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 Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 Accessions No.Si^^2i^. Class No. 
 
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ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURES, 
 
 DERIVED PRINCIPALLY FROM THE 
 
 MANNERS, CUSTOMS, RITES, TRADITIONS, FORMS OF SPEECH ANTiaUITIES 
 CLIMATE, AND WORKS OF ART AND LITERATURE, 
 
 EASTERN NATIONS; 
 
 EMBODYING ALL THAT IS VALUABLE IN THE WORKS OF 
 
 HARMER, BURDER, PAXTON, AND ROBERTS, 
 
 AND THE MOST 
 
 CELEBRATED ORIENTAL TRAVELLERS ; 
 
 ' EMBRAQNG ALSO THE SUBJECT OF THE 
 
 FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY, 
 
 AS EXHIBITED BY KEITH AND OTHERS ; 
 WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF THE 
 
 PRESENT STATE OF COUNTRIES AND PLACES MENTIONED IN THE SACRED WRITINGS, ILLUSTRATED 
 BY NUMEROUS LANDSCAPE ENGRAVINGS, FROM SKETCHES TAKEN ON THE SPOT. 
 
 REV. GEORGE BUSH, jfV OF XH^ s 
 
 PROFESSOR OP HEBREW AND ORIENTAL LITERATURE IN THE NEW YORK CITY rNTVERSITY. '' *« ** A it 
 
 13* 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: ^ 
 
 PUBLISHED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1850. 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by JOHN C. HOLBROOK, in the Clerk's Office of the District 
 
 Court of Vermont. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY FRANCIS F. RIPLEY, NEW YORK. 
 
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 4"^^ 
 
PREFACE. H^^nr^ 
 
 Next in worth and importance to the possession, is doubtless to be estimated the correct interpretation of the sacred 
 volume. Indeed, it is the latter which gives its value to the former. A revelation not understood, or not intelligible, is 
 no revelation, as far as its recipients are concerned. The position, therefore, that the meaning of the Bible is the Bible, 
 we consider as unquestionably true, and consequently any new accession of light, which goes to clear up its obscurities, 
 and cause its genuine sense to stand forth in bolder relieY upon the inspired page, is in reality enriching us with a larger 
 amount of its treasures, and virtually bestowing upon us added communications of the Divine will. In this view, the 
 progressive elucidation of the scriptures, whether by the expository labours of critics, the researches of travellers, or the 
 fulfilments of prophecy, may be compared to the gradual rolling away of the morning mist from a splendid landscape. 
 As the sun advances, the shades retire, and new and interesting features of the scenery are continually opening upon tha 
 delighted eye of the spectator. Or, it may be said to resemble the slow, but momentous process of unfolding the ancient 
 papyri, which the ravages of time and fire have spared among the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here, as every 
 successive word and letter, which can be redeemed from the crisp and crumbling texture of the blackened parchment, 
 is noted down with the most scrupulous care, as forming a part of the continuous record, and going to make out its entire 
 sense ; so the sense of the sacred volume is gradually elicited, item by item, and needs only to be collected and treasured 
 up with equal solicitude, in order to constitute a possession of infinitely more value than the choicest literary relics of 
 antiquity. Perhaps it may be safely affirmed, that the materials are at this moment in existence, for the satisfactory 
 solution of nearly every doubtful passage of holy writ ; but the great desideratum is to have them brought together — to 
 collect them from their wide dispersion over a countless multitude of writings, in various languages, which the great 
 majority of Christians can neither procure nor understand. It is only in this way that they can be made really available 
 to the great end which they are calculated to subserve ; and far from idle are the claims of any one who professes to 
 bring from scattered sources a new quota to the general stock of biblical illustration. 
 
 As the Bible, in its structure, spirit, and costume, is essentially an Eastern book, it is obvious that the natural phenomena, 
 and the moral condition of the East, should be made largely tributary to its elucidation. In order to appreciate fully 
 the truth of its descriptions, and the accuracy, force, and beauty of its various allusions, it is indispensable that the 
 reader, as far as possible, separate himself from his ordinary associations, and put himself, by a kind of mental transmi- 
 gration, into the very circumstances of the writers. He must set himself down in the midst of oriental scenery — gaze 
 upon the sun, sky, mountains, and rivers of Asia — go forth with the nomade tribes of the desert — follow their flocks — 
 travel with their caravans — rest in their tents— lodge in their khans— load and unload their camels — drink at their 
 watering-places — pause during the heat of the day under the shade of their palms — cultivate the fields with their own 
 rude implements — gather in or glean after their harvests— beat out and ventilate the grain in their open thrashing-floors — 
 dress in their costume— note their proverbial or idiomatic forms of speech, and listen to the strain of song or story, with 
 which they beguile the vacant hours. In a word, he must surround himself with, and transfuse himself into, all the forms, 
 habitudes, and usages of oriental life. In this way only can he catch the sources of their imagery, or enter into full 
 communion with the genius of the sacred penmen. 
 
 While, therefore, we readily concede the very high importance of critical and philological research in dissipating the 
 obscurities of the scriptures, and fixing their exact sense, we cannot, at the same time, but think that the collatera* 
 illustrations derived from this source, are deserving of at least equal attention from the student of revelation. The truth 
 is, the providence of God, which is never more worthily employed than about his Word, seems now to be directing the 
 eyes of his servants, as with pointed finger, to the immense stores of elucidation constantly accumulating from this 
 quarter. The tide of travel within a few years, has turned remarkably to the East. Animated either by the noble spirit 
 of missionary enterprise, of commercial speculation, of military adventure, or laudable curiosity, men of intelligence and 
 observation have made their way into every region on which the light of revelation originally shone ; exploring its 
 antiquities, mingling with its inhabitants, detailing its manners and customs, and displaying its physical, moral, and 
 political circumstances. From these expeditions they have returned laden with the rich results of their industry, and 
 the labours of the pen and the pencil have made thousands partakers of the benefit. Somewhat more than half a 
 century ago, when the justly celebrated Observations of Harmer were given to the public, the range of materials to 
 which he had access was comparatively limited. The travels of Chardin, Pococke, Shaw, Maundrell, Pitts, D'Arvieux, 
 with Russel's Natural History of Aleppo, were his principal authorities— authorities, it is true, which have not yet been 
 wholly superseded. But since his time, what an immense accession has the department of oriental travels received' 
 The names of Volney, Niebuhr, Mariti, Clarke, Chateaubriand, Porter, Burckhardt, Buckingham, Morier, Seetzen, 
 De Lamartine, Laborde, exhaust but a small part of the list of eastern tourists, whose labours have gone to make us 
 familiarly acquainted with the land of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. How desirable that the scattered gleams of 
 illustrative light, which shine in th^ir works, should be concentrated into one focus of illumination ! This is the task 
 which we have essayed in the present volume. 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 In entering upm and advancing in this task, we have been more and more impressed with the remarkal.le fact of the 
 permanence of eastern usages. True to the traditions of their ancestors, and impenetrable thus far to the spirit of 
 innovation, their manners and customs, opinions and institutions, retain all the fixedness of their mountains, and flow 
 on as unvarying as the course of their streams. To the question, therefore, whether the state of things in the East, as 
 described by modern travellers, really coincides with that which existed at the time the scriptures were written, so that 
 one may be cited as conveying a correct idea of the other ;• we may reply, in the words of Sir John Chardin, one of the 
 most respectable and authentic of the number:—" I have written nothing," says he, " of the Indies, because I lived but 
 five years there, and understood only fhe vulgar languages, which are the Indian and Persian, without the knowledge of 
 that of the Brahmins; but, nevertheless, I did not spend my time there in idleness : on the contrary, as the winters in 
 tljat country will not permit one to travel, I employed, that time in a work which I had long in my thoughts, and which 
 I may call my favourite design, by the pleasure wherewith I laboured in it, and the profit which I hope the public will 
 receive thereby; which is certain notes upon very many passages of holy scripture, whereof the explication depends on 
 the knowledge of the customs of the eastern countries ; for the East is the scene of all the historical facts mentioned in 
 the Bible. The language of that divine book (especially of the Old Testament) being oriental, and very often figurative 
 and hyperbolical, those parts of scripture which are written in verse, and in the prophecies, are full of figures and 
 hyperboles, which, as it is manifest, cannot be well understood without a knowledge of things from whence such figures 
 are taken, which are natural properties and particular manners of the countries to which they refer. I discerned this in 
 my first voyage to the Indies: for I gradually found a greater sense and beauty in divers passages of scripture than I had 
 before, by having in my view the things, either natural or moral, which explained them to me ; ana in perusing the 
 different translations which the greatest part of the translators of the Bible had made, I observed that every one of them 
 (to render the expositions, as they thought, more intelligible) used such expressions as would accommodate the phrase to 
 the places where they writ ; and which did not only many times pervert the text, but often rendered the sense obscure, 
 and sometimes absurd also. In fine, consulting the commentators upon such kind of passages, I found very strangp 
 mistakes in them, and that they had long guessed at the sense, and did but grope (as in the dark) in search of it. And 
 from these reflections I took a resolution to make my remarks upon many passages of the scriptures ; persuading myself 
 that they would be equally agreeable and profitable for use. And the learned, to whom I communicated my design, 
 encouraged me very much, by their commendations, to proceed in it ; and more especially when I informed them, that 
 it is not in Asia, as in our Europe, where there are frequent changes, more or less, in the form of things, as the habits, 
 buildings, gardens, and the like. In the East they are constant in all things ; the habits are at this day in the same 
 manner as in the precedent ages ; so that one may reasonably believe, that in that part of the world, the exterior form of 
 things (as their manners and customs) are the same now as they were two thousand years since, except in such changes 
 as have been introduced by religion, which are, nevertheless, veryinconsiderable."^Prefaceto Travels in Persia, p. 6.) 
 Morier, an eastern traveller, says, " The manaers of the East, amid all the changes of government and religion, are stil„ 
 the same; they are living impressions from an original mould; and at every step, some object, some idiom, some dress, 
 or some custom of common life, reminds the traveller of ancient times, and confirms, above all, the beauty, the accuracy^ 
 and the propriety of the language and the history of the Bible." 
 
 This very striking testimony to the conformity, or rather identity, of the modern with the ancient usages of the 
 East, is abundantly confirmed from other sources, as scarcely a traveller has set foot upon oriental soil, without 
 professing himself to be at once struck with the remarkable coincidence between the picture of ancient manners, as 
 drawn in the sacred writings, and the state of things which actually meets his eye. This steadfast resistance to the 
 spirit of innovation and change, which thus remarkably distinguishes the nations of the East, will probably, in the 
 providence of God, remain unsubdued, till it shall have answered all the important purposes of biblical elucidation, 
 when it will give way to the all-pervading, all-regenerating influence of the Bible itself, borne upon the bosom of a new 
 tide of civilization and improvement, which shall, ere long, set in upon the East from the nations of Europe, and the 
 great continent of the West. " By a wonderful provision of Providence," says De Lamartine, " who never creates 
 wants without at the same time creating the means of satisfying them, it happens, that at the moment when the great 
 crisis of civilization takes place in Europe, and when the new necessities resulting from it are revealing themselves, 
 both to governments and people, a great crisis of an inverse order takes place in the East, and a vast void is there off"ered 
 for the redundancy of European population and faculties. The excess of life which is overflowing here, may and 
 must find an outlet in that part of the world ; the excess of force which overstrains us, may and must find employment 
 in those countries, where the human powers are in a state of exhaustion and torpidtty, where the stream of population is 
 stagnant or drying up, where the vitality of the human race is expiring." 
 
 In the mean time, while the inevitable doom of revolution and transformation that awaits the East, lingers, it behooves 
 us to make the most, for useful purposes, of that state of society which still exists, but which, ere long, will have passed 
 away. With this view, we have endeavoured to imbody in the present volume a large mass of oriental illustration. 
 The work is strictly of an eclectic character. Postponing the claims of originality to those of practical utility, the 
 Editor, after arraying before him the amplest store of materials which he could command, set himself to the task of 
 selecting and arranging the most valuable portions which he could bring within the limits of his plan. The kindred 
 works of Harmer, Burder, Paxton, Taylor's edition of Calmet, scarcely any of which are in common accessible to the 
 majority of biblical students, have been diligently gleaned, and all their important contents transferred to our pages. 
 As these works are not likely ever to be reprinted in this country, there appeared no other way to arrest their progress 
 lO oblivion, and to secure a larger and wider circulation to the valuable matter which they contain. 
 
 But the range of selection has been by no means confined to the works now mentioned. So prolific has been the press 
 within the last twenty or thirty years, of books of eastern travels, illustrative of manners, customs, and religion, that our 
 resources in this department have been almost indefinitely multiplied. But to one work in particular— Roberts' Oriental 
 
PREFACE. "J 
 
 Illustrations of the Sacred Scriptures, collected during a residence of nearly fourteen years among the Hindoos— the 
 Editor desires, as an act of justice, to which he is sure the reader will most heartily respond, to express his very deep 
 obligations. He considers himself peculiarly fortunate in meeting with this work just as he was entering upon his own 
 undertaking, so that he has been able to incorporate it nearly entire in the present volume. Though abounding chiefly 
 in illustrations drawn from the parabolical, idiomatical, and proverbial phraseolgy common in the East, yet his notes are 
 so pointed and pertinent in their scope, so felicitous and graphic in their turn of expression, and so remarkable for the 
 vividness with which the leading idea is exhibited, that we doubt not the reader will find in this part alone an ample 
 equivalent for the cost of the whole volume. The Rev. T. H. Home says he feels himself "justified in recommending 
 Mr. Roberts' ' Illustrations,' as supplying an important desideratum in biblical literature. They furnish to very many 
 difficult or obscure passages satisfactory explanations, which are not more original than they are entertaining and 
 instructive." " Mr. Roberts' work," says the British Critic, "is replete with interesting matter, and, in a condensed 
 form, contains more illustrations of Holy Writ than any other book we know of. He richly deserves our thanks, and 
 the thanks especially of those who are not able to possess many volumes illustrative of the oriental rites and customs to 
 be found in the Bible. We have only to add, that this volume is worth all the twopenny trash which the last half dozen 
 years have given birth to." 
 
 As the present work is designed to be marked by somewhat of the same Comprehensive character which distinguishes 
 the other biblical works lately issued from the press of the Publishers, the illustrations bear upon numerous other points 
 than those relating to manners and customs. Every thing of a purely doctrinal character, about which the different 
 denominations of Christians might be supposed to disagree, has been studiously excluded; at least such has been the 
 Editor's intention, and if any thing should be met with that seems to gainsay this declaration, he begs it maybe set down 
 to the account of a momentary inadvertence, rather than of a determinate purpose. But with this exception, he has 
 given himself as much latitude in the selection of matter, as was consistent with a prevailing unity of design in the 
 structure of the whole. 
 
 The subject of the Fulfilment of Prophecy, cannot well be lost sight of by any one conversant at once with the scriptures 
 and the reports of modern travellers. The topographical descriptions of many of the most noted places of scripture, a 
 department to which particular attention has been given in the ensuing pages, suggests at once the divine predictions 
 bearing upon their future doom. The researches of tourists, both skeptics and Christians, have poured a flood of light 
 upon this subject. It is perfectly astonishing, to one who has never examined the subject, to find how literally and minutely 
 the prophetic declarations of scripture have been fulfilled, so that even infidel travellers and historians, as Volney and 
 Gibbon, in their accounts of nations and countries, have unwittingly used for description, almost the words of scripture 
 in which the events are foretold. Volney, particularly, (one of the bitterest opposers of Christianity,) in his published 
 travels in the East, has atforded, unwillingly and unthinkingly, a wonderful attestation to the truth of the Bible, in the 
 relation of facts which came under his own eye. There needs no better witness. Indeed, it is impossible for the most 
 determined infidel carefully to examine and weigh this subject, and not be forced to feel that the Bible is divine ; or, in the 
 words of Bishop Newton, " he is reduced to the necessity, either to renounce his senses, deny what he reads in the Bible, 
 and what he sees and observes in the world, or acknowledge the truth of prophecy, and consequently, of divine revelation." 
 The researches of travellers in Palestine have been abundant, and the prophecies thereby verified are numerous and 
 distinct, so that the facts may be related literally in the language of the prophecy. To use the words of a late writer in 
 the London Gtuarterly Review, " we confess that we have felt more surprise, delight, and conviction, in examining the 
 accounts which the travels of Burckhardt, Mangles, Irby, Leigh, and Laborde, have so recently given of Judea, Edom, &c. 
 than we have ever derived from any similar inquiry. It seems like a miracle in our own times. Twenty years ago we 
 read certain portions of th.e prophetic scriptures, with a belief that they were true, because other similar passages had, 
 in the course of ages, been proved to be so, and we had an indistinct notion, that all these (to us) obscure and indefinite 
 denunciations iiad been — we knew not very well when or how — accomplished : but to have graphic descriptions, ground 
 plans, and elevations, showing the actual existence of all the heretofore vague and shadowy denunciations of God against 
 Edom, does, we confess, excite our feelings, and exalt our confidence in prophecy, to a height that no external evidence 
 
 has hitherto done Here we have — ^bursting upon our age of incredulity, by the labours of accidental, impartial, 
 
 and sometimes incredulous" (infidel) " witnesses— the certainty of existing facts, which fulfil what were considered 
 hitherto the most vague and least intelligible of the prophecies. The value of one such contemporaneous proof is 
 immense." Indeed, it would seem that in regard to such places as Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Moab, Edom, and others, 
 the providence of God was no less conspicuous in bringing to light, in these latter ages, the evidence of the accomplishment 
 of those prophecies, than formerly in working the accomplishment itself. The valuable labours of Keith in this depart- 
 ment, arranged in accordance with our general plan, so as to exhibit the commentary under its appropriate text, will be 
 found to have added much to the interest and profit of the reader in perusing our pages. 
 
 The numerous highly finished engravings, executed by distinguished artists, from sketches taken on the spot, and 
 accompanied, for the most part, with letter-press descriptions by the Rev. T. H, Home, originally published in Finden's 
 Landscape Illustrations, will go also greatly to enhance the value of this portion of the illustrations. 
 
 A critical note is occasionally thrown in, where the point of a passage seemed capable of a happy explication, especially 
 from a more exact analysis of the import of the original terms. Those bearing the signature of the Editor will perhaps 
 usually be found of this character, and for any seeming infraction in this of his general plan, he solicits the indulgence 
 not unreasonably claimed for a favourite mode of scripture exposition. They are, however, for the most part, " few and 
 far between." 
 
 As a prominent object aimed at throughout has been, not only to increase the facilities for a complete understanding of 
 the inspired volume, but also to multiply the evidences, and vindicate the claims of its divine original, a portion of our 
 pages has been allotted to the direct consideration of infidel objections and cavils. The most important extracts of this 
 
8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 description have been taken from the valuable and now rare " Life of David," by Chandler, in which the insinuations 
 of Bayle against the character of David, are canvassed and refuted with distinguished ability, though perhaps somewhat 
 more verbosely than is consistent with the taste either of modern writers or readers. 
 
 The original and acute remarks of Michaelis, on many points of the Mosaic laws and ritual, though sometimes 
 bordering upon the fanciful, disclose a profound acquaintance with the genius of the East, and are generally entitled to 
 deep attention. 
 
 As the authorities employed in the preparation of the ensuing pages are usually quoted in a very general way — for 
 *he most part merely by citing the writer's name — it will probably be rendering an important service to many of our 
 readers, to give a more ample view of the sources upon which we have drawn for materials. The list is by no 
 means complete, nor, as many have served us at second hand, is it perhaps practicable or necessary that it should bej 
 but the most important and valuable will be found here grouped together, and ordinarily, by turning to this catalogue, 
 the entire title, including edition and date, of any work cited in the ensuing pages simply by the author's name, will be 
 found. Such a catalogue may be of service for other purposes than those connected with the present volume. 
 
 Harmer's Observations on Various Passages of Scripture, with ad- 
 ditions by Adam Clarke, LL. £>., 4 vols. 8vo. Charlestown, 1811. 
 
 Paxton's Illustrations, 3 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1^. 
 
 Burder's Oriental Customs, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1816. 
 
 " Oriental Literature, with Rosenmuller's Additions, 2 vols. 
 
 8vo. London, 1822. 
 
 Roberts' Oriental Illustrations, 8vo. London, 1835. 
 
 Calmet's Dictionary, Taylor's Edition, 5 vols. 4to. London, 1829. 
 
 Shavf's Travels through Barbary and the Levant, folio. Lon. 1738. 
 
 MAVSi>REL,h's Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, 8vo. Oxford, 1749. 
 
 Volney's Travels through Egypt and Syria, 8\o. New York, 1798. 
 
 Mariti's Travels through Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Dublin, 1793. 
 
 Baron De Tott's Memoirs on the Turks and Tartars, 3 vols. 12mo. 
 Dublin, 1785. 
 
 RrssELL's Natural history of Aleppo, 2 vols. 4to. London, 1794. 
 
 Clarke's Travels in the Holy Land, 12mo. Philadelphia, 1817. 
 
 Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1741. 
 
 Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1827. 
 " Travels among the Arab Tribes, 4to. London, 1825. 
 
 Bcrckhardt's Travels in Arabia, 4to. London, 1829. 
 
 " Travels in Nubia and Egypt, ito. London, 1822. 
 
 Madden's Travels in Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine, 2 vols. 12mo. 
 Pliiladelphia, 1830, 
 
 Madox's Excursions in the Holy Land, Egypt, Nubia, Syria, ^c, 
 2vols. 8vo. London, 1834. 
 
 Callaway's Oriental Observations, 12mo. London, 1825. 
 
 Campbell's African Light, 12mo. London, 1835. 
 
 Anderson's Tour through Greece, 12mo. Boston, 1831. 
 
 Hardy's Notices of the Holy Land, 12mo. London, 1835. 
 
 Chateaubriand's Travels, 8vo. New York, 1814. 
 
 Keppel's Narrative of a Journey from India to England, 8vo. 
 Philadelphia, 1827. 
 
 Morier's Journey through Persia, 8vo. Philadelphia, 1816. 
 
 Smith and Dwiqht's Researches in Armenia, 2 vols. 12mo. Boston, 
 1833. 
 
 Jowett's Christian Researches in Syria and the Holy Land, 8vo. 
 London, 1825. 
 
 Modern Traveller, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, 3 vols. 12mo. 
 Boston, 1830. 
 
 Heeren's Asiatic Nations, 3 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1833. 
 
 Waddington's Travels in Ethiopia, 4to. London, 1^7. 
 
 HosKiNs' Travels in Ethiopia, 4to. London, 1835. 
 
 Bdrnes's Travels in Bokhara, 2 vols. 12mo. Philadelphia, 1835. 
 
 Munroe's Summer Ramble in Syria, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1835. 
 
 Hogg's Visit to Alexandria, Damascus, and Jerusalem, 2 vols. \2xBa. 
 London, 1835. 
 
 Wilkinson's TViebes, and General View of Egypt, 8vo. London, 1835. 
 
 ARfTNDELL's Dtscovcries in Asia Minor, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1834. 
 
 De Lamartine's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 2 vols. 12mo. Phila- 
 delphia, 1835. 
 
 Stackhouse's History of the Bible, 2 vols, folio. Londcn, 1755. 
 
 Chandler's Life of David, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1766. 
 
 Michaelis's Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, 4 vols. 8vo. Lon- 
 don, 1814. 
 
 Gleig's History of the Bible, 3 vols. 12mo. New York, 1831. 
 
 Horsley's Sermons, 8vo. London, 1830. 
 
 Pococke's Theological Works, 2 vols, folio. London, 1740. 
 
 Newcome's Minor Prophets, 8vo. Pontefract, 1809. 
 
 Keith's Evidence of Prophecy, 12mo. New York, 1833. 
 
 Good's Translation of Job, 8vo. London, 1812. 
 
 Finden's Landscape Illustrations. London, 1835. 
 
 The importance of the present work must be obvious, and being altogether illustrative, without reference to doctrineSj 
 or other points in which Christians differ, it is hoped it will meet with favour from all who love the sacred volume, and 
 that it will be sufficiently interesting and attractive to recommend itself, not only to professed Christians of all denomina- 
 tions, but also to the general reader. The arrangement of the texts illustrated with the notes, in the order of the chapters 
 and verses of the authorized version of the Bible, will render it convenient for reference to particular passages, while 
 the copious Index at the end, will at once enable the reader to turn to every subject discussed in the volume. 
 
 It only remains for the Editor to remark, that he would by no means be held responsible for the truth or justice of every 
 sentiment advanced by way of interpretation or illustration in the present work. He hopes not to be considered as 
 adopting himself all the various explications of scripture which he has yet felt it his duty to propound. Many of them 
 are proposed by their authors themselves merely as conjectures, and though he may occasionally have entertainec 
 doubts of their correctness, yet, as they involved only points of minor importance, he has seldom felt himself called upon 
 to turn aside to question or confute them. A very large mass of obviously true or highly probable illustration, is here 
 presented to the reader. As to the pertinency or verisimilitude of particular portions, he will of course exercise a due 
 discrimination ; he cannot be expected to forego his own judgment, nor will he find it necessary to presume upon that of 
 him who has thus endeavoured, however feebly, to minister, by so great a variety of provision, to his instruction and 
 pleasure. , Q. B. 
 
 Nem Yorkf May 1st, 1836. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURES. 
 
 GENESIS 
 
 dliH 
 
 Chap. 1. Ver. 1. In the beginning God created 
 the heavens and the earth. 
 
 Notwithstanding the industrious attempts of many skep- 
 tical writers to array the evidence deducible from geolo- 
 gical discoveries against the Mosaic account of the cre- 
 ation, nothing has yet been advanced to invalidate the 
 testimony of the inspired record, as nothing has yet been 
 brought to show that its statements, when rightly under- 
 stood, are at all at variance with any of the clear and un- 
 doubted results of scientific research. We say, when 
 rightly understood ; for that the conclusions of the geolo- 
 gist, even the most legitimate and demonstrable, may be 
 inconsistent with the fo'pular interpretation of the sacred 
 narrative, we by no means deny ; but it is obvious that 
 such interpretation may be erroneous, and thart all that 
 is requisite to bring the two departments into perfect har- 
 mony, may be the fixing of the genuine sense of the writer 
 by a purely philological process. Until, therefore, it is es- 
 tablished beyond controversy that the language of Moses 
 cannot, by any possibility of fair construction, be made to 
 tally with, or at least not to contradict, the admitted truths 
 of geological science, it is vain to charge revelation with 
 uttering oracles at variance with the irrefragable teach- 
 ings of nature. But this, it is to be remembered, never 
 has been, and we are confident never will be, done. The 
 material fabric of the universe and the book of inspira- 
 tion are the works of the same author, and we may be 
 sure that the truths pertaining to the one cannot be at war 
 with those belonging to the other. The following remarks 
 of the Rev. Bartholomew Lloyd, Provost of Trinity Col- 
 lege, Dublin, on the drift of the sacred penman in the 
 first chapter of Genesis, cannot but commend themselves 
 to every enlightened reader : " The sacred writer pre- 
 faces his history of God's government over his chosen 
 people, by informing us, that ' in the beginning God created 
 the heavens and the earth,' and it seems equallv certain 
 that he here speaks of the original creation of all things 
 out of nothing. This, indeed, is a great subject, and though 
 nothing circumstantial is here revealed to us concerning 
 it, yet the sacred importance of the truth, assured to us 
 by this simple expression, is every way suitable to the prom- 
 inent place assigned to it ; for it is nothing less than the 
 authoritative statement of the first and fundamental article 
 of all true religious faith. By it we are taught that self- 
 existence is an attribute of the one supreme Being, and 
 that all things besides owe their existence to His unlimited 
 power. How necessary it was to mankind to have an, 
 authoritative declaration on this subject, we may readily 
 convince ourselves by adverting to the errors into which 
 the most celebrated men of all antiquity had fallen, who 
 presumed to speculate on these matters, so far beyond the 
 reach of human reason, without other guidances. Among 
 these erroneous opinions, or rather among those wild con- 
 jectures, we find the following :— that matter was eternal; 
 that the Deity was the soul of the world; agreeably to 
 which, the material frame of nature was to be regarded 
 as his body, and not as his work. Now, in this his first 
 sentence, the inspired writer settles definitively what we 
 are to believe on this subject, by stating the primary rela- 
 
 tion which all things in common bear to the supreme Be- 
 ing ; and with this information he forbears from mixing 
 up any other matter. For it will be perceived that the state- 
 ment is made without any specification of time or other cir- 
 cumstance ; seemingly, because no addition of this kind 
 could be of use in aiding our conceptions of a truth purely 
 religious, or in strengthening our faith in the authority on 
 which it was proposed ; but chiefly because it was the sole 
 object of the writer, in this first sentence, to (^.aim for God 
 the creation of all things whatsoever, and that this claim 
 must remain unshaken, however we may decide on other 
 questions which may be raised about the creation ; such 
 as that relative to the time when it occurred ; how long 
 before the origin of the human race ; whether all the parts 
 of the universe were brought into existence simultaneous- 
 Iv, or at different and widely distant epochs. It is plain, 
 then, that in this place the sacred writer furnishes no helps 
 for the decision of such questions. Let us look to what 
 follows. In proceeding to those arrangements by which 
 the earth was to be fitted for the residence and support 
 of man, and the other inferior tribes by which it was then 
 to be tenanted, we find him describing its preceding condi- 
 tion ; informing us that it was then ' without form and 
 void,' and that ' darkness was upon the face of the deep.' 
 Now, I confess that this always seemed to me very like 
 the description of a ruined world : and if such was the 
 earth at that time, it would be difficult to suppose that it 
 had not existed long before. But this is not all. When 
 he does come to tlje work of the six days, we find the de- 
 scription of each day's work introduced by an expression 
 of a particular form, and concluded by another, by which 
 it appears that the original work of creation, spoken ol 
 in the first verse, is excluded from the series of perform- 
 ances belonging to those days; — and, if excluded, theri, 
 perhaps, removed to an indefinite distance; for had it 
 immediately preceded, we might naturally expect to find 
 it spoken of, either as the work of the first of a series ol 
 seven days, or as part of the work of the first of the six 
 days. This, then, would seem to remove the work of the 
 original creation far beyond that of the reconstruction ol 
 the globe. It is true, that nothing is exhibited to our ima- 
 ginations to mark the interval between these perform- 
 ances ; but to deny that there was such an interval, and 
 for that reason, would be to conclude about as wisely as 
 the peasant, who supposes the clouds to be contiguous to 
 the stars, because when looking up he discerns nothing 
 between them." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers, in his treatise on the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity, speaks to the same effect. " Does Moses ever say, 
 that when God created the heavens and the earth, he did 
 more, at the time alluded to, than transform them out of 
 previously existing materials? Or does he ever say, that 
 there was not an interval of many ages between the first act 
 of creation, described in the first verse of the book of Gen- 
 esis, and said to have been performed in the beginning, 
 and those more detailed operations, the account of which 
 commences at the second verse, and which are described 
 to us as having been performed in so many days % Or, 
 finally, does he ever make us understand, that the gener- 
 ations of man went further than to fix the antiquity of th« 
 
10 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 1. 
 
 species, and of consequence that they left the antiquity of 
 the globe a free subject for the speculations of philoso- 
 phers 1" 
 
 " We do not know," says Sharon Turner, " and we have 
 no means of knowing, at what point of the ever-llowing 
 eternity of that which is alone eternal— the Divine subsist- 
 ence — the creation of our earth, or of any part of the uni- 
 verse began, nor in what section of it we are living now. 
 All that we can learn explicitly from revelation is, that 
 nearly 6000 years have passed since our first parent began 
 to be. Our chronology, that of Scripture, is dated from the 
 period of his creation ; and almost 6000 years have elapsed 
 since he moved and breathed a full-formed man. But 
 what series of time had preceded his formation, or in what 
 portion of the anteceding succession of time this was effect- 
 ed, has not been disclosed, ajid cannot by any effort of hu- 
 man ingenuity be now explored. — Creation must have be- 
 gun at some early part of anteceding eternity; and our 
 earth may have had its commencement in such a primeval 
 era, as well as in a later one." 
 
 Professor Hitchcock, in an elaborate and very able essay 
 on the connexion between Geology and the Mosaic History, 
 (Biblic. Reposit. Oct. 1835,) undertakes to establi:-h, and 
 we tliink with entire success, the following positions, which 
 we give in his own words: — " In the first place, we main- 
 tain that between geology and revelation there are several 
 unexpected and remarkable coincidences, such as could 
 have resulted (jnly from veracity on the part of the sacred 
 historian; and that the points of agreement are far more 
 numerous than the points of apparent collision; and, there- 
 fore, even geology alone famishes a strong presumptive 
 evidence in favour of the truth of the Mosaic history. We 
 maintain, secondly, that the first chapter of Genesis is a por- 
 tion of Scripture that has always occasioned much difficulty 
 in its interpretation, apart from geology, and that those por- 
 tions of it about which commentators have differed most, 
 are the very ones with which geology is supposed to come 
 into collision ; so that in fact scarcely any new interpreta- 
 tion has been proposed to meet the geological ditficulty. 
 We admit, thirdly, that the geological dilficulty is real ; 
 that is, the established facts of geology do teach us that the 
 earth has existed through a vastly longer period, anterior 
 to the creation of man, than the common interpretation of 
 Genesis allows. We maintain, fourthly, that most of the 
 methods that have been proposed to avoid or reconcile the 
 geological difficulty are entirely inadequate, and irrecon- 
 cilably at variance either with geology or revelation. We 
 maintain, fifthly, that at least one or two of these proposed 
 modes of reconciling geology and Scripture, although not 
 free from objections, are yet so probable, that without any 
 auxiliary considerations, they would be sufficient, in the 
 view of every reasonable man, to vindicate the Mosaic 
 history from the charge of collision with the principles of 
 geology. And finally, we maintain, that though all these 
 modes of reconciliation should be unsatisfactory, it would 
 be premature and unreasonable to infer that there exists 
 any real discrepance : first, because we are by no means 
 certain that we fully understand every part of the Mosaic 
 account of the creation ; secondly, because geology is so 
 recent a science, and is making so rapid advances, that 
 we may expect from its future discoveries that some more 
 light will be thrown upon cosmogony: and thirdly, be- 
 cause, as geology has been more and more thoroughly un- 
 derstood, the apparent discrepances between it and reve- 
 lation have become less numerous." — B. 
 
 Ver. 9. And God said. Let the waters under the 
 heaven be gathered together unto one place, and 
 let the dry land appear : and it was so. 
 
 We have before remarked, that, during the first and sec- 
 ond days of the creation, the earth must have presented 
 :o the view, (had any human eye existed to look upon it,) a 
 solid globe of spheroidal form, covered with a thin coat of 
 aqueous fluid, and already revolving on its axis as a mem- 
 ber of the solar system. We are fully authorized in coming 
 to this latter conclusion, from the distinct mention made in 
 the record, of the days, comprising, like our present days, 
 the evening and the morning, with the darkness and the 
 light following each other in regular succession. The 
 sun, it is true, had not yet been made visibly to appear, or 
 to shine through the, as yet, cloudy atmosphere. It was 
 
 now the will of the Creator that the earth should no longer 
 be ^Hnvisible" under its watery covering; and, according- 
 ly, the command was given, that " the waters should be 
 gathered together unto one place," that the " dry land" 
 might appear. In considering this great event, it becomes 
 a natural and fair question, as it has been left open to us 
 by the record, as to the mode or means by which it must 
 have taken place. The well-poised earth had already be- 
 gun to revolve upon its axis ; and the laws of gravitation 
 and of fluids had consequently begun to act in our system. 
 By these laws, it was impossible that the waters could have 
 been gathered together by accumulation, or above the gen 
 eral level, as the solids of the earth might have been. We 
 can, therefore, come to no other conclusion than that to 
 which we are also led by various parts of the inspired wri- 
 tings, viz. that God did " rend the depths by his intelli- 
 gence," and formed a depression, or hollow, on a part of 
 the solid globe, within which, by the appointed laws of 
 fluids, the "depths" were "gathered together." The fol- 
 lowing beautiful reflections on this part of our subject are 
 from the enlightened mind of Mr. Granville Penn, who 
 may, indeed, be called the first great advocate for the 
 Mosaic Geology, among the men of science of our day. 
 " The briefness of this clatfse, (Genesis i. 9,) and the nature 
 of the subject, have caused it to be little contemplated in 
 proportion to its importance, and to the fulness of the in- 
 struction which it conveys ; and, therefore, it has not been 
 observed that the same sublimity which is universally per- 
 ceived in the clause, ' Let there be light, and there was light,' 
 subsists equally in this clause ; ' Let the waters be gathered 
 together unto one place, and let the Axy land be seen, and 
 it was so.' The sentiment of sublimity in the former 
 clause, results from the contemplation of an instantaneous 
 transition of the universe from the profoundest darkness 
 to the most splendid light, at the command of God. All 
 men familiarly apprehend the sadness of the former, and 
 the delight of the latter ; and they are, therefore, instantly 
 sensible of the glorious nature of the change which was then 
 so suddenly produced. But the nature of the change which 
 must necessarily have taken place, in suddenly rendering 
 visible a part of a solid globe, the universal surface of 
 which had been, overflowed and concealed by a flood of 
 waters, is not so familiarly or ^o instantly apprehended ; 
 the mind, therefore, does not care to dwell upon it, but is 
 contented with receiving the general information that the 
 sea was formed. Hence, both commentators and geologists 
 have equally failed to draw the immediate and necessary 
 inference from the revelation of that great and undeniable 
 geological fact.''^ — Fairholme's Geology, p. 51 — 54. 
 
 Ver. 14. And God said, Let there be lights in the 
 firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from 
 the night ; and let them be for signs, and for 
 seasons, and for days, and years : 15* And let 
 them be for lights in the firmament of the heav- 
 en, to give light upon the earth : and it was so. 
 16. And God made two great lights ; the greater 
 light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule 
 the night: he made the stars also. 17. And 
 God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to 
 give light upon the earth. 
 
 It is admitted that the Scriptures generally describe the 
 phenomena of the natural world as they appear, rather than 
 according to strict scientific truth. Thus the sun and moon 
 are said to rise and set, — the stars to fall, — and the moon to 
 be turned into blood. Consequently, if this history of the 
 creation were designed to describe the effects of the six 
 days' work as they would have appeared to a spectator, had 
 one been present, — a supposition rendered probable from its 
 being said, " Let the dry land appear," (Heb. be seen,) when 
 as yet there was no eye to see it, — then we may reasonably 
 conclude that the sun was formed on the first day, or per- 
 haps had been created even before our earth, and w^as in 
 fact the cause of the vicissitudes of the three first days and 
 nights. But as the globe of the earth was during that time 
 surrounded by a dense mass of mingled air and water, the 
 rays of the sun would be intercepted ; only a dim glimmer- 
 ing l|ght, even in the daytime, would appear; and the 
 bodies of the heavenly luminaries would be entirely hidden, 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 GENESIS, 
 
 11 
 
 just as they now are in a very cloudy day. Let it be sup- 
 posed then that on the fourth day the clouds, mists, and va- 
 pours were all cleared away, and the atmosphere made 
 pure and serene ; the sun of course would shine forth in 
 all his splendour, and to the eye of our imagined spectator 
 would seem to have been just created ; and so at night of 
 the moon and stars. This effect of the Divine power, ac- 
 cording to the USU3J analogy of the Scriptures, is descri- 
 bed from its appearance, and the language employed,— 
 " let there be lights in the firmament,"— and— " he made tWo 
 great lights, and set them in the firmament" — is to be inter- 
 preted on the principle above stated. They might then be 
 said to be " made," because they then first began to be visi- 
 ble, and to perform the office for which they were designed. 
 The original word for " made" is not the same as that which 
 is rendered " create." It is a term frequently employed to 
 signify constituted, appointed, set for a particular purpose or 
 use. Thus it is said that God " made Joseph a father to 
 Pharaoh" — " made him lord of Egypt" — " made the Jordan a 
 border between the tribes" — " made David the head of the 
 heathen ;" and so in innumerable other instances. As, there- 
 fore, the rainbow was made or constituted a sign, though it 
 might have existed before, so the sun, moon, and stars may 
 be said to have been made and set as lights in the firma- 
 ment, on the fourth day, though actually called into exist- 
 ence on the first, or previously. — Bush. 
 
 Chap. 2. ver. 18. And the Lord God said, It 
 
 is not good that the man should be alone ; I 
 will make him a help-meet for him. 
 
 This is the polite way of speaking of a wife in the East, 
 though it must be confessed that they associate with this 
 term too much of the idea of a servant. Does an aged 
 person advise a young friend to get married ; he will not 
 say, " Seek for a wife," but " Try to procure a thunive, a 
 help-meet." A man who repines at his single state, says, 
 " I have not any female help in my house." A widower 
 says, " Ah ! my children, I have now no female help." A 
 man, wishing to say something to his wife, will address 
 her as follows: " My help-meet, hear what I am going to 
 say." It is worthy of observation, that the margin has for 
 help-meet, " as before him ;" and this gives a proper view 
 of her condition, for she literally has to stand before her 
 husband to serve him on all occasions, and especially when 
 he takes his food ; she being then his servant. Say to a 
 woman, " Leave thy husband!" she will reply, "No, no; 
 I will stand before him." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. And whatsoever Adam called every 
 living creature, that was the name thereof. 
 
 The verb was is not in the original text ; and, therefore, 
 the sentence may run in the present, with equal propriety 
 as in the past; and, indeed, according to the genius of the 
 language, with more propriety in the present — ^that is the 
 name thereof. Hence the names by which the lower ani- 
 mals were known in the days of Moses, were those which 
 Adam gave them in Paradise ; and as these are pure He- 
 brew, the legitimate conclusion is, that Hebrew was the 
 language spoken by Adam before the fall. 
 
 This argument receives an accession of strength from 
 the ideal character of the Hebrew language. It is admit- 
 ted, that all languages participate more or less of the ideal 
 character ; but it is one of the most remarkable circumstan- 
 ces by which the Hebrew is distinguished. A number of 
 its words, as in other languages, are mere arbitrary signs 
 of ideas; but, in general, they derive their origin from a 
 very few terms, or roots, that are commonly expressive of 
 some idea borrowed from external objects ; from the hu- 
 man constitution ; from our senses or our feelings. The 
 names of men, and of the lower animals, and the names of 
 many places, particularly in the remoter ages, allude to 
 some remarkable character in the creature named ; or, in 
 reference to place, to some uncommon circumstance or 
 event. Scarcely a proper name can be mentioned, which 
 alludes not to something of this kind. To give a few ex- 
 amples : Kore, the partridge, received its name from the 
 verb Kara, to call, in imitation of the note which that bird 
 uses in calling its young. The camel is in Hebrew, Gamal, 
 from a verb of the same form, which signifies to recom- 
 pense, because that creature is remarkable for remember- 
 
 ing and revengmg an injur) . The Hebrews call the scor- 
 pion Akrab, from two woi ds which signify to kill one's 
 father ; now, both Pliny and Aristotle inform us, that it is 
 the character of that creature to destroy its own parents. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 20. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and 
 to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the 
 field: but for Adam there was not found a 
 help-meet for him. 
 
 With respect to the original language which Moses de- 
 scribes our first parents as making use of, from their very 
 first creation, we are nowhere informed in what manner 
 they first acquired it, nor how it was communicated to 
 them. It is, indeed, probable that the inspired historian 
 addressed himself to those who were much less skeptical 
 on such subjects than ourselves ; and that this remarkable 
 endowment, peculiar to the human race, and by which they 
 so far excel all other created beings, was never, in early 
 times, doubted as having been directly communicated from 
 the same wise and provident source from whence the hu- 
 man race itself had arisen ; and the researches of the wisest 
 and most learned men of all ages have invariably led them 
 to the same natural conclusion. 
 
 We have no direct means of positive knowledge as to 
 what relation the primitive language of the earth may have 
 had with existing tongues; but, in the absence of such 
 evidence, we may form some conjectures on the subject, 
 which are certainly marked with the highest probability. 
 In the first place, we must consider that the numbers of the 
 antediluvian human race, and their consequent divisions 
 into nations, could not have been nearly so great as in the 
 present day, from the comparatively short period they had 
 existed, and from the comparatively unrefined condition 
 natural to a primitive race of beings, on whom the gift of 
 reason was obviously bestowed by the Creator for the pur- 
 poses of exertion, and of gradual cultivation and improve- 
 ment. We must not here suppose, however, with too many 
 advocates of an erring philosophy, that man was, at first, 
 Laturally savage, or in the state we now find the wild and 
 uncultivated natives of savage countries; or that religion 
 and knowledge were, in the first days, in the debased con- 
 dition we now too often find them in the remote corners 
 of the earth. 
 
 The savage state is not natural to man; but, on the con- 
 trary, is brought on by erring from the true path of know- 
 ledge, in which both Adam and Noah must have brought 
 up their first descendants ; and which, in both instances, was 
 communicated in a direct manner, from the unerring source 
 of every good which mankind now enjoys. In considering 
 the progressive stages of society, we are too apt to content 
 ourselves with merely looking back, from our own times, 
 into the darker ages of barbarism, and thus to form our 
 ideas on the false supposition, that the primitive nature of 
 man is one of perfect ignorance, and such as we now find 
 among the savages of Africa or America: whereas, if we 
 trace the progress of society, in its proper and natural 
 course, by descending from the creation, and from the deluge, 
 instead of ascending from our own times, we shall find that 
 the primitive state of mankind, even immediately after the 
 creation, was one of intelligence and understanding, if not 
 in arts and sciences, at least on the leading point of religion, 
 which is, of all others, that in which the savage falls most 
 short of the civilized man. It pleased his Creator to bestow 
 upon primitive man a full and perfect conception of the 
 relation in which he stood towards the Supreme Being; 
 and it was in order to preserve a knowledge of the true 
 religion among men, that a certain family arid race were 
 afterward expressly chosen ; we find, accordingly, that to 
 whatever state of idolatrous ignorance, or savage barbari- 
 ty, the various ancient nations of the earth were, from time 
 to time, reduced, there was always some portion of the 
 world, and especially of the Jewish race, which adhered to 
 the true faith, and which was, consequently, preserved from 
 that state of unnatural debasement from which man has a 
 constant tendency and desire to emancipate himself. It is, 
 therefore, highly probable that, as we hear of no diversity 
 of language on the earth until after the deluge, the whole 
 primitive race was " of one language, and of one speech," 
 and that that language must, consequently, have been the 
 
12 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 same spoken by those few individuals who were preserved 
 from the flood. 
 
 Now, when we consider the great scheme of the Almighty, 
 foretold from time to time, from the days of Adam to 
 those of Abraham, and continued from thence, in a well- 
 defined course of history, to our own times ; when we con- 
 sider the wonderful and miraculous events that were fore- 
 told, and were afterward so \iteial\y fulfilled, in the line 
 of the chosen people of God; — that, through them, and 
 through their language, the Inspired Writings of the early 
 times were to be for ever 'handed down to the generations 
 of men ; that, of all the languages of the earth, the Hebrew 
 tongue, like the Hebrew people, has hitherto withstood 
 every change and every calamity ; and been, like them, 
 miraculously preserved by the Almighty will for a great 
 and beneficent end; and when we further consider the 
 strong analogy and filiation, so easily traced, in all the 
 languages of the earth, to the Hebrew, as the most probable 
 2>ostdiluvian original tongue; — when all these considera- 
 tions are combined, is it unreasonable to conclude to the 
 high probability of the original language of the Sacred 
 Scriptures being the pure and original tongue first commu- 
 nicated to man by his Maker % In considering, then, the 
 language of the Hebrews as the most probable source from 
 whence all other tongues have been derived ; and when we 
 trace in all these other tongues the gradual varieties that 
 have arisen, and are still now proceeding in the dialects of 
 the earth, by the secondary causes, and, seemingly, trivial 
 accidents, by which the different shades of language are 
 brought about, are we not justified in drawing a compari- 
 son betweeen the miraculously preserved primitive lan- 
 guage, and the no less miraculously preserved chosen 
 people, who are the constant living miracle, bearing unwill- 
 ing witness to the truth of Inspiration, to all the generations 
 of mankind 1 We are reminded, that it was repeatedly 
 foretold in prophecy, that the Hebrew nation should be dis- 
 persed into all cotmtries ; yet that they should not be swal- 
 lowed up and lost among their conquerors, but should 
 subsist, to the latest times, a distinct people ; that, " though 
 God would make an end of the nations, their oppressors, 
 He would not make an end of them." — Fairholme. 
 
 The names which men and things received at the be- 
 ginning of time, are so strikingly similar to those which 
 they bore when the Hebrew was certainly a living language, 
 that its claim to the honour of being the primeval speech 
 of the human family, can scarcely be rejected. It is ever 
 reckoned a proof of similar origin, when many words in 
 any two languages have the same form, the same sound, 
 meaning, and reason. But the names of the first genera- 
 tions of men, like those of the lower animals, are as pure 
 Hebrew as the names of Peleg, Abraham, Isaac, and Ja- 
 cob, or those of David and Solomon, or Malachi. They 
 have the Hebrew form, are constructed according to He- 
 brew rules, are founded on certain reasons, like Hebrew 
 names; and, in fine, are not to be distinguished in any one 
 respect from pure Hebrew, 
 
 It deserves also to be remarked, that the reason assign- 
 ed for these names will not correspond with any other lan- 
 guage. The garden of Paradise was called Eden; be- 
 cause among the Hebrews it signifies pleasure or delight. 
 The place of Cain's exile was for this reason called the 
 land of Nod, from a root which signifies to wander. 
 Adam received his name because he was taken out of the 
 ground ; but if the term for ground in the first language 
 had been terra, or yr?, or earth, there had been no proprie- 
 ty in the designation. Eve was called by this name, be- 
 cause she was the mother of all living ; but it is derived 
 from a pure Hebrew verb which signifies to live ; and to 
 this relation the name owes all its propriety and signifi- 
 cance. Cain was named from the Hebrew verb Kana, 
 to possess, because his mother had got him from the Lord ; 
 and in this instance also, the name is inseparably connect- 
 ed with the Hebrew root. The proper name Seth is de- 
 rived from the Hebrew verb Shooth, to appoint; because, 
 said our first mother, God hath appointed me another seed 
 instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. The same mode of 
 reasonirig might be carried through all the names of the 
 Adamiiic age; but these instances are suflicient to show 
 the near affinity, if not the positive identity, of the lan- 
 gnac^e which Adam spoke, with the Hebrew of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 The names ascribed by the inspired writer to the found- 
 
 ers of our race, are not interpretations of primitive terms ; 
 for he declares they are the very names which were given 
 at first ; and as they are derivatives from pure Hebrew 
 verbs, the language then spoken must have been the same 
 in substance and structure. Had they been translations, 
 we have reason to think the same method would have been 
 followed as in several instances in the New Testament, 
 where the original term is used, and the interpretation 
 avowedly subjoined. But Moses gives not a single hint of 
 his translating these terms ; he asserts, on the contrary, 
 that they are the original words employed ; and the truth 
 of his assertion is rendered indubitable by the reasons 
 assigned for their imposition, which are inseparably con- 
 nected with the Hebrew language. Nor does Moses, in 
 the whole course of his history, when speaking of the 
 names of persons and places, utter a single word from 
 which we can infer the existence of an earlier language. 
 When the minute and extensive acquaintance with the 
 natural character and temper of the numerous animals to 
 which our first father gave names in Paradise, which he 
 certainly had not time to acquire by his own industry, and 
 which we have no reason to believe he owed to intuition, 
 is considered, we must admit, that the language in which 
 he conversed was not his own contrivance, but the imme- 
 diate gift of Heaven. When Jehovah breathed into Adam 
 and Eve the breath of life, he inspired them in the same 
 moment with the knowledge of the tongue in which they 
 were to express their thoughts. A similar favour was be- 
 stowed at the beginning of the New Testament dispensa- 
 tion, on the apostles and other ministers of the gospel ; who 
 were inspired in a moment with the perfect knowledge of 
 many diflferent languages. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap, 4. ver. 3. And in process of time it came 
 to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the 
 ground an offering unto the Lord. 
 
 The margin* reads, " at the end of days;" and this is 
 truly Oriental. " When the days are ended, I will fulfil 
 my promise." " After those days are ended, I shall have 
 peace." " When the days come round, (in their circle,) 
 I will do that for you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. If thou doest well, shalt thou not be ac- 
 cepted ? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at 
 the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, 
 and thou shalt rule over him. 
 
 D'Oyly and Mant interpret this, " Your sin will find you 
 out." "'Thy punishment is not far off'." They also say sin 
 may be rendered sin-offering ; and several other com- 
 mentators take the same view, and think this is its true and 
 only meaning. The victim proper for a sin-offering was 
 lying at the door, and therefore was within his reach. 
 
 There are some who affect to smile at the idea of sin 
 lying at the door : it is, however, an Eastern figure. Ask 
 a man who is unacquainted with Scripture, what he un- 
 derstands by sin lying at the threshold of the door ; he will 
 immediately speak of it as the guilt of some great crime 
 which the owner had committed. A man accused ot 
 having murdered a child, would be accosted in the follow- 
 ing language : — " If you have done this, think not to es- 
 cape ; no ! for sin will ever lie at your door : it will descend 
 from generation to generation." To a man accused of 
 having committed any other dreadfitl crime, it would be 
 said, " Ah ! if I had done it, do I not know sin would ever 
 lie at my door V The idea is sin personified in the shape 
 of some fierce animal crouched at the door. Its criminality 
 and punishment remain. 
 
 If Cain had done well, would there not have been " the 
 excellency 1" (see margin ;) but if not well, then sin, like a 
 monster, was crouching at his door. Taking the other 
 view of it, seems to amount to this ; now, Cain, if thou 
 doest well, that will be thy excellency, thou shalt be accept- 
 ed : but if thou doest not well, it is a matter of no very great 
 consequence, because there is a sin-offering at thy door. 
 
 * I would here observe, once for all, that I have gone regularly 
 through the marginal readings, and have found, with few exception^ 
 that they literally agree with Eastern language in idiom anrl figiire 
 In the course of this work, most of them will be illustrated ; and I 
 think few readers will doubt that they are the tsorrect translations. 
 
14 
 
 GENESIS, 
 
 Chap. 8. 
 
 nearer than Batoom and other parts of the eastern coast 
 of the Black sea, a distance of seven days journey of a 
 caravan, or about 130 miles in the circuitous route that 
 would thus be taken. But might not a dove make this 
 iourney in a day 1 Or might not the climate then have been 
 warmer than it is now 1 The second objection is drawn 
 from the fact that sonle of the old versions and paraphra- 
 ses, particularly the Chaldee and the Syriac, refer " the 
 mountains of Ararat" to the mountains of Kurdistan, 
 where there is, not far from Jezeereh, a high mountain 
 called Joody, on which the moslems suppose the ark to 
 have rested. But if the ark rested on that, the posterity 
 of Noah would, most likely, have descended at once into 
 Mesopotamia, and have reached Shinar from the north ; 
 while, from the vafley of the Aras, they would naturally 
 have kept along on the eastern side of the mountains of 
 Media, until they reached the neighbourhood of Hamadan 
 or Kermanshah, which is nearly east of Babylon. Such 
 is the route now taken every day by all the caravans from 
 this region to Bagdad. The Armenians believe, not only 
 that this is the mountain on which the ark rested after the 
 flood, but that the ark still exists upon its top ; though, ra- 
 ther from supernatural than from physical obstacles, no 
 one has yet been able to visit it. A devout vartabtd, their 
 legends relate, once attempted, for this purpose, to ascend 
 the mountain. "While yet far from the top, drowsiness 
 came upon him, and he awoke at the bottom, in the very 
 spot whence he had started. Another attempt resulted only 
 in the same miraculous failure. He then betook himself 
 more fervently to prayer, and started the third time. Again 
 he slept, and awoke at the bottom ; but now an angel stood 
 before him with a fragment of the ark, as a token that his 
 pious purpose was approved and his prayer answered, 
 though he could never be allowed to reach the summit of 
 the moimtain. The precious gift was thankfully received, 
 and is to this day carefully preserved, as a sacred relic, in 
 the convent of Echmiadzin. — Smith & Dwight. 
 
 Ararat forms the angle of an immense chain of moun- 
 tains, on the loftiest pinnacles of which the natives of the 
 country believe that part of the ark yet remains. It is a 
 most sublime and stupendous object, which excites in the 
 mind of the beholder the mingled emotions of admiration 
 and terror. One of the great features of this mountain is 
 the immense chasm which extends nearly half-way down, 
 over which impends a cliif, discernible at a great distance, 
 whose enormous masses of ice are from time to time precip- 
 itated into the abyss with a noise resembling the loudest 
 thunder. " Nothing," says Mr. Morier, " can be more 
 beautiful than its shape ; more awful than its height. 
 Compared with it, all the other mountains sink into insig- 
 nificance. It is perfect in all its parts : no hard rugged 
 features : no imnatural prominences ; every thing is in har- 
 mony ; and all combines to render it one of the most sub- 
 lime objects in nature. Spreading originally from an im- 
 mense base, its slope towards the summit is gradual, until 
 it reaches the regions of the snows, when it becomes more 
 abrupt. The cone is surmounted with a crown of ice, 
 which glitters in the sun with a peculiar and dazzling 
 brightness. As a foil to this stupendous work, a smaller 
 hill rises from the same base, near the original mass, simi- 
 lar to it in shape and proportion, and in any other situation 
 entitled to rank among the high mountains. The moun- 
 tain is divided into three regions of different breadths. 
 The first, composed of a short and slippery grass, or sand 
 as troublesome as the quicksands of Africa, is occupied by 
 the shepherds ; the second, by tigers and crows : the re- 
 mainder, which is half the mountain, is covered with snow 
 which has been accumulating ever since the ark rested 
 npcm it ; and these snows are concealed during one half of 
 the year in very dense clouds." This stupendous moun- 
 tain, Mr. Morier and his party endeavoured to scale ; and 
 after excessive fatigue arrived on the margin of eternal 
 snow. But they found it impossible to proceed and pen- 
 etrate the highest region ; and not easy to go back. At 
 length, utterly exhausted, they reached the bottom, and 
 gave thanks to God for their safe return. — Paxton. 
 
 [The remarkable achievement of the ascent of Mount 
 Ararat, has at length, it appears, been accomplished by 
 Professor Parrot of England. Taking with him Mr. 
 Behagel as mineralogist, Messrs. Hehn and Schiemann, 
 medical students of Moscow, and Mr. Federow, astron- 
 omer of St. Petersburg, he commenced his journey on 
 
 the 20th of March, 1829, and arrived'at Tiflis on the 6th 
 of June. Owing to peculiar circumstances they were un- 
 able to leave Titiis till the first of September, the distance 
 to Mount Ararat being by the road about 280 wasts (say 
 200 miles.) The following account of the ascent, extracted 
 from a work recently published by Professor Parrot, at 
 Berlin, is from the Foreign (Quarterly Review for June, 
 1835.] 
 
 At seven o'clock in the morning of the 12th September, 
 I set out on my journey, [from the Convent of St. James' 
 near the foot of the mountain,] accompanied by Mr. Schie 
 mann. We took with us one of our Cossacks and a pea- 
 sant of Arguri, who was a good huntsman, and our route 
 was first in the bottom of the valley, then up its right ac- 
 clivity towards the spot where there are two small stone 
 houses standing close to each other ; the one formerly a 
 chapel, and the other built as a protection for a spring 
 which is considered sacred. 
 
 From the chapel we crossed the grassy elevation, which 
 forms the right declivity of the cleft : we suffered so much 
 from the heat of the day, that our Cossack, who would prob- 
 ably have much rather been seated on horseback and gal- 
 loping about on the steppes for three days than scrambling 
 over the rocks for a couple of hours, was ready to sink 
 from fatigue, and we were obliged to send him back. At 
 about six o'clock in the evening, when we also were much 
 tired, and had almost reached the snowy region, we chose 
 our night's lodgings in the clefts of the rocks. We had at- 
 tained a height of 11,675 Paris feet; in the sheltered places 
 about us lay some new-fallen snow, and the temperature of 
 the air was at the freezingpoint. Mr. Schiemann and I haxi 
 provided ourselves tolerably well for such an undertaking ; 
 besides, the pleasure of the expedition warmed us ; but our 
 athletic Jagar, Schak of Arguri, (Isaac,) was quite dejected 
 froni the cold, for he had nothing but his summer clothing ; 
 his whole neck and also his legs, from the knee to the san- 
 dal, were quite bare, and his head was only covered with 
 an old handkerchief I had neglected to think about his 
 wardrobe before setting out, and, therefore, it was uiy duly 
 to help him as well as I could: but as neither of us had 
 much clothing to spare, I wrapped up his neck and his 
 bare limbs in sheets of blotting-paper which I had taken 
 with me for drying plants, and this was a great relief to 
 him. At daybreak we pursued our journey towards the 
 eastern side of the mountain, and soon reached'the declivity 
 which runs immediately from the summit ; it consists en- 
 tirely of pointed rocky ridges coming down from above, 
 and leaving between them ravines of considerable depth, 
 in which the icy mantle of the summit loses itself, and gla* 
 ciers of great extent. There were several of these rocky 
 ridges and clefts of ice lying between us and the side 
 of the mountain which we were endeavouring to reach. 
 When we had J^ppily surmounted the first crest and the 
 adjoining beauffml glacier, and reached the second crest, 
 Schak had no courage to proceed. His benumbed limbs 
 had not yet recovered their warmth, and the icy region 
 towards which he saw us hastening, did not hold out much 
 prospect of relief; thus one remained behind from heat 
 and the other from cold — only Mr. Schiemann, though un- 
 accustomed to these hardships, did not for an instant lose 
 his courage or his desire to accompany me, but shared with 
 alacrity and perseverance all the difficulties and dangers* 
 Ave had to encounter. Leaving the Jager behind us, we 
 crossed the second glacier, and gained the third rocky 
 ridge. Then immediately turning off in an oblique direc- 
 tion, we reached the lower edge of the icy crest, at a height 
 of 13,180 Paris feet, and which from this place runs with- 
 out interruption to the summit. We had now to ascend 
 this declivity covered with perpetual snow. Though the 
 inclination was barely 30 deg., this was a sheer impossi- 
 bility for two men to accomplish in a direct line. We there- 
 fore determined to advance diagonally towards a long 
 pointed ridge which runs far up towards the summit. "We 
 succeeded in this by making with our ice-poles deep holes 
 in the ice of the glacier, which was covered with a thin 
 layer of new-fallen snow, too slight to aflford the requisite 
 firmness to our steps. "We thus reached the ridge, and ad- 
 vanced directly towards the summit by a track where the 
 new snow was rather deeper. Though we might by great 
 exertions have this time reached the goal of our wishes, 
 yet the fatigue of the day had been considerable, and as 
 it was already three o'clock in the afternoon, we were 
 
Ghap. 8. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 la 
 
 obliged to think of providing a lodging for the approaching 
 night. We had attained the extreme upper ndge of the 
 rocky crest, an elevation of 14,560 Paris feet above the 
 level of the sea, (the height of the top of Mount Blanc,) and 
 yet the summit of Ararat lay far above us. I do not think 
 that any insurmountable obstacle could have impeded our 
 farther progress, but to spend the few remaining hours of 
 day light in reaching this point would have been worse 
 than madness, as we had not seen any rock on the summit 
 which could have afforded us protection during the night ; 
 independently of which, our stock of provisions was not 
 calculated to last so long. Having made our barometrical 
 observations, we turned back, satisfied from the result 
 that the mountain on this side was not inaccessible. In 
 descending, however, we met with a danger which we 
 had not anticipated ; for if in the descent of every mountain 
 you tread less safely than in going up, it is still mpre diffi- 
 cult to tread firmly, when you look down upon such a sur- 
 face of ice and snow as that over which we had to pass for 
 more than a werst, and where, if we slipped and fell, there 
 was nothing to stop us but the sharp-pointed masses of 
 stone in which the region of eternal ice loses itself The 
 danger here is perhaps rather in the want of habit than 
 in real difficulties. My young friend, whose courage had 
 probably been proof against severer trials, lost his presence 
 of mind here— his foot slipped, and he fell; but, as he was 
 about twenty paces behind me, I had time to thrift my 
 pole firmly in the ice, to take a sure footing in my capital 
 snow-shoes, and while I held the pole in my right hand, 
 to catch him in passing with my left. My position was 
 well chosen, but the straps which fastened my ice-shoes 
 broke, and, instead of being able to stop my friend, I was 
 carried with him in his fall. He was so fortunate as to 
 be stopped by some stones, but I rolled on for half a werst, 
 till I reached some fragpienls of lava near the lower gla- 
 cier. The tube of my barom^er was dashed to pieces 
 — my chronometer burst open, and covered with blood — 
 every thing had fallen out of my pockets, but I escaped 
 without severe injury. As soon as we had recovered from 
 our fright, and thanked God for our prpvidential escape, 
 we collected the most important of our effects, and con- 
 tinued our journey. "We were soon afterward delighted 
 to hear the voice of our good Schak, who had very pru- 
 dently waited for our return. Having made a fire, we 
 passed the night in the grassy region, and on the third day 
 reached the convent, where we were regaled with an ex- 
 cellent breakfast. We however took care not to tell the 
 Armenians any thing about our accident, as they would 
 certainly not have failed to ascribe it to a judgment from 
 Heaven for our presumptuous attempt to reach the summit, 
 which they say has been prohibited to mortals by a divine 
 decree since the time of Noah. All the Armenians are 
 firmly persuaded that Noah's ark exists to the present 
 day on the summit of Mount Ararat, and that, in order to 
 preserve it, no person is permitted to approach it. We 
 learn the grounds of this tradition from the Armenian 
 chronicles in the legend of a monk of the name of James, 
 who was afterward Patriarch of Nissibus, and a contempo- 
 rary and relative of St. Gregory. It is said that this monk, 
 in order to settle the disputes which had arisen respecting 
 the credibility of the sacred books, especially with refer- 
 ence to their account of Noah, resolved to ascend to the 
 top of Ararat to convince himself of the existence of the 
 ark. At the declivity of the mountain, however, he had 
 several times fallen asleep from exhaustion, and found on 
 awaking that he had been unconsciously carried down to 
 the point from which he first set out. God at length had 
 compassion on his unwearied though fruitless exertions, 
 and during his sleep sent an angel with the message, 
 that his exertions were unavailing, as the summit was 
 inaccessible ; but as a reward for his indefatigable zeal, 
 he sent him a piece of the ark, the verv same which is 
 now preserved as the most valuable relic' in the cathedral 
 of Etschmaidsin. The belief in the impossibility of as- 
 cending Mount Ararat has, in consequence of this tradi- 
 tion, which is sanctioned by the church, almost become an 
 article of faith, which an Armenian would not renounce 
 even if he were placed in his own proper person upon the 
 summit of the mountain. 
 
 [After recovering in some measure from the effects of 
 his fall and an attack of fever which ensued, the profes- 
 sor set out on the 18th September to make a second at- 
 
 tempt to gain the summit, taking with him a cross ten feet 
 high, which it was proposed to set up on the top of the 
 mountain, with an inscription in honour of Field Marsha* 
 Count Paskewitsch, by whose victories the Russian do- 
 minions had been extended to this point. They chose this 
 time the northeast side of the mountain, by which the way 
 was much longer, but not so steep. But as this second 
 attempt also failed, wx pass over the account of it, and pro- 
 ceed without further preface to the third, which succeeded. 
 They however erected the cross on an almost horizontal 
 surface covered with snow, at the height of 15,138 Paris 
 feet above the level of the Euxine, or about 350 feet higher 
 than the summit of Mount Blanc] 
 
 In the meantime the sky cleared up, the air became 
 serene and calm, the mountain too was more quiet, the 
 noise occasioned by the falling of the masses of ice and 
 snow grew less frequent — in short, every thing seemed to 
 indicate that a favourable turn was about to take place in 
 the weather, and I hastened to embrace it for a third at- 
 tempt to ascend the mountain. On the 25th September I 
 sent to ask Stepan whether he would join us, but he de- 
 clined, saying that he had suflered too much from the for- 
 mer excursion to venture again so soon ; he however 
 promised to send us four stout peasants with three oxen and 
 a driver. Early the next morning, four peasants made 
 their appearance at the camp to join our expedition, and 
 soon alter a fifth, w^ho offered himself voluntarily. To 
 them I added two of our soldiers. The deacon again ac- 
 companied us, as well as Mr. Hehn, who wished to explore 
 the vegetation at a greater elevation ; but he did not intend 
 to proceed beyond the line of snow. The experience of 
 the preceding attempt had convinced me that everything 
 depended on our passing the first night as closely as possi- 
 ble to this boundary, in order to be able to ascend and re- 
 turn from the summit in one day, and to confine our bag- 
 gage to what was absolutely necessary. We therefore 
 took with us only three oxen, laden with the clothing, wood, 
 
 and provisions. I also took a cross carved in oak 
 
 We chose our route towards the same side as before, and, 
 in order to spare ourselves, Abowiam and I rode on horse- 
 back, wherever the rocky nature of the soil permitted it, 
 as far as the grassy plain Kip-Giholl, whence we sent the 
 horses back. Here Mr. Hehn parted from us. It was 
 scarcely twelve o'clock when we reached this point, and, 
 after taking our breakfast, we proceeded in a direction 
 rather more oblique than on our former attempt. The 
 cattle were, however, unable to follow us so quickly. We 
 therefore halted at some rocks which it would be impossi- 
 ble for them to pass — took each our own share of clothing 
 and wood, and sent back the oxen. At half-past five in 
 the evening we were not far from the snow line, and con- 
 siderably higher than the place where we passed the night 
 on our previous excursion. The elevation at this point 
 was 13,036 Paris feet above the level of the sea, and the 
 large masses of rock determined me to take up our quar- 
 ters here. A fire was soon made, and a warm supper pre- 
 pared. I had some onion broth, a dish which I would 
 recommend to all mountain travellers in preference to meat 
 broth, as being extremely warm and invigorating. This 
 being a fast-day, poor Abowiam was not able to enjoy it. 
 The other Armenians, who strictly adhered to their rules 
 of fasting, contented themselves with bread and the 
 brandy which I distributed among them in a limited quan- 
 tity, as this cordial must be taken with great caution, espe- 
 cially where the strength has been previously much tried, 
 as it otherwise produces a sense of exhaustion and inclina- 
 tion to sleep. It was a magnificent evening, and, with my 
 eyes fixed on the clear sky, and the lofty summit which 
 projected against it, and then again on the dark night 
 which was gathering far below and around me, I experi- 
 enced all those delightful sensations of tranquillity, love, 
 and devotion, that silent reminiscence of the past, that sub- 
 dued glance into the future, which a traveller never fails 
 to experience when on lofty elevations, and under pleasing 
 circumstances. I laid myself down under an overhanging 
 rock of lava, the temperature of the air at 4 1-2 degrees, 
 which was tolerably Avarm, considering our great height. 
 
 At daybreak we rose, and began our journey at half 
 past six. We crossed the last broken declivities in half an 
 hour, and entered the boundary of eternal snow nearly at 
 the same place as in our preceding ascent. In consequence 
 of the increased warmth of the weather, the new-fallen 
 
16 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 8. 
 
 snow, which had facilitated our progress on our previous 
 ascent, had melted away, and again frozen, so that, in spite 
 of the still inconsiderable slope, we were compelled to cut 
 steps in the ice. This very much embarrassed our ad- 
 vance, and added greatly to our fatigue. One of the pea- 
 sants had remained behind in our resting-place, as he felt 
 unwell; two others became exhausted in ascending the 
 side of ihe glacier. They at first lay down, but soon re- 
 treated to our quarters. Without being disheartened by 
 these difiiculties, we proceeded, and soon reached the great 
 cleft which marks the upper edge of the declivity of the 
 large glacier, and at ten o'clock we arrived at the great 
 plain of snow which marks the first break on the icy head 
 of Ararat. At the distance of a werst, we saw the cross 
 which we had reared on the 19th of September, but it ap- 
 peared to me so extremely small, probably on account of 
 its black colour, that I almost doubted whether I should be 
 able to find it again with an ordinary telescope from the 
 plain of the Aiaxes. In the direction towards the summit, 
 a shorter but at the same time a steeper declivity than the 
 one we had passed lay before us ; and between this and the 
 extreme summit there appeared to be only one small hill. 
 After a short repose we passed the first precipice, which 
 was the steepest of all, by hewing out steps in the rock, and 
 after this the next elevation. But here, instead of seeing 
 the ultimate goal of all our difficulties, immediately before 
 us appeared a series of hills, which even concealed the 
 summit from our sight. This rather abated our courage, 
 which had never yielded for a moment so long as we had 
 all our difficulties in view, and our strength, exhausted by 
 the labour of hewing the rock, seemed scarcely commen- 
 surate with the attainment of the now invisible object of our 
 wishes. But a review of what had been already accom- 
 plished, and of that which might still remain to be done, 
 the proximity of the series of projecting elevations, and a 
 glance at my brave companions, banished my fears, and 
 we boldly advanced. We crossed two more hills, and the 
 cold air of the summit blew towards us. I stepped from 
 behind one of the glaciers, and the extreme cone of Ara- 
 rat lay distinctly before my enraptured eyes. But one more 
 efibrt was necessar-y. Only one other icy plain was to be 
 ascended, and at a quarter past three on the 27th of Septem- 
 ber, O. S., 1829, we stood on the summit of Mount Ararat ! 
 [Having thus happily accomplished his fatiguing and per- 
 ilous enterprise, says the Review, our author's first wish 
 and enjoyment was repose; he spread his cloak on the 
 ground, and sitting down, contemplated the boundless but 
 desolate prospect around him. He was on a slight con- 
 vex, almost circular, platform, about 200 Paris feet in di- 
 ameter, which at the extremity declines pretty steeply on 
 all sides, particularly towards the S. E. and N. E. ; it was 
 the silver crest of Ararat, composed of eternal ice, unbro- 
 ken by a rock or stone. Towards the east, the summit de- 
 clined more gently than in any other direction, and was 
 connected by a hollow, likewise covered with perpetual ice, 
 with another rather lower summit, which by Mr. Fede- 
 row's trigonometrical measurement was found to be 187 
 toises distant from the principal summit. On account of 
 the immense distances nothing could be seen distinctly. 
 The whole valley of the Araxes was covered with a gray 
 mist, through which Erivan and Sardarabad appeared as 
 small dark spots ; to the south were seen more distinctly 
 the hills behind which lies Bayazeed ; to the N. W. the 
 ragged top of Alaghes, covered with vast masses of snow, 
 probably an inaccessible summit ; near to Ararat, espe- 
 cially to the S. E. and at a great distance towards the west, 
 are numerous small conical hills, which look like extinct 
 volcanoes ; to the E. S. E. was little Ararat, whose head 
 did not appear like a cone, as it does from the plain, but 
 like the top of a square truncated pyramid, with larger and 
 smaller rocky elevations on the edges and in the middle ; 
 but what very much surprised Professor Parrot was to see 
 a large portion of Lake Goktschai, which appeared in the 
 N. E. like a beautiful shining dark blue patch, behind the 
 lofty chain of mountains which encloses it on the south, 
 und which is so high that he never could have believe<l 
 that he should have been able from the top of Ararat to 
 see over its summit into the lake behind it. Mr. Parrot, 
 having allowed himself time to enjoy this prospect, pro- 
 ceeded to observe his barometer, which he placed precisely 
 in the middle of the summit. The mercury was no higher 
 than 15 inches 3-4 of a line Paris measure, the tempera- 
 
 ture being 3 7-lOths below the freezing point of the centri- 
 grade thermometer. By comparing this observation with 
 that which Mr. Federow made at the same time at the con- 
 vent of St. James, the elevation of the summit appears to 
 be 10,272 Paris feet above the convent, and, adding to that 
 the height of the latter, the top of Ararat is 16,254 Paris 
 feet, nearly five wersts, above the level of the sea. While 
 the professor was engaged in his observations, the dea- 
 con planted the cross, not precisely on the summit, where 
 it could not have been seen from the plain, as it was only 
 five feet high, but on the N. E. edge, about thirty feet 
 lower than the centre of the summit. The professor and his 
 five companions, viz. the deacon, two Russian soldiers, and 
 two Armenian peasants, having remained three quarters 
 of an hour on the summit, commenced their descent, which 
 was very fatiguing; but they hastened, as the sun was go- 
 ing down, and before they reached the place where the 
 great cross was erected, it had already sunk below the 
 horizon.] 
 
 It was a glorious sight to behold the dark shadows 
 which the mountains in the west cast upon the plain^ and 
 then the profound darkness which covered all the valleys, 
 and gradually rose higher and higher on the sides of Ara- 
 rat, whose icy summit was still illuminated by the beams 
 of the setting sun. But the shadows soon passed over that 
 also, and would have covered our path with a gloom that 
 would have rendered our descent dangerous, had not the 
 sacred lamp of night, opportunely rising above the eastern 
 horizon, cheered us witli its welcome beams. 
 
 [Having passed the night on the same spot as on their 
 ascent, where they found their companions, they arrived 
 the next day at noon, at the Convent of St. James, and on 
 the following day, Sunday, the 28th of September, O. S., 
 they offered their grateful thanksgiving to Heaven for the 
 success of their arduous enterprise, perhaps not far from 
 the spot where " Noah built an altar to the Lord."] 
 
 Ver. 11. And tlie dove came in to him in thoj 
 evening, and, lo, in lier moutli was an olive 
 leaf plucked off So Noah knew that the wa*^ 
 ters were abated from off the earth. 
 
 The olive may be justly considered as one of the most 
 valuable gifts which the beneficent Creator has bestowed 
 on the human family. The oil which it yields, forms an 
 important article of food ; it imparts a greater degree of 
 pliancy to the limbs, and agility to the whole body; it 
 assuages the agonizing pain, and promotes, by its sanative 
 influence, the cure of wounds ; it alleviates the internal 
 sufferings produced by disease ; it illumines, at once, the 
 cottage and the palace ; it cheers, by the splendour of its 
 combustion, the festive meeting; it serves to expel the 
 deadly poison of venomous reptiles ; it was used in conse- 
 crating a thing to the service of God; and it mingled, 
 perhaps, from the first of time, by the command of Heaven, 
 with many of the bloodless oblations which the worshipper 
 presented at his altar. In these various and important 
 uses, we may, perhaps, discover the true reason that the 
 dove of Noah was directed, by God himself, to select the 
 olive leaf from the countless variety which floated on the 
 subsiding waters of the deluge, or bestrewed the slimy tops 
 and declivities of Ararat, as the chosen symbol of return- 
 ing peace and favour. From the creation of the world, 
 the fatness of this tree signally displayed the divine good- 
 ness and benignity; and since the fall of man, it symbolizes 
 the grace and kindness of our heavenly Father, and the 
 precious influences of the Holy Ghost, in healing the spir- 
 itual diseases of our degenerate race, and in counteracting 
 the deadly poison of moral corruption. Hence, the people 
 of Israel were commanded to construct their booths, at the 
 feast of tabernacles, partly with branches of olive ; and all 
 the nations of the civilized world Avere secretly directed, by 
 the overruling providence of Heaven, to bear them in their 
 hands as emblems of peace and amity. The olive is men- 
 tioned as the sign of peace, by both Livy and Virgil, in 
 several parts of their works, but one instance from the 
 latter shall suffice. 
 
 "Turn pater ^neas puppi sic fatur ab alta 
 Paciferseque manu ramum pretendit olivs." 
 
 jEn. b. viii. 1. 116. 
 
 The celebrated navigator. Captain Cook, found that 
 green branches, carried in the hands, or stuck in the 
 
Chap. 9 — 11. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 17 
 
 ground, were the emblems of peace, universally employed 
 and understood by the numerous and untutored inhabitants 
 of the South Sea islands. The origin of a custom, thus 
 received and religiously observed, by nations dwelling on 
 opposite sides of the globe, who never had the smallest 
 intercourse with one another, must be sought for near the 
 beginning of time, when the inhabitants of our earth, form- 
 ing but one family, lived under the gentle sway of their 
 common parent. Dr. Chandler, indeed, is of opinion, that 
 the idea of reconciliation and peace was not associated with 
 the olive branch till ages long posterior to the deluge. The 
 olive groves, he argues, are the usual resort of doves, and 
 other birds, that repair to them for food ; and thus endeav- 
 ours to find a natural connexion between the dove of Noah 
 and the olive leaf. The olive might, he thinks, be the only 
 tree which had raised its head above the subsiding waters, 
 near the place where the ark was floating, although it is 
 only of a middling height ; but if the dove saw a great 
 number of other trees above the water, the habits of the 
 bird naturally led it to the olive plantation for shelter and 
 food, in preference to all others. But the greater part of 
 this reasoning avowedly rests upon mere assumption ; and 
 although the olive grove may be the favourite retreat of 
 the dove, how are we to account for the olive branch being 
 chosen by almost every nation, from the remotest times, 
 for the symbol of reconciliation and peace 1 It is far more 
 probable, that the dove was directed by the finger of God 
 to prefer the olive leaf, or a sprig of olive leaves, as being 
 the symbol of peace with which Noah was already acquaint- 
 ed, or that it might, in future, be the token of reconciliation 
 between God and his offending creatures, and between one 
 nation and another. — Paxton, 
 
 Chap. 9. ver. 4. But flesh, with the life thereof, 
 which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. 
 
 Mr. Bruce has given a very extraordinary account of the 
 practice of eating blood in Abyssinia. This custom, so 
 prevalent in several places, is forbidden in the scriptures. 
 A recital of the narrative will probably suggest to the 
 reader the reasons of the prohibition. Mr. Bruce tells us, 
 that, "not long after our losing sight of the ruins of this 
 ancient capital of Abyssinia, we overtook three travellers 
 driving a cow before them: they had black goatskins 
 upon their shoulders, and lances and shields in their 
 hands ; in other respects they were but thinly clothed ; 
 they appeared to be soldiers. " The cow did not seem 
 to be fattened for killing, and it occurred to us all, that it 
 had been stolen. This, however, was not our business, 
 nor was such an occurrence at all remarkable in a country 
 so long engaged in war. We saw that our attendants 
 attached themselves, in a particular manner, to the three 
 soldiers that were driving the cow, and held a short con- 
 versation with them. Soon after, we arrived at the hither- 
 most bank of the river, where I thought we were to pitch 
 our tent: the drivers suddenly tripped up the cow, and gave 
 the poor animal a very rude fall upon the ground, which 
 was but the beginning of her sufferings. One of them sat 
 across her neck, holding down her head by the horns, the 
 other twisted the halter about her fore feet, while the third, 
 who had a knife in his hand, to my very great surprise, in 
 place of taking her by the throat, got astride upon her belly, 
 before her hind legs, and gave her a very deep wound in 
 the upper part of the buttock. From the time I had seen 
 them throw the beast upon the ground, I had rejoiced, 
 thinking that when three people were killing a cow, they 
 must have agreed to sell part of her to us ; and I was much 
 disappointed upon hearing the Abyssinians say, that we 
 were to pass the river to the other side, and not encamp 
 ■vvhere I intended. Upon my proposing they should bar- 
 gain for part of the cow, my men answered, what they had 
 already learned in conversation, that they were not then 
 to kill her : that she was not wholly theirs, and they could 
 not sell her. This awakened my curiosity; I let my 
 people go forward, and stayed myself, till I saw, with the 
 utmost astonishment, two pieces, thicker and longer than 
 our ordinary beef steaks, cut out of the higher part of the 
 buttock of the beast : how it was done I cannot positively 
 say, because, judging the cow was to be killed from the 
 moment I saw the knife drawn, I was not anxious to view 
 that catastrophe, which was by no means an object of cu- 
 riosity : whatever way it was done, it surely was adroitly, 
 
 and the two pieces were spread upon the outside of one of 
 their shields. One of them still continued holding the 
 head, while the other two were busy in curing the wound. 
 This, too, was done not in an ordinary manner. The skin, 
 which had covered the flesh that was taken away, was left 
 entire, and flapped over the wound, and was fastened to 
 the corresponding part by two or more s]*all skewers or 
 
 Eins. Whether they had put any thing under the skin, 
 etM'^een that and the wounded flesh, I know not ; but, at 
 the river-side where they were, they had prepared a cata- 
 plasm of clay, with which they covered the wound ; they 
 then forced the animal to rise, and drove it on before them, 
 to furnish them with a fuller meal when they should meet 
 their companions in the evening." ( Travels, vol. iii. p. 142.) 
 " We have an instance, in the life of Saul, that shows the 
 propensity of the Israelites to this crime: Saul's army, 
 after a battle, Jlew, that is, fell voraciously upon the cattle 
 they had taken, and threw them upon the ground to cut off 
 their flesh, and eat them raw ; so that the army was defiled 
 by eating blood, or living animals: 1 Sam. xiv. 33. To 
 prevent this, Saul caused to be rolled to him a great stone, 
 and ordered those that killed their oxen, to cut their throats 
 upon that stone. This was the only lawful way of killing 
 animals for food; the tying of the ox, and throwing it 
 upon the ground, were not permitted as equivalent. The 
 Israelites did probably, in that case, as the Abyssinians do 
 at this day ; they cut a part of its throat, so that blood might 
 be seen on the ground, but nothing mortal to the animal 
 followed from that wound : but, after laying his head upon 
 a large stone, and cutting his throat, the blood fell from jn 
 high, or was poured on the ground like water, and suffi- 
 cient evidence appeared that the creature was dead, before 
 it was attempted to eat it. We have seen that the Abyssi- 
 nians came from Palestine a very few years after this, and 
 we are not to doubt, that they then carried with them this, 
 with many other Jewish customs, which they have con- 
 tinued to this day." (Bruce's Travels, vol. iii. p. 299.) To 
 corroborate the account given by Mr. Bruce, in these 
 extracts, it may be satisfactory to affix what Mr. Antes has 
 sqjd upon the subject, in his Observations on the Man- 
 ners and Customs of the Egj'ptians, p. 17. "When Mr. 
 Bruce returned from Abyssinia, I was at Grand Cairo. I 
 had the pleasure of his company for three months almost 
 every day, and having, at that time, myself an idea of 
 penetrating into Abyssinia, I was very inquisitive about 
 that coimtry, on hearing many things from him which 
 seemed almost incredible to me ; I used to ask his Greek 
 servant Michael, (a simple fellow, incapable of any inven- 
 tion,) about the same circumstance, and must say, that he 
 commonly agreed with his master, as to the chief points. 
 The description Mr. Bruce makes concerning the bloody 
 banquet of live oxen among the natives, he happened 
 never to mention to me, else I could have made the same 
 inquiry; but I heard not onlv this servant, but many eye- 
 witnesses, often speak of the Abyssinians eating raw meat." 
 On the general veracity of Bruce as a traveller, Madden 
 observes, " Whatever have been the petty jealousy and 
 egotism of Bruce, he was an enterprising and intelligent 
 traveller ; and his general descriptions are better entitled to 
 credit than those of the travellers who have reviled him. 
 Mr. Coffin has just arrived here after a residence of eighteen 
 years in Abyssinia: this gentleman assures me, that those 
 ipoints in his travels which are most disputed in England, 
 are the points which are most correct : he showed me how 
 the flesh was taken from the glutaei muscles of the living 
 bullock, dissected out without wounding the bloodvessels. 
 Mr. Coffin performed this operation here upon the living 
 animal, in presence of Lord Prudhoe, and Mr. Burton, one 
 of our most intelligent travellers." — Madden's Travels. 
 
 Vcr. 29. And all the days of Noah were nine 
 hundred and fifty years : and he died. 
 
 In asking the age of a child or a man, the inquiry is not 
 how many years, but, "Days how many?" — In sp'eaking 
 of a man who will die soon — " Ah ! in five years his days 
 will be gone. That young man has gray hairs ; to him how 
 many days 1 he has seen twenty-six years." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 1 1. ver. 1. And the whole earth was of one 
 
 language, and of one speech. 
 See on ver. 4, and on chap. 2. 20. 
 
GENESIS 
 
 Chap. 11, 
 
 Ver. 3. And they said one to another, Go to, let 
 us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. 
 And they had^ brick for stone, and slime had 
 they for mortar. 
 
 The soil of ancient Assyria and Babylonia consists 
 of a fine clay, mixed with sand, with which, as the. waters 
 of the river retire, the shores are covered. This compost, 
 when dried by the heat of the sun, becomes a hard and 
 solid mass, and forms the finest material for the beautiful 
 bricks for which Babylon was so celebrated. We all 
 put to the test the adaptation of this mud for pottery, by 
 taking^ some of it while wet from the bank of the river, and 
 Then moulding it into any form we pleased. Having been 
 exposed to the sun for half an hour, it became as hard as 
 stone. These remarks are important, as the indications of 
 buildings throughout this region are different from those 
 of other countries, the universal substitution of brick for 
 stone being observable in all the numerous ruins we visit- 
 ed, including those of the great cities of Seleucia, Ctesi- 
 phon, and of the mighty Babylon herself, for which we 
 have the authority of Scripture, that her builders " had 
 brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar." In con- 
 sequence of this circumstance, the ruins now before us, 
 which our guide called Mumliheh, instead of showing 
 fragments of pillars, or any marks by which we might con- 
 jecture the order of architecture, exhibit an accumulation 
 of mounds, which, on a dead flat, soon attract the eye of a 
 traveller, and have at first sight the appearance of sandy 
 hillocks. On a nearer inspection they prove to be square 
 masses of brick, facing the cardinal points, and, though 
 sometimes much worn by the weather, built with much reg- 
 ularity; the neighbourhood of these large mounds is 
 strewed with fragments of tile, broken pottery, and manu- 
 factured vitreous substances. Coins, the incontestible 
 proofs of former population, are generally to be found. 
 In this place, they are so abundant, that many persons 
 come from Bagdad in the dry season to search for them. 
 Aboo Nasir told us, that some time ago he found a pot 
 full of coins, and Mr. Hart picked up two, with apparency 
 Cufic inscriptions, but their characters were not very de- 
 cipherable. Near the place where they were found, was 
 the fragment of a vessel which had possibly contained 
 them. — Keppel. 
 
 Ver. 4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a 
 city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto 
 heaven ; and let us make us a name, lest we 
 be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole 
 earth. 
 
 The words in which they couched their daring resolu- 
 tion, " Let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may 
 reach unto heaven," mean no more than a tower of ex- 
 traordinary height. Such phrases may be found in every 
 language; and their meaning can scarcely be misunder- 
 stood. When the messengers w^hom Moses employed to 
 examine the land of Canaan, returned and made their 
 report, they described the cities which they had visited, as 
 great and walled up to heaven : and Moses himself, in his 
 farewell address to the congregation, repeats it; "Hear, 
 O Israel, thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to 
 possess nations ^m^ier and mightier than thyself, cities 
 great and fenced up to heaven." The meaning of these 
 phrases plainly is, that the walls of those cities were un- 
 commonly strong and lofty. That the builders of Babel 
 meant no more, is further evident from the words of Jeho- 
 vah, recorded by Moses. " Now nothing will be restrained 
 from them which they have imagined to do." It is here 
 plainly admitted, that the design was practicable, and had 
 been accomplished, if God had not thought proper to 
 interrupt their operations. But to build a tower, the top of 
 which should actually reach unto heaven, is beyond the 
 power of mortals. The opinion of Josephus is not much 
 mere reasonable ; that their design Avas to raise a tower 
 higher far than the summits of the highest mountains, to 
 defend them from the waters of a second flood, of which 
 they were afraid. Had this been their design, they would 
 not have commenced their operations on the level plain, 
 ^".t on tne top of Ararat, where the ark rested. They had 
 the aj^emn promise of Jehovah, that he would no more 
 
 destroy the earth by water ; and beheld the ratification of 
 it in the radiant bow of heaven, placed in the cloud to 
 quiet the fears of guilty mortals. If the Noachidag had 
 distrusted the promise and sign of heaven, they had not 
 descended from the mountains, where only they could 
 hope for safety from the strength and height of their tower, 
 into the plains of Babylonia, and fixed their abode between 
 two mighty rivers, to whose frequent inundations that 
 province is exposed. Nor could they be so infatuated as 
 to imagine, that a tower constructed of bricks, whether 
 hardened in the sun, or burnt in the fire, could resist the 
 waters of a general deluge, whose impetuous assault, as 
 they must have well known, the strong barriers of nature 
 could hardly endure. Equally inadmissible is the notion, 
 that they constructed this tower to defend them from the 
 general conflagration, of which they are supposed to have 
 received some obscure and imperfect notices; for in the 
 destruction of the world, who could hope to find safety in the 
 recesses of a tower, or on the summit of the mouiitains 1 
 they would rather seek^for refuge from the devouring 
 element, in the profound caverns of the earth. 
 
 But it is vain to indulge in conjectures, when the true 
 reason is clearly stated in the page of inspiration : " Let 
 us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto 
 heaven ; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered 
 abroad upon the face of the whole earth." These words 
 clearly show, that their object in building the tower was, 
 to transmit a name illustrious for sublime conception and 
 bold undertaking, to succeeding generations. In this sense, 
 the phrase, to make one's self a name, is used in other parts 
 of Scripti-^-e. Thus, " David gat him a name when he 
 returned from smiting of the Syrians in the valley of salt;" 
 and the prophet informs us, that the God of Israel " led 
 them by the right hand of Moses, with his glorious arm 
 dividing the waters before them, to make himself an ever- 
 lasting name." They seem also to have intended it as a 
 beacon or rallying point, to their increasing and naturally 
 diverging families, to prevent them from separating in the 
 boundless wilderness into independent and hostile societies. 
 This may be inferred from these words, in which they 
 further explain the motive of their undertaking: 'lest we 
 be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth." They 
 seem to have anticipated the necessity, and dreaded the 
 consequences of dispersion; and, like all who seek to avert 
 evil by imlawful means, they hastened, by the rash and 
 impious measure which they adopted, the very mischief 
 they sought to avoid. To build a city and a tower was 
 certainly no crime ; but to do this with a view merely to 
 transmit an illustrious name to posterity, or to thwart the 
 counsels of heaven, was both foolish and wicked, and 
 justly excited the displeasure of the supreme Judge, who 
 requires his rational creatures to acknowledge and to 
 glorify him in all their undertakings. 
 
 It is by no means improbable that this tower was also 
 intended for idolatrous purposes. The worship of fire 
 began in a very remote age, and most probably under the 
 direction and among the rebellious followers of Nirarod. 
 This idea receives no small confirmation from the numer- 
 ous fire towers which in succeeding ages were built in 
 Chaldea, where the sacred fire was kept, and the religions 
 rites in honour of the sun were celebrated. If this con- 
 jecture be well founded, it accounts in the most satisfactory 
 manner, for the sudden and effectual dispersion of the 
 builders, visibly and strongly marking the first combined ?ct 
 of idolatry after the flood, of which we have any notice, with 
 the displeasure of the true God. Guilty of the same crime 
 which procured the sudden dispersion of the first settlers ax 
 Babel, was the restorer of that great city, when he proudly 
 boasted, "Is not this great Babylon which I have builded 
 for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, 
 and for the honour of my majesty :" and he was in'^tanfly 
 visited with a similar punishment, but proport'.oned to the 
 greater enormity of his transgression; for the place should 
 have reminded him of the sin and punishment of his fore- 
 fathers, and taught him to guard against the pride and 
 vanity of his heart. Nebuchadnezzar was, for his wici.-ed- 
 ness, driven from bis throne and kingdom, to dwell with 
 the beasts of the field, and eat grass like oxen, " till seven 
 times passed over him ;" till the sun had seven times passed 
 over his appointed circuit, and he had learned "that the 
 most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to 
 whomsoever he will." But his irreligious ancestors were 
 
Chap. 13. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 19 
 
 punished with dispersion, by confounding their language. 
 Till this memorable event, "the inspired writer assures us, 
 the whole earth was of one language and one speech. 
 When Jehovah came down to see the tower which the 
 Babylonians were building, he said, " Behold, the people is 
 one,' and they have all one language." They formed one 
 great society, and conversed in the tongue which they had 
 learned from those who lived before the flood ; and which 
 was the only language spoken on earth from the beginning 
 of the world : for no hint of any confusion of language, or 
 even material diversity of speech, before the building of 
 Babel, is given in the sacred volume. It is exceedingly 
 natural to suppose, that the devout Seth, and his religious 
 descendants, would preserve with care the family tongue 
 in which God conversed with their renowned father; in 
 which the first promise was given to sinners, and many 
 subsequent revelations were made. The language of our 
 fathers is not easily changed, if we were so disposed ; but 
 no man is willing to change it ; and a religious man will 
 be yet more averse to relinquish a language which contains 
 the only grounds of his hope, and that of the whole human 
 race. We may therefore conclude, that since this language 
 had so many claims on the affectionate care of Seth, he 
 would certainly hand it down, with the gospel it contained, 
 to his children, that they might teach it to succeeding gener- 
 ations, till it was received by his celebrated descendant 
 Noah, the second father of our family. For the same 
 reasons, which were daily receiving additional strength, 
 Shem would preserve with pious care the sacred deposit, 
 till he delivered it into the hands of Abraham, with whom 
 he lived about two hundred years. The line of descent, 
 by which the primitive language might be transmitted from 
 Adam to Abraham, and from this patriarch to Moses, is 
 short and straight; for between Adam and Noah were 
 only eight persons, and the father of Noah was fifty-six 
 years old when Adam died. The only interruption is the 
 confusion of tongues, which happened after the flood. But 
 though God confounded the speech of mankind at Babel, it 
 is not said he extinguished the general language ; nor that 
 he confounded the speech of any but the colony at Babel. 
 These only were in the transgression, and, therefore, these 
 only were liable to the punishment. Noah, and the rest of 
 his family, persevering in their dutiful obedience to God, 
 undoubtedly retained their language, together with their 
 ancient habitations. It may be urged that, by the testimo- 
 ny of Moses, the Lord confounded at Babel, "the language 
 of all the earth." But the plain of Shinar could, with no 
 propriety, be called the whole earth ; nor could the inhabit- 
 ants of Shinar, by any figure of speech, be entitled to that 
 name. If mankind were in possession of a great part of 
 the globe when the tower was built, by what rule of justice 
 could thev be punished for a crime in which they had no 
 share, and of which multitudes of the distant settlers could 
 not even have heard '? " Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right V The truth of this history depends upon 
 two terms, which admit of different senses. In the first 
 verse of the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the sacred histo- 
 rian says. The whole earth was of one language and of one 
 speech. The word (Sd) Col, signifies the wJwle, and also 
 every; by (y-is) Arets, is often meant the earth, it also signi- 
 fies a land or province ; and occurs frequently in this latter 
 acceptation. In this very chapter, the region of Shinar is 
 called Arets Shinar, the land or province of Shinar; and 
 the land of Canaan, Arets Canaan, the country of Canaan. 
 The psalmist uses both terms in precisely the same sense : 
 " Their sound is gone out into every land," Col Arets. 
 The words of Moses, then, ought to be rendered, Therefore 
 is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there 
 confound the language of the whole land. If this view of 
 the text be just, the dispersion was a partial event, and 
 related chiefly to the sons of Cush, whose intention was 
 to found a great, if not a universal empire ; but by this 
 judgment their purpose was defeated. The language of 
 the whole country, Mr. Bryant thinks, was confounded, 
 by causing a labial failure, so that the people could not 
 articulate. It was not an aberration, in words or language, 
 but a failure and incapacity in labial utterance ; for God 
 said, " Go to, let us go down and confound, noty, their lip, 
 that they may not understand one another's speech." By 
 this, their speech was confounded, but not altered ; for, as 
 soon as they separated, they recovered the true tenor of 
 pronunciation; and the language of the earth continued, 
 
 for some ages, nearly the same. This appears, from many- 
 interviews between the Hebrews, and other nations, in 
 which they spoke without an interpreter. Thus, when 
 Abraham left his native country to sojourn in the land of 
 promise, he conversed with the natives in their own lai - 
 guage, without difficulty, though they were the descendants 
 of Canaan, who, for his transgression at Babel, was driven, 
 by the divine judgments, from the chosen residence of his 
 family. The Hebrew language, indeed, seems to ha^ve 
 been the vernacular tongue of all the nations in those parts 
 of the world ; for the patriarchs, and their descendants, so 
 late as the days of Moses and Joshua, conversed familiarly 
 with the inhabitants of Midian and Canaan, without the 
 help of interpreters. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 13. ver. 3. And he went on his journeys 
 from the south even to Beth-el, unto the place 
 where his tent had been at the beginning, be- 
 tween Beth-el and Hai. 
 
 Abraham, and the other patriarchs, led a wandering 
 shepherd's life in tents, such as the Arabs, Turcomans, 
 and numerous tribes of eastern Asia, lead to this day in the 
 same countries. Divided into tribes, they traverse immense 
 tracts with their numerous herds, consisting of camels, oxen, 
 and especially sheep and goats ; and when the pasture of 
 a district is exhausted, the tents are taken down, and the 
 whole family, or the whole tribe, removes to another spot. 
 "Each of these tribes," says Volncy, "of the Bedouin 
 Arabs appropriates to itself a certain tract, which it consid- 
 ers as its property. They difter from agricultural nations 
 pnly so far, as such tracts must be far more extensive ti) 
 procure subsistence for their flocks all the year round. 
 One man's camps distributed over such a tract, form a 
 tribe ; they traverse the whole in succession, as they have 
 consumed with their flocks the pastures in one place." 
 The following account by Parsons (Travels from Alep- 
 po to Bagdad, p. 109) of the movement of an Arab horde, is 
 illustrative of the manners of the old patriarchs. " It was 
 entertaining enough to see the horde of Arabs decamp, 
 as nothing could be more regular. First went the sheep 
 and goatherds, each with their flocks in divisions, accord- 
 ing as the chief of each family directed ; then followed 
 the camels and asses, loaded with the tents, furniture, and 
 kitchen utensils ; these were followed by the old men, 
 women, boys, and girls, on foot. The children that cannot ^ 
 walk are carried on the backs of the young women, or the 
 boys and girls ; and the smallest of "the lambs and kids 
 are carried under the arms of the children. To each tent 
 belong many dogs, among which are some greyhounds ; 
 some tents have from ten to fourteen dogs, and from twenty, 
 to thirty men, women, and children, belonging to it. The 
 procession is closed by the chief of the tribe, whom they 
 call emir and father, (emir means prince,) mounted on 
 the very best horse, and surrounded by the heads of each 
 family, all on horses, with many servants on foot. Be- 
 tween each family is a division or space of one hundred 
 yards, or more, when they migrate ; and such great regu- 
 larity is observed, that neither camels, asses, sheep, ncr 
 dogs, mix, but each keeps to the division to which it be- 
 longs, without the least trouble. They bad been here 
 eight days, and were going four hours journey to the north- 
 west, to another spring of water. This tribe consisted of 
 about eight hundred and fifty men, women, and children. 
 Their flocks of sheep and goats were about five thousand, 
 besides a'' great number of camels, horses, and asses. 
 Horses and greyhounds they breed and train up for sale : 
 they neither kill nor sell their ewe lambs. At set times a 
 chapter in the Koran is read by the chief of each family, 
 either in or near each tent, the whole family being gather- 
 ed roimd, and very attentive." 
 
 The Compte de Ferkieres Sauveboeup describes the 
 manner of an Arab horde moving to a fresh pasturage. 
 " Their wandering life, without ambition, brings to the 
 mind of the traveller that of the ancient patriarchs. No- 
 thing is more interesting than their manner of changing 
 their abode. Numerous flocks, which precede the caravan, 
 express by their bleating, their joy at reluming to their 
 old pastures. Some beasts of burden, guided by the young 
 men, bear the little ones just dropped, and not able to trav- 
 el; then come the camels carrying the baggage, and the 
 
20 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. I*. 
 
 old or sick women. The rest go on foot, carrying their 
 infants on their backs or in their arms ; and the men, mount- 
 ed on the horses, armed with lances, ride round, or bring 
 up the march of the cattle, which loiter behind, browsing 
 > JO long a time. In this manner the Arabs journey, and 
 find their homes, their hearths, and their country, in every 
 lace." — BuRDEK. 
 
 Ver. 7. And there was a strife between the herd- 
 men of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's 
 cattle. 
 
 How often have I been reminded of the strife of the herd- 
 men of the scriptures, by seeing, on a distant plain, a num- 
 ber of shepherds or husbandmen struggling together re- 
 specting some of the same causes which promoted strife in 
 the patriarchal age. The fields are not, as in England, 
 enclosed by fences ; there is simply a ridge which divides 
 one from another. Hence the cattle belonging to one per- 
 son find no difficulty in straying into the field of another, 
 and the shepherds themselves have so little principle, that 
 they gladly take advantage of it. Nothing is more com- 
 mon than for a man, when the sun has gone down, thus to 
 injure his neighbour. The time when most disputes take 
 place, is when the paddy, or rice, has been newly cut, as 
 the grass left among the stubble is then long and green. 
 The herdmen at that time become very tenacious, and wo 
 to the ox, if within reach of stick or stone, until he shall 
 get into* his OAvn field. Then the men of the other party 
 start up on seeing their cattle beaten, and begin to swear 
 and decla'-e h»iw often the others have done the saine thing. 
 They now approach each other, vociferating the most op- 
 probrious epithets: the hands swiftly move about in every 
 direction ; one pretends to take up a stone, or spits on the 
 ground in token of contempt ; and then comes the contest 
 — the long hair is soon dishevelled, and the weaker fall be- 
 neath their antagonists. Then begins the beating, biting, 
 and scratching, till in their cruel rage they have nearly 
 destroyed some of the party. The next business is with 
 the magistrate: all are clamorous for justice; and great 
 must be his patience, and great his discernment, to find 
 out the truth. 
 
 Another common cause of strife is that which took place 
 between the herdmen of Gerar and those of Isaac. Water 
 is at all times very precious in the East, but especially in 
 the dry season ; as the tanks are then nearly exhausted, and 
 what remains is scarcely fit for use. At that time recourse 
 must be had to the wells ; which are often made at the ex- 
 pense or labour of five, ten, or twenty people. Here, then, 
 is the cause of contention. One man has numerous herds ; 
 he gets i\veve first, and almost exhausts the well ; the others 
 come, and, seeing what is done, begin the affray. But the 
 most common cause of quarrel is when the owners of the 
 well have to irrigate their lands from the same source. To 
 prevent these contests, they have generally each an ap- 
 pointed time for watering their lands ; or, it may be, that 
 those who get there first, shall have the privilege : but where 
 there is so little integrity, it is no wonder there should be 
 so much strife. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld 
 all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered 
 every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom 
 and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, 
 like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto 
 Zoar. 
 
 The Jordan flows from the Lake of Genesareth to the 
 Dead Sea, betAveen two ridges of moderately high moun- 
 tains, in a valley that may be about twelve miles in breadth. 
 This valley opens at Jericho, and encloses within it the 
 Dead Sea, which is surrounded by a circle of mountains. 
 Before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah there was, 
 however, no lake here ; but all this was a vallev, which 
 Moses calls the vale of Siddim. It is probable, that even 
 at that time there was a lake under this valley, in which 
 the Jordan discharged itself, which otherwise could have 
 had no vent. This subterraneous lake was covered with 
 a thick coat of earth, on which, besides Sodom and Gomor- 
 rah, other cities stood. This being the nature of the 
 ground, it could never be deficient in the requisite moist- 
 
 ure, and besides it was doubtless watered by canals sup- 
 plied from the Jordan. In this view Moses compares ii 
 with Egypt, which was watered by innumerable canaLs 
 led from the Nile, and cultivated like a garden. — Burder. 
 
 Chap. 14. ver. 3. All these were joined together 
 in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea. 
 
 The lake Asphaltites, or the Dead Sea, is enclosed on 
 the east and west with exceeding high mountains ; on the 
 north it is bounded with the plain of Jericho, on which 
 side it receives the waters of the Jordan ; on the south it is 
 open, and extends beyond the reach of the eye. It is said 
 to be twenty-four leagues long, and six or seven broad ; and 
 is fringed with a kind of coppice of bushes and reeds. In 
 the midst of this border, not a furlong from the sea, rises 
 a fountain of brackish water, which was pointed out to 
 Maundrell by his Arab conductor ; a sure proof that the 
 soil is not equally impregnated with saline particles. The 
 ground, to the distance of half an hour from the sea, is 
 uneven and broken into hillocks, which Mr. Maundrell 
 compares to ruinous lime-kilns ; but whether these might 
 be the pits at Avhich the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah 
 were overthrown by the four kings who invaded their 
 country, he could not determine. — Paxton. 
 
 As it has no outlet, Reland, Pococke, and other trav- 
 ellers, have supposed that it must throw off its superfluous 
 waters by some subterraneous channel; but, although it 
 has been calculated that the Jordan daily discharges into 
 it 6,090,000 tons of water, besides what it receives from the 
 Arnon and several smaller streams, it is now known, that 
 the loss by evaporation is adequate to explain the absorption 
 of the waters. Its occasional rise and fall at certain sea-, 
 sons, is doubtless owing to the greater or less volume which 
 the Jordan and the other streams bring down from the 
 mountains. — Modern Traveller. 
 
 The water of the lake is intensely salt, extremely bitter 
 and nauseous, and so heavy, that the most impetuous winds 
 can scarcely ruffle its surYace. It is called by common 
 writers the Dead Sea, because it nourishes neither animal 
 nor vegetable life. No verdure is to be seen on its banks, 
 nor fish to be found within its waters ; but it is not true 
 that its exhalations are so pestiferous as to kill birds that 
 attempt to fly over it. Mr. Maundrell saw several birds 
 flying about, and skimming the surface of its waters, with- 
 out any visible harm. The same fact is attested by Vol- 
 ney, who states it as no uncommon thing to see swallows 
 dipping for the water necessary to build their nests. The 
 true cause that deprives it of vegetables and animals, is the 
 extreme saltness of the water, which is vastly stronger than 
 that of the sea. The soil around it, impregnated also with 
 salt, produces no plants ; and the air itself, which becomes 
 loaded with saline particles from evaporation, and which 
 receives also the sulphureous and bituminous vapours, can- 
 not be favourable to vegetation : hence the deadly aspect 
 which reigns around this lake. The ground about it, how- 
 ever, is not marshy, and its waters are limpid and incor- 
 ruptible, as must be the case with a dissolution of salt. Mr. 
 Maundrell questions the truth of the common tradition, 
 which is admitted by Volney in all its extent, that the 
 waters of the Dead Sea are destructive to animal existence, 
 having observed among the pebbles on the shore two or 
 three shells of fish, resembling oyster-shells. [Mr. Mad- 
 den, however, savs. Travels, vol. 2, p. 210, " I found seve- 
 ral fresh water shells on the beach, such as I before noticed 
 on the Lake of Tiberias ; and also the putrid reiiiains of 
 two small fish, of the size of mullet ; which no doubt had 
 been carried down from the Jordan, as well as the shells 
 for I am well convinced, both from my own observatioi 
 and from the accounts of the Arabs, that no living creature 
 is to be found in the Dead Sea."] That respectable travel- 
 ler, willing to make an experiment of its strength, went 
 into it, and found it bore up his body in swimming, with an 
 uncommon force ; but the relation of some authors, thaJ 
 men wading in it are buoyed up to the top as soon as thi 
 water reaches to the middle, he found upon experiment un 
 true. Pococke, however, says : " I was much pleased wit] 
 what I observed of this extraordinary' water, and stayed ii 
 it near a quarter of an hour. I found I could lay on it ii 
 any posture, without motion, and without sinking. It ho- 
 me up in such a manner, that, when I struck in swimming 
 my legs were above the water, and I found it diflicult tc 
 
 •ft I 
 
Chap. 14. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 21 
 
 recover my feet. I did not care to venture where it was 
 deep, though these eifects would probably have been more 
 remarkable farther in. They have a notion that if any 
 one attempted to swim over, it would burn up the body ; 
 and they say the same of boats, for there are none on the 
 lake." Van Egmont and Heyman state, that on swimming 
 to some distance from the shore, they found themselves, to 
 their great surprise, lifted up by the water. " When I had 
 swam to some distance, I endeavoured to sink perpendicu- 
 larly to the bottom, but could not ; for the water kept me 
 continually up, and would certainly have throwm me upon 
 my face, had I not put forth all the strength I was master of, 
 to keep myself in a perpendicular posture ; so that I walked 
 in the sea as if I had trod on firm ground, without having 
 occasion to make any of the motions necessary in treading 
 fresh water ; and when I was swimming, I was obliged to 
 keep my legs the greatest part ot the time out of the water. 
 My fellow-traveller was agreeably surprised to find that 
 he could swim here, having never learned. But his case 
 and mine proceeded from the gravity of the water, as this 
 certainly does from the extraordinary quantity of salt in it." 
 —Modern Traveller. 
 
 About six in the morning, says Mr. Madden, I reached 
 die shore, and much against the advice of my excellent 
 ?uide, I resolved on having a bath. I was desirous of 
 ascertaining the truth of the assertion, that " nothing sinks 
 in the Dead Sea." I swam a considerable distance from 
 the shore ; and about four yards from the beach I was 
 Deyond my depth : the water was the coldest I ever felt, 
 and the taste of it most detestable ; it was that of a solution 
 of nitre, mixed with an infusion of quassia. Its buoyancy 
 I found to be far greater than that of any sea I ever swam 
 in, not excepting the Euxine, which is extremely salt. I 
 could lie like a log of wood on the surface, without stirring 
 hand or foot, as long as I chose ; but with a good deal of 
 exertion I could just dive sufficiently deep to cover all my 
 body, but I was again thrown on the surface, in spite of 
 my endeavours to descend lower. On coming out, the 
 wounds in my feet pained me excessively ; the poisonous 
 quality of the waters irritated the abraded skin, and ulti- 
 mately made an ulcer of every wound, which confined me 
 fifteen days in Jerusalem; and became so troublesome in 
 Alexandria, that my medical attendant was apprehensive 
 of gangrene. — Madden. 
 
 The question of its specific gravity, indeed, has been 
 set to rest by the chymical analysis of the waters made by 
 Dr. Marcet, and published in the London Philosophical 
 Transactions for 1807. In 1778, Messrs. Lavoisier, Mac- 
 quer, and Le Sage, had concluded, by experiment, that a 
 hundred pounds of the water contain forty-five pounds six 
 ounces of salt ; that is, six pounds four ounces of common 
 marine salt, and thirty-eight pounds two ounces of marine 
 salt with an earthy base. But Dr. Marcet's more accurate 
 analysis has determined the specific gravity to be 1,211, 
 (that of the fresh water being 1000,) a degree of density 
 not to be met with in any other natural wat^r ; and it holds 
 in solution the following salts, in the stated proportions to 
 100 grains of the water :— 
 
 Muriate of lime 
 
 3,920 grains 
 
 Muriate of magnesia 
 
 10.246 
 
 Muriate of soda 
 
 10,360 
 
 Sulphate of lime 
 
 0,0M 
 
 24,580 
 
 So that the water of the lake contains about one fourth of 
 its weight of salts, supposed in a state of perfect desicca- 
 tion ; or if they be desiccated at the temperature of 180^ 
 on Fahrenheit's scale, they will amount to forty-one per 
 cent, of the water. Its other general properties are, that, 
 
 1. As stated by all travellers, it is perfectly transparent. 
 
 2. Its *.aste is extremely bitter, saline, and pungent. 3. Re- 
 age^^ts demonstrate in it the presence of the marine and 
 sulphuric acids. 4. It contains no alumine. 5. It is not 
 saturated with common salt. 6. It did not change the col- 
 ours of the infusions commonly used .o ascertain the prev- 
 alence of an acid or an alkali, such as litmus, violet, and 
 tumeric. 
 
 Mr. Maundrell neither saw nor heard of the apples of 
 Sodom, so frequently mentioned by the ancients ; nor did 
 he discover any tree near the lake, from which a fruit of 
 that kind might be expected. It is a production which ex- 
 tets only in the imagination and song of the poet ; and has 
 
 perhaps been kept up so long, because it furnished him 
 with a good allusion, or helped him to a beautiful simile. 
 Several travellers, however, claim the honour of having 
 discovered that far-famed apple. Hasselquist says, the 
 apple of Sodom is not the fruit either of a tree or of a shrub, 
 but the production of the solanum melongena of Linnaeus. 
 It is found in great abundance round Jericho, in the vales 
 near the Jordan, and in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea. 
 Its apples are sometimes full of dust ; but this appears only 
 when the fruit is attacked by. an insect, which converts the 
 whole of the inside into dust, leaving nothing but the rind 
 entire, without causing it to lose any of its colour. JNl, 
 Seetzen supposes it is the fruit of a tree which grows on 
 the plain of El Gor, near the southern extremity of the 
 Dead Sea. The tree resem-bles a fig-tree, and the fruit is 
 like the pomegranate : it struck him, that this fruit, which 
 hafe no pulp or flesh in the inside, but only a species of cotton 
 resembling silk, and is unknown in the rest of Palestine, 
 might be the celebrated apple of Sodom. Chateaubriand 
 imagines that he has made the interesting discovery. The 
 shrub which bears, in his opinion, the true apple of Sodom, 
 grows two or three leagues from the mouth of the Jordan ; 
 it is thorny, and has small taper leaves ; its fruit is exactly 
 like the little Eg3T)tian lemon, both in size and colour : be- 
 fore it is ripe, it is filled Avith a corrosive and saline juice ; 
 when dried, it yields a blackish seed, which may be com- 
 pared to ashes, and which resembles loitter pepper in taste. 
 He gathered half a dozen of these fruits, but nas no name 
 for them, either popular or botanical. Next comes Mr. 
 Jollifie. He found in a thicket of brushwood, about half a 
 mile from the plain of Jericho, a shrub of five or six feet 
 high, on which grew clusters of fruit, about the size of a 
 small apricot, of a bright yellow colour, "which, contrast- 
 ing with the delicate verdure of the foliage, seemed like the 
 union of gold and emeralds. Possibly, when ripe, they 
 may crumble into dust upon any violent pressure." Those 
 which this gentleman gathered did not crumble, nor even 
 retain the slightest mark of indenture from the touch ; they 
 would seem to want, therefore, the most essential character- 
 istic of the fruit in question. But they were not ripe. This 
 shrub is probably the same as that described by Chateau- 
 briand. Lastly, Captains Irby and Mangles have no doubt 
 that they have discovered it in the oskar plant, which they 
 noticed on the shores of the Dead Sea, grown to the sta- 
 ture of a tree ; its trunk measuring, in many instances, two 
 feet or more in circumference, and the boughs at least fif- 
 teen feet high. The filaments enclosed in the fruit, some- 
 what resemble the down of a thistle, and are used by the 
 natives as a stuffing for their cushions ; " they likewise 
 twist them, like thin rope, into matches for their guns, 
 which, they assured us, required no application of sulphur 
 to render them combustible." This is probably the same 
 tree that M. Seetzen refers to. But still, the correspondence 
 to the ancient description is by no means perfect; there 
 being little resemblance between cotton and thistle-down, 
 and ashes or dust. M. Chateaubriand's golden fruit, full 
 of bitter seed, comes the nearest to what is told us of the 
 deceitful apple. If it be any thing more than a fable, it 
 must have been a production peculiar to this part of Pales- 
 tine, or it would not have excited such general attention. 
 On this account, the oskar and the solanum seem alike 
 unentitled to the distinction; and for the same reason, the 
 pomegranate must altogether be excluded from considera- 
 tion. The fruit of the solaniwi melongena, which belongs 
 to the same genus as the common potato, is white, resem- 
 bling a large egg, and is said to impart an agreeable acid 
 flavour to soups and sauces, for the sake of which it is 
 cultivated in the south of Europe. This could hardly be 
 what Tacitus and Josephus referred to. It is possible, 
 indeed, that what they describe, may have originated, like 
 the oak-galls in this country, in the work of some insect: 
 for these remarkable productions sometimes acquire a con- 
 siderable size and beauty of colour. Future travellers 
 will be inexcusable if they leave this question undecided. 
 — Modern Traveller. 
 
 The far-famed fruit of the tree of Sodom, " which tempts 
 the eye and turns to ashes on the lips," is nowhere to be 
 found on the western shore; and Burckhardt appears to 
 favour the opinion of its having only an imaginary exist- 
 ence: but it does exist in the vicinity of El Ghor. I saw 
 one of the npples at Mar Saba; and, perhaps, the only 
 plant in Egypt producing this fruit I discovered at Koum 
 
22 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 14. 
 
 Omhos, in Upper Eg}T)t, growing in a comer of the small 
 temple of Isis, facing the Nile; the plant was not quite the 
 height of the Palma Christi, the fruit was the size of the 
 pomegranate ; indeed, from the similarity of the fruit and 
 leaves, I consider the Dead Sea apple as a spurious pome- 
 granate. It was, indeed, tempting to the eye, but deceitful 
 to the sense ; on opening it, it was quite empty, the surface 
 of the liud having only a light floculent sort of cotton 
 atta^^hed to it, which was destroyed by the lightest touch ; 
 thii was the true Dead Sea apple which I saw in Egypt, 
 and which I also found in Mar Saba; albeit Shaw and 
 Pococke doubt its existence. — Madden. 
 
 The extreme saltness of this lake, has been ascribed by 
 Volney to mines of fossil salt in the side of the mountains, 
 which extend along the western shore, and from time im- 
 memorial have supplied the Arabs in the neighbourhood, 
 and even the city of Jerusalem. He does not attempt to 
 invalidate the credit of the Mosaic narrative; but only 
 insinuates, that these saline depositions were either coeval 
 with the mountains in which they are found, or entered 
 into their original conformation. The extraordinary fruit- 
 fulness of the vale of Siddim, before the destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, is asserted by Moses in terms so 
 clear and precise, that the veracity of the sacred writer 
 must be overthrown, before a reasonable doubt can be 
 entertained of the fact. No disproportionate quantity of 
 saline matter, could then have been present, either in the 
 soil or in the surrounding mountains. That it abounded 
 with bitumen, some have inferred from the assertion of 
 Moses, that the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits: 
 where the Hebrew word chemar, which we render slime, 
 others, and particularly the Seventy interpreters, render i 
 bitumen. But gophrith, and not chemar, is the word that 
 Moses employs to denote brimstone, in his account of the i 
 judgment which overwhelmed the cities of the plain; and i 
 by consequence, brimstone is not meant, when chemar is 
 used, but bitumen, a very different Substance. Hence the 
 brimstone which now impregnates the soil of the salt sea, 
 and banishes almost every kind of vegetation from its 
 shores, must be regarded, not as an original, but an 
 accidental ingredient, remaining from the destruction of 
 the vale by fire and brimstone from heaven. The same 
 remark applies to the mines of fossil salt, on the surround- 
 ing mountains; the saline matter was deposited in the 
 cavities which it now occupies at the same time, else the 
 vale of Siddim, instead of verdant pastures, and abundant 
 harvests, had exhibited the same frightful sterility from 
 the beginning, for which it is so remarkable in modern 
 times. Bitumen, if the Hebrew word chemar denotes that 
 substance, abounds in the richest soils ; for in the vale of 
 Shinar, whose soil, by the agreement of all writers, is fer- 
 tile in the highest degree, the builders of the tower of Babel 
 used it for mortar. The ark of bulrushes in which Moses 
 was embarked on the Nile, was in like manner daubed 
 with bitumen (chemar) and pitch ; but the mother of Mo- 
 ses, considering the poverty of her house, cannot be sup- 
 posed to have procured it from a distance, nor at any great 
 expense : she must therefore have found it in the" soil of 
 Egypt, near the Nile, on whose borders she lived. It is 
 therefore reasonable to suppose, that bitumen abounded in 
 Goshen, a region famed for the richness of its pastures. 
 Hence it may be fairly concluded, that the vale of Siddim, 
 before its destruction, in respect of natural fertility, re- 
 sembled the plain of Shinar, and the land of Egypt along 
 the Nile, But it is well known, that wherever brimstone 
 and saline matter abound, there sterility and desolation 
 reign. Is it not then reasonable to infer, that the sulphu- 
 reous and saline matters, discovered in the waters and on 
 the shores of the Asphaltites, are the relics of the divine 
 vengeance executed on the cities of the plain, and not 
 original ingredients in the soil. If we listen to the testi- 
 mony of the sacred writers, what was reasonable hypothe- 
 sis rises into absolute certainty. Mo'^es expressly ascribes 
 the brimstone, the salt, and the burning: in the overthrow 
 of Sodom, to the immediate vengeance of Heaven ; " When 
 they see the plagues of that land, . . . tRat the whole land 
 is bnm^+one, and salt, and burning; that it is not sown, 
 norbeareth, nor any grass groweth thereon, (like the over- 
 throw I f Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboira, 
 which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath ;) 
 even all nations shall say, Wherefore has Ae Lord done 
 thus unto this land ? What meaneth the heat of this great 
 
 anger"?" In this passage, the brimstone, salt, and burning, 
 are mentioned as true and proper effects of the 'divine 
 wrath; and since this fearful destruciion is compared to 
 the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, the brimstone and 
 salt into which the vale of Siddim was turned, must also 
 be the true and proper effects of divine anger. This, in- 
 deed, Moses asserts in the plainest terms : " Then the Lord 
 rained upon Sodom, and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and 
 fire from the Lord out of heaven ; and he overthrew those 
 cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the 
 cities, and that which grew upon the ground." But since 
 the brimstone and the fire were rained from heaven, so 
 must the salt, with which they are connected in the former 
 quotation : and this is the opinion received by the Jewish 
 doctors. The frightful sterility which followed the brim- 
 stone, salt, and burning, in the first quotation, is in the 
 same manner represented as an effect of the divine judg- ■ 
 ment upon the vale of Siddim; "it is not sown, norbear- 
 eth, nor any grass groweth thereon." — Paxton. 
 
 Chateaubriand says: "Several travellers, and, among 
 others, Troilo and d'Arvieux, assert, that they remark- 
 ed fragments of walls and palaces in the Dead Sea. This 
 statement seems to be confirmed by Maundreil and Fa- 
 tJier Nau. The ancients speak more positively on this , 
 subject. Josephus,- employing a poetic expression, says, 
 hat he perceived on the banks of the lake, the shades of 
 le overwhelming cities. Strabo gives a circumference of 
 sixty stadia to the ruins of Sodom, which are mentioned 
 also by Tacitus. I know not whether they still exist; but, 
 as the' lake rises and falls at certain seasons, it is possible 
 that it may alternately cover and expose the skeletons of 
 the reprobate cities." Mr. Jollitfe mentions the same 
 story. " We have even," he says, " heard it asserted with 
 confidence, that broken columns and other architectural 
 ruins are visible at certain seasons, when the water is 
 much retired below its usual level ; but of this statement 
 our informers, wheii closely pres-^ed, could not adduce any 
 satisfactory confirmation." _ We are afraid that, notwith- 
 standing the authori ^ of Strabo, we must class this legend 
 with the dreams of imagination ; or perhaps its origin may 
 be referred to some such optical delusion as led to the mis- 
 take respecting the supposed isle^nd. In the travels ot 
 Egmont and Heyman, however, there is a statement which 
 may throw some light on the subject. They say : " We 
 also saw here a kind of jutty or prominence, which appear? 
 to have been a heap of stones from time to time thrown 
 up by the sea ; but it is a current opinion here, that they 
 are part of the ruins of one of the towns which are buried 
 under it." The bare possibility, that any wreck of the 
 guilty cities should be brought to light, is sufficient to ex- 
 cite an intense curiosity to explore this mysterious flood, 
 which, so far as appears from any records, no bark has 
 ever ploughed, no plummet ever sounded. Should permis- 
 sion ever be obtained from the Turks, to launch a vessel 
 on the lake, its aavigation, if practicable, would probably 
 lead to some interesting results. — Modern Traveller. 
 
 Ver. 10. And the vale of Siddim icas full of 
 slime-pits ; and the kings of Sodom and Go- 
 morrah fled, and fell there : and they that re- 
 mained fled to the mountain. 
 
 People retired to the movvtaivs anciently when defeat- 
 ed in war : they do so still. Dr. Shaw indeed seems to sup- 
 pose, that there was no greater safety in the hills than in 
 the plains of this country : that there were few or no 
 places of difficult access ; and that both of them lay equal- 
 ly exposed to the insults and outrages of an enemy. But 
 in this point this ingenious writer seems to be mistaken ; 
 since, as we find that those that remained of the armies 
 of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled to the mount- 
 ains, in the days of Abraham, Gen. xiv. 10; so d'.'* rvieux 
 tells us, that the rebel peasants of the Holy La:..', who 
 were defeated while they were in that country by the 
 Arabs, in the plain of Goiiin, fled towards the mountains, 
 whither the Arabs could not pursue them at that time. 
 So, in like manner, the Archbishop of Tyre tells us, that 
 Baldwin IV. of the croisade kings of Jerusalem, rava- 
 ging a place called the valley of Bacar, a country remark- 
 ably fruitful, the inhabitants fled to the mountains, whither 
 our troops could not easily follow them. This flying to 
 
Chap. 14. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 23 
 
 hills and mountains for safety, is frequently alluded to in 
 Scriptilre. — Harmjeh. 
 
 Ver. 14. And when Abram heard that his brother 
 was taken captive, he armed his trained ser- 
 vants born in his own house, three hundred 
 and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. 
 
 If we should turn our thoughts to the strength of an 
 Arab emir, or the number of men they command, we shall 
 find it is not very great, and that were Abraham now alive, 
 jind possessed of the same degree of strength that he had 
 in his time, he would still be consid£red as a prince among 
 them, and might, perhaps, even be called a mighty prince, 
 he having three hundred and eighteen servants able to 
 1)3ar arms, Gen. xiv. 14, especially in the Eastern com- 
 plimental style : for this is much like the strength of those 
 Arab emirs of Palestine dArvieux visited. There were, 
 according to him, eighteen emirs or princes that governed 
 the Arabs of Mount Carmel ; the grand emir, or chief of 
 these princes, encamped in the middle, the rest round about 
 him, at one or two leagues distance from him, and from 
 each other ; each of these emirs had a number of Arabs 
 particularly attached to him, who called themselves his 
 servants, and were properly the troops each emir com- 
 manded when they fought; and when all these. divisions 
 were united, they made up between four and five thousand 
 fighting men. Had each of these emirs been equal in 
 strength to Abraham, their number of fighting men must 
 have been near six thousand, for three hundred and 
 eighteen, the number of his servants, multiplied by eighteen, 
 the number of those emirs, make five thousand seven hun- 
 dred and twenty-four ; but they were but between four and 
 five thousand, so that they had but about two hundred and 
 fifty each, upon an average. Abraham then was superior 
 in force to one of these emirs. But though Abraham was 
 a man of power, and did upon occasion make war, yet I 
 hope a remark I before made concerning him will be re- 
 membered here, that is, that he was a pacific emir not- 
 withstanding, at least, that he by no means resembled the 
 modern Arabs in their acts of depredation and violence. 
 — Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 15. And he divided himself against them, 
 he and his servants, by night, and smote them, 
 and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the 
 left hand of Damascus. 
 
 The manner in which the Arabs harass the caravans 
 of the East, is described in the same page. Chardin tells 
 us, " that the manner of their making war, and pillaging 
 the caravans, is, to keep by the side of them, or to follow 
 them in the rear, nearer or farther off, according to their 
 forces, which it is very easy to do in Arabia, whidh is one 
 great plain, and in the night they silently fali upon the 
 camp, and carry off one part of it before the rest are got 
 under arms." He supposes that Abraham fell upon the 
 camp of the four kings, that had carried away Lot, pre- 
 cisely in the same Arab manner, and by that means, with 
 unequal forces, accomplished his design,, and rescued Lot. 
 Gen. xiv. 15, he thinks, shows this ; and he adds, that it 
 is to be remembered, that the combats of the age of 
 Abraham more resembled a fight among the mob, than 
 the bloody and destructive wars of Europe. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 17. And the king of Sodom went out to 
 meet him. 
 
 The conduct of this king, of Abraham, bf Lot, of Saul, 
 of the father of the prodigal, and of many others, is beauti- 
 fully illustrated by the manners of the East, at this day. 
 Not to meet a friend, or an expected guest, would be con- 
 sidered as rude in the extreme. So soon as the host hears 
 of the approach of his visitant, he and his attendants go 
 forth in courtly style ; and when they meet him, the host 
 addresses him, " Ah ! this is a happy day for me ; by your 
 favour I am found in health." He will then, perhaps, put 
 his arm round his waist, or gently tap him on the shoulder, 
 as they proceed towards the house. When at the door, he 
 againmalfes his boM', and politely ushers him in; and the 
 rest joyfully follow, congratulating each other on the hap- 
 py meeting. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 22. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, 
 I have lifted up my hand unto the Lord, the 
 most high God, the possessor of heaven and 
 earth, 23. That I will not take from a thread 
 even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take 
 any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, 
 I have made Abram rich. 
 
 The use of shoes may be traced to the patriarchal age ; 
 Abraham protested to the king of Sodom, after his victory 
 over Amraphel and his associates, " I have lifted up mine 
 hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of 
 heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even 
 to a shoe-latchet." And when the Lord appeared to Moses 
 in the bush, he commanded him to put off his shoes from 
 his feet, for the place on which he stood was holy ground. In 
 imitation of this memorable example, the priests officiated 
 in the temple barefoot ; and all the orientals, under the 
 guidance of tradition, put off their shoes when they enter 
 their holy places. The learned Bochart is of opinion, that 
 the Israelites used no shoes in Egj^pt ; but being to take a 
 long journey, through a rough and barren wilderness, God 
 commanded them to eat the passover with shoes on their 
 feet ; and those very shoes which they put on at that festi- 
 val, when they were ready to march, he suffered not to 
 decay during the whole forty years they traversed the 
 desert ; and to increase the miracle, Grotius adopts the 
 idle conceit of some Jewish writers, that their clothes en- 
 larged as they grew up to maturity, and their shoes also 
 underwent a similar enlargement. This was not impos- 
 sible with Jehovah, but it seems to have been quite unne- 
 cessary, for the clothes and shoes of those that died, might 
 serve their children when they grew up ; and it was suf- 
 ficiently wonderful, without, such an addition, that their 
 clothes should not decay, nor their shoes wear, nor their 
 feet swell, by travelling over hot and sandy deserts for the 
 long period of forty years. It only remains to be observed, 
 on this part of the subject, that no covering for the foot can 
 exclude the dust in those parched regions; and by con- 
 sequence, the custom of washing and anointing the feet, 
 which is, perhaps, coeval with the existence of the human 
 race, is not to be ascribed to the use of sandals. What- 
 ever covering for the foot may be used, Chardin declares, 
 it is still necessary to wash and anoint the feet after a 
 journey. It is also the custom everywhere among the 
 Asiatics, to carry a stafi' in their hand, and a handkerchief 
 to wipe the sweat from their face. The handkerchiefs are 
 wrought with a needle ; and to embroider and adorn them, 
 is one of the elegant amusements of the other sex. — Paxton. 
 
 To lift up the right hand with the fingers towards heav- 
 en is equivalent to an oath. Hence Dr. Boothroyd has 
 rendered the passage, " I sivear to Jehovah." To lift up 
 the hand in confirmation of any thing is considered a most 
 sacred way of swearing. In Isaiah Ixii. 8. it is written, 
 " The Lord hath sworn by his right hand." It is an in- 
 teresting fact, that many of the images of the gods of the 
 heathen have the right hand lifted up, which to the under- 
 standing of the people, says, " lavi Cod; I am truth-; I my- 
 self ; I am. Fear not.'" Does a man make a solemn proni- 
 ise, and should the person to whom it is made express a 
 doubt; he will say, "Lift up your hand;'''' which means, 
 swear that you will perform it. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. That I will not take from a thread even 
 to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take any 
 thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I 
 have made Abram rich. 
 
 This may refer to the red thread worn round the neck 
 or the arm, and which binds on the amulet; or the string 
 with Vv^hich females tie up their hair. The latchet I sup- 
 pose to mean the thong of the sandal, which goes over the 
 top of the foot, and betwixt the great and little toes. It is 
 proverbial to say, should a man be accused of taking away 
 some valuable article, which belongs to another, " I have 
 not taken away even a piece of the thong of your worn-out 
 sandals." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 1.5. ver. 3. And Abram said, Behold, tome 
 thou hast given no seed : and, lo, one born in 
 my house is mine heir. 
 
24 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 16. 
 
 Though the slaves in the oriental regions were treated 
 with more severity than hired servants, their condition 
 was by no means ' reckoned so degrading as in modern 
 times, among the civilized nations of the west. The slave- 
 master in the East, when he has no son to inherit his 
 wealth, and even when the fortune he has to bequeath is 
 very considerable, frequently gives his daughter to one of 
 his slaves. The wealthy people of Barbary, when they 
 have no children, purchase young slaves, educate them in 
 their own faith, and sometimes adopt them for their own 
 children. This custom, so strange and unnatural, accord- 
 ing to our modes of thinking, may be traced to a very 
 remote antiquity ; it seems to have prevailed so early as 
 the days of Abraham, who says of one of his slaves, " One 
 born in mine house is mine heir :" although Lot, his bro- 
 ther's son, resided in his neighbourhood, and he had besides 
 many relations in Mesopotamia. In the courts of eastern 
 monarchs, it is well known, that slaves frequently rise to 
 the highest honours of the state. The greatest men in the 
 Turkish empire are originally slaves, reared and educated 
 in the seraglio. When Maillet was in Egypt, there was 
 a eunuch who had raised three of his slaves to the rank 
 of princes ; and he mentions a Bey who exalted five or 
 six of his slaves to the same office with himself. With 
 these facts before us, we have no reason to question the 
 veracity of the inspired writers, who record the extraor- 
 dinary advancement of Joseph in the house of Pharaoh, 
 and of Daniel, under the monarch of Babylon. These 
 sudden elevations, from the lowest stations in society, from 
 the abject condition of a slave, or the horrors of a dungeon, 
 to the highest and most honourable offices of state, are quite 
 consistent with the established manners and customs of 
 those countries. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. And it came to pass, that, when the sun 
 went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking 
 furnace, and a burning lamp that passed be- 
 tween those pieces. 
 
 Several eminent critics believe the lamp of fire was an 
 emblem of the Divine presence, and that it ratified the cov- 
 enant with Abram. It is an interesting fact that the burn- 
 ing lamp or fire is still used in the East in confirmation of 
 a covenant. Should a person in the evening make a solemn 
 promise to perform something for another, and should the 
 latter doubt his word, the former will say, pointing to the 
 iiame of the lamp, " That is the witn£ss." On occasions of 
 greater importance, when two or more join in a covenant, 
 should the fidelity of any be questioned, they will say, " We 
 invoke the lamp of the Temple" (as a witness.) When 
 an agreement of this kind has been broken, it will be said, 
 " Who would have thought this 1 for the lamp of the Tem- 
 ple was invoked." That^re was a symbol of the Divine 
 presence, no one acquainted with the sacred scriptures 
 can deny ; and in the literature and customs of the East, 
 the same thing is still asserted. In the ancient writings, 
 where the marriages of the gods and demigods are des- 
 cribed, it is always said the ceremony was performed in 
 the presence of the god of fire. He was the witness. But 
 it is also a general practice, at the celebration of respecta- 
 ble marriages at this day, to have a. fire as a witness of the 
 transaction. It is made of the wood of the Mango-tree, or 
 the Aal or Arasu, or Panne or Paldsu. The fire being 
 kindled in the centre of the room, the young coiiple sit on 
 stools ; but when the Brahmin begins to repeat the incan- 
 tations, they arise, and the bridegroom puts the little finger 
 of his left hand roimd the little finger of the right hand of 
 the bride, and they walk round the fire three times from 
 left to right. " Fire is the witness of their covenant; and 
 if they break it, fire will be their destruction.^' In the 
 Scanda Purana, the father of the virgin who was to be 
 married to the son of the Rishi, said to him, " Call your 
 son, that I may give him to my daughter in the presence of 
 the god of fire, that he may be the ^vitness;" that being 
 done, " Ilsteyar gave his daughter Verunte in marriage, 
 the fire being the witness." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 16. ver 2. I pray thee, go in unto my 
 
 maid ; it may be that 1 may obtain children by 
 
 her. 
 
 The Hebrew has, " Be builded by her." When a wife 
 
 has been for some time considered steril. should she have 
 
 a child, she is said to be making her house new, ox rather, 
 she has caused the house to be newly built. When a man 
 marries, " he is making a new house." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. And he will be a wild man ; his hand 
 will he against every man, and every man's 
 hand against him : and he shall dwell in the 
 presence of all his brethren. 
 
 The phrase, " a wild man," it is well known, is in the 
 original text, " a wild ass man," that is, a man like a wild 
 ass in teniper and manners. The comparison seems to re- 
 fer, first to Ishmael himself, and to intimate certain lead- 
 ing traits in his character ; and then to his offspring in 
 every succeeding age. The troops of onagers, are con- 
 ducted by a leading stallion, that prefers the most arid des- 
 erts of the mountains, keeps watch while his companions 
 repose, and gives the signal at the appearance of an enemy. 
 The Nomades of Asia report of these animals, that the 
 first of a troop which sees a serpent or a beast of prev, 
 makes a certain cry, which brings, in a moment, the whole 
 herd around him, when each of them strives to destroy it 
 instantly. Such were the character and manners of Ish- 
 mael. "He was the first prince of his family, the founder 
 of a powerful nation, of a rough, wild, and untractable 
 disposition. Nor was this all: ambitious of supreme au- 
 thority, he loved to place himself at the head of his rising 
 community, to regulate its affairs, and direct its operations ; 
 and, like the high-spirited leader of the onagers, he could 
 brook no rival. He discovered his ruling passion, when he 
 was but a stripling in the house of his father. Determined to 
 maintain his prerogatives as the elder son, and provoked to 
 see a younger, and a child of a different mother, preferred 
 before' him, he gave vent to his indignation, by deriding his 
 brother, and the feast which was made on his account. 
 Expelled for his imprudence from his father's house, he 
 made choice of the sandy desert for his permanent resi- 
 dence, and required the tieads of all the families around 
 him, either to acknowledge his supremacy, and treat him 
 with the highest respect, or be driven from his station and 
 neighbourhood. Wherever he pitched his tent, he expect- 
 ed, according to a custom of great antiquity, all the tents to be 
 turned with their faces towards it, in token of submission ; 
 that the band might have their eye always upon their mas- 
 ter's lodging, and be in readiness to assist him if he were 
 attacked. In this manner did Ishmael dwell " in the pres- 
 ence," — "before," Cry) or, "over against the "faces of all 
 his brethren." But the prediction embraced also the char- 
 acter and circumstances of his descendants. The man- 
 ners and customs of the Arabians, except in the article of 
 religion, have suffered almost no alteration, during the 
 long period of three thousand years. They have occupied 
 the same country, and followed the same mode of life, 
 from the days of their great ancestor, down to the present 
 times, and range the wide extent of burning sands which 
 separate them from all the surrounding nations, as rude, and^ 
 savage, and untractable as the wild ass himself. Claiming 
 the barren plains of Arabia, as the patrimonial domain 
 assigned by God to the founder of their nation, they con- 
 sider themselves entitled to seize, and appropriate to their 
 own use, whatever they can find there. Impatient of re- 
 straint, and jealous of their liberty, they form no connex- 
 ion with the neighbouring states ; they admit of little or 
 no friendly intercourse, but live in a state of continual 
 hostility with the rest of the world. The tent is their 
 dwelling, and the circular camp their city; the spontane- 
 ous produce of the soil, to which they sonietimes add a lit- 
 tle patch of corn, furnishes them wath means of subsist- 
 ence, amply sufficient for their moderate desires; and the 
 liberty of ranging at pleasure their interminable wilds, 
 fully compensates in their opinion for the want of all other 
 accommodations. Mounted on their favourite horses, th e y 
 scour the waste in search of plunder, with a velocity sur- 
 passed only by the wild ass. They levy contributions on 
 every person that happens to fall in their way ; and fre-^ 
 quently rob their own countrymen, with as little ceiemonv 
 as they do a stranger or an enemy; their hand is still 
 against everv man, and every man's hand against them. 
 But thev do not alwa5^s confine their predatory excursions 
 to the desert. When booty is scarce at home, they make 
 incursions into the territories of their neighbours, and hav- 
 ing robbed the solitary traveller, or plundered the ciravaa. 
 
Chap. 18. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 25 
 
 immediately retire into the deserts far beyond the reach of 
 their pursuers. Their character, drawn by the pen of in- 
 .spiration, exactly corresponds with this view of their dis- 
 positions and conduct : " Behold, as wild asses in the de- 
 sert, go they forth to their work, rising betimes for a prey : 
 the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their chil- 
 dren." Savage and stubborn as the wild ass which inhabits 
 the same wilderness, they go forth on the horse or the drom- 
 edary with inconceivable swiftness in quest of their prey. 
 Initiated in the trade of a robber from their earliest years, 
 they know no other employment; they choose it as the bu- 
 siness of their life, and prosecute it with unwearied activ- 
 ity. They start before the dawn, to invade the village or 
 the caravan ; make their attack with desperate courage, and 
 surprising rapidity ; and, plunging instantly into the desert, 
 escape from the vengeance of their enemies. Provoked by 
 their continual insults, the nations of ancient and modern 
 times have often invaded their country with powerful ar- 
 mies, determined to extirpate, or at least to subdue them 
 to their yoke ; but they always return baffled and disap- 
 pointed. The savage" freebooters, disdaining every idea 
 of submission, with invincible patience and resolution, 
 maintained their independence ; and they have transmitted 
 it unimpaired to the present times. In spite of all their 
 enemies can do to restrain them, they continue to dwell in 
 the presence of all their brethren, and to assert their right 
 to insult and plunder every one they meet with on the bor- 
 ders, or within the limits of their domains. — Paxton. 
 
 The fate of Ishmael is here identified with that of his 
 descendants : and the same character is common to them 
 both. The historical evidence of the fact, the universal 
 tradition, and constant boa.st of the Arabs themselves, their 
 language, and the preservation for many ages of an origin- 
 al rite, derived from him as their primogenitor, — confirm 
 the truth of their descent from. Ishmael. The fulfilment 
 of the^rediction is obvious. Even Gibbon, while he at- 
 tempts^ from the exceptions which he specifies, to evade 
 the force of the fact that the Arabs have maintained a per- 
 petual independence, acknowledges that these exceptions 
 are temporary and local; that the body of the nation has 
 escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies ; and 
 that " tlie arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and 
 Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia." 
 But even the exceptions which he specifies, though thev 
 were justly stated, and though not coupled with such 
 admissions as invalidate them, would not detract from the 
 truth of the prophecy. The independence of the Arabs 
 w^as proverbial in ancient as well as in modern times ; and 
 the present existence, as a free and independent nation, of 
 a people who derive their descent from so high antiquity, 
 demonstrates that they had never been wholly subdued, as 
 all the nations around them have unquestionably been ; and 
 that they have ever dwelt in the presence of their brethren. 
 They not only subsist unconquered to this day, but the 
 prophesied and primitive wildness of their race, and their 
 hostility to all, remain unsubdued and unaltered. " They 
 are a wild people; their ho,nd is against every man, and 
 every man's hand is against them." In the words of Gib- 
 bon, which strikingly assinailate with those of the prophecy, 
 they are " armed against mankind." Plundering is their 
 profession. Their alliance is never courted, and can 
 never be obtained ; and all that the Turks, or Persians, or 
 any of their neighbours can stipulate for from them is a 
 partial and purchased forbearance. Even the British, who 
 nave established a residence in almost every country, 
 have entered the territories of the descendants of Ishmael 
 to accomplish only the premeditated destruction of a fort, 
 and to retire. It cannot be alleged, with truth, that their 
 peculiar character and manner, and its vtninterrupted per- 
 manency, is the necessary result of the nature of their 
 country. They have continued wild or uncivilized, and 
 have retained their habits of hostility towards all the rest 
 of the human race, though they possessed for three hun- 
 dred years countries the most opposite in their nature from 
 the mountains of Arabia. The greatest part of the tem- 
 perate zone was included within the limits of the Arabian 
 conquests ; and their empire extended from India to the 
 Atlantic, and embraced a wider range of territory than 
 ever was possessed by the Romans, those boasted rnasters 
 of the world. The period of their conquest and dominion 
 was sufficient, imder such circumstances, to have changed 
 the manners of any people ; but whether in the land of 
 4 
 
 Shinar or in the valleys cf Spain, on the banks of the 
 Tigris or the Tagus, in Araby the Blessed or Araby the 
 Barren, the posterity of Ishmael have ever maintained 
 their prophetic character : they have remained, under every 
 change of condition, a wild people ; their hand has still 
 been against every man, and every man's hand against 
 them. The natural reflection of a recent traveller, on 
 examining the peculiarities of an Arab tribe, of which he 
 was an eyewitness, may suflice, without any art of con- 
 troversy, for the illustration of this prophecy : — " On the 
 smallest computation, such must have beerf tlie manners ot 
 those people for more than three thousand years: thus in 
 all things verifying the prediction given of Ishmael at his 
 birth, that he, in his posterity, should be a wild man, and 
 always continue to be so, though they shall dwell for ever 
 in the presence of their brethren. And that an acute and 
 active people, surrounded for ages by polished and luxu- 
 riant nations, should, from their earliest to their latest 
 times, be still found a wild people, dwelling in the presence 
 of all their brethren, (as we may call these nations,) un- 
 subdued and unchangeable, is, indeed, a standing miracle — 
 one of those mysterious facts which establish the truth ol 
 prophecy," {Sir Robert K. Porter.') — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 14. Wherefore the well was called Beer- 
 lahai-roi : behold, it is between Kadcsh and 
 Bered. • 
 
 If in some places where there are wells, there are no 
 conveniences to draw any water with, to refresh the faint- 
 ing traveller, there are other places where the wells are 
 furnished with troughs, and other contrivances, for the 
 watering cattle that want to drink. Sir John Chardin tells 
 us there are wells in Persia and in Arabia, in the driest 
 places, and above all in the Indies, with troughs and basins 
 of stone by the side of them. He supposes the well called 
 Beer-lahai-roi, mentioned Gen. xvi. 14, was thus furnished, 
 I do not remember any circumstance mentioned in that part 
 of the patriarchal history that proves this ; but it is suffi- 
 ciently apparent there, that the well where Rebecca went to 
 draw water, near the city of Nahor, had some convenience 
 of this kind ; as also had the Arabian well to which the 
 daughters of Jethro resorted. Other wxlls, without doubt, 
 had the like conveniences, though not distinctly mentioned, 
 — Harmeh. 
 
 Chap. 18. ver. 1. And the Lord appeared unto 
 him in the plains of Mamre : and he sat in the 
 tent door in the heat of the day. 
 
 In the time of Chandler it was still the custom of eastern 
 shepherds to sit at the door of their tents in the heat of the 
 day. That traveller, " at ten minutes after ten in the 
 morning," was entertained with the view of a plain full of 
 booths, with the Turcomans sitting by their doors, under 
 sheds resembling poriicoes, or by shady trees, surrounded 
 w^ith flocks of goats. In the same situation the three angels 
 found Abraham, when they came to destroy Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, sitting under the portico, or skirts of his tent, 
 near the door, to enjoy the refreshing breeze, and superin- 
 tend his servants. It was not the hottest part of the day, 
 when Chandler saw the Turcoman shepherds sitting at 
 the doors of their booths; it was soon after ten in the 
 morning; and when Abraham was sitting at his tent door, 
 it might be nearly at the same hour. In the hottest part of 
 the day, according to the practice of those countries, the 
 patriarch had been retired to rest. The goats of the Tur- 
 comans were feeding around their huts; and if Abraham's 
 cattle, which is extremely probable, were feeding around 
 his tent in the same manner, it accounts for the expedition 
 with which he ran and fetched a calf from the herd, in 
 order tc entertain his visitants. — Paxton. 
 
 Often has my mind reverted to the scene of the good ol(jI 
 patriarch sitting in the door of his tent in the- heat of the 
 day. When the sun is at the meridian, the wind often 
 becomes softer, and the heat nv)re oppressive ; and then 
 may be seen the people seated in the doors of their huts, to 
 inhale the breezes, and to let them blow on their almost 
 naked bodies. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he lifted up his eyes, and looked. 
 
 To lift up the eyes does not mean to look vpu-ard, but 
 
»6 
 
 GENESIS, 
 
 Chap. IQ, 
 
 to look directly at an object, and that earnestly. A man 
 coming from the jungle might say, " As I came ihis morn- 
 ing, I lifted up my eyes, and behold, I saw three elephants." 
 " Have you seen any thing to-day in your travels 1" — " I 
 have not lifted up my eyes." " I do not see the thing you 
 sent me for, sir. — "Just lift up your eyes, and you will 
 soon find it." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, 
 and wash your feet. 
 
 How often, in passing through a village, may we see this 
 grateful otRce performed for the weary traveller ! As the 
 people neither wear shoes nor stockings, and as the sandal 
 is principally for the defence of the sole of the foot, the 
 upper part soon becomes dirty. Under these circumstances, 
 to have the feet and ankles washed is very refreshing, and 
 is considered a necessary part of Eastern hospitality. The 
 service is always performed by servants. (John xiii. 14.) — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto 
 Sarah, and said. Make ready quickly three 
 measures of fine meal, knead it, and make 
 cakes upon the hearth. 7. And Abraham ran 
 unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and 
 good, and gave it unto a young man ; and he 
 hasted to dress it. 8. And he took butter and 
 milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set 
 it before them ; and he stood by them under the 
 tree, and they did eat. 
 
 In the cities and villages of Barbary, where public ovens 
 are established, the bread is usually leavened , but among 
 the Bedoweens and Kabyles, as soon as the dough is 
 kneaded,' it is made into thin cakes, either to be baked im- 
 mediately upon the coals, or else in a shallow earthen ves- 
 sel like a fryingpan, called Tajen. Such were the un- 
 leavened cakes^ which we so frequently read of in Scrip- 
 ture, and those also which Sarah made quickly upon the 
 hearth. These last are about an inch thick; and being 
 commonly prepared in woody countries, are used all along 
 the shores of the Black Sea, from the Palus-Moeotis to the 
 Caspian, inChaldea and in Mesopotamia, except in lowns. 
 A fire is made in the middle of the room ; and when the 
 bread is ready for baking, a corner of the hearth is swept, 
 the bread is laid upon it, and covered with ashes and em- 
 bers: in a quarter of an hour they turn it. Sometimes 
 they use small convex plates of iron : which are most com- 
 mon in Persia, and among the nomadic tribes, as being 
 the easiest way of baking, and done with the least ex- 
 pense ; for the bread is extremely thin, and soon prepared. 
 The oven is used in every part of Asia; it is made in the 
 ground, four or five feet deep, and three in diameter, well 
 plastered with mortar. When it is hot, they place the 
 bread (Avhich is commonly long, and not thicker than a 
 finger) against the sides ; it is baked in a moment. Ovens, 
 Chardin apprehends, were not used in Canaan in the pa- 
 triarchal age ; all the bread of that time was baked upon 
 a plate, or under the ashes; and he supposes, what is 
 nearly self-evident, that the cakes which Sarah baked on 
 the hearth, were of the last sort, and that the shew-bread 
 was of the same kind. The Arabs about mount Carmel 
 use a great stone pitcher, in which they kindle a fire ; and 
 when it is heated, they mix meal and water, which they 
 apply with the hollow of their hands to the outside of the 
 pitciier ; and this extremely soft paste, spreading itself, is 
 baked in an instant. The heat of the pitcher having dried 
 up all the moisture, the bread comes off as thin as our wa- 
 fers ; and the operation is so speedily performed, that in 
 a very little time a sufficient quantity is made. But their 
 best sort of bread they bake, either by heating an oven, or 
 a large pitcher half full of little smooth shining flints, 
 upon which they lay the.dough, spread out in the form of 
 a thin broad cake. Sometimes they use a shallow earthen 
 vessel, resembling a fryingpan, which seems to be the 
 pan mentioned by Moses, in which the meat-offering was 
 naked. This vessel. Dr. Shaw informs us, serves both for 
 haking and frying ; for the bagreah of the people of Bar- 
 ' ary differs not much from our pancakes, only, instead 
 
 of rubbing the pan in Wiiich they fry them with butier, 
 they rub it wiih soap,, to make them like a honeycomb. 
 If these accounts of the Arab stone pitcher, the pan, and 
 the iron hearth or copper plate, be attended to, it will not 
 be difficult to understand the laws of Moses in the second 
 chapter of Leviticus ; they will be found to answer per- 
 fectly well to the description which he gives us of the dif- 
 ferent ways of preparing the meat-offerings. The pre- 
 cepts of Moses evidently bear a particular relation to the 
 methods of preparing bread, used by those who live in 
 tents, although they were sufficient for the direction of his 
 people after their settlement in Canaan; and his mention- 
 ing cakes of bread baked in the oven, and wafers that 
 were baked on the outside of these pitchers, in the fourth 
 verse, with bread baked on a plate, and in a pan, in the 
 fifth and seventh verses, inclines Mr. Harmer to think, the 
 people of Israel prepared their meat-offerings in their tents, 
 which they afterward presented at the national altar, ra- 
 ther than in the court of the tabernacle. — Paxton. 
 
 While we were talking of the Turcomans, who had ' 
 alarmed us on our way, a meal was preparing within; 
 and soon afterward, warm cakes baked en the hearth, 
 cream, honey, dried raisins, butter, lebben, and wheat 
 boiled in milk, were served to the company. Neither the 
 Sheikh himself nor any of his family partook with us, but 
 stood around, to wait upon their guests, though among 
 those who sat down to eat, were two Indian fakirs, or beg- 
 gars, a Christian pilgrim from Jerusalem, and the slaves 
 and servants of Hadjee Abd-el-Rakhman, all dipping their 
 fingers into the same dish. Coffee was served to us in 
 gilded china cups, and silver stands or finjans, and the 
 pipes of the Sheikh and his son were filled and offered to 
 those who had none. If there could be traced a resem- 
 blance between the form of this tent, and that of the most 
 ancient buildings of which we have any knowledge, our 
 reception there no less exactly corresponiied to the picture 
 of the most ancient manners, of which we have any detail. 
 When the three angels are said to have appeared (o Abra- 
 ham in the plains of Mamre, he is represented as sitting 
 in the tent-door in the heat of the day. " And wVien he saw 
 them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and bowed 
 himself towards the ground." " And Abraham hastened 
 into the tent, unto Sarah, and said, ' Make ready quickly 
 three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes 
 upon the hearth.' And he took butter and milk, and the 
 calf which he had dressed, and set it before them, and. he 
 stood by them under the tree, and they did eat." When 
 inquiry was made after his wife, he replied, " Behold, she 
 is in the tent." And when it was promised him, that Sarah 
 should have a son, it is said, " And Sarah heard in the 
 tent-door, which was behind him." The angels are repre- 
 sented, as merely passengers in their journey, like our- 
 selves : for the rites of hospitality were shown to them, 
 before they had made their mission known. At first sight 
 they were desired to halt and repose, to wash their feet, as 
 they had apparently walked, and rest beneath the tree, 
 while bread should be brought them to comfort their 
 hearts. "And after that," said the good old patriarch, 
 "shall ye pass on, for therefore are ye come unto your 
 servant ;" so that the duty of hospitality to strangers seems 
 to have been as well and as mutually understood in the 
 earliest days, as it is in the same country at present. The 
 form of Abraham's tent, as thus described, seems to have 
 been exactly like the one in which we sit; for in both, 
 there -w as ashaded open front, in which he could sit in the 
 heat of the day, and yet be seen from afar ofl^; and the 
 apartment of the females, where Sarah was, when he 
 stated er to be within the tent, was immediately behind 
 this, w erein she prepared the meal for the guests, and' 
 from ^\ lence she listened to their prophetic declaration. — 
 Buckingham. 
 
 Chap. 19. ver. 19. Behold now, thy servant hath 
 found grace in thy sight. 
 
 Nothing can be more common than this form of speech. 
 Has a man been jjleading with another and succeeded in 
 his request, he will sav, " Ah ! since I have found favour 
 in your sight, let me mention another thing." " My lord, 
 had I not found Yavour in your sight, who would have 
 helped me ?" " Happy is the man who fmds grace in your \ 
 sight ["—Roberts. 
 
CiiAi'. 21. 
 
 GENESIS, 
 
 27 
 
 Ver. 24. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and 
 upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the 
 Lord out of heaven. 25, And he overthrew 
 those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabit- 
 ants of the cities, and that which grew upon 
 the ground. 
 
 With regard to the agents employed in this catastrophe, 
 there might seem reason to suppose that volcanic phe- 
 nomena had some share in producing it ; but Chateau- 
 briand's remark is deserving of attention, " I cannot," he 
 says, " coincide in opinion with those who suppose the 
 Dead Sea to be the crater of a volcano. I have seen 
 Vesuvius, Solfatara, Monte Nuovo in the lake of Fusino, 
 the peak of the Azores, the Mamalif opposite to Carthage, 
 the extinguished volcanoes of Auvergne ; and remarked 
 in all of them the same characters ; that is to say, moim- 
 tains excavated in the form of a tunnel, lava, and ashes, 
 which exhibited incontestible proofs of the agency of fire." 
 After noticing the very diiferent shape and position of the 
 Dead Sea, he adds: " Bitumen, warm springs, and phos-" 
 phoric stones, are found, it is true, in the mountains of 
 Arabia ; but then, the presence of hot springs, sulphur, and 
 asphaltos, is not suificient to attest the anterior existence of 
 a volcano." The learned Frenchman inclines to adopt 
 the idea of Professors Michaelis and Biisching, that Sod- 
 om and Gomorrah were built upon a mine of bitumen ; that 
 lightning kindled the combustible mass, and that the cities 
 sank in the subterraneous conflagration. M. Malte Brun 
 ingeniously suggests, that the cities might themselves have 
 been built of bituminous stones, and thus have been set in 
 flames by the fire of heaven. We learn from the Mosaic 
 account, that the Vale of Siddim, which is now occupied 
 by the Dead Sea, was full of " slime-pits," or pits of bitu- 
 men. Pococke says : " It is observed, that the bitumen 
 floats on the water, and comes ashore after windy weather ; 
 the Arabs gather it up, and it serves as pitch for all uses, 
 goes into the composition of medicines, and is thought to 
 have been a very great ingredient in the bitumen used in 
 embalming the bodies in Egypt : it has been much used 
 for cerecloths, and has an ill smell when burnt. It is prob- 
 able that there are subterraneous fires that throw up this 
 bitumen at the bottom of the sea, where it may form itself 
 into a mass, which may be broken by the motion of the 
 water occasioned by high winds ; and it is very remarkable, 
 that the stone called the stone of Moses, found about two or 
 three leagues from the sea, which burns like a coal, and 
 turns only to a white stone, and not to ashes, has the same 
 smell, when burnt, as this pitch ; so that it is probable, a 
 stratum of the stone under the Dead Sea is one part of the 
 matter that feeds the subterraneous fires, and that this 
 bitumen boils up out of it." To give force to this last con- 
 jecture, however, it would be requisite to ascertain, whe- 
 ther bitumen is capable of being detached from this stone, 
 in a liquid state, by the action of fire. The stone in ques- 
 tion is the black fetid limestone, used at Jerusalem in the 
 manufacture of rosaries and amulets, and worn as a charm 
 against the plague. The effluvia which it emits on friction, 
 is owing to a strong imprfegnation of sulphureted hydro- 
 gen. If the buildings were constructed of materials of this 
 description, with quarries of which the neighbouring moim- 
 tains abound, they would be easily susceptible of ignition 
 by lightning. The scriptural account, however, is ex- 
 plicit, that "the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Go- 
 morrah brimstone and fire from heaven;" which Ave may 
 safely interprei as implying a shower of inflamed sulphur, 
 or nitre. At tue same time it is evident, that the whole 
 plain underw it a simultaneous convulsion, which seems 
 reterible to the consequences of a bituminous ex ^losion. 
 In perfect accordance with this view of the cata.-trophe, 
 we find the very materials, as it were, of this awful vis- 
 itation still at hand in the neighbouring hills; from 
 which they might have been poured down by the agency 
 of a thunder-storm, without excluding a supernatural cause 
 from the explanation of the phenomena. Captains Irby 
 and Mangles collected on the southern coast lumps of 
 nitre and fine sulphur, from the size of a nutmeg up to 
 that of a small hen's egg, which, it was evident from their 
 situation, had been brought down by the rain: their great 
 deposite must be sought for," they say, " in the cliff"." Dr. 
 Shaw supposes that the bitumen, as it rises, is accompanied 
 
 with sulphur, " inasmuch as both of them are found pro- 
 miscuously upon the wash of the shore." But his conjec- 
 ture is not founded on observation. The statement he 
 gives, is founded on hearsay evidence ; we cannot, there- 
 fore, admit him as (in this case) an original authority, 
 " I was informed," he says, " that the bitumen, for which 
 this lake hath been always remarkable, is raised, at certain 
 times, from the bottom, in large liemispheres ; which, as 
 soon as they touch the surface, and so are acted upon by 
 the external air, burst at once with great smoke and noise, 
 like the pulvis fulminans of the chymists, and disperse 
 themselves round about in a thousand pieces. But this 
 happens only near the shore ; for, in greater depths, the 
 eruptions are supposed to discover themselves onl)^ in such 
 columns of smoke as are now and then observed to arise 
 from the lake." Chateaubriand speaks of the puffs of 
 smoke " which announce or follow the emersion of asphal- 
 tos, and of fogs that are really unwholesome like all other 
 fogs." These he considers' as the supposed pestilential 
 vapours said to arise from the bosom of the lake. But it 
 admits of question, in the deficiency of more specific infor- 
 mation, whether what has been taken for columns of smoke, 
 may not be the effect of evaporation, — Modern Traveller. 
 
 Ver. 26, But his wife looked back from behind 
 him, and she became a pillar of salt. 
 
 " From behind him." This seems to imply that she was 
 following her husband, as is the custom at this day. When 
 men, or women, leave their house, they never look back, as 
 " it would be very unfortunate." Should a husband have 
 left any thing which his wife knows he will require, she 
 will not call on him to turn or look back; but Avill either 
 take the article herself, or send it by another. Should a 
 man have to look back on some great emergency, he will : 
 not then proceed on the business he was about to transact. 
 When a person goes along the road, (especially in tht 
 evening,) he will take great care not to look back, "because 
 the evil spirits would assuredly seize him." When they 
 go on a journey, they will not look behind, though the 
 palankeen, or bandy, should be close upon them ; they step 
 a little on one side, and then look at you. Should a person 
 have to leave the house of a friend after sunset, he will be 
 advised in going home not to look back: " as much as pos- 
 sible keep your eyes closed ; fear not." Has a person 
 made an offering to the evil spirits, he must take particular 
 care when he leaves the place not to look back. A female 
 known to me is believed to have got her crooked neck by 
 looking back. Such observations as the following may be 
 often heard in private conversation. "Have you heard 
 that Comdran is very ill i"— " No, what is the matter with 
 him V — " Matter ! why he has looked back, and the evil 
 spirit has caught him." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 21. ver. 6. And Sarah said, God hath made 
 me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh 
 with me. 
 
 A Avoman advanced in years, under the same circum- 
 stances, would make a similar observation : " I am made 
 to laugh." But this figure of speech is also used on any 
 wonderful occasion. Has a man gained any thing he did 
 not expect, he will ask, " AVhat is this ? I am made to 
 laugh." Has a person lost any thing which the moment 
 before he had in his hand, he says, " I am made to laugh." 
 Has he obtained health, or honour, or wealth, or a wife, or 
 a child, it is said, " He is made to laugh." " Ah, his 
 mouth is now full of laughter ; his mouth cannot contain all 
 that laughter." (Ps. cxxivi. 2.) — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And the child grew, and was weaned : 
 and Abraham made a great feast the same day 
 that Isaac was weaned. 
 
 When the time has come to wean a child, a fortunate 
 day is looked for, and the event is accompanied with feast- 
 ing and religious ceremonies. Rice is given to the child 
 in a formal way, and the relations are invited to join in 
 i)ie festivities. For almost every event of life the Hindoo? 
 have a fixed rule from which they seldom deviate. They 
 wean a female child within the year, " because, if they dil? 
 not, it would become steril ;" but boys are often allowed 
 the breast till they are three years of age,— Roberts 
 
GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 21, 
 
 Ver. 9. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the 
 Egyptian, which she had borne unto Abraham. 
 
 It is not uncommon for a man of property to keep a con- 
 cubine in the same house with his wife ; and, strange as it 
 may appear, it is sometimes at the wife's request* Per- 
 haps she has not had any children, or they may have died, 
 and they both wish to have one, to perform their funeral 
 ceremonies. By the laws of Menu, should a wife, during 
 the first eight years of her marriage, prove unfruitful ; or 
 should the children she has borne be all dead in the tenth 
 year after marriage ; or should she have a daughter onhj 
 in the eleventh year ; he may, without her consent, put her 
 away, and take a concubine into the house. He must, 
 however, continue to support her. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. And Abraham rose up early in the 
 morning, and took bread and a bottle of water, 
 and gave it unto Hagar, (putting it on her 
 shoulder,) and the child, and sent her away ; 
 and she departed, and wandered in the wilder- 
 ness of Beer-sheba. 15. And the water was 
 spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under 
 one of the shrubs. 16. And she went, and sat 
 her down over against him a good way off, as 
 it were a bow-shot ; for she said, Let me not see 
 the death of the child. And she sat over against 
 him, and lifted up her voice, and wept. 
 
 Chardin has given us, at large, an amusing account of 
 these bottles, which, therefore, I would here set down. 
 After observing that the bottle given to Hagar was a lea- 
 ther one, he goes on thus: " The Arabs, and all those that 
 lead a wandering kind of life, keep their water, milk, and 
 other kind of liquors in these bottles. They keep in them 
 more fresh than otherwise they would do. These lea- 
 ther bottles are made of goat skins. When the animal is 
 killed, they cut off its feet and its head, and they draw it 
 in this manner out of the skin, without opening its belly. 
 They afterward sew up the places where the legs were 
 cut off, and the tail, and when it is filled, they tie it about 
 the neck. These nations, and the country people of Per- 
 sia, never go a journey without a small leather bottle of 
 water hanging by their side like a scrip. The great leather 
 bottles are made of the skin of a he-goat, and the small 
 ones, that serve instead of a bottle of water on the road, are 
 made of a kid's skin. Mons. Dandilly, for want of ob- 
 serving this, in his beautiful translation of Josephus, has 
 put goat skin in the chapter of Hagar and Ishmael, instead 
 of a kid's skin bottle, which, for the reasons assigned above, 
 must have been meant." He reassumes the subject in ano- 
 ther part of the same volume, in which he tells us, "that 
 they put into these goat-skin and kid-skin vessels every 
 thing which they want to carry to a distance in the East, 
 whether dry or liquid, and very rarely make use of boxes 
 and pots, unless it be to preserve such things as are lia- 
 ble to be broken. The reason is, their making use of 
 beasts of carriage for conveying these things, who often 
 fall down under their loading, or throw it down, and also 
 because it is in pretty thin woollen sacks that they enclose 
 v/hat they carry. There is another advantage, too, in put- 
 ting the necessaries of life in these skin vessels, they are 
 preserved fresher ; the ants and other insects cannot make 
 their way to them ; nor can the dust get m, of which there 
 are such quantities in the hot countries of Asia, and so 
 fine, that there is no such thing as a coffer impenetrable to 
 it ; therefore it is that butter, honey, cheese, and other like 
 aliments, are enclosed in vessels made of the skins of this 
 species of animals." According to this, the things that 
 were carried to Joseph for a present, were probably en- 
 closed in little vessels made of kid skins ; not only the balm 
 and the honey, which were somewhat liquid ; biit the nuts 
 and the almonds too, that they might be preserved fresh, 
 and the whole put into slight woollen sacks. — Harmer. 
 
 That Ishmael should, when just ready to faint, and un- 
 able to proceed onward in his journey, desire to lie down 
 
 • I knew a couple witli whom this occurred, and the wife deli<rhts 
 in nursing and bringing up the offspring of her husband's concubine. 
 
 under some tree, where he might be in the shade, was 
 quite natural : in such a situation Thevenot (Travels, p. 
 164) fell in with a poor Arab in this wilderness, just ready 
 to expire. " Passing by the side of a bush," says this 
 writer, " we heard a voice that called to us, and being come 
 to the place, we found a poor languishing Arab, who told 
 us that he had not eaten a bit for five days ; we gave him 
 some victuals and drink, with a provision of bread for tAvo 
 days more, and so went on our way." Ishmael was, with- 
 out debate, fourteen years old when Isaac was born, (com- 
 pare Gen. xvi. 16, with chap. xxi. 5,) and probably seven- 
 teen when Isaac was weaned, for it was anciently the 
 custom in these countries to suckle children till they were 
 three years old, and it still continues so ; the translation 
 then of the Septuagint is very amazing, for instead of 
 representing Abraham as giving Hagar bread, and a skin 
 bottle of water, and putting them upon Hagar's shoulder, 
 that version represents Abraham as putting his son Ishmael 
 on the shoulders of his mother. How droll the represent- 
 ation ! Young children indeed are wont to be carried so ; 
 but how ridiculous to describe a youth of seventeen, or 
 even fourteen, as riding upon his mother's shoulders, when 
 sent upon a journey into the wilderness, and she- loaded at 
 the same time with the provisions. Yet unnatural and odd 
 as this representation is, our version approaches too near 
 to it, when it describes Hagar as casting the youth under 
 one of the shrubs : which term agrees well enough with 
 the getting rid of a half grown man from her shoulders, 
 but by no means with the maternal affectionate letting go 
 her hold of him, when she found he could go no farther, 
 and desired to lie down and die under that bush : for that 
 undoubtedly was the idea of the sacred writer ; she left off 
 supporting him, and let him gently drop on the ground, 
 where he desired to lie. In a succeeding verse, the angel 
 of the Lord bade her lift up Ishmael, and hold him in her 
 hand, support him under his extreme weakness ; she had 
 doubtless done this before, and her quitting her hold, upon 
 his lying down, is the meaning of the word (i'r!t') sha/ak, 
 translated casting, that word sometimes, indeed, signify- 
 ing a sudden and rather violent quitting hold of a thing, 
 but at other times a parting with it in a gentle manner. 
 It may also be wondered at, how Hagar came to give way 
 to despair at that time, as she certainly did ; for since there 
 were several shrubs in that place, we may suppose it was 
 a sure indication of water, and that therefore maternal 
 anxiety would rather have engaged her to endeavour to 
 find out the spring w^hich gave this spot its verdure. But it 
 is to be remembered, that though Irwin found many shrubs 
 in that part of the wilderness through which he travelled, 
 yet the fountains or wells there were by no means equal 
 in number to the spots of ground covered with shrubs, a 
 latent moisture in the earth favouring their growth, where 
 there were no streams of water above ground : she might, 
 therefore, having found her preceding searches vain, verv 
 naturally be supposed to have given up all hope of relief, 
 when the angel made her observe where there was water 
 to be found, upon drinking which Ishmael revived. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 16. And she went.tmd sat her down over 
 against him, a good way off, as it were a bow- 
 shot. 
 
 This is a common figure of speech in their anciei 
 writings, " The distance of an arrow. — So far as the arroA _ 
 flies." The common way of measuring a short distance is~ 
 to say, " It is a call off,"! e. so far as a man's voice can 
 reach. ^ " How far is he off"'?" " O, not more than three 
 calls,^' i. e. were three men stationed within the reach of 
 each other's voices, the voice of the one farthest off would 
 reach to that distance. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. And God opened her eyes, and she sa\A', 
 a Avell of water : and she went and filled th« 
 bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. 
 
 Few Europe an readers are, probably, able to form ai 
 adequate idea 3f the horrors of such a situation as is her^ 
 described. The following description may serve to paii 
 to us the terrors of the desert, and the danger of perishinl 
 in it with thirst. " The desert of Mesopotamia now pre 
 sents to our eyes its melancholy uniformity. It is a cor 
 
Chap. 21—23. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 29 
 
 <inuation, and, as it were, a branch of the Great Arabian 
 desert on the other side of the Euphrates. Saline plants 
 cover, at large intervals, the burning sand or the dry gyp- 
 sum. Wormwood spreads here, as the furze in Europe, 
 over immense tracts, from which it excludes every other 
 plant, Agile herds of gazelles traverse those plains, 
 where many wild asses forrt(erly roved. The lion con- 
 cealed in the rushes along the rivers lies in wait for these 
 animals ; but when he is unable to seize them, to appease 
 his hunger, he sallies forth with fury, and his terrible roar- 
 ing rolls like thunder from desert to desert. The water of 
 the desert is, for the most part, bitter and brackish. The 
 atmosphere, as is usual in Arabia, is pure and dry ; fre- 
 quently it is burning in the naked and sandy plains : the 
 corrupt vapours of stagnant waters are diffused there ; the 
 exhalations of the sulphureous and salt lakes increase the 
 pestilential matter, w henever any interruption of equilib- 
 rium sets a column of such infected air into rapid motion, 
 that poisonous wind arises, which is called Samum or 
 Samyel, which is dreaded less in the interior of Arabia 
 than on the frontiers, and especially in Syria and Mesopo- 
 tamia, As soon as this dangerous wind arises, the air im- 
 mediately loses its purity, the sun is covered with a bloody 
 veil, all animals fall alarmed to the jearth, to avoid this 
 burning blast, which stifles every living being that is bold 
 enough to expose itself to it. The caravans which convey 
 goods backward and forward from Aleppo to Bagdad, 
 and have to traverse these deserts, pay a tribute to the 
 Arabs, who consider themselves as masters of these soli- 
 tudes. They have also to dread the suffocating wind, the 
 swarms of locusts, and the want of water, as soon as they 
 leave the Euphrates," A French traveller affirms, that J[ie 
 was witness to a scene occasioned by the want of water, 
 the most terrible that can be imagined for a man of feel- 
 ing. It was between Anah and Dryjeh. The locusts, af- 
 ter they had devoured every thing, at last perished. .The 
 immense numbers of dead locusts corrupted the pools, 
 from which, for want of springs, they were obliged to draw 
 water. The traveller observed a Turk, who, with despair 
 in his countenance, ran down a hill, and came towards 
 him. " I am," cried he, "the most unfortunate man in the 
 world ! I have purchased, at a prodigious expense, two 
 hundred girls, the most beautiful of Greece and Georgia. 
 I have educated them with care; and now that they are 
 marriageable, I am taking them to Bagdad to sell them to 
 advantage. Ah ! they perish in this desert for thirst, but 
 I feel greater tortures than they." The traveller immedi- 
 ately ascended the hill ; a dreadful spectacle here present- 
 ed itself to hira. In the midst of twelve eunuchs and about 
 a hundred camels he saw these beautiful girls, of the age of 
 twelve to fifteen, stretched upon the ground, exposed to 
 the torments of a burning thirst and inevitable death. Some 
 were already buried in a pit which had just been made; 
 a great number had dropped down dead by the side of their 
 leaders, who had no more strength to bury them. On all 
 sides were heard the sighs of the dying ; and the cries of 
 those who, having still some breath remaining, demanded 
 in vain a drop of water. The French traveller hastened 
 to open his leathern bottle, in which there was a little 
 I water. He was already going to present it to one of these 
 ! unhappy victims. " Madman !" cried his Arabian guide, 
 ' " wouldst thou also have us die from thirst '?" He immedi- 
 ately killed the girl with an arrow, seized the bottle, and 
 threatened to kill any one who should venture to touch it. 
 He advised the slave-merchant to go to Dryjeh, where he 
 would find water. " No," replied the Turk, " at Dryjeh 
 the robbers would take away all my slaves," The Arab 
 dragged the traveller away. The moment they were re- 
 tiring, these unhappy victims, seeing the last ray of hope 
 vanish, raised a dreadful cry. The Arab was moved with 
 compassion ; he took one of them, poured a drop of water 
 or. her burning lips, and set her upon his camel, with the 
 intention of making his wife a present of her. The poor 
 girl fainted several times, when she passed the bodies of 
 her companions, who had fallen down dead in the way. 
 Our traveller's small stock of water was nearly exhausted, 
 i when they found a fine well of fresh and pure water; but 
 I the rope was so short, that the pail would not reach the 
 j surface of the water. They cut their cloaks in strips, tied 
 I • them together, and drew up but little water at a time, be- 
 '. cause they trembled at the idea of breaking their weak 
 i rope, and leaving their pail in the well. After such dan- 
 
 gers, they at last arrived at the first station in Syria,— 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver, 21. And he dwelt in the wilderness of Pa- 
 ran : and his mother took him a wife out of the 
 land of Egypt. 
 
 When a father dies, the mother begins to look out for a 
 wife for her son, though he may be very young ; and her 
 arrangements will generally be acceded to. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 28. And Abraham set seven ewe-lambs of 
 the flocks by themselves. 29. And Abimelech 
 said unto Abraham, What meaii these seven 
 ewe-lambs, which thou hast set by themselves % 
 
 30. And he said, For these seven ewe-lambs 
 shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be 
 a witness unto me that I have digged this well. 
 
 31. Wherefore he called that place Beer-she- 
 ba ; because there they sware both of them. 
 
 Mr. Bruce, ( Travels, vol. i. p. 199,) relating the manner 
 in which a compact was made between his partj'' and some 
 shepherds in Abyssinia, says, " Medicines and advice being 
 given on my part, faith and protection pledged on theirs, 
 two bushels of wheat and seven sheep were carried down 
 to the boat." — Burder. 
 
 Chap. 22. ver. 3. And Abraham rose up early in 
 the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two 
 of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, 
 and clave the wood for the burnt-ofTering, and 
 rose up, and went unto the place of which God 
 had told him. 
 
 There is no ground for supposing that the ancient eastern 
 saddles were like our modern ones. Such were not known 
 to the Greeks and Romans till many ages after the Hebrew 
 judges. " No nation of antiquity knew the use of either 
 saddles or stirrups," (Goguet;) and even in our own times, 
 Hasselquist, when at Alexandria, says, " I procured an 
 equipage which I had never used before ; it was an ass 
 with an Arabian saddle, which consisted only of a cushion, 
 on which I could sit, and a handsome bridle." But even 
 the cushion seems an improvement upon the ancient east- 
 ern saddles, which were probably nothing more than a kind 
 of rug girded to the beast, — Burder, 
 
 Chap. 23. ver. 2. And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba ; 
 the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: 
 and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to 
 weep for her. 
 
 'The ancient Greeks were accustomed to lay out the body 
 after it was shrouded in its grave-clothes ; sometimes upon 
 a bier, which they bedecked with various sorts of flowers. 
 The place where the bodies were laid out, was near the 
 door of the house : there the friends of the deceased attend- 
 ed them with loud lanstentations; a custom which still 
 continues to be observed among that people. Dr. Chandler, 
 when travelling in Greece, saw a woman at Megara, sitting 
 with the door of her cottage open, lamenting her dead hus- 
 band aloud ; and at Zante, a woman in a house with the 
 door open, bewailing her little son, whose body lay by her 
 dressed, the hair powdered, the face painted and bedecked 
 with gold leaf This custom of mourning for the dead, 
 near the door of the house, was probably borrowed from 
 the Syrians; and if so, it will serve to illustrate an obscure 
 expression of Moses, relative to Abraham : " And Sarah 
 died in Kirjath-arba; and Abraham came to mourn for 
 Sarah, and to weep for her." He came out of his own 
 separate tent, and seating himself on the ground near the 
 door of her tent, where her corpse was placed, that he 
 might perform those public solemn rites of mourning, that 
 were required, as well by decency as affection, lame»ted 
 with many tears the loss he had sustained. — Paxton. 
 
5u 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 24. 
 
 Ver. 7. And Abraham stood up, and bpwed him- 
 self to the people of the land, even to the chil- 
 dren of Heth. 
 
 The politeness of Abraham may be seen exemplified 
 among the highest and the lowest of the people of the 
 East: in this respect, nature seems to have done for them, 
 what art has done for others. With what grace do all 
 classes bow on receiving a favour, or in paying their 
 respects to a superior ! Sometimes they bow down to the 
 ground ; at other times they put their hands on their 
 bosoms, and gently incline the head; they also put the right 
 hand on the /ace in a longitudinal position; and sometimes 
 give a long and graceful sweep with the right hand, from 
 lYie forehead to the ground. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. That he may give me the cave of Mach- 
 pelah, which he hath, which is in the end of 
 his field : for as much money as it is worth he 
 shall give it me, for a possession of a burying- 
 
 place among you. 
 $ 
 This IS the most ancient example of a family vault or an 
 hereditary sepulchre in a cave. In the southern mountain- 
 ous part of Palestine, there are many natural caves in the 
 rocks, which may easily be formed into spacious burying- 
 places. There are still found in Syria, Palestine, and 
 Ep-vpt, many such sepulchral caves, which have been fre- 
 quently described by travellers who have visited those 
 countries. These sepulchres are differently contrived. 
 Sometimes they descend ; only those which are made in the 
 declivities of the mountains, often go horizontally into the 
 rock. In Eg3T)t, also, there are many open sepulchres, 
 which run horizontally into the rock, but most of the mum- 
 my-pits are open perpendicularly, and you must let your- 
 self down through this opening. In Palestine and Syria, 
 on the contrary, the sepulchres which descend, are provided 
 with steps, which are now for the most part covered with 
 heaps of rubbish. Many of them consist in the inside of 
 many chambers which are united by passages ; in some of 
 them the back chambers are deeper than the front ones, 
 and you are obliged to descend some more steps to come to 
 them. These chambers, as they are still found, are pretty 
 spacious ; in most of them recesses, six or seven feet long, 
 are made in; he walls all round, to receive the dead bodies; 
 in others stoi e slabs of the same length are fixed against 
 the walls ; sometimes several, one above another, on which 
 the dead bodies were laid; in some few there are stone- 
 coffins, whicli are provided with a lid. It is nearly in this 
 manner that 'he arrangement of graves is prescribed in the 
 Talmud ; on' v there is always to be an antechamber and re- 
 cesses made m the walls of the square sepulchres, the num- 
 ber of which may be ditferent. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15. My lord, hearken unto me : the land is 
 loorth four hundred shekels of silver; what is 
 that betwixt me and thee 1 bury therefore thy 
 dead. 
 
 _ Respectable people are always saluted with the dignified 
 title, " My lord ;" hence English gentlemen on their arrival, 
 are apt to suppose they are taken for those of very high 
 rank. The man of whom Abraham oflered to purchase 
 Machpelah, affected to give the land. "Nay, my lord, 
 hear me, the field I give thee." And this fully agrees with 
 the conduct of those, who are requested to dispose of a thing 
 to a person of superior rank. Let the latter go and ask the 
 price, and the owner will say, " My lord, it will be a great 
 favour if you will take it." " Ah, let me have that pleasure, 
 my lord." Should the possessor believe he will one day 
 need a favour from the great man, nothing will induce 
 him to sell the article, and he will take good care (through 
 the servants or a friend) it shall soon be in his house. 
 Should he, however, have no expectation of a favour in 
 fiture, he will say as Ephron, " The thing is worth so 
 Ijiuch; your pleasure, my lord." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 24. ver. 2. And Abraham said unto his 
 eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all 
 
 that he had. Put, I pray thee, thy hand under 
 my thigh : 3. And I will make thee swear by 
 the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of 
 the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto 
 my son of the daughters of the Canaan ites, 
 among whom I dwell. 
 
 The present mode of swearing among the Mohammedan 
 Arabs, that live in tents as the patriaichs did, according to 
 de l-a Roque, is by laying their hands on the Koran. They 
 cause those who swear to wash their hands before they give 
 them the book; they put their left hand imderneatii, and 
 the right over it. Whether, among the patriarchs, one hand 
 was under, and the other upon the thigh, is not certain; 
 possibly Abraham's servant might swear with one hand 
 under his master's thigh, and the other stretched out to 
 Heaven. As the posterity of the patriarchs are described 
 as coming out of the thigh, it has been supposed, this cere- 
 mony had some relation to their believing the promise of 
 God, to bless all the nations of the earth, by means of one 
 that was to descend from Abraham. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. And he made his camels to kneel down 
 without the city by a well of water, at the time 
 of the evening, even the time that women go out 
 to draw loater. 
 
 It is the work oi females in the East to draw w^ater both 
 morning and evening ; and they may be seen going in 
 groups to the wells, with their vessels on the hip or the 
 shoulder. In the morning they talk about the events of ' 
 the past night, and in the evening about those of the day: 
 many a time would the story of Abraham's servant and Re- 
 becca, the daughter of Bethuel, be repeated by the women 
 of Mesopotamia m their visits to the well. — Roberts. 
 
 The women among the orientals, are reduced to a state 
 of great subjection. Irt Barbary they regard the civility 
 and respect which the politer nations of Europe pay to the- 
 weaker sex, as extravagance, and so many infringements 
 of that law of nature, which assigns to man the pre-emi- 
 nence. The matrons of that country, though they are 
 considered indeed as servants of better station, yet" have 
 the greatest share of toil and business upon their hands. 
 While the lazy husband reposes under some neighbouring 
 shade, and the young people of both sexes tend the flocks, 
 the wives are occupied all the day long, either in toiling 
 on their looms, or in grinding at the mill, or in prepsiring 
 bread or other kind of farinaceous food. Nor is this all f 
 for to finish the day, " at the time of evening," to use the 
 words of the sacred historian, " even at the time that 
 women go out to draw water," they must equip themselves 
 with a pitcher or goat's skin, and tying their sucking 
 children behind them, trudge out in this manner, two or 
 three miles, to fetch •water. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And the damsel u^a^s very fair to look 
 upon, a virgin ; neither had any man known 
 her : and she went down to the well, and filled 
 her pitcher and came up. 
 
 The vessel that the Eastern women frequently make u?e' 
 of, for the purpose of carrying water, is described as like 
 our jars, and is, it seems, of earth. Bishop Pococke, in 
 his journey from Acre to Nazareth, observed a well, 
 where oxen were drawing up water, from whence women 
 carried water up a hill, in earthen jars, to water some 
 plantations of tobacco. In the next page he mentions the 
 same thing in general, and speaks of their carrying the jars 
 on their heads. There is no reason to suppose this kind 
 of vessel was appropriated to the carrying water for the 
 purposes of agriculture, it might do equally well ■« hen 
 they carried it for domestic uses. Such seems to have 
 been the sort of vessels in Avhich the women of ancient 
 times fetched water, for it is called a had in the history of 
 Rebecca, Gen. xxiv. 14, d-c. and I have elsewhere shown, 
 that the word signifies ajar of considerable size, in which 
 they keep their rorn, and in w^hich, at least sometimes, they 
 fetched their water. 
 
 Since the above was written, I have observed a passage 
 
Chap. 24. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 31 
 
 in Dr. Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor, that confirms 
 and illustrates the preceding account ; " The women," 
 sa^'s the Doctor, " resort to the fountains by their houses, 
 each with a large two-handled earthen jar, on the back, or 
 thrown over the shoulder, for water." This accotint of the 
 jars made use of by the Greek women of the island of 
 Tenedos may, very naturally, be understood to be a mod- 
 ern, bat accurate comment on what is said concerning 
 Rebecca's fetching water. The Eastern women, according 
 to Dr. Pococke, sometimes carry their jars upon their 
 heads ; but Rebecca's was carried on her shoulder. In 
 such a case, the jar is not to be supposed to have been placed 
 upright on the shoulder, but held by one of the handles, 
 with the hand over the shoulder, and suspended in this 
 manner on the back. Held, I should imagine, by the right 
 hand over the left shoulder. Consequently, when it was to 
 be pre:;ented to Abraham's servant, that he might drink out 
 of it, it -;■ ^ ^^ "ently moved over the left arm, and being 
 susp'^ -3 hand, while the other, probably, was 
 
 placr • ' • .; t jttom of the jar, it was in that position 
 presc ■ I V /aham's servant, and his attendants, ib 
 drink out ( '. She said, Drink, my lord: and she hasted, and 
 let doum her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. 
 Ver. 18. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 18. And s!:e said, Drink, my lord: and she 
 hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, 
 and gave him drink. 
 
 We met on this road (from Orfa to Bir) with seVferal 
 wells, at which the young women of the neighbouring 
 villages, or of the tribes of the Curds and Turkomans, 
 Who were wandering in these parts, watered their flocks. 
 They were not veiled like those in the towns. They were 
 well made and beautiful, though tanned by the sun. As 
 soon as we accosted them, and alighted from our horses, 
 they brought us water to drink, and likewise watered our 
 horses. Similar civilities had indeed been shown to me 
 in other parts. But here it appeared to me particularly 
 remarkable, because Rebecca, who was certainly brought 
 up in these parts, showed herself e-qually obliging to trav- 
 ellers. Perhaps I have even drank at the same well from 
 which she drew water. For Haran, now a small place, two 
 days' journey to the south-south-east of Orfa, which is still 
 visited by Jews, was probably the town wh^ch Abraham left 
 to remove to the land of Canaan, and his brother Nahor's 
 family probably remained in these parts, Leon.ird Rauwolp, 
 a German traveller, who visited these countries about two 
 hundred years before, observes, in his Travels, (part i. p. 
 259,) " This town (Orfa) is supposed by some to have been 
 formerly called Haran, from which the holy patriarch Abra- 
 ham, with Sarah, and Lot, his brother's son, removed by 
 the command of God;- so that the abundant well is still 
 called Abraham's well, at which his servant first recog- 
 nised Rebecca, when she gave him and his camels water 
 to drink from it. The water of this well has more of a 
 whitish colour than others, and also, as I drank it from the 
 well in the middle of the great Khan, had a peculiar yet 
 sweet and pleasant taste."— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 22. And it came to pass, as the camels had 
 done drinking, that the man took a golden ear- 
 ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets 
 for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold. 
 
 The weight of the ornaments that the servant of Abra- 
 ham put upon Ijlebecca appears to us rather extraordinary. 
 Sir J. Chardin assures us as heavy, and even heavier, were 
 worn by the women of the East when he was there. The 
 ear-ring, or jewel for the face, weighed half a shekel, and 
 the bracelets for her hands ten shekels, Gen. xxiv. 22, 
 which, as he justly observes, is about five ounces. Upon 
 Which he tells us, " the women weor rings and bracelets of 
 as great weight as this, through all Asia, and even much 
 heavier. They are rather manacles than bracelets. There 
 are some as large as the finger. The women wear sev- 
 eral of them, one above the other, in such a manner as 
 sometimes to have the arm covered with them from the 
 wrist to the elbow. Poor people wear as many of glass or 
 horn. Thev hardly ever take them ofif: they are their 
 riches." — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 43. Behold, I stand by the well of water ; 
 and it shall come to pass, that w^hen the virgin 
 Cometh forth to draw water, and I say to her, 
 Give me, I pray thee, a little w^ater of thy 
 pitcher to drink. 
 
 It is still the proper business of the females to supply the 
 family with waten I^^om this drudgery, however, the 
 married women are exempted, unless when single women 
 are wanting. The proper time for drawing water in those 
 burning climates, is in the morning, o^ when the sun is 
 going down; then they go forth to perform that humble 
 office, adorned with their trinkets, some of which are often 
 of great value. Agreeably to this custom, Rebecca went in- 
 stead of her mother to fetch water from the well, and the 
 servant of Abraham expected to meet an unmarried female 
 there who might prove a suitable match for his master's 
 son. In the East Indies, the women also draw water at 
 the ptiblic wells, as Rebecca did, on that occasion, for 
 travellers, their servants and their cattle ; and women or 
 no mean rank literally illustrate the conduct of an unfor- 
 tunate princess in the Jewish History, by performing the 
 services of a menial. The young women of Guzerat daily 
 draw water from the wells, and carry the jars upon the * 
 head ; but those of high rank carry them upon the shoulder. 
 In the same way Rebecca carried her pitcher; and proba- 
 bly for the same reason, because she was the daughter of 
 £m eastern prince. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 47. And I put the ear-ring upon her face, 
 and the bracelets upon her hand. 
 
 Nothing is more common than for heathen females tc 
 have a ring in the nose; and this has led some to suppose^ 
 that the jewel here alluded to was put into that member, 
 and not on the face. " I put a jewel on thy forehead ;" 
 Ez. XV. 11. The margin has, for forehead, "nose." It 
 does not appear to be generally known, that there is an 
 ornament which is worn by females in the East on the 
 forehead. It is made of thin gold, and is studded with 
 precious stones, and called Pattam, which signifies dig- 
 nity. Thus, to tie on the Paitavi, is to " invest with high 
 dignity." Paiia^Istcre, " is the name of the first lawful 
 wife of the king." In the Sathur-Agara'athe, this ornament 
 is called 'Uhe ornament of the forehead." Tyentian and 
 Bennet say of a bride they saw in China, "Her headdress 
 sparkled with jewels, and was most elegantly beaded with 
 rows of pearls encircling it like a coronet ; from which a 
 brilliant angular ornament hung over her forehead, and 
 between her eyebrows." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 57. And they said. We will call the damsel, 
 and inquire at her mouth. 
 
 Do people wish to know the truth of any thing which 
 has been reported of another, they say, " Let us go and 
 inquire of his moulh.^' — " Let us hear the birth of his 
 mouth." Do servants ask a favour of their mistress, she 
 will say, " I know not what will be the birth of the master's 
 mouth; I will inquire at his mouth.'' So the mother and 
 brother of Rebecca inquired at the mouth of the damsel, 
 whether she felt willing to go with the man. " And she 
 said, I will go." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 59. And they sent away Rebecca their sis- 
 ter, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant, and 
 his men. 
 
 How often have scenes like this led my mind to the 
 patriarchal age ! The daughter is about for the frst time 
 to leave the paternal roof: the servants are all in confu- 
 sion ; each refers to things long gone by, each wishes to do 
 something to attract the attention of his young mistress. 
 One says, " Ah ! do not forget him who nursed you when 
 an infant :" another, " How often did I bring you the beau- 
 tiful lotus from the distant tank ! Did I not always conceal 
 your faults'?'.' The mother comes to take leave. She 
 weeps, and tenderly embraces her, saying, " My daugliter. 
 I shall see yoti no more ; — Forget not your mother." The 
 brother infolds his sister in his arms, and promises soor 
 to come and see her. The father is aosorbed in thought^ 
 
S2 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 24—26, 
 
 and is only aroused by the sobs of the party. He then 
 aiieciionately embraces his daughter, and tells her not to 
 I'ear. The female domestics must each smell of the poor 
 girl, and the men louch her feet. As Rebecca had her nurse 
 to accompany her, so, at this day, the A'lja (the nurse) who 
 has from infancy brought up the bride, goes with her to the 
 new scene. She is her adviser, her assistant, and friend; 
 and to her will she tell all her hopes, and all her fears, — 
 
 IIOBERTS. 
 
 Yer. 60. And they blessed Rebecca, and said 
 unto her, Thou art our sister ; be thou the 
 mother of thousands of millions. 
 
 From the numerous instances which are recorded in the 
 scriptures, of those who were aged, or holy, giving their 
 blessing, may be seen the importance which was attached 
 to such benedictions. Has a son, or a daughter, to leave 
 a father, an aged friend, or a priest, a blessing is always 
 given. To be the mother of a num^erous progeny is con- 
 sidered a great honour. Hence parents olten say to their 
 daughters, " Be thou the mother of thousands.''^ Beggars, 
 also, when relieved, say to the mistress of the house, " Ah ! 
 madam, niillions will come from you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver 64. And Rebecca lifted up her eyes ; and 
 when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. 
 
 It was always customary, in all the East, on perceiving 
 a superior, to alight from tKe animal upon which they were 
 riding. Anderson and Iverson relate, that " when the 
 governor of Mossul and his suite passed our caravan, we 
 were obliged to alight from our horses, mules, and asses, 
 and lead the animals till they had gone by." Even now, 
 women show this mark of respect to men, Niebuhr says, 
 " that an Arabian lady who met them in a broad valley in 
 the desert of Mount Sinai, retired from the road, and let 
 her servant lead the camel till they had passed." — Burder. 
 
 Ver, 65, For she had said unto the servant, What 
 man is this that walketh in the field to meet us ? 
 And the servant had said. It is my master: 
 therefore she took a veil, and covered herself 
 
 Rebecca's covering herself with a veil, when Isaac came 
 to meet her, Avhich is mentioned Gen. xxiv. ()5, is to be 
 considered rather as a part of the ceremonial belonging to 
 the presenting a bride to her intended husband, than an 
 effect either of female delicacy, or desire to appear in the 
 most attractive form. The eastern brides are wont to be 
 veiled in a particular manner, when presented to the bride- 
 groom. Those that give us an account of their customs, 
 at such times, take notice of their being veiled all over. 
 Dr. Russell gives us this circumstance in his account of a 
 Maronite wedding, which, he saj'^s, may serve as a speci- 
 men of all the rest, there being nothing materially different 
 in the ceremonies of the difierent sects. — Harmer, 
 
 Chap. 25. ver, 21, And Isaac entreated the Lord 
 for his wife, because she was barren. 
 
 Under similar circumstances, the husband and the wife 
 fast and pray, and make a vow before the temple, that, 
 should their desire be granted, they will make certain gifts, 
 (specifying their kind,) or they will repair the walls, or 
 add a new wing to the temple ; or that the child shall be 
 dedicated to the deity of the place, and be called by the 
 same name. Or they go to a distant temple which has 
 obtained notoriety by granting the favours they require, I 
 have heard of husbands and wives remaining for a year 
 togetner at such sacred places, to gain the desire of their 
 hearts ! — Roberts, 
 
 Ver, 28, And Isaac loved Esau, because he did 
 eat of his venison ; but Rebecca loved Jacob, 
 
 Margin, " Venison was in his mouth." Has a man been 
 Bupported by another, and is it asked, " Why does Kandan 
 love Muttoo 1" the reply is, " Because Muttoo's rice is in 
 his m.outh" " Why have you such a regard for that man V 
 — " Is not his rice in my mouth ?" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver, 30. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I 
 pray thee, with that same red pottage. 
 
 The people of the East are exceedingly fond of pottage, 
 which they call Kool. It is something like gruel, and is 
 made of various kinds of grain, which are first beaten in a 
 mortar. The red pottage is made of Kurakan, and other 
 grains, but is not superior to the other. For such a con- 
 temptible mess, then, did Esau sell his birthright. When 
 a man has sold his fields or gardens for an insignificant 
 sum, the people say, " The fellow has sold his land for 
 pottage" Does a father give his daughter in marriage to a 
 low caste man, it is observed, " He has given her for pot- 
 tage.'" Does a person by base means seek for some paltry 
 enjoyment, it is said, " For one leaf* of pottage, he will 
 do nine days' work." Has a learned man stooped to any 
 thing which was not expected from him, it is said, " The 
 learned one has fallen into the pottage pot." Has he given 
 instruction or advice to others—" The Lizard, which gave 
 warning to the people, has fallen into the pottage pot." Of 
 a man in great poverty, it is remarked, " Alas ! he cannot 
 get pottage." A beggar asks, " Sir, will you give me a 
 little pottage ?" Does a man seek to acquire great things 
 by small means — " He is trying to procure rubies by pot- 
 tage." When a person greatly flatters another, it is common 
 to say, " He praises him only for his pottage." Does a king 
 greatly oppress his subjects, it is said, " He only governs 
 for the pottage." Has an individual lost much money by 
 trade — " The speculation has broken his pottage pot." 
 Does a rich man threaten to ruin a poor man, the latter 
 wilf ask, "Will the lightning strike 'my pottage pot?" — 
 Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 41, And Esau said in his heart. The days of 
 mourning for my father are at hand. 
 
 When the father (or the mother) has become aged, the 
 children sav, " The day for the lamentation of our father 
 is at hand,' " The sorrowful time for our mother is fast 
 approaching," If requested to go to another part of the 
 country, the son will ask, " How can I go *? the day of 
 sorrow for my father is fast approaching," When' the 
 aged parents are seriously ill, it is said, " Ah ! the days of 
 mourning have come." — IRoeerts. 
 
 Chap, 26, ver, 15, For all the wells which his 
 father's servants had digged in the days of 
 Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped 
 them, and filled them with earth. 
 
 To stop the wells, is justly reckoned an act of hostility. 
 The Canaanites, envying the prosperity of Abraham and 
 Isaac, and fearing their power, endeavoured to drive them 
 out of the country, by stopping " up all the wells which their 
 servants had digged, and filling them with earth." The 
 same mode of taking vengeance on enemies, mentioned in 
 this passage, has been practised in more recent times. 
 The Turkish emperors give annually to every Arab tribe 
 near the road, by which the Mohammedan pilgrims travel 
 to Mecca, a certain sum of money, and a certain number 
 of vestments, to keep them from destroying the wells which 
 lie on that route, and to escort the pilgrims across their 
 country. D'Herbelot records an incident exactly in point, 
 which seems to be quite common among the Arabs. Gia- 
 nabi, a famous rebel in the tenth century, gathered a num- 
 ber of people together, seized on Bassorah, and Caufa ; and 
 afterward insulted the reigning caliph, by presenting him- 
 self boldly before Bagdad, his capital ; after which he re- 
 tired by little and little, filling up all the pits with sand, 
 which had been dug on the road to Mecca, for the benefit 
 of the pilgrims. Near the fountains and wells, the robber 
 and assassin commonly took his station ; and in time of war, 
 the enemy placed their ambush, because the flocks and 
 herds, in which the wealth of the country chiefly consisted, 
 were twice every day collected to those places, and might 
 be seized with less danger when the shepherds were busily 
 engaged in drawing water. This circumstance, which 
 must have been familiar to the inhabitants of those countries, 
 is mentioned by Deborah m her triumphal song: " They 
 
 It is common to fold a large leaf so as to hold the pottage. 
 
Chap. 27. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 hat are delivered from the noise of archers in the place of 
 the drawing of water, ihere shall they rehearse the righteous 
 acts of the Lord." But a still more perfect commi nt on 
 these words is furnished by an historian of the croi: ades, 
 who complains, that during the siege of Jerusalem by the 
 Christian armies, numbers of their men were daily cut oflf, 
 and their cattle driven away by the Saracens, who lay in 
 ambush for this purpose near all -the fountains and water- 
 ing places. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. And Isaac digged again the wells of 
 water which they had digged in the days of 
 Abraham his father; for the Philistines had 
 stopped them after the death of Abraham : and 
 he called their names after the names by which 
 his father had called them. 
 
 This would appear a trifle among us, because water is 
 so abundant, that it is scarcely valued, and nobody thinks 
 of perpetuating his name in the name of a well. But in 
 those deserts, where water is so scarce, and wells and 
 springs are valued more, and as they are there the general 
 permanent, monuments of geography, it is also an honour 
 to have given them names. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 20. And the herdmen of Gerar did strive 
 with Isaac's herdmen. 
 
 See on chap. 13. 7. 
 
 4 
 
 Ver. 31. And they rose up betimes in the morn- 
 ing, and sware one to another : and Isaac sent 
 them away, and they departed from them in 
 peace. 
 
 In the same manner, family alliances are frequent among 
 the Arabian shepherds, and indeed rendered necessary, by 
 the state of continual warfare in which they live with the 
 neighbouring tribes. The eighteen Arab emirs of the fam- 
 ily which d'Arvieux visited, kept near one another, en- 
 camping at no greater distance from their chief than a 
 league or two, and all removing together every month , some- 
 times every fortnight, as their cattle wanted fresh pasture, 
 that they might be able to assemble with ease. But while 
 Abraham and Isaac cultivated the friendship of their neigh- 
 bours, entered into treaties of peace and amity with the 
 kings and princes of Canaan, and entertained them in their 
 tents,— Ishmael, animated by different principles and 
 views, commenced a course of action, after leaving his 
 father's house, so new and unprecedented, that it was made 
 , the subject of a distinct prediction. Standing on the verge 
 of a burning desert, which he claimed as his proper inherit- 
 ance, he assumed from the beginning a hostile attitude, 
 spurned the ties of peace and friendship, and laid all the 
 surrounding tribes under contribution. When he drew 
 upon himself and his adherents the resentment of the fixed 
 inhabitants, and was afraid to risk their attack, he with- 
 drew into the depths of the great wilderness, where none 
 could follow him with hopes of success. In the same man- 
 ner have his descendants lived ; when threatened with an 
 unequal contest, they will strike their tents upon less than 
 two hours' warning, and retire immediately, with all their 
 effects, into the deserts, with whose wells and forage they 
 only are acquainted. Within those impenetrable barriers, 
 which are for ever guarded by hunger and thirst, the Ara- 
 bians regard with utter contempt, the warlike array of the 
 most powerful nations. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 27. ver. 4. And make me savoury meat, 
 such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may 
 eat ; that my soul may bless thee before I die. 
 
 Our version of Gen. xxvii. 4, 7, 9, 14, 17, 31, may be 
 
 presumed to have given us the true sense there of the word 
 translated savoury, though it is undoubtedly of a more large 
 and less determinate signification. That it is of a more 
 large signification, is evident from hence, that a kindred 
 word expresses the tasting of honey, 1 Sam. xiv. 43 ; and 
 the taste of manna, which tasted lite fresh oil, Numb. xi. 
 8, and like wafers made with hon£y, Exod. xvi. 31. These 
 5 
 
 two last passages are easily reconciled, though honey and 
 fresh oil are by no means like each other in taste, when 
 we consider the cakes of the ancients were frequently a 
 composition of honey, and oil, and flour; consequently, 
 in lasting like one of these wafers or thin cakes, it might 
 be said to resemble the taste of both, of oil mingled with 
 honey. The word sinyiCD matdniTneem, then, translated sa- 
 voury in a confined sense, signifies generally whatever is 
 gustful, or pleasing to the taste, whether by being salt and 
 spicy, which the English word savoury means, or pleasant 
 by its sweetness ; or by being acidulated. However, it is 
 very probable, that in this accoimt of what Isaac desired, 
 it means savoury, properly speaking, since though one 
 might imagine, that in so hot a climate, and among people 
 wont to observe so much abstemiousness in their diet, food 
 highly seasoned should not be in request ; yet the contrary 
 is known to be fact. Almost all the dishes of the people 
 of Aleppo, Dr. Russell informs us, " are either greasy with 
 fat, or butter, pretty high-seasoned with salt and spices ; 
 many of them made sour with verjuice, pomegranate, or 
 lemon juice ; and onions and garlic often complete the 
 seasoning." As it was something of the venison kind 
 Isaac desired, it is very probable, the dish he wished for 
 was of the savoury sort. Some of their dishes of meat, 
 however, are of a sweet nature. " A whole lamb, stuffed 
 with rice, almonds, raisins, pistaches, &c. and stewed, is 
 a favourite dish with them." It was very just then, in our 
 translators, to render this word by a more extensive term 
 in Prov. xxiii. 3, " When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, 
 consider diligently what is before thee," v. 1. " Be not de- 
 sirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat," v. 3. 
 It is translated in much the same manner in v. 6, dainty 
 meats. I would observe further, as to this subject, that 
 there is a great propriety in Solomon's describing these 
 dainty meats as very much appropriated to the tables of 
 rulers, or a few others of the great, since the food of the 
 common people of Aleppo, a large and rich commercial 
 city, is very simple and plain ; for Russell tells us, ''bread, 
 dibbs, the juice of grapes thickened to the consistence of 
 honey, leban, coagulated sour milk, butter, rice, and a very 
 little 'mutton, make the chief of their food in winter ; as 
 rice, bread, cheese, and fruits, do in the summer." De 
 la Roque gives much the same account of the manner of 
 living of the Arabs, whose way of life very much resem- 
 bles that of the patriarchs ; " roast meat being almost pecu- 
 liar to the tables of their emirs or princes, and lambs or 
 kids stewed whole, and stuffed with bread, flour, mutton 
 fat, raisins, salt, pepper, saffron, mint, and other aromatic 
 herbs." I would only add further, with respect to the meat 
 Isaac desired, that perhaps his desiring Esau to take his 
 bow and arrows, and to kill him some venison, — an ante- 
 lope, or some such wild animal, when a kid from his 
 own flock would, as appears from the event, have done as 
 well, — might as much arise from the sparingness natural to 
 those that live this kind of life, together with the pleasure 
 he proposed to himself from this testimony of filial aflfec- 
 tion from a beloved son, as from the recollection of some 
 peculiar poignant flavour he had formerly perceived in 
 eating the flesh of wild animals, though now his organs of 
 taste were so much impaired as not to perceive the differ- 
 ence. So Dr. Shaw observes, that " the Arabs rarely di- 
 minish their flocks, by using them for food, but live chiefly 
 upon bread, milk, butter, dates, or what they receive in 
 exchange for their wool." — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 19. And Jacob said unto his father, I am 
 Esau thy first-born ; I have done according as 
 thou badest me : arise, I pray thee, sit and eat 
 of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. 
 
 The ancient Greeks and Romans sat at meals. Ho- 
 mer's heroes were ranged on separate seats along the wall, 
 with a small table before each, on which the meat and 
 drink were placed. This custom is still observed in China, 
 and perhaps some other parts of the greater Asia. When 
 Ulysses arrived at the palace of Alcinous, the king dis- 
 placed his son Laodamas, in order to seat Ulysses in a 
 magnificent chair. The same posture was preferred by 
 the Egyptians and the ancient Israelites. But, afterward, 
 when men became soft and effeminate, they exchanged 
 their seats for beds, in order to drink with more ease ; yet 
 
34 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 27—29. 
 
 even then, the heroes who drank sitting were still thought 
 entitled to praise ; and those who accustomed themselves to 
 a primitive and severe way of living, retained the ancient 
 posture. The custom of reclining was introduced from the 
 nations of the east, and particularly from Persia, where it 
 seems to have been adopted at a very remote period. The 
 Old Testament scriptures allude to both customs : but they 
 furnish undeniable proofs of the sitting posture, long before 
 common authors took notice of the other. It was the cus- 
 tom in Isaac's family to sit at meat ; for Jacob thus address- 
 ed his aged father : " Arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my 
 venison, that thy soul may bless me." At the entertain- 
 ment which Joseph gave his brethren, on their return to 
 Egypt, they seem to have followed the custom of their fa- 
 thers ; for " they sat before him, the first-born according to 
 his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth." 
 In the court of Saul, many ages after this, Abner sat at ta- 
 ble by his master's side ; and David also had his place al- 
 lotted, to him, which is emphatically called his seat. As 
 this is undoubtedly the most natural and dignified posture, 
 so it seems to have been universally adopted by the first 
 generations of men ; and it was not" till after the lapse of 
 many ages, and degenerate man had lost much of the firm- 
 ness of his primitive character, that he began to lie flat up- 
 on his belly. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 27. And he came near, and kissed him : and 
 he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed 
 him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the 
 smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed. 
 
 The Orientals endeavour to perfume their clothes in 
 various ways. They sprinkle them with sweet-scented 
 oils, extracted from spices, they fumigate them with the 
 most valuable incense or scented wood, and also sew the 
 wood of the aloe in their clothes. By some of these means, 
 Jacob's clothes were perfumed. Pliny observes, {Nat. Hist. 
 b. xvii. chap. 5,) " that the land, after a long drought, 
 moistened by the rain, exhales a delightful odour, with 
 which nothing can be compared :" and soon after, he adds, 
 " that it is a sign of a fruitful soil, when it emits an agreeable 
 smell, when it has been ploughed." — Burder. 
 
 The natives are universally fond of having their gar- 
 ments strongly perfumed: so much so, that Europeans can 
 scarcely bear the smell. They use camphor, civet, sandal 
 wood or sandal oil, and a great variety of strongly scented 
 waters. It is not common to salute as in England : they 
 simply smell each other; and it is said that some people 
 know their children by the smell. It is common for a 
 mother or father to say, *' Ah ! child, thy smell is like the 
 Sen-Paga-Poo." The crown of the head is the principal 
 place for smMing. Of an amiable man, it is said, " How 
 sweet is the smell of that man ! the smell of his goodness is 
 universal." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 28. ver. 18. And Jacob rose up early in 
 the morning, and took the stone that he had 
 put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, 
 and poured oil upon the top of it. 
 
 One of the idols in the pagoda of Juggernaut is described 
 by Captain Hamilton as a huge black stone., of a pyramidal 
 form, and the sommona codom among the Siamese is of the 
 same complexion. The ayccn Akbery mentions an octago- 
 nal pillar of black stone fifty cubits high. Tavernier ob- 
 served an idol of black stone in the pagoda of Benares, 
 and that the statue of Creeshna, in his celebrated temple 
 fcf Mathura, is of black marble. It is very remarkable, 
 that one of the principal ceremonies incumbent upon the 
 priests of these stone deities, according to Tavernier, is to 
 anoint them daily with odoriferous oils : a circumstance 
 which immediately brings to our remembrance the similar 
 practice of Jacob, who, after the famous vision of the celes- 
 tial ladder, took the stone which he had pvtfor his piJloiv, and 
 set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. It is 
 added, that he called the name of that place Beth-el, that 
 is, the house of God. This passage evinces of how great 
 antiquity is the custom of considering stones in a sacred 
 'vight, as well as the anointing them with consecrated oil. 
 From this condv.ct of Jacob, and this Hebrew appellative, 
 the learned Bochart, with great ingenuity and reason, 
 
 insists that the name and veneration of the sacred stones, 
 called baet/ijli, so celebrated in all pagan antiquity, were 
 derived. These baetyli were stones of a round form ; they 
 were supposed to be animated, by means of magical incan- 
 tations, with a portion of the deity: they were consulted on 
 occasions of great and pressing emergency, as a kind of 
 divine oracles, and were suspended, either round the neck, 
 or some other part of the body. Thus the setting up of a 
 stone by this holy person, in grateful memory of the celestial 
 vision, probably became the occasion of the idolatry m suc- 
 ceeding ages, to these shapeless masses of unhewn stone, 
 of which so many astonishing remains are scattered up and 
 down the Asiatic and the European world. — Burder. 
 
 Chap. 29. ver. 1. Then Jacob went on his journey, 
 and came into the land of the people of the east. 
 
 The margin has, " lifted up his feet ;" which, in Eastern 
 language, signifies to walk quickly — ^to reach out — to be in 
 good earnest — not to hesitate. Thus Jacob journeyed to 
 the East, he lifted up his feet, and stretched forth in good 
 earnest, having been greatly encouraged by the vision of 
 the ladder, and the promise, " Thy seed shall be as the 
 dust of the earth." — Roberts. i| 
 
 Ver. 2. And he looked, and behold, a well in the 
 field, and lo, there ivere three flocks of sheep 
 lying by it ; for out of that well they watered 
 the flocks: and a great stone was upon the 
 well's mouth. 
 
 In Arabia, and in other places, they are wont to close 
 and cover up their wells of water, lest, the sand, which is 
 put into motion by the winds there, like the water of a 
 pond, should fill them, and quite stop them up. This is 
 the account Sir J. Chardin gives us in a note on Ps. Ixix. 
 15. I very much question the applicableness of this cus- 
 tom to that passage, but it will serve to explain, I think, 
 extremely well, the view of keeping that well covered 
 with a stone, from which Laban's sheep were wont to be 
 watered ; and their care not to leave it open any time, but 
 to stay till the flocks were all gathered together, before 
 they opened it, and then, having drawn as much water as 
 was requisite, to cover it up again immediately, Gen. xxix. 
 2, 8. Bishop Patrick supposes it was done to keep the 
 water clean and cool. Few people, I imagine, will long 
 hesitate in determining which most probably was the vicAV 
 in keeping the well covered with so much care. All this 
 care of theit water is certainly very requisite, since thej' 
 have so little, that Chardin supposes, " that the strife be- 
 tween Abraham's herdmen and Lot's was rather about 
 water, than pasturage ;" and immediately after observes, 
 " that when they are forced to draw the water for very 
 large flocks, out of one well, or two, it must take up a great 
 deal of time." — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he looked, and behold, a well in the 
 field, and lo, there were three flocks of sheep 
 lying by it ; for out of that well they watered 
 the flocks : and a great stone was upon the 
 well's mouth. 3. And thither were all the 
 flocks gathered : and they rolled the stone from 
 the well's mouth, and watered the sheep, and 
 put the stone again upon the well's mouth in 
 his place. 
 
 To prevent, the sand, which is raised from the parched 
 surface of the ground by the winds, from filling up their 
 wells, they were obliged to cover them with a stone. In 
 this mariner the well was covered, from which the flocks 
 of Laban were commonly watered : and the shepheids, 
 careful not to leave them open at any time, patientJy wait 
 ed till all the flocks were gathered' together, before the> 
 removed the covering, and then having drawn a sufficient 
 quantity of water, they replaced the stone immediately. 
 The extreme scarcity of water in these arid regions, en- 
 tirely justifies such vigilant and parsimonious care in the 
 management of this precious fluid ; and accounts for the 
 fierce contentions about the possession of a well, which so 
 frequently happened between the shepherds of different 
 
Chap. 29. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 35 
 
 masters. But after the question of right, or of possession, 
 was decided, it would seem the shepherds were often de- 
 tected in fraudulently watering their flocks and herds 
 from their neighbour's well. To prevent this, they se- 
 cured the cover with a lock, which continued in use so 
 late as the davs of Chardin, who frequently saw such pre- 
 cautions used" in different parts of Asia, on account of the 
 real scarcity of water there.. According to that intelli- 
 gent traveller, when the wells and cisterns were not locked 
 up, some person was so far the proprietor, that no one 
 dared to open a well, or a cistern, but in his presence. 
 This was probably the reason, that the shepherds of Pa- 
 dan aram declined the invitation of Jacob to water the 
 flocks, before they were all assembled; either they had 
 not the key of the lock which secured the stone, or if they 
 had. they durst not open it, but in the presence of Rachel, 
 to whose father the well belonged. It is ridiculous to sup- 
 pose the stone was so heavy that the united strength of 
 several Mesopotamian shepherds could not roll it from the 
 mouth of the well, when Jacob had strength, or address, to 
 remove it alone; or, that though a stranger, he ventured 
 to break a standing rule for watering the flocks, which the 
 natives did not dare to do, and that without opposition. 
 The oriental shepherds were not on other occasions so 
 passive; as the violent conduct of the men of Gerar sufli- 
 ciently proves. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. And he said, Lo, it is yet high day. 
 
 Heb. " Yet the day is great." Are people travelling 
 through places where are wild beasts, those who are timid 
 will keep troubling the party by saying, " Let us seek for 
 a place of safety :" but the others reply, " Not yet ;" for 
 " the day is great." " Why should I be in such haste 1 the 
 day is yet great." When tired of working, it is remarked, 
 " Why, the day is yet great." — " Yes, yes, you manage to 
 leav^e ofi" while the day is yet great." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. And it came to pass, when Jacob saw 
 Rachel, the daughter of Laban his mother's 
 brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's 
 brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the 
 stone from the well's mouth, and watered the 
 flock of Laban his mother's brother. 
 
 Twice in the day they led their flocks to the wells ; at 
 noon, and when the sun was going down. To water the 
 flocks, was an operation of much labour, and occupied a 
 considerable space of time. It was, therefore, an office of 
 great kindness with which Jacob introduced himself to the 
 notice of his relations, to roll back the stone which lay 
 upon the mouth of the well, and draw water for the flocks 
 which Rachel tended. Some of these wells are furnished 
 with troughs and flights of steps down to the water, and 
 other contrivances, to facilitate the labour of watering the 
 cattle. It is evident the Avell to which Rebecca went to 
 draw water, near the city of Nahor, had some convenience 
 of this kind; for it is "written, "Rebecca hastened and 
 emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto 
 the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels." A 
 trough was also placed by the Avell, from which the daugh- 
 ters of Jethro watered his flocks ; and if we may judge 
 from circumstances, was a usual contrivance in every part 
 of the east. In modern times, Mr. Park found a trough 
 near the well, from which the Moors watered their cattle, 
 in the sandy deserts of Sahara. As the wells are often 
 very deep, from a hundred and sixty to a hundred and 
 j seventy feet, the water is drawn up "with small leathern 
 buckets, and a cord, which travellers are often obliged to 
 I carry along with them, in their journey, because they 
 j meet with more cisterns and wells than springs. Dr. 
 I Richardson saw one of these buckets lying beside a deep 
 I well near a Christian church in Egjrpt to draw v/ater for 
 "1 the congregation. And Buckingham found a party of 
 'i twelve or fifteen Arabs drawing water in leathern buckets 
 i by cords and pulleys. To this custom, which they are 
 ' forced to submit to by the scantiness of the populatibn in 
 those regions, the woman of Samaria refers m her answer 
 to our Lord : " Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with ;" thou 
 hast no bucket and cord, as travellers commonly have ; 
 
 J 
 
 "and the well is deep; from whence then hast thou that 
 living water 1" — P.^xton. 
 
 Ver. 18. And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I 
 will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy 
 younger daughter. 
 
 Because he had no money or other goods which he 
 could give to the father for" his daughter. For among 
 many people of the East, in ancient and modern times, we 
 find "it customary, not for the bride to bring a dowry to the 
 bridegroom, but the bridegroom must, in a manner, pur- 
 chase the girl whom he intends to marry, from the father. 
 Therefore Shechem says, (ch. xxxiv. 12,) to Dinah's father 
 and brothers, " Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and 
 I will give according as ye .shall say unto me : but give me 
 the damsel to wife." In the same manner Tacitus relates, 
 that among the ancient Germans, the wife did not bring 
 the dowry to the man, but the man to the woman. " The 
 parents and relations are present, who examine the gifts, 
 and choose, not such as are adapted to female dress, or to 
 adorn the bride, but oxen, and a harnessed horse, a shield, 
 and a sword. In return for these presents he receives the 
 wife." This custom still prevails among the Bedouins. 
 " When a young man meets with a girl to his taste, he 
 asks her of her father through one of his relations : they 
 now treat about the number of camels, sheep, or horses, 
 that the son-in-law will give to the father for his daughter; 
 for the Bedouins never save any money, and their wealth 
 consists only in cattle. A man that marries must therefore 
 literally purchase his wife, and the fathers are most fortu- 
 nate who have many daughters. They are the principal 
 riches of the family. When, therefore, a young man 
 negotiates with the father whose daughter he intends to 
 marry, he says, ' Will you give me your daughter for fifty 
 sheep, six camels, or twelve cows'?' If he is not rich 
 enough to give so much, he offers a mare or foal. The 
 qualilies of the girl, the family, and the fortune of him that 
 intends to marry her, are the principal considerations in 
 making the bargain." {Cvstoms of the Bedouin Arabs, by 
 D'Arvieux, p. 119.) This is confirmed by Seetzen, in hi"s 
 account of the Arab tribes whom he visited in 1808. The 
 ceremonies at the marriage of a wandering Arab are 
 remarkable ; a young Arab knows a girl who pleases him; 
 he goes to her father, and makes his wishes known to him. 
 The latter speaks to his daughter. " Daughter," says he, 
 " there is one who asks you for his wife: the man is good, 
 and it depends upon yourself if you will become his wife ; 
 you have my consent." If the girl refuses, there is an end 
 of the matter ; if she is contented, the father returns to his 
 guest, and informs him of the happy intelligence. " But," 
 he adds, " I demand the price of the girl." This consists 
 of five camels ; but generally, by the intervention of others, 
 a couple more are added, and those given are frequently 
 miserable enough. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. And Laban said, It is better that I give 
 her to thee, than that I should give her to 
 another man : abide with me. 
 
 So said Laban, in reference to his daughter Rachel; and 
 so say fathers in the East, under smiZar circumstances. The 
 whole aflfair is managed in a business-like way, without any 
 thing like a consultation with the maiden. Her likes and 
 dislikes are out of the question. The father understands 
 the matter perfectly, and the mother is very knowing; 
 therefore they manage the transaction. This system, how- 
 ever, is the fruitful source of that general absence of do- 
 mestic happiness which prevails there. She has, perhaps, 
 never seen the man with whom she is to spend her days. 
 He may be young ; he may be aged ; he may be repulsive 
 or attractive. The whole is a lottery to her. Have the 
 servants or others whispered to her something about the 
 match 1 she will make her inquiries; but the result will 
 never alter the arrangements : for though her soul abhor 
 the thoughts of meeting him, yet it must be done.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. And it came to pass, in the evening, that 
 he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to 
 him ; and he went in unto her. 
 
GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 29—31. 
 
 This deceit of giving Leah to Jacob instead of Rachel 
 was the more easy, because the bride was introduced veil- 
 ed to the bridegroom. The following passage from Olea- 
 rius ( Travels in Persia) is particularly applicable here. 
 " If they are people of any consideration, they bring up 
 %heir daughters, locked up in their chambers, to hide them 
 from view, and they cannot be seen by the bridegroom till 
 they are received in the chamber. In this manner many 
 a one is deceived, and receives, instead of a handsome, a 
 deformed and ugly girl, nay, instead of the daughter, some 
 other relation, or even a maid. Also, Avhen the bridegroom 
 has sat down, the bride is seated by his side veiled, and 
 magnificently dressed, and that neither may see the other, 
 a piece of red silk is drawn between them, which is held by 
 
 two boys." — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 24. And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah, 
 Zilpah his maid for z. handmaid. 
 
 Chardin observes, that none but very poor people marry 
 a daughter in the East, without giving her a female slave 
 for a handmaid, there being no hired servants there as in 
 Europe. So Solomon supposes they were extremely poor 
 that had not a servant, Prov. xii. 9. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 26. And Laban said, It must not be so done 
 in our country, to give the younger before the 
 first-born. 
 
 The existence of this rule, and its application to practice, 
 in those parts of the world, is confirmed by the Hindoo law, 
 v/hich makes it criminal to give the younger daughter in 
 marriage before the elder; or for a younger son to marry 
 while his elder brother remains unmarried. — Paxton. 
 
 It has been said, (and with much truth,) that could Alex- 
 ander revisit India, he would find the same customs and 
 manners that prevailed in his day. From age to age the 
 fashions and usages are carefully and reverently adhered 
 to. When the eldest daughter is deformed, or blind, or 
 deaf, or dumb, then the you7igcr may be given first: but 
 under other circumstances it would be disgraceful in the 
 extreme. Should any one wish to alter the order of things, 
 the answer of Laban is given. Should a father, however, 
 have a very advantageous oflfer for a younger daughter, he 
 will exert all his powers to get off the elder ; but until this 
 can be accomplished, the younger will not be married. 
 Younger brothers are sometimes married first, but even this 
 takes place but very seldom. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 30. And he went in also unto Rachel, and 
 he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and 
 served with him yet seven other years. 
 
 Polygamy was productive of many evils ; and particu- 
 larly ^ave occasion for jealousy and contention. It re- 
 quired, indeed, the utmost exertion of prudence on the pan 
 of the husband so to conduct himself towards his wives, as 
 to prevent continual strife and discord. Wherever the 
 practice obtains, the same care will always be requisite. 
 Thus a late traveller, (Sir R. K. Porter's Travels in Per- 
 sia, vol. ii. p. 8,) speaking of the number of wives a Per- 
 sian keeps, says, " To preserve amity between these ladies, 
 which had so excited my admiration, our communicative 
 host told me, that himself, in common with all husbands, 
 who preferred peace to passion, adhered to a certain rule, 
 of each wife claiming, in regular rotation, the connubial 
 attentions of her spouse : something of this kind is intima- 
 ted in the domestic history of the ancient Jewish patriarchs, 
 as a prevailing usage in the East, after men fell from the 
 order of nature and of God, into the vice of polygamy." — 
 Birder. 
 
 Ver. 35. And she conceived again, and bare a 
 son ; and she said, Now will I praise the Lord : 
 therefore she called his name Judah, and left 
 bearing. 
 
 Marein, " She called his name Praise,"—" and left bear- 
 ing." Heb. " stood from bearing." Scriptural names have 
 generally a meaning. Thus, Didvmus, means a twin; 
 Boanerges, a son of thunder ; and" Peter, a stone. The 
 
 names of the Orientals have always a distinct meaning. 
 Thus,' Ani Muttoo, the precious pearl ; Pun Amma, the 
 golden lady; Perrya Amma, the great lady; Chinny 
 Tamby, the little friend; Kanneyar, the gentleman for the 
 eye. Vast numbers of their children are named after their 
 gods. " Stood from bearing." When a mother has ceased 
 to bear children, should a person say it is not so, others 
 will reply, " She stood from bearing at such a time." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 30. ver. 14. And Reuben went, in the days 
 of wheat-harvest, and found mandrakes in the 
 field, and brought them unto his mother Leah. 
 Then Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray 
 thee, of thy son's mandrakes. 
 
 This plant is a species of melon, of which there are two 
 sorts, the male and the female. The female mandrake is 
 black, and puts out leaves resembling lettuce, though 
 smaller and narrower, which spread on the ground, and 
 have a disagreeable scent. It bears berries something like 
 services, pale and of a strong smell, having kernels within 
 like those of pears. It has two or three very large roots, 
 twisted together, white within, black without, and^'covered 
 with a thick rind. The male mandrake is called Morion, 
 or folly, because it suspends the senses. It produces ber- 
 ries twice as large as those of the female, of a good scent, 
 and of a colour approaching towards saffron. Pliny says, 
 the colour is white. Its leaves are large, white, broad, 
 and smooth, like the leaves of the beech-tree. The root 
 resembles that of the female, but is thicker and bigger, 
 descending six or eight feet into the ground. Both the 
 smell and the taste are pleasant; but it stupifies those that 
 use it, and often produces phrensy, vertigo, and lethargy, 
 which, if timely assistance is not given, terminate in coii- 
 vulsions and death. It is said to be a provocative, and is 
 used in the east as filters. The Orientals cultivate this 
 plant in their gardens, for the sake of its smell ; but those 
 which Reuben found were in the field, in some small 
 copse of woo4 perhaps, or shade, where they had come to 
 maturity before they were found. If they resemble those 
 of Persia rather than those of Eg\'pt, which are of a ver} 
 inferior quality, then we see their value, their superiority, 
 and perhaps their rarity, which induced Rachel to pm 
 chase them from the son of Leah.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 20. And Leah said, God hath endowed me 
 with a good dowry; now will my husband 
 dwell with me, because I have borne him six 
 sons. 
 
 Should it be reported of a husband, that he is going to 
 forsake his wife, after she has borne him children, people 
 will say, " She has borne him so^is ; he will never, never 
 leave her." To have children is a powerful tie upon a 
 husband. Should she, however, not have any, he is almost 
 certain to forsake her. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 30. And the Lord hath blessed thee since 
 my coming. 
 
 Heb. " at my foot." By the labour of Jacob's foot, the 
 cattle of Laban had increased to a multitude. Of a man 
 who has become rich by his own industry, it is said, "Ah! 
 by the labour ofhis feet these treasures have been acquired." 
 " How have you gained this prosperitv V " Bv the favour 
 of the gods, and the labour of my feet." " How is it the 
 king is so prosperous V " By the labour of the feet of his 
 ministers.— Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 31. ver. 2. And Jacob beheld the counte- 
 nance of Laban, and, behold, it was not towards 
 him as before. 
 
 Heb. " as yesterday and the dav before." See also mar- 
 ginal reading of Isa. xxx. 33. Of old, " from yesterday. 
 The latter form of speech is truly Oriental, and means tim 
 gone by. Has a person lost the friendship of another, h 
 will say to him, " Thy face is not to me as yesterday and 
 the day before." Is a man reduced in his circumstance: 
 he says, " The face of God is not upon me as yesterday 
 
 mce^ 
 yanM 
 
Chap. 31. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 37 
 
 the day before.'''' The future is spoken of as to-dmj and to- 
 morroio; " His face will be upon me to-day and to-morroioy 
 which means, alicays. " I will love thee to-day and to-mor- 
 row." " Do you think of me V — " Yes, to-day and to-mor- 
 row." " Modeliar, have you heard that Tambati is trying 
 to injure you'?" — " Yes; and go and tell him that neither 
 tO-day nor to-morrow will he succeed." Our Saviour says, 
 " Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to- 
 morrow." A messenger came to inform him Herod M'ould 
 kill him; but this was his reply, intimating that the power 
 could never be taken from him. Jacob said to Laban, " My 
 righteousness answers for me in time to come ;" but the 
 Hebrew has for this, " to-morrow;" his righteousness would 
 be perpetual. In Eastern language, therefore, "yesterday 
 and the day before" signify time past ; but " to-day and to- 
 morrow" time to conie. (See Ex. xiii. 14. Jos, iv. 6., also 
 xxii. 24. margin.) — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. And Jacob sent and called Rachel and 
 Leah to the field unto his flock. 
 
 Besides those that live wholly in tents, numbers of the 
 Eastern people spend part of the year in them. I have ob- 
 served it particularly in the accounts of Mesopotamia. In 
 that country Bishop Pococke tells us, he fell in with a sum- 
 mer village of country people, whose huts were made of 
 loose stones covered with reeds and boughs ; their winter 
 village being on the side of a hill at some distance, consist- 
 ing of very low houses ; and that they chose this place for 
 the convenience of being with their cattle, and out of the 
 high road. Five pages after, he observes, that many of 
 the Curdeens live honestly in Mesopotamia as well as 
 Syria, removing in summer to some places at a distance 
 from their village, where they live under tents, generally 
 in places retired from the road, to avoid the injuries of the 
 soldiery, and of the people of the pacha. May not this 
 circumstance serve to explain a passage of the Old Testa- 
 ment, relating to this country 1 In Gen. xxxi. it is said, 
 that Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to his flock, 
 that he there told them of his design of returning from 
 Mesopotamia to his native country, and that upon their 
 consenting to go with him, he set out upon this journey so 
 silently, that Laban had no notice of it, until the third day 
 alter ; yet it appears; that he had all his effects with him, 
 and tents for the accommodation of his family ; and that 
 Laban, who pursued him, had tents also for his company. 
 Here one is surprised to find both parties so suddenly 
 equipped with tents for their accommodation in travelling, 
 and is naturally led to inquire, why Jacob sent for his 
 wives to his flock 1 Bishop Patrick's account of the last 
 circumstance, that it was for greater secrecy, and perhaps 
 to avoid the danger of being seized upon by Laban and his 
 sons, will hardly be thought satisfactory. Could not a 
 husband speak to his wives with suflicient privacy in La- 
 ban's house 1 Were matters come to such an extremity, 
 that Jacob durst not venture himself within the doors of 
 his uncle's house, for fear of being seized upon, and made 
 a prisoner '? And in fact Jacob seems actually to have com- 
 municated his intention to Rachel in her father's house : 
 for when he sent for his wives, she brought her father's 
 teraphim with her, which she would by no means have 
 
 I done, had she been unapprized of the design. The case 
 seems to have been thus. While Laban and his daughters 
 dwelt in a house, they that tended the flocks had tents for 
 their accommodation. Laban's flocks were in two parcels, 
 one under the care of Jacob, the other committed to the 
 care of Laban's sons, three days' journey off; Jacob's own 
 afterward were also, for the same reason, probably at an 
 equal distance. At the time of shearing sheep, it is rea- 
 sonable to suppose, that more and better tents were erected 
 for the reception and entertainment of their friends, it be- 
 ing a time of great feasting, 1 Sam. xxv. 4, 8, 36 ; to which 
 they were wont to invite their friends, 2 Sam. xiii. 25 ; and 
 the feasts being held at a distance from their own houses, in 
 the places where the sheep were fed, as appears from the 
 passage last cited, and also from Gen. xxxviii. 12. Laban 
 
 i went then with his relations at the time of sheep-shearing 
 
 ' to his flocks ; Jacob at the same time shore his own sheep, 
 and sent to his wives to come to the entertainment, with all 
 those utensils that they had with them of his, which would 
 
 , be wanted, having before communicated his intention to 
 Rachel his beloved wife. This w^s a fair pretence for 
 
 the having all his household stuff brought to him, which, 
 according to the present Eastern mode, we may believe 
 was very portable, beds not excepted ; and having told 
 Leah then his views, in the company of Rachel, and both 
 consenting to go with him, he had every thing ready for 
 his journey, and could decamp immediately, taking his 
 flocks and herds along with him. Somebody, upon this, 
 went to inform Laban of Jacob's departure, who being at 
 a considerable distance, did not receive the news till the 
 third day. This accounts at once, in the most simple and 
 natural way, for Jacob's sending for his wives to his flock ; 
 for his being able to get his goods together without jeal- 
 ousy ; and for his and his father-in-law's being furnished 
 witt tents for the journey. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 7. And your father hath deceived me, and 
 changed my wages ten times : but God suffer- 
 ed him not to hurt me. 8. If he said thus. The 
 speckled shall be thy wages ; then all the cattle 
 bare speckled : and if he said thus, The ring- 
 streaked shall be thy hire ; then bare all the 
 cattle ring-streaked. 
 
 The flocks which ranged the fertile pastures of Mesopo- 
 tamia, seem also to have generally produced twins every 
 year. Laban, who lived in that country, is said to have 
 changed the wages of Jacob ten times in the space of six 
 years ; but since the wages of Jacob consisted of the lambs 
 and the kids, they could not have been changed more than 
 six times in six years, if his flock had brought forth only 
 one a-year. Should it be thought that, according to this 
 rule, tHe wages of Jacob must have been changed twelve 
 times, let it be remembered, that the flocks of Laban had 
 brought forth their first lambs before the bargain was con- 
 cluded between him and Jacob, and by consequence, the 
 latter had only the lambs of one yeaning that year ; and 
 again, the flocks had yeaned only once in the last year of 
 his abode with Laban, because he was compelled to leave 
 the service of his envious relative before the close of the 
 season, and consequently, before the second yeaning. Thus 
 the flocks yeaned only ten times from the date of their « 
 agreement, till the departure of Jacob to his own country. 
 Or, we may consider the phrase " ten times," as a definite 
 for an indefinite number ; in which senscit is often used by 
 the sacred writers. Thus, Jehovah complains of his an- 
 cient people whom he had brought out of Egypt, that they 
 had tempted him " now these ten times," that is, many times, 
 " and had not hearkened to his voice." Job uses it in the 
 same sense : " These ten times have ye reproached me," 
 that is, ye have often reproached me. In the same man- 
 ner, when Jacob complained that Laban had changed his 
 wages ten times, he might only mean that he had done so 
 frequently. Had we therefore no stronger proof, that the 
 sheep of Laban yeaned twice in the year, the fact might 
 seem to rest merely on the state of the flocks in the adjacent 
 regions, which, it cannot be doubted, generally yeaned twins, | 
 and for the most part twice in the year. A stronger proof, 
 therefore, may be drawn from these words : " And it came 
 to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that 
 Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gut- 
 ters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when 
 the cattle were feeble, he put them not in ; so the feebler 
 were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's." Two yeanings 
 are supposed to be suggested in this passage, by the terms 
 stronger and feebler ; the lambs of the first were always 
 stronger than those of the second : and consequently, they 
 fell to Jacob by the special bounty of Heaven, causing the 
 cattle, not by any law of nature, but by an act of Almighty 
 power, to conceive among the rods, the use of which was 
 merely the test of Jacob's faith in the divine promise. This 
 is evident, by the sense in which the Syriac interpreter, and 
 the Chaldee" Paraph rast understood the text ; for, instead 
 of the term " feebler," they use the word " later," rendering 
 the clause, "so the later were Laban's." Jerome, Aquila, 
 and other expositors, interpret the clause in the same man- 
 ner. Kimchi and other Jewish writers often speak of the 
 first and second yeanings ; referring the former to the month 
 Nisan, which corresponds to our March ; and the latter to 
 the month Tisri, which nearly corresponds to^ September ; 
 and they assert, that the lanibs of the first 'yeaning are 
 called D-'-ia'p, keshorim, or bound, because they had a more 
 
38 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 31. 
 
 compact body; and those of the second, cd::];, aeto^yhim, 
 or deficient, "because they were feebler. The autvTmnal 
 lambs, however, were preferred by many before the vernal, 
 and the winter before the summer lambs, as being more 
 vigorous and healthy. But it must be confessed, that no 
 certain trace of two yeanings in the year can be discover- 
 ed in the sacred volume. The fact is attested by many 
 common authors, and seems necessary to account for the 
 rapid increase of oriental stock, and the prodigious num- 
 bers of which the Syrian flocks consisted. The words of 
 M;)ses may refer, at least with equal probability, to the vig- 
 orous and healthy constitution of the ewes which Jacob se- 
 lected for his purpose ; and signify, that robust mothers pro- 
 duced robust lambs, and feeble mothers a weak and spirit- 
 less offspring. Aware of the advantages of a vigorous and 
 healthy stock, especially with a long and perilous journey 
 before him, " Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the 
 stronger ewes in the gutters, that they might conceive among 
 the rods ; but when the cattle were feeble, he put them not 
 iu ; so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's." 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 27. Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly, 
 and steal away from me, and didst not tell me, 
 that I might have sent thee away with mirth, 
 and with songs, and with tabret, and with harp ? 
 
 The Easterns used to set out, at least on their longer jour- 
 neys, with music. When the prefetto of Egypt was pre- 
 paring for his journey, he complains of his being incom- 
 moded by the songs of his friends, who in this manner took 
 leave of their relations and acquaintance. These valedic- 
 tory songs were often extemporary. If we consider them, 
 as they probably were used not on common but more sol- 
 emn occasions, there appears peculiar propriety in the com- 
 plaint of Laban. — Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 34. Now Rachel had taken the images, and 
 put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon 
 them. And Laban searched all the tent, but 
 found them not. 
 
 Mounted on this mild and persevering animal, (the 
 camel,) the traveller pursues his journey over the sandy 
 deserts of the east, with speed and safety. For his con- 
 venience, a sort of round basket is slung on each side with 
 a cover, which holds all his necessaries, between which 
 he is seated on the back of the animal. Sometimes two 
 long chairs, like cradles, are hung on each side with a 
 covering, in which he sits, or, stretched at his ease, re- 
 signs himself to sleep, without interrupting his journey. 
 These covered baskets, or chairs, are the camel's furni- 
 ture, where Rachel put the images which she stole from 
 her father, — Paxton. 
 
 Yer. 35. And she said to her father. Let it not 
 displease my lord that I cannot rise up before 
 thee ; for the custom of women is upon me. 
 And he searched, but found not the images. 
 
 In Persia, a son never sits in the presence of his father 
 or his mother ; even the king's son always stands before 
 him; and is regarded only as the first of his servants. 
 This is the reason that Rachel addressed her father in 
 these words : " Let it not displease my lord, that I cannot 
 rise up before thee." — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 38. This twenty years have I been with 
 thee ; thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast 
 their young, and the rams of thy flock have I 
 not eaten. 39. That which was torn of beasts I 
 brought not unto thee ; I bare the loss of it : of 
 my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by 
 day, or stolen by night. 
 
 The shepherds of the East were accountable for the flocks 
 under their pharge. Of this fact, the following extract from 
 the Gentoo laws, furnishes a remarkable proof: "Cattle 
 shall be delivered over to the cow-herd in the morning ; 
 the cow-herd sr ^^ end them the whole day with grass and 
 
 water; and in the evening, shall re-deliver them to the 
 master, in the same manner as they were intrusted to 
 him ; if, by the fault of the cow-herd, any of the cattle be 
 lost or stolen, that cow-herd shall make it good. When 
 a cow-herd has led cattle to any distant place to feed, if 
 any die of some distemper, notwithstanding the cow-herd 
 applied the proper remedy, the cow-herd shall carry the 
 head, the tail, the fore-foot, or some such convincing proof 
 taken from that animal's body, to the owner of the cattle ; 
 having done this, he shall be no further answerable ; if he 
 neglects to act thus, he shall make good the loss." In this 
 very situation was Jacob with Laban, his father-in-law, as 
 we learn from his memorable expostulation, addressed to 
 that deceitful and envious relation. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 40. Thus I was ; in the day the drought 
 consumed me, and the frost by night ; %nd my 
 sleep departed from mine eyes. 
 
 See on Jeremiah 3G. 30. 
 
 Does a master reprove his servant for being idle, he will 
 ask, " What can I do 1 the heat eats me up by day, and the 
 cold eats me up by night : how can I gain strength 1 I am 
 like the trees of the field : the sun is on my head by day, 
 and the dew by night." — Roberts. 
 
 In the midst of the burning deserts, where the heat is 
 increased tenfold by the sandy surface on which it beats, 
 the traveller encounters much inconvenience, and even 
 distress, from the chilling cold of the night, Mr. Bruce, 
 the justly celebrated Abyssinian traveller, lost all his 
 camels in one night by the cold, in the deserts of Senaar. 
 In the year 1779, the Bedouin Arabs plundered an Eng- 
 lish caravan in the desert, between Suez and Cairo. Seven 
 of the Europeans, stripped entirely naked by their inhu- 
 man sailers, in the hope of reaching Cairo, pushed for- 
 ward into the desert. Fatigue, thirst, hunger, and the 
 heat of the sun, destroyed one after another ; one alone 
 survived all these horrors. During three days and two 
 nights, he wandered in this parched and sandy desert, 
 frozen at night by the north wind, (it being in the month 
 of January,) and burnt by the sun during the day, with- 
 out any other shade but "a single bush, into which he 
 thrust his head among the thorns, or any drink but his 
 own urine. At length, on the third day, he was descried 
 by an Arab, who conducted him to his tent, and took 
 care of him for three days, with the utmost humanity. 
 At the expiration of that time, the merchants of Cairo, 
 apprized of his situation, procured him a conveyance to 
 that city, where he arrived in the most deplorable condi- 
 tion. From these important facts we may conclude, that 
 even in those parched countries, a fire in the night, in the 
 middle of May, might be very requisite, and highly ac- 
 ceptable. The hapless wanderer, whose aifectmg story 
 Volney records, was frozen at night by the north wind, 
 and burnt by the dreadful heat of the sun during the day; 
 and the patriarch Jacob complains, that he was for many 
 years exposed to similar hardships in the plains of Meso- 
 potamia; " In the day the drought consumed me, and the 
 frost by night," Nothing assuredly was remoter from the 
 design of Volney, a proud and insolent enemy of revela- 
 tion, than to confirm the truth of Scripture history; his 
 statement clearly proves, that Jacob's complaint was not 
 hastily made, but strictly agreeable to truth. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 46. And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather 
 stones : and they took stones, and made a heap : 
 and they did eat there upon the heap. 
 
 Our version of Genesis xxxi. 46, represents Jacob as 
 sitting, with his relations and friends, when he held a 
 solemn feast, on a heap of stones : one would be inclined 
 to suspect the justness of the translation, as to this circum- 
 stance, of the manner in which he treated his friends; but 
 it is made less incredible, by the account Niebuhr has 
 given us, in the first volume of his travels, of the manner 
 in which some of the nobles of the court of the Iman seated 
 themselves, when he visited the prince at Sana of Arabia, 
 his capital city. It is certain the particle Sj?, «/, translated 
 in this passage iipoji, sometimes signifies near to, or some- 
 thing of that sort ; so it is twice Tised in this sense, Gen. xvi. 
 " And the angel of the Lord found her bif a fountain in 
 the way to Shur." So Gen. xxiv. 13, *' Behold, I stand 
 
Chap. 32. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 39 
 
 here by the well of water, and the daughters of the men of 
 the city come out to draw water." The same may be ob- 
 served in many other places of the book of Genesis. Con- 
 sequently the sitting of Jacob and Laban, with their relations 
 and friends, might be understood to have been only near the 
 heap of stones, which was collected together upon this oc- 
 casion, and designed for a memorial of present reconcilia- 
 tion, and reciprocal engagement to preserve peace and 
 amity in future times : but their actual sitting on this heap 
 of stones may perhaps appear somewhat less improbable, 
 after reading the following passage of Niebuhr's travels, 
 relating to his being admitted to an audience of the Iman 
 of Yemen. " I had gone from my lodgings indisposed, and 
 by standing so long, found myself so faint, that I was 
 obliged to ask permission to quit the room. I found near 
 the door some of the principal officers of the court, who 
 were sitting in a scattered manner, in the shade, upon 
 stones, by the side, of the wall. Among them was the 
 nakib, the general, or rather master of the horse, Gheir 
 Allah, with whom I had some acquaintance before. He 
 immediately resigned his place to me, and applied himself 
 to draw together stones into a heap, in order to build him- 
 self a new seat." This management to us appears very 
 strange ; it might possibly be owing to the extreme heat of 
 that time of the year in that country, which made sitting 
 on the ground very disagreeable ; it can hardly however 
 be supposed that they sat upon the heap of stones that had 
 been gathered together on Mount Gilead, for this reason, 
 since high grounds are cooler than those that lie low; 
 since it was in spring time, when the heat is more mod- 
 erate, for it was at the time of sheep-shearing : but it might 
 be wet, and disagreeable sitting on the ground, especially 
 as they were not furnished with sufficient number of 
 carpets, pursuing after Jacob in a great hurry ; and sev- 
 eral countries furnishing stones so flat as to be capable of 
 being formed into a pavement, or seat, not so uneasy as we 
 may have imagined. Mount Gilead might be such a 
 country. It might also be thought to tend more strongly to 
 impress the mind, when this feast of reconciliation was 
 eaten upon that very heap that was designed to be the 
 lasting memorial of this renewed friendship. As for the 
 making use of heaps of stones for a memorial^ many are 
 found to this day in these countries, and not merely by 
 land, for they have been used for sea marks too : So Nie- 
 buhr, in the same volume, tells us of a heap of stones 
 placed upon a rock in the Red Sea, which was designed to 
 warn them that sailed there of the danger of the place, that 
 they might be upon their guard. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 55. And early in the morning, Laban rose 
 up, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and 
 blessed them : and Laban departed, and return- 
 ed unto his place. 
 
 Early rising is a universal custom. Thus, in every 
 season of the year, the people may be seen at sunrise, 
 strolling in all directions. At the time of the heavy dews, 
 they bind a part of the robe round the head, which also 
 falls on the shoulders. When a journey has to be taken, 
 were they not to rise early, they would be unable to travel 
 far before the sun had gained "its meridian height. They 
 therefore start a little before daylight, and rest under the 
 shade during the heat of the day. Here also we have 
 another instance of the interesting custom of blessing those 
 who were about to be separated. A more pleasing scene 
 than that of a father blessing his sons and daughters can 
 scarcely be conceived. The fervour of the language, the 
 expression of the countenance, and the affection of their 
 embraces, all excite our strongest svmpathy. " My child, 
 may God keep thy hands and thy feet !" " May the beasts 
 of the forest keep" far from thee !" " May thy wife and thy 
 children be preserved !" " May riches and happiness ever 
 be thy portion !" — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 32. ver. 7. Then Jacob was greatly afraid, 
 and distressed : and he divided the people that 
 loas with him, and the flocks, and herds, and 
 the camels, into two bands. 
 
 This plan seems not to have been first invented by, Ja- 
 cob; but it may be conjectured that large caravans used at 
 
 that time to take this precaution against hostile attacks. 
 Sir H. Blount relates in his Travels, that he traveU.ed with 
 a caravan which had divided itself in like manner into two 
 troops; one of which that went before, feeing attacked bv 
 robbers, had an action with them, and were plundered, 
 whereas the other escaped uninjured. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 15. Thirty milch-camels with their colts, 
 forty kine and ten bulls, twenty she-asses and 
 ten foals. 
 
 Milch-camels, among the Arabs, constitute a principal 
 part of their riches ; the creature being every way so ser- 
 vicealfce, that the providence of God appears peculiarly 
 kind and wise in providing such a beast for those countries, 
 where no other animal could be of equal use. Niebuhr re- 
 lates, " that among other dishes presented to him by the 
 Arabs at Menayre, there was also camels' milk. That it 
 was indeed considered cooling and healthy in these hot 
 countries, but that it was so clammy, that when a finger is 
 dipped into it, and drawn up again, the milk hangs down 
 from it like a thread." Host, in his Account of Morocco and 
 Fez, says, " that the Moors also drink camels' milk; and 
 when they have milked them for a short time, they suffigr 
 the young camels to suck, and then begin to milk again, 
 partly to share it with the young camels, and partly to 
 make the camels give the milk better." Pallas, in his Rus- 
 sian Travels, says, that it is customary among the Kirgise 
 to milk the camels : " their milk is said to be bluish, thick, 
 and of an agreeable taste. The Kirgise consider it to be 
 very wholesome ; and it is also said that a more intoxica- 
 ting beverage is drawn from it than from mares' milk." 
 In fact, the camel is of such multifarious use to the Orien- 
 tals, and of such importance, that among the Bedouins, 
 wealth is not estimated by money, but by the number of 
 camels. These observations are confirmed by Seetzen, in 
 his Account of the Arab Tribes. " No animal among the 
 Arabs surpasses the camel in utility ; besides the whole- 
 some diet which his flesh, his milk, and their products, 
 afford them, they turn every part of it to account. Out of 
 its hair, they manufacture carpets, large strong sacks for 
 corn, &c. Out of its skin, soles (serbul,) large water bot- 
 tles (rawijch,) two of which are a load for a camel, and 
 large leather sacks (karpha,) in which they transport and 
 preserve butter, corn, and similar articles ; they die them red 
 on the outside ; and two of these also are a load for a camel. 
 They likewise cut straps out of the skin, and out of five or 
 six such straps .they prepare long, tough thongs, which they 
 employ in drawing up water fnm deep wells. They 
 also stitch the skin over a frame of bent sticks, and thus 
 form large vessels, which they use to water the camels, 
 and which are called Hhod. "The two sinews of the neck 
 of the camel (aelba) serve instead of ropes, and are ex- 
 tremely strong. Their dung is used for fuel. Even the 
 urine of this animal is of utility : all the Arabs, Nomades 
 of both sexes, and likewise many Arab peasants, wash the 
 head every two or three days with the urine of the female 
 camel, and consider this to be very healthy." — Rosenmuller. 
 From the present which Jacob made to his brother Esau, 
 consisting of five hundred and eighty head of different 
 sorts, we may form some idea of the countless numbers of 
 great and small cattle, which he had acquired in the ser- 
 vice of Laban. In modern times, the numbers of cattle in 
 the Turcoman flocks which feed on the fertile plains ot 
 Syria, are almost incredible. They sometimes occupy 
 three or four days in passing from one part of the country 
 to another. Chardin had an opportunity of seeing a clan 
 of Turcoman shepherds on their march, about two days' 
 distance from Aleppo. The whole country was covered 
 with them. Many of their principal people, with whom he 
 conversed on the" road, assured him, that there were four 
 hundred thousand beasts of carriage, camels, horses, oxen, 
 cows, and asses, and three millions of sheep and goats. 
 This astonishing account of Chardin, is confirmed by Dr. 
 Shaw, who states that several Arabian tribes, who can 
 bring no more than three or four hundred horses into the 
 field, are possessed of more than so many thousand camels, 
 and triple the number of sheep and black cattle. Russel, in 
 his history of Aleppo, speaks of vast flocks-which pass that 
 city every year, of wliich many sheep are sold to supply the 
 inhabitants. The flocks jnd herds which belonged to the 
 Jewish patriarchs, were not more numerous. — Paxton. 
 
40 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 32—34 
 
 Ver. 19. And so commanded he the second, and 
 the third, and all that followed the droves, say- 
 ing, On tUis manner shall ye speak unto Esau, 
 when ye find him. 
 
 I almost think I hear Jacob telling his servants what 
 they were to say to Esau. He would repeat it many times 
 over, and then ask, " What did I say 7" until he had com- 
 pletely schooled them into the story. They would be most 
 attentive ; and at every interval, some of the most officious 
 would be repeating the tale. The head servant, however, 
 Would be specially charged with the delivery of the mes- 
 sage. When they went into the presence of Esagi, they 
 would be very particular in placing much stress on Jacob's 
 saying, " the present is sent unto my lord I'' and this would 
 touch his feelings. Servants who see the earnestness of 
 their master, imitate him in this when they stand before 
 the person to whom they are sent. They repeat a number 
 of little things respecting him ; his great sorrow for his 
 offence, his weeping, his throwing himself into the dust, 
 and his fearful expressions. Should the occasion, how- 
 ever, be of a pleasing nature, they mention his great joy, 
 and his anxiety for an interview. The dependants of 
 Esau, also, would hear the story, and every now and then 
 be making exclamations at the humility of Jacob, and the 
 value of his present. They would also put their hands 
 together in a supplicating posture, for Esau to attend to the 
 request. He, feeling himself thus acknowledged as lord, 
 seeing the servants of his brother before him, and knowing 
 that all his people had witnessed the scene, would consider 
 himself greatly honoured. In this Avay many a culprit in 
 the East gains a pardon, when nothing else could purchase 
 it. Should the offender be too poor to send a present, he 
 simply despatches his wife and children to plead for him ; 
 and they seldom plead in vain. — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 33. ver. 3. And he passed over before 
 them, and bowed himself to the ground seven 
 times, until he came near to his brother. 
 
 There is something very touching, and, to an Eastern 
 mind, very natural, in this action of Jacob's. His arrange- 
 ments, also, may be seen to the life, at this day. His wives 
 and children were placed behind him : they would be in a 
 separate group, in order that Esau might the more easily 
 see them. He would then walk forward, and cast himself 
 on the earth, and rise again, till he had bowed seven times ; 
 after which, (as he would walk a short distance every time 
 he arose,) he would be near to his brother. Esau could 
 not bear it any longer, and ran to meet him, and fell on his 
 neck, and kissed him, and wept. Then came the hand- 
 maids and their children, (I think I see them,) and bowed 
 themselves before Esau ; the wives, also, according to their 
 age, and their children, prostrated themselves before him. 
 What with the looks of the little ones, joined with those of 
 the mothers, Esau could not help being moved. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if 
 now I have found grace in thy sight, then re- 
 ceive my present at my hand. 
 
 It is the custom of the East, when one invites a superior, 
 to make him a present after the repast, as an acknowledg- 
 ment of his trouble. Frequently it is done before it, as it 
 is no augmentation of honour to go to the house of an in- 
 ferior. They make no presents to equals, or those who are 
 below themselves. — Burder. 
 
 Not to receive a present, is at once to show that the thing 
 desired will not be granted. Hence, nothing can be more 
 repulsive, nothing more distressing, than to return the gifts 
 to the giver. Jacob evidently laboured under this impres- 
 sion, and therefore pressed his brother to receive the gilts, 
 if he had found favour in his sight. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 3. And he said unto him. My lord knoweth 
 that the children are tender, and the flocks and 
 herds with young are with me : and if men 
 should overdrive them one day, all the flock 
 will die. 
 
 " Their flocks," says Chardin, speaking of those who 
 now live in the East after the patriarchal manner, " feed 
 down the places of their encampments so quick, by the 
 great numbers which they have, that they are obliged to 
 remove them too often, which is very destructive to their 
 flocks, on account of the young ones, which have not 
 strength enough to follow." — Habmer. 
 
 Ver. 14. Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over be- 
 fore his servant ; and I will lead on softly, ac- 
 cording as the cattle that goeth before me, and 
 the children be able to endure, until I come 
 unto my lord unto Seir. 
 
 People having taken a journey, say, " We came to tnis 
 place according to the walking of our feet." " It was done 
 according to the foot of the children ;" which means, they 
 did not come in a palankeen, or any other vehicle, but on 
 foot. From this it appears, that the females, and the 
 children, performed their journey on foot, and that, accord- 
 ing to their strength. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. And Esau said, Let me now leave with 
 thee some of the folk that are w^ith me. And 
 he said. What needeth it ? let me find grace 
 in the sight of my lord. 
 
 As Esau had received valuable gifts from his brother, 
 he wished to make some present in return ; and having 
 received cattle, it would not have looked well to have giv- 
 en the same kind of gift that he had received ; he therefore 
 offered some of his people, (who were no doubt born in his 
 house,) as a kind oi recompense for what he had received, 
 and as a proof of his attachment. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. And he bought a parcel of a field, where 
 he had spread his tent, at the hand of the chil- 
 dren of Hamor, Shechem's father, for a hundred 
 pieces of money. 
 
 There is very great reason to believe that the eSj" liest 
 coins struck were used both as weights and money and 
 indeed this circumstance is in part proved by the very 
 names of certain of the Greek and Roman coins. Thus 
 the Attic mhia and the Roman libra equally signify a 
 pound ; and the ararrip {stater) of the Greeks, so called from 
 weighing, is decisive as to this point. The Jewish shekel, 
 was also a weight as well as a coin : three thousand she- 
 kels, according to Arbuthnot, being equal in weight and 
 value to one talent. This is the oldest coin of which we 
 anywhere read, for it occurs Gen. xxiii. 16, and exhibits 
 direct evidence against those who date the first coinage of 
 money so low as the time of Croesus or Darius, it being 
 there expressly said, that Abraham weighed to Ephron four 
 hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. 
 Having considered the origin and high antiquity of coined 
 money, we proceed to consider the stamp or impression 
 which the first money bore. The primitive race of men 
 being shepherds, and their wealth consisting in their cattle, 
 in which Abraham is said to have been rich, for greater 
 convenience metals were substituted for the commodity it- 
 self. It was natural for the representative sign to bear im- 
 pressed the object which it represented ; and thus accord- 
 ingly the earliest coins were stamped with the figure of an 
 ox or a sheep : for proof that they actually did thus impress 
 them, we can again appeal to the high authority of scrip- 
 ture : for there we are informed that Jacob bought a parcel 
 of a field for a hundred pieces of moneif. The original 
 Hebrew translated pieces of money, is kcsitoth, which sig- 
 nifies lambs, with the figure of which the metal was doubt- 
 less stamped. — Maurice's Indian Antiquities. 
 
 Chap. 34. ver. 1. And Dinah the daughter of 
 Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, w^ent out to 
 see the daughters of the land. 2. And when 
 Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince 
 of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay 
 with her, and defiled her. 
 
Chap. 34. 
 
 GENESIS, 
 
 41 
 
 Voltaire objects, in like manner, to the probability of the 
 Old Testament history, in the account given us there of 
 the dishonour done to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, by a 
 Hivite prince in Canaan, Gen. xxxiv. 1, 2, who he sup- 
 
 Eoses was too young to have suflered such an injury, or to 
 ave excited the atiiactions of Shechem. The two following 
 citations will prove there was nothing incredible in it, 
 and that an ardent young Eastern prince may be sup- 
 posed to have been guilty of such a fact. The first cita- 
 tion shall be from Niebuhr's account of Arabia : " I have 
 heard speak in Persia of one that was a mother at thir- 
 teen : they there marry girls at nine years of age ; and I 
 knew a man whose wife was no more than ten years old 
 when the marriage was consummated." The other is 
 from Dr. Shaw's Travels and observations. Speaking of 
 the inhabitants of Barbary, he says, " The men, indeed, 
 by wearing only the tiara, or a scull cap, are exposed so 
 much to the sun, that they quickly attain the swarthiness 
 of the Arab; but the women, keeping more at home, pre- 
 serve their beauty until they are thirty : at which age they 
 begin to be wrinkled, and are usually past childbearing. 
 It sometimes happens that one of these girls is a mother at 
 eleven, and a grandmother at two-and-twenty." If they be- 
 come mothers at eleven, they might easily become the ob- 
 jects of attachment at ten, or thereabouts ; and this cannot 
 be supposed to be very extraordinary, when the daughter 
 of such a one is supposed to become a mother too by 
 eleven. It cannot then be incredible that Shechem should 
 cast his eyes on Dinah at ten years of age, and should 
 desire to marry her at that age ; if human nature in the 
 East then was similar, in that respect, to what it is now. 
 Bui she might be considerably older than ten when this af- 
 fair happened, for aught that is said in the book of Genesis 
 relative to this matter. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 11. And Shechem said unto her father, and 
 unto her brethren, Let me find grace in your 
 eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give. 
 12. Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and 
 I will give according as ye shall say tmto me : 
 but give me the damsel to wife. 
 
 In the remote ages of antiquity, women were literally 
 purchased by their husbands ; and the presents made to 
 their parents or other relations were called their dowry. 
 The practice still continues in the country of Shechem ; 
 for when a young Arab wishes to marrK-he must purchase 
 his wife ; and for this reason, fathers, among the Arabs, 
 are never more happy than when they have many daugh- 
 ters. They are reckoned the principal riches of a house. 
 An Arabian suitor will offer fifty sheep, six camels, or a 
 dozen of cows ; if he be not rich enougn to make such of- 
 fers, he proposes to give a mare or a colt, considering in 
 the offer, the merit of the young woman, the rank of her 
 family, and his own circumstances. In the primitive times 
 of Greece, a well-educated lady was valued at four oxen. 
 When they agree on both sides, the contract is drawn up 
 by him that acts as cadi or judge among these Arabs. In 
 some parts of the East, a measure of corn is formally men- 
 tioned in contracts for their concubines, or temporary 
 wives, besides the sum of money which is stipulated by 
 way of dowry. This custom is probably as ancient as 
 concubinage, with %hich it is connected ; and if so, it will 
 perhaps account for the prophet Hosea's purchasing a wife 
 of this kind for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer 
 of barley, and a half homer of barley. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 21. These men are peaceable with us, there- 
 fore let them dwell in the land, and trade therein ; 
 for the land, behold, it is large enough for 
 them: let us take their daughters to us for 
 wives, and let us give them our daughters. 
 
 The shepherds of Syria and the East have, from the re- 
 motest antiquity, carried on a considerable trade with the 
 circumjacent cities. The people of Aleppo are vStill sup- 
 plied with the greater part of their butter, their cheese, 
 and their cattle for slaughter, by the Arabs, Kushwans, 
 or Turcomans, who travel about the country with their 
 flocks and herds, as did the patriarchs of old. It was un- 
 6 
 
 doubtedly by trading with the ancient cities of Canaan in 
 such articles of provision, that Abraham became so rich 
 in silver and gold. The lucrative commerce which Jacob 
 his grandson carried on with the inhabitants of Shechem, 
 is mentioned by Hamor their prince, and urged as a rea- 
 son of alliance and union : " these men are peaceable with 
 us ; therefore, let them dwell in the land, and trade there- 
 in; for the land, behold it is large enough for them." 
 While the wealth of the country, where they tended thei7 
 flocks and herds, flowed into the coffers of these shephera 
 princes, in a steady and copious stream, their simple and 
 frugal manner of living, required but little expense for the 
 support of their numerous households; and their nomadic 
 state prevented them from contracting alliances, or/orm- 
 ing connexions of an expensive nature. Hence, in a fcAV 
 years they amassed large quantities of the precious metals ; 
 they multiplied their flocks and their herds, till they cov- 
 ered the face of the country for many miles; they en- 
 gaged a numerous train of servants from the surround- 
 ing towns and villages, and had servants born in theii 
 houses, of the slaves whom they had purchased, or taken 
 prisoners in war. When Abraham heard that his brother 
 Lot was taken captive by the king of Shinar and his 
 confederates, he armed his trained servants born in his 
 house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto 
 Dan. The truth Of the scripture accounts is verified by 
 the present state of the Arabian chieftains in those very 
 places where Abraham and his descendants formerly wan- 
 dered. By the unimpeachable testimony of Russel, they 
 are equally rich, and powerful, and independent, as were 
 these renowned patriarchs ; they are surrounded with ser- 
 vants and retainers, equally numerous, resolute, and faith- 
 ful ; they are, in fine, the modern patriarchs of the East. In 
 Persia and in Turkey, where the country is full of Tur- 
 coman shepherds, their chiefs appear with a great train 
 of servants, richly clothed and mounted. Chardin fell in 
 with one of these pastoral chieftains between Parthia and 
 Hyrcania, whose train filled him at once with surprise and 
 alarm. The Turcoman had more than ten led horses, with 
 harness all of solid gold and silver. He was accompanied 
 by many shepherds on horseback, and well armed. They 
 treated the traveller civilly, and answered all the questions 
 his curiosity prompted him to put to them, upon their 
 manner of life. The whole country, for ten leagues, was 
 full of their flocks. An hour after, the chieftain's wives, 
 and those of his principal attendants, passed along in a 
 line : four of them rode in great square baskets, carried 
 two upon a camel, which were not close covered. The 
 rest were on camels, on asses, and on horseback ; most of 
 them with their faces unveiled, among whom were some 
 very beautiful women. From this display of pastoral mag- 
 nificence, which Chardin had an opportunity of contem- 
 plating, we are enabled to form a very clear idea of the 
 splendouF and elegance in which Abraham and other pa- 
 triarchs lived; and of the beauty which the sacred histo- 
 rian ascribes to Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel, who had very 
 fair complexions, — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. When they were sore. 
 
 Circumcision in infants is easy and soon healed, and 
 some have thought, that in adults, it was worst the third 
 day ; but Sir John Chardin says, that he had heard from 
 divers renegadoes in the East, who had been circumcised, 
 some at thirty and some at forty years of age, that the cir- 
 cumcision had occasioned them a great deal of pain, and 
 that they were obliged to keep their bed at least twenty or 
 twenty-two days, during which time they could not walk 
 without feeling very severe pain ; but that they applied no- 
 thing to the wound to make it cicatrize, except burnt paper. 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 27. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain 
 and spoiled the city, because they had defiled 
 their sister. 
 
 Among the Bedouin Arabs, the brother finds himself 
 more dishonoured by the seduction of his sister, than a 
 man by the infidelity of his wife. As a reason, they allege, 
 " that a wife is not of the family, and that they are obliged 
 to keep a wife only as long as she is chaste ; and if she is 
 not she may be sent away, and is no longer a member of 
 the family; but tha*, -i sister constantly remains a mH'S:>et 
 
42 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 34—36, 
 
 of the family ^ ind even if his sister became dissolute, and 
 was defiled, rxbody could hinder her from still being his 
 sister." (D'Arvieux.) This is confirmed by Niebuhr. "I 
 learnt at Basra, that a man is not allowed to kill his wife, 
 even on account of adultery; but that her father, brother, 
 or any of her relations, were suiFeredto do it without being 
 punished, or at least paying a small sum as an atonement, 
 because her relations had been dishonoured by her bad be- 
 haviour ; but that after this satisfaction, nobody is permitted 
 to reproach the family. They rememlDered examples of it 
 in Basra and Bagdad ; in this latter place, a rich merchant, 
 a few years since, had found a young man with a relation 
 of his, and not only hewed her in pieces on the spot, but 
 also, by witnesses and money, caused the young man, who 
 was the son of a respectable citizen, to be hanged the same 
 night by the magistrates." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 30. And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye 
 have troubled me, to make me to stink among 
 the inhabitants of the land. 
 
 So said Jacob to Simeon and Levi. Of a man who has 
 lost his honour, whose fame has entirely gone, it is said, 
 " Ah ! he has lost his smell— where is the sweet smell of 
 former years 1" " Alas !" says an old man, " my smell is 
 for ever gone." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 35. vcr. 2. Then Jacob said unto his 
 household, and to all that were with him, Put 
 away the strange gods that are among you, and 
 be clean, and change your garments. * 
 
 The household of Jacob had strange gods among them, 
 and he ordered them to put them away, and to make them- 
 selves clean, and to change their garments in token of their 
 purity. When people have been to any unholy place, they 
 always on returning wash their persons and change their 
 garments. No man can go to the temple, wearing a dirty 
 cloth : he must either put it on clean, or go himself to a 
 tank and wash it; or put on one which is quite new. 
 Hence, near temples, men may be seen washing their 
 clothes, in order to prepare themselves for some ceremony. 
 (Exodus xix. 10.)— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange 
 gods which were in their hand, and all their 
 ear-rings which were in their ears; and Jacob 
 hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. 
 
 The nose-jewel is another ornament peculiar to the East, 
 which the Jewish females were accustomed to wear, and 
 of which the Asiatic ladies are extremely fond. It is men- 
 tioned in several parts of scripture; thus the prophet 
 Ezekiel : " And I put a jewel on thy foreheaa," or, as ]t 
 should have been rendered, on thy nose. This ornament 
 was one of the presents which the servant of Abraham 
 gave to Rebecca, in the name of his master : " I put," said 
 he, " the ear-ring upon her face ;" more literally, I put the 
 ring on her nose. They wore ear-rings besides ; for the 
 household of Jacob at his request, when they were prepar- 
 ing to go up to Bethel, gave him all the ear-rings which 
 were in their ears, and he hid them under the oak which 
 was by Shechem, The difference between these orna- 
 ments is clearly stated by the prophet: " I put a jewt? on 
 thy nose, and ear-rings in thine ears." The nose-jewel, 
 therefore, was different from the ear-ring, and actually 
 worn by the females as an ornament in the East. This is 
 confirmed by the testimony of Sir John Chardin, who says, 
 "It is the custom in almost all the East, for the women to 
 wear rings in their noses, in the left nostril, which is bored 
 low down in the middle. These rings are of gold, and have 
 commonly two pearls and one ruby between them, placed 
 in the ring ; I never saw a girl or young woman in Arabia, 
 or in all Persia, who did not wear a ring after this man- 
 ner in her nostril." Some writers contend, that by the nose- 
 jewel, we are to understand rings, which women attached 
 to their forehead, and let them fall down upon their nose ; 
 but Chardin, who certainly was a diligent observer of East- 
 ern customs, nowhere saw this frontal ring in the East, but 
 everywhere the ring in the nose. His testimony is sup- 
 ported by Dr. Russel who describes the women in some of 
 
 the villages about Aleppo, and all the Arabs and Chinga- 
 nas, (a sort of gipsies,) as wearing a large ring of silver 
 or gold, through the external cartilage of their right nos- 
 tril. It is worn, by the testimony of Egmont, in the same 
 manner by the women of Egypt. The difference in the 
 statements of these travellers is of little importance, and 
 may be reconciled by supposing, what is not improbable, 
 that in some eastern countries they wear the ring in the 
 left, and in others in the right nostril ; all agree that it is 
 worn in the nose, and not upon the forehead. Some re- 
 mains of this custom have been discovered among the 
 Indians in North America, where Clark and Lewis, in 
 their travels to the sources of the Missouri, fell in with 
 some tribes that wore a long tapering piece of shell, or 
 bead, put through the cartilage of the nose. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. But Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died, and 
 she was buried beneath Beth-el, under an oak : 
 and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth. 
 
 Savary, speaking of the Egyptian women, and their 
 manner of nursing their children, says, " When circum- 
 stances compel them to have recourse to a nurse, she is 
 not looked upon as a stranger. She becomes pari of the 
 family, and passes the rest of her life in the midst of the 
 children she has suckled. She is honoured and cherished 
 like a second mother." So the Syrian nurse continued 
 until her death with Rebecca, and was buried with great 
 solemnity of mourning : since that oak was from that time 
 distinguished by the name of the Oak of Weeping. — Har- 
 
 MER. 
 
 Ver. 19. And Rachel died, and was buried in the 
 way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem; 20. And 
 Jacob set a pillar upon her grave : that is the 
 pillar of RacheFs grave unto this day. 
 
 Th3 following account from the recent and valuable 
 Trarch in Palestine, by Mr. Buckingham, on the subject 
 of Rachel's tomb, will" be found highly interesting. " In 
 the way, on the right, at a litt> distance from the road, 
 is hewn the reputed tomb of Racliel, to which we turned 
 " off, to enter. This may be near the spot of Rachel's inter- 
 ment, as it is not far from Ephrath, and may correspond 
 well enough with the place assigned for her sepulchre by 
 Moses, who says, in describing her death in childbirth of 
 Benjamin, ' and Rachel died, and was buried in the way 
 to Ephrath, which-is Bethlehem ; and Jacob set a pillar 
 upon her grave, that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto 
 this day.' Gen. xxxv. 19. Instead of a pillar, the spot is 
 now covered by a Mohammedan building, resembling in 
 its exterior the tombs of saints and scheiks in Arabia and 
 Egypt, being small, square, and surmounted by a dome. 
 We entered it on the south side by an aperture, through 
 which it was difficult to crawl, as it has no doorwav ; and 
 found on the inside a square mass of masonry in the cen- 
 tre, built up from the floor nearly to the roof, and of such 
 a size as to leave barely a narrow passage for walking 
 around it. It is plastered with white stucco on the outer 
 surface, and is sufficiently large and high to enclose with- 
 in It any ancient pillar that might have been found on the 
 grave of Rachel. This central mass is certainly different 
 from any thing that I have ever observed in Arabian 
 tombs ; and it struck me on the spot, as by no means im- 
 probable, that its intention might have originally been to 
 enckse either a pillar, or fragment of one, which tradition 
 had ])ointed out as the pillar of Rachel's grave : and that 
 as th3 place is held in equal veneration by Jews, by Chris- 
 tians, and by Mohammedans, the last, as lords of the coun- 
 try, might have subsequentlv built the present structure 
 over it in their own style, and plastered the high square 
 pillar within. Around the interior face of the walls, is an 
 arched recess on each side, and over every part of the 
 stucco are written and engraved a profusion of names in 
 Hebrew, Arabic, and Roman characters ; the first execu- 
 ted i 1 curious d»^vices, as if a sort of abracadabra." P. 216. 
 — Birder. {See Engraving.) 
 
 Chap. 36. ver. 6. And Esau took his Avives, and 
 his sons, and his daughters, and all the persons 
 of his house. 
 
Chap. 36. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 43 
 
 The Margin has, for persons, " souls." Has a man gone to 
 a distant place, it is said, " Viravan, and all the souls of his 
 house, have gone to the far country." " Have you heard 
 that the old man and thirty souls have gone on a pilgrim- 
 age V " Sir, I can never get rich, because I have fifteen 
 souls who daily look to me for their rice." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. And these are the children of Zibeon ; 
 both Ajah, and Anah : this was that Anah that 
 found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed 
 the asses of Zibeon his father. 
 
 The Hebrews ascribe the invention of mules to Anah, 
 the son of Zibeon, whose daughter, Aholibamah, was 
 given in marriage to Esau. " This was that Anah, that 
 found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the asses of 
 Zibeon his father." In this text, Moses evidently censures 
 the misguided and preposterous industry of Anah, who, 
 not satisfied with the numerous flocks and herds which the 
 bounty of- Providence had bestowed on his family, or, per- 
 haps, actuated by impure and licentious motives, contrived 
 a new and spurious breed of animals unknown to nature, 
 and contrary to the laws which regulate her operations. 
 Whatever might be the motive, the conduct of this Horite 
 prince was certainly criminal. We cannot, on any other 
 supposition, account for the peculiar and emphatical phrase 
 which Moses employs : " This was that Anah, that found 
 the mules in the wilderness." In opposition to this idea, 
 Bochart contends, that if Anah had found out the method 
 of procreating mules, the sacred historian would not have 
 said he found them ; because the verb (ni«d) matsa, among 
 the Hebrews, does not signify to invent, but to find some- 
 thing already in existence. Nor to strengthen this con- 
 jecture, is it sufiicient, that Anah is said at the time to 
 have tended the asses of Zibeon his father ; for mules are 
 not procreated of asses only, but of an ass and a mare, or 
 of a horse and a female ass. But of horses or wild asses, 
 by whose union with the domestic ass a mule is generated, 
 no mention is made in this passage. In addition to these 
 arguments, our author insists on the improbability, that the 
 method of generating mules was discovered in Idumea at 
 that early period ; because, the use of these animals does 
 not seem to have become common in Judea, till the reign 
 of David, about five hundred years after the death of Anah. 
 No mention is made of mules in the flocks and herds of 
 Abraham, of Isaac, of Job, and other shepherd princes of 
 the East. In the various enumerations, horses, camels, 
 asses, oxen, sheep, and goats, are expressly mentioned, but 
 in relation to mules, the profoundest silence is uniformly 
 observed ; hence, Bochart argues, that the origin of mules 
 is involved in great uncertainty. But the assertion of that 
 [Celebrated writer, that the Hebrew verb (nsd) matsa, sig- 
 inifies only to find, not to invent, is incorrect. In Leigh's 
 Critica Sacra, it signifies also to procine for himself by 
 labour and industry; and in Parknurst, the seventh sense 
 is, to obtain, to procure. According to these respectable 
 authors, the text may be rendered, This was that Anah, 
 jrho, by labour and industry, procured for himself mules 
 in the wilderness, which is quite consistent with the com- 
 mon exposition. If Anah did not invent the method of 
 procreating mules, but only found them already existing, 
 what can the sacred writer mean by the emphatical phrase. 
 He, Anah; or, as in our version. This was that Anah? 
 What was so remarkable or important in a person merely 
 finding a knot of mules in the wilderness, that Moses 
 should reckon it necessary to use such emphatical terms 1 
 And what r iason can be given, that he takes not the smallest 
 notice of those who found horses, or camels, or asses in the 
 wilderness, although some individual must have found and 
 reduced them to a state of servitude 1 Something unusual 
 and peculiar is certainly intended in the phrase which 
 Moses employs : and what can that be, but the invention of 
 a new breed of animals. The want of mules in the numer- 
 ous herds of the patriarchs, and the late period at which 
 they came into general use among the Jews, will not prove 
 thai Anah was not the in venter of that spurious breed, but 
 only, that it was not in much request till the reign of David. 
 That the procreation of mules was actually discouraged 
 among the holy people, we have the highest authority for 
 asserting. The God of Israel, who is a God of order and 
 not of confusion, enacted a law, which he introduces with 
 more than usual solemnity, not indeed to prohibit the use 
 
 of mules when procreated, but the rearing of them : " Ye 
 shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle 
 gender with a diverse kind." The mules which David 
 and the nobles of his kingdom rode, were therefore, in all 
 probability, imported from other countries where they 
 abounded, long before the time of that illustrious monarch. 
 Bochart offers another interpretation, which he thinks ought 
 to be preferred ; that the original term which our translators 
 render mules, is in reality the name of a people, probably 
 the same as the gigantic Emim, mentioned in the fourteenth 
 chapter .of Genesis. The Samaritan Pentateuch, accord- 
 ingly reads here, (cn^Nn) the Emim; and the Targum in 
 Genesis, renders the term by (n-i'^d;) giaiits ; and Aquila 
 and Symmachus retain the Hebrew name, Emim ; so, that 
 the passage should be rendered : This is that Anah, who 
 found, or lighted upon, the Emim in the desert. The verb 
 (nxd) matsa, when spoken of enemies, is used for lighting 
 upon them, or even attacking them suddenly : several ex- 
 amples of which, are quoted by Parkhurst. Thus, Anah 
 is said to have found the Emim, or to have fallen upon 
 them, or attacked them suddenly. By this daring exploit, 
 which was greatly celebrated at the time it happened, 
 whether he discomfited these gigantic enemies by his 
 valour, or eluded the snare they had prepared for him bv 
 his address, he transmitted his fame to succeeding genwa- 
 tions; and by this criterion the historian distinguishes him 
 from others of the same name. — Paxton. 
 
 [But for this interpretation there is no evidence in his- 
 tory, and we shall exhibit as more plausible, though by no 
 means conclusive, the opinion of Mr. BxyanX, {Observations 
 upon some Passages in Scripture, p. 26.) There is reason 
 to think, that the nature of these thirsty regions above 
 mentioned is alluded to in the history of Anah, who was 
 of the family of Seir the Horite, into which Esau had 
 married. " And these are the children of Zibeon" (the 
 son of Seir) " both Aiah and Anah : this was that Anah, 
 who found mules in the wilderness, as he fed the asses of 
 Zibeon, his father." Gen. chap, xxxvi. ver. 24. Why the 
 word DD"', Yamim, is here rendered mules, I know not; 
 and why in some other versions it is expressed giants. It 
 manifestly denotes waters; and is so translated in the 
 Syriac version ; and by aquas calidas in the Vulgate. The 
 translations of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, retain 
 the original word, which they express in Greek characters 
 lafjieiv, or laiiEiii, as if it were a proper name. The word, I 
 make no doubt, was in common use among the Edomites, 
 and Horites of Mount Seir. It is the same as cd'' of the 
 scriptures, and as the word Hammim, by which baths and 
 waters are denoted at this day by the Arabians, Persians, 
 and other nations in the east. The account given in 
 scripture is short, and was well understood by the persons 
 to whom it is addressed, and undoubtedly related to water. 
 The circumstance mentioned must have been of conse- 
 quence, otherwise there would have been no necessity to 
 specify the person, by whom it was eflfected. We should 
 therefore read, that instead of m^wZes Anah found out v-ater 
 in the wilderness : but to what does the history amount 1 
 Every known spring must have had somebody to have dis- 
 covered it ; so that Anah, if this be all, did no more than 
 hundreds had done before. But to me there seems to be 
 something of more importance in the account than at first 
 appears ; and for that reason the name of the person is 
 recorded, as being of moment to those who lived in the 
 vicinity of Edom, and were acquainted with the rites of 
 Midian. It is to be observed, that the sacred writer, in 
 speaking of Anah's first discovery of these waters, does 
 not inform us, when, or where, he was feeding his father's 
 asses ; but only that the event took place, as he was feeding 
 them. This may be found of some moment. I imagine, 
 that the latent purport of the history is this. As Anah was 
 attending thfese animals, in the desert, he observed that 
 faculty with which they were endued, of snufimg the 
 moisture of the air, and being by these means led to latent 
 waters. Accordingly, either by the intimation of tho.se 
 which he fed, or by the traces of the wild brood, he wa? 
 brought to the knowledge of those resources. And as those 
 animals, which had been beneficial, were entitled in manj 
 countries to a particular regard, so these among others 
 met with uncommon reverence among the Horites ol 
 Mount Hor, and the people of Seir : for they were looked 
 •upon as the instruments of Heaven, towards the finding 
 out in those barren wilds the greatest blessing. Hence 
 
44 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 37, 38. 
 
 arose a town, and temple, where the divinity -was wor- 
 shipped under this emblem. They stood in a valley be- 
 neath Mount Hor, which was a part of the mountains 
 Kiddim, upon the skirts of Edom. Thus, as I have before 
 mentioned, what was natural sagacity, they looked upon as 
 a supernatural impulse, an intimation from Heaven. And 
 the animal, like the Apis and Mnevis in Egypt, was es- 
 teemed a living emblem of the Deity, and oracular. From 
 the situation of Petora, which was very recluse, the place 
 being almost surrounded by high mountains, we may sup- 
 pose, that the water was first found out in the manner 
 above : in consequence of which the animal was looked 
 upon as an oracle, and accordingly reverenced. And 
 when the false prophet proved disobedient, and was going 
 to utter his curses against God's people, he was terrified by 
 an angel, and rebuked by the beast he strode. Instead of 
 that divine energy, which it was at times supposed to enjoy, 
 and for which at Petora it was in an idolatrous manner 
 reverenced, God gave the ass a human voice, a far supe- 
 rior and more surprising gift. Hence his power was 
 shown above that of the gods of Edom and Midian ; and 
 the miracle was well calculated, in respect to the person 
 on whose account it was exhibited. That the history did 
 not relate either to mules, or to the Emims, but on the con- 
 trary, to water and fountains, may be seen in the name of 
 the person. This was n:y, Anah, directly from ]>y, Ain, a 
 fountain; and is analogous to Ilriyaios in Greek, and Fon- 
 tanus, or Fonteius, in Latin. It is what the Greeks called 
 a itETovoixatna^ and was bestowed in consequence of the 
 discovery ; and is applicable to nothing else.] — B. 
 
 Chap. 37. ver. 3. Now Israel loved Joseph more 
 than all his children, because he was the son 
 of his old age: and he made him a coat of 
 many colours. 
 
 Rauwolf says, " that Turks of rank at Aleppo dress 
 their sons, when they are a little grown, and can walk, in 
 loose coats of a fine texture, in which various colours are 
 woven, and which look very handsome." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 The margin has, instead of colours, "pieces;" and it is 
 probable the coat was patch-work of different colours. For 
 beautiful or favourite children, precisely the same thing is 
 done at this day. Crimson, and purple, and other colours, 
 are often tastefully sewed together. Sometimes children of 
 the Mohammedans have their jackets embroidered with 
 gold and silk of various colours. A child being clothed in a 
 garment of many colours, it is believed that neither tongues 
 nor evil spirits will injure him, because the attention is 
 taken from the beauty of the person, to that of the garment. 
 Children seldom wear them after they are eight years of 
 age ; though it must have been the custom among the an- 
 cients referred to in the Bible to wear them longer, as we 
 read of Tamar having " a garment of divers colours upon 
 her ; for with such robes were the king's daughters that 
 were virgins apparelled." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 10. Shall I, and thy mother, and thy brethren, 
 indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to 
 the earth. 
 
 The Hebrew word here translated bow down, (by Lu- 
 ther, anbelen, i. e. worship,) means the manner customary 
 in all Asia of testifying respect to kings and princes, by 
 falling on the knee, and stooping till the forehead touches 
 the ground. Ovington says, " The mark of respect which 
 is paid to kings in the East approaches very near to ado- 
 ration. The manner of saluting the Great Mogul is, to 
 touch with the hand first the earth, then the bre.ast, and then 
 to lift it above, which is repeated three times in succession 
 as you approach him." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 24. And they took him, and cast him into a 
 pit : and the pit was empty, there was no water 
 in it. 
 
 "What is here meant by a pit is an empty cistern or re- 
 servoir dug in the ground, in which the rain-water is col- 
 lected, of which there are many in the Arabian deserts. 
 Rauwolf, in the account of his Journey i]iro%s;h the Desert 
 of Mesopotamia, says, " That the camels, besides other 
 
 necessaries, were chiefly laden with water to refresh them« 
 selves and their cattle m the sultry heat of the sun, as they 
 do not easily meet with springs or brooks in crossing the 
 desert : though they may by chance meet with pits or cis 
 terns, which are for the most part 'without water, which only 
 runs into them from the rain."— Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 34. And Jacob rent his clothes. 
 
 This ceremony is very ancient, and is frequently men- 
 tioned in scripture. Levi {Rites and Ceremonies of the Jews, 
 p. 174) says, it was performed in the following manner : 
 "they take a knife, and holding the blade downward, do 
 give the upper garment a cut on the right side, and then 
 rend it a hand's-breadth. This is done for the five fol- 
 lowing relations, brother, sister, son, or daughter, or wife ; 
 but for father or another, the rent is on the left side, and in 
 all the garments, as coat, waistcoat, &c." — Burder. 
 
 Chap. 38. ver. 14. And she put her "widow's 
 garments off from her, and covered her with a 
 veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open 
 place, which is by the way to Timnath : for 
 she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was 
 not given unto hii^a to wife,. 
 
 The habit of eastern females was also suited to their 
 station ; and women of all ages and conditions, appeared 
 in dresses of the same fashion ; only a married woman 
 wore a veil upon her head, in token of subjection ; and a 
 widow had a garment which indicated her widowed state. 
 The daughters of a king, and ladies of high rank, who 
 were virgins, wore a garment of many colours, reaching, 
 as is supposed, to the heels or ankles, with long sleeves 
 down to the wrists, which had a border at the bottom, and 
 a facing at the hands, of a colour different from the gar- 
 ment : it was likewise embroidered with flowers, which in 
 ancient times, was reckoned both splendid and beautiful. 
 Before the Jews were carried captives to Babylon, their 
 wives and daughters had arrived at the greatest degree of 
 extravagance in dress. The prophet Isaiah gives a long 
 list of the vestments, trinkets, and ornaments in use among 
 the ladies of Israel, in that remote age ; the greater part 
 of which, it is extremely diflicult to describe. A common 
 prostitute among the Jews was known, as well by the pe- 
 culiar vesture she wore, as by having no covering upon 
 her head, and her eyebrows painted with stibium, w^hich 
 dilated the hair, and made the eyes look black and beauti- 
 ful. In the days of Jacob, the harlot seemed to have been 
 distinguished by her veil, and by wrapping herself in some 
 peculiar manner ; for these are the circumstances that in- 
 duced Judah to consider Tamar his daughter-in-law as a 
 woman of this character: When Judah saw her, he thought 
 her to be a harlot, because she had covered her face. It 
 may be justly inferred from this passage, that modest wo- 
 men did not constantly wear a veil in those days. Rebecca, 
 indeed, put a veil upon her face when she met Isaac in the 
 field : but it was a part of the marriage ceremony to de- 
 liver the bride covered with a veil, from head to foot ; and 
 Rebecca, in this instance, only followed the established 
 custom of her country. Had it been the practice of modest 
 women in that age to cover their faces, jn the presence of 
 the other sex, she would not have needed to veil herself 
 when her future husband met her in the field. She seems to 
 have had no veil when Abraham's servant accosted her at the 
 well ; nor, for any thing that can be discovered, was Rachel 
 veiled at her first interview with Jacob ; or if they did ap- 
 
 Eear in veils, these prevented not a part of the face from 
 eing seen. The practice of wearing veils, except at the 
 marriage ceremony, must, therefore, be referred to a later 
 period, and was perhaps not introduced till after the lapse 
 of several ages. These observations may serve to illus- 
 trate the address of Abimelech to Sarah: "Behold, he 
 is to thee a coverinfr of the eyes, unto all that are with thee ; 
 and with all other." Sarah, you have not been used to 
 wear the veil constantly when at home, as a person of your 
 beauty and accomplishments should do, and by that cir- 
 cumstance we were tempted ; but now I insist that you wear 
 a covering, which, by concealing your beautiful counte- 
 nance, may prevent such desires ; and henceforth be correct, 
 (as the word may be rendered, that is, circumspect,) and do 
 
Chap. 38—41. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 45 
 
 not show yourself; or, as in our translation, thus she was 
 corrected, reproved, by a very handsome compliment paid 
 to her beauty, and a very handsome present paid to her 
 brother, as Abraham is sarcaGtically termed by Abimelech. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. And he said, What pledge shall I give 
 thee 1 and she said. Thy signet, and thy brace- 
 lets, and thy staff that is in thy hand : and he 
 gave it her, and came in unto her : and she 
 conceived by him. 
 
 The signet used by kings and persons of rank in the East 
 was a ring which served all the purposes of sealing. All 
 the Orientals, instead of signature by sign manual, use the 
 impression of a seal on which their name and title (if they 
 have one) is engraved. Among intriguing and mali- 
 cious people, it is so easy to turn the possession of a man's 
 seal to his disgrace, by making out lalse documents, that 
 the loss of it always produces great concern. This shows 
 how much Judah put himself in the power of Tamar, when 
 he gave her his signet ; and one reason of his anxiety, 
 ** Let her take it to her, lest we be ashamed," may therefore 
 mean something beyond the mere discovery of the im- 
 moral action ; " Lest by some undue advantage taken of 
 the signet, I maybe endangered." In an Indian court, 
 the monarch still takes the ring from his finger, and affixes 
 it to the decree, and orders the posts to be despatched to 
 the provinces, as in the reign of Ahasuerus. When an 
 eajstem prince delivers the seal of empire to a royal guest, 
 he treats him as a superior ; but when he delivers it to a 
 subject, it is only a sign of investiture with office. Thus 
 the king of Egypt took otfhis ring from his hand and put 
 it upon Joseph's hand, when he made him ruler over all 
 his dominions ; and the king of Persia took off the ring 
 which he had taken from Haman and gave it unto Mor- 
 decai. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 39. ver. 6. And he left all that he had in 
 Joseph's hand ; and he knew not aught he had, 
 save the bread which he did eat. 
 
 All resi)ectable men have a head servant called a Kani- 
 ka-Pulli, i. e. an accountant, in whose hands they often 
 place all they possess. Such a man is more like a rela- 
 tion or a friend, than a servant; for, on all important 
 subjects, he is regularly consulted, and his opinion will 
 have great weight with the family. When a native gen- 
 tleman has such a servant, it is common to say of him, 
 " Ah ! he has nothing — all is in the hand of his Kanika- 
 ^vMi." — " Yes, yes. he is the treasure pot." *' He knows 
 of nothing but the food he eats." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 40. ver. 13. Yet within three days shall 
 Pharaoh lift up thy head, and restore thee unto 
 thy place : and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's 
 cup into his hand, after the former manner 
 when thou wast his butler. 
 
 The ancients, in keeping their reckonings or accounts 
 of time, or their list of domestic officers or servants, made 
 use of tables with holes bored in them, in which they put 
 a sort of pegs, or nails with broad heads, exhibiting the 
 particulars, either number or name, or whatever it was. 
 These nails or pegs the Jews call headS, and the sockets 
 of the heads they call bosses. The meaning therefore of 
 'Pharaoh's Ufli7ig up his head is, iha.t Pharaoh would take 
 out the peg, which had the cup-bearer's name on the top 
 of it, to read it, i. e. would sit in judgment, and make ex- 
 amination into his accounts ; for it seems very probable 
 that both he and the baker had been either suspected or 
 accused of having cheated the king, and that, when their 
 accounts were examined and cast up, the one was acquit- 
 ted, while the other was found guilty. And though Joseph 
 uses the same expression in both cases, yet we may observe 
 that, speaking to the baker, he adds, that Pharaoh shall lift 
 up thy head from off thee, i. e. shall order thy name to be 
 .struck out of the list of his servants, by takins: thy peg out 
 of the socket. — Bibliotheca Biblica, cited by Stackhouse. 
 
 Chap. 41. ver. 40. Thou shalt be over my house, 
 and according unto thy word shall all my peo- 
 ple be ruled : only in the throne will I be 
 greater than thou. 
 
 Pococke, when he describes the Egyptian compliments, 
 tells us, that upon their taking any thing from the hand of 
 a superior, or that is sent from such a one, they kiss it, and 
 as the highest respect put it to their foreheads. This is 
 not peculiar to those of that country : for the editor of the 
 Ruins of Balbec observed, that the Arab governor of that 
 city respectfully applied the firman of the Grand Seignior 
 to his forehead^ which was presented to him when he and 
 his fellow-travellers first waited on him, and then kissed 
 it, declaring himself the Sultan's slave's slave. Is not this 
 what Pharaoh refers to in Gen. xli. 40'? " Thou shalt be 
 over my house, and according unto thy word," (or on ac- 
 count of thy word,) " shall all my people kiss," (for so it is 
 in the original ;) " only in the throne will I be greater than 
 thou :" that is, 1 imagine, the orders of Joseph were to be 
 received with the greatest respect by all, and kissed by the 
 most illustrious of the princes of Egypt. Drusius might 
 well deny the sense that Kimchi and Grotius put on these 
 words, the appointing that all the people should kiss his 
 mouth. That would certainly be reckoned in the West, 
 in every part of the earth, as well as in the ceremonious 
 East, so remarkable for keeping up dignity and state, a 
 most strange way of commanding the second man in the 
 kingdom to be honoured. It is very strange then that 
 these commentators should propose such a thought ; and 
 the more so, as the Hebrew word "'d pee is well known 
 to signify word, or commandment, as well as month. As 
 this is apparent from Gen. xlv. 21 ; so also that the prepo- 
 sition bv at, often signifies according to, or on account of, 
 is put out of the question by that passage, as well as by 
 Sam. iv. 12, Ezra x. 9, &c. These are determinations that 
 establish the exposition I have been giving. " Upon thy 
 commandment,'^ or when thou sendest out orders, " my 
 people, from the highest to the lowest, shall kiss,'' receiving 
 them with the profoundest respect and obedience. — Harmeii. 
 
 In Psalm ii. 12, it is written, " Kiss the son, lest he be 
 angry, and ye perish from the way." Bishop Patrick says 
 on this, " Kiss the son ; that is, submit to him, and obey 
 him." Bishop Pococke says, " The Egyptians, on taking 
 any thing from the hand of* a superior, or that is sent from 
 him, kiss it; and, as the highest respect, put it to their 
 foreheads." It is therefore probable that Pharaoh meant, 
 that all should submit to Joseph, that all should obey him, 
 and pay him reverence, and that only on the throne he 
 himself^ would be greatest. When a great man causes a 
 gift to be handed to an inferior, the latter will take it, and 
 put it on the right cheek, so as to cover the eyes ; then on 
 the left ; after which he will kiss it. This is done to show 
 the great superiority of the donor, and that he on whom 
 the gift is bestowed is his dependant, and greatly reverences 
 him. When a man of rank is angry with an inferior, the 
 latter will be advised to go and kiss his feet ; which he does 
 by touching his feet with his hands, and then kissing them. 
 When the Mohammedans meet each other after a long ab- 
 sence, the inferior will touch the hand of the superior, and 
 then kiss it. All, then, were to kiss Joseph, and acknow- 
 ledge him as their ruler. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 42. And Pharaoh took off his ring from his 
 hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand. 
 
 That is, his signet. In the ring there is generally a seal, 
 on which the name of the sovereign is engraved. This 
 signet is dipped in a coloured matter, and impressed over 
 the royal orders, instead of the king's title. Whoever is in 
 possession of this seal, can issue commands in the name of 
 the king. What is said in this text, would be expressed in 
 modern language by, " Pharaoh raised Joseph to the dig- 
 nity of grand vizier.'' The symbol of power and authority 
 given to the grand vizier, is the seal of the sultan with 
 his cipher, which is intrusted to his care. The signet was 
 considered, in the East, from the most ancient times, as the 
 sign of delegated power. That given to the grand vizier 
 is so great, that no officer of state, no minister, dares to 
 resist, or even to contradict his orders, without risking his 
 head, because every one of his commands is obeyed, as if 
 
46 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 41 — 43, 
 
 it had proceeded from the throne, or from the mouth of the 
 sultan. He likewise receives almost royal honours; all 
 about him bears the stamp of the highest honour, power, 
 and splendour. Liidecke, in his Description of the Turkish 
 Empire, says, " The grand vizier is the principal of all 
 the ofticers of state, and his dignity is similar to that with 
 which Pharaoh invested Joseph. He is called Your High- 
 ness. The emperor scarcely differs from him except in 
 name. There is nothing at the European courts similar 
 to his dignity, and the premiers ministres, as they are 
 called, are nothing to him. Being keeper of the imperial 
 signet, he always has it suspended round his neck. The 
 investing him with it, is the sign of his elevation to office, 
 and the taking it off, of his discharge. Without further 
 orders or responsibility, he issues all orders for the em- 
 
 Eire." In like manner, when Alexander the Great, on 
 is death-bed, delivered his signet to Perdiccas, it was 
 concluded that he had also given to him his royal powers, 
 and intended him for his successor. (Curtius.) — The ar- 
 raying of Joseph in fine linen, was probably a part of the 
 ceremony of investing him with his high dignity. Thus 
 the grand vizier on the day of his appointment is invested 
 with a double golden caftan, or robe of honour. — Rosen- 
 
 MULLER. 
 
 This practice is still common, but was much more so 
 in former times. " Aruchananan, a king, once became 
 greatly enamoured with a princess called Alii, and desired 
 to have her in marriage ; but being in doubt whether he 
 should be able to have her, he sent for a woman who w^as 
 well skilled in palmistry ! She looked carefully into his 
 hand, and declared, 'You will marry a princess called 
 Alii— you shall have her.' The king was so delighted, 
 that he took his ring off his finger, and put it upon that of 
 the fortuneteller.''^ Should a rich man be greatly pleased 
 with a performer at a comedy, he will call him to him, and 
 take off the ring from his finger, and present it to him. 
 Does a poet please a man of rank ; he w'ill take the ring 
 off his finger, and put it on his. A father gives his son-in- 
 law elect a r'ng from off his finger. When the bridegroom 
 g.>es to the ho!i?e of his bride, her brother meets him, and 
 pears water on his feet ; then the former takes a ring from 
 off his finger, and puts it on that of the latter. Does one 
 man send to another for any particular article, or to solicit 
 a favour, and should he not have time to write, he will 
 give his ring to the messenger, and say, " Show this in 
 proof of my having sent you to make this request." Is a 
 master at a distance, and does he wish to introduce a per- 
 son to the notice of another; he says, '• Take this ring, and 
 YOU "will be received." Pharaoh's ring carried with it the 
 highest mark of favour towards Joseph, and was a proof of 
 the authority conferred on him. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver, 43. And he made him to ride in the second 
 chariot which he had ; and they cried before 
 him. Bow the knee : and he made him ruler 
 over all the land of Egypt. 
 
 As to magnificent riding, chariots are not now made use 
 of in the East, either by men, or even the fair sex. It may 
 be difficult to say what this is owing to : whether to the dif- 
 ficulty of their roads, or to the clumsy and unmechanical 
 manner of constructing their carriages ; or to a junction of 
 both causes. Certain it is, that they are not now used in 
 these countries : and the magnificence of the furniture of 
 their horses makes up the want of pompous chariots. 
 Anciently, however, chariots were used by the great: 
 they were thought most deadly machines of war ; it was 
 courage in war that in those ruder times gave dignity, and 
 seems to have been chiefly looked at in conferring royal 
 honours; it was natural then for their kings to ride in 
 chariots, as their great warriors at that time in common 
 did ; which royal chariots were without doubt most highly 
 ornamented. In the most magnificent of all that Pharaoh 
 had, but one, Joseph was made to ride. But when chariots 
 were laid aside in war, their princes laid aside the use of 
 them by degrees, and betook themselves to horses, as upon 
 the whole most agreeable, and they endeavoured to transfer 
 the pomp of their chariots to them, and richly indeed they 
 do adorn them. — Harmer. 
 
 The Hebrew has for bow the knee, ^^ Tender Father,^'' 
 which I believe to be the true meaning. Dr. Adam Clarke 
 
 says the word i->2n abrec, which we translate bow the knee, 
 might as well be translated any thing else. In chapter xlv. 
 8, Joseph says himself, " God hath made me a father to 
 Pharaoh J" A younger brother is called the little father ; he 
 being the next in authority. The king's minister (if a 
 good man) is called the little father. There are five per- 
 sons who have a right to this parental title. Tlie father 
 himself, a king, a priest, a gooroo or teacher, and a bene- 
 factor. Joseph was indeed the father of the Egyptians. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 42. ver. 15. Hereby ye shall be proved: 
 by the life of Pharaoh, ye shall not go forth 
 hence, except your youngest brother come 
 hither. 
 
 Extraordinary as the kind of oath which Joseph made 
 use of may appear to us, it still continues in the East. Mr. 
 Hanway says, the most sacred oath among the Persians is 
 " by the king's head ;" and among other instances of it we 
 read in the Travels of the Ambassadors, that "there were 
 but sixty horses for ninety-four persons. The mehemander 
 (or conductor) swore by the head of the king, (which is the 
 greatest oath among the Persians,) that he could not possi- 
 bly find any more." And Thevenot says, " his subjects 
 never look upon him but with fear and trembling ; and 
 they have such respect for him, and pay so blind an obedi- 
 ence to a.., ais orders, that how unjust soever his commands 
 might be, t^ey perform them, though against the law both 
 of God and nature. Nay, if they swear by the king^s head., 
 their oath is more authentic, and of greater credit, than if 
 they swore by all that is most sacred in heaven and upon 
 earth."— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 37. And Reuben spake unto his father, say- 
 ing, Slay my two sons, if I bring him not to 
 thee: deliver him into my hand, and I will 
 bring him to thee again. 
 
 Is a man placed in great difficulty, and does he make a 
 solemn promise, in which another person is also involved ; 
 he will say, " Ah ! if I do not this thing, then kill my chil- 
 dren." "Yes, my lord, my children shall die if I do not 
 accomplish this object." " Ah ! my children, your lives 
 are concerned in this matter." — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 43. ver. 3. And Judah spake unto him, 
 saying, The man did solemnly protest unto us, 
 saying, Ye shall not see my face, except your 
 brother he with you. 
 
 ^ See on 2 Sam. 14. 24. 
 
 Ver. 7. And we told him according to the tenor 
 of these words. 
 
 The margin has, for words, " mouth." Send a messenger 
 with a message to deliver, and ask him, on his return, 
 what he said, he will reply, " According to your mouth .'"— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 18. Seek occasion against us, and fall upon us. 
 
 The margin has this, " Roll himself upon us." (Job 
 XXX. 14. Psa. xxii. 8. xxxvii. 5. Prov. xvi. 3.) For to say 
 a man rolls himself upon another, is the eastern way of 
 saying he falls upon him. Is a person beaten or injured 
 by another : he says of the other, " He rolled himself upon 
 me." Of the individual who is always trying to live upon 
 another, who is continually endeavouring to get something 
 out of him, it is said, " That fellow is for ever rolling him- 
 self upon him." So, also, " I will not submit to his conduct 
 any longer; I will beat him, and roll myself upon him." 
 Has a man committed an offence, he is advised to go to the 
 offended, and roll himself upon him. A person in great 
 sorrow, who is almost destitute of friends, asks in his dis- 
 tress, " Upon whom shall I roll myself 7" When men or 
 women are in great misery, they wring their hands and 
 roll themselves on the earth. Devotees roll themselves 
 round the temple, or after the sacred car. — Roberts. 
 
Chap. 44. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 47 
 
 Ver. 19. And tho.y came near to the steward of 
 Joseph's house, and they communed with him 
 at the door of the house. 
 
 Who, in India, lias not seen similar scenes to this"? 
 When people come from a distance to do business, or to 
 hava an interview with a person, they do not (if it can be 
 avoided) go to him at once, but try to find out the head ser- 
 ' vant, and after having made him some little present, try to 
 ascertain the disposition of his master, what are his habits, 
 his possessions, and his family. Every thing connected 
 with the object of their visit is thoroughly sifted^ so that 
 when they have to meet the individual, they are complete- 
 ly prepared for him ! — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. And they made ready the present against 
 Joseph came at noon : for they heard that they 
 should eat bread |here. 
 
 Presents are commonly sent, even to persons in private 
 station, with great parade. The money which the bride- 
 grooms of Syria pay for their brides, is laid out in furni- 
 ture for a chamber, in clothes, jewels, and ornaments of 
 gold for the bride, which are sent with great pomp to the 
 bridegroom's house, three days before the wedding. In 
 Egypt they are not less ostentatious; every article of fur- 
 niture, dress, and ornament is displayed, and they never 
 fail to load upon four or five horses, what might easily be 
 carried by one : in like manner, they place in fifteen dishes, 
 the jewels, trinkets, and other things of value, which a 
 single plate would very well contain. The sacred writer 
 seems to allude to some pompous arrangement of this kind, 
 in the history of Joseph : " And they made ready the pres- 
 ent against Joseph came at noon." They probably sepa- 
 rated into distinct parcels, and committed to so many 
 bearers, the balm, the honey, the spices, the myrrh, the 
 nuts, and the almonds, of which their present consisted. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 29. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw his 
 brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said. 
 Is this your younger brother, of whom ye 
 spake unto me? And he said, God be gra- 
 cious unto thee, my son. 
 
 The forms of salutation in the East wear a much more 
 serious and religious air than those in use among the na- 
 tions of Europe. " God be gracious unto thee, my son," 
 were the words which Joseph addressed to his brother 
 Benjamin. In this country, it would be called a benedic- 
 tion; but Chardin asserts, that in Asia, it is a simple salu- 
 tation, and used there instead of those offers and assu- 
 rances of service which it is the custom to use in the West. 
 The Orientals, indeed, are exceedingly eloquent in wishing 
 good and the mercy of God on all occasions to one another, 
 even to those they scarcely know ; and yet their compli- 
 ments are as hollow and deceitful as those of any other 
 people. This appears from scripture, to have been always 
 their character : " They bless with their mouths, but they 
 curse inwardly." These benedictory forms explain the 
 reason, why the sacred writers so frequently call the salu- 
 tation and farewell of the East, by the name of blessing. 
 —Paxton. 
 
 " God be gracious unto thee, my son," was the address of 
 Joseph to his brother Benjamin; "and in this way do people 
 3f respectability or years address their inferiors or juniors. 
 " So7i, give me a little water." " The sun is very hot ; I 
 will rest under your shade, my son." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 32. And they set on for him by himself, and 
 for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians, 
 which did eat with him, by themselves: be- 
 cause the Egyptians might not eat bread with 
 the Hebrews ; for that is an abomination unto 
 the Egyptians. 33. And they sat before him, 
 the first-born according to his birthright, and 
 the youngest according to his youth : and the 
 men marvelled one at another. 34. And ho 
 
 took and sent messes unto them from before 
 him : but Benjamin's mess was five times so 
 much as any of theirs. And they drank, and 
 were merry with him. 
 
 Public entertainments in the East, are not all conducted 
 in the same way. At Aleppo, the several dishes are 
 brought in one by one ; and after the company has eaten 
 a little of each, they are removed ; but among the Arabs, 
 the whole provisions are set on the table at once. In Per- 
 sia, where the last custom is followed, the viands are dis- 
 tributed by a domestic, who takes portions of different 
 kinds out of the large dishes in wliich they are served up, 
 and lays four or five different kinds of meat in one smaller 
 dish; these are set, furnished after this manner, before 
 the company ; one of these spaller dishes being placed 
 before two persons only, or at most three. The same 
 practice obtains at the royal table itself. It is not improba- 
 ble that the ancient Egyptians treated their guests in a 
 similar way ; and in the entertainment given by Joseph to 
 his brethren, we may discover many points of resemblance. 
 The Persians were placed in a row on one side of the room, 
 without any person before them ; a distinct dish, with dif- 
 ferent kinds of food, was set before every guest; circum- 
 stances which entirely correspond with the arrangement 
 of Joseph's entertainment. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 34. And he took and sent messes unto them 
 from before him : but Benjamin's mess was five 
 times so much as any of theirs. And they 
 drank, and were merry with him. 
 
 The manner of eating among the ancients was not for 
 all the company to eat out of one and the same dish, but 
 for every one to have one or more dishes to himself. Th« 
 whole of these dishes were set before the master of thw 
 feast, and he distributed to every one his portion. As Jo- 
 seph, however, is here said to have had a table to himself, 
 we may suppose that he had a great variety of little dishes 
 or plates set before him ; and as it was a custom for great 
 men to honour those who were in their favour, by sending 
 such dishes to them as were first served up to themselves, Jo- 
 seph showed that token of respect to his brethren ; but tc 
 express a particular value for Benjamin, he sent him five 
 dishes to their one, which disproportion could not but be 
 marvellous and astonishing to them, if what Herodotus tells 
 us be true, that the distinction in this case, even to Egyp- 
 tian kings themselves, in all public feasts and banquets, was 
 no more than a double mess. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Chap. 44. ver. 1. And he commanded the stew- 
 ard of his house, saying, Fill the men's sacks 
 with food, as much as they can carry, and put 
 every man's money in his sack's mouth. 
 
 There are two sorts of sacks taken notice of in the his- 
 tory of Joseph, which ought not to be confounded ; one for 
 the corn, the other for the baggage. There are no w^ag- 
 ons almost through all Asia as far as to the Indies ; eveif 
 thing is carried upon beasts of burden, in sacks oi wool, 
 covered in the middle with leather, the better to majce re- 
 sistance to water. Sacks of this sort are called lambellit; 
 they enclose in them their things done up in large parcels. 
 It is of this kind of sacks we are to understand -t'hat issaid 
 here and all through this history, and not of their sacjiis in 
 which they carry their corn. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 18. Then Judah came near unto him, and 
 said, O my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, 
 speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not 
 thine anger burn against thy servant : for thou 
 art even as Pharaoh. 
 
 A company of people have always some one among 
 them, who is known and acknowledged to be the chief 
 speaker ; thus, should they fall into trouble, he will be the 
 person to come forward and plead with the superior. He 
 will say, " My lord, I am indeed a very ignorant person, and 
 am not worthy to speak to vou : were I of high caste, perhaps 
 
48 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 44—46. 
 
 my lord would hear me. May I say two or three words ?" 
 (some of the party will then say, "Yes, yes, our lord will 
 hear you.") He then proceeds, — " Ah, rny lord, your mercy 
 is known to all; great is your wisdom; you are even as a 
 king to us : let, then, your servants find favour in your 
 sight." He then, like Judah, relates the whole affair, for- 
 getting no circumstance which has a tendency to exculpate 
 him and his companions ; and every thing which can touch 
 the feelings of his judge will be gently brought before him. 
 As he draws to a conclusion, his pathos increases, his com- 
 panions put out their hands in a supplicating manner, ac- 
 companied by other gesticulations; their tears begin to 
 flow, and with one voice they cry, " Forgive us, this time, 
 and we will never offend you more." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 21. And thou saidst unto thy servant. Bring 
 him down unto me, that I may set mine eyes 
 upon him. 
 
 Has a beloved son been long absent, does the father anx- 
 iously desire to see him, he says, " Bring him, bring him, 
 chat the course of my eyes may be upon him." " Ah, my 
 eyes, do you again see my son 1 Oh, my eyes, is not this 
 pleasure for youV — Robekts. 
 
 Chap. 45. ver. 2. And he wept aloud: and the 
 Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. 
 
 Hebrew, " gave forth his voice in weeping." In this 
 way do they speak of a person who thus conducts himself: 
 " How loudly did he give forth his voice and weep." 
 " That child is for ever giving forth its voice." The vio- 
 lence of their sorrow is very great, and their voice may be 
 heard at a considerable distance. — Roberts. 
 
 " This," says Chardin, " is exactly the genius of the peo- 
 ple of Asia, especially of the women. Their sentiments 
 of joy or of grief are properly transports; and their trans- 
 ports are ungoverned, excessive, and truly outrageous. 
 When any one returns from a long journey, or dies, his 
 family burst into cries, that may be heard twenty doors off; 
 and this is renewed at different times, and continues many 
 days, according. to the vigour of the passion. Especially 
 are these cries long in the case of death, and frightful, for 
 *he mourning is right down despair, and an image of hell. 
 I was lodged in. the year 1676, at Ispahan, near the Roval 
 square ; the mistress of the next house to mine died at that 
 time. The moment she expired, all the family, to the num- 
 ber of twenty-five or thirty people, set up such a furious 
 erv, that I w'as quite startled, and was above two hours 
 before I could recover myself. These cries continue a 
 long time, then cease all at once; they begin again as sud- 
 denly, at daybreak, and in concert. It is this suddenness 
 which is so terrifying, together with a greater shrillness 
 and loudness than one could easily imagine. This enraged 
 kind of mourning, if I may call it so, continued forty days ; 
 not equally violent, but with diminution from day to day. 
 The longest and most violent acts were when they washed 
 the body, when they perfumed it, when they carried it out 
 to be interred, at making the inventory, and when they di- 
 vided the effects. You are not to suppose that those that 
 were ready to split their throats with crying out, wept as 
 much ; the greatest part of them did not shed a single tear 
 through the whole tragedy." This is a very distinct de- 
 scription of eastern mourning for the dead : they cry out 
 too, it seems, on other occasions ; no wonder then the house 
 of Pharaoh heard, when Joseph wept at making himself 
 known to his brethren.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 14. And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's 
 neck, and wept ; and Benjamin wept upon his 
 neck. 15. Moreover, he kissed all his brethren, 
 and wept upon them ; and after that his brethren 
 talked with him. 
 
 When people meet, after long absence, they fall on 
 each other's shoulder or neck, and kiss or smell the part. 
 A husband, after long absence, kisses or smells the fore- 
 head, the eyes, the right and left cheeks, and the bosom, of 
 kis wife. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say 
 unto thy brethren. This do ye ; lade your beasts. 
 
 Nearly all the merchandise, which goes by land, is car- 
 ried by beasts of burden ; and, no doubt, will continue to be 
 so till regular roads are constructed. Hence may be seen 
 hundreds of bullocks, or camels, carrying rice, salt, spices, 
 and other wares, traversing the forests and deserts to dis- 
 tant countries. Some of the buffaloes carry immense bur- 
 dens, and though they only make little progress, yet they 
 are patient and regular in their pace. Bells are tied pound 
 the necks of some of the animals, the sound of which pro- 
 duces a pleasing effect on the feelings of a traveller, who 
 now knows that he is not far from some of his fellows. 
 The sound of the bells also keeps the cattle together, and 
 frightens off the wild beasts. — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 46. ver. 4. I will go down with thee into 
 Egypt ; and I will also surely bring thee up 
 again : and Joseph shall put his hand upon 
 thine eyes. 
 
 A father, at the point of death, is always very desirous 
 that his wife, children, and grandchildren should be with 
 him. Should there be one at a distance, he will be imme- 
 diately sent for, and until he arrives the father will mourn 
 and complain, " My son, will you not come 1 I cannot die 
 without you." When he arrives, he will take the hands of 
 his son, and kiss them, and place them on his eyes, his face, 
 and mouth, and say, " Now I die." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. And came inio Egypt, Jacob, and all his 
 seed with him. 
 
 In this way descendants are spoken of. Has a man been 
 deceived by another, he will be asked, " How could you 
 trust him 1 did you not know him to be bad {veethe) seed." 
 " That fellow is of the seed of fiends." " The reason you 
 see such good things in that youth is, that he is of good 
 seed." " The old man and his seed have all left this village 
 many years ago." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. For every shepherd is an abomination 
 unto the Egyptians. 
 
 Cunpeus, with great plausibility, ascribes this detestation 
 on the part of the Egyptians, to the ferocious dispositions 
 and rebellious conduct of the shepherds who tended their 
 flocks in the plains and marshes of lower Egypt, " These," 
 says that writer, "were active and able men, but execrable 
 to all the Egyptians, because they would not sufler them to 
 lead their idle course of life in security. These men often 
 excited great commotions, and sometimes created kings for 
 themselves. It was on this account, that the Romans, in 
 succeeding times, when they easily held the rest of Egypt 
 in obedience, placed a strong garrison in all these parts. 
 When you have taken the most exact survey of all circum- 
 stances, you will find this was the reason that made the 
 Egyptians, even from the first, so ill affected to shepherds ; 
 because these sedentary men and handicrafts could not 
 endure their fierce and active spirits. Pharaoh himself, 
 when he had determined to abate and depress the growing 
 numbers of the Israelites, spake to his subjects in this man- 
 ner : * The Israelites are stronger than we ; let us deal 
 wisely, that they increase not, lest, when war arises, they 
 join themselves to our enemies, and take up arms against 
 us.' But this view does not account for the use of the 
 term which is properly rendered abomination, and which 
 indicates, not a ferocious and turbulent character, which is 
 properly an object of dread and hatred, but a mean and 
 despicable person, that excites the scorn and contempt of 
 his neighbours. It is readily admitted, that the detestation 
 in which shepherds were held in Eg>'pt, could not arise 
 from their employment in the breeding of cattle ; for the 
 king himself, in the days of Joseph, had very numerous 
 flocks and herds, in the management of which he did not 
 think it unbecoming his dignity to take a lively interest. 
 This is proved bv the command to his favourite minister ; 
 ' If thou knowest any men of activity among them, then 
 make them rulers over my cattle.' Nor were his numer- 
 ous subjects less attentive to this branch of industry ; every 
 one seems to have lived upon his paternal farm, part of 
 which was converted into pasture. Hence, when money 
 failed in the vears of famine, 'all the Egyptians came to 
 Joseph and said, Give us bre.id ; for why should we die in 
 
Chap. 47—49. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 49 
 
 thy presence '? for the money faileth. And Joseph said, 
 Give your cattle, and I will give you bread for your cattle, 
 if money fail." But if Pharaoh and all his subjects, were 
 themselves engaged in the rearing of stock, a shepherd 
 could not be to them an object of general abhorrence. Be- 
 sides, it was not unlawful in Egypt to deprive an ox or a 
 sheep of life, and feast upon the' flesh ; for, in the temples, 
 these animals were offered in sacrifice every day ; and for 
 what purpose did the Egyptians rear them on their farms, 
 but to use them as food 1 The contempt in which this or- 
 der of men were held, could not then be owing to the super- 
 stition of the nation in general. It may even be inferred 
 from the command of Pharaoh to Joseph, requiring him to 
 appoint the most active of his brethren rulers over his cat- 
 tle, that the ofi&ce of a shepherd was honourable among the 
 Egyptians ; for it could not be his design to degrade the 
 brethren of his favourite minister. This idea is confirmed 
 by Diodorus, who asserts that husbandmen and shepherds 
 were held in very great estimation in that country. But 
 that writer states a fact, which furnishes the true solution 
 of the difficulty — that in some parts of Egypt, shepherds 
 were not suffered. The contempt of shepherds seems, 
 therefore, to have been confined to some parts of the king- 
 dom ; probably to ihe royal city, and the principal towns in 
 Upper Egypt, where the luxury of a court, or the wealth 
 and splendour of the inhabitants, taughtj them to look down 
 with contempt and loathing upon those humble peasants. 
 But the true reason seems to be stated by Herodotus, who 
 informs us that those who worship in the temple of the The- 
 ban Jupiter, or belong to the district of Thebes, the ancient 
 capital of Egypt, abstained from sheep and sacrificed goats. 
 But sheep and oxen were the animals which the shepherds 
 usually killed for general use. It was natural, therefore, 
 for that superstitious people to regard with abhorrence those 
 who were in the daily practice of slaughtering the objects 
 of their religious veneration. But this custom was con- 
 fined to the district of Thebes ; for, according to the same 
 writer, " in the temple of Mendes, and in the whole Men- 
 desian district, goats were preserved and sheep sacrificed." 
 Shepherds, therefore, might be abhorred in one part of 
 Egypt and honoured in another. The sagacious prime 
 minister of Egypt, desirous to remove his brethren from the 
 fascinations of wealth and power, directed them to give such 
 an account of themselves, that the counsellors of Pharaoh, 
 from their dislike of the mean employment in which they 
 had been educated, might grant their request, and suffer 
 them to settle in Goshen, a land of shepherds, far removed 
 from the dangerous blandishments of a court. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 47. ver. 29. And the time drew nigh that 
 Israel must die : and he called his son Joseph, 
 and said unto him, If now I have found grace 
 in thy sight, put, I pray thee, thy hand under 
 my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me ; 
 bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt. 
 
 See on chap. 24. 2, 3. 
 
 Chap. 49. ver. 3. Reuben, thou art my first-born, 
 my might, and the beginning of my strength, 
 the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of 
 power. 
 
 It is generally believed that the first-bom son is the 
 strongest, and he is always placed over his brethren. To 
 him the others must give great honour, and they must not 
 sit in his presence without his permission, and then only 
 behind him. When the younger visits the elder, he goes 
 with great respect, and the conversation is soon closed. 
 Should there be any thing of a particular nature, on which 
 he desires the sentiments of his elder brother, he sends a 
 friend to converse with him. The younger brother will not 
 enter the door at the same time with the elder; he must al- 
 ways follow. Should they be invited to a marriage, care 
 will be taken that the oldest shall go in the first. The 
 younger will never approach him with his wooden sandals 
 on, he must take them off. He will not speak to the wife 
 of the elder, except on some special occasion. When the 
 father thinks his end is approaching, he calls his children, 
 and, addressing himself to the elder, says, " My strength, 
 |Dy glory, my all is in thee." From this may be gained an 
 
 idea of the importance which was attached to the " birth- 
 right." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. Judth, thou art he whom thy brethren 
 shall praise ; thy hand shall be in the neck of 
 thine enemies. 
 
 The oriental conqueror oflen addressed his unfortunate 
 captives in the most insulting language, of which the pro- 
 phet Isaiah has left us a specimen : " But I will put it (the 
 cup of Jehovah's fuify) into the hand of them that afflict 
 thee ; which have said to thy soul, bow down that we may 
 go over." And their actions were as harsh as their words 
 were haughty; they made them bow down to the very 
 ground, and put their feet upon their necks, and trampled 
 them in the mire. This indignity the chosen people of God 
 were obliged to suffer: " Thou hast laid thy body as the 
 ground, and as the street to them that went over." Conquer- 
 ors of a milder and more humane disposition put their hand 
 upon the neck of their captives, as a mark of tneir superior- 
 ity. This custom may be traced as high as the age in 
 which Jacob flourished; for in his farewell blessing to 
 Judah, he thus alludes to it: " Judah, thou art he whom 
 thy brethren shall praise ; thy hand shall be in the neck of 
 thine enemies." This benediction, which at once foretold 
 the victorious career of that warlike tribe, and suggested 
 the propriety of treating their prisoners with moderation 
 and kindness, was fulfilled in the person of David, and ac- 
 knowledged by him : " Thou hast also given me the necks 
 of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me." 
 Traces of this custom may be discovered in the manners 
 of other nations. Among the Franks it was usual to put 
 the arm round the neck, as a mark of superiority on the 
 part of him by whom it was done. When Chrodin, decli- 
 ning the oflice of mayor of the palace, chose a young 
 nobleman named Goga'n, to fill that place, he immediately 
 took the arm of the young man, and put it round his own 
 neck, as a mark of his dependance on him, and that he 
 acknowledged him for his general and chief. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 9. Judah is a lion's whelp ; from the prey, 
 my son, thou art gone up : he stooped down, 
 he couched as a lion, and as an aid lion : who 
 shall rouse him up? 
 
 The Hebrew words will be more accurately expressed by 
 the following translation : — 
 
 a young lion is Judah, 
 
 From prey, my son, art thou become great ; 
 
 He bends his feet under him and couches 
 
 Like a lion and like a Uoness ; 
 
 Who shall rouse him upl 
 
 Judah is compared to a young lion, which becomes great 
 by prey, and which, when grown up and satiated with booty, 
 is found reposing with his feet bent under his breast. The 
 lion does this when he has eaten sufiiciently ; he then does 
 not attack passengers, but if any one would venture to rouse 
 him out of wantonness, he would repent of his temerity. 
 The meaning of the image is, that the tribe of Judah would 
 at first be very warlike and valiant, but in the sequel, satia- 
 ted by conquests and victories, would cease to attack its 
 neighbours, yet had made itself so terrible that nobody 
 would venture to attack it. Among the eastern nations, the 
 lion was always the emblem of warlike valour and might. 
 
 — BURDER, 
 
 Ver. 11. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his 
 ass's colt unto the choice vine. 
 
 One species of vine is not less distinguished by the 
 luxuriance of its growth, than by the richness and delicacy 
 of its fruit. This is the Sorek of the Hebrews, which the 
 prophet Isaiah has chosen to represent the founders of his 
 nation — men renowned for almost every virtue which can 
 adorn the human character: "My well-beloved has a 
 vineyard in a very fruitful hill, and he planted it with 
 Sorek, or the choicest vine." It is to this valuable species 
 that Jacob refers, in his prophetic benediction addressed to 
 Judah ; and the manner in which he speaks of it is remark- 
 able : " Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt 
 unto the choice vine." In some parts of Persia it was 
 formerly the custom to turn their cattle into the vinc;3'ard$ 
 
50 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 Chap. 49 
 
 after the vintage, to browse on the vines, some of which 
 are so large, that a man can hardly compass their trunks 
 in his arms. These facts clearly show, ^at agreeably to 
 the prediction of Jacob, the ass might be slcurely bound to 
 the vine, and without damaging the tree by browsing on 
 its leaves and branches. The same custom appears, from 
 the narratives of several travellers, to have generally pre- 
 vailed in the Lesser Asia. Chandler observed, that in the 
 vineyards around Smyrna, the leaves of the vines were 
 decayed or stripped by the camels, or herds of goats, 
 which are permitted to browse uport them after the vin- 
 tage. When he left Smyrna on the thirtieth of September, 
 the vineyards were already bare ; but when he arrived at 
 Phygela, on the fifth or sixth of October, he found its terri- 
 tory still green with vines; which is a proof, that the 
 vineyards at Sm /"rna must have been stripped by the cattle, 
 which delight to feed upon the foliage. This custom fur- 
 nishes a satisfactory reason for a regulation in the laws of 
 Moses, the meaning of which has been very imperfectly 
 understood, which forbids a man to introduce his beast 
 into the vineyard of his neighbour. It was destructive to 
 the vineyard before the fruit was gathered ; and after the 
 vintage, it was still a serious injury, because it deprived 
 the owner of the fodder, which was most grateful to his 
 flocks and herds, and perhaps absolutely requisite for their 
 subsistence during the winter. These things considered, 
 we discern in this enactment, the justice, wisdom, and 
 kindness of the great legislator: and the same traits of 
 excellence might no doubt be discovered in the most ob- 
 scure and minute regulation, could we detect the reason 
 on which it is founded. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. Issachar is a strong ass, couching- down 
 between two burdens: 15. And he saw that 
 rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; 
 and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a 
 servant unto tribute. 
 
 The ass is not more remarkable for his power to sustain, 
 ".ban for his patience and tranquillity when oppressed by 
 an unequal load. Like the camel, he quietly submits to 
 -Vie heaviest burden ; he bears it peaceably, till he can pro- 
 ceed no farther ; and when his strength fails him, instead 
 of resisting or endeavouring to throw off the oppressive 
 Aveight, he contentedly lies down, and rests himself under 
 it, recruits his vigour with the provender that may be of- 
 fered him, and then, at the call of his master, proceeds on 
 his journey. To this trait in the character oi that useful 
 animal, the dying patriarch evidently refers, when, under 
 the afflatus of inspiration, he predicts the future lot and con- 
 duct of Issachar and his descendants. " Issachar is a strong 
 ass, couching down between two burdens. And he saw 
 that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant, and 
 bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto trib- 
 ute." This tribe, naturally dull and stupid, should, like 
 '.he creature by which they were characterized, readily 
 .submit to the vilest master and the meanest service. Al- 
 .nough, like the ass, possessed of ability, if properly exert- 
 ed and rightly directed, to shake off the inglorious yoke of 
 r^ervitude, they would basely submit to the insults of the 
 Phenicians on the one hand, and the Samaritans on the 
 other. Issachar was a strong ass, " able," says a sprightly 
 writer, " to refuse a load, as well as to bear it ; but like 
 the passive drudge which symbolized him, he preferred 
 inglorious ease to the resolute vindication of his liberty ; a 
 burden of tribute, to the gains of a just and well-regulated 
 freedom ; and a yoke of bondage, to the doubtful issues of 
 war." — Paxton. 
 
 " Couching down between two burdens." The original 
 word rendered " burdens," we believe, after careful investi- 
 gation, properly signifies the double partition forming the 
 sides of a stall for cattle or asses, or the bars and timbers 
 of which they were made. A similar structure was erect- 
 ed about the dwellings of the Jews, in which their pots, 
 kettles, and other kitchen utensils, were hung, and there- 
 fore rendered by Gusset, in Ps. 68. 14, " pot-ranges." This 
 expression, as applied to a region of country, would natu- 
 rally be supposed to imply two very marked and conspicu- 
 ous'limits, as for instance two ranges of mountains enclo- 
 sing a valley, and by a very remarkable coincidence the 
 iribe of Lsachar received for its lot, in the distribution of 
 
 the land, the fertile and delightful vale of Esdraelon, lying 
 between ranges of hills, in the peaceful and industrious oc- 
 cupancy of which they might very justly be likened to an 
 ass reposing between the sides of his stall. " Here, on this 
 plain,^' says Dr. Clarke, " the most fertile part of all the land 
 of Canaan, which, though a solitude, we found like one 
 vast meadow covered with the richest pasture, the tribe of 
 Issachar ' rejoiced in their tents.' " There is no authority 
 whatever for rendering it "burdens," which seems to have 
 been suggested solely by the words " couching between," as 
 it was unnatural to suppose that if an ass couched betAveen 
 any two objects, it would of course be between two bur- 
 dens. But as the blessings of several of the other sons have 
 respect to the geographical features of their destined in- 
 heritance, it is natural to look for something of the same 
 kind in that of Issachar, and viewed in this light the words 
 yield a clear and striking sense, the appropriateness of which 
 to the matter of fact is obvious to every eye. Chal. " Is- 
 sachar rich in substance, and his possession shall be be- 
 tween the bounds;" Syr. " Issachar, a gigantic man, lying 
 down between the paths;" Targ. Jon. " He shall lie down 
 between the limits of his brethren ;" Jerus. Targ. " and his 
 boundary shall be situated between two limits." — " He saw 
 that rest was good." Instead of interpreting this prediction 
 with many commentators to the disparagement of Issachar, 
 as though he were to be addicted to ignominious ease, we 
 understand it in a sense directly the reverse, as intimating 
 that he should have so high an esteem of the promised 
 " rest" in another life, that he should give himself to unre- 
 mitting labour in this; that he should be so intent upon 
 " inheriting the earth" after the resurrection, the reversion 
 of the saints, that he should willingly subject himself to 
 toil, privation, and every species of endurance, with a view 
 to secure the exceeding great reward. Thus his character 
 would correspond with his name, the import of which is, 
 " he shall bear or carry a reward." — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 17. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an 
 adder in the path, that biteth the horse-heels, 
 so that his rider shall fall backward. 
 
 The only allusion to this species of serpent, (the Cerastes, 
 or horned snake,) in the sacred volume, occurs in the 
 valedictory predictions of Jacob, where he describes the 
 character and actions of Dan and his posterity : " Dan 
 shall be a serpent by the way, an adder (ps'^Bir sephiphon) 
 in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider 
 shall fall backward." It is indisputably clear, that the pa- 
 triarch intended some kind of serpent ; for the circum- 
 stances will not apply to a freebooter watching for his prey. 
 It only remains to investigate the species to which it be- 
 longs. The principal care of the Jewish writers, is to as- 
 certain the etymology of the name, about which their sen- 
 timents are much divided. The Arabian authors quoted 
 by Bochart, inform us, that the Sephiphon is a most perni- 
 cious reptile, and very dangerous to man. It is of a sandy 
 colour, variegated with black and white spots. The par- 
 ticulars in the character of Dan, however, agree better 
 with the Cerastes, or horned snake, than with any other 
 species of serpent. It lies in wait for passengers in the 
 sand, or in the rut of the wheels on the highway. From 
 its lurking-place, it treacherously bites the horse's heels, 
 so that the rider falls backward, in consequence of the 
 animal's hinder legs becoming almost immediately torpid 
 by the dreadful activity of the poison. The Cerastes is 
 equally formidable to man and the lower animals ; and 
 the more dangerous, because it is not easy to distinguish 
 him from the sand in which he lies ; and he never spares 
 the helpless traveller who unwarily comes within his reach. 
 " He moves," says Mr. Bruce, " with great rapidity, and 
 in all directions, forward, backward, and sidewise. When 
 he inclines to surprise any one who is too far from him, he 
 creeps with his side towards the person, and his head avert- 
 ed, till, judging his distance, he turns round, sj)rings upon 
 him, and fastens upon the part next to him ; for it is no* 
 true, what is said, that the Cerastes does not leap or spring 
 I saw one of them at Cairo, crawl up the side of a box, ir. 
 which there were many, and there lie still as if hiding 
 himself, till one of the people who brought them to us, came 
 near him, and though in a very disadvantngeous posture, 
 sticking, as it were, perpendicular to the side of the box, he 
 leaped near the distance of three feet, and fastened between 
 
Chap. 49. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 51 
 
 the man's fore-finger and thumb, so as to bring the blood. 
 The fellow showed no signs of either pain or fear : and we 
 kept him ^ith us fall four hours, without applying any sort 
 of remedy, or hi^ seeming inclined to do so. To make 
 myself assured that the animal was in its perfect state, I 
 made the man hold him by the neck, so as to force him to 
 open his mouth, and lacerate the thigh of a pelican, a bird I 
 had tamed, as big as a swan. The bird died in about thirteen 
 minutes, though it was apparently affected in fifty seconds; 
 and we cannot think it was a fair trial, because a very few 
 minutes before, it had bit, and so discharged a part of its 
 virus, and it was made to scratch the pelican by force, 
 without any irritation or action of its own." These ser- 
 pents have always been considered as extremely cunning, 
 both in escaping^heir enemies and seizing their prey : they 
 have even been called insidious ; a character which, frorh 
 the preceding statement, they seem to deserve. The Orien- 
 tals call him the Her in a-mbush ; for, in this manner, both 
 the Seventy and Samaritan render the text in Genesis; and 
 this appellation well agrees with his habits. Pliny says, 
 that the Cerastes hides its whole body in the sand, leaving 
 only its horns exposed, w^hich attract birds, who suppose 
 them to be grains of barley, till they are undeceived, too 
 late, by the darting of the serpent upon them. Ephraim, 
 the Syrian, also mentions a kmd of serpents whose heads 
 only are seen above the ground. Like the Cerastes, Dan 
 was to excel in cunning and in artifice, to prevail against 
 his enemies, rather by his policy in the cabinet than by his 
 valour in the field. But all the Jewish expositors refer the 
 words of Jacob to Samson, who belonged to that tribe, and 
 was undoubtedly the most illustrious personage of whom 
 they could boast. This remarkable man, Jehovah raised 
 up to deliver his chosen people, not so much brhis valour, 
 although his actions qlearly showed, that he was by no 
 means deficient in personal courage, as by his artful and 
 unexpected stratagems. This interpretation has been 
 adopted by several Christian expositors; while it has been 
 opposed by others as a needless refinement. It is unneces- 
 sary, and perhaps improper, to restrict the prediction to 
 Samson, when it can with equal propriety be applied to the 
 whole tribe. Whether the words of Jacob, in this instance, 
 were meant to express praise or blame, it may be diflicult 
 to determine ; but, if the deceitful and dangerous character 
 of the Cerastes, to which Dan is compared, be duly con- 
 sidered, the latter is more probable. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful 
 bough by a well, whose branches run over the 
 wall. 
 
 To the northward and westward are several villages, 
 interspersed with extensive orchards and vineyards, the 
 latter of which are generally enclosed by high walls. The 
 Persian vine-dressers do all in their power to make the 
 vine run up the walls, and curl over on the other side, 
 which they do by tying stones to the extremity of the ten- 
 dril. The vine, particularly in Turkey and Greece, is fre- 
 quently made to intwine on trellises, around a well, where, 
 in the heat of the day, whole families collect themselves, 
 and sit under the shade.— Morier. 
 
 All this falls very naturally on an eastern ear. Joseph 
 was the fruitful bough of Jacob, and being planted near a 
 well, his leaf would not wither, and he would bring forth 
 his fruit in his season. Great delight is taken in all kinds 
 of creepers, which bear edible fruits, and the natives allow 
 them to run over the walls and roofs of their houses. The 
 term "branches" in the verse is in the margin rendered 
 " daucrkters _;" and it is an interesting fact, {and one vMch 
 will throw light on some other passages,) that the same term 
 is used here to denote the same thing. " That man has 
 only one Chede, i. e. branch, daughter." " The youngest 
 Chede (branch) has got married this daj?' " Where are 
 your branches V " They are all married." " What a 
 young branch to be in this state !— how soon it has given 
 fruit !" When a mother has had a large family, " That 
 branch has borne plenty of fruit." A husband will say to 
 his wife, who is steril, " Of what use is a branch which 
 bears not fruit 1" The figure is much used in poetry. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 The people of Israel, and other oriental nations of those 
 days, appear to have bestowed particular attention on the 
 CTiitivation of the vine. The site of the vineyard was care- 
 
 fully chosen m f.elds of a loose crumbling soil, on a rich 
 plain, or on a sic ping hill rising with a gentle ascent ; or, 
 where the acclivity was very steep, on terraces supported 
 by masonry, and turned as much as possible from the 
 setting sun. The plot was enclosed with a wall ; the stones 
 and other encumbrances were removed, and the choicest 
 plants were selected to form the plantation. Within the 
 vineyard, low walls were sometimes raised for the purpose 
 of supporting the vines ; a practice which seems to have 
 been adopted before the days of Jacob ; for in the blessing 
 of Joseph, he speaks of it in a manner which shows that it 
 was quite familiar to the vine-dresser: "Joseph is a fruit- 
 ful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well ; whose branches 
 run over the wall." By this beautiful image then it appears, 
 that while the dying patriarch justly appreciated and highly 
 praised the admirable qualities of liis beloved son, he inti- 
 mated to his family in the most delicate but significant 
 manner, their obligation to Joseph for the protection and 
 comfort they enjoyed under his government. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 22. Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful 
 bough by a well, whose branches run over the 
 wall: 23. The archers have sorely grieved 
 him, and shot at him, and hated him. 
 
 I have shown, in preceding observations, that vines 
 in Judea sometimes grow against low stone walls ; but I 
 do not apprehend the ingenious Mr. Barrington can be 
 right, when he supposes, in a paper of his on the patriarchal 
 customs and manners, that Joseph is compared to a vine 
 growing against the wall, Gen. xlix. 22. As vines are 
 sometimes planted against a low wall, they might possibly 
 be planted against a low wall surrounding a well : though 
 it IS difficult to guess, why a wall should be built round 
 a well, in a vineyard, of such a height as to be proper for 
 the support of a vine ; and if it were, why archers direct 
 their arrows against it, when it would be so easy to gather 
 the fruit by hand, without injury. But I suppose this is 
 not an exact representation. In the first place, a vine is 
 not mentioned; it is only a, fruitful tree, in general, to 
 which Joseph is compared. Secondly, The being situated 
 near water, is extremely conducive, in that dry and hot 
 country, to the flourishing of vegetables in general ; and 
 trees among the rest. " We came," says Maundrell, " to 
 the fountain of Elisha. Close by the fountain grows a 
 large tree, spreading into boughs over the water, and here 
 in the shade we look a collation." A tree, we find, planted 
 near plenty of water, grows there to a large size. Thirdly, 
 the wild Arabs of those countries are great plunderers of 
 fruit. Maillet assigns that as the reason why the fruit of 
 the land of Egvpt, in these later times, is not better, namely, 
 that they are wont to gather it before it is properly ripened, 
 on account of the Arabs, who would otherwise rob them of 
 it. Fourthly, It is very well known, that walls easily stop 
 Arabs, who are continually on horseback in their roving 
 about, and do not care to quit them, nor are used to climb 
 walls. They had no better way then to get the fruit of 
 those trees, whose luxuriant boughs ran over the walls of 
 their enclosures, than by throwing their bludgeons at them, 
 and gathering up the fruit that fell on the outside of the 
 wall. To these things should be added. Fifthly, That the 
 word translated arrotcs, means, not only those things that 
 we are wont to call arrows, but such sticks as are throwii 
 by the hand, as well as those missile weapons that are 
 darted by means of a bow; for we find the word is made 
 use of to express the staflf of a spear, 1 Sam. xvii. 7, and 
 consequently any piece of wood long in proportion to its 
 diameter, especially if used as a missile instrument. The 
 lords of arrows nnn ^Sy^ baalee chitseem, for that is the 
 Hebrew expression, conformable to an eastern mode of 
 speech, which we translate archers, is a natural description 
 of the wild Arabs, those lords of bludgeons, in committing 
 their depredations on the eastern gardens and vineyards. 
 But this manner of treating the vine would not be advan- 
 tageous ; bunches of grapes are bv no means thus to be 
 dislodged, and the fall would spoil the fruit. But there are 
 other trees whose fruit might thus be gathered; among the 
 rest, I suppose the pomegranate, whose fruit has so hard a 
 shell, as neither to be injured by the fall, or destroyed by 
 an accidental blow of the sticks^ they_ used for pelting the 
 tree. The destroying a man is sometimes compared to the 
 cutting down a tree :' " I knew not," said the Prophet Jere- 
 
52 
 
 GENESIS, 
 
 Chap. 50. 
 
 miah, " that tiiey had devised devices against me, saying, 
 Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut 
 him off from the land of the living, that his name may be 
 no more remembered," Jer. xi. 19. But the envious brethren 
 of Joseph did not imbrue their hands in his blood, they did 
 not destroy liim as men destroy a tree when they cut it 
 down, but they terribly distressed him ; they sold him for 
 a slave into Egypt : he had flourished in the favour of his 
 father and of his God, like a tree by a reservoir of water; 
 but they for a time dishonoured him, as a tree is disgraced 
 by the breaking its boughs, and knocking off its leaves, by 
 the wild Arabs, who want to derive some advantage from 
 battering it after this manner, when they cannot come at it 
 to destroy it. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 27. Benjamin shall raven as a wolf: in the 
 mornings he shall devour the prey, and at night 
 he shall divide the spoil. 
 
 The wolf is weaker than the lion or the bear, and less 
 courageous than the leopard; but he scarcely yields to 
 them in cruelty and rapaciousness. So Benjamin, although 
 not destitute of courage and address, nor disinclined to 
 war, possessed neither the strength, nor the manly spirit of 
 Judah, whose symbol was the lion's whelp ; but yet he was 
 greedy of blood, and delighted in rapine ; and in the early 
 periods of Jewish history, he distinguished himself by an 
 active and restless spirit, which commonly, like the wolf 
 among lambs and kids, spent itself in petty or inglorious 
 v/arfare, although it sometimes blazed forth in deeds of 
 heroic valour, and general utility. He had the honour of 
 giving the second judge to the nation of Israel, who deliv- 
 ered them from the oppressive yoke of Moab ; and the first 
 king who sat on the tnrone of" that chosen people, whose 
 valour saved them from the iron sceptre of Ammon, and 
 more than once revenged the barbarities of the uncircum- 
 cised Philistines upon their discomfited hosts. In the de- 
 cline of the Jewish commonwealth, Esther and Mordecai, 
 who were both of this tribe, successfully interposed with 
 the King of Persia, for the deliverance of their brethren, 
 and took their station in the first rank of public benefactors. 
 But the tribe of Benjamin ravened like wolves, that are so 
 ferocious as to de/our one another, when they desperately 
 espoused the cause of Gibeah, and in the d.ishonourable 
 
 and bloody feud, reduced their own tribe to the very brink 
 of ruin, and inflicted a deep wound on the other members 
 of the state. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 50. ver. 10. And they came to the thresh- 
 ing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan ; and 
 there they mourned with a great and very sore 
 lamentation : and he made a mourning for his 
 father seven days. 
 
 See on chap. 45. 3. 
 
 Ver. 26. So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten 
 years old: and they embalmed him, and he 
 was put in a coffin in Egypt. 
 
 The people of the East do not in general put their dead 
 in a coffin ; they simply fold up the corpse in a mat. When 
 dying, the head is always placed towards the south, and in 
 the grave also in the same direction. When a person is 
 very ill, should another ask how he is, he will reply, " Ah ! 
 his head is towards the south ;" meaning there is no hope. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 When Joseph died, he was not only embalmed, but put 
 in a coffin. This was an honour appropriated to persons 
 of distinction, coffins not being universally used in Egypt, 
 Maillet, speaking of the Egyptian repositories of the dead, 
 having given an account of several niches that are found 
 there, says, " it must not be imagined that the bodies 
 deposited in these gloomy apartments were all enclosed in 
 chests, and placed in niches ; the greatest part were simply 
 embalmed and swathed after that manner that every one 
 hath some notion of; after which they laid them one by the 
 side of another without any ceremony : some were even 
 put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or such 
 a slight one, that there remains nothing of them in the 
 linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and those 
 half rotten." Antique cofl5ns of stone, and sycamore wood, 
 are still to be seen in Egypt. It is said that some were 
 formerly made of a kind of pasteboard, formed by folding 
 and gluing cloth together a great number of times ; these 
 were curiously plastered and painted with hieroglyphics.— 
 Thevenot. 
 
 1 
 
EXODUS. 
 
 • Chap. 1. ver, 14. And they made their lives bit- 
 j ter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, 
 
 and in all manner of service in the field : all 
 ' their service, wherein they made them serve, 
 
 was with rigour. 
 
 Of a bad man it is said, in the East, " He makes the lives 
 of his servants bitter." Also, " Ah! the fellow : the heart 
 of his wife is made bitter," " My soul is bitter." " My 
 heart is like the bitter tree." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. And he said, When ye do the office of 
 a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them 
 upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill 
 him ; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. 
 
 There have been great difficulties started in the nature and 
 use of the instruments here rendered stools, (Heb. stones.) Ac- 
 cording to the rendering of the established version, it would 
 seem that they were designed for procuring a more easy 
 delivery for women in labour. But besides that stone seats 
 were obviously very unfit for such a purpose, the Hebrew 
 word plainly signifies a vessel of stone for holding water, 
 (Ex. vii. 19.) A far more probable interpretation, we think, 
 is made out by referring the pronoun them, not to the moth- 
 ers, but to the children. The sense of the passage would 
 then be this : — " When ye see the new-born children, for 
 the purpose of being washed, laid in the troughs or vessels 
 of stone for holding water, ye shall destroy the boys." A 
 passage from Thevenot seems to confirm this construction. 
 " The kings of Persia are so afraid of being deprived of 
 that power which they abuse, and are so apprehensive of 
 being dethroned, that they destroy the children of their 
 female relations, when they are brought to bed of boys, by 
 putting them into an earthen trough, where they sufier them 
 to starve ;" that is, probably, under pretence of preparing to 
 wa,sh them, they let them pine away or destroy them in the 
 water. — B. 
 
 Ver. 19. And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, 
 Because the Hebrew women are not as the 
 Egyptian women ; for they are lively, and are 
 delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. 
 
 Oriental women suflfer little from parturition ; for those 
 of better condition are frequently on foot the day after de- 
 livery, and out of all confinement on the third day. They 
 seldom call midwives, and when they do, they are some- 
 times delivered before they come to their assistance ; the 
 poorer sort, while they are labouring or planting, go aside, 
 deliver themselves, wash the child, lay it in a cloth, and 
 return to work again. The same facility attended the He- 
 brew women in Egypt; and the assertion of the midwives 
 seems to have been literally true. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 2. ver. 5. And the daughter of Pharaoh 
 :;ame down to wash herself at the river ; and 
 her maidens walked along by the river's side. 
 
 All this is very natural. "Wherever there is a river, or 
 a tank, which is known to be free from alligators, there fe- 
 males go in companies to some retired place to bathe. There 
 are so- many ceremonies, and so many causes for dejile- 
 rnent, among the Hindoos, that the duty has often to be at- 
 tended to. In the Scanda Purana, the beautiful daughter 
 of Mougaly is described as going to the river with her 
 maidens to bathe. — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 3. ver. 5. And he said, Draw not nigh 
 hither: put off th}?- shoes from off thy feet ; ifor 
 the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. 
 
 See on Gen. 14. 23. 
 
 No heathen would presum-e to go on holy ground, or en- 
 ter a temple, or any other sacred place, without first taking 
 off" his sandals. Even native Christians, on entering a 
 church or chapel, generally do the same thing. No res- 
 pectable man would enter the house of another without 
 having first taken oflf his sandals, which are generally left 
 at the door, or taken inside by a servant. — Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 7. ver. 1. And the Lord said unto Moses, 
 See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh : and 
 Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. 
 
 A man who is afraid to go into the presence of a king, 
 or a governor, or a great man, will seek an interview with 
 the minister, or some principal character ; and should he 
 be much alarmed, it will be said, " Fear not, friend ; I will 
 make you as a god to the king." " What ! are you afraid, 
 of the collector] fear not; you will be as a god to him." 
 " Yes, yes, that upstart was once much afraid of the great 
 ones ; but now he is like a god among them." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. For they cast down every man his rod, 
 and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod 
 swallowed up their rods. 
 
 The rods of the magicians were hardly travelling staves, 
 but doubtless such as they bore by virtue of their office as 
 priests and servants of God. The Roman augurs were, 
 m the like manner, accustomed to carry a staff called li.- 
 tures, which was crooked at the top, as described by Cice- 
 ro {on Divination, b. i. chap. 17.) That these staves were 
 a Roman invention, is improbable ; they were derived, 
 like others of their sacred customs, from the religion of 
 older nations. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 18. And the fish that is in the river shall 
 die, and the river shall stink ; and the Egyp- 
 tians shall loathe to drink of the water of the 
 river. 
 
 There are few wells in Egypt, but their waters are not 
 drank, being unpleasant and unwholesome ; the water of 
 the Nile is what they universally make use of in this coun- 
 try, which is looked upon to be extraordinarily whole- 
 some, and at the same time, extremely delicious. " The 
 water of Egypt," says the Abbe Mascrier, " is so delicious, 
 that one would not wish the heat should be less, nor to be 
 delivered from the sensation of thirst. The Turks find it 
 so exquisitely charming, that they excite themselves to 
 drink of it by eating salt. It is a common saying among 
 them, that if Mohammed had drank of it, he would have 
 begged of God not to have died, that he might always have 
 done it. They add, that whoever has once drank of it, he 
 ought to drink of it a second time. This is what the peo- 
 ple of the country told me, when they saw me return from 
 ten years' absence. When the Egyptians undertake the 
 pilgrimage of Mecca, or go out of their country on any 
 other account, they speak of nothing but the pleasure they 
 shall find at their return in drinking the Nile water. There 
 is nothing to be compared to this satisfaction; it surpasses 
 in their esteem that of seeing their relations again, and 
 their families. Agreeably to this, all those that have tasted 
 of this water allow that they never met with the like in 
 any other place. In truth, when one drinks of it the first 
 time, it seems to be some water prepared by art. It has 
 something in it inexpressibly agreeable and pleasing to the 
 taste ; and we ought to give it perhaps the same rank 
 among waters, which champaigne has among wines. I 
 must confess, however, it has, to my taste, too much sweet- 
 ness. But its most valuable quality is, that it is infinitely 
 salutary. Drink it in what quantities you will, it never ia 
 
54 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 8. 
 
 theleast incommodes you. This is so true, that it is no un- 
 common thing to see some persons drink three buckets of 
 it in a day, without finding the least inconvenience. . . 
 "When I give such encomiums to the water of Egypt, it is 
 right to observe, that I speak only of that of the Nile, which 
 indeed is the only water there which is drinkable. Well- 
 water is detestable and unwholesome ; fountains are so rare, 
 that they are a kind of prodigy in that country; and as for 
 the rain-water, it would be in vain to attempt preserving that, 
 jsince scarce any falls in Egypt." The embellishments of 
 a Frenchman may be seen here, but the fact, however, in 
 general is indubitable. A person that never before heard 
 of this delicacy of the water of the Nile, and the large 
 quantities that on that account, are drank of it, will, I am 
 very sure, find an energy in those words of Moses to Pha- 
 raoh, Exod. vii. 18, The Egyptian shall loathe to drink of the 
 icater of the river ^ which he never observed before. They 
 will loathe to drink of that water which they used to prefer 
 to all the waters of the universe, loathe to drink of that 
 which they had been wont eagerly to long for ; and will 
 rather choose to drink of well-water, which is in their 
 country so detestable. And as none of our commentators, 
 that I know of, have observed this energy, my reader, I 
 hope, will not be displeased that I have remarked it here. 
 — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 19. And that there may be blood through- 
 out all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of 
 wood, and in vessels of stone. 
 
 Perhaps these words do not signify, that the water that 
 had been taken up into their vessels, was changed into 
 blood. The water of the Nile is known to be very thick 
 and muddy, and they purify it either by a paste made of 
 almonds, or by filtrating it through certain pots of white 
 earth, which is the preferable way, and therefore the pos- 
 session of one of these pots is thought a great happiness. 
 Now, may not the meaning of this passage be, that the wa- 
 ter of the Nile should not only look red and nauseous, like 
 blood in the river, but in their vessels too, when taken up 
 in small quantities; and that no method whatever of puri- 
 fying it should take place, but whether drank out of vessels 
 of wood, or out of vessels of stone, by means of which they 
 were wont to purge the Nile water, it should be the same, 
 and should appear like blood 1 Some method must have 
 .been used in very early days to clarify the water of the 
 Nile ; the mere letting it stand to settle, hardly seems suffi- 
 cient, especially if we consider the early elegance that ob- 
 tained in Egypt. So simple an invention then as filtrating 
 vessels may easily be supposed to be as ancient as the time 
 of Moses ; and to them therefore it seems natural to sup- 
 pose the threatening refers. — Harmer. 
 
 The changing of the river into blood, in colour, I saw 
 partially accomplished. For the first four or five days of 
 the Nile's increase the waters are of a muddy red, owing 
 to their being impregnated with a reddish coal in the upper 
 country ; as this is washed away, the river becomes of a 
 greenish yellow for four or five days. "When I first ob- 
 served this, I perceived that the animalculse in the water 
 were more numerous than at any other period ; even the 
 Arabs Avould not drink the water without straining it 
 through a rag : " And the river stank, and the Egyptians 
 could not drink of the water of the river." — Madden, 
 
 Chap. 8. ver. 4. And the frogs shall come up, 
 both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon 
 all thy servants. 
 
 This loathsome plague extended to every place, and to 
 every class of men. The frogs came up and covered the 
 land of Egypt; they entered into their houses, and into 
 their bed-chambers ; they crawled upon their persons, upon 
 their beds, and into their kitchen utensils. The whole 
 country, their palaces, their temples, their persons — all was 
 polluted and hateful. Nor was it in their power to wash 
 away the nauseous filth with which they were tainted, for 
 every stream and every lake was full of pollution. To a 
 people who affected the most scrupulous purity in their 
 persons, their habitations, and manner of living, nothing 
 almost can be conceived more insufferable than this plague. 
 The frog is, compared with many other reptiles, a harm- 
 .^ss animal ; it neither injures by its bite nor by its poison ; 
 
 but it must have excited on that occasion, a disgust which 
 rendered life an almo-t insupportable burden. The eye 
 was tormented with beholding the march of their impure 
 legions, and the ear with hearing the harsh tones of their 
 voices: the Egyptians could recline upon no bed where they 
 were not compelled to admit their cold and filthy embrace ; 
 thev tasted no food which was not infected by their touch ; 
 and they smelled no perfume, but the foetid stench of their 
 slime, or the putrid exhalations emitted from their dead 
 carcasses. The insufl!erable annoyance of such insignificant 
 creatures illustriously displayed the power of God, while it 
 covered the haughty and unfeeling persecutors of his peo- 
 ple with confusion, and filled them with utter dismay. 
 How much the Egyptians endured from this visitation, is 
 evident from the haste with which Pharaoh sent for Moses 
 and Aaron, and begged the assistance of their prayers : 
 " Entreat the Lord that he may take away the frogs from 
 me and from my people; and 1 Avill let the people go that 
 they may do sacrifice unto the Lord." Reduced to great 
 extremity, and receiving no deliverance from the pretended 
 miracles of his magicians, he had recourse to that God, 
 concerliing whom he had so proudly demanded, " Who is 
 Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let Israel gol" 
 Subdued and instructed by adversity, he implores his 
 compassion, and acknowledges the glory of his name ; but, 
 as the event proved, not with a sincere heart : " Then said 
 Moses, Glory over me ;" an obscure phrase, which is ex- 
 plained by the next clause, " when shall I entreat for thee 1" 
 that is, according to some writers, although it belongs not 
 to thee, Pharaoh, to prescribe to me the time of thy deliver- 
 ance, which entirely depends on the will and pleasure of 
 God alone ; yet I, who am a prophet, and the interpreter 
 of his will, grant thee, in his name, the choosing of the 
 time when this plague shall be removed. But this inter- 
 pretation is more ingenious than solid. Moses intends ra- 
 ther to suggest an antithesis between the perverse boasting 
 of the proud monarch, and the pious glonation of the hum- 
 bled penitent, who was now reduced to cry for mercy. 
 Thus far, said Moses, thou hast trusted in thine own pow- 
 er ; then, fascinated with the deceitful miracle of the ma- 
 gicians, thou hast perversely exalted thyself against the 
 God of heaven ; now rather glory that thou hast in me an 
 intercessor with God, whose prayers for thy deliverance he 
 will not refuse to hear : and in proof that he is the only 
 true God, and that I bear his commission, fix thou the time 
 of deliverance. 
 
 " And he said. To-morrow, And he said. Be it according 
 to thy word : that thou mayst know, that there is none like 
 unto the Lord our God." To-morrow, said Pharaoh : but 
 why not to-day 7 It was to be expected, that the vexed and 
 humbled monarch would ask for instant relief. It is prob- 
 able, the king had called Moses and Aaron in the evening, 
 and that he durst not ask the promised deliverance on the 
 same day, because he thought it was not to be obtained 
 without inany prayers. Whatever might be the true reason 
 of Pharaoh's procrastination, the renowned Calvin seems 
 to have no ground for his opinion, that his only reason was, 
 after obtaining his desire, to depart as formerly from his 
 engagement to let the people go ; and that Moses, content 
 with his promise, retired to intercede with Jehovah in his 
 favour. That great man was persuaded, that the plague 
 was immediately removed, not sufl^ered to continue till next 
 day. It is better, however, to abide by the obvious mean- 
 ing of the clear and precise terms used on that occasion, 
 both by the king and the prophet: " and he said. To-mor- 
 row. And he said. Be it according to thy word." Moses 
 and Aaron, it is true, " went out from Pharaoh, and imme- 
 diately cried unto the Lord, because of the frogs which he 
 had brought against Pharaoh." But it is not said, the Lord 
 immediately removed the plague ; but only, that he " did 
 according to the word of Moses." Now, Moses had prom- 
 ised relief next day, in the clearest terms, and we have 
 every reason to suppose, that his intercession proceeded 
 upon his promise ; therefore, when the Lord did according 
 to the word of Moses, he removed the frogs on the next day. 
 They were not, however, swept away, like the locusts 
 which succeeded them, but destroyed, and left on the face 
 of the ground. They were not annihilated, nor resolved 
 into mud, nor marched back into the river, from whence 
 they had come ; but left dead upon the ground, to prove the 
 truth of the miracle, — that they had not died by the hands 
 of men, but by the power of God ; that the great deliverance 
 
Chap. 9. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 5.:> 
 
 was not like the works of the magicians, a lying wonder, 
 but a real interposition of almighty power, and an effect of 
 divine goodness. The Egyptians were, therefore, reduced 
 to the necessity of collecting them into heaps, which had 
 the effect of more rapidly disengaging the putrid effluvia, 
 and thus for a time, increasing ,jthe wretchedness of the 
 country. Their destruction was probably followed by a 
 pestilence, which cut off many of the people, in addition to 
 those that died in consequence of the grievous vexations 
 they endured from their loathsome adversaries ; for, in one 
 of the songs of Ziou, it is said, " He sent frogs, which de- 
 stroyed them ;" laid waste their lands, and infected them- 
 selves wiih pestilential disorders. In another Psalm, the 
 sweet singer of Israel brings the frogs which destroyed the 
 Egyptians, from the land ; whereas, Moses avers, they were 
 produced by the river : " Their land brought forth frogs in 
 abundance, in the chambers of their kings;" but the differ- 
 ence is only apparent, and may be easily reconciled ; for 
 the Psalmist may be understood as referring, not to any 
 kind of land, but to the miry soil on the banks, or the mud 
 in the bottom of the river. But the truth is, he uses a term, 
 which signifies a region or country, comprehending both 
 land and water. His true meaning then is. Their land or 
 country, of which the Nile is a part, brought forth frogs : 
 lor the land of Egypt certainly produces whatever the Nile 
 contains. Were it necessary to prove so clear a position, 
 the words of Moses might be quoted, in which he reminds 
 the people of Israel, that they came in the course of their 
 journeyings to Jobath, a land of rivers ; and the sublime 
 ascription of Habakkuk : " Thou didst cleave the earth 
 with rivers." The sea itself, belongs as it were to the 
 neighbouring countries ; for it is said, that Solomon con- 
 structed a fleet " in the land of Edom;" that is, in the sea 
 which washed the shores of Edom. 
 
 It has been inquired, why David in the same passage 
 says, the frogs penetrated into the chamber-s of their kings. 
 The answer is easy : the plural is often used for the singu- 
 lar in Hebrew : thus the Psalmist himself: " "We will go 
 into his tabernacles ;" although there was but one taber- 
 nacle where the people of Israel assembled for religious 
 worship. The servants of Nebuchadnezzar accused the 
 three children in these terms : " they do not worship thy 
 gods," meaning only the golden image, which the king had 
 set up in the plain of Dura. The language of David, there- 
 fore, in the text under consideration, meant no more than 
 the king's palace. Some interpreters propose another solu- 
 tion : That the kingdom of Egypt was at that time divided 
 into a number of small independent states, governed each 
 by its own prince, and that all of them were equally sub- 
 jected to the plague ; but although it must be granted that 
 this country was in succeeding ages, divided into a number 
 of small principalities, no evidence has been adduced in 
 support of such a state of things in the time of Moses ; on 
 the contrary, the whole tenor of his narrative leads to the 
 opposite conclusion. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose, 
 that the principal grandees of Egypt, many of whom were 
 persons of great power and influence in the state, received 
 from the royal Psalmist the title of kings ; it is certainly 
 not more incongruous, than to give the title of princes 
 to the merchants of Tyre ; or the title of kings to the princes 
 of Assyria. The meaning of the j)assage then, is briefly 
 this the potent monarch of Egypt, in the midst of his vas- 
 sal ,>rinces, in the innermOvSt recesses of his palace, could 
 find no means of defence against the ceaseless intrusion of 
 the impure vermin which covered the face of his dominions, 
 and equally infested the palaces of the rich, and the cottages 
 of the poor ; the awful abode of the king, and the clay-built 
 hovel of the mendicant. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 9. And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory 
 c^ver me : when shall I entreat for thee, and for 
 thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy the 
 frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may 
 remain in the river only ? 
 
 The margin has, for " glory," " honour," and for " over 
 me," " against me." Pharaoh had besought Moses to pray 
 that the Lord might take away the frogs, and Moses wish- 
 ed the king to have the honour or glory (in preference to 
 niraself) of appointing a time when he should thus pray to 
 me Lord to take them awiy. This was not only compli- 
 
 mentary to Pharaoh, but it would have a strong tendency 
 to convince him that the Lord had heard the prayer of Mo- 
 ses, because he himself had appointed the time. The Tamui 
 translation* has this, " Let the honour be to you (or over 
 me) to appoint a time when I shall pray." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 16. And the Lord said unto Moses, Say 
 unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the 
 dust of the land, that it may become lice throug ■.• 
 out all the land of Egypt. 
 
 The learned have not been agreed in their opinion con- 
 cerning the third of the plagues of Egypt: Exod. viii. 16, 
 &c. Some of the ancients suppose that gTiats, or some an- 
 imals resembling them, were meant ; whereas our transla- 
 tors, and many of the moderns, understand the original 
 word o-'jr ki7meem, as signifying lice. Bishop Patrick, m 
 his commentary, supposes that Bochart has suflftciently 
 proved, out of the text itself, that our version is right, since 
 gnats are bred in fenny places, he might have said with 
 truth, and with much greater energy of argument, in wa- 
 ter, whereas the animals Moses here speaks of, were 
 brought out of the dust of the earth. A passage I lately 
 met with, in Vinisaur's account of the expedition of oiir 
 King Richard the First into the Holy Lancf, may, perhaps, 
 give a truer representation of this Egyptian plague, than 
 those that suppose they were gnats, or those that suppose 
 they were lice, that God used on that occasion, as the in- 
 strument of that third correction. Speaking of the march- 
 ing of that army of Croisaders, from Cayphas to where the 
 ancient Caesarea stood, that writer informs us, that each 
 night certain worms distressed them, commonly called tar- 
 rentes, which crept upon the ground, and occasioned a very 
 burning heat by most painful punctures. They hurt no- 
 body in the day time, but when night came on they ex- 
 tremely pestered them, being armed with stings, conveying 
 a poison which quickly occasioned those that were wound- 
 ed by them to swell, and was attended with the most acuto 
 pains. — Harmer. 
 
 Chap. 9. ver. 8. And the Lord said unto Moses 
 and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes 
 of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it to- 
 wards the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. 
 
 When the magicians pronounce an imprecation on ai. 
 individual, a village, or a country, they take ashes of cow's 
 dung, (or from a common fire,) and throw them in the air, 
 saying to the objects of their displeasure, such a sickness, 
 or such a curse, shall surely come upon you. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. And the hail smote throughout all the 
 land of Egypt all that was in the field, both 
 man and beast ; and the hail smote every herb 
 of the field, and brake every tree of the field. 
 
 I do not apprehend that it is at all necessary to suppose, 
 that all the servants, and all the cattle of the Egyptians, 
 that were abroad at the time the hail fell, which Moses 
 threatened, and which was attended with thunder and 
 lightning, died ; it is sufficient to suppose they all felt the 
 hailstones, and that several of them were killed. This 
 was enough to justify the words of Moses, that it should be 
 a " grievous hail, such as had not fallen before in Egypt 
 from its foundation." For though it hails sometimes in 
 Egypt as well as rains, as Dr. Pococke found it hailed at 
 Fioume, when he was there in February; and thunders 
 too, as Thevenot says it did one night in December, when 
 he was at Cairo ; yet fatal effects are not wont to follow in 
 that country, as appears from what Thevenot says of this 
 thunder, which, he tells us, killed a man in the castle there, 
 though it had never been heard before that thunder had 
 killed anybody at Cairo. For divers people then to have 
 been killed by the lightning and the hail, besides cattle, 
 was an event that Moses might well say had never happened 
 there before, from the time it began to be inhabited. I will 
 
 * Which is made from the original ; and the genius of the language i3 
 every way more suited to the Hebrew, than ours. And nearly all the 
 orientalisms in the marginal references of the English Bible are in* 
 serted in the textoiitis Tamul translation. 
 
ft6 
 
 EXOD0S. 
 
 Chaf. 10—11. 
 
 » ©niy add, that Moses, by representing this as an extraordi- 
 nary hail_ supposed that it did sometimes hail there, as it is 
 found in fact to do, though not as in other countries : the 
 not raining in Egypt, it is well known, is to be understood 
 in the same manner. — Harmer. 
 
 Chap. 10. ver. 11, Not so: go now ye that are 
 men, and serve the Lord : for that ye did de- 
 sire. And they were driven out from Pha- 
 raoh's presence. 
 
 Among natives of rank, when a person is very impor- 
 tunate or troublesome, when he presses for something 
 which the former are not willing to grant, he is told to 
 begone. Should he still persist, the servants are called, 
 and the order is given, " Drive that fellow out." He is 
 then seized by the n£ck, or taken by the hamds, and dragged 
 from the premises ; he all the time screaming and bawling 
 as if they were taking his life. Thus to be driven out is 
 the greatest indignity which can be offered, and nothing 
 but the most violent rage will induce a superior to have 
 recourse to it,— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. And the Lord turned a mighty strong 
 west wind, which took away the locusts, and 
 cast them into the Red Sea ; there remained 
 not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt. 
 
 It was not the purpose of God to complete every punish- 
 ment at once, but to carry on these judgments in a series, 
 and by degrees to cut off all hopes, and every resource 
 upon which the Egyptians depended. By the hail and 
 thunder and fire mingled with rain, both the flax and 
 barley were entirely ruined, and their pastures must have 
 been greatly injured. The wheat and rye were not yet in 
 ear; and such was the fertility of the soil in Egypt, that a 
 T-ery short time would have sufficed for the leaves of the 
 trees, and the grass of the field, to have been recruited. 
 To complete, therefore, these evils, it pleased God to send 
 a host of locusts, to devour every 1-eaf and blade of grass, 
 which had been left in the former devastation, and what- 
 ever was beginning to vegetate. It is hard to conceive 
 how v/ide the mischief extends, when a cloud of these 
 insects comes upon a country. They devour to the very 
 root and bark, so that it is a long time before vegetation 
 can be renewed. How dreadful their inroads at all times 
 were, may be known from a variety of authors, both 
 ancient and modern. They describe them as being brought 
 by one wind, and carried off by another. They swarm 
 greatly in Asia and Africa. In respect to Europe, Theve- 
 not tells us, that the region upon the Boristhenes, and 
 particularly that inhabited by the Cossacks, is greatly 
 infested with locusts, especially in a dry season. They 
 come in vast clouds, which extend fifteen and sometimes 
 eighteen miles, and are nine to twelve in breadth. The 
 air, by their interposition, is rendered quite obscure, how- 
 ever bright the day may have been before. In two hours 
 they devour all the corn, where-.^er they settle, and often a 
 famine ensues. At night, when they repose upon the 
 earth, the ground is covered with them four inches deep, 
 or more : and if a carriage goes over them, and they are 
 mashed under foot, the smell of them is scarcely to be 
 borne, especially when they are reduced to a state of 
 putrefaction. They come from Circassia, Mingrelia, and 
 Tartary, on which account the natives rejoice in a north 
 or northeast wind, which carries them into the Black Sea, 
 where they perish. The vast region of Asia, especially 
 the southern part, is liable to their depredations. China 
 is particularly infested with them; and the natives use 
 various means to obviate the evil, which is generally too 
 powerful to be evaded. But the most fearful account's are 
 from Africa, where the heat of the climate, and the nature 
 of the soil in many places, contribute to the production of 
 these animals in astonishing numbers.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 21, And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch 
 out thy hand towards heaven, that there may be 
 darkness over the land of Egypt, even dark- 
 ness which may be felt. 
 
 When the magicians deliver their predictions, they 
 
 stretch forth the right hand towards heaven, to show that 
 they have power, and that God favours them. The Tamul 
 translation has this, " darkness which causeth to feel;" i. e. 
 so dark that a man is obliged to feel for his way, and untii 
 he shall have so felt, he cannot proceed. Thus the dark- 
 ness was so great, that their eyes were not ol aiij use j they 
 were obliged to grope for their way. — Roberts. 
 
 [This is probably a correct view of the passage, as a 
 darkness consisting of thick clammy fogs, of vapours and 
 exhalations so condensed as to be perceived by the organs 
 of touch, would have extinguished animal life in a few 
 Moments.] — B. 
 
 Ver, 28, And Pharaoh said unto him. Get thee 
 from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no 
 more : for in that day thou seest my face, thou 
 shalt die. 
 
 Has a servant, an agent, or an officer, deeply offended 
 his superior, he will say to him, " Take care never to see my 
 face again ; for on the day you do that, evil shall come up- 
 on you." " Begone, and m future never look in this face" 
 pointing to his own. — Roberts, 
 
 Chap. 11. ver. 2, Speak now in the ears of the 
 people, and let every man borrow of his neigh- 
 bour, and every woman of her neighbour, 
 jewels of silver, and jewels of gold. 
 
 Dr, Boothroyd, instead of borrow, translates "ask." Dr. 
 A. Clarke says, " request, demand, require." The Israel- 
 ites wished to go three days' journey into the wilderness, 
 that they might hold a feast unto the Lord. When the 
 Orientals go to their sacred festivals, they always put on 
 their best jewels. Not to appear before the gods in such a 
 way, they consider would be disgraceful to themselves and 
 displeasing to the deities. A person, whose clothes or 
 jewels are indifferent, will borrow of his richer neigh- 
 bours ; and nothing is more common than to see poor peo- 
 ple standing before the temples, or engaged in sacred cere- 
 monies, well adorned with jewels. The almost pauper 
 bride or bridegroom at a marriage may often be seen deck- 
 ed with gems of the most costly kind, which have been 
 borrowed for the occasion. It fully accords, therefore, 
 with the idea of what is due at a sacred or social feast, lo 
 be thus adorned in their best attire. Under these circum- 
 stances, it would be perfectly easy to borrow of the Egyp- 
 tians their jewels, as they themselves, in their festivals, 
 would doubtless wear the same things. It is also recorded, 
 the Lord gave them " favour in the sight of the Egj^ptians." 
 It does not appear to have been fully known to the He- 
 brews, that they were going finally to leave Eg}'pt: they 
 might expect to return; and it is almost certairi that, if 
 their oppressors had known they were not to return, they 
 would not have lent them their jewels. 
 
 The Lord, however, did say to Moses, in chap, iii, 11., 
 that He would " bring forth the children of Israel out of 
 Egypt," and that they should worship Him upon that moun- 
 tain ; but whether Moses fully understood Him is not cer- 
 tain. But the Lord knew ! — certainly He did. And as 
 a father, or a master, who saw his children, or slaves, de- 
 prive each other of their rightful pay, (as the Egyptians did 
 the Israelites,) had a right to give to the injured what they 
 had been unjustly deprived of: so the Lord, in whose hands 
 are all things, who daily takes from one, and gives to an- 
 other; and who builds up, or destroys, the families of the 
 earth ; would have an undoubted right to give to the He- 
 brews that property of which the Egyptians had so unjustly 
 and cruelly deprived them. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5, And all the first-born in the land of Egypt 
 shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that 
 sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born 
 of the maid-servant that is behind the mill ; 
 and all the first-born of beasts. 
 
 In the first ages, they parched or roasted their grain ; 
 a practice which the people of Israel, as we learn from the 
 scriptures, long continued ; afterward they pounded it in 
 a mortar, to which Solomon thus alludes : " Though thou 
 shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat, with a pes^ 
 
Chap. 12. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 57 
 
 tie, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." This was 
 succeeded by mills, similar to the handmills formerly used 
 in this country; of which there were two sorts: the first 
 were large, and turned by the strength of horses or asses : 
 the second were smaller, and wrought by men, commonly 
 by slaves condemned to this hard labour, as a punishment 
 for their crimes. Chardin remarks in his manuscript, that 
 the persons employed are generally female slaves, who are 
 least regarded, or are least fit for any thing else : for the 
 work is extremely laborious, and esteemed the lowest em- 
 ployment about the house. Most of their corn is ground 
 by these little mills, although they sometimes make use of 
 large mills, wrought by oxen or camels. Near Ispahan, 
 and some of the other great cities of Persia, he saw water- 
 mills ; but he did not meet with a single windmill in the 
 East. Almost every family grinds their wheat and barley 
 at home, having two portable millstones for that purpose; 
 ' of which the uppermost is turned round by a small handle 
 of wood or iron, that is placed in the rim. When this stone 
 is large, or expedition is required, a second person is called' 
 in to assist ; and as it is usual for the women only to be 
 '( concerned in this employment, who seat themselves over 
 ) against each other, with the millstone between them, we 
 I may see the propriety of the expression in the declaration 
 ; of Moses: " And all the first-born in the land of Egypt 
 shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh, that sitteth upon 
 his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant, 
 that is behind the mill." The manner in which the hand- 
 mills are worked, is well described by Dr. Clarke : " Scarce- 
 ly had we reached the apartment prepared for our recep- 
 i tion, when looking from the window, into the courtyard 
 belonging to the house, we beheld two women grinding at 
 ! the mill, in a manner most forcibly illustrating the saying 
 1 of our Saviour : ' Two women shall be grinding at the 
 i mill, the one shall be taken and the other left.' They were 
 I preparing flour to make our bread, as it is always cusiom- 
 j ary in the country when strangers arrive. The two women, 
 I seated upon the ground opposite to each other, held between 
 them two round flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, 
 and such as in Scotland are called querns. In the centre 
 ©f the upper stone was a cavity for pouring in the corn; 
 ! and by the side of this, an upright wooden handle for mov- 
 j ing the stone. As this operation began, one of the women 
 opposite received it from her companion, who pushed it 
 i towards her, who again sent it to her companion; thus 
 || communicating a rotatory motion to the upper stone, their 
 I left hands being all the while employed in supplying fresh 
 I corn, as fast as the bran and flour escaped from the sides 
 of the machine."-PAXTON. 
 
 Chap. 12. ver. 11, And thus shall ye eat it; 
 with your loins girded, your shoes on your 
 feet, and your staff in your hand: and ye shall 
 eat it in haste ; it is the Lord's passover. 
 
 When people take a journey, they have always their 
 I loins well girded, as they believe that they can walk much 
 ' faster and" to a greater distance. Before the palankeen 
 *>earers take up their load, they assist each other to make 
 tight a part of the sali or robe round the loins. When men 
 are about to enter into an arduous undertaking, bystanders 
 sav, " Tie your loins loell up J' (Luke xii. 35. Eph. vi. 4. 
 1 Pet. i. 13.)— Roberts. 
 
 They that travel on foot are obliged to fasten their gar- 
 ments at a greater height from their feet than they are 
 wont to do at other times. This is what some have under- 
 stood to be meant by the girding their loins : not simply 
 their having girdles about them, but the wearing their gar- 
 ments at a greater height than usual. There are two ways 
 of doing this. Sir J. Chardin remarks, after having inform- 
 ed us that the dress of the eastern people is a long vest, 
 leaching down the calf of the leg, more or less fitted to the 
 b idy, and fastened upon the loins by a girdle, which goes 
 three or four times round them. " This dress is fastened 
 hi2;her up two ways: the one, which is not much used, is 
 to draw up the vest above the girdle, just as the monks do 
 when they travel on foot ; the other, which is the common 
 way, is to tuck up the foreparts of their vest into the girdle, 
 and so fasten them. All persons in the East that journey 
 on foot always gather up their vest, by which they walk 
 viiore commodiously, having the leg and knee unburdened 
 did unembarrassed by the vest, which they are not when 
 
 i 
 
 8 
 
 that hangs over them." And after Ibis manner he supposes 
 the Israelites were prepared for their going out of Egypt, 
 when they ate the first passover, Exod. xii. 11. He takes 
 notice, in the same passage, of the singularity of their hav 
 ing shoes en their feet at that repast. They in common, h'% 
 observes, put otf their shoes when they eat, for which h«' 
 assigns two reasons: the one, that as they do not use tables 
 and chairs in the East, as in Europe, but cover their floors 
 with carpets, they might not soil those beautiful pieces of 
 furniture ; the other, because it would be troublesome to 
 keep their shoes upon their feet, they sitting crosslegged 
 on the floor, and having no hinder quarters to their shoes, 
 which are made like slippers. He takes no notice in this 
 note, of their having to eat this passover with a staff" in their 
 hand ; but he elsewhere observes, that the eastern people 
 very universally make use of a staflf when they journey 
 on foot; and this passage plainly supposes it. — EIatimer. 
 
 Ver. 34. And the people took their dough before 
 it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being 
 bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. 
 
 The dough, we are told, which the Israelites had prepared 
 for baking, and on which it should seem they subsisted af- 
 ter they left Egypt for a month, was carried away by them 
 in their kneading-troughs on their shoulders, Exod. xii. 34. 
 Now, an honest thoughtful countryman, who knows how 
 cumbersome our kneading-troughs are, and how much less 
 important they are than many other utensils, maybe ready 
 to wonder at this, and find a difficulty in accounting for it. 
 But this wonder perhaps may cease, when he comes to un- 
 derstand, that the vessels which the Arabs of that country 
 make use of, for kneading the unleavened cakes they pre-, 
 pare for those that travel in this very desert, are only 
 small wooden bowls ; and that they seem to use no other 
 in their own tents for that purpose, or any other, these 
 bowls being used by them for kneading their bread, and 
 afterward serving up their provisions when cooked : for 
 then it will appear, that nothing could be more convenient 
 than kneading-troughs of this sort for the Israelites, in their 
 journey. I am, however, a little doubtful, whetlier these 
 were the things that Moses meant by that word which our 
 version renders kneading-troughs ; since it seems to me, 
 that the Israelites had made a provision of corn sufficient 
 for their consumption for about a month, and that they 
 were preparing to bake all this at once : now their own 
 little wooden bowls, in which they were wont to knead the 
 bread they wanted for a single day, could not contain all 
 this dough, nor could they well carry a number of these 
 things, borrowed of the Egyptians for the present occasion, 
 with them. That they had furnished themselves with corn 
 sufficient for a month, appears from their not wanting 
 bread till they came into the wilderness of Sin ; that the 
 eastern people commonly bake their bread daily, as they 
 want it, appears from an observation I have already made, 
 and from the history of the patriarch Abraham ; and that 
 they were preparing to bake bread sufficient for this pur- 
 pose at once, seems most probable, from the universal bus- 
 tle they were in, and from the much greater conveniences 
 for baking in Egypt than in the wilderness, w^hich are 
 such, that though Dr. Shaw's attendant sometimes baked 
 in the desert, he thought fit, notwithstanding, to carry bis- 
 cuit with him, and Thevenot the same. They could not 
 well carry such a quantity of dough in those wooden 
 bowls, which they used for kneading their bread in com- 
 mon. What is more. Dr. Pococke tells us, that the Arabs 
 actually carry their dough in something else : for, after 
 having' spoken of their copper dishes put one within an- 
 other, and their wooden bowls, in which they make their 
 bread, and which make up all the kitchen furniture of an 
 Arab, even where he is settled ; he gives us a description 
 of a round leather coverlet, which they lay on the ground, 
 and serves them to eat off", which, he says, has rings round 
 it, by which it is drawn together with a chain that has a 
 hook to it to hang it by. This is drawn together, he says, 
 and sometimes they carry in it their meal made into dough ; 
 and in this manner they bring it full of bread, and, when 
 the repast is over, carry it away at once, with all that is left. 
 
 Whether this utensil is rather to be understood by the 
 word ni-KK'n misharoth, translated hieading-t roughs, than 
 the Arab wooden bowl, I leave my reader to determine. I 
 would only remark, that there is nothing, in the other three 
 
58 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 13—15. 
 
 places, in which the word occurs, to contradict this expla- 
 nation. These places are Exod. viii. 3, Deut. xxviii. 5, 17, 
 in the two last of which places it is translated store. It is 
 more than a little astonishing, to find Grotius, in his com- 
 ment on Exod. xii. 31), explaining that verse as signifying, 
 that they baked no bread in their departing from Egypt, 
 but stayed till they came to Succoih, because they had not 
 time to stay till it was leavened in Egypt ; when it is cer- 
 tain that they were so hurried out of Egypt, as to be desired 
 not to stay to bake unleavened bread; nor can we imagine 
 they would stay till leaven put into it at Succoth, had pro- 
 duced its eifect''in their dough, since travellers now in that 
 desert often eat imleaveaed bread, and the precepts of Mo- 
 ses, relating to their commemoration of their going out of 
 Egypt, suppose they ate unleavened bread for some time. 
 Succoih, the first station then of the Israelites, which Dr. 
 Shaw supposes was nothing more than some considerable 
 encampment of Arabs, must have been a place where there 
 was a considerable quantity of broom, or other fuel, which 
 is not to be found in that desert everywhere.— Harmbr. 
 
 Chap. 13. ver. 18. But God led the people about, 
 . through the way of the wilderness of the Red 
 Sea : and the children of Israel went up har- 
 nessed out of the land of Egypt. 
 
 The margin of our translation remarks, that the word 
 rendered harnessed, in Exodus xiii. 18, signifies hj fives, hui 
 when it adds, five in a rank, it seems to limit the sense of 
 the term very unnecessarily, as it may as well signify five 
 men in a company, or their cattle tied one to another in 
 strings of five each. If there were 600,000 footmen, be- 
 'sides children, and a mixed multitude, together with cattle, 
 the marching of five only abreast, supposing only one yard 
 for each rank to move in, would make the whole length of 
 this enormous file of people more than sixty-eight miles. 
 If we should suppose two such columns, and place the chil- 
 dren, mixed multitude, and cattle between them, the length 
 then of this body of people would be above thirty-four 
 miles. At the same time we cannot conceive any reason 
 for such a narrow front, on the one hand, in such a wide 
 desert, nor, on the other, why they are described as march- 
 ing five abreast, if there were many such columns. It 
 would seem in such a case, to be a circumstance that re- 
 quired no particular notice. Pitts tells us, that in the march 
 of the Mohammedan pilgrims from Egypt, through this 
 very desert, they travel with their camels tied four in a 
 parcel, one after the other, like so many teams. He says also 
 that usually three or four of the pilgrims diet together. If we 
 will allow that like circumstances naturally produce like 
 eflfects, it will appear highly probable, that the meaning of 
 the word used in the passage of Exodus is, that they went 
 up out of Egypt with their cattle, in strings of five each ; or 
 that Moses ordered that five men with their families should 
 form each a little company, that should keep together, and 
 assist each other, in this difficult march. In either of these 
 senses we may understand the term, in all the other places 
 in which it appears; whereas it is not natural to suppose 
 they all went out of Egypt properly armed for war, and it 
 is idle to say, as some have done, that they were girded 
 about the loins, that is always supposed to be done by the 
 eastern people when they journey. Not to say that the 
 kindred word continually signifies five, and this word 
 should in course signify that they were, somehow or other, 
 formed into fives, companies of five men each, or companies 
 that had e.B,c\y five beasts, which carried their provisions and 
 Other necessaries, fastened to each other. — Harmer. 
 
 Chap. 15. var. 20. And Miriam the prophetess, 
 the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand ; 
 and all the women went out after her with tim- 
 brels and nih. dances. 
 
 Lady M, W. Montague, speaking of the eastern dances, 
 says, "Their manner is certainly the same that Diana is 
 said to have dance 1 on the banks of Eurotas. The great 
 lady still leads the dance, and is followed by a troop of 
 j-^oung girls, who indlate her steps, and if she sings, make 
 iip the chorus. Th(i tunes are extremely gay and lively, 
 yet with something ii them wonderfnllv soft. Their steps 
 arc varied according to the pleasure of her that leads the 
 
 dance, but always in exact time, and infinitely more agree- 
 able than any of our dances." {Letters, vol, ii. p. 45.) This 
 gives us a difierent apprehension of the meaning' of these 
 words than we should otherwise form. " Miriam the 
 prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, 
 and all the women went out after her, with timbrels and 
 dances." She led the dance, and they imitated her steps, 
 which were not conducted by a set well-known form, but 
 extemporaneous. Probably David did not dance alone 
 before the Lord when the ark was removed, but led the 
 dance in the same authoritative kind of way. (2 Sam. vi. 
 14, Judges xi, 34, 1 Sam, xviii, 6.) — Burcer. 
 
 Ver. 25. And he cried unto the Lord ; and the 
 Lord showed him a tree, which when he had 
 cast into the waters, the waters were made 
 sweet : there he made for them a statute and an 
 ordinance, and there he proved them. 
 
 This water, which was bitter or brackish, (Dr. Shaw 
 says the latter,) was thus made sweet by the casting in of 
 the tree. Some suppose it was a bitter wood, such as 
 quassia, which corrected the water. Water is often brack- 
 ish in the neighbourhood of salt-pans or the sea, and the 
 natives correct it by throwing in it the wood called Perrao- 
 Nelli, Phylanthus Emblica. Should the water be very 
 bad, they line the well with planks cut out of this tree. In 
 swampy grounds, or when tnere has not been rain for a 
 long time, the water is often muddy, and very unwhole- 
 some. But Providence has again been bountiful by giving 
 to the people the Teatta Maram, Strychnos Potatorum, 
 All who live in the neighbourhood of such water, or who 
 have to travel where it is, always carry a supply of the 
 nuts of this tree. They grind one or two of them on the 
 side of an earthen vessel : the water is then poured in, and 
 the impurities soon subside. — Roberts, 
 
 " Ei-vah is a large village or town, thick planted with 
 
 E aim-trees ; the Oasis Parva of the ancients, the last m- 
 abited place to the west that is under the jurisdiction of 
 Egypt ; it yields senna and coloquintida. The Arabs call* 
 El-vah, a shriib or tree, not unlike our hawthorn, either in 
 form or flower. It was of this wood, they say, that Moses' 
 rod was made, when he sweetened the waters ol" Marah. 
 With a rod of this wood too, they say, Kaled Ibn el Waalid, 
 the great destroyer of Christians, sweetened these waters 
 at El-vah, once bitter, and gave it the name from this 
 miracle. A number of very fine springs burst from the 
 earth at El-vah, which renders this small spot verdant and 
 beautiful, though surrounded with dreary deserts on every 
 quarter : it is situated like an island in the midst of the 
 ocean." (Bruce.) — Our colonists, who first peopled some 
 parts of America, corrected the qualities of the water they 
 found there, by infusing in it branches of sassafras ; and it 
 is understood that the first inducement of the Chinese to 
 the general use of tea, was to correct the water of their 
 rivers. That other water also stands in some need of cor- 
 rection, and that such correction is applied to it, appears 
 from the custom of Egypt, in respect to the water of the 
 Nile. " The water of the Nile," says Niebuhr, " is always 
 somewhat muddy; but by rubbing with bitter almonds, 
 prepared in a particular manner, the earthen jars in which 
 It is kept, this water is rendered clear, light, and salutary," 
 — Burder. 
 
 We travelled, says Burckhardt, over uneven, hilly ground, 
 gravelly and flinty. At one hour and three quarters, we 
 passed the well of Howara, around which a few date-trees 
 grow. Niebuhr travelled the same route, but his guides 
 probably did not lead him to this well, which Hes among 
 hills about two hundred paces out of the road. The water 
 of the well of Howara is so bitter, that men cr i,not drink 
 it ; and even camels, if not very thirsty, refuse to taste it. 
 This well Burckhardt justly supposes to be the Marah of 
 the Israelites; and in this opinion Mr. Leake, Gesenius, 
 and Rosenmiiller, concnr. From Ayoun Mousa to the 
 well of Howara we had travelled fifteen hours and a quar- 
 ter. Referring to this distance, it appears probable that 
 this i, the desert of three days mentioned in the scriptures 
 to have been crossed by the Israelites immodiaiely after 
 their passing the Red Sea; and at the end of Avhich they 
 arrived at Marah. In moving with a whole nation, the 
 march may well be supposed to have occupied three daysj 
 
Chap, lb 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 59 
 
 and the fc.t'er well at Marah, which was sweetened by Mo- 
 ses, corresponds exactly to that at Howara. This is the 
 usual route to Mount Sinai, and was probably, therefore, 
 li'.at which the Israelites took on their escape from Egypt, 
 j)rovided it be admitted that they crossed the sea at Suez, 
 a.s Niebuhr, with good reason, conjectures. There is no 
 other road of three days' march in the way from Suez to- 
 wards Sinai, nor is there any other well absolutely bitter 
 on the whole of this coast. The complaint of the bitterness 
 of the water by the children of Israel, who had been accus- 
 tomed to the sweet water of the Nile, are such as may be 
 daily heard from the Egyptian servants and peasants^^rho 
 travel in Arabia. Accustomed from their youth to the ex- 
 cellent water of the Nile, there is nothing which they so 
 much regret in countries distant from Egypt; nor is there 
 aiiv eastern people who feel so keenly the want of good 
 v.aier, as the present natives of Egypt. With respect to the 
 i;ieans employed by Moses to render the waters of the well 
 su eet, I have frequently inquired among the Bedouins in 
 d liferent parts of Arabia, whether they possessed any means 
 I'f effecting such a change, by throwing wood into it, or by 
 i\uy other process; but 1 never could learn that such an 
 ii!i was known. At the end of three hours we reached 
 Wady Gharendel, which extends to the northeast, and is 
 almost a mile in breadth, and full of trees. The Arabs 
 told me that it may be traced through the whole desert, and 
 that it begins at no great distance from El Arysh, on the 
 
 i Mediterranean ; but I had no means of ascertaining the 
 truth of this statement. About half an hour from the place 
 where we halted, in a southern direction, is a copious 
 spfing, with a small rivulet, which renders the valley the 
 J)rincipal station on this route. The water is disagreeable, 
 and if kept for a night in the water skins, it turns bitter and 
 spoils, as I have myself experienced, having passed this 
 way three times. If, now, we admit Bir Howara to be the 
 Marah of Exodus, (xv. 23,) then Wady Gharendel is prob- 
 ably Elim, with its well and date-trees ; an opinion enter- 
 tained by Niebuhr, who, however, did not see the bitter 
 well of Howara. The non-existence, at present, of twelve 
 wells at Gharendel, must not be considered as evidence 
 against the just-stated conjecture ; for Niebuhr says, that 
 his companions obtained water here by digging to a very 
 small depth, and there was great plenty of it when I passed. 
 Water, in fact, is readily found* by digging, in every fertile 
 valley in Arabia, and wells are thus easily formed, which 
 are filled up agam by the sands. 
 
 The Wady Gharendel contains date-trees, tamarisks, 
 acacias of different species, and the thorny shrub Gharkad, 
 the Pegan-um retusum of Forskal, which is extremely com- 
 Imon in this peninsula, and is also met with in the sands of 
 the Delta on the coast of the Mediterranean. Its small 
 'red berry, of the size of a grain of a pomegranate, is very 
 juicy ancl refreshing, much resembling a ripe gooseberry 
 m taste, but not so sweet. The Arabs are very fond of it. 
 The shrub Gharkad delights in a sandy soil, and reaches 
 its maturity in the height of summer, when the ground is 
 parched up, exciting an agreeable surprise in the traveller, 
 at finding so juicy a berry produced in the driest soil and 
 season. Might not the berry of this shrub have been used 
 by Moses to sweeten the waters of Marah 1 [The Hebrew 
 in Ex. XV. 25, reads : " And the Lord showed him a tree, 
 and he cast into the waters, and they became sweet." The 
 Aiabic translates, " and he cast of it into the waters," &c.] 
 As this conjecture did not occur to me when I was on the 
 spot, I did aot inquire of the Bedouins, whether they ever 
 Sweetened the water with the juice of berries, which would 
 pr iuably effect this change in the same manner as the juice 
 Of pomegranate grains expressed into it. — Calmet. 
 
 Chap. 16. ver. 13. And it came to pass, tliat at 
 even the quails came up, and covered the camp ; 
 and in the morning- the dew lay round about 
 the host. 
 
 Tt is evident from the history of Moses, that the demands 
 of Israel were twice supplied with quails by the miraculous 
 interposition of divine providence. The "first instance is 
 recorded in the book of Exodus, and is described in these 
 words ; *' I have heard the murmurings of the children of 
 Israel : speak unto them, saying. At even ye shall eat flesh, 
 and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread ; and ye 
 shall know that I am the Lord your God. And it came to 
 
 pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the 
 camp." From these words it appears, that the quails were 
 sent to supply the wants of the people, at the same time the 
 manna began to be showered down from heaven, around 
 their encampment in the desert of Sin ; and it is clear, from 
 the beginning of the chapter, that this event took place soon 
 after their departure from Egypt, upon the fifteenth day of 
 the second month, before they came to mount Sinai. This 
 miracle was repeated at Kibroth-hattaavah, a place three 
 days' journey beyond the desert of Sinai ; but they struck 
 their tents before Sinai, in the second year after their de- 
 parture from Egypt, on the twentieth day of the second 
 month; so that a whole year intervened between the first 
 and second supply. In the first instance, the quails were 
 scattered about the camp only for one day; but in the sec- 
 ond, they came up from the sea for a whole month. They 
 only covered the camp at their first appearance ; but when 
 they came the second time, they lay round about it to the 
 distance of a day's journey. No signs of divine wrath at- 
 tended the first miracle; but the second was no sooner 
 wrought, than the vengeance of their offended God over- 
 took these incorrigible sinners : " While the flesh was yet 
 between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the 
 Lord was kindled against the people ; and the Lord smote 
 the people with a very great plague." Hence it is evident, 
 that the sacred historian records two different events.; of 
 which, the one was more stupendous than the other, and 
 seemed to Moses so extraordinary, that on receiving the 
 divine promise, he could not refrain from objecting : " The 
 people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand foot- 
 men; and thou hast said, I will give them flesh, that they 
 may eat a whole month. Shall the flocks and the herds be 
 slain for them to sufllice them 1 Or shall all the fish of the 
 sea be gathered together for them to suffice themi" Moses 
 had seen the power of Jehovah successfully exerted in 
 feeding his people with flesh for one day; but he could 
 scarcely imagine, from whence supplies of the same kind 
 could be drawn for a whole month. That eminent servant 
 of Jehovah, astonished at the greatness of the promised 
 favour, seemed to forget for a moment, that with God all 
 things are possible. 
 
 The quails were scattered around the camp of Israel, in 
 the most astonishing numbers : " He rained flesh also upon 
 them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the 
 sea." The holy Psalmist had used the metaphorical word 
 to rain, in relation to the manna, in a preceding verse, both 
 to intimate its descent from heaven, and its prodigious 
 abundance. And because a single metaphor is not sufli- 
 cient to give us a just idea of the sudden and extraordinary 
 supplies which descended on the tents of Israel, they are 
 compared to the dust of the field, and to the sand of the sea, 
 which cannot be numbered. To suggest at once the count- 
 less myriads of these birds, and the ease with which they 
 are caught, it is added : " He let it fall in the midst of their 
 camp round about their habitations." The account of Moses 
 is still more striking. " And there went forth a wind from 
 the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall 
 by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as 
 it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the 
 camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the 
 earth." Hence, these birds covered the whole camp and the 
 surrounding waste, to the distance of a day's journey on 
 every side. The only ambiguity lies in the phrase, "a 
 day's journey ;" whether it means the space over which an 
 individual could travel in one day, in which case it would 
 be much greater — or the whole army could traverse, which 
 would be much less. If the journey of an individual is in- 
 tended, it might be about thirty rniles; but if the sacred 
 historian refers to the whole army, a third part of this 
 space is as much as they could march in one day in the 
 sandy desert, under a vertical sun. In the opinion of Bo- 
 chart, this immense cloud of quails covered a space of at 
 least forty miles diameter ; for a day's journey is at least 
 twenty miles. Ludolf thinks, it ought to be reduced to six- 
 teen miles ; and others, to half that number, because, Moses 
 refers to the march of Israfel through the desert, encumber- 
 ed with their women and children, their flocks and herds, 
 and the baggage of the whole nation; which must have 
 greatly retarded their movements, and rendered the short 
 distance of eight miles more than sufficient for a journey 
 of one day. It is equally doubtful, whether the distance 
 mentioned by Moses, must be measured from the centre, or 
 
 J^... 
 
50 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 16 
 
 from the extremities of the encampment; it is certain, 
 however, that he intends to state the countless nmnbers of 
 these birds which fell around the tents of Israel. 
 
 Some interpreters have doubted, whether the next clause 
 refer to the amazing multitude of these birds which strewed 
 the desert, or to the facility with which they were caught ; 
 the wind let them fall by the camp — " as it were two cubits 
 high upon the face of the earth." The Seventy, and after 
 them the Vulgate, render it, They flew, as it were two cu- 
 bits high above the earth. Others imagine, the quails were 
 piled one above another over all that space, to the height of 
 two cubits; while others suppose, that the heaps which 
 were scattered on the desert with vacant spaces between, for 
 the convenience of those that went forth to collect them, 
 rose to the height of two cubits. The second opinion seems 
 entitled to the preference ; for the phrase " to rain," evi- 
 dently refers to these birds after they had fallen to the 
 ground, upon which they lay Numerous as the drops of rain 
 from the dense cloud. Besides, the people could scarcely 
 have gathered ten homers a piece, in two days, if they had 
 not found the quails lying upon the ground ; for a homer is 
 the largest measure among the Jews, and contains nearly 
 six pints ; according to some Hebrew writers, the load of 
 an ass, from whose name the term is supposed to be deriv- 
 ed. — Paxton. 
 
 V'er. 15. And when the children of Israel saw it, 
 they said one to another, It is manna ; for they 
 wist not what it was. And Moses said unto 
 them, This is the bread which the Lord hath 
 given you to eat. 
 
 "We cannot mistake in this description the natural pro- 
 duction which is called, in all the European languages, 
 manna. Manna is the common name for the thick, clam- 
 ray, and sweet juice, which in the southern countries oozes 
 from certain trees and shrubs, partly by the rays of the sun, 
 partly by the puncture of some kinds of insects, and partly 
 by artificial means. The manna common in our druggists' 
 shops, comes from Calabria and Sicily, where it oozes out 
 of a kind of ash-tree, from the end of June to the end of July, 
 when the bicada appears, an insect at first sight resembling 
 the locust, but is distinguished from it by a thorn under the 
 belly, with which it punctures this tree. The juice issuing 
 from this wound, is in the night fluid, and looks like dew, 
 but in the morning it begins to harden. But the European 
 manna is not so good as the oriental, which is gathered in 
 particular in Syria, Arabia, and Persia ; partly from the 
 oriental oak, and partly from a shrub, which is called in 
 Persia, Terengabin or Terendschabin. Rauwolf says, that 
 the manna grains resemble coriander seeds, as mentioned 
 in the Mosaic account ; and this is confirmed by several 
 modern travellers. Gmelin remarks, that the manna is as 
 white as snow, and consists of grains like coriander seeds. 
 The peasants about Ispahan gather it at sunrise, holding 
 a sieve under the branch, into which the grains fall when 
 the branches are struck with a stick ; if the gathering it be 
 put off" till after sunrise, no manna can be obtained, because 
 it melts. — BuRDER. 
 
 The Wady el Sheikh, the great valley of western Sinai, 
 is in many parts thickly overgrown with the tamarisk or 
 tarfa, {Hedysarun ALJiagi of Linn.) It is the only valley in 
 'he peninsula of Sinai where this tree grows, at present, in 
 any great quantity; though small bushes of it are here and 
 here met with in other parts. It is from the tarfa that the 
 .nanna is obtained. This substance is called by the Be- 
 douins mann, and accurately resembles the description of 
 manna given in the scriptures. In the month of June, it 
 drops from the thorns of the tamarisk upon the fallen twigs, 
 ?eaves, and thorns which always cover the ground beneath 
 that tree in the natural state ; the manna is collected before 
 sunrise, when it is coagulated ; but it dissolves as soon as 
 the sun shines upon it. The Arabs clean away the leaves, 
 dirt, etc. which adhere to it, boil it, strain it through a coarse 
 piece of cloth, and put it in leathern skins : in this way they 
 preserve it till the following year, and use it as they (io ho- 
 ney, to pouroverunleavened bread, orto dip theirbread into. 
 I could not learn that they ever made it intocakes or loaves. 
 The manna is found only in years when copious rains have 
 fallen ; sometimes it is not produced at all. I saw none of 
 it among the Arabs, but I obtained a small piece of the 
 last year's produce, in the convent (of Mount Sinai,) where, 
 
 having been kept in the cool shade and moderate tempera, 
 ture of that place, it had become quite solid, and formed a 
 small cake ; it became soft when kept some time in the 
 hand ; if placed in the sun for five minutes, it dissolved ; 
 but when restored to a cool place, it became solid again in 
 a quarter of an hour. In the season at which the Arabs 
 gather it, it never acquires that state of hardness which will 
 allow of its being pounded, as the Israelites are said to have 
 done, in Num. xi. 8. Its colour is a dirty yellow, and the 
 piece which I saw was still mixed with bits of tamarisk 
 leaves ; its taste is agreeable, somewhat aromatic, and as 
 sweet as honey. If eaten in any considerable quantity, it 
 is said to be slightly purgative. 
 
 The quantity of manna collected at present, even in sea- 
 sons when the most copious rains fall, is trifling, perhaps 
 not amounting to more than five or six hundred pounds. 
 It is entirely consumed among the Bedouins, who consider 
 it the greatest dainty which their country affords. The har- 
 vest is usually in June, and lasts for about six weeks. In 
 Nubia, and in every part of Arabia, the tamarisk is one of 
 the most common trees ; on the Euphrates, on the Astabo- 
 ras, in all the valleys of the Hedjaz and the Bedja, it grows 
 in great plenty. It is remarked by Niebuhr, that in Meso- 
 potamia, manna is produced by several trees of the oak spe- 
 cies; a similar fact was confirmed to me by the son of a 
 Turkish lady, who had passed the greater part of his youth 
 at Erzerum m Asia Minor; he told me that at Moush, a 
 town three or four days distant from Erzerum, a substance 
 is collected from the tree which produces the galls, exactly 
 similar to the manna of the penmsula in taste and consist- 
 ence, and that it is used by the inhabitants instead of honey. 
 
 BURCKHARDT. 
 
 The notion, however, that any species of vegetable gum 
 is the manna of the scriptures, appears so totally irreconci- 
 lable with the Mosaic narrative, that, notwithstanding the 
 learned names which may be cited in support of the con- 
 jecture, it cannot be safely admitted as any explanation of 
 the miracle. It is expressly said, that the manna was 
 rained from heaven ; that when the dew was exhaled, it 
 appeared lying on the surface of the ground, — " a small, 
 round thing, as small as the hoar-frost," — "like coriander 
 seed, and its colour like a pearl ;" that it fell but six days 
 m the week, and that a double quantity fell on the sixth 
 day; that what was gathered on the first five days became 
 offensive and bred worms if kept above one day, while that 
 which was gathered on the sixth day kept sweet for two 
 days ; that the people had never seen it before, which could 
 not possibly be the case with either wild-honey or gum- 
 arabic ; that it was a substance which admitted of being 
 ground in a handmill or pounded in a mortar, of being 
 made into cakes and baked, and that it tasted like wafers 
 made with honey ; lastly, that it continued falling for the 
 forty years that the Israelites abode in the wilderness, but 
 ceased on their arriving at the borders of Canaan. To 
 perpetuate the remembrance of the miracle, a pot of the 
 manna was to be laid up by the side of the ark, which 
 clearly indicates the extraordinary nature of the produc- 
 tion. In no one respect does it correspond to the modern 
 manna. The latter does not fall from heaven, it is not 
 deposited with the dew, but exudes from the trees w^hen 
 punctured, and is to be found only in the particular spots 
 where those trees abound ; it coiild not, therefore, have 
 supplied the Israelites with food in the more arid parts of 
 the desert, where they most required it. The gums, more- 
 over, flow only for about a month in the year ; they neither 
 admit of being ground, pounded, or baked ; they do not melt 
 in the son ; they do not breed worms ; and they are not 
 peculiar to the Arabian wilderness. Others have supposed 
 the manna to have been a fat and thick honey-dew, and 
 that this was the wild-honey which John the Baptist lived 
 upon, — a supposition worthy of being ranked with the 
 monkish legend of St. John's bread, or the locust-tree, and 
 equally showing an entire ignorance of the nature of the 
 country. It requires the Israelites to have been constantly 
 in the neighbourhood of trees, in the midst of a wilderne.'^s 
 often bare of all vegetation. Whatever the manna was, it 
 was clearly a substitute for bread, and it is expressly called 
 meat, or food. The abundant supply, the periodical sus- 
 pension of it, and the peculiarity attaching to the sixth 
 day's supply, it must at all events be admitted, were ureter 
 natural facts, and facts not less extraordinary than that the 
 substance also should be of an unknown and peculiar de- , 
 
Chap. 17—19. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 61 
 
 scription. The credibility of the sacred narrative cannot 
 receive the slightest addition of evidence from any attempt 
 to explain the miracle by natural causes. That narrative 
 would lead any plain reader to expect that the manna 
 should no longer be foimd to exist, having ceased to fall 
 upwards of 3,000 years. As to the fact that the Arabs give 
 that name to the juice of the tarfa, the value of their au- 
 thority may be estimated by the pulpit of Moses and the 
 footstep of Mohammed's camel. The cause of Revelation 
 has less to fear from the assaults of open infidels, than from 
 such ill-judged attempts of skeptical philosophers, to square 
 the sacred narrative by their notions of probability. The 
 giving of the manna was either a miracle or a fable. The 
 proposed explanation makes it a mixture of both. It ad- 
 mits the fact of a Divine interposition, yet insinuates that 
 Moses gives an incorrect or embellished account of it. It 
 requires us to believe, that the scripture history is at once 
 true and a complete misrepresentation, and that the golden 
 vase of manna was designed to perpetuate the simple fact, 
 that the Israelites lived for forty years upon gum-arabic ! 
 The miracle, as related by Moses, is surely more credible 
 than the explanation. — Modern Traveller. 
 
 Ver. 16. Gather of it every man according to his 
 eating-; an omer for every man, (Heb. a head,) 
 according to the number of your persons ; take 
 ye every man for them which are in his tents. 
 
 A man, when offering money to the people to induce 
 the;m to do something for him, says, " To every head, I will 
 give one fanam." In time of sickness or sorrow, it is said, 
 "Ah ! to every head there is now trouble." " Alas ! there 
 is nothing left for any head." *' Yes, yes, he is a good 
 master: to every head he has given a cow." " What did 
 you pay your coolies'?"—*' To every head one fanam." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 17. ver. 1. And all the congregation of 
 the children of Israel journeyed from the wil- 
 derness of Sin, after their journeys, according 
 to the commandment of the Lorb, and pitched 
 in Rephidim : and there was no water for the 
 people to drink. 
 
 At twenty minutes' walk from the convent of El Erbayn, 
 • a block of granite is shown as the rock out of which the 
 water issued when struck by the rod of Moses. It is thus 
 described by Burckhardt : "** It lies quite insulated by the 
 side of the path, which is about ten feet higher than the 
 lower bottom of the valley. The rock is about twelve feet 
 in height, of an irregular shape, approaching to a cube. 
 There are some apertures upon its surface, through which 
 the water is said to have burst out; they are about twenty 
 in number, and lie nearly in a straight line round the three 
 Sides of the stone. They are for the most part ten or twelve 
 inches long, two or three inches broad, and from one to two 
 inches deep, but a few of them are as deep as four inches. 
 Every observer must be convinced, on the slightest exami- 
 nation, that most of these fissures are the work of art ; but 
 three or four perhaps are natural, and these may have first 
 drawn the attention of the monks to the stone, and have in- 
 duced them to call it the rock of the miraculous supply of 
 water. Besides the marks of art evident in the holes them- 
 selves, the spaces between them have been chiselled, so as 
 to make it appear as if the stone had been worn in those 
 parts by the action of the water ; though it cannot be doubt- 
 ed, that if water had flowed from the Assures, it must gen- 
 erally have taken quite a diiferent direction. One travel- 
 ler saw on this stone twelve openings, answering to the 
 number of the tribes of Israel ; another describes the holes 
 as a foot deep. They were probably told so by the monks, 
 and believed what they heard, rather than what they saw. 
 About 150 paces farther on in the valley, lies another piece 
 of rock, upon which it seems that the work of deception 
 was first begun, there being four or five apertures cut in it, 
 similar to those on the other block, but in a less finished 
 state. As it is somewhat smaller than the former, and lies 
 in a less conspicuous part of the valley, removed from the 
 ptiblic path, the monks thought proper, in process of time, 
 to assign the miracle to the other. As the rock of Moses 
 
 has been described by travellers of the fifteenth centuiy, 
 the deception must have originated among the monks of an 
 earlier period. As to the present inhabitants of the con- 
 vent and of the peninsula, they must be acquitted of any 
 fraud respecting it, for they conscientiously believe that it 
 is the very rock from whence the water gushed forth. la 
 this part of the peninsula, the Israelites could not have suf- 
 fered from thirst. The upper Sinai is full of wells and 
 springs, the greater part of which are perennial ; and on 
 whichever side the pretended rock of Moses is approached, 
 copious sources are found within an hour of it." The fact, 
 that this part of the peninsula abounds with perennial 
 springs, which is attested by every traveller, proves deci- 
 dedly that this cannot be the vale of Rephidim. It is aston- 
 ishing to find such travellers as Shaw and Pococke credu- 
 lously adopting this imbecile legend. " Here," says the 
 former, " wes^iZZsee that extraordinary antiquity, the rock of 
 Meribah, which hath continued down to this day, without the 
 least injury from time or accident. It is a block of granite 
 marble, about six yards square, lying tottering as it were, and 
 loose in the middle of the valley, and seems to have former- 
 ly belonged to Mount Sinai, which hangs in a variety of pre- 
 cipices all over this plain. The icaterstohich gtished out, and 
 the stream which flowed, (Psalm Ixxviii. 20,) have hollowed, 
 across one corner of this rock, a channel about two inches 
 deep and twenty wide, appearing to be incrustated all over, 
 like the inside of a teakettle that hath been long in use. 
 Besides several mossy productions that are still preserved 
 by the dew, we see all over this channel a great number of 
 holes, some of them four or five inches deep, and one or 
 two in diameter, the lively and demonstrative tokens of 
 their having been formerly so many fountains. It likewise 
 may be further observed, that art or chance could by no 
 means be concerned in the contrivance, for every circum- 
 stance points out to us a miracle, and, in the same manner 
 with the rent in the rock of Mount Calvary, at Jerusalem, 
 never fails to produce a religious surprise in all who see it." 
 That this rock is as truly the Rock of Meribah, as the 
 spot alluded to is Mount Calvary, may be freely admitted ; 
 but the surprise which they are adapted to awaken in an 
 intelligent observer, is at the credulity of travellers. " These 
 supernatural mouths," says Sir F. Henniker, " appear to 
 me common crevices in the rock : they are only two inches 
 in depth, and their length is not confined to the water- 
 course. That the incrustation is the effect of water, I have 
 not the slightest doubt, for the rocks close at hand, where 
 water is still dripping, are marked in the same manner : 
 and if a fragment of the cliff" were to fall down, we .should 
 scarcely distinguish between the two. I therefore doubt the 
 identity of the stone, and also the locality ; for, in this 
 place, the miracle would be that a mountain so lofty as 
 Mount Sinai should be without water !" — Modern Trav- 
 eller. 
 
 Ver. 16. For he said, Because the Lord hath 
 sworn that the Lord will have war v/ith 
 Amalek from generation to generation. 
 
 Literally, " Because the hand of the Lord is upon the 
 throne." These words are susceptible of a very diflTerent 
 meaning, which has not escaped the notice of some valua- 
 ble commentators: "For he said. Because his hand hath 
 been against the throne of the Lord, therefore, will he have 
 war with Amalek from generation to generation." The 
 prophet is there giving a reason of the perpetual war 
 which Jehovah had just proclaimed against that devoted 
 race ; their hand had been against the throne of the Lord, 
 that is, they had attacked the people whom he had chosen, 
 and among whom he had planted his throne ; disregarding, 
 or probably treating with contempt, the miraculous signs of 
 the divine presence which led the way, and warranted the 
 operations of Israel ; they attempted to stop their progress, 
 and defeat the promise of Heaven ; therefore they dared 
 to lift their hand against the throne of God himself, and 
 were for their presumption, doomed to the destruction 
 which they intended for others. Hence, the custom of 
 laying the hand upon the gospels, as an appeal to God, if 
 not the contrivance of modern superstition, is derived from 
 the practice of some obscure Gentile nation, and has no 
 claim whatever to a more reputable origin. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 19. ver. 1. In the third month, when the 
 
62 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 19. 
 
 children of Israel were gone forth out of the 
 land of Eg-ypt, the same day came they into the 
 wilderness of Sinai. 
 We were near twelve hours in passing the many wind- 
 ings and difficult ways which lie betwixt the deserts of Sin 
 and Sinai. The latter is a beautiful plain, more than a 
 league in breadth, and nearly three in length, lying open 
 towards the N.E., where we entered it, but is closed up to the 
 southward by some of the lower eminences of Mount Sinai, 
 in this direction, likewise, the higher parts of it make such 
 encroachments on the plain, that they divide it into two, 
 each of them capacious enough to receive the whole en- 
 campment of the Israelites. That which lieth to the east- 
 ward of the mount, may be the desert of Sinai, properly so 
 called, where Moses smo the angel of the Lord in the burning 
 bush, when he was guarding the flocks of Jethro. The con- 
 vent of St. Catharine is built over the place of this divine 
 appearance: it is near three hundred feet square, and 
 more than forty in height, being partly built with stone, 
 partly with mud only and -mortar mixed together. The 
 more immediate place of the Shekinah is honoured with a 
 little chapel, which this old fraternity of St. Basil hath in 
 such esteem and veneration, that, in imitation of Moses, 
 they put off" their shoes from off their feet, when they enter 
 or approach it. This, with several other chapels, dedica- 
 ted to particular saints, are included within the church, as 
 ihey call it, of the Transfiguration, which is a large beau- 
 tiful structure, covered with lead, and supported by two 
 rows of marble columns. The floor is very elegantly laid 
 out in a variety of devices in Mosaic work ; of the same 
 workmanship, likewise, are both the floor and the walls of 
 the presbyterium, upon the latter whereof is represented 
 the figure of the Emperor Justinian, together with the his- 
 tory of the transfiguration. On the partition, which sepa- 
 rates the presbyterium from the body of the church, there 
 is placed a small marble shrine, whereon are preserved the 
 scull and one of the hands of St. Catharine. Mount Sinai 
 hangs over this convent, being called by the Arabs, Jebbel 
 Mousa, the mountain of Moses, and sometimes only, by 
 way of eminence, El Tor, the mountain. St. Helena was 
 at the expense of the stone staircase, that was formerly car- 
 ried up entirely to the top of it ; but, at present, as most of 
 these steps are either removed, washed out of their places, 
 or defaced, the ascent up to it is very fatiguing, and entire- 
 ly imposed on their votaries as a severe penance. How- 
 ever, at certain distances, the fathers have erected, as so 
 many breathing places, several little chapels, dedicated to 
 one or omer of their samis. who are always invoked on 
 these occasions ; and, after some small oblation, are en- 
 gaged to lend their assistance. The summit of Mount 
 Sinai is somewhat conical, and not very spacious, where 
 the Mohammedans, as well as the Christians, have a small 
 chapel for public worship. Here we were shown the place 
 where Moses fasted forty days ; where he received the law ; 
 where he hid himself from the face of God ; where his 
 hand was supported by Aaron and Hur, at the battle with 
 Amalek. After we had descended, with no small difficul- 
 ty, down the western side of this mountain, we came into 
 the other plain formed by it, which is Rephidim. — Shaw. 
 
 The Arabs call Jebbel Musa, the mount of Moses, all that 
 range of mountains at the exterior extremity of the valley 
 of Paran ; and to that part of the range on which the con- 
 vent of St. Catharine stands, they give the name of Tur 
 Sina. This similarity of name, owing most probably to 
 tradition, affords ground for presuming, that the hill which 
 we had now reached was the Sinai of the Jews, on which 
 Moses received the law. It is, indeed, not easy to compre- 
 hend how such a multitude of people as the Jews, who ac- 
 companied Moses out of Egypt, could encamp in those 
 narrow gullies, amid frightful and precipitous rocks. 
 But, perhaps, there are plains on the other side of the moun- 
 tain, that we know not of. Two German miles and a half 
 up the mountain stands the convent of St. Catharine. The 
 body of this monastery is a building one hundred and twen- 
 ty feet in length, and almost as many in breadth. Before 
 it stands another small building, in which is the only gate 
 of the convent, which remains always shut, except when 
 the bishop is here. At other times, whatever is introduced 
 within the convent, whether men or provisions, is drawn 
 I'p to the roof, in a basket, with a cord and a pulley. The 
 whole building is of hewn stone, which, in such a desert. 
 
 must have cost prodigious expense and pains. Next day 
 our scheichs brought me an Arab, whom they qualified 
 with the title of scheich of Mount Sinai. Under the con- 
 duct of this newly-created lord of Sinai, with our scheichs, 
 I attempted to clamber to the summit of that mountain. It 
 is so steep, that Moses cannot have ascended on the side 
 which I viewed. The Greeks have cut a flight of steps up 
 the rock, Pococke reckons three thousand of these steps 
 to the top of the mountain, or, rather, bare-pointed rocK, 
 Five hundred steps above the convent we found a charm- 
 ing spring, which, by a little pains, might be improved into 
 a very agreeable spot. A thousand steps higher, a chapel, 
 dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; and five hundred above 
 this, two other chapels, situated in a plain, which travellers 
 enter by two small gates of mason work. Upon this plain 
 are two trees, under which, at high festivals, the Arabs are 
 regaled at the expense of the Greeks. My Mohammedan 
 guides, imitating the practice which they had seen the pil- 
 grims observe, kissed the images, and repeated their pray- 
 ers in the chapels. They would accompany me no farther, 
 but maintained this to be the highest accessible peak of the 
 mountain ; whereas, according to Pococke, I had yet a 
 thousand steps to ascend. I was, therefore, obliged to re- 
 turn, and content myself with viewing the hill of St. Catha- 
 rine at a distance. — Niebuhr. 
 
 After reposing in the convent and its delightful garden, 
 the first duty of a pilgrim is, to climb the summit of tlie 
 Djebel Mousa, or mountain of Moses, the road to which be- 
 gins to ascend immediately behind the walls of the convent. 
 Regular steps (it is said, to the number of 15,000) have been 
 cut all the way up ; but they are now either entirely de- 
 stroyed, or so much damaged by the winter torrents, as* to 
 be of very little use. They are ascribed to the munificence 
 of the Empress Helena. " After ascending for about twen- 
 ty-five minutes," says Burckhardt, " we breathed a short 
 time under a large impending rock, close by which is a 
 small well of water, as cold as ice. At the end of three 
 quartej-s of an hour's steep ascent, we came to a small plain, 
 the entrance to which from below is through a stone gate- 
 way, which in former times was probably closed : a little 
 beneath it, stands, amid the rocks, a small church dedica- 
 ted to the Virgin. On the plain is a larger building of rude 
 construction, which bears the name of the convent of St. 
 Elias: it was lately inhabited, but is now abandoned, the 
 monks repairing here only at certain times of the year to 
 read mass. Pilgrims usually halt on this spot, where a tall 
 cypress-tree grows by the side of a stone tank, which re- 
 ceives the winter raiiis. On a large rock in the plain are < 
 several Arabic inscriptions, engraved by pilgrims three or 
 four hundred years ago ; I saw one also in the Syriac lan- 
 guage. According to the Koran and Moslem traditions, 
 it was in this part of the mountain, which is called Djebel 
 Oreb, or Horeb, that Moses communicated with the Lord. 
 From hence a still steeper ascent of half an hour, the steps 
 of which are also in ruins, leads to the summit of Djebel 
 Mousa, where stands the church which forms the principal 
 object of the pilgrimage : it is built on the very peak of 
 the mountain, the plane of which is at most sixty paces in 
 circumference. The church, though strongly built with 
 granite, is now greatly dilapidated by the unremitted at- 
 tempts of the Arabs to destroy it ; the door, roof, and wal!i 
 are greatly injured. 
 
 Some ruins round the church indicate that a much larger 
 and more solid building once stood here ; and the rock ap- 
 pears to have been cut perpendicularly with great labour, to 
 prevent any other approach to it than by the southern side 
 The view from this summit must be very grand, but i 
 thick fog prevented me from seeing even the nearest moun- 
 tains. About thirty paces from the church, on a some 
 what lower peak, stands a poor mosque, without any orn? 
 ments, held in great veneration by the Moslems, and thi 
 place of their pilgrimage. It is frequently visited by th^ 
 Bedouins, who slaughter sheep in honour of Moses, anfl 
 who make vows to him, and entreat his intercession ill 
 heaven in their favour. There is a feast-day on which the' 
 Bedouins come hither in a mass, and offer their sacrifices, 
 I was told that formerly they never approached the place 
 without being dressed iii the Ihram, or sacred mantle, with 
 which the Moslems cover their naked bodies on visilini^ 
 Mecca, and which then consisted only of a napkin tie^l 
 round the middle ; but this custom has been abandoned for | 
 the last forty years. Foreign Moslem pilgrims often repaiir '' 
 
 i 
 
Chap. 19—21. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 63 
 
 . to the spot ; and even Mohammed Ali Pasha, and his son 
 ' Tousoun Pasha, gave notice that ihey intended to visit it, 
 ! but they did not keep their promise. Close by the loolpath, 
 in the ascent from St. Elias to this summit, and at a small 
 distance from it, a place is shown in the rock, which some- 
 what resembles the print of the forepart of the foot; it is 
 staled to have been made by Mohammed's foot when he 
 visited the mountain. We found the adjacent part of the 
 rock sprinkled with blood, in consequence of an accident 
 which happened a few days before to a Turkish lady of 
 rank, who was on her way from Cairo to Mecca, with her 
 son, and who had resided for some weeks in the convent, 
 duiia? Avhich she had made the tour of the sacred places, 
 barefooted, although she was old and decrepit. In altempt- 
 i!!g to kiss the mark of Mohammed's foot, she fell, and 
 woanded her head, but not so severely as to prevent her 
 from pursuing her pilgrimage. Somewhat below the 
 I mosque is a fine reservoir, cut very deep in the granite 
 y i-ock, for the reception of rain-water. 
 ' Mr. Fazakerley says, it is difficult to imagine a scene 
 more desolate and terrific then that which is discovered 
 fi om the summit of Sinai. A haze limited the prospect, 
 land, except a glimpse of the sea in one direction, nothing 
 fjwas within sight but snow, and huge peaks and crags of 
 naked granite. Sir F. Henniker describes it as a " sea of 
 desolation." " It would seem," he says, " as if Arabia Pe- 
 liLva had once been an ocean of lava, and that while its 
 waves were running literally mountains high, it was com- 
 manded suddenly to stand still." He did not ascend the 
 Djchel Katerin ; but the former traveller did, and speaks 
 of it in the following terms : " The view from hence is of 
 tlie same kind, only much more extensive than from the 
 toj) of Sinai: it commands the two seas (gulfs) of Akaba 
 ami Suez ; the island of Tiraan and the village of Tor were 
 l^oiuted out to us: Sinai was far below us; clouds prevent- 
 lmI our seeing the high ground near Suez: all the rest, 
 wiierever the eye could reach, was a vast wilderness, and 
 .1 confusion of granite mountains and valleys destitute of 
 verdure." Burckhardt thus describes the country as seen 
 from this fame summit: " From this elevated peak, a very 
 extensive view opened before us, and the direction of the 
 ui ill-rent surrounding chains of mountains could be dis- 
 tinctly traced. The upper nucleus of the Sinai, composed 
 r.Luost entirely of granite, forms a rocky wilderness of an 
 i ' ri^gular circular shape, intersected by many narrow val- 
 Icvs, and from thirty to forty miles in diameter. It con- 
 tains the highest mountains of the peninsula, whose shag- 
 C^v and pointed peaks, and steep and shattered sides, ren- 
 der it, clearly distinguishable from all the rest of the coun- 
 w V in view. It is upon this highest region of the peninsu- 
 la, that the fertile valleys are found, which produce fruit- 
 trees : they are principally to the west and southwest of the 
 f-iinvenr, at three or four hours' distance. Water, too, is 
 <t'. ways found in plenty in this district, on which account it 
 is the place of refuge of all the Bedouins, when the low 
 country is parched up."-MoDERN Traveller. 
 
 Ver. 1 3. There shall not a hand touch it, but he 
 shall surely be stoned, or shot through. 
 
 "To be stoned to death was a most grievous and terrible 
 infliction. When the offender came within four cubits of 
 t!ie place of execution, he was stripped naked, only leaving 
 a covering before, and his hands being bound, he M^as led up 
 to the fatal place, which was an eminence twice a man's 
 liin2:ht. The first executioners of the sentence were the 
 A\iuiesses, who generally pulled off" their clothes for the 
 purpose: one of them threw him down with great violence 
 upon his loins : if he rolled upon his breast, he was turned 
 upon his loins again, and if he died by the fall there was 
 an end ; but if not, the other witness took a great stone, 
 and dashed upon his breast, as he lay upon his back; and 
 then, if he was not despatched, all the people that stood by 
 threw stones at him till he died," — Lewis's Origines 
 HcbrcccB. 
 
 Chap. 20. ver. 5. Thou shalt not bow dowTi thy- 
 self to them, nor serve them : for I the Lord 
 thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity 
 of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation of them that hate me. 
 
 It is universally believed that children suffer fur the 
 iniquities of their ancestors, through many geneiations. 
 " I wonder why Tamban's son was born a cripple T'— " You 
 wonder ! why,' that is a strange thing ; have you not heard 
 what a vile man his grandfather was 1" " Have you heard 
 that Valen has had a son, and that he is born blind T' — " I 
 did not hear of it, but this is another proof of the sins of a 
 former birth." " What a wdcked wretch that Venasi is ! 
 alas for his posterity, great will be their sufferings." " Evil 
 one, why are you going on in this way ; have you no pity 
 for your seed 1" " Alas ! alas ! I am now suffering for the 
 sins of my fathers." When men enjoy many blessings, it 
 is common to say of them, " Yes, yes, they are enjoying 
 the good deeds of their fathers." " The prosperity .i my 
 house arises from the virtues of my forefathers." In the 
 Scanda Purana it is recorded, " The soul is subject to 
 births, deaths, and sufferings. It may be born on the earth, 
 or in the sea. It may also appear in ether, fire, or air. 
 Souls may be born as men, as beasts or birds, as grass oi 
 trees, as mountains or gods." By these we are reminded 
 of the question, " Who did sin, this man or his parents, 
 that he was born blind 1" "Jesus answered. Neither hath 
 this man sinned, nor his parents." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 18. And all the people saw the thunderings, 
 and the lightnings, and the noise of the trum- 
 pet, and the mountain smoking : and when the 
 people saw it, they removed and stood afar off 
 
 Large splinters of wood, either of a resinous nature m 
 themselves, or perhaps prepared in some cases by art, are 
 made use of in the Levant instead of flambeaux ; and if 
 they are in use in these times, in which great improve- 
 ments have been made in all the arts of life, it is natural to 
 suppose they were in use anciently, particularly among 
 the peasants, shepherds, and travellers of the lower class. 
 Dr. Richard Chandler found lighted brands made use of 
 in Asia Minor, by some villagers, instead of torches, and 
 he refers to Virgil, representing the Roman peasants as 
 preparing, in his days, the same sort of flambeaux, in 
 winter time, for their use. If they still continue in use in 
 the East, there is reason to believe they were used an- 
 ciently, and indeed, it seems to be a torch of this kind, that 
 is meant by the Hebrew word -\^th lappced, which our 
 translators sometimes render firebrand, sometimes lamp, 
 thus confounding things that are very distinct, and which 
 are expressed by different words. I would remark further, 
 that as this word is made use of, Exod. xx. 18, and a very 
 diflTerent word is used to express lightning in the Hebrew, 
 it is unfortunate that our version should render it lightning 
 there, when it is to be imderstood, I apprehend, of the 
 flaming of the trees on Mount Sinai, on that memorable 
 occasion, whole trees flaming around the Divine presence, 
 bearing some resemblance to the torches made of splinters 
 of wood, which were made use of on less august occasions : 
 " All the people saw the thunderings, and the trees flaming 
 like so many torches, and the noise of the trumpet, and the 
 mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they rt^- 
 moved and stood afar off'." Lightning is understood "here 
 without doubt, and that the trees were set on fire by the 
 lightning will hardly be contested; on the other hand, if 
 the w^ord directly meant lightning, still it is evidently sup- 
 posed the trees and shrubs were fired by it; from whence 
 else would have come the smoked But as the word signi- 
 fies torches, not flashes of lightning, it should not have 
 been translated here lightning, differently from w^hat it 
 properly signifies. Agreeable to this account is the descrip- 
 tion given us, Exod. xix. 18, " And Mount Sinai was alto- 
 gether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in 
 fire : and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a 
 furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." — Harmer. 
 
 Chap. 21. ver. 10. If he take him another wife : 
 her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, 
 shall he not diminish. 
 
 Though flesh meat is not wont to be eaten by these nations 
 so frequently as with us in the West, or in such quantities, 
 yet people of rank, who often have it in their repasts, are 
 ibnd of it, and even those in lower life, when it can be pro- 
 cured. Our translation then does not express the spirit of 
 the Mosaic precept, relating to the superindu^ng a second 
 
64 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 22l 
 
 :i 
 
 wife in the lifetime of the first, Exod. xxi. 10. " Her food, 
 her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not dimin- 
 ish ; in the original it is, herfiesh^ her raiment, &c. meaning 
 thai he should not only afford her a sufficient quantity of 
 food as before, but of the same quality, The feeding "her 
 With bread, with herbs, with milk, &c. in quantities not 
 only sufficient to maintain life, but as much as numbers of 
 poor people contented themselves with, would not do, if he 
 took away the Jlcsh, and others of the more agreeable arti- 
 cles of food he had before been wont to allow her. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 20. And if a man smite his servant, or his 
 maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand ; 
 he shall surely be punished. 21. Notwith- 
 standing, if he continue a day or two, he shall 
 not be punished : for he is his money. 
 
 The people of Israel, like all the nations of antiquity, 
 had the power of life and death over their slaves; for sla- 
 very proceeded from the right of conquest, when the vic- 
 tors, instead of putting their enemies to death, chose rather 
 to give them their lives, that they might have the benefit of 
 their services. Hence it was supposed that the conqueror 
 always reserved the power of taking away their lives, if 
 they committed any thing worthy of death ; and that he ac- 
 quired the same power over their children, because they 
 had never been born, if he had not spared the father, and 
 transmitted it when he alienated his slave. Such is the 
 foundation of the absolute power claimed by the Orientals 
 over the unhappy persons whom they detained in slavery. 
 It must be granted, that such reasons never can justify the 
 exorbitant power of a slaveholder, or even his right to 
 deprive his fellow-creature of his liberty, who has been 
 guilty of no adequate crime. The claims of Israel rested 
 upon different grounds, the positive grant of Jehovah him- 
 self, who certainly has a right to dispose of his creatures 
 as he pleases. But among that people, the power of the 
 master was limited by laws, which secured the safety and 
 comfort of the slave, perhaps as much as that condition 
 could possibly admit. Though the Israelitish master had 
 the power of life and death, it has been alleged by some wri- 
 ters, that he seldom abused it ; for his interest obliged him 
 to preserve his slave, who made a part of his riches. This 
 is the reason of the law. That he should not be punished 
 who had smitten a servant, if he continued alive a day or 
 two after. He is his money, says the lawgiver, to show 
 that the loss of his property was deemed a sufficient punish- 
 ment ; and it may be presumed, in this case, that the mas- 
 ter only intended his correction. But if the slave died un- 
 der the strokes, it was to be supposed the master had a real 
 design to kill him, for which the law commanded him to 
 be punished. But considerations of interest are too feeble a 
 barrier to resist the impulse of passions, inflamed by the 
 consciousness and exercise of absolute power over a fellow- 
 mortal. The wise and benevolent restraints imposed upon 
 a master of slaves, by the law of Moses, clearly prove that 
 he very often abused his power, or was in extreme danger 
 of doing so ; for laws are not made for the good, but for the 
 evil-doer. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 22. ver. 5. If a man shall cause a field or 
 vineyard to be eaten, and shall put in his beast, 
 and shall feed in another man's field ; of the 
 best of his own field, and of the best of his 
 own vineyard, shall he make restitution. 
 
 Bee on Gen. 49. 11. 
 
 Chandler observes, (Travels in Asia Minor,) that the 
 tame cattle were very fond of vine leaves, and were per- 
 mitted to eat them in the autumn. " We remarked," he 
 says, '* about Smyrna, the leaves were decayed, or stripped 
 by the camels and herds of goats, which are admitted to 
 browse after the vintage." If those animals are so fond of 
 vine leaves, it is no wonder that Moses, by an express law, 
 forbad a man's causing another man^s vtneyard to be eaten 
 hi putting in his beast. The turning any of* them in before 
 the fruit" was gathered, must have occasioned much mis- 
 chief-, and even afler it must have been an injury, as it 
 would ha\{g been eating up another's feed. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 6. If fire break out, and catch in thorns, so 
 that the stacks of corn, or the standing corn, or 
 the field, be consumed therewith; he that 
 kindleth the fire shall surely make restitution. 
 
 It is a common management in the East, to set the dry 
 herbage on fire before the autumnal rains, which^fires, for 
 want of care, often do great damage. Moses has taken 
 notice of fires of this kind, and by an express law has pro- 
 vided, that reparation shall be made for the damage done 
 by those who either maliciously or negligently occasioned it. 
 Chandler, speaking of the neighbourhood of Smyrna, says, 
 " In the latter end of July, clouds began to appear from the 
 south ; the air was repeatedly cooled by showers which had 
 fallen elsewhere, and it was easy to foretell the approach- 
 ing rain. IViis was the season for conswuing the dry herbage 
 and iindergrovjth on the mountains : and we often saw the 
 fire blazing in the wind, and spreading a thick smoke 
 along their sides." He also relates an incident to which 
 he was an eyewitness. Having been employed the latter 
 end of August, in taking a plan at Troas, one day after 
 dinner, says he, a Turk coming to us, " emptied the ashes, 
 from his pipe, and a spark of fire fell unobserved in the 
 grass, which was long, parched by the sun, and inflamma- 
 ble like tinder. A brisk wind soon kindled a blaze, which 
 withered in an instant the leaves of the bushes and trees in 
 its way, seized the branches and roots, and devoured all 
 before it with prodigious crackling and noise. We were 
 much alarmed, as a general conflagration of the country 
 seemed likely to ensue." After exerting themselves for 
 an hour, they at length extinguished it. It is an im- 
 propriety worth correcting in this passage, where the word 
 stacks of corn is used rather than shocks, v/hich is more con- 
 formable to custom, as the heaps of the East are only the 
 disposing of corn into a proper form to be immediately 
 trodden out. The stacking of corn, in our agricultural lan- 
 guage means, the collecting corn in the straw into heaps, 
 larger or smaller as it happens, designed to continue for 
 some considerable space of time. They are not wont to . 
 stack corn, in our sense of the word, in those countries.- 
 The term shock, by which the word a'">nj gadeesh is translated! 
 in two other places, is less exceptionable, but not perfectly' 
 expressive of the original idea. We put together, or heap 
 up our corn, not fully ripe, in parcels which are called 
 shocks, that it may more perfectly ripen after being cut, 
 but the original word trni gadeesh, means a heap of corn, 
 fully ripe, see Job v. 26; means, in a word, the heaps of the 
 eastern threshing-floors, ready to be trodden out. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 26. If thou at all take thy neighbour's rai- 1 
 ment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him I 
 by that the sun goeth down : 27. For that is ' 
 his covering only ; it is his raiment for his skin : 
 wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to 
 pass, w^hen he crieth unto me, that I will hear : ; 
 for I am gracious. ? 
 
 The clothes which the Orientals wear by day, serve them^ 
 as bed-clothes for the night. Does a man wish to retire to3 
 rest, he needs not to trouble himself about the curtains, he| 
 requires not the bed-steps, he does not examine whether| 
 his bolsters or pillows are in order, he is not very particu-| 
 lar about the adjustment of his sheets and counterpane; hei 
 throws a mat on the floor, places his little travelling bag or' 
 turban for a pillow, takes off his cloth, (which is general]/.: 
 about nine yards long,) puts one end under him; then' 
 covers his feet, and folds the rest round his body, leaving' 
 the upper end to cover his face. Thus may be seen coolie*' 
 in the morning, stretched side by side, having, during 
 the night, defied all the stings of their foes, the moschetoes. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 The upper garment of the Israelites was a large square 
 cloth which folded round the whole body, and served the 
 poor as a bed-covering during the night. Less altera- 
 tion than could have been expected has taken place in 
 the d^'-ess of the eastern people. This garment was still 
 found by Shaw in the eighteenth century, among the Be- 
 douin Arabs in the north of Africa, under the Arabiajl 
 name of Hyke, i. e. texture, covering. In fair weathet 
 this cloth is therefore mostly worn on the shoulders, a» 
 
Chap. 23—24. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Niebuhr observes in his Description of Arabia. " It will 
 not, perhaps, be imagined," says he, " that the above-men- 
 tioned little clothing constitutes the whole bedding of a 
 common Arab. He spreads out his great girdle, and so he 
 has a bed to lie down upon : with the cloth which he wears 
 on his shoulders, he covers his whole body and face, and 
 sleeps naked between these two cloths, quite happy and 
 contented." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 In all parts of Southern Africa, the skin cloak is the 
 covering of males and females by day, and that in which 
 they sleep by night : they have no other bed-clothes. The 
 Hottentot cloak is composed of sheep skins, retaining the 
 wool on the inside of it, in which he sleq)s comfortably 
 under a bush or tree wherever he goes. Deprive him of 
 that covering, and he would find himself most uncomfort- 
 ably placed. It would be a cruel act. The nations farther 
 in the interior, have cloaks made from hides of oxen or 
 cows, which they have a method of rendering soft and 
 pliable, and use exactly for the same purposes as the others, 
 viz. for clothing and for sleeping in. The Israelites sleep- 
 ing in the wilderness in this simple manner, would be 
 always ready to remove when the trumpet intimated the 
 moving of the pillar of fire ; like the dogs, when they shook 
 themselves, they might be said to be dressed and ready to 
 march. The God who gave such a humane, considerate 
 law to the Israelites, might well be called a gracious God, 
 —African Light. 
 
 Chap. 23. ver. 4. If thou meet thine enemy's ox 
 or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring 
 it back to him again. 
 
 Among the Hindoos, malice often finds its victim in a 
 dumb animal. If the wretch cannot revenge himself on 
 the man, he will on his beast. The miscreant watches till 
 the cattle go astray, or the owner shall be out of the way, 
 when he pounces upon the innocent ox or cow, and cuts off 
 the tail. Hence may be seen, in every village, cattle which 
 thus proclaim the diabolical passions of man. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. Three times in the year all thy males 
 shall appear before the Lord God. 
 
 To those that may wonder how Jerusalem could receive 
 such multitudes, as were obliged by the Jewish law to at- 
 tend there three times a-year, and as we know did some- 
 times actually appear in it, I would recite the account that 
 Pitts gives of Mecca, the sacted city of the Mohammedans, 
 and the number he found collected together there, for the 
 celebration of their religious solemnities, in the close of the 
 17th century. This city, he tells us, he thought he might 
 safely say, had not one thousand families in it of constant 
 inhabitants, and the buildings very mean and ordinaiy. 
 That four caravans arrive there every year, with great 
 numbers of people in each, and the Mohammedans say, 
 there meet not fewer than seventy thousand souls at these 
 solemnities ; and that though he could not think the num- 
 ber quite so large, yet that it is very great. How such 
 numbers of people, with their beasts, could be lodged and 
 entertained in such a little town as Mecca, is a question he 
 thus answers. " As for house-room, the inhabitants do 
 straiten themselves very much, in order at this time to 
 make their market. As for such as come last, after the 
 town is filled, they pitch their tents without the town, and 
 there abide until they remove towards home. As for pro- 
 vision, they all bring sufficient with them, except it be of 
 flesh, which they may have at Mecca ; but all other provi- 
 sions, as butter, honey, oil, olives, rice, biscuit, &c. they 
 bring with them, as much as will last through the wilder- 
 ness, forward and backward, as well as the time they stay 
 at Mecca ; and so for their camels they bring store of prov- 
 ender, &c. with them." The number of Jews that assem- 
 bled at Jerusalem at their passover was much greater : but 
 had not Jerusalem been a much larger city than Mecca is, 
 as in truth it was, yet the present Mohammedan practice 
 of abiding imder tents, and carrying their provisions and 
 bedding with them, will easily explain how they might be 
 accommodated. — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 19. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his 
 mother's milk. 
 
 The Jewish legislator three times forbids his people to 
 9 
 
 " seethe a kid in his mother's milk." The meaning of this 
 law has been greatly disputed, although the terms in which 
 it is couched, are sufficiently clear and precise. It is the 
 opinion of some writers, that the prohibition refers to a kid 
 in the womb of its mother, which in that state is nourished 
 only with milk ; but the opinion of Clemens, that the people 
 of Israel had been in the practice of eating the foetus of a 
 goat, which this precept was intended to prohibit, is sup- 
 ported by no proof. The disgusting custom of eating the 
 foetus of a sow, is indeed mentioned by Plutarch ; but we 
 have no proof that it was known to epicures in the times of 
 Moses. Other expositors imagine, that the Jews were by 
 this precept forbidden to takeaway the life of a kid, before 
 it was eight days old, when, according to them, it may sub- 
 sist without the aid of its mother's milk. This exposition 
 is supposed to be confirmed by another precept : " When a 
 bullock, or a sheep, or a goat is brought forth, then it shall 
 be seven days under the dam ; and from the eighth day, 
 and thenceforth, it shall be accepted for an offering made 
 by fire unto the Lord." But si^ce the law, which prohibited 
 the people of Israel to offer in sacrifice, " the young of the 
 herd, or of the flock," before the eighth day, is immediately 
 subjoined to the precept concerning the oblation of the first 
 ripe fruits, and the first-born, in the twenty-second chapter 
 of Exodus ; so, in the twenty-third and thirty-fourth chap- 
 ters, the law which forbids to seethe a kid in his mother's 
 milk, follows the same precept ; and by consequence, not 
 only the sacred, but also the common use of the kid, is pro- 
 hibited before the eighth day. Such is the opinion, and 
 the reasoning by which it is supported ; but it must be evi- 
 dent to every reader, that a kid is as much in his mother's 
 milk all the time he is suckled, as during the first eight 
 days ; nor can any reason be imagined, why he may not 
 be said to be in his mother's milk on the seventh day from 
 his birth, rather than on the eighth or the ninth. Others 
 are of opinion, that, according to this precept, a sucking 
 kid was at no time to be slain, either for sacred or common 
 use. The she-goat suckles her young about three months ; 
 and till this period, it was not to be subjected to the sacri- 
 ficing knife. But it is very improbable, that the Jews were 
 forbidden the use of a kid for so long a time ; for that which 
 the law permits to be offered in sacrifice to God, may surely 
 be eaten by his people. Nor was any species of food pro- 
 hibited by the law, out for ceremonial impurity. But that 
 cannot be reckoned legally unclean, which the law permits 
 to be offered in sacrifice at the altar. He permitted a suck- 
 ing kid or lamb, to be offered on the eighth day ; a sure 
 proof they were not reckoned unclean, while they remained 
 under the dam. The prophet Samuel offered a sucking 
 lamb as a burnt-offering to the Lord on a day of public 
 humiliation ; and God condescended to give them a strong 
 proof of his acceptance, in utterly discomfiting their ene- 
 mies, by a furious tempest of thunder and lightning. If, 
 therefore, a sucking kid might be offered in sacrifice to 
 God, it might be used as food by his people. Nor is their 
 opinion more tenable, who say, that by this law the dam 
 and her suckling were not to be slain at the same time. 
 To cherish kind and humane feelings among the chosen 
 seed, Jehovah forbade them to kill a cow, a sheep, or a 
 goat, on the same day with their young ; but the precept 
 under consideration cannot naturally bear such a meaning. 
 Had this been the design of Moses, why did he not say in 
 plain terms. Thou shalt not seethe a kid and his mother at 
 the same time 1 He must, therefore, have meant what the 
 words naturally suggest, that a kid is not to be seethed in 
 the milk of his mother. The barbarous custom to which 
 the lawgiver alludes, probably existed in some neighbour- 
 ing countries, and particularly in Egypt, from whose iron 
 yoke they had just been delivered ; either because the flesh 
 dressed in this manner was more tender and juicy, than 
 when roasted with fire, or boiled in water ; or, which is 
 more probable, while at the feast of ingathering, they gave 
 thanks to God for the mercies they had received, and ex- 
 pressed their dependance upon him for future blessings, 
 they were not to expect his favour by imitating the super- 
 stitious rites of the heathens, among whom they had lived 
 so long, who at the end of their harvest seethed a kid in 
 his mother's milk, and sprinkled the broth in a magical 
 way upon their gardens and fields, to render them more 
 fruitful next season. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 24. ver. 28. And I will send hornets be- 
 
66 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 24—25. 
 
 fore thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the 
 Canaanite, and the Hiltite, from before thee. 
 
 Another insect which Heaven has sometimes employed 
 to avenge the quarrel of his covenant, is the hornet ; which 
 is a larger species of wasp. The irascible temper and poi- 
 sonmis sting of the wasp, are too well known to require de- 
 scription ; they have been mentioned by the natural histo- 
 rians, and celebrated by the poets of every age and coun- 
 try. In three parallel places of scripture, the sacred wri- 
 ter mentions the hornet which Jehovah sent before his 
 people, to expel the Canaanites from their habitations : 
 " And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive 
 out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before 
 thee." This promise was afterward renewed a short time 
 before that people passed the Jordan : " Moreover, the 
 Lord thy God will send the hornet among them, till they 
 that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed." 
 Both these promises, we learn from Joshua, were punctu- 
 ally fulfilled : " And I sent t^e hornet before you, which 
 drave them out from Defore you, even the two kings of the 
 Amorites, but not with thy sword, nor with thy bow." At 
 what particular time during the wars of Joshua, the Lord, 
 in fulfilment of his promise, sent the hornet against the in- 
 habitants of Canaan, and what impression its attack made 
 upon the enemies of Israel, we are nowhere informed in 
 scripture. On this account, several writers of great emi- 
 nence consider the words of Moses as a metaphor, denoting 
 the terror of the Lord, or some remarkable disease which 
 he commissioned to lay waste the country before the armies 
 of Israel. But neither the words of Moses nor Joshua, be- 
 tray the smallest indication of metaphor : and in a plain 
 narration, we are never, without the most obvious neces- 
 sity, to depart from the literal sense. The inspired histo- 
 rian could not mean the terror of the Lord, as Augustine 
 is inclined to suppose ; for he had mentioned this in the 
 verse immediately preceding : " I will send my fear before 
 thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt 
 come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs 
 unto thee." Upon which it is added, " And I will send 
 hornets before thee." Nor could any particular disease be 
 intended ; for no disease was ever called by this name. 
 Junius gives a different version : I will send before thee 
 fear or disease as a hornet ; but the comparative particle 
 as, is not in the text, and must not be supplied by the ca- 
 price of translators. The words of Joshua are express, 
 without either metaphor or comparison : " I have sent the 
 hornet before you." It is no valid objection to the literal 
 sense, that the circumstances of time and place are not 
 mentioned by the sacred writer, for this is by no means an 
 unusual omission in the rapid narrative of an inspired his- 
 torian. To mention but one example : the patriarch Ja- 
 cob gave to his son Joseph a portion of land, which he took 
 from the Amorite by force of arms ; but when or in what 
 place this battle was fought, we are not informed. The 
 hornet, it is probable, marched before the armies of Israel, 
 till the five nations that had been doomed for their numer- 
 ous and long-continued crimes to destruction, were sub- 
 dued ; which rendered such a circumstantial detail unne- 
 cessary and improper. But who can believe, say they, 
 that the hornets of Canaan were so vexatious to the inhab- 
 itants, that they were forced to abandon their dwellings, 
 and seek for other habitations 1 The testimony of an in- 
 spired writer ought to silence all such objections ; but, in 
 reality, the same thing has not unfrequently happened in the 
 liistory of the world. Both Athenoeus and Eustatheus in- 
 tbrm us, that the people about Paeonia and Dardania were 
 compelled by frogs to forsake their native country, and fix 
 their abode in a distant region. If Pliny may be credited, 
 the ancient city of Troy was forced to open her gates, after 
 a war often years, not so much by the victorious arms of 
 the Greeks, as by an innumerable host of mice, which 
 compelled the Trojans to desert their houses, and retire to 
 the neighbouring mountains ; and in Italy, whole nations 
 were driven from their possession by the same destructive 
 creature, which in immense mimbers ov^erran their fields, 
 devoured every green thing, and, grubbing up the roots, 
 converted some of the fairest regions of that country into 
 an mhospitable waste. The Myusians, according to Pau- 
 Fanias, were forced, by swarms of gnats, to desert their 
 f'itv; and the Scythians beyond the Ister, are recorded to 
 liave been expelled from their country by countless my- 
 
 riads ( ; bees. But, since the wasp is more vexatious than 
 the bee, its sting more severe, and its hostility more viru- 
 lent — it is by no means incredible, that many of the Ca- 
 naanites were fo.-ced, by so formidable an enemy, to re- 
 move beyond the reach of their attack. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 25. ver. 5. And rams' skins died red, and 
 badgers' skins, and shittim-wood. 
 
 To enter into the history of this animal is unnecessary, 
 as it is mentioned in scripture only on account of its skin. 
 This part of the animal seems to have been in great re- 
 quest among the people of Israel, for it is mentioned among 
 the valuable articles which they were permitted to offer for 
 the tabernacle : " Rams' skins died red, and badgers' skins." 
 These last formed the exterior covering of that splendid 
 structure, and of all the sacred utensils, which the Levites 
 were commanded to spread over them during their march. 
 Of these also the shoes of the mystical bride were formed, 
 when, according to the representation of the prophet, she 
 was richly adorned for the marriage. Jehovah had chosen 
 Israel to be his peculiar people, and had bestowed upon 
 them innumerable favours, but they had become ungrate- 
 ful and perfidious, like a woman who proves inconstant 
 and unfaithful to her husband, who had raised her from 
 the meanest condition, to the greatest affluence and splen- 
 dour : " Thou becamest mine. Then I washed thee with 
 water ; yes, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, 
 and I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also with 
 broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin ; and I 
 girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with 
 silk." In this passage, badgers' skin is mentioned as a 
 very precious and splendid substance, such as might be 
 made into shoes for ladies of the highest rank, and worn 
 on their marriage day; while, in the book of Exodus, it is 
 represented as very coarse and homely, fit only to be made 
 a covering for the tabernacle, and its furniture, during the 
 journeys of the tribes. These very different representa- 
 tions cannot easily be reconciled, and involve the subject 
 in doubt and uncertainty. And indeed the original word 
 (tynn) tahash, which our translators render badgers' skins, 
 is of very uncertain meaning. It is evident from scripture, 
 that it was a kind of skin which, being capable of resisting 
 rain, was manufactured by the people of Israel into cover- 
 ings for the tabernacle and its furniture, and into shoes 
 for persons of the highest rank in the state. But the inspir- 
 ed writers furnish no details from which it can be inferred, 
 to what animal it originally belonged ; it is even extremely 
 doubtful, whether the word rendered badger, denotes an 
 animal at all. The Seventy interpreters considered it 
 merely as the name of a colour, and uniformly translate it 
 hyacinth, or hyacinthine. In this opinion, they were fol- 
 lowed by all the ancient translators of the scripture, with- 
 out one exception ; and the same idea has been adopted by 
 the learned Bochart, and other eminent moderns. The 
 reasons on which their interpretation is founded, seem to 
 be quite conclusive. In the first place, no evidence can be 
 found that the badger ever existed in Palestine, Arabia, or 
 Egypt. Dr. Shaw made particular inquiry, but could hear 
 of no such animal in Barbary. Harmer was unable to 
 discover in modern travellers, the smallest traces of the 
 badger in Egypt, or in any of the adjacent countries ; Buf- 
 fon represents it as unknown in that part of Asia. So little 
 was the badger known to the ancients, that the Greeks had 
 not a word in their language by which to express it ; and 
 the Latin term which is supposed to denote this animal, 
 is extremely doubtful. But if the badger is not a native 
 of the East, if it is not to be found m those countries, from 
 whence could the people of Israel in the wilderness, pro- 
 cure its skin to cover the tabernacle 1 It is an animal of 
 small size, and is nowhere found in great numbers ; and, 
 by consequence, its skin could not, in remote times, more 
 than at present, constitute an article of commerce in the 
 ports of Egypt, and come at last into the possession of that 
 people. The exterior covering of the tabernacle, and its 
 bulky utensils, must have required a greater number of 
 skins than could be procured even in the native country 
 of the badger; and therefore, it must have been formed of 
 leather, fabricated from the skin of some other animal, 
 which not only existed, but also abounded in Egypt, and 
 the adjacent countries. The coarseness of the leather, 
 fabricated of badgers' skin, which in the East is reluctantly 
 
Chap. 26. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 67 
 
 employed for the meanest purposes of life, forbids us to 
 consider it as the material of which the elegant 1ft oes of 
 an oriental lady are formed. When the prophet says in 
 the name of the Lord, " I clothed thee also with broidered 
 work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee 
 about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk," he 
 certainly meant, that the shoes, corresponding to the other 
 parts of the dress, were formed of costly materials. The 
 Targum accoriingly translates the passage, " I put pre- 
 cious shoes upon tny feet ;" but this could be said with no 
 propriety of shoes made of badgers' skins. Nor can it be 
 supposed, that the skin of an animal, which the law of 
 Moses pronounces unclean, strictly enjoins the people of 
 Israel not to touch, or if they did happen to touch it, not to 
 worship at the tabernacle, till the ceremonial pollution which 
 they accidentally contracted was removed according to the 
 precept, — would be employed to cover that sacred struc- 
 ture, and its consecrated utensils, and that the Levites 
 should be obliged c ften to handle it in performing the du- 
 ties of their office. The sacred implements of Jewish wor- 
 ship, certainly were defended from the injuries of the wea- 
 ther by the skins of clean beasts, which were easily pro- 
 cured, and that in sufficient numbers, even in the wilder- 
 ness. This idea, so conformable to the spotless purity re- 
 quired in the ceremonial law, has been adopted and main- 
 tained by all the earlier Jewish writers, whose authority 
 in matters of this kind is entitled to great respect. Many 
 disputes indeed have been agitated among them, in relation 
 to the particular animal employed ; but none of them be- 
 fore the time of Jarchi, who flourished about the middle of 
 the eleventh century, supposed that it was the skin of the 
 badger. These considerations leave no room for doubt 
 in the mind of the writer, that the original term denotes 
 neither the badger, nor any other animal, but merely a 
 colour. What particular colour is meant, it may not be 
 easy to ascertain ; but when it is considered, that the peo- 
 ple of rank and fashion in the East, were accustomed to 
 appear in purple shoes, it is extremely probable, that pur- 
 ple was the colour intended by the sacred writer. The 
 Chaldee Paraphrast accordingly, expounds the words of 
 the Song, " How beautiful are thy feet with shoes," how 
 beautiful are the feet of Israel, when they go up to appear 
 three times before the Lord in purple sandals ! The Ro- 
 man emperors, and the kings of Persia, reserved by a for- 
 mal edict, shoes of a purple colour for their own use ; and 
 it is said, red shoes were among the insignia of the an- 
 cient kingdom of Bulgaria. Hence, Isaac Comnenus, the 
 Roman emperor, deprived the patriarch of Constantinople 
 of his dignity, because he presumed to put on shoes of a 
 crimson colour, although these were formerly worn at 
 Rome by persons of the senatorial order. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 10. And they shall make an ark o/shittim- 
 wood : two cubits and a half shall be the length 
 thereof and a cubit and a half the breadth 
 thereof, and a cubit and a half the height 
 thereof. 
 
 Concerning the shitta tree, mentioned by the prophet 
 Isaiah with the cedar and the myrtle, different opinions are 
 entertained by commentators. The name is derived from 
 the Hebrew verb Shata, to decline or turn to and fro^ hav- 
 ing for the plural Shittim. It is remarkable for being the 
 wood of which the sacred vessels of the tabernacle were 
 made. The Seventy interpreters generally render it by 
 
 ' the term a<TriT:ia, incorruptible. Theodotion, and after him 
 the Vulgate, translate it by Spina, a thorn. The shittim- 
 wood, says Jerome, resembles the white thorn in its colour 
 and leaves, but not in its size ; for the tree is so large, that 
 it affijrds very long planks. Hasselquist also says it grows 
 
 I in Upper Egypt, to the size of a large tree. The wood is 
 hard, tough, smooth, without knots, and extremely beauti- 
 
 ■ ful. This kind of wood grows only in the deserts of Ara- 
 bia ; but in no other part of the Roman empire. In another 
 place he remarks, it is of an admirable beauty, solidity, 
 strength, and smoothness. It is thought he means the 
 black acacia, the only tree found in the deserts of Arabia. 
 This plant is so hard and solid, as to become almost incor- 
 ruptible. Its wood has the colour of the Lotus tree ; and 
 60 large, that it furnishes plank twelve cubits long. It is 
 very thorny, and even its bark is covered with very sharp 
 
 thorns ; and hence it perhaps had the Hebrew name Shatn 
 from making animals decline or turn aside by the shar}>. 
 ness of its spines. The interpretation now given, seems 
 to be confirmed by the following remark of Dr. Shaw ; 
 " The acacia being by much the largest and the most com- 
 mon tree of these deserts, we have some reason to conjec- 
 ture, that the shittim-wood, of which the several utensils of 
 the tabernacle were made, was the wood of the acacia. 
 This tree abounds with flowers of a globular figure, and of 
 an excellent smell ; which is another proof of its being the 
 shitta tree of the scriptures, which, in the prophecies of 
 Isaiah, is joined with the myrtle and other sweet-smelling 
 plants." Besides, we have no reason to conclude, that the 
 people of Israel possessed any species of wood for making 
 the utensils of the tabernacle, but what they could procure 
 in the desert; but the desert produces none' in the quantity 
 required, except the acacia. In one place they found seven- 
 ty-two palm-trees: but the sacred writer distinguishes them 
 by their vulgar name ; therefore they could not be the same 
 tree ; nor is the palm, which is a soft spongy wood, at ail 
 fit for the purpose, — for the nature of the utensils, as the 
 ark of the testimony and the mercy-seat, required wood ol 
 a fibre the hardest, the most beautiful and durable which 
 could be found, had it been in their power to make a choice ; 
 and these are the very characters of the acacia. To these 
 important qualities may be added, the fragrant odour emit- 
 ted by this wood, which to Orientals who delight in rich 
 perfumes, must have been a powerful recommendation. 
 But if the acacia was perfectly suited to the purpose of Mo- 
 ses, and if the desert produces no other, as Dr. Shaw de- 
 clares, the shittim-wood mentioned in the scriptures must 
 be the acacia of the natural historian. — Paxton. 
 
 Chap. 26. ver. 1. Moreover, thou shalt make the 
 tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, 
 and blue, and purple, and scarlet : ivith cher- 
 ubims of cunning work shalt thou make them. 
 
 It seems that the tabernacle, as it was ordered in the plan 
 given, might be called a tent or a house, because it had 
 wooden walls or partitions like a house, and curtains and 
 hangings like a lent ; but as it externally resembled a tent, 
 and that a common oblong tent, such as those of the Arabs, 
 for the most part, now are, and the wooden walls were 
 without a roof, and properly only supports for the many 
 curtains and hangings which spread over them, it is better 
 and more properly called a tent. Even the ordinary tent*; 
 of the wandering tribes of the East have at least two main 
 divisions ; the innermost or hindmost is for the women ; 
 and, among the Orientals, it is in this sense sacred, i. e. 
 parted oflf, inaccessible. The first space is divided from 
 the innermost only by a curtain, and is for the men ; what 
 is found in the tents of the common people is found also, 
 but far more rich and splendid, in the tents of the men of 
 rank. The tent of an emir or prince has more conveniences ; 
 the inrfermost space is only accessible to himself, or to those 
 whom he especially honours : into the first space, or outer 
 tent, others may come. The furniture is costly, the floor 
 is covered with a rich carpet, and a stand, with the censer 
 and coals, on which incense is strewed. Here we have the 
 simple idea after which this royal tent, this abode of God, 
 who was at the same time king of the Hebrew people, was 
 made. It was not to be a house or a palace, but a tent, and 
 that with all the magnificence which the skill of the He- 
 brews in architecture could erect. The boards for the 
 standing walls were covered with plates of gold; twenty 
 boards, which served as pillars to the supporters, standing 
 upright, joined together, each three feet broad and twenty 
 high, made on each side the length, and eight the breadth, 
 so that eight-and-forty such boards, twenty in the length on 
 each side, and eight for the breadth of the back wall, (for 
 the front side had only a curtain,) resting upon two silver 
 sockets, formed the partition. This oblong quadrangle was 
 separated into two parts or divisions ; the innermost, or the 
 most holy ; and the front, or the holy. The innermost was 
 properly the dwelling of the Lord, the front one was more 
 for his service. The inner division was very considerable, 
 sixty feet long, twenty feet broad, and twenty high ; and, 
 as over this extensive frame-work several covers were 
 spread, which hung down on three sides, (that is, all round 
 except at the entrance,) this also gave the tent a greatei 
 appearance, so that it was undoubtedly distinguished b} 
 
68 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 Chap. 26—29. 
 
 its size. In the coverings of the tents, the Orientals, who 
 are fond of magnificence, regard both the stuff and the 
 colour : this royal tent was to be distinguished in both par- 
 ticulars. The curtain, which lay immediately under the 
 beams, was the most beautiful and the most costly. On the 
 finest linen stuff were embroidered cherubims of the most 
 beautiful colours, dark blue, purple, and scarlet. Thus 
 the tents of eastern princes, even in our days, are distin- 
 guished by most beautiful colours. Olearius, accompany- 
 ing the ambassadors of Holstein Gottorf, who were invited 
 by the Persian monarch to a hunting party, found in an Ar- 
 menian village many tents, ready for the reception of the 
 company, which afforded a pleasing sight on account of 
 their manifold colours. Over the under curtain a cover- 
 ing of goats' hair was spread, which is the usual covering 
 of the Arabian tents, commonly coarse, but here of the 
 finest texture ; and, that these coverings might not be in- 
 jured by the sand or dust, two others, made of skins, were 
 laid over them. The portable temple of the Israelites had, 
 indeed, in its whole arrangement, a resemblance with the 
 temples of other nations of antiquity. As they had spacious 
 forecourts, so had the tabernacle an oblong quadrangular 
 forecourt, two hundred feet long, and one hundred broad, 
 which was formed by the hangings or curtains which hung 
 on pillars. The tabernacle itself was divided into two 
 parts, the holy and the most holy ; in the latter was the ark 
 of the covenant, with the symbols of the divine qualities, 
 the cherubims; and no human being dared to enter this 
 especially sanctified place, except the high-priest, once a 
 year, (oii the feast of reconciliation.) Thus, also, in many 
 Grecian temples, the back part was not to be entered by 
 anybody. (Lackemacher's Antiq. Grsecor. Sacr.) This 
 ]iart, where, in the heathen temples, the statue of the deity 
 was placed, was generally towards the west, and the en- 
 trance towards the east. (Spencer de Leg. Hebrgeor. Ritual.) 
 In the same manner the entrance of the tabernacle was 
 towards the east, and, consequently, the most holy place 
 to the west. In the most holy, a solemn darkness reigned, 
 as in most of the ancient temples. A richly-worked cur- 
 tain divided the most holy from the holy, and thus, in the 
 Egyptian temples, the back part, where the sacred animal 
 to which the temple was dedicated, was kept, was divided 
 from the front part by a curtain embroidered with gold. — 
 
 ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 36. And thou shalt make a hanging for the 
 door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scar- 
 let, and fine twined linen, wrought w^ith needle- 
 work. 
 
 We passed Lahar, close to a small valley, where we 
 found several snug encampments of the Eelauts, at one of 
 which we stopped to examine the tent of the chief of the o/!>aA, 
 or family. It was composed of a wooden frame of circu- 
 lar laths, which were fixed on the ground, and then cover- 
 ed over with large felts, that were fastened down by a cord, 
 ornamented by tassels of various colours. A curtain, cu- 
 riously worked by the w^dmen, with coarse needle-work of 
 various colours, was suspended over the door. In the king 
 of Persia's tents, magnificent perdahs, or hangings of nee- 
 dle-work, are suspended, as well as on the doors of the 
 great mosques in Turkey ; and these circumstances com- 
 bined, will, perhaps, illustrate Exodus xxvi. 36. — Morier. 
 
 Chap. 27. ver. 20. And thou shalt command the 
 children of Israel, that they bring thee pure 
 oil-olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp 
 to burn always. 
 
 By the expression oil-olive, this oil is distinguished from 
 other kinds. The addition beaten, indicates that it is that 
 oil obtained from olives pounded in a mortar, and not 
 pressed from olives in the oil-mill. The oil obtained from 
 pounded olives is, according to Columella's observation, 
 much purer and better tasted, does not emit much smoke, 
 and has no offensive smell. — Burder, 
 
 Chap. 28. ver. 33. And beneath, upon the hem of 
 it, thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and 
 
 of purple, and o/ scarlet, round about the hem 
 fnereof; and bells of gold between them round 
 about. 
 
 The bell seems to have been a sacred utensil of very 
 ancient use in Asia. Golden bells formed a part of the orna- 
 ments of the pontifical robe of the Jewish high-priest, with 
 which he invested himself upon those grand and peculiar 
 festivals, when he entered into the sanctuary. That robe was 
 very magnificent, it was ordained to be of sky-blue, and the 
 border of it, at the bottom, was adorned with pomegranates 
 and gold bells intermixed equally, and at equal distances. 
 The use and intent of these bells is evident from these 
 words : " And it shall be upon Aaron to minister, and his 
 sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place 
 before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that he die not." 
 The sound of the numerous bells that covered the hem ot 
 his garment, gave notice to the assembled people that the 
 most awful ceremony of their religion had commenced. 
 When arrayed in this garb, he bore into the sanctuary the 
 vessel of incense ; it was the signal to prostrate themselves 
 before the Deity, and to commence those fervent ejacula- 
 tions which were to ascend with the column of that incense 
 to the throne of heaven. "One indispensable ceremony 
 in the Indian Pooja is the ringing of a small bell by the 
 officiating brahmin. The women of the idol, or dancing 
 girls of the pagoda, have little golden bells fastened to their 
 feet, the soft harmonious tinkling of which vibrates in 
 unison with the exquisite melody of their voices." (Mau- 
 rice's Indian Antiquities.) " The ancient kings of Persia, 
 who, in fact, united in their own persons the regal and 
 sacerdotal office, were accustomed to have the fringes of 
 their robes adorned with pomegranates and golden bells. 
 The Arabian courtesans, like the Indian women, have 
 little golden bells fastened round their legs, neck, and 
 elbows, to the scund of which they dance before the king. 
 The Arabian princesses wear golden rings on their fingers, 
 to which little bells are suspended, as well as in the flowing 
 tresses of their hair, that their superior rank may be known, 
 and they themselves, in passing, receive the homage due to 
 their exalted station."-CALMET. 
 
 Ver. 41. And thou shaU put them upon Aaron 
 thy brother, and his sons with him ; and shalt 
 anoint them, and consecrate them, and sanctify 
 them, that they may minister unto me in the 
 priest's office. 
 
 The Hebrew has for "consecrate," "fill their hands." 
 See also Judges xvii. 5, 12, and 1 Kings xiii. 33, and many 
 other places where the word " consecrate" is in the margir. 
 rendered ^'fill the hand'' Is it not a remarkable fact that 
 the word Kai-Reppi, which signifies, in Tamul, to conse- 
 crate a priest, also means io fill the hand ? When a layman 
 meets a priest, he puts his hands together as an act of 
 reverence, and the priest stretches out his right hand, as if 
 full of something, and says, " Blessings."— Roberts. 
 
 Chap. 29. ver. 22. Also thou shalt take of the 
 ram the fat and the rump. 
 
 Or the large tail of one species of the eastern sheep. 
 Russell, {Hist, of Aleppo, p. 51,) afler observing that thev 
 are in that country much more numerous than those with 
 smaller tails, adds, " this tail is very broad and large, ter- 
 minating in a small appendix that turns back upon it. It 
 is of a substance between fat and marrow, and is not eaten 
 separately, but mixed with the lean meat in many of their 
 dishes, and also often used instead of butter. A common 
 sheep of this sort, without the head, feet, skin, and entrails 
 weighs about twelve or fourteen Aleppo rotoloes, of which 
 the tail is usually three rotoloes or upwards ; but suc'.v as 
 are of the largest breed, and have been fattened, will some- 
 times weigh above thirty rotoloes, and the tail of these ten. 
 These very large sheep, being about Aleppo kept up in 
 yards, are in no danger of injuring their tails : but in some 
 other places, where they feed in the fields, the shepherds 
 are obliged to fix a piece of thin board to the under part of 
 their tail, to prevent its being torn by bushes and thistles, 
 as it is not covered underneath with thick wool like the 
 
Chap. 38. 
 
 EXODUS. 
 
 69 
 
 upper part. Some have small wheels to facilitate the 
 dragging of this board after them." A rotoloe of Aleppo 
 is five pounds. With this agrees the account given by the 
 Abbe Mariti, {Travels through Cyprus.) "The mutton is 
 iuicy and tender. The tails of some of the sheep, which 
 are remarkably fine, weigh upwards of fifty pounds." This 
 ghows us the reason why, in the levitical sacrifices, the tail 
 was always ordered to be consumed by fire. — Burder. 
 
 Ver, 24. For I will cast out the nations before 
 thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall 
 any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go 
 up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice 
 in the year. 
 
 I find in Exod. xxxiv. 24, a very remarkable promise of 
 God, which could hardly have been fulfilled in the common 
 course of providence, and without a miracle, unless the 
 Israelites and other neighbours had in their wars observed 
 a certain law of truce, quite strange to us, and which I 
 only know from the customs of the Arabs. Moses com- 
 mands all the males of Israel to leave their homes thrice 
 a year, and celebrate a festival for a week at the place 
 where the tabernacle should be erected; assuring them, 
 withal, that during this period, no rtmn should desire their 
 land; and that, therefore, however distant their abodes 
 might be from the sanctuary, they might undertake this 
 journey with perfect safety.' According to the present 
 course of things in the world, this is quite incomprehensi- 
 ble. Were all the males to leave certain parts of the 
 country, and still more, the fortified cities, the greatest of 
 all wonders would be, the enemy with whom the nation 
 happened to be at war, refraining from seizing the oppor- 
 tunity to occupy the fortresses, — to plunder and burn the 
 open country,— and to forage the corn-fields. And it is 
 most obvious, that the danger of all this will be still 
 greater among nations who do not maintain settled peace 
 with each other ; of which description were the marauding 
 Arabs: or who carry on war rather by incursions than 
 regular campaigns, and have no other object than to make 
 booty in money, produce, women, and children. Shall we 
 then venture so to expound the words of Moses, as if he 
 had promised a periodical miracle from God, which 
 should, for three weeks every year, convert all the enemies 
 of the Israelites into statues 1 A promise so incredible, 
 will, perhaps, not appear to be necessary, when, to illus- 
 trate this point, we call in the aid of the customs of the 
 Arabs, who are Abraham's descendants, and the immediate 
 brethren of the Israelites. In all their wars, and even 
 amid their family feuds, during the holy month, in which 
 they solemnized the festival at Mecca, they had a truce. 
 Mohammed's greatest transgression is, that he is said to have 
 broken this truce. Yet, in the Koran, he has commanded 
 his followers to keep it only when their adversaries keep it ; 
 and he permits them to fight against the enemy during the 
 holy month, only when he makes the first attack. Thus 
 we see, in like manner, from 1 Kings xii. 27, that among 
 the Israelites, during the high festivals, a suspension of 
 arms .took place ; and the ten tribes who had revolted from 
 the family of David, might, without hinderance, have kept 
 the feast "at Jerusalem, and would have done so, had not 
 Jeroboam, for political reasons, endeavoured to prevent 
 them. The Judahites, therefore, did not put any obstacle 
 in their way ; and they would the7i have been in as perfect 
 security at Jerusalem, as, before Mohammed's time, every 
 Arab during the holy month was at Mecca. It would ap- 
 pear, then, that the nations related to the Israelites, paid 
 equal respect to the worship of God, and made a truce 
 during war, whenever the people celebrated a festival. 
 But probably the Canaanites were, both in religion and 
 manners, so difierent from the Israelites, that they did not 
 observe any such truce ; for Moses expressly says on this 
 
 occasion, that God would destroy the Canaanites; and 
 then, no other people would conceive any desire to attack 
 the land of Israel during the seasons of the festivals. 
 
 Now such a law of nations once introduced, God might 
 fulfil his promise in the common course of providence, and 
 without the aid of a miracle. This sacred truce, which is, 
 however, quite unsuitable to the more connected operations 
 of modern warfare, was likewise probably the cause, 
 wherefore the commandment respecting the Sabbath could 
 be given without any particular limitation. For on that 
 day, all labour was prohibited. Moses does not, indeed, 
 expressly specify fighting, marching, intrenching ; but 
 neither does he expressly except them. Now although, in 
 a rational consideration "df the matter, the justice of these 
 exceptions, in cases of necessity, is manifest ; this silence 
 seems, nevertheless, to be a defect in the law ; and a nation 
 who in this point had even the smallest scruple of con- 
 science, would make but a poor figure in war. We see 
 in fact, that after the Babylonish captivity, when, as St 
 Paul says, (Heb. viii. 7—13,) the law began to be useless 
 from its antiquity, the observance of the Sabbath became 
 very prejudicial to the Jews in their wars with the Syrians 
 and Romans. For the former on the Sabbath attacked 
 them, and burnt thousands of them in a cave, without their 
 making any resistance: and the latter, in their first siege 
 of Jerusalem under Pompey, carried on the works of in- 
 vestment undisturbed, and only guarded against attempt- 
 ing to storm the city, because against a storm the Jews de- 
 fended themselves even on the Sabbath. But since, before 
 the captivity, we never find, that in their numerous wars, 
 the Sabbath had been detrimental to the Jews, or that any 
 of their enemies availed himself of the advantage it gave 
 him ; the Israelites must either, from ancient and undoubt- 
 ed usage, have known that the commandment concerning 
 the Sabbath did not extend to the operations of war; or 
 else, betwixt them and all the neighbouring nations there 
 must on this day have been a sacred truce. Among the latter, 
 this day, which the Israelites dedicated to the Creator of the 
 heavens and the earth, was probably sacred to Saturn, to 
 whom the Phoenicians paid the highest veneration; be- 
 cause, before his being raised to divine honours, or num- 
 bered among the stars, he is said to have been king of their 
 country. According to the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, 
 they accounted him the chief of the planets ; and the Ara- 
 bians had, in like manner, dedicated to him their national 
 temple, the Caaba at Mecca. — Michaelis. 
 
 Chap. 38. ver. 8. And he made the laver o/ brass 
 and the foot of it of brass, of the looking-glasses 
 of the women assembling, which assembled at 
 the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. 
 
 The eastern mirrors were made o( polished steel, and for 
 the most part convex. If they were thus made in the 
 country of Elihu, the image made use of by him will 
 appear very lively. " Hast thou with him spread out the 
 sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking-glass T' 
 (Job xxxvii. 18.) Shaw informs us, that " in the Levant 
 looking-glasses are a part of female dress. The Moorish 
 women in Barbary are so fond of their ornaments, and 
 particularly of their looking-glasses, which they hang upon 
 their breasts, that they will not lay them aside, even when, 
 after the drudgery of the day, they are obliged to go two or 
 three miles with a pitcher, or a goat's skin, to fetch water." 
 The Israelitish women used to carry their mirrors with 
 them, even to their most solemn place of worship. The 
 word mirror should be used in the passages here referred 
 to, rather than those which are inserted in the present 
 translation of the Bible. To speak of looking glasses made 
 of steel, and glasses molten, is palpably absurd ; whereas the 
 term mirror obviates every difficulty, and expresses the 
 true meaning of the original. — Burder. 
 
LEVITICUS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 4. And if thou bring an oblation of a meat- 
 offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleaven- 
 ed cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or un- 
 leavened wafers anointed with oil. 
 
 What attracted our attention most this stormy day, was 
 the apparatus for warming us. It was the species of oven 
 called tannoor, common throughout Armenia and also in 
 Syria, but converted here for purposes of warmth into what 
 is called a tandoor. A cylindrical hole is simk about three 
 feet in the ground in some part of the room, with a flue en- 
 tering it at the bottom to convey a current of air to the fire 
 which heats it. For the emission of smoke no other pro- 
 vision is made than the open sky-light in the terrace. When 
 used for baking bread, the dough, being flattened to the 
 thickness of common pasteboard, perhaps a foot and a half 
 long by a foot broad, is stuck to its smooth sides by means 
 of a cushion, upon which it is first spread. It indicates, by 
 cleaving off", when it is done, and being then packed down 
 in the family chest, it lasts at least a month in the winter, 
 and ten days in the summer. Such is the only bread 
 known in the villages of Armenia ; and even the cities of 
 Erivan and Tebriz offer no other variety than a species 
 perhaps only twice as thick, and so long that it might almost 
 be sold by the yard. To bake it, the bottom of a large oven 
 is covered with pebbles, (except one corner, where a fire is 
 kept constantly burning,) and upon them when heated, the 
 sheets of dough are spread. The convenience of such thin 
 bread, where knives and forks are not used, and spoons are 
 rare, is, that a piece of it doubled enables you to take hold 
 of a mouthful of meat more delicately than with your bare 
 fingers ; or, when properly folded, helps you to convey a 
 spoonful safely to your mouth, to be eaten with the spoon 
 itself. When needed for purposes of warmth, the tannoor 
 is easily transformed into a tandoor. A round stone is laid 
 upon the mouth of the oven, when well heated, to stop the 
 draught ; a square frame, about a foot in height, is then 
 placed above it; and a thick coverlet, spread over the 
 whole, lies upon the ground around'it, to confine the warmth. 
 Thjp family squat upon the floor, and warm themselves by 
 extending their legs and hands into the heated air beneath 
 it, while the frame holds, as occasion requires, their lamp 
 or their food. Its economy is evidently great. So full of 
 crevices are the houses, that an open fireplace must con- 
 sume a great quantity of fuel, and then almost fail of 
 warming even the air in its immediate vicinity. The tan- 
 door heated once, or at the most twice in twenty-four hours, 
 by a small quantity of fuel, keeps one spot continually 
 warm for the relief of all numb fingers and frozen toes. 
 
 The house, apparently the best in the village, was built 
 throughout, floor, walls, and terrace, of mud. Fortunately, 
 as its owner had two wives, it had two rooms. The one 
 assigned us, being the principal family apartment, was of 
 course filled with every species of dirt, vermin, and litter; 
 and withal, as they were in the midst of the process of bak- 
 ing, the insufferable smoke of the dried cow-dung which 
 heated their tannoor, or cylindrical oven, detained us a 
 long time before we could take possession. Persuaded at 
 last by impatience that the bread must be done, I entered, 
 and found our host and chief muleteer shaking their shirts 
 in the oven, to dislodge the "crawling creatures" that in- 
 habited them. Though new to us then, we afterward found 
 reason to believe that this use of the tannoor is common, 
 and for it alone we have known it to be heated. In such 
 ovens was our bread baked, by being stuck upon their sides, 
 *ind tnough we would fain have quieted our fastidiousness 
 by imagining that they were purified by fire, the nature of 
 trie fuel of which that was almost invariably made, left 
 little room upon which to found such a conception. And 
 
 as for the loathsome company of which our host and mule- 
 teer had thus attempted to rid themselves, we found them 
 too constantly affecting our senses to think of imagining 
 them away; for the traveller can hardly journey a day 
 here, or in any part of Turkey, without their annoying 
 him, and his only relief is in a constant change of his linen. 
 The apartment was finally cleared and swept, but the old 
 man could give us neither carpet nor mat, and our own 
 painted canvass and travelling carpets were all that cover- 
 ed the ground on which we sat and slept. — Smith and 
 
 DWIGHT. 
 
 Mr. Jackson, in his Journey over land from India, gives 
 an account of an eastern oven, equally instructive and 
 amusing, as it confirms the statements of ancient travellers, 
 and shows the surprising expertness of the Arabian women 
 in baking their bread. " They have a small place built 
 with clay, between two and three feet high, having a hole 
 at the bottom for the convenience of drawing out the ashes, 
 something similar to a lime-kiln." The oven, (which he 
 thinks the most proper name for this place,) is usually 
 about fifteen inches wide at top, and gradually widening 
 to the bottom. It is heated with wood; and when suffi- 
 ciently hot, and perfectly clear from the smoke, having 
 nothing but clear embers at the bottom, which continue to 
 reflect great heat, they prepare the dough in a large bowl, 
 and mould the cakes to the desired size on a board, or 
 stone, placed near the oven. After they have kneaded the 
 cake to a proper consistence, they pat it a little, then toss 
 it about with great dexterity in one hand, till it is as thin 
 as they choose to make it. They then wet one side of it 
 with water, at the same time wetting the hand and arm 
 with which they put it into the oven. The side of the cake 
 adheres fast tothe side of the oven, till it is sufficiently 
 baked, when, if not paid proper attention to, it would 
 fall down among the embers. If they were not exceedingly 
 quick at this work, the heat of the oven would burn their 
 arms ; but they perform it with such an amazing dexterity, 
 that one woman will continue keeping three or four cakes 
 in the oven at once, till she has done baking. This mode, 
 he adds, requires not half the fuel that is consumed in.Eu- 
 rope. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 9. And the meat-offering that is baken in 
 the oven, and all that is dressed in the frying- 
 pan, and in the pan, shall be the priest's that 
 offereth it. 
 
 Our translation of this passage, presents a confusioa 
 more easily perceived than regulated by the general read- 
 er : — " And all the meat-offering that is baken in the oven, 
 and all that is dressed in the f ryingpan, and in the pan, 
 shall be the priest's that offers it." It is evident that here 
 are three terms used, implying three different manners of 
 dressing food. — Do we understand theml The term, 
 " meat-offering" is certainly unfortunate here, as it raises 
 the idea of flesh-meat, without just reason, to say the least, 
 especially as it stands connected with baking in the oven, 
 nun. Passing this, the folloMang sentence, also, as it stands 
 connected, expresses a meat-offering, dressed in a frying- 
 pan, nttrniD ; and then we have another kind of meat-oflfer- 
 ing, dressed in the pan, nana. Of what nature is this pan 1 
 To answer this question, we must dismiss the flesh-meat. 
 Whether the following extract from Denon may contribute 
 assistance on this subject, is submitted with great defer- 
 ence. It is his explanation of his plate lxxxv. " The 
 manner of making macaroni, in Egypt. — The manufactory, 
 and the shop for selling it, are both at once in the street ; — 
 an oven, over which a great plate of copper is heated ; the 
 maker sheds on it a thin and liquid paste, which is strain- 
 ed through the holes in a kind of cup which he passes uj 
 
r 
 
 Chap. 7- 
 
 LEVITICUS, 
 
 71 
 
 and down on the plate : after a few minutes, the threads 
 of paste are hardened, dried, and baked, by a uniform de- 
 gree of heat, maintained without intermission, by an equal 
 quantity of branches of palm-tree, by which the oven is 
 kept constantly heated. The same degree of heat is given 
 in the same space of time to an equal quantity of macaroni; 
 which is perpetually renewed on the plate, and sold direct- 
 ly as it is made." — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 12. If he offer it for a thanksgiving, then he 
 shall offer with the sacrifice of thanksgiving 
 unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and un- 
 leavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes 
 mingled with oil, of fine flour, fried. 
 
 With the exception of two rare cases, oil was order- 
 ed to accompany every meal-offering, in order to its being 
 therewith prepared, and baked into cakes. With this 
 law, in so far as it is perhaps typical, and regards a holy 
 ceremony, I have here nothing to do, because I consider it 
 merely with respect to its political influence in the state ; 
 and that, among a people brought out of Egypt into Pales- 
 tine, and still always hankering after Egypt, was important. 
 It imperceptibly attached them to their new country, and 
 served to render even the idea of a future residence in 
 Egypt, irksome ; while it also imperceptibly gave them an 
 inclination to cultivate the olive-tree, for which nature 
 seems to have pre-eminently adapted Palestine. In the 
 greatest part of Egypt, according to Strabo, no olives were 
 cultivated. It was only in the Heracleotic canton, that 
 they came to such perfection as that oil could be made from 
 them. In the gardens around Alexandria, (which, how- 
 ever,, did not exist in the time of the ancient kings, that 
 part of the country being an uncultivated waste till the 
 reign of Alexander the Great,) there were olive-trees, but 
 no oil was made. The consequence of this want of oil 
 was, (as it still is,) that in Egypt they made use of butter, as 
 we do, and also of honey, in their pastry : and even at this 
 day, travellers, going from Egypt into Ara*bia, carry butter 
 along with them ; although, indeed, it is not very tempting 
 to the appetite, because, in consequence of the great heat, it 
 generally melts in the jars by the way. In those parts of 
 Arabia likewise, which the Israelites traversed, and in 
 which they might, perhaps, have thought of settling as wan- 
 dering herdsmen; scarcely any olives were produced. The 
 oil of Palestine, on the other hand, was not only most 
 abundant, but also peculiarly excellent ; and Hasselquist 
 prefers it even to that of Provence. By this gift of na- 
 ture, stony places and mountains, which would otherwise 
 have been barren, became not only useful, but even more 
 productive, than the best fields could be made. The only 
 part of Palestine which Strabo, that much misquoted au- 
 thor, describes as imfruitful, is that about Jerusalem; and 
 it really is so, in regard to the production of grain : but 
 still the Jews say, that an acre about Jerusalem was for- 
 nierly of much more value that in any other part of Pales- 
 tine. This I should not believe on their word, if any de- 
 gD|e of improbability attached to it ; for Jewish accounts 
 frrnn hearsay and oral tradition, have little weight with 
 me. But as long as Palestine was properly cultivated, an 
 acre near Jerusalem, from its produce in wine and oil, 
 must naturally have been more profitable, than as a corn- 
 field. We need only call to mind the Mount of Olives, 
 which lay to the east of the city. An acre planted with 
 olives or vines, however rocky and arid the soil may be, 
 will very easily be made worth ten times as much as an 
 acre of the richest corn-land. — The account given by Abul- 
 feda, in his Description of Syria, confirms this statement ; 
 for he says, that the country about Jerusalem is one of the 
 hiost fertile in Palestine. Let us now represent to ourselves 
 the effects of a law which enjoined, that the pastry of of- 
 ferings should be baked with oil, (and, therefore, not with 
 butter,) and that to every meal-offering so much oil should 
 be added. The priests, who, among the Hebrews, were 
 persons of distinction by birth, were accustomed to oil-pas- 
 try; and as their entertainments were generally offering- 
 feasts, the people thus became acquainted with it. Now, 
 what people have once tasted as a luxury at a feast, and 
 found savoury, or heard of as eaten by the great, they 
 begin first to imitate sparingly, and then, if they can, more 
 and more frequently in their daily meals. This was an 
 
 infallible means to accustom the Israelite?, to oil-pastry, 
 with which, whoever is once acquainted, will always pre- 
 fer it to that made with butter. For if the oil is fresh and 
 good, it tastes much better ; to which add, that as butter is 
 very liable to spoil, it then communicates to pastry, and 
 every other sort of meat, a disagreeable by-taste. — The 
 worst faults in cookery arisf from bad butter. This is a 
 general maxim with our German housewives, particularly 
 in Southern Germany. The natural consequences, then, 
 of the use of oil-pastry, as now mentioned, were, in the first 
 place, that the olive-tree, which formed so principal a 
 source of the riches of the new country of the Israelites, 
 came to be more carefully cultivated, and thus its natural 
 treasures properly improved ; and, in the next place, that 
 the people at length lost their desire of returnmg back to 
 Egypt. That in the time of Moses, they .often thought of 
 Egypt with regret, and were even inclined to return to 
 their ancient bondage, we know from his own accounts. 
 Indeed, Xheiv penchant for this their ancient country was so 
 strong and permanent, that he found it necessary to intro- 
 duce into the fundamental and unalterable laws of ihe gov- 
 ernment, as affecting the king, an express ordinance against 
 all return to Egypt, Deut. xvii. 16. No sooner, however, 
 would the Israelite become rightly acquainted with the chief 
 of nature's gifts to his new country, and accustomed to the 
 use of wine and oil, than his longing after a country, which 
 produced neither, would totally cease. In fact, the object 
 which the statutes, now considered, most probably had in 
 view, was so completely attained, that, 
 
 1. Butter was entirely disused among the Israelites. In 
 the whole Hebrew Bible, which contains so many other 
 economical terms, we do not once find the word for butter ; 
 for 7\H'0T\^ which in Job xx. 17. xxix. 6. Deut. xxxii. 14. 
 Judg. V. 25. Isa. vii. 15, 16, 22, is commonly so translated, 
 does not mean butter, but thick milk. It would therefore 
 appear, that butter had been as rarely to be seen in Pales- 
 tine, as it now is in Spain ; and that "the people had made 
 use of nothing but oil in their cookery, as being more de- 
 licious. The reason why the LXX. have improperly ren- 
 dered it butler, was this ; that their Greek version was 
 made by Egyptian Jews, who, from the want of oil in their 
 new country, were accustomed to the use of butter only. 
 
 2. From the time of Joshua until the destruction of their 
 government, the desire of returning to Egypt never once 
 arose among the Israelites. It was only after Nebuchad- 
 nezzar had destroyed Jerusalem, and when the remnant of 
 the people no longer thought themselves secure against 
 similar disasters within Palestine, that, contrary to the di- 
 vine prohibition, the Jews took refuge in Egypt, Jer. xlii. 
 xliv. ; and when the kingdom of the ten tribes' was destroy- 
 ed, and Samaria conquered by the Assyrians, many of the 
 Israelites, as we must infer from Hosea, in like manner 
 withdrew thither. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 26. Moreover, ye shall eat no manner of 
 blood, whether it be of fowl, or of beast, in any 
 of your dwellings. 
 
 With the prohibition of fat, we find in tioo passages 
 (Lev. iii. 17, and vii. 26, 27,) another prohibition joined, 
 that of eating blood; which, however, occurs also in f.vc 
 other passages, (Lev. xvii. 10 — 14. xix. 26. Deut. xii. 16, 
 23, 24. XV. 23 ;) and was binding, not only on the Israelites 
 themselves, but also on all foreigners living among them, 
 under the penalty of death : Lev. xvii. 10. This unusuallv 
 frequent recurrence of the prohibition, together with the 
 punishment of extirpation from among the people, annexed 
 to the transgression of it ; and the denunciation of God's 
 JDeculiar vengeance against every man who should eat 
 blood, is quite sufficient to show, that the legislator must 
 have been more interested in this, than in the other prohi- 
 bitions relative to unclean meats, and likewise that the 
 Israelites had had peculiar temptations to transgress it. 
 These we really should not have, were blood forbidden to 
 us ; and one should think that the person who had not, 
 from infancy, eaten blood, would rather have an antipathy 
 at it. Bloodpuddings, it is true, (like goose and hare,) boiled 
 black, we eat with great relish ; but I cannot recollect to 
 have found any person pre-eminently fond of them, but in 
 the single case of their being quite fresh ; and that would 
 be the precise case, in which, to a person not previously 
 accustomed to eat them, they would at first be most likely 
 
72 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 11. 
 
 to cause sensations of abhorrence. Add to this, that blood- 
 puddings of ox-blood are by no means so savoury, as ours 
 made of swine's blood are; which cannot, however, be here 
 in question. For they have something of a mealy taste ; 
 which, mdeed, is very perceptible, when ox-blood is fraud- 
 ulently mixed with swine's blood. The temptation, there- 
 fore, which the Israelites had had to violate this law, must 
 have proceeded from anothef cause, than from an appetite 
 for blood ; and so much the more so, as the eating of blood 
 would appear to have never been a custom of their ances- 
 tors; for even the Arabs, who are descended from Abraham, 
 do not eat blood ; and Mohammed (as we have seen,) has 
 forbidden them to taste of idol-oflerings and blood of beasts 
 strangled, torn, or dead, and of swine's flesh. But before 
 I proceed to state the cause of this so remarkably rigid 
 prohibition of blood, I must observe, that it only extended 
 to the blood of quadrupeds and birds ; for the blood of fishes 
 was, on the contrary, permitted to be eaten ; Lev. vii. 26, 
 xvii. 13. This point is so clear, that even our modern 
 Jews, who in most things overstretch the law of Moses, 
 make no conscience of eating carp stewed in their own 
 blood. I now come to notice the reason of this prohibition, 
 which we find so urgently repeated. It is connected with 
 one of the grand objects, which the Hebrew legislator 
 always had in view, namely, the exclusion of all manner of 
 idolatry from among his people. Eating of blood, or rather 
 drinking it, was quite customary among the pagan nations 
 of Asia, in their sacrifices to idols, and in the taking of 
 oaths. This, indeed, was so much an Asiatic, and in a 
 
 Particular manner, a Phoenician usage, that we find the 
 Loman writers taking notice of it, as something outlandish 
 at Rome, and peculiar to these nations; and as in the 
 Roman persecutions, the Christians were compelled to 
 burn incense, so were they, in the Persian, to eat blood. 
 In the West the one, and in the East the other, was re- 
 garded as expressive of conversion to heathenism; because 
 both were idolatrous practices. It was for this very reason, 
 that Moses now prohibited blood so rigidly, and under the 
 pain of death, not only among the Israelites themselves, 
 but among all foreigners that lived within their land ; and 
 in order to render the prohibition the more sacred, and the 
 more revered, by connecting with it a moral implication, 
 God declared, (Lev. xvii. 11 — 14,) That the Israelites, on 
 account of the sins which they daily committed, and tohich 
 could never be fully expiated by offerings on the altar, owed to 
 him all the blood of the beasts which they slaughtered, and were 
 7iot to eat of it, becaiose it was destined as an atonement for 
 their sins. But for this very reason also, because it was an 
 idolatrous usage among the neighbouring nations, were 
 the Israelites in the greater danger of being led, by eating 
 blood, into idolatry, from their great propensity to that 
 universally-prevalent crime, and not from mere fondness 
 for blood as a desirable article of food. In regard to many 
 other heathenish customs, Moses acted quite otherwise, 
 consecrating, instead of prohibiting them, by commanding 
 that they should be kept up, under an altered signification, 
 in honour of the true God ; but it is not to be wondered 
 that he should not have done so with regard to the drink- 
 ing of blood in sacrifices and oaths, but rather have 
 forbidden the use of it altogether. The eating of blood is 
 a matter of indifference in a moral view, and, if not carried 
 to excess, in a medical view also. It will not make a man 
 cruel and pitiless ; nor yet will it occasion disease and 
 death. But drinking of blood is certainly not a becoming 
 ceremony in religious worship. It is not a very refined 
 custom, and if often repeated, it might probably habituate 
 a people to cruelty, and make them unfeeling with regard 
 to blood ; and certainly religion should not give, nor even 
 have the appearance of giving, any such direction to the 
 manners of a nation. Add to this, that it is actually 
 dangerous to drink blood ; for if taken warm, and in large 
 quantity, it may prove fatal; particularly ox-blood, which, 
 by coagulating in the stomach, causes convulsions and 
 sudden death, and was with this view given to criminals 
 in Greece, as a poisoned draught. It is true, the blood of 
 other animals may not always produce the same effects ; 
 but still, if it is not in very small quantity, its effects will be 
 hurtful. At any rate, the custom of "drinking blood in 
 sacrifice, and in taking oaths, may, from imprudence, 
 sometimes have the same effects which Valerius Maximus 
 ascribes to it, in the case of Themistocles ; only that he 
 purposely drank as much during a sacrifice, as was suffi- 
 
 cient to kill him ; which others might also do from inad- 
 vertence, or from superstitious zeal. This was sufficient 
 reason to keep Moses irom making the drinking of blood 
 a part of religious worship ; and this being the case, it was, 
 as a heathen rite, on his principles, necessarily prohibited 
 in the strictest terms. Nor need we, after this, be surprised 
 to find the eating of blood forbidden, not only in the Acts 
 of the Apostles, (chap. xv. 20 — 29,) but also among the 
 Arabs, and in the Koran, and classed with the offerings 
 made to idols : for it actually was a part of idolatrous 
 worship very common in the East. — Michaelis. 
 
 * CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 2. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, 
 These are the beasts which ye shall eat among 
 all the beasts that are on the earth. 
 
 Of the laws relative to clean and unclean beasts, which 
 are recorded in Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv., the following may, 
 perhaps, serve as an abstract, sufficient for a reader wliu) 
 has not to observe them, but means only to contemplate 
 them philosophically. 
 
 In regard to quadrupeds, Moses reduces the previous cus- 
 toms of the Israelites, together with the additional ordi- 
 nances which he found it necessary to make, into a very 
 simple and natural system. According to him. All beasts 
 that have their feet completely cloven, above as well as below, 
 and at the same time chew the cud, are clean. Those which 
 have neither, or indeed want one of these distinguishing 
 marks, are unclean. That in so early an age of the world, 
 we should find a systematic division of quadrupeds so ex- 
 cellent, as never yet, after all the improvements in natural 
 history, to have become obsolete, but, on the contrary, to be 
 still considered as useful by the greatest masters .of the 
 science, cannot but be looked upon as truly wonderful. 
 In the case of certain quadrupeds, however, a doubt may 
 arise, whether they do fully divide the hoof, or ruminate. 
 For example, whether the hare ruminates or not, is so un- 
 decided, that if we put the question to any two sportsmen, 
 we shall rarely receive the same answer. In such cases, 
 to prevent difficulties, a legislator must authoritatively de- 
 cide ; by which I do not mean, that he is to prescribe to 
 naturalists what their belief should be, but only to deter- 
 mine, for the sake of expounders or judges of the law, what 
 animals are to be regarded as ruminating or parting the 
 hoof. The camel ruminates, but whether it fully parts tlie 
 hoof, is a question so undecided, that we do not, even in 
 the Memoirs of the Academy of Paris, find a satisfactory 
 answer to it on all points. The foot of the camel is actu- 
 ally divided into two toes, and the division even below is 
 complete, so that the animal might be accounted clean ; 
 but then it does not extend the whole length of the foot, but 
 only to the forepart ; for behind it is not parted, and we 
 find, besides, under it, and connected with it, a ball on 
 which the camel goes. Now, in this dubious state of cir- 
 cumstances, Moses authoritatively declares, (Lev. xi. 4,) 
 that the camel has not the hoof fully divided. It would ap- 
 pear as if he had meant that this animal, heretofore ac- 
 counted clean by the Ishmaelites, Midianites, and all Jhe 
 rest of Abraham's Arabian descendants, should not be eaten 
 by the Israelites; probably with a view to keep them, by 
 this "means, the more separate from these nations, with 
 whom their connexion, and their coincidence in manners, 
 was otherwise so close; and perhaps too, to prevent them, 
 from conceiving any desire to continue in Arabia, or to! 
 devote themselves again to their favourite occupation of 
 wandering herdsmen. For in Arabia, a people will always 
 be in an uncomfortable situation, if they dare not eat the- 
 flesh and drink the milk of the camel. 
 
 With regard Xo fishes, Moses has in like manner made a 
 very simple systematic distinction. All that have scales and 
 fins are clean : all others unclean. 
 
 Of birds, without founding on any systematic distriDU- 
 tion, he merely specifies certain sorts as forbidden, thereby 
 permitting allothers to be eaten; but what the prohibited 
 Ijirds are, it is, from our ignorance of the language, in 
 some instances impossible to ascertain ; and the Jews, who 
 still consider the Mosaic law as obligatory, are here placed 
 in the awkward predicament of not understanding a statute 
 which they have to observe, and of expoimding it merely 
 bv guess. 
 ' Insects, serpents, worms, &c. are prohibited ; and Moses 
 
 I 
 
Chap. 13. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 73 
 
 IS especially careful to interdict the use of various sorts of 
 lizards ; which, of course, must have been eaten in some 
 parts of Egypt, or by the people in the adjacent countries ; 
 but concerning which, I must admit, that I have not met 
 with any account besides. There is, indeed, as we find 
 from Hasselauist's Travels in Palestine, (under the cla,ss 
 Amphibia, Ivii.) one species of lizard in that country, viz. 
 the Gecko, which is poisonous ; so much so, that its poison 
 Icills when it happens to be among meat. This is not the 
 t;ase with the poison of serpents, which is only noxious in 
 A wound, and may, as well as the animals themselves, 
 which are edible, be safely taken into the stomach, if only 
 the mouth be perfectly sound, and free from bloody spots. 
 Tliis Lacerta Gecko must certainly not have been eaten by 
 any of the neighbouring nations, and Moses had therefore 
 no occasion to prohibit it. With regard, however, to those 
 winged insects, which besides four walking legs, {Pedes 
 saltatorii,) Moses makes an exception, and under the de- 
 nomination of locusts, declares them clean in all their four 
 stages of existence, and under as many different degrees of 
 hardness. In Palestine, Arabia, and the adjoining coun- 
 ix*es, locusts are one of the most common articles of food, 
 ana the people would be very ill off if they durst not eat 
 them. For when a swarm of them desolates the fields, they 
 prove, in some measure, themselves an antidote to the 
 famine which they occasion ; so much so, indeed, that poor 
 people look forward with anxiety to the arrival of a swarm 
 of locusts, as yielding them sustenance without any trouble. 
 They are not only eaten fresh, immediately on their ap- 
 pearance ; but the people collect them, and know a method 
 of preserving them for a long time for food, after they have 
 dried them in an oven. 
 
 I'he law further prohibited the touching the carcass of 
 any unclean beast, Lev. xi. 8, 24, 25, 27, 31. This, how- 
 ever, does not mean that a carcass was, in a literal sense, 
 never to be touched, (for then it must always have been in 
 the way, and we shall see in the sequel that it was expressly 
 ordered to be buried ;) but only, that the person who touch- 
 ed it, was to be deemed unclean until the evening. To 
 strangers who dwelt among the Israelites, unclean beasts 
 were not forbidden: for certainly the legislator never 
 thought of making his prohibition of certain meats a moral 
 law, by which every man, of whatever nation, was to be 
 bound to regulate his conduct. If his design in these sta- 
 tutes was to separate the Israelites from other nations, it 
 must have been his wish and intention to prohibit the for- 
 mer from the use of those very meats which were eaten by 
 the latter ; and had the people in any of the surrounding 
 countries deemed all such meats unclean, Moses would 
 probably have given a set of laws on this subject quite dif- 
 ferent from those which he did give. When a commander 
 gives his soldiers a cockade to distinguish them from other 
 troops, he by no means wishes that everybojdy should in- 
 discriminately wear it, but would rather have it taken from 
 any foreigner who should mount it. The law relative to 
 clean and unclean beasts was never, not even under the 
 Old Testament, a precept of religion w^hich every individual, 
 to whatever nation he belonged, was bound to observe for 
 the sake of his eternal salvation ; it was only, if I may so 
 term it, a cockade for the Israelites ; but still one that they 
 could not omit wearing without committing a trespass of a 
 divine commandment ; and indeed it was so firmly pinned 
 upon them by their earliest education, that it must certainly 
 have been difficult for them ever to lay it aside. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 33. And every earthen vessel whereinto any 
 of them falleth, whatsoever is in it shall be un- 
 clean ; and ye shall break it. 
 
 This refers to any unclean or dead animal falling into 
 or touching an earthen vessel. Most of the cooking uten- 
 sils of the Hindoos are of earthen ware. Should an un- 
 clean, or dead animal, or insect, touch or fall into tliem, 
 they must be broken. Nay, should a person of low caste 
 get a look at the cooking vessels of a Brahmin, or one of 
 the Saiva sect, they will immediately be broken ; and no 
 small portion of abuse be poured upon the offending indi- 
 vidual. Should an unfortunate dog, in his prowlings, find 
 his way into the kitchen, and begin to lick the vessels, wo 
 be to him ! for he Avill not only have hard words, but hard 
 blows ; and then follows the breaking of the vessels. On 
 10 
 
 this account, the Brahmins, and others, concea^ their earth 
 en ware when not in use. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 35. And every thing whereupon any part 
 of their carcass falleth shall be unclean ; whether 
 it he oven, or ranges for pots, they shall be 
 broken down ; for they are unclean, and shall 
 be unclean unto you. 
 
 The scarcity of fuel in the East mduces the people to be 
 very frugal in using it. Rauwolff gives the following ac- 
 count of their management: " They make in their tents or 
 houses a hole about a foot and a half deep, wherein they 
 put their earthen pipkins or pots, with the meat in them, 
 closed up, so that they are in the half above the middle. 
 Three fourth parts thereof they lay about with stones, and 
 the fourth part is left open, through which they fling in 
 their dried dung, which burns immediately, and gives so 
 great a heat that the pot groweth so hot as if it had stood 
 in the middle of a lighted coal heap, so that they boil their 
 meat with a little fire, quicker than we do ours with a great 
 one on our hearths." As the Israelites must have had as 
 much occasion to be sparing of their fuel as any people, 
 and especially when journeying in the wilderness, Mr. 
 Harmer considers this quotation as a more satisfactory 
 commentary on this passage than any which has been giv- 
 en. — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 3. And the priest shall look on the plague 
 in the skin of the flesh : and when the hair in 
 the plague is turned white, and the plague in 
 sight he deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is 
 a plague of leprosy : and the priest shall look 
 on him, and pronounce him unclean. 
 
 The leprosy, a contagious and dreadful disorder, which 
 slowly consumes the human body, which is common, par- 
 ticularly in Egypt and Syria, but is also met with in other 
 hot countries, generally manifests itself first in the manner 
 described in the text. Peysonnel, a French physician, 
 who was sent by his government, in the year 1756, to the 
 island of Gaudaloupe, to examine the leprosy which had 
 appeared there, writes in his report of 3d February, 1757, (in 
 Michaelis Mosaic Law, part iv. p. 224 :) " The commence- 
 ment of the leprosy is imperceptible ; there appear only a 
 few dark reddish spots on the skin of the whites; in the 
 blacks they are of a coppery red. These spots are at first 
 not attended with pain, or any other symptom, but they can- 
 not be removed by any means. The disease increases im- 
 perceptibly, and continues for some years to be more and 
 more manifest. The spots become larger, and spread in- 
 discriminately over the skin of the whole body : they are 
 sometimes rather raised, though flat; when the disease 
 increases, the upper part of the nose swells, the nostrils dis- 
 tend, and the nose itself becomes soft. Swellings appear 
 on the jaw-bones, the eyebrows are elevated, the ears grow 
 thick, the ends of the fingers, as well as the feet and toes, 
 swell, the nails grow scaly, the joints on the hands and 
 feet separate and die off"; on the palms of the hands and 
 the soles of the feet there are deep dry ulcers, which rapid- 
 ly increase, and then vanish again. In short, when the 
 disease reaches its last stage, the patient becomes horrible, 
 and falls to pieces. All these circumstances come on very 
 slowly, for many years are often required before they all 
 occur ; the patient has no severe pain, but he feels a kind 
 of numbness in his hands and feet. These persons are not 
 hindered, during the time, in any of the functions of na- 
 ture, they eat and drink as usual, and even when some of 
 their fingers and toes die off", the loss of the member is the 
 only consequence, for the wound heals of itself without at- 
 tention or medicine. But when the poor people reach this 
 last period of the disease, they are horribly disfigured and 
 most worthy of pity. It has "been observed, that this dis- 
 ease has other dreadful properties, such, in fact, that it is 
 hereditary, and, therefore, some families are more afflicted 
 with it than others ; secondly, that it is infectious, and that 
 it is propagated by persons sleeping together, or even hav- 
 ing long-continued intercourse ; thirdly, that it is incurable, 
 or, at least, that no means to cure it have been discovered. 
 
74 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. !?> 
 
 A very well-grounded fear of being infected with this cruel 
 disease, the difficulty of recognising the persons attacked 
 with it, before the disorder has attained its height; the 
 length of time that it remains secret, from the care of the 
 patients to conceal it ; the uncertainty of the symptoms at 
 the beginning, which should distinguish it from other dis- 
 orders, excited extraordinary claims among all the inhabit- 
 ants of this island. They were suspicious of each, because 
 virtue and rank were no protection agai^J^st this cruel 
 scourge. They called this disease the leprosy, and pre- 
 sented to the commander and governor several petitions, 
 in which they represented all the above circumstances ; the 
 general food, the uneasiness caused in this newly-settled 
 country; the inconveniences and the hatred which such in- 
 culpations produced among them ; the laws which had been 
 made against lepe.rs, and their exclusion from civil society. 
 They demanded a general inspection of all those who 
 were suspected of having this disease, in order that those 
 who were found to be. infected might be removed into a 
 particular hospital, or some separate place." All that 
 these people required, and which was also granted them, 
 we find to be prescribed in the laws relative to the leprosy, 
 contained in the thirteenth chapter. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 38. If a man also or a woman have in the 
 skin of their flesh bright spots, even white bright 
 spots ; 39. Then the priest shall look : and, be- 
 hold, if the bright spots in the skin of their flesh 
 be darkish white; it is a freckled spot that 
 groweth in the skin : he is clean. 
 
 The Hebrew word here translated "freckled spot," is 
 Bohak, and the Arabs still use the same word to denote a 
 kind of leprosy, of which Niebuhr says, " Bohak is neither 
 contagious nor dangerous. A black boy at Mocha, who 
 was affected with this eruption, had here and there on his 
 body white spots. "We were told that the use of sulphur 
 had relieved this boy for a time, but had not entirely 
 removed the disease." He adds, subsequently, from Fors- 
 kaVs papers, the following particulars : " On the 15th of 
 May, 1765, I myself first saw the eruption called bohak in 
 a Jew at Mocha. The spots of this eruption are of unequal 
 size ; thev do not shine, are imperceptibly higher than the 
 skin, and do not change the colour of the hair. Their 
 colour is a dirty white, or rather reddish. The rest of the 
 skin of the patient I saw was darker than the inhabitants of 
 the country usually were, but the spots were not so white 
 as the skin of a European when it is not tanned by the sun. 
 The spots of this eruption do not appear on the hands or 
 near the navel, but on the neck and face, yet not that part 
 of the face where the hair grows thick. They spread 
 gradually. Sometimes they remain only two months, 
 sometimes one or two years, and go away by degrees of 
 themselves. This disorder is neither contagious nor he- 
 reditary, and does not cause any bodily inconvenience." 
 Hence it appears why a person affected with the bohak is 
 declared in the above law not to be unclean, — Rosen- 
 muller. 
 
 Ver. 45. And the leper in whom the plague is, 
 his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and 
 ho, shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and 
 shall cry, Unclean, unclean. 
 
 Thf prophet Ezekiel, in reference to the death of his 
 wife, was ordered not to " cry," neither to cover the lips ; 
 (the margin has, " upper lip.") The prophet Micah (iii. 7) 
 describes the confusion and sorrow" of those who had by 
 their wickedness offended the Lord. " Then shall the seers 
 be ashamed, and the diviners confounded : yea, they shall 
 all cover their lips, for there is no answer of God." Margin 
 again has, " upper lip." All these passages refer to the 
 sorrow of those concerned. A person in deep distress puts 
 his hand over his mouth, and hangs down his head, as if 
 looking on the ground. When a man suddenly claps his 
 hand on his mouth, it denotes great sorrow or surprise. 
 To put the fingers in a line with the nose, conveys the idea 
 of silence and submission. "Why is your hand on your 
 mouth T'— "Not for joy." "But why'l" — "My son, my 
 son, my wicked son ! He has gone with the evil ones to 
 ihe distant country." " Ah, friend, why is your hand 
 
 there %" — " Alas, the tigers got among my cattle last night, 
 and great is the slaughter." " The king is angry with 
 Raman — his hand is now on his mouth." " I may well put 
 my hand on my mouth ; I have been taken by the neck, and 
 driven from the presence of my lord. My requests have 
 all been denied." Job xxi. 5. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 47, The garment also that the plague of 
 leprosy is in, whether it be a woollen garment, 
 or a linen garment ; 48. Whether it be in the 
 the warp, or woof, of linen, or of woollen, 
 whether in a skin, or in any thing made of 
 skin : 49. And if the plague be greenish or 
 reddish in the garment, or in the skin, either in 
 the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of 
 skin ; it 25 a plague of leprosy, and shall be 
 showed unto the priest : 50. And the priest 
 shall look upon the plague, and shut up it that 
 hath the plague seven 
 
 The two statutes of Moses relative to the leprosy of 
 clothes and houses, may appear to us at first view very 
 strange, because in Europe we have never heard of any 
 such leprosy, and the name immediately suggests to us the 
 idea of something akin to human leprosy. Learned men 
 who write upon the Bible in their closets, sometimes know 
 nothing but books ; being quite unacquainted with nature, 
 and often with their own houses, in which, perhaps, the 
 Mosaic leprosy may actually be ; and they are too much 
 wrapped up in themselves to think of asking the unlearned 
 about such things. Perhaps the leprosy in question does 
 not, properlv speaking, fall to be treated under the present 
 head, but under the statutes of police respecting buildings, 
 manufactures, and clothes. Here, however, it will be 
 looked for; and although it were not, I must nevertheless 
 offer some general remarks on both the laws given by Mo- 
 ses respecting it, which would lose their eflfect, were I to 
 separate the one from the other. In the first place then, 
 when we hear of the leprosy of clothes and houses, Ave must 
 not be so simple as to imagine it the very same disease 
 which is termed leprosy in man. Men, clothes, and stones, 
 have not the same sort of diseases ; but the names of hu- 
 man diseases are, by analogy, or as the grammarian terms 
 it, by a figure of speech, applied to the diseases of other things. 
 In Berne, for instance, they speak of the cancer of build- 
 ings, but then that is not the distemper so called in the hu- 
 man body. The cancer of buildings, is with equal proprie- 
 ty a Swiss, as the leprosy of buildings is a Hebrew, expres- 
 sion. The late Dr. Forskal wrote me from Egypt, that 
 two sorts of diseases of certain trees proceeding from in- 
 sects, are there termed leprosy ; but I do not print the words 
 of his letter, because I am aware that a fuller account of 
 this matter will be found in the Diary of his Travels, which 
 is very soon to be published, and which I should not wish 
 to anticipate. Hasselquist likewise, has, in p. 221 of his 
 Travels in the Holy Land, spoken of a leprosy in the fig- 
 trees. 
 
 In the second place, although Moses gives laws relative 
 to the leprosy in clothes and houses, we must not imagine, 
 considering that he lets not fall a single word on the sub- 
 ject, that any such leprosy could infect man. Of this Mo- 
 ses is so far from being afraid, that we find him, on the 
 contrary , when a house lies under the suspicion of leprosy, 
 commanding all the articles of furniture to be removed out 
 of it, previous to its inspection, that the priest may not be 
 obliged to pronounce them unclean. If there adhered to 
 the walls any poisonous matter that could pass to humanj 
 beings, and infect 
 strange injunction 
 case of a house ir 
 
 bring out everv article within it previous to its being exam-^ 
 ined, that it might not be declared infected. What else 
 would the consequence be, than the direct propagation of 
 the infection 1 It would be the very same, though in a less 
 degree, if the house-leprosv infected man. But Avill those 
 who have alreadvanv knowledge of Moses as a legislator, 
 suppose him capable of committing such an oversight ? 
 
 The leprosy of clothes is described in Lev. xiii.47— 59, as 
 consisting of green or reddish spots that remain in spite of 
 washing, and still spread ; and by which the cloth becomes 
 
 nice IIICIIJ UllCJCaU. il liH.lt, miin^iv-vx iv/ 
 
 sonous matter that could pass to humanj 
 t them with leprosy, this wouM be a veryi 
 m indeed. Let us only conceive, in thM 
 infected with the plague, orders given to' 
 
Chap. 14. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 75 
 
 bald, or bare, sometimes on the one side, sometimes on the 
 other. This Moses terms dropping or losing the hair ; that is, 
 if we are to give the literal truth of the Hebrew text, in a 
 passage which might have its diflicullies to a man of learning, 
 if he knew nothing of the manufacture of woollen. These 
 symptoms too, of leprosy, are said to be found sometimes only 
 in ihe warp, and at other times only in the woof. To a per- 
 son who has nothing to do with the manufactures of woollen, 
 linen, or leather, but with books only, this must doubtless be 
 obscure ; or, at most, he will be led to think of specks of rot- 
 tenness, bul still without being rightly satisfied. I have not 
 been able lo obtain complete information on this subject; 
 b,;'L in regard to wool, and woollen stuffs, I have consulted 
 t!i ' 'greatest manufacturer in the electorate of Hanover; and 
 he informs me, that what he has read in my German Bible, 
 ai t his passage, will be found to hold good, at any rate with 
 n '^^ard to woollen articles ; and that it proceeds from what 
 i^ ealled dead wool, that is, the wool of sheep that have died 
 by disease, not by the knife; that such wool, if the disease 
 has been but of short duration, is not altogether useless, but 
 in a sheep that has been long diseased, becomes extremely 
 bad, and loses the points; and that, according to the estab- 
 lished usage of honest manufacturers, it is unfair to man- 
 ufacture dead wool into any article worn by man ; because 
 vermin are so apt to establish themselves in it, particular- 
 ly when it is worn close to the body and warmed thereby. 
 When I told him, that in the countries, with a view to 
 which I questioned him, the people, for want of linen and 
 from poverty, had always worn, and still wear, woollen 
 stuffs next the skin, he stated it as his opinion that there 
 the disagreeable effect just mentioned, must take place in a 
 still higher degree than in countries where, according to 
 our German fashion, which would there be a luxury, a 
 linen shirt is worn between the woollen clothes and the 
 body. He added, that dead wool was usually manufactur- 
 ed into sacks and horse-cloths ; and he expressed his wish 
 for a statute, in the style of Moses, which should discour- 
 age the use of dead wool, or inflict a punishment on those 
 who either sold it, or knowingly manufactured it into hu- 
 man clothing. — I am likewise informed by Hamburghers, 
 that in their neighbourhood, many frauds are committed 
 with dead wool, from its being sold for good wool ; in con- 
 sequence of which, the stuffs rrfade of it not only become 
 very soon bare, but full first of little depressions, and then 
 of holes. 
 
 These accounts serve to render this law pretty intelligi- 
 ble, as far as regards wool and woollen stuffs. We sec how 
 the disease may appear sometimes only in the warp, and 
 sometimes only in the woof, from good wool being used for 
 the one, and diead wool for the other. Whether this dead 
 wool will, in process of time, infect good wool, I do not 
 know; but to bring into complete discredit and disuse, 
 stuffs, which so soon become threadbare, and burst out in 
 holes, and at the same time so readily shelter vermin, al- 
 though they cannot proceed from the wool itself, but only 
 find it a very suitable breeding-place, unquestionably be- 
 comes the duty of legislative policy. How this end could 
 be attained, without destroying stuffs thus manufactured 
 contrary to law, our present system of police can scarcely 
 conceive ; and in that early age of the world, when every 
 thing was yet in its infancy, — when merchants were not so 
 knowing as now, — and when among the petty independent 
 tribes, there was no police established for manufactures, 
 nor any boards of inspection, the trick of using dead wool 
 was probably more frequent than at present ; while yet the 
 cause of its effects was but imperfectly known ; and these 
 effects in those climates must have been still worse than 
 with us, particularly in Egypt, which breeds such abun- 
 dance of vermin. The best remedy was, in the language 
 of Moses, to destroy the leprous article : for that would soon 
 make every one careful to manufacture nothing either for 
 himself, or for sale, that might be pronounced leprous ; and 
 people would soon observe where the fault lay, when they 
 were losers, and found no sale for their goods, in conse- 
 quence of former purchasers having suffered by them. 
 The prohibition of dead wool, although the legislator be 
 ever so fully satisfied that it is entirely to blame for the ef- 
 fects in question, is not sufficient of itself; for it will still be 
 privately manufactured and then denied, particularly 
 where there is no board of survey. But where the stuff, in 
 which leprous symptoms make their appearance, is destroy- 
 ed in spite of the owner, every one will become attentive 
 
 to guard against such a loss. Moses therefore enjoined, 
 Jirst, that the place on which there were marks of leprosy 
 that no washing could obliterate, should be torn out ; and 
 then, if the leprosy still recurred a second time, that the 
 whole piece should be burnt. With regard to leather and 
 linen, I can say nothing with historical certainty : because 
 I know no great wholesale manufacturer or merchant in 
 either line, and I do not choose to trouble my reader with 
 conjectures, because they may occur to himself, just as well 
 as to me. Perhaps, however, my book may find some 
 readers better acquainted with such persons than I can be 
 here in Gottingen, and who may hereafter communicate 
 with me on the subject ; for which purpose, I particularly 
 request the attention of my readers in Holland, where I am 
 inclined to think the best judges may be found. Now that 
 the origin of the evil has been traced in wool, there will be 
 no great difficulty in carrying on the investigation further. 
 Only I must deprecate closet-accounts, and learned con- 
 jectures. It is only from those who are acquainted with 
 the manufacture or sale of linen, leather, and furriery, on 
 a large scale, that I look for any useful information. — Mi- 
 
 CHAELIS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 4. Then shall the priest command to take 
 for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive 
 and clean, and cedar-wood, and scarlet, and 
 
 Interpreters have not been able to determine in what 
 parts of scripture, the Hebrew term (-i>bs) tsippor, ought to 
 be translated sparrow. Some suppose that Moses intends 
 this bird in the law concerning the purification of the lep- 
 rosy : " Then shall the priest command to take for him 
 that is to be cleansed, two birds alive." One of these birds 
 was to be killed over running water ; and the living bird, 
 after certain ceremonies described in the law, was ordered 
 to be let loose into the open field. The same ceremonies 
 were commanded to be observed in cleansing the leprous 
 house. Jerome and many succeeding interpreters, render 
 the word a^-^^o^ used in the law, sparrows. But it is evident 
 from an attentive perusal of the fourth verse, that it signi- 
 fies birds in general. " Then shall the priest command to 
 take for him that is to be cleansed, tv^o birds alive and 
 clean." Now, if the sparrow was a clean bird, there could 
 be no use in commanding a clean one to be taken, since 
 every one of the species was ceremonially clean ; bui if it 
 was unclean by law, then it could not be called clean. The 
 term here must therefore signify birds in general, of which 
 some were ceremonially clean, and some unclean ; which 
 rendered the specification in the command, proper and 
 necessary. From the terms of the law it appears, that any 
 species of clean birds might be taken on such occasions, 
 domestic or wild ; provided only they were clean, and the 
 use of them conceaed by the laws of Moses to the people, 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 33. And the Lord spake unto Moses and 
 unto Aaron, saying-, 34. When ye be come into 
 the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a 
 possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in 
 a house of the land of your possession ; 35. And 
 he that owneth the house shall come and tell 
 the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as 
 it were a plague in the house. 
 
 The house-leprosy is said in Lev. xiv. 33 — 57, to consist 
 of greenish or reddish dimples, which appear on the walls, 
 and continually spread wider and wider ; and its nature 
 would probably hare been understood long ago, but for the 
 prevalence of the notion of its being a disease communica- 
 ble to man, which notion arose from taking the word lepra-' 
 sy in too literal a sense. The bare description of it given 
 by Moses is so clear, that, I have known more than one 
 example of children, who, shortly after reading it;, having 
 had occasion to go into the cellar, where, with terror, they 
 thought they had observed it on the walls, on their return, 
 described it distinctly or figuratively to their parents, and 
 were laughed at for their pains. Laughed at they certainly 
 ought not to have been, but instructed. Their acu^e vision 
 
76 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 14. 
 
 had shown them what many a learned man has in vain 
 sought to find out. In short, what we usually term the Salt- 
 petre, that appears on walls, has much the same symptoms 
 as the Mosaic house-leprosy, and is at the same time attend- 
 ed with such noxious eifects as require the attention of a 
 well-regulated police. I expressed this idea first in my 12th 
 Cluestion to the Arabian Travellers; but I did so very 
 briefly, and as addressing men of sense and skill. I have 
 not yet, however, received any answer, because Forskal, 
 the person to whose province the question belonged, is 
 dead, and his journal is not yet printed. The oftener, how- 
 ever, I consider the matter, I am the more impressed with 
 the probability of this idea.being the true one, and here is 
 the place to expatiate more fully upon it. Our walls and 
 houses are often attacked with something that corrodes 
 and consumes them, and which we commonly denominate 
 Saltpetre. Its appearances are nearly as Moses describes 
 them, only that we seldom find the spots greenish or red- 
 dish, although I think I have met with them of the latter 
 colour. As, however, I cannot exactly recollect where, I 
 must appeal to the testimony of Mr. Professor Bekmann, 
 who, on my asking him, informed me that he had seen an 
 instance of reddish ones at Lnibeck. With us, this disease 
 of walls is most frequently found in cellars, but it also as- 
 cends into the higher parts of buildings, particularly in the 
 case of a privy being directly under the wall, or where any 
 other sort of filth can affect it. In my native city, Halle, it 
 is extremely common, because the soil of all the country 
 around is full of what is called saltpetre; which is scraped 
 off from the turf walls of the cottages, by people who make 
 it their business to collect it. Properly speaking, it is not 
 saltpetre, but it contains the acid from which saltpetre is 
 prepared. Wherever any part of these walls, that is preg- 
 nant with this substance, is suffered to remain, it always 
 effloresces anew ; and such parts the collectors take care 
 to leave, when they repair the cottages with new earth, 
 that after a few years they may find a fresh crop on the 
 walls. But I have never seen it to such a degree as at 
 Eisleben, in the church in which Luther was baptized. In 
 the year 1757, I observed, on the left side of the choir of 
 that church, a gravestone, I think of marble, and dated 
 in the present century, in which the inscription, though 
 deeply cut, was in many places, by reason of numberless 
 dimples, scarcely legible, while I read with perfect ease 
 other two inscriptions, four times as old. On my asking 
 the sexton the reason of this, he said, the saltpetre had come 
 into the stone, and told me a great deal more about it, which 
 I did not sufficiently attend to, because I had no idea of its 
 ever being useful to me in explaining the Bible, In Bern, 
 Mr. Apothecary Andrea heard the people complain of a 
 disease that in an especial manner attacked sandstone, so 
 as to make it exfoliate, and become as it were cancerous. 
 They call it the Gall, and, in like manner, ascribe it to the 
 saltpetre contained in the stone. The Society of Natural- 
 ists at Dantzig some time ago proposed a prize question on 
 the Causes of the Destructive Corrosion of Walls by Saltpetre, 
 and on the Means, not onhj of preventing it in New Buildings, 
 but of curing it in Old. It was answered, among others, 
 by Mr. Pastor Luther, who obtained the prize : but his 
 essay, although, as the best, it might merit that distinction, 
 has nevertheless given but little satisfaction to those who 
 are versed in the subject, and particularly to Mr. Professor 
 Bekmann, as we see from the third volume of his Physical 
 and (Economical Library, p. 574. 
 
 It is not, properly speaking, saltpetre that is in these walls 
 and buildings, but an acid of nitre, from which, by the ad- 
 dition of a fixed alkali, we can make saltpetre. But the 
 disease is likewise owing sometimes to other acids, to the 
 acid of sea-salt, for instance, as Professor Bekmann informs 
 me ; and, from other experiments, Mr. Andrea has found 
 the component parts of the efflorescence, to approach very 
 near to those of Epsom salt, that is, vitriolic acid and mag- 
 nesia. — See Bekmann's Biblioth. above quoted, vol. iv. p. 
 250. The detrimental effects of this efflorescence in walls, 
 or, if I may use the common name, of this saltpetre, are the 
 following : — 
 
 1. The walls become mouldy, and that to such a degree, 
 as, in consequence of the corrosion spreading farther and 
 farther, at least to occasion their tumbling down. Perhaps, 
 however, this, at least in most parts of Germany, is the 
 most tolerable evil attending the disease ; for it is certain, 
 that many houses affected with it last to a great age ; only 
 
 that the plaster of them requires very frequent repairing, 
 because the lime with which they are coated, blisters, as it 
 is called, that is, detaches itself from the wall, swells, and 
 then falls off. I myself lived in a house at Halle, that was 
 more than a hundred years old, and may probably stand a 
 hundred years longer ; in which, nevertheless, the saltpe- 
 tre had on one side, at a period beyond all remembrance, 
 penetrated as far as the second story. The walls, hoM^ever, 
 were from three to four feet thick, and really of excellent 
 stone ; for which, indeed, Halle is remarkable. In other 
 places, this evil may no doubt be more serious ; and I very 
 much suspect, that such may have been the case in the 
 damp parts of Egypt, where the Israelites dwelt. When I 
 figure to myself those marshes, which the Greeks called 
 Bucolia, at the mouth of the Nile, and the great quantity of 
 saltpetre, or at any rate, of salt akin thereto, which Egypt 
 produces, I cannot help thinking, that the saltpetre in build- 
 ings, must have been much more destructive there than 
 with us. Only our travellers very seldom go into the mar- 
 shy districts, but rather to Alexandria, Cairo, and along the 
 Nile as far as Assouan, where the soil is quite different ; 
 and, of course, we can expect from them no information 
 relative to the matter. Even the way along the coast, from 
 Damietta to Alexandria, of which Abulfeda gives such a 
 beautiful description, is, as far as I recollect, described by 
 no other traveller. As my work has had the good fortune 
 to find numerous readers in Holland, of whom, perhaps, 
 some have it in their power to obtain more particular in- 
 formation concerning those parts, I have to request, that 
 they will take some pains for that purpose, and have the 
 goodness to communicate to me whatever accounts they 
 may procure, that are authentic, and illustrative of the 
 subject, 
 
 2. Many things that lie near walls affected with saltpetre, 
 thereby suffer damage, and are spoiled. I have myself seen 
 great piles of books nearly ruined from this cause, and it 
 is the same with other articles that cannot bear dampness, 
 and acids. The loss here may often be greater and more 
 considerable, than by the slow decay of the building itself; 
 for it shows itself very perceptibly in the course of a few 
 years, by rendering such articles often perfectly useless. 
 
 3. If the saltpetre be strong in those apartments wherein 
 people live, it is pernicious to health, particularly where 
 they sleep close to the wall. Of this, I had long ago a 
 general notion, at Halle, from observing that such apart- 
 ments were not usually inhabited ; but Professor Bekmann 
 has just informed me of a remarkable case of a person, 
 who, by occupying a room infected by saltpetre, was seized 
 with {Salzflusse) saline defiuctions, which the physicians 
 ascribed to the apartment alone. This unfortunate patient, 
 who could not procure himself any better abode, he had 
 often visited in company with a physician, whose attend- 
 ance he had procured for him. Those people among us, 
 who are in good circumstances, or not quite poor, may 
 avoid the effects of the saltpetre corrosion, which seldom 
 ascends higher than the lowest story, by living in the sec- 
 ond floor, which is not so apt to be affected by it, and using 
 the ground-floor for kitchen, waiting-parlour, &c. &c. But 
 in a country where there was but little knowledge of archi- 
 tecture, and where they were obliged to be satisfied, in 
 general, with houses of W one story, the pernicious effects 
 of the house-leprosy could not be thus averted. 
 
 The consideration of these circumstances will render the 
 Mosaic ordinances on this subject easily intelligible. Their 
 object was to check the evil in the very bud ; to extiroate 
 it while it was yet extirpable, by making every one, from 
 the loss to which it would subject him, careful, to prevent 
 his house from becoming affected with leprosy, which he 
 could easily be, where the houses had no damp stone cellars 
 below ground; and thus also, to place not only himself in 
 perfect security, but his neighbours also, who might ver; 
 reasonably dread having their houses contaminated b 
 the infection. For this purpose, Moses proceeded in th 
 following manner : — 
 
 1. In the first place, he ordained that the owner of a 
 house, when any suspicious spots or dimples appeared oH 
 the walls, should be bound to give notice of it, in ordejj 
 that the house might be inspected by a person of skill ; anfli 
 that person, as in the case of human leprosv, was to be the 
 priest, whose duty it was to apply himself to (he study of 
 such things. Now this would serve to check the mischi^^ 
 in its very origin, and to make every one attentive to ol 
 
 I 
 
Chap. 16. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 77 
 
 serve it. If we had any such regulations in oar newly- 
 ! founded cities, it is probable that the saltpetre would never 
 • acquire suc'h a footing as it does. The cause of its estab- 
 lishment anywhere would soon be discovered and remov- 
 ed, instead of its being, as it now is, in our cities, suffered 
 to increase to such a degree as to vitiate the whole atmo- 
 sphere. 
 
 2. On notice being given, the priest was to inspect the 
 house, but the occupant had liberty to remove every thing 
 previously out of it ; and that this might be done, the priest 
 was empowered to order it ex officio; for whatever was 
 found within a house declared unclean, became unclean 
 along with it. Thus much is clear, that the legislator did 
 not suppose that the furniture of an infected house could 
 contaminate any other place, else would he not have al- 
 lowed its removal, while the matter was doubtful ; but here 
 PI >bably he yielded to the fears of the people, (as every 
 Jet,nslator should do in such cases, instead of saying. There 
 can be no infection here, and ye must believe so ; for the dread 
 of infection, whether well founded or not, is an evil against 
 which we are fain to be secure ; and if a legislator neglects 
 to make us so, we will either take forcible measures to ef- 
 fect security, or else take fright, and shut ourselves up :) 
 or perhaps he only meant to compel the possessor of a 
 house, to a more honest intimation of the very first suspi- 
 cious symptoms of the evil. For if he gave no such inti- 
 mation, and his house, on being broke into, either at the re- 
 quest of a neighbour, or any other informer, interested in 
 making a discovery, happened to be found unclean, its 
 whole contents became unclean of course. 
 
 3. If, on the first inspection, the complaint did not ap- 
 pear wholly without foundation, but suspicious spots or 
 dimples were actually to be seen, the house was to continue 
 shut up for eight days, and then to be inspected anew. If, 
 in this interval, the evil did not spread, it was considered 
 as having been a circumstance merely accidental, and the 
 house was not polluted ; but if it had spread, it was not ac- 
 counted a harmless accident, b'ut the real house-leprosv ; 
 and the stones affected with it, were to be broken out of the 
 wall, and carried to an unclean place without the citv ; 
 and the walls of the whole house were scraped and plaster- 
 ed anew. These are the very same things that must be 
 done at this day, if we want to clear a house of the saltpe- 
 ire-evil. The stone or spot which produces it, must be ab- 
 solutely removed : and the scraping, and fresh plastering, 
 is also necessary ; for it is in the very lime that the saltpe- 
 tre, (or, to speak more properly, the acid of nitre,) estab- 
 lishes itself most firmly. In our large buildings, indeed, 
 it is not just necessary to new-plaster the whole house ; but 
 the houses of the Hebrews were very small ; and even the 
 temple of Solomon itself, built some centuries posterior to 
 the time of Moses, notwithstanding all the fame of its mag- 
 nificence, was by no means nearly so large as many a house 
 in Gottingen ; although certainly we cannot boast of palaces, 
 and have only good bourgeois houses. 
 
 4. If, after this, the leprosy broke out afresh, the whole 
 house was to be pulled down, and the materials carried to 
 an unclean place without the city. Moses, therefore, it 
 would appear, never suffered a leprous house to stand. 
 The injury which such houses might do to the health of 
 the inhabitants, or to the articles they contained, was of more 
 consequence in his estimation, than the buildings them- 
 selves. Those to whom this appears strange, and who la- 
 ment the fate of a house pulled down by legal authority, 
 probably think of large and magnificent houses like ours, 
 of many stories high, which cost a great deal of money, and 
 in the second story of which, the people are generally se- 
 cure from all danger of the saltpetre ; but I have already 
 mentioned, that the houses of those days were low, and of 
 very little value. 
 
 5. If, on the other hand, the house, being inspected a 
 second time, was found clean, it was solemnly so declared, 
 and an offering made on the occasion ; in order that every 
 one might know for certain, that it was not infected, and 
 the public be freed from all fears on that score. 
 
 By this law many evils were actually prevented, — the 
 spreading of the saltpetre-infection, and even its beginning ; 
 for the people would guard against those impurities whence 
 it arose, from its being so strictly inquired into ; — the dan- 
 ger of their allowing their property or their health to suf- 
 fer in an infected house, from mere carelessness ; — the dif- 
 ficulty of making (among the Hebrews it would have been, 
 
 their slaves, but among us it would be) our hired servants, 
 or perhaps our children's preceptor, occupy an infected 
 apartment that was for no other use, and sleep close to an 
 unwholesome wall. With such a law, no man can have 
 any just ground of dissatisfaction ; and we might at all 
 events ask, why we have it not put in force in newly-built 
 cities'? It is certainly very singular, that in this country, 
 or, at any rate, in some places of it, we have a law, which 
 is a most complete counterpart to it. No doubt our house- 
 leprosy is not attended with the same evils as it was among 
 the Hebrews, by reason of the change of circumstances, 
 and because tne saltpetre, being necessary for the manu- 
 facture of gunpowder, is otlen scraped off; and herein we 
 have a strong example of the diversity occasioned in legis- 
 lative policy, by difference of time and climate. We hav^e 
 occasion for great quantities of saltpetre, in consequence of 
 the invention of gunpowder ; and, as in some parts of Ger- 
 many where the soil abounds with it, such as the circle of the 
 Saal, in the dutchy of Magdeburg, the cottages of the peas- 
 ants have, from time immemorial, had their walls built 
 only of earth, in which, by reason of tbat want of cleanli- 
 ness, in many respects, which prevails in country villages, 
 the saltpetre establishes itself, and effloresces ; there is an 
 ancient consuetudinary law, that the collectors of this sub- 
 stance may scrape it off; which they can do without any 
 damage whatever to the houses ; only they take care never 
 to scrape it off to the very roots, nor dare the occupants of 
 the l^ouses extirpate it altogether. The walls are so thick, 
 and so often cleaned by this operation, that, for my part at 
 least, I never heard that the health of the people was affect- 
 ed by the saltpetre ; and in the houses themselves, though 
 inhabited by very substantial tenants, there is not much to 
 spoil. — At the same time, I should be glad to be more fully 
 informed by any physician of that country, whether he had 
 ever traced any pernicious effects to the cause in question 1 
 
 — MiCHAELIS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 10. But the goat on which the lot fell to be 
 the scape-goat, shall be presented alive before 
 the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and 
 to let him go for a scape-goat. 
 
 When a person is sick he vows on his recovery to set a 
 goat at liberty, in honour of his deity. Having selected a 
 suitable one from his flocks, he makes a slit in the ear, or 
 ties a yellow string round its neck, and lets it go whitherso- 
 ever it pleases. Whoever sees the animal knows it to be 
 a Nate-kadi, the vowed goat, and no person will molest it. 
 Sometimes two goats are thus made sacred ; but one of 
 them will be offered soon, and the other kept for a future 
 sacrifice. But it is not merely in time of sickness that they 
 have recourse to this practice : for does a man wish to 
 procure a situation, he makes a similar vow. Has a per- 
 son heard that there are treasures concealed in any place, 
 he vows to Virava (should he find the prize) to set a goat 
 at liberty, in honour of his name. When a person has 
 committed what he considers a great sin, he does the same 
 thing ; but in acidition to other ceremonies, he sprinkles 
 the animal with water, puts his hands upon it, and prays 
 to be forgiven. — Roberts. 
 
 The Aswamedha Jug is an ancient Indian custom, in 
 which a horse was brought and sacrificed, with some rites 
 similar to those prescribed in the Mosaic law. " The 
 horse so sacrificed is in place of the sacrificer, bears his 
 sins with him into the wilderness, into which he is turned 
 adrifl, (for, from this particular instance, it seems that the 
 sacrificing knife was not always employed,) and becomes 
 the expiatory victim of those sins." Mr. Halhed observes, 
 that this ceremony reminds us of the scape-goat of the 
 Israelites ; and indeed it is not the only one in which a 
 particular coincidence between the Hindoo and Mosaic 
 systems of theology may be traced. To this account may 
 be subjoined a narrative in some measure similar from 
 Mr. Bruce. " We found, that upon some dissension, the 
 garrison and townsm-en had been fighting for several days, 
 in which disorders the greatest part of the ammunition in 
 the town had been expended, but it had since been agreed 
 on by the old men of both parties, that nobody had been to 
 blame on either side, but the whole wrong was the woik of 
 a camel. A camel, therefore, was seized, and brought 
 without the town, and there a number on both sides ha\ »ng 
 
78 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 17, 18 
 
 met, they upbraided the camel with every thing that had 
 been either said or done. The fM,mel had killed men ; he 
 had threatened to set the town on fire ; the camel had 
 threatened to burn the aga's house and the castle ; he had 
 cursed the grand seignior and the sheriff of Mecca, the 
 sovereigns of the two parties ; and, the only thing the poor 
 animal was interested in, he had threatened to destroy the 
 wheat that was going to Mecca. After having spent great 
 part of the afternoon in upbraiding the camel, whose mea- 
 sure of iniquity, it seems, was near full, each man thrust 
 him through with a lance, devoting him Mis maif^ibus et 
 diris, by a kind of prayer, and with a thousand curses upon 
 his head, after which every man retired, fully satisfied as 
 to the wrongs he had received from the camel .'" — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 7. And they shall no more offer their sacri- 
 fices unto devils, after whom they have gone 
 a-whoring-. This shall be a statute for ever 
 unto them throughout their generations. 
 
 The Hebrew word Seirim, here translated devils, (field 
 devils,) properly signifies woolly, hairy, in general ; whence 
 it is used as well for he-goats, as also for certain fabulous 
 beings or sylvan gods, to whom, as to the satyrs, the popu- 
 lar belief ascribed the form of goats. But, in the above 
 passage, he-goats are probably meant, which were ob- 
 jects of divine honour among the Egyptians, under 'the 
 name of Mendes, as emblems of the fructifying power of 
 nature, or of the frtictifying power of the sun. From this 
 divinity, which the Greeks compared with their Pan, a 
 province in Egypt had its name. Goats and he-goats, says 
 Herodotus, are not slaughtered by the Egyptians whom we 
 have mentioned, because they consider Pan as one of the 
 oldest gods. But painters as well as statuaries represent 
 this deity with the face and the legs of a goat, as the Greeks 
 used to represent Pan. The Mandeseans pay divine honour 
 to he-goats and she-goats ; but more to the former than to 
 the latter. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Ver. 6. None of you shall approach to any that 
 is near of kin to him, (Heb. remnant of flesh,) 
 to uncover their nakedness. 
 
 In his statutes relative to marriage, and sometimes, also, 
 in other parts of his law, Moses expresses near relationship, 
 either by the single word, -iNtr, (Sheer) pars, scil. carnis, or 
 more fully by the two words, -^v:: -iNtt?, Sheer-basar, pars 
 carnis, {part or remainder of flesh.) The meaning of these 
 terms has been the subject of much controversy. Some 
 would translate ihexo. flesh of flesh; others, remn/int of flesh. 
 But those that say most of their etymology, are in general 
 not so much oriental philologists, as divines and lawyers ; 
 and yet we should rather like to have an illustration of any 
 obscure etymological question, from those who unite with 
 the knowledge of Hebrew, an acquaintance with its kin- 
 dred eastern languages. There are some also, who would 
 make this distinction between Sheer, and Sheer-basar, that 
 the former means only persons immediately connected loith 
 us, such as children, parents, grandchildren, grandparents, 
 and husbands or wives ; and the latter, those who are related 
 to us only mediately, but in the nearest degree, such as, our 
 brothers and sisters, who are, properly speaking, our father'' s 
 flesh. Others again think, that Sheer-basar means nothing 
 but children and grandchildren. These conjectures, how- 
 ever, are by no means consonant to the real usage of the 
 language, in the Mosaic laws themselves ; for in Levit. 
 XXV. 48, 49, Slieer-basar follows as the name of a more 
 remote relation, after brother, paternal uncle, or paternal 
 uncle's son; and in Num. xxvii. 8 — 11, it is commanded, 
 that " if a man die without sons, his inheritance shall be 
 given to his daughters ; if he have no daughters, it shall 
 pass to his brothers, of whom, if he has none, then to his 
 paternal uncles ; and if these are also wanting, it shall 
 then be given unto his nearest Sheer in his family.''^ It is 
 manifest that, in this passage. Sheer includes those relations 
 that follow in succession to a father's brother. If the 
 reader wishes to know what these words etymologically 
 signify, I shall here just state to him my opinion, but with- 
 out repeating tjie grounds on which it rests. Sheer means, 
 
 1. a, remtiant; 2. the remnant of a meal; 3. a piece of a/riy 
 thing eatable, such as flesh ; 4. a piece of any thing in gen- 
 eral. Hence we find it subsequently transferred to rela- 
 tionship in the Arabic language ; in which, though with a 
 slight orthographical variation, that nearest relation is 
 call-ed Tair or Thsair, whom the Hebrews denominate 
 Goel. In this way. Sheer, even by itself, would signify i 
 relation. — Basar, commonly rendered flesh, is among th«. 
 Hebrews equivalent to body ; and may thence have been 
 applied to signify relationship. Thus, thou art my flesh, or 
 body, (Gen. xxix. 14,) means, thou art my near kinsman. 
 When both words are put together, Sheer-basar, they may 
 be rendered literally, corporeal relation, or by a half Hu. 
 brew phrase, kinsman after the flesh. In their derivation, 
 there are no further mysteries concealed, nor any thing 
 that can bring the point in question to a decision ; and 
 what marriages Moses has permitted or commanded, we 
 cannot ascertain from Sheer-basar, frequent and extensive 
 as is its use in his marriage-laws : but must determine, 
 from his own ordinances, in which he distinctly mentions 
 what Sheer-basar, that is, what relations, are forbidden to 
 marry. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 16. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness 
 of thy brother's wife : it is thy brother's naked- 
 ness. 1 8. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her 
 sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, be- 
 sides the other in her life-time. 
 
 With regard to the marriages mentioned in this chapter, 
 there arises the question, whether Moses only prohibits the 
 marriages which he expressly mentions, or others besides, 
 not mentioned, where the degree of relationship is the same 1 
 This question, which is of so great importance in the mar- 
 riage laws of Christian nations, and which, from our im- 
 perfect knowledge of oriental customs, has been the sub- 
 ject of so much controversy*properly regards the following 
 marriages never mentioned by Moses, viz. 
 
 1. With a brother's daughter. 
 
 2. A\ ith a sister's daughter. 
 
 3. With a maternal uncle's widow. 
 
 4. With a brother's son's widow. 
 
 5. With a sister's son's widow. 
 
 6. With a deceased wife's sister. 
 
 These marriages we may, perhaps, for brevity's sake, be 
 allowed to denominate the six marriages, or the consequen- 
 tial marriages. They are as near as those mentioned in 
 the foregoing article, and prohibited. Moses never men- 
 tions them in his marriage statutes ; yet the ground of his 
 prohibitions is nearness of relationship. The question, 
 therefore, is, Are these marriages to be, or not to be, con- 
 sidered as prohibited, by just inference from the letter of his 
 laws 'i In my opinion, they an not; and in proving this, I 
 will most willingly concede to those of a contrary opinion, 
 a multitude of objections against their consequences, as de- 
 duced from the letter of the Mosaic statutes ; such, for in- 
 stance, as this, that according to the pri7iciple of judicial 
 her^ieneutics, prohibitions are not to be extended beyond thf 
 letter of the lau) ; for I readily acknowledge that this rule, 
 how valid soever in our law, is nevertheless not universal 
 and not always safely applicable to veiy ancient laws, if we 
 wish to ascertain the true meaning and opinion of the law- 
 giver : Or this, again, that in these marriages there is no 
 violation of Respectus parentela ; for I have already admit- 
 ted that that principle, to which the Roman lawyers appeal, 
 was not the foundation of the Mosaic prohibitions. I will 
 go yet one step further in courtesy, and promise to appeal 
 on no occasion whatever to the common opinion of the Jews, 
 or to those examples of ancient Jewish usage, whereby the 
 marriages here mentioned are permitted ; for all the Jewish 
 expositors, and all the examples they can produce, are 
 much too modern for me to found upon, where the question 
 is concerning the true meaning of a law given some hun- 
 dred, or rather thousand years before them. So much 
 generosity on my part, many readers would, perhaps, not 
 have anticipated ; but I owe nothing less to impartialitjj, 
 and the love of truth. My reasons, then, for denying, arid 
 protesting against the conclusions in question, ar^ iz iol-' 
 lowing : — 
 
 1. Moses does not appear to have framed or given hi? 
 I marriage laws with any view to our deducing, or acting 
 
Chap. 19, 20 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 79 
 
 upon, conclusions which we might think fit to deduce from 
 them : for if this was his view, he has made several repetitions 
 in theui, that are really very useless. What reason had he, 
 for example, after forbidding marriage with a father's sis- 
 ter, to forbid it also with a mother's, if this second prohibi- 
 tion was included in the first, and if he meant, without say- 
 ing a word on the subject, to be understood as speaking, not 
 of particular marriages, but of degrees ^ 
 
 3. Moses has giv^en his marriage laws in two different 
 places of the Pentateuch, viz. in both the xviii. and xx. 
 chapters of Leviticus ; but in the latter of these passages 
 we find only the very same cases specitied, which had been 
 specified in the former. Now, had they been meant mere- 
 ly as examples of degrees of relationship, it would have 
 been more rational to have varied them; and if it had been 
 said, for instance, on the first occasion, Thou shall nol mar- 
 rtj Ihyfalher^s sisler, to have introduced, on the second, the 
 converse case, and said. Thou s/utll nol marry thy brother's 
 daughter. This, however, is not done by Moses, who, in 
 the second enactment, just specifies thefather^s sister^ as be- 
 fore ; and seems, therefore, to have intended that he should 
 be understood as having in his view no other marriages 
 than those which he expressly names; unless we choose to 
 interpret his laws in a manner foreign to his own meaning 
 and d-esign. 
 
 3. If, in opposition to this, the advocates of the contrary 
 opinion urge, that the six consequential marriages are just 
 as near as those expressly prohibited ; my answer is, that 
 though here they may seem to be in the right, there is yet, 
 according to the customs of the Hebrews, so great a dis- 
 tinction between these two classes of marriages, that any 
 conclusion drawn from the one to the other, is entirely nu- 
 gatory. For, 
 
 (1.) In the Jirst place, among the oriental nations, the 
 niece was regarded as a more distant relation than the 
 aunt. The latter, whether fathers' or mothers' sister, her 
 nephew might see unveiled, in other words, had much 
 nearer access to her ; whereas the former, whether bro- 
 thers' or sisters' daughter, could not be seen by her uncle 
 without a veil. Now, this distinction refers to the very 
 essence of 'le prohibitions ; for it is not the natural degree 
 of relationship, but the right of familiar intercourse, that 
 constitutes the danger of corruption. If, therefore, these 
 laws were given for the purpose of preventing early de- 
 bauchery under the hope of marriage, with an aunt, and 
 with a niece, they are by no means on the same footing ; for 
 to the former, by" the law of relationship, an Israelite had a 
 degree of access, which in the case of the latter was not per- 
 mitted. Both stood in the same degree of affinity accord- 
 ing to the genealogical tree, but not so by the intimacy of 
 intercourse permitted with them. 
 
 (2.) In the second place, there was a difference equally 
 great, or even greater, made between the paternal uncle's 
 widow on the one hand, and the widow of the maternal 
 uncle, or of the brother's or sister's son, on the other. For 
 if by that ancient law, of which the Levirate-marriage may 
 be a relic, the widow was regarded as part of the in- 
 heritance, — I, in the event of my father being dead, receiv- 
 ed his brother's widow by inheritance, but not my mother's 
 brother's, because he belonged to a different family ; nor yet 
 could I thus receive the widow of my brother or sister's son, 
 because inlieritances do not usually ascend ; or, at any rate, 
 an inheritance of this kind ; to make use of which, a man 
 must necessarily not be old, ifthe person who has left it was 
 young. In the case, therefore, of the prohibited marriages 
 specified by Moses, there was by the ancient law an expec- 
 tancy, and by the Levirate-law it become a duty, to marry 
 the widow of a paternal uncle, who had died childless, and 
 to raise up seed to him; but in the case of the marriages 
 not prohibited by Moses, there could be no room for either. 
 If, by reason of this distinction, there be, in regard to the 
 brother's son's widow, as belonging to one familv, the least 
 doubt remaining in the mind of the reader, I hope to re- 
 move it likewise, into the bargain. V/ere I to receive her 
 by inheritance, it must be presupposed that she would have 
 first fallen naturally to my father, and only in consequence 
 of his being no longer alive, have devolved upon me, one 
 degree more distant. But any inheritance so abominable 
 as that of a son's widow devolving to his father, we can 
 scarcely figure to ourselves ; although Thamar, from re- 
 sentment and despair, conceived the idea of her having 
 suck a claim, and contrived by secret artifice to enforce it, 
 
 Gen. xxxviii. Rather would she fall to her husband's bro- 
 ther, and were he not alive, naturally devolve to his son. 
 It is therefore manifest, that the father's brother could never 
 have had that expectancy of his brother's son's widow, 
 which might be attended with such pernicious consequen- 
 ces as I have already remarked. 
 
 4. The strongest and most decisive argument against the 
 conseqiiential system^ and the reckoning by degrees, is drawn 
 from the case of marriage with a deceased wife's sister; 
 The relationship- here is as near as that of a brother's 
 widow ; and yet Moses prohibits the marriage of a bro- 
 ther's widow, and permits that of a deceased wife's sister, 
 or rather (which makes the proof still stronger,) he presup- 
 poses it in his laws as permitted ; and consequent] v^ wished 
 to be understood as forbidding only those marriages which 
 he expressly specifies, and not others of the like proximity, 
 thougn unnoticed. The reader who is not satisfied v. iih 
 these remarks, may consult the 7th chapter of my Treatise 
 on the Marriage Laws, where he will find many particu- 
 lars more fully detailed. But here I cannot say move, 
 without dwelling too long on one part of my subject. — Mi- 
 
 CHAELIS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ver. 9. And when ye reap the harvest of your 
 land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners 
 of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the glean- 
 ings of thy harvest. 
 
 The right of the poor in Israel to glean after the reapers, 
 was thus secured oy a positive law. It is the opinion of 
 some writers, that although the poor were allowed the lib- 
 erty of gleaning, the Israelitish proprietors were not oblig- 
 ed to admit them immediately into the field, as soon as the 
 reapers had cut down the corn, and bound it up in sheaves, 
 but when it was carried off; they might choose also among 
 the poor, whom they thought most deserving or most ne- 
 cessitous. These opinions receive some countenance, from 
 the request which Ruth presented to the servant of Boaz, 
 to permit her to glean " among the sheaves ;" and from the 
 charge of Boaz to his young men, " let her glean even 
 among the sheaves ;" a mode of speaking which seems to 
 insinuate, that though they could not legally hinder Paith 
 from gleaning in the field., they had a right", if they chose 
 to exercise it, to prohibit her from gleaning r.mong the 
 sheaves, or immediately after the reapers. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 28. Ye shall not rnake any cuttings in your 
 flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upoji 
 you : I am the Lord. 
 
 The heathen print marks on their bodies, (by puncturing 
 the skin,) so as to represent birds, trees, and the gods they 
 serve. Some also, especially the sacred females of the tem- 
 ples, have representations on their arms of a highly offen- 
 sive nature. All Hindoos have a black spot, or some other 
 mark, on their foreheads. And the true followers of Siva 
 rub holy ashes every morning on the knees, loins, navel, 
 arms, shoulders, brow, and crown of the head. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause 
 her to be a whore ; lest the land fall to whore- 
 dom, and the land become full of -wickedness. 
 
 Parents, in consequence of a vow or some other circum- 
 stance, often dedicate their daughters to the gods. They 
 are sent to the temple, at the age of eight or ten years, to 
 be initiated into the art of dancing before the deities, and 
 of singing songs in honour of their exploits. From that pe- 
 riod these dancing girls remain in some sacred building neai 
 the temple ; and when they arrive at maturity, (the parents 
 being made acquainted with the fact,) a feast is made, and 
 the poor girl is given into the embraces of some influential 
 man of the establishment. Practices of the most disgusting 
 nature then take place, and the young victim becomes a 
 prostitute for life. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Ver. 2. Ao-ain thou shalt say to the children of 
 Israel, Whosoever he he of the children of Is- 
 
8C 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 20. 
 
 rael, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, 
 that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he 
 shall surely be put to death : the people of the 
 land shall stone him with stones. 
 
 One of the most common punishments in use among the 
 Jews, was stoning, which appears to have been a most 
 grievous and terrible infliction: "when the criminal ar- 
 rived within four cubits of the place of execution, he was 
 stripped naked, only leaving a covering before ; and his 
 hands being bound, he was led up to the fatal spot, which 
 was an emmence about twice the height of a man. The 
 first executioners of the sentence, were the witnesses, who 
 generally pulled off their clothes for that purpose : one of 
 them threw him down with great violence upon his loins ; 
 if he rolled upon his breast, he was turned upon his loins 
 again : and if he died by the fall, the sentence of the law 
 was executed ; but if not, the other witness took a great 
 stone and dashed it on his breast as he lay upon his back ; 
 and then, if he was not despatched, all the people that 
 stood by, threw stones at him till he died."— Lewis. 
 
 Ver. 25. Ye shall therefore put difference between 
 clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean 
 fowls and clean : and ye shall not make your 
 souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by 
 any manner of living thing that creepeth on 
 the ground, which I have separated from you 
 as unclean. 
 
 The Mosaic ordinances respecting clean and unclean 
 beasts, other authors refer to the head of Ecclesiastical 
 Laws; but as they relate, not to any ceremonies of religious 
 worship, but merely to matters of a secular nature, I choose 
 rather to treat of them under the head of Police Law, as 
 one would naturally do in the case of any other laws, that 
 prohibited the use of certain meats. And first of all, I 
 must illustrate the terms clean and unclean, as applied to 
 beasts ; because we are apt to consider them as implying a 
 division of animals with which we are entirely unacquaint- 
 ed, and then to wonder that Moses, as an historian, in 
 describing the circumstances of the deluge, w^hich took 
 place many centuries before the era of his own laws, 
 should mention clean and unclean beasts, and, by so doing, 
 presuppose that there was such a distinction made at that 
 early period. The fact however is, that we ourselves, 
 and indeed almost all nations, make this very distinction, 
 although we do not express it in these terms. Clean and 
 unclean beasts is precisely tantamount to beasts usual and 
 not usual for food. And how many animals are there not 
 poisonous, but perfectly edible, which yet we do not eat, 
 and at the flesh of which, many among us would feel a 
 strong abhorrence, just because we have not been accus- 
 tomed to it from infancy 1 
 
 What Moses did in regard to this matter, was, in the 
 main, nothing more than converting ancient national cus- 
 tom into positive law. The very same animals had, for 
 the most part, previously been to the Israelites or their 
 ancestors, clean or unclean, that is, usual or unusual for 
 food ; and we find that even in Joseph's time, the Eg)'p- 
 tians, who had different customs with regard to meats, and 
 observed them, very rigidly, could not so much as eat at 
 the same table with the Israelitish patriarchs. Gen. xliii. 32. 
 These ancestorial usages Moses now prescribed as express 
 laws; excluding, perhaps, some animals formerly made 
 use of for food, and reducing the whole into what, upon the 
 principles of physiology, was actually a very easy and nat- 
 ural system ; concerning which, as I shall have to speak in 
 the sequel, I only observe at present, that its limits were, 
 perhaps, before trespassed, both on the side of prohibition 
 and permission. As soon as we know what is the real 
 meaning of clean and unclean beasts, many errors, some of 
 them ludicrous, and from which, even men of great learn- 
 ing have not been wholly exempt, instantly vanish. The 
 word unclean, applied to animals, is no epithet of degrada- 
 tion : of all animals, man was the most unclean, that is, 
 human flesh was least of all things to be eaten ; and such 
 is the case, in every nation not reckoned among cannibals. 
 The lion and the horse are unclean beasts, but were to the 
 Hebrews just as little the objects of contempt as they are to 
 
 us. It is another mistake to imagine that the Jews durst 
 not have any unclean animals in their houses, nor have 
 any thing to do with them ; and hence has arisen our 
 strange German proverb, Like a sow in a Jew^s house. But 
 let us only recollect the instances of the ass and camel, the 
 common beasts of burden among the Hebrews, in addition 
 to which, in later times, we have the horse. All the three 
 species w^ere unclean. Even the keeping of swine, as arti- 
 cles of trade, was as little forbidden to the Jews as dealing 
 in horses, which they carried on very commonly. 
 
 The main design of Moses, in converting the ancient 
 national customs of the Hebrews into immutable laws, 
 might, no doubt, be, to keep them more perfectly separate 
 from other nations. They were to continue a distinct 
 people by themselves, to dwell altogether in Palestine, 
 without spreading into other countries, or having too much 
 intercourse with their inhabitants ; in order to prevent their 
 being infected, either with that idolatry, which was then 
 the sensus communis of all mankind, or with the vices of the 
 neighbouring nations, among whom the Canaanites were 
 particularly specified. The first of these objects, the pre- 
 vention of idolatry, and the maintenance of the worship of 
 one only God, was the fundamental maxim of the Mosaic 
 legislation, and t^e second, namely, the preservation of his 
 people from the contagion of various vices, previously un- 
 common among them, such as bestiality, sodomy, incest, 
 incestuous marriages, which are always destructive to the 
 happiness of a country, divinations, human sacrifices, &c. 
 &c. ; together with the maintaining among them their 
 present morals, if but tolerably good, must be an object of 
 great importance with every legislator, if a profligate 
 race, such as Moses and the RouMn writers describe the 
 Canaanites to have been, happen to live in their vicinity. 
 And this Moses himself seems to point out as his object, in 
 the xxth chapter of Leviticus, ver. 25, 26, and that too after 
 warning the Israelites against imitating the Canaanites in 
 the vices now mentioned: "Ye shall," says he, "distin- 
 guish beasts clean and unclean, and birds clean and un- 
 clean, from each other, and not defile yourselves by 
 four-footed, flying, or creeping creatures, which I have 
 separated as unclean ; ye shall be holy to me, for I Jeho- 
 vah am holy, and have separated you from other peoples, 
 to be mine own." 
 
 The distinction of clean and unclean meats may be a 
 very effectual means of separating one nation from another. 
 Intimate friendships are, in most cases, formed at table ; 
 and with the man, with whom I can neither eat or drink, 
 let our intercourse in business be what it may, I shall sel- 
 dom become so familiar, as with him whose guest I am, 
 and he mine. If we have, besides, from education, an 
 abhorrence of the food which others eat, this forms a new 
 obstacle to closer intimacy. Now, all the neighbours of 
 the Israelites did make use of meats, which were forbidden 
 to them from their infancy. The Eg}^ptians differed most 
 from them in this respect : for they had from immemorial 
 ages, a still more rigorous system of national laws on this 
 point, which restrained them even more strongly from 
 intercourse with foreigners. Some of the animals which 
 the Israelites ate, were among them not indeed unclear, 
 but yet sacred, being so expressly consecrated to a deity, 
 that they durst not be slaughtered ; because, according to 
 the Egyptian doctrine of the transmigration of souls, a man 
 could not but be afraid of devouring his OAvn forefathers, 
 if he tasted the flesh of those beasts, in which the souls of 
 the best of men usually resided. Even before the ancestors 
 of the Israelites descended into Egj'pt, this had proceeded 
 so far, that the Egyptians not only could not eat the same 
 sort of food, but could not even so much as sit at the same 
 table with Hebrews, Gen. xliii. 32 ; and these wandering 
 herdsmen, who ate the flesh of goats, sheep, and oxen, 
 which were all forbidden in one or other of the provinces of| 
 Egypt, were so obnoxious to them, that they would noM 
 allow them to live among them, but assigned "them a sepa-1 
 rate part of the country for a residence. Gen. xlvi. 33, 34. 
 An Egyptian durst not so much as use a vessel, in which 
 a foreigner ate his impure victuals ; still less durst he kiss 
 a foreigner: although I will not venture to assert, that this 
 last command was, in all cases, inviolably observed, where 
 a tawny Egyptian found a fair Grecian alone, how impure 
 soever her food rendered her. — We may therefore conjec- 
 ture, that Moses here borrowed somewhat from the legis- 
 lative policy of the Egyptians, and with a view to a mort 
 
Chap. 21—24. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 51 
 
 complete and permanent separation of the two peoples, 
 made that a law among the Israelites, which before was 
 nothing else than a custom of their fathers. 
 
 Besides this main object, there might,. no doiibt, in the 
 case of certain animals, interfere dietetical considerations 
 to influence Moses ; only we are not to seek for them in all 
 the prohibitions relative to unclean beasts. In regard to 
 that respecting swine's flesh, they are pretty obvious ; and 
 every prudent legislator must endeavour either to divert 
 by fair means a people in the circumstances and climate 
 of the Israelites, from the use of that food, or else express- 
 ly interdict it. For whoever is affected with any cutane- 
 ous disease, were it but the common itch, if he wishes to 
 be cured, must abstain from swine's flesh. It has likewise 
 been long ago observed, that the use of this food produces a 
 peculiar susceptibility of itchy disorders. Now, throughout 
 the whole climate under which Palestine is situated, and 
 for a certain extent both south and north, the leprosy is an 
 endemic disease ; and with this disease, which is pre-emi- 
 nently an Egyptian one, the Israelites left Egypt so terribly 
 overrun, that Moses found it necessary to enact a variety 
 of laws respecting it ; and that the contagion might l>e 
 weakened, and the people tolerably guarded against its in- 
 fluence, it became requisite to prohibit them from eating 
 swine's flesh altogether. This prohibition, however, is suf- 
 ficiently distinguished, from all others of the kind, in these 
 two respects ; in the first place, the Arabs, who eat other 
 sorts of food forbidden the Jews, yet hold swine's flesh to be 
 imclean ; and, in conformity with their ideas, Mohammed 
 forbade the use of it in the Koran : in the second place, 
 every physician will interdict a person labouring under 
 any cutaneous disease, from eating pork ; and it has been 
 remarked of our Germany — a country otherwise in gener- 
 al pretty clear of them, — that such diseases are in a pecu- 
 liar manner to be met with in those places where a great 
 deal of pork is eaten. 
 
 Some have been inclined to discover moral reasons for 
 the laws in question, and to ascribe to the eating of certain 
 animals a specific influence on the moral temperament. 
 Thus the camel is extremely revengeful ; and it has been 
 pretended, that it is their eating camels' flesh so frequently, 
 that makes the Arabs so prone to revenge. But of this 
 there is too little proof Other nations in the south of Eu- 
 rope, charged with the same national passion, and who 
 either, as in the case with the Italians, have a pleasure in 
 < revenge, even in secret revenge, or, like the Portuguese, 
 are, by a strange point of honour, necessitated to the ex- 
 ercise of implacable revenge, neither eat the flesh nor 
 drink the milk of camels. Perhaps the vindictive propen- 
 sity of the Arabs is rather an effect of climate, or of tneir 
 point of honour in regard to blood-avengement, than of 
 eating camels' flesh. At the same time, I do not entirely 
 I deny the influence of food on the moral temperament ; but 
 t I am by no means yet convinced, that the daily use of cer- 
 tain kinds of animal food will ever so far alter it, as to 
 give a legislator reason to prohibit them ; nor yet can I 
 believe, that eating the flesh of any animal directly in- 
 spires us with the passions of that animal, although it may 
 operate upon us in other respects. — Michaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 18. For whatsoever man he he that hath a 
 blemish, he shall not approach ; a blind man, 
 or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any- 
 thing superfluous. 
 
 Among the heathen, persons of the most respectable 
 appearance were appointed to the priesthood ; and the 
 emperor, both among the Greeks and Romans, was both 
 king and priest. Considering the object of r^igious wor- 
 
 I ship, it is not possible tliat too much circumspection can be 
 maintained in every part of it. If great men deem it re- 
 proachful to have things imperfect presented to them, it 
 may most reasonably be supposed that such offerings would 
 be rejected with anger by God. The general opinion was, 
 that a priest who was defective in any member was to be 
 avoided as ominous. At Elis, in Greece,, the judges chose 
 the finest looking man to carry the sacred vessels of the 
 deity : he that was next him in beauty and elegance led 
 
 I the ox ; and the third m personal beauty carried the gar- 
 
 I Unds, ribands, wine, and the other things used in sacrifice. 
 
 i 11 
 
 Among most nations of antiquity, persons who had bodily 
 defects were excluded from the priesthood. Among the 
 Greeks " it was required, that whoever was admitted to 
 this oflfice should be sound and perfect in all his members, 
 it being thought a dishonour to the gods to be served by any 
 one that was lame, maimed, or any other way imperfect ; 
 and therefore at Athens, before their consecration, they 
 were w^cAtij, i. e. perfect and entire, jieither having any de- 
 fect, nor any thing superfluous." Potter. Seneca says, 
 " that Metelius, who had the misfortune to become blind, 
 when he saved the Palladium from the flames, on the burn- 
 ing of the temple of Vesta, was obliged to lay down the 
 priesthood :" and he adds, " Every priest whose body is not 
 faultless, is to be avoided like a thing of bad omen." 
 Sacerdos non integri corporis quasi mali ominis est vitandus 
 est. M. Sergius, who lost his right hand in defence of his 
 country, could not remain a priest for that reason. The 
 bodily defects which disqualified a virgin from becoming 
 a vestal are named by A. Gellius, Noct. Alt. i. chap. 12. 
 
 ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Even those of the seed of Aaron who had any personal 
 defect, were not allowed to take a part in the offerings 
 of the Lord. The priesthood among the Hindoos is 
 hereditary, but a deformed person cannot perform a cere- 
 mony in the temple ; he may, however, prepare the flowers, 
 fruits, oils, and cakes, for the offerings, and also sprinkle 
 the premises with holy water. The child of a priest 
 being deformed at the birth will not be consecrated. A 
 priest having lost an eye or a tooth, or being deficient in 
 any member or organ, or who has not a wife, cannot per- 
 form the ceremony called Teevasam, for the manes of de- 
 parted friends. Neither will his incantations, or prayers, 
 or magical ceremonies, have any effect. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Ver. 22. And when ye reap the harvest of your 
 land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of 
 the corners of thy field when thou reapest, nei- 
 ther shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy har- 
 vest : thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and 
 to the stranger: I am the Lord your God. 
 
 Fields in the East, instead of hedges, have ridges. In the 
 corners they cannot easily work with the plough, and there- 
 fore prepare that part with a man-vetty, i. e. an earth-cutter, 
 or large kind of hoe. The corn in these corners is seldom 
 yery productive, as the ridge for some time conceals it 
 from the sun and other sources of nourishment, and the 
 rice also, in the vicinity, soon springing up, injures it by 
 the shade. Under these circumstances, the people think but 
 little of the corners, and were a person to be very particular, 
 he would have the name of a stingy fellow. From this 
 view, it appears probable, that the command was given, in 
 order to induce the owner to leave the little which was 
 produced in the corners for the poor. No farmer will 
 allow any of his family to glean in the fields, the pittance 
 left is always considered the property of-the poor. In car- 
 rying the sheaves, all that falls is taken up by the gleaners. 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 16. And he that blasphemeth the name ot 
 the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and 
 all the congregation shall certainly stone him ; 
 as well the stranger, as he that is born in the 
 land, when he blasphemeth the name of the 
 LORD, shall be put to death. 
 
 Among most nations blasphemy is regarded as one ot 
 the greatest crimes, and punished capitally. Whether in 
 this they act rationally, and what force there is in the ob- 
 jection, that blasphemy does not hurt God, I shall not here 
 stop to inquire ; as, perhaps, some notice of these points 
 will be taken in my proposed essay on the Intention ot 
 Punishments; and, therefore, I proceed to observe, that in 
 the Mosaic polity, whereby God became both King ana 
 Lawgiver of the Israelites, and where, of course, blasphe- 
 my was a crime against the state, we find it, in like man- 
 ner, considered as a capital crime, and the punif^iment ot 
 stoning annexed to it ; Lev. xxiv. 10 — 14. Nor was th« 
 
82 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap, 24. 
 
 circumstance of the blasphemer being a foreigner, to make 
 any difference in the punishment. Indeed, this was actually 
 the case, on the occasion of the punishment of this crime 
 being first settled. A man, whose father was an Egyptian, 
 but his mother a woman of Israel, had, in a quarrel with 
 an Israelite, blasphemed Jehovah, He was, after an inquiry 
 into the mind of God, adjudged to be stoned ; and the edict 
 published on this occasion, concludes with these words, 
 " One uniform law shall you all have, foreigners as well 
 as natives ; for I am Jehovah your God." Allowing that 
 a foreigner does not believe in our God, although, indeed, 
 with regard to the God of Israel this was not likely to hap- 
 pen, because paganism was syncretistic, and did not deny 
 the divinity of other gods ; and, besides, the Israelites be- 
 lieved in the God who created the world, and whom we 
 know, and acknowledge from reason, without revelation ; 
 but allowing, I say, a foreigner to be an infidel, still he has 
 no right to insult the people, under whose protection he 
 lives, by blaspheming the object of their veneration, and 
 whose name they hold supremely sacred. 
 
 It is with hesitation, and not without danger, that I 
 venture to adopt a Jewish explanation, which has been 
 commonly ridiculed as a piece of mere superstition, in 
 regard to this law, in Lev. xxiv. 16, which declares, that 
 whoever shall utter the name Jehovah shall die ; the 
 whole congregation shall stone him: foreigner as well as 
 native shall die, if he utter the name Jehovah, Instead of 
 utter, we may translate curse, for the Hebrew word Nakab 
 (3p)) signifies both, and then we shall have the blasphemer 
 spoken of a second time ; but to this translation there seems 
 to be this objection, that the 16th verse would thus be no- 
 thing but a needless repetition of the preceding one. Thus 
 much is certain, that at a very ancient period, long be- 
 fore the birth of Christ, the Jews understood the law be- 
 fore us, as if it prohibited them from uttering the name 
 Jehovah, which the true God had given himself as his 
 nomen proprium, on any other than solemnly-sacred, or 
 at any rate sacred, occasions ; and, of course, from ever 
 naming him at all in common life. The Greek version 
 ascribed to the persons called the Seventy Interpreters, and 
 which was made at least 250 years before Christ, here ren- 
 ders, " Whoever nameththe name of the Lord shall die;" 
 and we see that, by this time, the Jews were accustomed, 
 wherever they found the word Jehovah in the Bible, to pro- 
 nounce, instead of it, the name Adonai, (>3in) or Lord : for, 
 in place of Jehovah, (nin'') the Seventy always put, b Kvpiog. 
 Philo, who lived in the time of Christ, explains the passage, 
 connecting it with the preceding verse, in the following 
 terms, " Strange gods are not to be blasphemed, lest men 
 should be accustomed to think meanly of the Deity. But 
 if any one, (I do not say blaspheme, for that is not here in 
 question, but) even so much as utter unseasonably the name 
 of the Lord of men and gods, he shall die." We may, 
 therefore, approve of this explanation, or not, as we please ; 
 but we must not look upon it as a piece of superstition 
 originating with the Jews, who lived after the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, and whose opinions, in regard to the Mosaic 
 law, I do not, for the most part, so much as notice. This 
 prohibition of uttering the name of God, whether it please 
 us or not, does not, by any means, appear altogether im- 
 probable ; for it is in conformity with the customs and 
 legislative policy of the Egyptians, who had secret names 
 for their gods, which it was lawful for the priests alone to 
 
 f)ronounce ; no man being permitted to do so in common 
 ife. And, in like manner, Rhadamanthus, who herein 
 wished to imitate the Egyptians, would not, on occasions 
 of taking oaths, allow the names of the gods to be mention- 
 ed, but only those of the animals consecrated to them, such 
 as dogs, rams, geese, &c. 
 
 Nor would I be disposed to maintain, that no advantage 
 could flow from such a prohibition. For in the first place, 
 that name of the Deity, which was considered as his proper 
 name, would be, at any rate, thereby guarded from profa- 
 nations and misapplications, which sometimes leave behind 
 them ludicrous and contemptuous impressions, that can 
 never be effaced ; and, in an age when polytheism was so 
 prevalent, this was a matter of much more importance than 
 at present ; for then God was not, as with us in Germany, 
 equivalent to a nom,en proprium, but every god, whether 
 true or false, had his own peculiar name ; and hence we 
 "find Mo'ies addressing the God who appeared to him, and 
 who declared himseH" the " God of his fathers," and, of 
 
 course, the creator of heaven and earth, and the only true 
 God ; and asking him what answer he should return to 
 the Israelites, if they wished to know what Was his name, 
 Exod. iii. 13, 
 
 In the second place, a name of the deity, which is never 
 mentioned in common life, will have something extremely 
 solemn in it, particularly where it is so significant, as was 
 the word Jehovah. It will, of course, in worship, in prayer, 
 and in the case of an oath, make so much the deeper im- 
 pression ; and thut, with respect to the last of these, may 
 serve to prevent perjury, or, at least, to make it but rare : 
 for whatever is unknown and uncommon, affects the human 
 heart with terror and with awe. In fact, I myself believed 
 that this law ought to be understood in this way, when I was 
 translating the book of Leviticus, about three years ago ; 
 but since that time, the consideration of the great severity 
 of the punishmept has raised a doubt in my mind on this 
 point. Moses prohibits naming the name Jehovah ; but 
 was that to be a capital crime 1 If so, where was there 
 any gradation of punishments ; stoning being- thus the 
 punishment of the blasphemer of God, and of the man also 
 who but uttered his name 1 — But this doubt becomes still 
 weightier, when we read both verses, namely, verses 15 
 and 16 of Lev. xxiv. together. And here I must acknow- 
 ledge a mistake in my translation : for the words in ver. 15, 
 " he shall bear his sin," I rendered periphrastically, " he 
 shall atone for his crime," because I adhered to the com 
 mon opinion, that they related to the stoning, which was 
 adjudged as the punishment of the blasphemer. If, how- 
 ever, I translate the passage quite literally thus, " Whoever 
 blasphemeth his God, shall bear his sin. Whoever utters 
 the name Jehovah, shall die; the whole congregation shall 
 stone him ;" it looks as if the utterer of the name was to be 
 punished differently from, and more severely than, the 
 blasphemer; as, indeed, Philo has remarked, though with 
 quite another view. But then, it is to be considered, fur- 
 ther, that the crime is not so much as distinctly expressed 
 unless we explain the 16th verse by, and, in some measure, 
 include it in, the one before it. The verb Nakab may as 
 well mean to write, as to utter ; and, therefore, even wri- 
 ting the name Jehovah, might seem to have been prohibit- 
 ed; and yet Moses has done that in every page of his wri- 
 tings. Let it, however, be rendered utter ; was then all ut- 
 terance of the name Jehovah forbidden 1 How then was 
 it to be used, and for what purpose did God assume it 1 , 
 This law, then, is surely to be understood with some limi- 
 tation 1 But with what limitation 1 Was the priest alone 
 to utter the name, as the Jews think 1 or durst laymen also 
 utter it, if they only did so in a holy manner 1 Durst it be 
 mentioned in an oath, or in prayer 1 Was it permitted in 
 instructing children 1 or was only the inconsiderate use of 
 it prohibited'? With regard to all this, we find nothing in 
 this law, and yet it is the only one that treats on this sub- 
 ject ; nor is it like other laws, illustrated by usage ; for the 
 name Jehovah was new, and it was Moses who first dis- 
 tinguished the God who sent him, by this philosophically 
 sublime and expressive title. Here, then, we should have 
 some crime, to whichthepunishmentof death was annexed, 
 and yet it was not rightly understood what it was, nor 
 wherein it consisted. 
 
 These doubts have prompted me to connect the 16tt 
 verse more closely with the 15th ; so that to vtt^r the nnm^ 
 Jehovah, becomes equivalent to uttering it in blasphc' 
 my ; and this explanation is the more probable, because in 
 the story which gave occasion to the law, we find, ver. IL 
 that the Egyptian had uttered the name, and blasphemed. 
 The meaning then of the words, of which I shall first give 
 a literal translation thus, — A man, a man, (that is, any man 
 whatever, whether native or stranger,) who blasphemeth his 
 God, shall bear his sin, find whoever uttereth the natne Jeho- 
 vah shall die ; the whole congregation shall stone him — will be 
 the following : " If any man blaspheme God, the God whom 
 he deems his God, (th'e Israelite, the true, and the heathen , 
 a false God,) it is a heinous sin. It is a sin even in the hea •' 
 then, to blaspheme what, according to his own opinion, is3 
 god. Such a person shall not escape his judge; althoughf 
 the magistrate has no right to interfere in the matter, bu!^ 
 must leave it to the true or false God, that he may be his' 
 own judge. It is, besides, uncertain whom the man may 
 have meant, when he cursed God, and here the law as-^ 
 sumes the milder supposition. But if any one, in blaspht 
 ming, expressly mention the name Jehovah, so -that 
 
 1 
 
Chap. 24. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 83 
 
 uoubt can remain, whether he meant to blaspheme the true 
 or a false God, lie shall be stoned to death." 
 
 In this way the criminal law, with respect to blasphe- 
 mers, woald undergo a very material alteration ; nor would 
 it be ^very blaphemy, but only that which was distinguish- 
 vA by a certain specific aggravation, that incurred capital 
 inunshment ; all other cases being left to the judgment of 
 God, because the blasphemer cannot be convicted of having 
 blasphemed the true God, and because God is certainly 
 •dble to avenge himself, if he think fit, without having oc- 
 casion for our aid; Judg. vi. 30, 31. And this appears 
 quite suitable to the spirit of those times, and is a great mit- 
 iiraiion of the rigour of the law. In our times, a legislator 
 \\ (jiild, perhaps, grant to the blasphemer the salvo of not 
 bein<< in his right mind. — At any rate, blasphemy, inferred 
 merely by deductions, or what is called blasphemous doc- 
 trine, could not be punished by the law. In later times, the 
 Jews were extremely prone to construe every thing that 
 did not please them, at once into blasphemy; and their 
 Zealots, as they were called, arrogated to themselves the 
 right of punishing on the spot, and without the smallest 
 judicial inquiry, any supposed blasphemy ; although per- 
 naps they had stopped their ears against it, and were, there- 
 fore, but bad judges of its real nature. Both the one and 
 the other of these measures are repugnant to the Mosaic 
 statute. Even the utterlr of aggravated blasphemy was 
 not put to death on the spot, but taken into custody, until 
 God could be consulted as lo his fate. We must not, there- 
 fore, charge the Mosaic law with those illegal outrages, to 
 which the zeal of the later Jews prompted them to resort. — 
 jMichaelis. 
 
 Ver. 19. And if a man cause a blemish in his 
 neighbour : as he hath done, so shall it be done 
 unto him ; 20. Breach for breach, eye for eye, 
 tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish 
 in a man, so shall it be done to him again. 
 
 In cases of corporal injuries done to free persons, (for the 
 same rule did not extend to servants, they being less pro- 
 tected members of the community,) that far severer law of 
 retaliation operated, whose language is, " Eye for eye, and 
 tooth for tooth ;" and upon that law I must here expatiate 
 more fully, because it is so far removed from our laws, that 
 il sometimes appears to us really barbarous, or, as others 
 would say, unchristian. Barbarous, however, it was not ; 
 for those very nations of antiquity whom we look upon as 
 most civilized, viz. the Athenians and Romans, had this 
 n law in the days of their freedom. But the singular cir- 
 cumstance respecting it is, that it is, strictly speaking, only 
 suited to a free people, and where the poorest citizen has 
 equal rights with the greatest man that can injure him ; al- 
 though, no doubt, it may subsist under an aristocracy and 
 a monarchy also, as long as no infringement is made on 
 liberty, and on the equality of the lowest with the highest, 
 in point of rights. Where, however, the eye of a nobleman 
 is of more value than that of a peasant, it would be a very 
 
 Ereposterous and inconvenient law ; and where, for the 
 enefit of the great, attempts might out of friendship be 
 made to pervert justice, it is much more consonant to equity, 
 in the case of such corporal injuries, to leave the determi- 
 nation of the punishment to the decision of the judge. It 
 would seem that Moses retained the law of retaliation, from 
 a more ancient, and a very natural, law of usage. It will 
 be well worth our while to hear what he himself says on 
 the subject of a lav/, so strange to us, and yet so common 
 among ancient free nations. His _^rsf statute respecting it, 
 clearly presupposes retaliation as consuetudinary, and only 
 applies it to the very special case of a pregnant woman be- 
 ing pushed, by two men quarrelling w'ith each other, and 
 therebv receiving an injury ; the man who pushed her, be- 
 ing adjudged to pay " life for life, eye for eye, tooth for 
 tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, brand for brand, wound 
 for wound, bruise for bruise," Exod. xxi. 23 — 25. The 
 second statute likewise occurs but incidentally; when, on 
 occasion of blasphemy uttered by an Egyptian, it was or- 
 damed that both Israelites and strangers should have one 
 and the same criminal law ; and it is added, by way of ex- 
 ample, " Whoever shall injure his neighbour in his person, 
 shall receive even as he hath given : eye for eye, wound 
 ' for wound, tooth for tooth; even as he hath injured another, 
 
 so shall it be done to himself in return ;" Lev. xxiv. 19, 20. 
 What Moses then says (incidentally, in fact, and presup- 
 posing a more ancient law of usage) concerning the pun- 
 ishment of retaliation, I understand under the two follow- 
 ing limitations : — 
 
 1. When the injury is either deliberate, or at east in con- 
 sequence of our fault ; (an instance of which last is that 
 mentioned above, from Exod. xxi. 23, where a woman is 
 hurt by two men fighting ; an act of outrage of which they 
 ought not to have been guilty ;) but not where there is 
 either no fault, or at any rate but an inadvertence ; as 
 w^here one man pushes out another's eye undesignedly. 
 This limitation every one will admit, who remembers thy* 
 Moses was so far from meaning to punish unpremeditated 
 homicide by the law of retaliation, that he established an 
 asylum for the unfortunate manslayer, to secure him from 
 the fury of the Goel. 
 
 2. The person who suflfered any personal injury, retained 
 (for he is nowhere deprived of it) the natural right of ab- 
 staining, if he chose, from all complaint, and even of re- 
 tracting a complaint already made, and remitting the pun- 
 ishment, if the other compounded with him for what we 
 should call a pecuniary indemnity, or, to use the Hebrew 
 expression, a ransom. Not to mention that this right is 
 quite natural and obvious, and scarcely requires to be no- 
 ticed in a penal statute, it maybe observed, that among the 
 Israelites such pecuniary expiations had been previously 
 common, even m the case of deliberate murder, as they 
 still are among the Orientals, and that in this case alone 
 did Moses find it necessary to prohibit the acceptance of 
 any such compensation ; Numb. xxxv. 31. If it was ^Jus- 
 tomary in cases of deliberate murder, we may conclude 
 with certainty, that it would frequently be accepted for the 
 loss of a tooth or an eye ; but as Moses did not prohibi.t 
 this, we must suppose that the ancient usage still continued 
 
 to prevail. ' 
 
 But is not the punishment of retaliation extremely rude 1 
 Does it not savour strongly of ancient barbarism 1 and 
 must not every legislator, who out of philanthropy wishes 
 the nobleman to preserve his own eyes, though he may pre- 
 viously havebeaten outthoseof theworthlesspeasant,natur- 
 ally keep at as great a d istance here as possible from the brutal 
 law of ancient times 1 And was not Moses then very much 
 to blame, I will not say in giving such a law, for that can- 
 not be laid to his charge, but in retaining it from ancient 
 usage % 
 
 Let us listen with candour, to what may be said both for 
 and against this species of punishment. 
 I. In favour of it, then, we may observe — 
 
 1. That it is the first punishment that will naturally oc- 
 cur to every legislator when left to himself; nor can any 
 one justly complain, that that should happen to himsell', 
 which he has done to another: for he hasjcertainly cause 
 to be thankful, that he does not suffer more : since not only 
 self-revenge, as authorized by Xhe. jus nature, but also pun- 
 ishments in civil society generally go much greater 
 lengths, and retaliate for" evils that have been sufiered, 
 perhaps tenfold. 
 
 2. That it has a more powerful effect than any other 
 punishment in deterring from personal injuries ; and is, 
 indeed, almost the only adequate means of attaining this 
 end of punishment. Pecuniary punishments will not be 
 very formidable to the man of opulence, particularly if 
 they are regulated by the rank of the person injured ; nor 
 will they, of course, ^o much to promote the security of the 
 poor : nay, even though corporal punishments be legal, if 
 they only rest with the discretion of the judge, (and here, 
 that is a very alarming and despotically-sounding expres- 
 sion.) not only is not the security of the poor man thereby 
 promoted, because the judge's discretion is generally pretty 
 favourable to the great, but his humiliation becomes, in fact, 
 only the greater. Should the nobleman, for instance, put 
 out the eye of a peasant, and the judge estimate the loss at 
 1000 rix-'dollars, which, though a sum pretty considerable 
 in itself, can give the former but little concern ; but the 
 peasant, on the other hand, who puts out a nobleman's eye, 
 be dragged to the gallows in a cart, though quite ready to 
 pay him the same sum, which indeed many a peasant, in 
 some countries, could very easily raise; such an inequality 
 
 in the Jaw would, to a man of spirit, who feels his bands, . 
 
 and who is both able and willing to defend his country with 
 them, prove rather intolerable. Under such a law, can the 
 
84 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 24 
 
 man in an humble station possibly have that security for 
 sound limbs, that he must wish, and has a right to demand, 
 from the community 1 When, on the contrary, the greatest 
 and richest man in the land knows, that if he puts out the 
 eye of a peasant, the latter has* a right to insist that Ms eye 
 be put out in return, that a sentence to that eifect will actu- 
 ally be pronounced, and the said punishment inflicted, with- 
 out the least respect to his rank, or his noble eye being con- 
 sidered as one whit better than the peasant's ; and that he 
 lias no possible way of saving it, but by humbling himself 
 before the other, as deeply as may be necessary to work 
 upon his compassion, and make him relent, besides paying 
 him as much money as he deems a satisfactory compensa- 
 tions for his loss ; every one will be convinced (without my 
 swearing to prove it) that the nobleman will bethink him- 
 self, before he put out any one's eye. The argument is 
 precisely the same in the case of othf r injuries, down to 
 the loss of a tooth ; concerning which the ancient jus ta- 
 lmas came at last to teach so differeut a doctrine. 
 
 If here it be objected, (and no djubt the objection has 
 weight,) that notwithstanding the 'exclusion of the jus ta- 
 lionis, from our law, and its superior mildness in all re- 
 spects, we scarcely ever see an instance of an eye put out 
 in deliberate malice ; I be^ leave to observe in answer, 
 that this is, in fact, to be ascribed in a great measure, to 
 the superior mildness and refinement of our manners : but 
 such manners are not found in all nations; they certainly 
 were not found in the ancient nations that approached 
 nearer to ihe state of nature; nor yet do we find them among 
 the people of southern countries ; whose rage is more ma- 
 licious, and loves to leave a lasting memorial behind it, in 
 those on whom it is vented. By the gradually refined man- 
 ners, therefore, of our more northerly regions, we can 
 hardly expect that the ancient law of retaliation, should in 
 southern nations have' been regulated. Add to this, that 
 among us, since the introduction of luxury and more effemi- 
 nate education, or in consequence of hereditary disease, 
 the nobleman has very seldom sucli bodily strength as to 
 be a match for a peasant ; and if it came to the driving 
 Cut of teeth or eyes, would run the risk of losing two of 
 eilner, before the latter lost one. There are, besides, to be 
 taken into consideration several other fortunate circum- 
 stances, which though not, properly speaking, connected with 
 our law, -serve nevertheless to remedy its defects. For in- 
 stance, most of the people of distinction among us are at the 
 same time servants to the sovereign, and as such have both 
 honour and revenues, and would sink into a sort of nothing- 
 ness if they lost their posts ; but such are the humane ideas 
 of many sovereigns, that they would no longer retain in 
 their service the person who had put out a poor man's eye, 
 unless circumstances appeared that were highly allevialive 
 of the outrage, or that he made a satisfactory compensation 
 for it. But the advantage which 7/;c thus derive from our 
 manners is not to be met with in every democracy or aristoc- 
 racy; for there, as posts are conferred either by laws, or by 
 votes, of which no individual is ashamed, so neither are 
 they taken away without legal authority. 
 
 3. That in the state of nature every man has a right to 
 take revenge at his own hand for any deliberate personal 
 injury, such as the loss of an eye, &c. is perhaps undenia- 
 ble. In fact, by the law of nature such revenge might be 
 carried still further : but if it be confined within the limits 
 of strict retaliation, the law of nature at any rate (for of 
 morality I do not now speak) can certainly have nothing 
 to object against it. Now, in tne state of civil society, every 
 man divests himself of the right in question; but then he 
 justly expects, in return, that society will, after proper in- 
 quiry, duly exercise revenge in his room. Morality may say 
 , what it will to our revenge, (and certainly it does not abso- 
 k tely condemn it,) but we are all naturally vindictive, and 
 tJM tc such a degree, that when we are grossly injured we 
 feel a most irksome sort of disquietude and feverish heat, 
 until we have gratified our revenge. Now, when creatures, 
 thus constituted, are the citizens of any government, can we 
 imagine that they will ever give up the prerogative of re- 
 venge, without looking for some equivalent in return '? If 
 the state means to withhold that equivalent, and yet pro- 
 hibit the exercise of revenge, it must begin by regenerating 
 human nature: or, if it be said, that God and his grace 
 can alone effect such a change, and that whoever lays open 
 his heart to grace, will never desire revenge, I can only 
 say, that we must then figure to ourselves a stale consisting 
 
 of none but people all truly regenerated ; but such a state 
 the world has never yet seen. 
 
 4. If the law of re^iZiafton, were abrogated, nothing could 
 be more natural, if the lower classes had not, by long con- 
 straint and oppression, become too much humbled, than 
 for the poor man, who had received any personal injury, 
 still to revenge it at his own hand, and more especially to 
 lie in wait for his rich oppressor, at whom he could not 
 come with open force, and put out his eye, with as little 
 warning and ceremony as he had done" his. And what 
 could in such a case be done ; were justice to be observed, 
 and the poor man who only requited the injury he had re- 
 ceived, to experience no severer punishment than he who 
 set him the example 1 It might, no doubt, be said, that his 
 conduct, in thus lying in wait, and in deliberately avenging 
 his own quarrel, in contempt of a legal prohibition, aggra- 
 vated his guilt in every respect; t)ut where the injured 
 person, aware that the laws gave him no reparation, only 
 didm instanti, what every man of spirit would very natu- 
 rally do, andw'hat, if he did not go beyond blows, even our 
 laws would excuse him for doing — if he only flew with all 
 possible fury upon the person who had put out his eye, and 
 tried to put out his in return ; we should not, perhaps, think 
 him deserving of so severe a punishment for having thus 
 requited like for like, as the person who had begun the 
 quarrel. Now this immediate s^lf-revenge would, among 
 a people who retained any feeling of their dignity, and 
 their natural equality with even the most distinguished of 
 their fellow-citizens, be the usual plan : and if no one at- 
 tempts any such thing, we can scarcely impute it to the re- 
 fined manners of the brawny peasantry, and even of the 
 very lowest of the people, but rather to the melancholy cir- 
 cuniistance, of their having become too tame, and having 
 forgotten that they are not slaves, but, in point of rights, 
 on a footing of equality with the rest of their countrymen. 
 
 5. Even our own laws admit the right of retaliation, and 
 that too, in rather an equivocal case, and where an injury 
 is not actually done, but only intended, and perhaps not 
 even that. They allow us, in the case of having been ca- 
 lumniated, to sue the person who has falsely and mali- 
 ciously charged us with any crime, for the same penalty, 
 which the crime itself incurs according to the laws. No 
 doubt, judgment is rarely pronounced in terms of our com- 
 plaint, and much here depends on the discretion of the 
 judge ; but still it is clear, that the laws, in authorizing any 
 such suit, presuppose the equity of the ji/s talionis. 
 
 II. The chief arguments against the law in question 
 may, perhaps, be found comprehended Under the following 
 objections, which are usually urged against it. 
 
 1. There are many injuries, where it would be absurd 
 to give the sufferer a right to retaliation :, in the cate of 
 adultery, for instance, to permit the injured husband to 
 sleep with the wife of the adulterer in return. In regard 
 to this objection, however, some misconception seems to lie 
 at bottom. It is not every description of injuries that we 
 here speak of, but only of personal injuries : nor yet of any 
 retaliation that the sufferer himself may choose to exact, 
 such, for instance, as thrusting out another's eyes or teeth : 
 but only of a punishment that depends upon, and is to be 
 inflicted by the magistrate. "Were any person to deduce 
 all sorts of punishments from the jus talionis, this objec- 
 tion would hold : but it does not hold in the case of a legis- 
 lator appointing the puriishment of retaliation for persona^ 
 injuries. 
 
 2. In many cases it is difficult to requite just as much 
 and no more, than has been suffered ; for instance, where 
 a man has thrust out one of another man's teeth, he may 
 in suffering retaliation, very easily lose tm-o teeth by on* 
 stroke. In like manner, it would be diflScult to inllict i 
 wound of exactly the same size and depth with that given 
 and neither larger nor deeper. And what shall be done 
 where a man, having but one eye, happens to thrust ou 
 one of his neighbour's'? Shall he' lose his only eye by wai 
 of retaliation 7 This would be to make him suffer a mucl 
 more serious injury than he had caused : for now he wonlc 
 be quite blind, whereas he had only made the other one 
 eyed, like himself Here I will make much greater con 
 cessions than the opponents of the law of retaliation ar* 
 wont to demand. For had they known human nature, the;" 
 would have stated in addition, and I. for my own part, read 
 ily grant them, that punishment by retaliation is in almos 
 every case, a much more sensible evil, than the origina 
 
di 
 
 HAP. 24. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 8$ 
 
 injury: for every pain and every evil to which we look 
 ibrward, is, by mere anticipation and fear, aggravated 
 more than a hundred fold ; the pang of a moment is ex- 
 tended to hours, days, weeks, &c. ; and when it actually 
 takes placCj every individual part of the evil is felt in the 
 utmost perfection, by both soul and body, in consequence 
 i)f its being expected. The adversaries of the lex talio- 
 nis were bad philosophers, when, with all their benevo- 
 ence, this observation escaped them. — But after all, it 
 ;p-ould, even in conjunction with what went before, form 
 10 objection to the law in question ; for this, in fact, is no- 
 hing more than what commonly takes place in all pun- 
 ishments, and in all the variety of revenge that we dread, 
 jven in the state of nature. If I had, in that state, beat out 
 .;he eye of one of my neighbours, I should ahvays be afraid 
 :hat he, or his son, or his father, or his brother, or some 
 Dther friend, or, perhaps some person hired for the purpose, 
 might lie in wait for me, and beat out one of mine in re- 
 turn; and, under this unnecessary fear, I should really and 
 truly be much more unhappy, than the man whose eye I 
 beat out; in my very dreams, I should, who knows how of- 
 ten, lose an eye with pain and horror ; and although, when 
 r awoke again, I found myself possessed of it, I should, at 
 first, be uncertain, perhaps, whether it had been a dream 
 or not ; and, stupified with fear, in the darkness of the 
 night, I should be anxious to try whether it could see or 
 not. Nay, not only should I be afraid of this, but well 
 aware that revenge always studies to retaliate beyond what 
 it suffers, I should anticipate a more serious injury than I 
 had caused, the loss of an eye perhaps for a tooth, or even 
 the loss of life itself, in short, every thing that is bad : and, 
 under these continual apprehensions, I should be extremely 
 miserable, even though the injured person might never ac- 
 tually retaliate the injury. Should he ever get me into his 
 hands, and repay me merely according to the jus talionis, 
 this would be a fresh addition to my misery ; unless, in- 
 deed, it might be said, that I ought to look upon it as good 
 luck, because I should no longer have to live in perpetual 
 leri'or. Now these are nothing inore than the terrors of 
 conscience, that natural and awful avenger of all the crimes 
 we commit, and, in the mythologies of the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans, represented under the ijnage of the Furies ; and 
 thus, for wise ends, hath nature constituted our minds, to 
 prevent us from injuring one another. Even in the case 
 of murder, it is precisely the same. Whoever, in the state 
 of nature, has perpetrated that crime, will continually be 
 in fear of the son or friend of the deceased, as his Goel; 
 will, while awake, fancy a hundred times that he sees 
 him, and tremble at the thoughts of him, how distant so- 
 ever he may be; and will be as often disturbed when 
 asleep, by seeing him in his dreams, and thinking that he 
 feels him giving him the fatal stab. In a word, he will, 
 jboth sleeping and waking, die a thousand deaths. If he 
 think this unjust, and too severe, let him blame God and 
 nature, for having annexed such variety of wretchedness 
 to the commission of guilt ; and blame himself for being 
 such a fool as to let such stuff come into his imagination. 
 
 If, again, it is committed by a member of civil society, 
 and if (which is the mildest punishment of all those now in 
 use) it costs him his head, he certainly, in suffering even 
 this retaliation, suffers much more than the person whom 
 he murdered ; who had only a few minutes agony, which 
 his rage, in self-defence, would scarcely let him feel; 
 whereas he, in his prison, anticipates his death for weeks, 
 and feels in imagination, which aggravates every evil, the 
 sword of justice every moment on his neck ; and at last, 
 when he is actually brought out to execution, is so much 
 overwhelmed by the previous feelings of death, that there 
 have been instances of malefactors, who, having a pardon 
 given them on the scaffold, were already so near death, 
 that they could not be saved even by blood-letting, but died. 
 las thoroughly as if they had actually been beheaded. But 
 thus to die of agony, is a much more terrible death than to 
 die of mere wounds by the hand of a murderer. This pb- 
 jection, therefore, amounts to nothing at all ; only there is 
 another, which it is understood to imply, viz. that the inju- 
 rious party is under no obligaliovv to suffer more evil than he 
 has (lone ; and this was actually the reasoning of the phi- 
 losopher Favorinus, whom A. Gellius intrt)duces as speak- 
 ing on this subject, in his Nodes Atticre. But what igno- 
 •rance doth such reasoning show of all the laws that have 
 been introduced into all nations, and above all, that any 
 
 man may, from his own feelings, know of the nature of re- 
 venge, if he pay but ever so little attention to what passes 
 within him. The injurious party has no right to demand 
 that the retaliation to which he subjects himself, shall not 
 exceed the injury ; for upon the same principle on which 
 he did an injury to another, without any precedent or prov- 
 ocation, may the sufferer, following his example, requite 
 him, in terms of his own law, with ten times, or ten thou- 
 sand times, as great an injury. The relations between no- 
 thing and something, and between something and infmity, 
 are alike : they both surpass all numeration. As to the 
 morality of such a procedure, and whether God approves 
 of evils being thus infinitely increased, I am not here con- 
 cerned with deciding. The^resent question relates not to 
 an evil infinitely augmented, but only of one requited with 
 some addition. If, however, the injurious party have it 
 requited him even in an infinite degree, he can have no- 
 thing more to sav, than that as he had done, so had he suf- 
 fered, wrong, feul putting this infinity entirely out of 
 the question ; in all the circumstances wherein human be- 
 ings can be placed together, proceeding from the rudest 
 state of nature, and what is a relic of it, the consuetudinary 
 law of duelling, through every stage of society, un^l we 
 arrive at the best-regulated commonwealth, it holds as a 
 fundamental principle, that the man who has caused evil 
 to another, has no reason to complain if he should suffer a 
 greater evil in return. In the state of nature, self-revenge 
 goes certainly much beyond the offence, and would go infi- 
 nite lengths, if not restrained at last by pity, or by con- 
 tempt of its victim, or by the suggestions of magnanimity. 
 In the old German proverb, which is strongly expressive 
 of a national idea, it is said, (Auf eine Maulschelle gehort 
 ein Dolch,) " Every blow has its dagger." The point of 
 honour, in duelling, insists on revenge with the sword ; 
 and the whip, with the pistol ; but where people's ideas are 
 not so artificial, they find a satisfaction in, and plume them- 
 selves on, having given for OTie blow, two or more in return. 
 — In the state of civil society, the design of punishment is to 
 deter from crimes; for which purpose, a bare requital in 
 kind will not be sufficient, because the criminal may hope 
 to escape detection, or to escape from justice, and of course 
 his fear of punishment is by its uncertainty materially 
 lessened ; and hence punishments are here much more 
 severe, and by one example, many thousands are deterred 
 from a repetition of the crime : so, that unless a man chooses 
 to take the consequences, and to serve the public as an 
 example in terrorem, he must abstain from injuring his 
 neighbour. In the case of theft, restitution, with considera- 
 ble additions, would not be accounted too severe, but on 
 the contrary a very mild punishment for the crime ; and 
 vet here more is given back than was taken away. — But 
 1 here stop short, because I mean to offer some general 
 remarks on the relation of punishments to crimes, in the 
 Essay which I have already mentioned my intention of 
 adding as an Appendix to this work. This observation 
 only shall I yet offer in the meantime. The objection ar- 
 gues not only against the retaliation of personal injuries, 
 now the suijject of dispute, but against all punishments 
 whatever, which consist of any evil that is at all a matter 
 of feeling, or which, by fear and anticipation, may become 
 aggravations of such evils ; and many inferences flow from 
 it, which to the objector himself must appear very strange, 
 and would go at any rate to destroy all the security of hu- 
 man life. Assassination, for instance, and child-murder, 
 would on this principle be mere trifles, and by no means 
 worthy of being punished with death. The assassin might 
 say, " The person, whom I murdered, did not know what 
 befell him. Jffe was no sooner stabbed than he fell; and he 
 died, without knowing it, altogether unexpectedly, and in 
 the midst of joy ; and if I must die on his account, let my 
 death be equally easy and unexpected. I only beg that 
 people may not take it into their heads to declare me an out- 
 law, else shall. I at every step be accompanied with the 
 dread of death, and, in imagination, die a hundred thou- 
 sand times instead of once." — The child-murderer, again, 
 might say all this, and thus much more : " The child whom 
 I despatched, knew nothing of the worth and enjoyroent 
 of life, and had been in a state of such obscure sensibilities, 
 that his pain was next to nothing ;" thus insinuating, that 
 whenever he himself should happen to come into the same 
 state, that is, to return to his mother's womb and be born 
 again, by a sort of Pythagorean Metempsychosis, he might 
 
86 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 24. 
 
 then be punished for the crime in question ; but that, till 
 then, justice required his punishment to be delayed, because 
 to make him die at present, would be doing him very great 
 injustice. 
 
 3. The law of retaliation is barbarous. I do not see why 
 it should be considered as more barbarous than hanging 
 or beheading ; and with the very same justice with w^hich 
 this assertion is made, it may in like manner be asserted, 
 that to demand payment of a debt is base and avaricious, 
 or that every punishment which is less severe than that of 
 like for like, is tit only for a state where the people are op- 
 pressed and enslaved. The one assertion is just like the 
 other, and neither of them proves any thing. The latter 
 indeed would, in these times, manifest a stronger tone of 
 sympathy, and perhaps more truth, than in former ages. 
 
 4. The sight of so many mutilated persons who, by the 
 law of retaliation, had had an eye beat out, or a hand chop- 
 
 Sed off, or a nose bitten away, &,c. &c., would be extremely 
 isagreeable; and would notonlybeapunishment tothe cul- 
 prits themselves, but to every person of the least degree of 
 sensibility, and especially to the fair sex at the time of con- 
 ception, when they are afraid of having their imaginations 
 aftected by disgusting objects. This I readily grant; but I 
 believe, at the same time, that where other circumstances, 
 and the character of the people are the same, these are 
 sights that will be much more rarely seen where the lex 
 talionis is established, than where it is not. For everyone 
 will then be the more careful to avoid wounding or maim- 
 ing his neighbour, in a quarrel, or in a passion ; and cer- 
 tainly nobody will attempt any such thing after deliberate 
 premeditation, when he knows that he must himself lose 
 the same member of his body, of which he deprives his 
 neighbour. Besides, it is certain that the law of retaliation 
 will be but seldom enforced, and be chiefly confined to 
 threatenings, and measures m terrorem. The man who has 
 beat out the eye or tooth of another, or cut oif his arm, will be 
 at all possible pains to obtain his forgiveness, and a remis- 
 sion of the legal punishment. He will humble himself be- 
 fore him, and beg his pardon; not as we see sometimes 
 done, with an air of proud contempt ; but even the man of 
 highest rank will heartily do so before the meanest of his 
 dependants ; will ever after honour him as his forgiver, 
 and at the same time gladly make him any pecuniar)- re- 
 compense in his power. In such a case, the sufferer of 
 the injury will be compassionate and generous, or, if not 
 sufficiently either the one or the other, at any rate he will 
 have as much Ipve of money as, when the violence of 
 his revenge has been a little mitigated by the humiliation 
 and entreaties of his adversary, to^ accept the proffered 
 peace-offering, and let self-interest settle the account be- 
 tween them. Men are naturally vindictive ; but whenever 
 we meet with humble apologies, and the injurious person 
 throws himself on our mercy, we are in general sufficiently 
 inclined to forget our wrongs ; so much so, indeed, that to 
 some people it is nothing less than intolerable punishment 
 to hear such apologies, and they forget the injuries they 
 have suffered, merely when they know that their author 
 regrets them. Even those whose sentiments are not so re- 
 fined, will still, when their fury is abated, yield to the 
 power of gold. It was thus that at Rome the lex talionis 
 came gradually into perfect desuetude, and gave place to a 
 pecuniary compefisation, depending on the discretion of 
 the praetor ; and that, though there had been nothing else, 
 was one bad consequence of the change; for to a free man, 
 the discretion of a judge is a term that sounds very sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 5. Sound morality cannot approve of that revenge, which 
 nothing short of a repetition of the same injury will satisfy, 
 and which insists on beating out the eye of another, if he 
 has beaten out ours. This too I readily admit ; but then 
 morality and civil law are not one and the same thing; 
 and the latter, as long as it has to do with people who are 
 not all paragons of perfect virtue, must tolerate many 
 things on account of hardness of .heart, to avoid greater 
 evils. Thus, for instance, as long as the greatest, or the 
 greater part of the people are still prone to revenge, the 
 law must give injured persons the means of obtaining sat- 
 isfaction for their wrongs, else will the consequence be, 
 that they will take revenge ai their own hands; and thus, 
 instead of authoritative punishments, none other will be 
 known than that of personal revenge, which is always 
 dangerous, by being carried beyond due bounds, and often 
 
 affects the innocent, and provokes to fresh acts of ven- 
 geance. To this, however, we must add what has been 
 already observed, that although those, who are in the least 
 injured, will inexorably abide by the law of retaliation, 
 they will still be satisfied with professions of repentance, 
 with apologies, and with pecuniary compensations. The 
 law does not peremptorily command an injured person tc 
 avail himself of the right of retaliation, without any alter- 
 native. It only fixes the punishment to which the author 
 of an injury must submit, if he cannot compound matters 
 with the injured party. It thus deters from outrages, be- 
 cause every one must be afraid, lest the sufterer insist upon 
 his right, and in the case of personal mutilation, compei 
 the person who has caused it, to agree to such terms oJ 
 compensation, as he would otherwise have refused to offer. 
 6. Christ, in his sermon on the mount, condemns that 
 revenge which requires eye for eye, and tooth for tooth ; 
 (Matt. V.38, 39;) and consequently the law of retaliation ir 
 unchristian. This is, in fact, the same objection with the 
 preceding, and therefore already answered. Christ does not 
 ' find fault with the Mosaic statute of eye for eye, and tooth 
 for tooth ; — fuT he has throughout his whole sermon nothing 
 to do with Moses, and neither expounds nor controvert? 
 his doctrines — he only condemns the bad morality of the 
 Pharisees, which they thought fit to propound in his words. 
 In the present instance, these expositors, confounded, as 
 on many other occasions, civil law and morality together; 
 and when the moral question was. How far may I be al- 
 lowed to carry my resentment, and gratify my thirst for 
 revenge'? they answered in the words which Moses ad- 
 dressed, not tothe injured,\iX\i to the injuring party, or to 
 the judge, and said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. That Christ 
 has no intention of controverting, or censuring the lawsol 
 Moses, but merely the expositions of the Pharisees, is 
 manifest, from comparing his own doctrine with that ol 
 Moses. Moses addresses the magistrate, or the delinquent 
 who has mutilated his neighbour, and says. Thou, delin^ 
 quent, art bound to give eye for eye, tooth for tooth ; and 
 thou, judge, to pro7iou7ice sentence to that effect. Christ, on 
 the other hand, manifestly addresses the person injured, 
 and forbids him to be vindictive ; Ye hate heard, that it 
 is said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth ; but I command you not 
 to requite evil ; but whoever strikes you on the right cheeky . 
 offer to him also the left. How this last clause is to be un- . 
 derstood ; whether it prohibits suing for revenge, and , 
 whether one should actually hold up the left cheek to the , 
 person who has slapped the right, it is not my business here 
 to decide, because I am not explaining the sermon on the, 
 mount. But as long as a people is not composed of citi- 
 zens, whose temper and conduct are altogether in conform- 
 ity to the doctrine of the sermon on the mount, civil laws, 
 which do not, as Christ himself says, permit many things, 
 on account of the hardness of the people's hearts, and which 
 presuppose such an exalted pitch of perfect virtue, will be 
 improper and unwise. I am far from meaning, by Avhat Ij 
 have now said in defence of the lex talionis, to assert 
 that it is the only proper punishment in the case of personal ^ 
 injuries, or that it ought to be introduced into every state, 
 in which it is not yet in use ; but only that where it already, 
 operates, and especially in the Mosaic policy, it does not 
 merit censure. Here also it ought to be considered, that 
 the same style of law is not equally suitable to every state. 
 To southern countries the law of retaliation appears to be 
 better adapted, and, in some respects, more necessary, than 
 to northern; because in southern countries, such as Italy, 
 Portugal, Palestine, and Arabia, the desire of revenge is 
 generally more violent, and of longer duration, than with 
 us in the 50th degree of latitude, who sooner forgive and 
 forget injuries, and are really magnanimous in our revenge. 
 Where it is once established, as where Moses found it 
 already in force, it is dangerous to attempt its abrogation, 
 because the people accustomed to it might not be willing 
 to give it up, and would, of course, enforce it themselves. 
 But to introduce it among us would appear to be needless ; 
 because we hear of or see so few in.stances of personal in- 
 juries ; for though we have people among us who want an 
 eye, there are none who owe the loss of it to deliberate 
 rnalice, nor is it by any means a trait of our national char- 
 acter, that we delight in inflicting permanent injuries on 
 one another. A German is commonly too magnanimous 
 to think of any such thing. Blows he will give, and show 
 his superiority over his enemy ; but even the peasant in the ' 
 
Chap. 25. 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 87 
 
 utmost violence of rage, and though he hardly knows of any 
 particular punishment for such an offence, will not, at any 
 rate, willingly beat out his neighbour's eye, or think of 
 giving him any such lasting mark of his revenge, as the 
 inhabitant of a southern country, or that rare character 
 among us, to whom, in lower Saxony, the epithet glupisch 
 is applied, would exult in having left behind him. Ex- 
 cept in cases of necessity, it is always a hazardous and 
 doubtful experiment to alter laws, or to increase the se- 
 verity of punishments ; and with regard to uncommon 
 crimes, a legislator will always decline taking' any notice 
 of them, or will, at any rate, make no new laws in relation 
 to them, lest he should thus only make them known ; he 
 will think it better to let them quietly rest under the an- 
 cient national abhorrence, with which they are regarded. 
 Thus as we are not accustomed to the law of retaliation, it 
 would appear to us cruel, and no injured person would, 
 for fear of the universal outcry it would raise against 
 him, attempt commencing an action to enforce it : so that, 
 as frequently happens in such cases, the increased severity 
 of the punishment would prove nothing else than a sort of 
 impunity to the person who had committed the crime. The 
 more nearly that a people approaches to a state of nature, 
 the more suitable to their circumstances is the law of re- 
 taliation : in like manner, it agrees better with a democra- 
 cy, than with any of the other forms of government : al- 
 though, no doubt, to these it can accommodate itself, and 
 did subsist in Rome under a strong mixture of aristocracy. 
 The following distinction, likewise, which has not, per- 
 hajps, been theoretically considered, is a very striking one. 
 "Wiiere every citizen is a soldier, and defends his country 
 with the strength of his arm, the law in question may an- 
 swer well enough; but where there is one particular class 
 of men, who follow the profession of arms, whether as 
 hired soldiers, according to our present system, or, accord- 
 ing to the feudal plan in the middle ages, as gentlemen, 
 with land given them in fee instead of pay, there, at least, 
 if crimes were very frequent, it could not be conveniently 
 enforced without many exceptions. For if the soldier had 
 an eye dug out, or his right arm, hand, or thumb, mutilated, 
 he would not only be punished himself, but his country 
 would also suffer, in his being rendered unfit for its defence. 
 Here, therefore, there would require to be one law for the 
 protectors, and another for the protected ; at least, unless 
 soldiers could be had in more than sufficient numbers. 
 Many dlher dangers of the same kind would attend an 
 alteration of the law; which is, in every case, a very 
 hazardous experiment. At the same time, I readily own, 
 that in cases of personal injury, I have no great partiality 
 for the pleasure of the judge, but would infinitely prefer the 
 decision of laws, that should place the high and. the low on 
 an equal footing, and estimate the tooth of a peasant at the 
 same rate with that of a lord, particularly where the former 
 must gnaw crusts, and the latter can have crumb if he 
 chooses. — MicHAELis, 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Ver. 23. The land shall not be sold for ever ; for 
 the land is mine ; for ye are strangers and so- 
 journers with me. 24. And in all the land of 
 your possession, ye shall grant a redemption for 
 the land. 25. If thy brother be waxen poor, 
 and hath sold away some of his possession, and if 
 any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he 
 redeem that which his brother sold. 26. And 
 if the man have none to redeem it, and himself 
 '. be able to redeem it ; 27. Then let him count 
 the years of the sale thereof, and restore the 
 overplus unto the man to whom he sold it ; that 
 he may return unto his possession. 28. But 
 if he be not able to restore it to him, then that 
 which is sold shall remain in the hand of him 
 that hath bought it until the year of jubilee: 
 and in the jubilee it shall go out, and he shall 
 return unto his possession. 
 
 Moses declared God, who honoured the Israelites by call- 
 ing himself their king, the sole lord-proprietary of all the 
 
 land of promjse, in which he was about to settle them by 
 his most special providence; while the people were to be 
 merely his tenants, and without any right to alienate their 
 possessions in perpetuity, Lev. xxv. 23. It was, indeed, 
 allowable for a proprietor to sell his land for a certain pe- 
 riod ; but every fiftieth year, which Moses denominated 
 the year of jubilee, it returned without any redemption 
 to its ancient owner, or his heirs. Hence Moses very just- 
 ly observes, that this was a sale, not of the land, but only ol 
 its crops, between the period of sale and the year of jubi- 
 lee. It was reasonable that the value of a field should be 
 estimated higher or lower, according as it came to sale at 
 a longer or shorter period preceding that year ; and Moses 
 therefore admonished the Israelites, (Lev. xxv. 14 — 16,) 
 against taking unjust advantage of the ignorant and simple 
 in this particular on such occasions. This purchase of 
 crops, however, must have been a very profitable specula- 
 tion, because no man would lay out his money for such a 
 length of time, and encounter all risks, (that of war not 
 excepted,) as he was obliged to do, unless he purchased at 
 a very cheap rate. It was not in his power to rid himselt 
 of those risks, by abandoning the bargain, as a lessee may 
 his lease, and re-demanding the money expended, because 
 at the year of jubilee all debts became instantly extin- 
 guished. He would, therefore, always take care to pur- 
 chase on such terms, as, allowing for the very worst that 
 could happen, might secure him from loss, and even yield 
 him some profit — at least the interest of his money, prohib- 
 ited as all usury was by the law. Hence, and as a con- 
 sequence of the principle, that the lands were to feed those 
 to whose families they belonged, there was established a law 
 of redenrption, or right of re-purchase, which put it in the 
 power of a seller, if before the return of tjie year orf jubilee 
 nis circumstances permitted him, to btfir back thfi yet re- 
 maining crops, after deducting the amotmt of those already 
 reaped by the purchaser, at the same ptice for which they 
 were originally sold : and of this right, even the nearest 
 relation of the seller, or, as the Hebrews termed him, his 
 Goel, might likewise avail himself, if he had the means. 
 Lev. xxv. 24—28. 
 
 The advantages of this law, if sacredly observed, would 
 have been great. It served, in \\ve first place, to perpetuate 
 that equality among the citizens, which Moses at first es- 
 tablished, and which was suitable to the spirit of the democ- 
 racy, by putting it out of the power of any flourishing citi- 
 zen to become, by the acquisition of exorbitant wealth, 
 and the accumulation of extensive landed property, too 
 formidable to the state, or in other words, a little prince, 
 whose influence could carry every thing before it,— In the 
 second place, it rendered it impossible that any Israelite 
 could be born to absolute poverty, for every one had his 
 hereditary land ; and if that was sold, or he himself from 
 poverty compelled to become a servant, at the coming of 
 the year of jubilee he recovered his property. And hence, 
 perhaps, Moses might have been able with some justice to 
 say, what we read in most of the versions of Deut. xv. 4, 
 There will not he a poor man among you. I doubt, how- 
 ever, whether that be the true meaning of the original 
 words. For in the 11th verse of this same chapter, he as- 
 sures them that they should never he vnthout poor ; to pre- 
 vent which, indeed, is impossible for any legislator, be- 
 cause, in spite of every precaution that laws can take, some 
 people win become poor, either by misfortunes or mis- 
 conduct. But here, if a man happened to be reduced to 
 poverty, before the expiry of fifty years, either he himself, 
 or his descendants, had their circumstances repaired by the 
 legal recovery of their landed property, which though in- 
 deed small, then became perfectly free and unincumbered, 
 — In the third place, it served to prevent the strength of the 
 country from being impaired, by cutting off one, and per- 
 haps the greatest cause of emigration, viz. poverty. No 
 Israelite needed to leave his home on that ground. Here, 
 to be sure, the extraordinary case of any public calamity 
 that might make the lands lose their value, must be except- 
 ed. But it was enough that in ordinary cases the law took 
 away the chief inducement to emigration, by such a judi- 
 cious provision as made it the interest of the people to re- 
 main contented at home. — In the fourth place, as every 
 man had his hereditary land, this law, by its manifest ten- 
 dency to encourage marriage, rather served to promote the 
 population of the country, than to impair it. — In the fifth. 
 place, the land being divided into numerous small portions, 
 
S8 
 
 LEVITICUS. 
 
 Chap. 26. 
 
 each cultivated by the father of a family, acquainted with 
 it from his infancy, and naturally attached to it as the in- 
 alienable property of his family, could not fail in conse- 
 quence of this law, to be better managed, and more produc- 
 tive, than large estates in the hands of tenants and day- 
 labourers could ever have been. — And, lastly, this institu- 
 tion served to attach every Israelite to his country in the 
 strongest manner, by suggesting to him that, if he had to 
 fight in its defence, he would at the same time be defending 
 his own property, which it was, moreover, out of his power 
 to convert into money, wherewith he might betake himself 
 to a more peaceful habitation elsewhere. — Michaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI, 
 Ver. 33. And I will scatter you among the heathen, 
 and will draw out a sword after you ; and your 
 land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. 
 
 By the concurring testimony of all travellers, Judea may 
 now be called a field of ruins. Columns, the memorials of 
 ancient magnificence, now covered with rubbish, and buried 
 Under ruins, may be found in all Syria. From Mount 
 Tabor is beheld an immensity of plains, interspersed with 
 hamlets, fortresses, and heaps of ruins. The buildings on 
 that mountain were destroyed and laid waste by the Sultan 
 of Egypt in 1290, and the accumulated vestiges of succes- 
 sive forts and ruins are now mingled in one common and 
 ext(>nsive desolation. Of the celebrated cities Capernaum, 
 Bethsaida, Gadara, Tarichea, and Chorazin, nothing re- 
 mains but shapeless ruins. Some vestiges of Emmaus may 
 still be seen. Cana is a very paltry village. The ruins of 
 Tekoa present only the foundations of some considerable 
 buildings. The city of Nain is now a hamlet. The ruins 
 f.f the ancient Sapphura announce the previous existence 
 of a large city, and its name is still preserved in the appel- 
 lation of a miserable village called Sephoury. Loudd, the 
 ancifnt Lydda and Diospolis, appears like a place lately 
 ravaged by fire and sword, and is one continued heap of 
 rubbish and ruins. Ramla, the ancient Arimathea, is in 
 almost as ruinous a state. Nothing but rubbish is to be 
 found within its boundaries. In the adjacent country there 
 are found at every step dry wells, cisterns fallen in, and 
 rast vaulted reservoirs, which prove that in ancient times 
 mis town must have been upwards of a league and a half 
 in circumference. Caesarea can no longer excite the envy 
 of a conqueror, and has long been abandoned to silent deso- 
 lation. The city of Tiberias is now almost abandoned, 
 and its subsistence precarious; of the towns that bordered 
 on Its lake there are no traces left. Zabulon, once the rival 
 of Tyre and Sidon, is a heap of ruins. A few shapeless 
 stones, unworthy the attention of the traveller, mark the 
 site of the Saffre. The ruins of Jericho, covering no less 
 than a square mile, are surrounded with complete desola- 
 tion ; and there is not a tree of any description, either of 
 palm or balsam, and scarcely any verdure or bushes to be 
 seen about the site of this abandoned city. Bethel is not to 
 be found. The ruins of Sarepta, and of several large cities 
 in its vicinity, are now "mere rubbish, and are only dis- 
 tinguishable as the sites of towns by heaps of dilapidated 
 stones and fragments of columns." But at Djerash, (sup- 
 posed to be the ruins of Gerasa,) are the magnificent re- 
 mains of a splendid city. The form of streets, once lined 
 with a double row of columns, and covered with pavement 
 Still nearly entire, in which are the marks of the chariot- 
 wheels, and on each side of which is an elevated pathway — 
 two theatres and two grand temples, built of marble, and 
 others of inferior note — ^baths — bridges — a cemetery with 
 many sarcophagi, which surrounded the city — a triumphal 
 arch— a large cistern— a picturesque tomb fronted with 
 columns, and an aqueduct overgrown with wood — and up- 
 wards of two hundred and thirty columns still standing 
 amid deserted ruins, without a city to adorn— all combine 
 in presenting to the view of the traveller, in the estimation 
 of those who were successively eyewitnesses of them both, 
 " a much finer mass of ruins" tha!n even that of the boasted 
 Palmyra. But how marvellously are the predictions of 
 their desolation verified, when in general nothing but ruin- 
 ed ruins form the most distinguished remnants of the cities 
 of Israel ; and when the multitude of its towns are aliuost 
 all left, with many a vestige to testify of their number, but 
 without a marl' to tell their name. — Keith. I 
 
 Ver. 34. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, 
 as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your 
 enemies' land ; even then shall the land rest, 
 and enjoy her sabbaths. 
 
 A single reference to the Mosaic law respecting the Sa]> 
 batical year renders the full purport of this prediction pen 
 fectly intelligible and obvious. " But in the seventh vear 
 shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land ; thou shalt neither 
 sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard." And the land of 
 Judea hath even thus enjoyed its Sabbaths so long as it 
 hath lain desolate. In that country, where every spot was 
 cultivated like a garden by its patrimonial possessor, where 
 every little hill rejoiced in its abundance, where every steep 
 acclivity was terraced by the labour of man, and where the 
 very rocks were covered thick with mould, and rendered 
 fertile ; even in that selfsame land, with a climate the same, 
 and with a soil unchanged, save only bv neglect, a dire 
 contrast is now, and has for a lengthened, period of time 
 been displayed, by fields untilled and unsown, and by waste 
 and desolated plains. Never since the expatriated descend- 
 ants of Abraham were driven from its borders, has the land 
 of Canaan been so " plenteous in goods," or so abundant in 
 population, as once it was ; never, as it did for ages unto 
 them, has it vindicated to any other people a right to its 
 possession, or its own title of the land of promise — it has 
 rested from century to century ; and while that marked, 
 and stricken, and scattered race, who possess the recorded 
 promise of the God of Israel, as their charter to its final 
 and everlasting possession, still "ic in the land of their ene- 
 mies, so long their land lieth desolate." There may thus al- 
 most be said to be the semblance of a sympathetic feeling 
 between this bereaved country and banished people, as il 
 the land of Israel felt the miseries of its absent children^ 
 awaited their return, and responded to the undying love 
 they bear it by the refusal to yield to other possessors- the 
 rich harvest of those fruits, with which, in the days of their 
 allegiance to the Most High, it abundantly blessed them, 
 And striking and peculiar, without the shadow of even a 
 semblance upon earth, as is this accordance between the 
 fate of Judea and of the Jews, it assimilates as closely, and; 
 may we not add, as miraculously, to those predictions re- 
 specting both, which Moses uttered and recorded ere the: 
 tribes of Israel had ever set a foot in Canaan. The land 
 shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her rest while she lieth 
 desolMe without them. 
 
 To the desolate state of Judea every traveller bears wit- 
 ness. The prophetic malediction was addressed to the 
 mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys; 
 and the beauty of them all has been blighted. Where the 
 inhabitants once dwelt in peace, each under his own vine 
 and under his own fig-tree, the tyranny of the Turks, and 
 the perpetual incursions of the Arabs, the last of a long list 
 of oppressors, have spread one wide field of almost un- 
 mingled desolation. The plain of Esdraelon, naturally 
 most fertile, its soil consisting of "fine rich black mould," 
 level like a lake, except where Mount Ephraim rises in its 
 centre, bounded by Mount Hermon, Carmel, and Mount 
 Tabor, and so extensive as to cover about three hundred 
 square miles, is a solitude " almost entirely deserted ; the 
 country is a complete desert." Even the vale of Sharon is 
 a waste. In the valley of Canaan, formerly a beautiful, 
 delicious, and fertile valley, there is not a mark or vestige 
 of cultivation. The country is continually overrun with 
 rebel tribes ; the Arabs pasture their cattle upon the spon- 
 taneous produce of the rich plains with which it abounds. 
 Every ancient landmark is removed. Law there is none. 
 Lives and property are alike unprotected. The valleys 
 are untilled, the mountains have lost their verdure, the 
 rivers flow through a desert and cheerless land. All the* 
 beauty of Tabor that man could disfigure is defaced ; im- 
 mense ruins on the top of it are now the only remains of a 
 once magnificent city; and Carmel is the habitation of wild 
 beasts. " The art of cultivation," says'Volney, " is in the 
 most deplorable state, and the countryman must sow with 
 the musket in his hand ; and no more is sown than is neces- 
 sary for subsistence." " Everyday I found fields abandoned 
 by the plough." In describing his journey through Galilee, 
 Dr. Clarke remarks, that the earth was covered with sweh 
 a variety of thistles, that a complete collection of them- 
 would be a valuable acquisition to botany. Six new spCi-* 
 
Chap. 2—10. 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 8* 
 
 cies of that plant, so significant of wildness, were discovered 
 by himself in a scanty selection. *' From Kane-Leban tcTi 
 Beer, amid the ruins of cities, the country, as far as the eye 
 of the traveller can reach, presents nothing to his view but 
 naked rocks, mountains, and precipices, at the sight of 
 which pilgrims are astonished, balked in their expectations, 
 and almost startled in their faith." " From the centre of the 
 neighbouring elevations (around Jerusalem) is seen a wild, 
 rugged, and mountainous desert ; no herds depasturing on 
 the summit, no forests clothing the acclivities, no waters 
 flowing through the valleys ; but one rude scene of savage 
 melancholy waste, in the midst of which the ancient glory 
 of Judea bows her head in widowed desolation." It is 
 needless to multiply quotations to prove the desolation of a 
 country which the Turks have possessed, and which the 
 Arabs have plundered for ages. Enough has been said to 
 prove that the larid mourns and is laid waste, and has be- 
 come as a desolate wilderness. — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Ver. 28. Notwithstanding, no devoted thing that 
 
 a man shall devote unto the Lord, of all that 
 he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field, 
 of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed : 
 every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. 
 
 Whatever has been devoted to the gods can never be 
 sold, redeemed, or applied to any other purpose. In every 
 village there are chroniclers of strange events, of the visita- 
 tions of the gods on men who did not act fairly and tru'.y 
 with their devoted things. There is a story generally re- 
 ceived of " a deranged man, who in a lucid interval made 
 a vow that he would give his gold beads to the temple ot 
 Siva, and he became quite well. After this he refused to 
 perform his voW, and he died." " Another person, who was 
 very ill of a fever, devoted a goat to the gods, and imme- 
 diately became well ; but some time after he refused the 
 gift, and his fever returned." When a child becomes sick, 
 the parents forthwith inquire, " Have we given all the 
 things we devoted to the gods'?" The medical man also 
 (when the disease baffles his skill) inquires, " Have you 
 given all the things you devoted to the gods T'— Roberts. 
 
 NUMBERS 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 31. All they that were numbered in the 
 
 camp of Dan, were a hundred thousand and 
 
 fifty and seven thousand and six hundred : they 
 
 > shall go hindmost with their standards. 34. And 
 
 the children of Israel did according to all that 
 
 . the Lord commanded Moses : so they pitched 
 
 ■ -'J by their standards, and so they set forward, 
 
 every one after their families; according to the 
 
 house of their fathers. 
 
 Mr. Harmer thinks the standards of the tribes were not 
 fiags, but little iron machines carried on the top of a pole, 
 in which fires were lighted to direct their march by night, 
 and so contrived, as sufficiently to distinguish them from 
 pne another. This is the kind of standard by which the 
 Turkish caravans direct their march through the desert to 
 JMecca, and seems to be very commonly used by travellers 
 in the East. Dr. Pococke tells us, that the caravan with 
 which he visited the river Jordan, set-out from thence in 
 the evening soon after it was dark for Jerusalem, being 
 lighted by chips of deal full of turpentine, burning in a 
 round iron frame, fixed to the end of a pole, and arrived 
 at the city a little before daybreak. But he states also, 
 * t^at a short time before this, the pilgrims were called be- 
 fore the governor of the caravan, by means of a white stand- 
 ard that was displayed on an eminence near the camp, in 
 order to enable him to ascertain his fees. In the Mecca 
 caravans, they use nothing by day, but the same moveable 
 >eacons in which they burn "those fires, which distinguish 
 the different tribes in the night. From these circumstances, 
 fiarmer concludes, that, " since travelling in the night must 
 as general be most desirable to a great multitude in that des- 
 jert, and since we may believe that a compassionate God for 
 the most part directed Israel to mov^e in the night, the stand- 
 Urds of the twelve tribes were moveable beacons, like those 
 .of the Mecca pilgrims, rather than flags or any thing of 
 that kind." At night the camp was illuminated by large 
 yood fires ; and a bituminous substance secured in small 
 Gages or beacons, formed of iron hoops, stuck upon poles, 
 threw a brilliant light upon the surrounding objects. — 
 Munroe's Summer Ramble in Syria. 
 12 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 2. Every one that hath an issue, and wh^t 
 soever is defiled by the dead. 
 
 All who attend a funeral procession, or ceremony, be- 
 come unclean, and before they return to their houses must 
 wash their persons and their clothes. Neither those in the 
 sacred office, nor of any other caste, can, under these cir- 
 cumstances, attend to any religious ceremonies. They can* 
 not marry, nor be present at any festivity, nor touch a sa- 
 cred book. A person on hearing of the death of a son, or 
 other relative, immediately becomes unclean. The Brah- 
 mins are unclean twelve days ; those of the royal family, 
 sixteen days ; the merchants, twenty-two ; and all other 
 castes, thirty-two days. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 Ver. 26. The Lord Jift up his countenance upon 
 thee, and give thee peace. 
 
 " As I came along the road, I met Raman, and he lifted 
 up his fa(U:, upon me; but I knew not the end;" which 
 rneans, he looked pleasantly. Does a man complain of 
 another who has ceased to look kindly upon him, he says, 
 " Ah ! my friend, you no longer lift up your countenance 
 upon me." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 7. But when the congregation is to be 
 gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall 
 not sound an alarrn. 
 
 The form of the republic established by Moses was demo- 
 cratical. Its head admitted of change as to the name and 
 nature of his office ; and we find that, at certain times, it 
 could subsist without a general head. If, therefore, we 
 would fully understand its constitution, we must begin, not 
 from above, but with the lowest description of persons that 
 had a share in the government. From various passages 
 of the Pentateuch, we find that Moses, at making known- 
 any laws, had to convene the whole congregation of Is- 
 rael, (Snp or mj?;) and, in like manner, in the book of 
 Joshua, we see, that when Diets were held, the whole con* 
 
90 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 Chap. 10. 
 
 gregation were assembled. If on such occasions every in- 
 dividual had had to give his vote, every thing would cer- 
 tainly have been democratic in the highest degree ; but it 
 is scarcely conceivable how, without very particular regu- 
 lations made for the purpose, (which, however, we nowhere 
 find,) order could have been preserved in an assembly of 
 600,000 men, their ,votes accurately numbered, and acts of 
 violence prevented. If, however, we consider that, while 
 Moses is said to have spoken to the whole congregation^ he 
 could not possibly be heard by 600,000 people, (for what 
 human voice could be sufficiently strong to be so %) all our 
 fears and difhculiies will vanish ; for this circumstance 
 alone must convince any one that Moses-coukl only have 
 addressed himself to a certain number of persons deputed 
 to represent the rest of the Israelites. Accordingly, m 
 Numij. -. IG. we find mention made of such persons. In 
 contradistinction to the common Israelites, they are there 
 denominated Kerm Hiieda, (myn isi^p) that is, " those wont 
 to be called to the convention." In the xvi. chapter of the 
 same book, ver. 2, they are styled, Nes'ie Eda Kerue Aloed, 
 (iy\a>KT>pmy i«>a';) that is, " chiefs of the community, that 
 are called to the convention." I notice this passage par- 
 ticularly, because it appears from it, that 250 persons of 
 this description, who rose up against Moses, became to him 
 objects of extreme terror ; which they could not have been, 
 ifl their voices had not been, at the same time, the voices of 
 their families and tribes. Still more explicit, and to the 
 point, is the passage, Deut. xxix. 9, where Moses, in a 
 speech to the whole people, says, " Ye stand this day all of 
 you before the Lord your God, your heads, your tribes, 
 (thatis, chiefs of tribes,) your elders, your scribes, all Israel, 
 infants, wives, strangers that are in your camp, from the 
 hewer of wood to the drawer of water." Now as Moses could 
 not possibly speak loud enough to be heard by two millions 
 and a half of people, (for to so many did the Israelites 
 amount, women and children included,) it must be manifest 
 that the first-named persons represented the people, to whom 
 they again repeated the word of Moses. Winether these 
 representatives were on every occasion obliged to collect 
 and lee are the sense of their constituents, or whether, like 
 the members of the English House of Commons, they acted 
 in the plenitude of their oWn power for the general good, 
 without taking instructions from their constituents, I find 
 nowhere expressly determined ; but methinks, from a pe- 
 rusal of the Bible, I can scarcely doubt that the latter was 
 the case. 
 
 "Who these representatives were, may in some measure 
 be understood from Josh, xxiii. 2., and xxiv. 1. They 
 would seem to have been of two sorts. To some, their 
 office as judges gave a right to appear in the assembly ; 
 and these were not necessarily of the same family in which 
 they exercised that office. Others, again, had a seat and a 
 voice in the Diet, as the heads of families. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 31. And he said. Leave us not, I pray thee ; 
 forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to 
 encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be 
 to us instead of eyes. 
 
 An aged father says to his son, who wishes to go to some 
 other village, "My son, leave me not in my old age; you 
 are now my eyes." " You are on the look-out for me, your 
 eyes are sharp." It is said of a good servant, " he is eyes to 
 his master." — Robert.s. 
 
 When Moses begged of Hobab not to leave Israel, be- 
 cause they were to encamp in the wilderness, and he might 
 be to them instead of eyes. Numb. x. 31, he doubtless meant 
 that he might be a guide to them in the difficult journeys 
 they had to take in the wilderness: for so Job, when he 
 wou.d express his readiness to bring forward on their 
 journey those that were enfeebled with sickness, or hurt by 
 accidents, and to guide them in their way that were blind 
 or ignorant of it, says, " I was eyes to the blind, and feet 
 was I to the lame," Job xxix. 1.5. Evervbody, accord- 
 ingly, at all acquainted with the nature of such deserts as 
 Israel had to pass through, must be sensible of the great 
 importance of having some of the na'ives of that cormtry 
 for guides: they know where water is to be found, and can 
 lead to places proper, on that account, for encampments. 
 Without their help, travelling would be much more diffi- 
 cult in these deserts, and indeed often fatal. The import- 
 ance of having these Arab guides appears, from such a 
 
 number of passages in books of travels, that every ono 
 whose reading has at all turned this way, must be apprized 
 of them ; for which reason I shall cite none in particular. 
 The application then of Moses to Hobab the Midianite, 
 that is, to a principal Arab of the tribe of Midian, would 
 have appeared perfectly just, had it not been for this 
 thought, that the cloud of the Divine Presence went before 
 Israel, and directed their marches ; of what consequence 
 then could Hobab's journeying with them hel A man 
 would take more upon himself than he ought to do, that 
 should affi;-m the attendance of such a one as Hobab was 
 of no use to Israel, in their removing from station to 
 station : it is very possible, the guidance of the cloud might 
 not be so minute as absolutely to render his offices of no 
 value. But I will mention another thing, that will put the 
 propriety of this request of Moses quite out of dispute. 
 The sacred history expressly mentions several journeys 
 undertaken by parties of the Israelites, while the main 
 body laid still : so in Numb. xiii. we read of a party that 
 was sent out to reconnoitre the land of Canaan ; in chap. 
 XX. of the messengers sent from Kadesh unto the king of 
 Edom ; in chap. xxxi. of an expedition against the idola- 
 trous Midianites; of some little expeditions, in the close of 
 chap. XXX.; and more journeys of the like kind, were with- 
 out doubt undertaken, which are not particularly recounted. 
 Now Moses, foreseeing something of this, might well beg 
 the company o^ Hobab, not as a single Arab, but as a 
 prince of one of their clans, that he might be able to apply 
 to him from time to time, for some of his people, to be con- 
 ductors to those he should have occasion to send out to 
 different places, while the body of the people, and the cloud 
 of the Lord, continued unmoved. 
 
 Nor was their assistance only wanted in respect to water, 
 when any party of them was sent out upon some expedi- 
 tion ; but the whole congregation must have had frequent 
 need of them, for directions where to find fuel. Manna 
 continually, and sometimes water, were given them mirac- 
 ulously ; their clothes also were exempted from decay 
 while in the wilderness; but fuel was wanted to warm 
 them some part of the year, at all times to bake and seethe 
 the manna, according to Exod. xvi. 23, and was never ob- 
 tained but in a natural way, that we know of: for this then 
 they wanted assistance of such Arabs as were perfectly 
 acquainted with that desert. So Thevenot, describing his 
 travelling in this very desert, says, on the night of the 25th 
 of January they rested in a place where was some broom, 
 for that their guides never brought them to rest anywhere, 
 willingly we are to suppose, but in places where they could 
 find some fuel, not only to warm them, but to prepare their 
 coffee and mafrouca. He complains also of their resting- 
 place on the night of the 28th of January, on account of 
 their not being able to find any wood there, not so much as 
 to boil coffee. A like complaint he makes of the night 
 between the eighth and ninth of February, Avhen not being 
 able to get into Suez, he was obliged to lie without the 
 gates till it was day, suffering a great deal of cold, because 
 they had no wood to make a fire. Moses hoped Hobab 
 would be instead of eyes to the Israelites, both with respect 
 to the guiding their parties to wells and springs in the 
 desert, and the giving the people in general notice where 
 they might find fuel : for though they frequently make use 
 in this desert of camels' dung for fuel, this could not, we 
 imagine, wholly supply their wants ; and in fact, we find 
 the Israelites sought about for other firing! — Harmer. 
 
 Ignorance is a kind of blindness often no less fatal than , 
 privation of sight; and partial, or deficient information, is 
 little better than ignorance: so we find Moses saying to 
 Hobab, "Leave' us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou 
 knowest how we ought to encamp in the wilderness, and 
 thou mayest be to us instead of eyes," Niimb. x. 31. The 
 necessity and propriety of such a guide, Avill appear from 
 considerations easily gathered from the following '.xtract; 
 and the description of a person of this character will be 
 interesting, though it cannot be equally interestipg to iw 
 who travel on hedge-bounded turnpike roads, as to an indi- 
 vidual about to take his passage across the great desert. 
 If it be sa-d, in the case of Moses, the angel who conducted 
 the camp might have appointed its stations without the as- 
 sistance of Hobab; we answer, it might have been so; but. 
 as it is now the nsral course of Providence to act by means,] 
 even to accomplish the most certain events; and as nO mail 
 who has neglected any mean, has now the smallest right '"^ 
 
Chap. U. 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 91 
 
 expect an interposition of Providence on his tchalf, so we 
 strongly query, whether it would not have been a failing, 
 of presumption, in Moses, had he omitted this application 
 tu Hobab; or indeed, any other, suggested by his good 
 sense and understanding. " 
 
 " A^ hybeer is a guide, from the Arabic word hubbar, to 
 inform, "instruct, or direct, because they are used to do this 
 oilice to the caravan travelling through the desert, in all its 
 directions, whether to Egypt and back again, the coast of 
 the Red Sea, or the countries of Sudan, and the western 
 extremities of Africi. They are we??- of great considera- 
 !ion, knowing perfectly the situation and properties of all 
 kinds of water, to be met on the route, the distances of 
 wells, whether occupied by enemies or not, and if so, the 
 way to avoid them with the least inconvenience. It is also 
 necessary to them to know the places occupied by the 
 simoom, and the seasons of their blowing in those parts of 
 the desert; likewise those occupied by moving sands. He 
 ^^enerally belongs to some powerful tribe of Arabs inhabit- 
 ing^ these deserts, whose protection he makes use of, to as- 
 sisi his caravans, or protect them in time of danger; and 
 handsome rewards are always in his power to distribute on 
 .such occasions; but now that the Arabs in these deserts 
 are everywhere without government, the trade between 
 Abyssinia and Cairo given over, that between Sudan and 
 the metropolis much diminished, the importance of that 
 oliice o(hybeer, and its consideration, is fallen in proportion, 
 and with these the safe conduct; and we shall see presently 
 a caravan cut off by the treachery of the very hybeers that 
 conducted them, the first instance of the kind that ever hap- 
 pened." (Bruce.) — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ■ Ver. 5. We remember the fish which we did eat 
 in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the mel- 
 ons, amd the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. 
 
 _To an Englishman the loss of these articles would not 
 ^ive much concern, and he is almost surprised at the Israel- 
 >ites repining at their loss, as at the loss of great delicacies. 
 The people of the East do not in general eat flesh, nor even 
 fish, so that when they can procure it they consider it a 
 delicacy. Cucumbers are eaten in abundance in hot wea- 
 ther, and melons are most delicious and plentiful. I have 
 never seen leeks in the East, and I am doubtful whether 
 they are to be found ; but whether or not, there is much 
 difference of opinion as to the translation of the word. 
 P'Oyly and Mant have a quotation to this effect : — " Whe- 
 ther the following word, rendered leeks, have that significa- 
 tion, may be doubted. Some think it was the lotus, which 
 is a water plant, a kind of water-lily, which the Egyptians 
 used to eat during the heats of summer." In the Universal 
 History, (vol. i. p. 486,) it is said, that those " Egyptians 
 who dwelt in the marshes, fed oil several plants which an- 
 nually grow, particularly the lotus, of which they made a 
 sort of bread." . Of the Arabs also, (in the same work,) it 
 is recorded—" They make a drink of the Egyptian lotus, 
 which is very good for inward heat." The Tamul name 
 of the lotus is the Tamari. The Materia Medica, under 
 the article Nelumbium Speciosum, says this plant is the 
 true lotus of the Egyptians, and the Nymphea Nilufer of 
 Sir William Jones. Its beautiful and fragrant flower is 
 sacred to Lechimy, the goddess of Maga Vishnoo. It has 
 a bulbous root, and is highly esteemed as an article of food. 
 As it grows in tanks, it can only be had in the hottest wea- 
 ther, when the water is dried up; and, in this we see a 
 most gracious provision in allowing it to be taken when 
 most required. Its cooling qualities are celebrated all over 
 India, and the Materia Medica says of it, " This is an ex- 
 cellent root, and is also prescribed medicinally, as cooling 
 and demulcent." The natives eat it boiled, or in curry, or 
 make it into flour for gruels. I am, therefore, of opinion, 
 that it was the lotus of Egypt respecting which the Israel- 
 ites were murmuring. — Roberts. 
 
 Whoever has tasted onions in Egypt must allow that 
 none can be had bel'er in any part of the universe. Here 
 they are sweet, in other countries they are nauseous and 
 strong; here they are soft, whereas in "the north, and other 
 parts, they are hard of digestion. Hence they cannot in 
 any place be eaten with less prejudice and more satisfaction 
 than in Egypt. They eat them roasted, cut into four pieces, 
 
 with some bits of roasted meat, which the Turks in Egypt 
 call kobab, and with this dish they are so delighted, that I 
 have heard them wish they might enjoy it in paradise. 
 They likewise make soup of them in Egypt, cutting the 
 onions in small pieces ; this I think one of the best dishes 
 I ever eat. 
 
 By melons we are probably to understand the water-me- 
 lon, which the Arabians call batech. It is cultivated on the 
 banks of the Nile, in the rich clayey earth which subsides 
 during the inundation. This serves the Egyptians for meat, 
 drink, and physic. It is eaten in abundance during the 
 season, even by the richer sort of people ; but the common 
 people, on whom providence has bestowed nothing but pov- 
 erty and patience, scarcely eat any thing but these, and ac- 
 count this the best time of the year, as they are obliged to 
 put up with worse fare at other seasons. This fruit like- 
 wise serves them for drink, the juice refreshing these poor 
 creatures, and they have less occasion for water than if 
 they were to live on more substantial food in this burning 
 climate. — Hasselquist. 
 
 Among the different kinds of vegetables, which are ot 
 importance to supply the want of life, or to render it more 
 agreeable, he tells us, is the melo7is, which, without dispute, 
 is there one of the most salutary and common among them. 
 All the species that they have in Europe, and in the sea- 
 ports of the Mediterranean, are to be found in Egypt. Be- 
 sides them, there is one, whose substance is green and very 
 delicious. It grows round like a bowl, and is commonly 
 of an admirable taste. There are also water-melons, ex- 
 tremely good. But above all the rest, at Cairo, and its 
 neighbourhood, they boast of a species of melons, pointed 
 at each end, and swelling out in the middle, which the peo- 
 ple of the country call abdelarins. This is an Arabian 
 word, which signifies the slave of sweetness. In fact, these 
 melons are not to be eaten without sugar, as being insipid 
 without it. Macrisi says, this last kind was formerly trans- 
 ported hither, by a man whose name they bear. They 
 give it to the sick, to whom they refuse all other kinds ol 
 fruit. The rind is very beautifully wrought; its figure 
 very singular ; as well as the manner of ripening it, which 
 is by applying a red-hot iron to one of its extremities. The 
 people of the country eat it green as well as ripe, and in 
 the same manner as we eat apples. These melons, of a 
 foreign extraction, continue two whole months, and grow 
 nowhere else in Egypt. They say the •same species is 
 found in Cyprus.— Maillet. 
 
 Ver. 6. But now our soul is dried away ; there 
 is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our 
 eyes. 
 
 In great hunger or thirst the people say, " Our soul is 
 withered." '* More than this, sir, I cannot do ; my spirit is 
 withered within me." " What ! when a man's soul is with- 
 ered, is he not to complain V — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And the people went about, and gathered 
 it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mor- ■ 
 tar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it : 
 and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil. 
 
 The eastern mill consists of two circular stones, about 
 eighteen inches in diameter, and three inches th:' ;k. The 
 top stone has a handle in it, and works round a pivot, which 
 has a hole connected with it to admit the corn. The mor- 
 tar also is much used to make rice flour. It is a block ot 
 wood, about twenty inches high and ten inches in diameter, 
 having a hole scooped out in the centre. The pestle is a 
 stick of about four feet long, made of iron-wood, having 
 an iron hoop fixed to the end. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. And the Lord said unto Moses, Gather 
 unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, 
 whom thou knowest to be the elders of the peo- 
 ple, and officers over them; and bring them 
 unto the tabernacle of the congregation, that 
 they may stand there with thee. 
 
 Moses established in the wilderness another institution, 
 which has been commonly held to be of a judicial nature; 
 
94 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 Chap. 12, 13. 
 
 thousand cities ; and by the testimony of Josephus, seven 
 hundred and fitty myriads of people, without including 
 the inhabitants of Alexandria. From this statement it 
 must be evident, that in order to supply the many thou- 
 sands of Israel with quails for a whole month, no act of 
 creation was necessary ; but only a strong breeze, to direct 
 the flight of those innumerable flocks, which encumber the 
 African continent, to the camp of Israel. We read that 
 our Lord muliiplied the loaves and the fishes, when he 
 fed the attending multitudes ; but no inspired writer insin- 
 uates, that Jehovah created or multiplied the quails with 
 which he sustained his people in the wilderness. He had 
 only to transport them on the wings of the wind, from the 
 vale of Egypt, and the shores of the Red Sea. It was in- 
 deed a stupendous miracle, to collect such immense num- 
 bers, to bring them into the desert precisely at the time 
 which he had appointed, and to let them fall about the 
 camp, that they might be gathered by his people ; but the 
 provision itself existed already in the stores of common 
 providence, and required only "to be conveyed to the spot 
 where it was needed. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 14. And the Lord said unto Moses, If her 
 father had but spit in her face, should she not 
 be ashamed seven days ? Let her be shut out 
 ifrom the camp seven days, and after that let her 
 be received in again. 
 
 Miriam had greatly offended God, and, therefore, she 
 was to be as a daughter, whose father had spit jn her face. 
 In Deuteronomy xxv. 9, the widow was to spit In the face, 
 of her late husband's brother, if he refused to marry her. 
 And Job (xxx. 10) in his great misery says of his ene- 
 mies, "they spare not to spit in my "face;" and in ref- 
 erence to our Saviour, they did " spit in his face." The 
 most contemptuous, the most exasperating and degrading 
 action, which one man can do to another, is to spit in 
 his face. A person receiving this insult is at once worked 
 up to the highest pitch of anger, and nothing but the 
 rank or power of the individual will prevent him from 
 seeking instant revenge. Indeed, such is the enormity 
 attached to this offence, that it is seldom had recourse to, 
 except in extreme cases. A master, whose slave has deeply 
 offended him, will not beat him, (for that would defile him,) 
 but he spits in his face. When his anger is at the greatest 
 height, he will not even condescend to do that, but order a 
 fellow-servant, or some one near, to spit in his face. Is a 
 person too respectable for this indignity ; then the offended 
 individual will spit upon the ground. Schoolmasters, also, 
 when very angry with a scholar, do not, as in England, be- 
 gin to beat him, but spit in his face, or order some one else 
 to do it. To a person making use of offensive language, 
 bystanders say, " Spit in his face." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 23. And they came unto the brook of Esh- 
 col, and cut down from thence a branch with 
 one cluster of grapes, and they bare it* between 
 two upon a staff: and the^/ brought of the pome- 
 granates, and of the figs. 
 
 It appears that the cultivation of the vine was never 
 abandoned in this country. The grapes, which are white, 
 and pretty large, are, however, not much superior in size 
 to those of Europe. This peculiarity seems to be confined 
 to those in this neighbourhood, for at the distance of only 
 six miles to the south, is the rivulet and valley called 
 Escohol, celebrated in scripture for its fertility, and for 
 
 Producing very large grapes. In other parts of Syria, also, 
 have se(^n grapes of such an extraordinary size, that a 
 bunch of them would be a sufficient burdenfor one man. 
 It is not at all surprising, therefore, that when the spies, 
 sent by Moses to reconnoitre the promised land, returned 
 to give him an account of its fertility, it required two of 
 them to carry a bunch qjgrapes, which they brought with 
 them suspended from at^le placed upon their shoulders. 
 (Mariti.) Many eyewitnesses assure us, that in Pales- 
 tine the vines, and bunches of grapes, are almost of an in- 
 credible size. Stephen Schultz relates, " At Beitdjin, a 
 
 village near Ptolemais, we took our supper under a large 
 vine, the stem of which was nearly a foot and a half in di- 
 ameter, the height about thirty feet, and covered with its 
 branches and shoots (for the shoots must be supported) a 
 hut more than fifty feet long and broad. The bunches ol 
 these grapes are so large that they weigh from ten to tw^elve 
 pounds, and the grapes may be compared to our plums. 
 Such a bunch is cut off and laid on a board, round which 
 they seat themselves, and each helps himself to as many 
 as he pleases." Forster, in his Hebrew Dictionary, (under 
 the word Eshcol,) says, " that he knew at Nurnburg, a 
 monk of the name of Acacius, whohad resided eight years 
 in Palestine, and had also preached at Hebron, where he 
 had seen bunches of grapes which were as much as twc 
 men could conveniently carry." Christopher Neitzschutz, 
 who travelled through Palestine in the year 1634, speaking 
 of his excursions on the Jewish mountains, says, " These 
 mountains are pretty high on the right, and most beautifully 
 situated ; and I can say with truth, that I saM' and ate ol 
 bunches of grapes which were each half an ell long, and 
 the grapes two joints of a finger in length." Reland says, 
 " that a merchant, who lived several years at Rama, as- 
 sured him that he had there seen bunches of grapes which 
 weighed ten pounds each." Vines and grapes ol an extra- 
 ordinary size are found in other parts of the East. Strabo 
 says, " that in the Margiana, a country southwest of the 
 Caspian sea, now called Ghilan, there are vines which two 
 men can scarcely span, the bunches of which are of extra- 
 ordinary length." Olearius, in 1637, saw in this part 
 vines, the stem of w^hich was as thick as a man's body. At 
 Iran, he states, there is a kind of grapes called Enkuri ali 
 deresi, which are of a brown red colour, and as large as 
 Spanish plums. The carrying of a bunch of grapes be- 
 tween two men was not merely for its weight, but that it 
 might be brought uninjured, and without being crushed, 
 into the Israelite camp. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 The pomegranate, the mains punica of the Romans, the 
 poa or pnia of the Greeks, and the Rimon of the Hebrews, 
 is a kind of apple-tree, whose fruit is covered without, with 
 a rind of a veddish colour, and which, opening lengthwise, 
 shows red grains full of juice resembling wine, with little 
 kernels. The Hebrew term Rimon, which expresses both 
 the tree and the fruit, from Rama, to project, seems to have 
 its name from the strong projection or reflection of light 
 either from the fruit or from the starlike flower with six 
 leaves, or rays, at the top of the apple. The Greek name 
 port, which denotes the tree, and poioKos, the fruit, by which 
 the Seventy render the word Rimon, aim perhaps at the 
 same thing, being derived from pew to flow. We learn 
 from Dr. Shaw, that August produces the first ripe pome- 
 granates, some of which are three or four inches in diam- 
 eter, and of a pound weight. The pomegranate, or malum 
 punicum, as originally brought from Phoenicia, was for- 
 merly numbered among the most delicious fruits which the 
 earth produces. That from Arabia is large, full of juice, 
 and highly flavoured. The juice especially, when express- 
 ed from the seeds and interior film, by which the bitter 
 flavour is avoided, is a delicate beverage : and one of those 
 pomegranates will sometimes fill a small basin. The high 
 estimation in which it was held by the people of Israel, 
 may be inferred from its being one of the three kinds of 
 fruit brought by the spies from Eshcol, to Moses and the 
 congregation in the wilderness ; and from its being spec'- 
 fied by that rebellious people as one of the greatest lu«urie<5 
 they enjoyed in Egv'pt, the want of which they felt so so- 
 verely in the sandy desert. The pomegranate, classed by 
 Moses with wheat and barley, vines and figs, oil olive and 
 honey, was, in his account, one principal recommendation 
 of the promised land. But no circumstance more clearly 
 proves the value which the Orientals nut upon this fruit, than 
 the choice which Solomon makes of it to represent certain 
 graces of the church : " Thy temples are like a piece of 
 pomegranate within thy locks ;" and in the thirteenth verse, 
 the children of God are compared to an orchard of pome- 
 granates with pleasant fruits. Three sorts of pomegranates 
 are used in Syria, the sour, the sweet, and another of ar. 
 intermediate taste, for the purpose of giving a grateful acid- 
 ity to their sauces or liquids. A very refreshing draught, 
 such as the Syrians use in hot weather, composed of wine 
 mixed with the juice of the pomegranate, it would seem, the 
 spouse proposed to make for her beloved : " I would cause 
 thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegrU' 
 
Chap. 13—18. 
 
 NUMBERS, 
 
 95 
 
 ftate ;" a delicious and cooling beverage to the parched in- 
 habitant of the equatorial regions ; or perhaps she means 
 a species of wine made of pomegranate juice, which we 
 learn from Chardin, is drank in considerable quantities in 
 the East, and particularly in Persia. Which of these is 
 really intended, it is not easy to determine. Liquors of 
 this kind are still very common in the East. Sherbet, 
 which is a syrup, chiefly that of lemons mixed with water, 
 is used by persons of all ranks. 
 
 "I think," says Mr. Harmer in a note, " it is highly prob- 
 able, that in the time of remote antiquity, pomegranate 
 juice was used in those countries where lemon juice is now 
 used, with their meat, and in their drinks ; and, that it was 
 not till afterward, that lemons came among them. I know 
 not how else to account for the mention of pomegranates, in 
 describing the fruitfulness of the Holy Land : they would 
 not now, I think, occur in such descriptions ; the juice of 
 lemons and oranges have at present almost superseded the 
 use of that of pomegranates." But the opinion of this re- 
 spectable writer, is opposed by no less an authority than Dr. 
 Russel, who spent many years in Syria, and wrote the na- 
 tural history of that country. According to that able his- 
 torian, lemons have by no means superseded the pomegra- 
 nate ; the latter is more easily preserved through the win- 
 ter, and is often in cookery preferred to the lemon. In 
 describing the fruitfulness of a country, the pomegranate 
 would be mentioned ; and it is diligently cultivated even 
 where lemons are plenty. What Chardin calls Roubnar, 
 he would not understand to be wine ; Rab-al-nar is' the in- 
 spissated juice of the pomegranate, or the juice of grapes 
 preserved with sugar, — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 32. The land, through which we have gone 
 to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabit- 
 ants thereof. 
 
 Of a very unhealthy place it is said, " That evil country 
 eats up all the people. " We cannot remain in these 
 parts, the land^s eating us up." " I go to that place ! never ! 
 it will eat me up." Of England it is said, in reference to 
 her victories, " She has eaten up all countries." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 9. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, 
 
 neither fear ye the people of the land : for they 
 
 are bread for us : their defence is departed from 
 
 them, and the Lord w with us ; fear them not. 
 
 Hebrew, " shadow." A poor man says of his rich friend, 
 " He is my shadow ;" i. e. he is my defence. " My sha- 
 dow is gone;" meaning, he has lost his defence. "Alas ! 
 those poor people have lost their shadow." — Roberts. 
 
 Literally, their shadow, a metaphor highly expressive of 
 protection and support in the sultry eastern countries. 
 The Arabs and Persians have the same word to denote the 
 same thing: using these expressions, " May the shadow of 
 thy prosperity be extended." " May the shadow of thy 
 prosperity be spread over the heads of thy well-wishers." 
 "May thy protection never be removed from my head; 
 May God extend thy shadow eternally." 
 At court, when mention is made of the sultan, the appella- 
 tion of alem-peTiah, refuge of the world, is usually added to 
 his title of padisha, or emperor. His loftiest title, and the 
 most esteemed, because given to him by the kings of Per- 
 sia, is zil-ullah, shadow of God. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 6. And Moses spake unto the children of 
 Israel, arid every one of their princes gave him 
 \ a rod apiece, for each prince one, according to 
 
 their fathers' houses, even twelve rods : and the 
 rod of Aaron was among their rods. 7. And 
 Moses laid up the rods before the Lord in the 
 tabernacle of witness. 8. And it came to pass, 
 that on the morrow Moses virent into the taber- 
 nacle of witness ; and. Heboid, the rod of Aaron, 
 for the house of Levi, was budded, and brought 
 forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded 
 almonds. 
 
 See on Jer. 1. 11, 12. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Ver. 16. And those that are to be redeemed, from 
 a month old shalt thou redeem, according to 
 thine estimation, for the money of five shekels, 
 after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is 
 twenty gerahs. 
 
 According to Leo of Modena, this was performed in the 
 following manner. When the child is thirty days old, the 
 father sends for one of the descendants of Aaron ; several 
 persons being assembled on the occasion, the father brings 
 a cup, containing several pieces of gold and silver coin. 
 The priest then takes the child into his arms, and address- 
 ing himself to the mother, says, " Is this thy son 1" Mo- 
 ther. " Yes." Priest. " Hast thou never had another child, 
 male or female, a mi.scarriage or untimely birth'?" Mo- 
 ther. "No." Priest. "This being the case, this child, as 
 first-born, belongs to me." Then turning to the father, he 
 says, " If it be thy desire to have this child, thou must re- 
 deem it." Father. " I present thee with this gold and sil- 
 ver for this purpose." Priest. " Thou dost wish, therefore, 
 to redeem the child 1" Father. " I do wish so to do." The 
 priest then turning himself to the assembly, says, " Very 
 well: this child, as first-born, is mine, as it is written in 
 Bemidbar, Numb, xviii. 16, 7%ou shalt redeem the first-born 
 of a month old for five shekels; but I shall content myself 
 with this in exchange." He then takes two gold crowns, or 
 thereabouts, and returns the child to his parents. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. All the heave-offerings of the holy 
 things, which the children of Israel offer unto * 
 theiliORD, have I given thee, and thy sons and 
 thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever : 
 it is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord 
 unto thee, and to .thy seed with thee. 
 
 Among other descriptions of a covenant, there is one 
 which demands explanation. Numb, xviii. 19, " The oflTer- 
 ings I have given to thee, and thy sons and thy daughters 
 with thee, by a statute for ever; it is a covenant of salt, for 
 ever, before the Lord." 2 Chr. xiii. 5, " Ought you not to 
 know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom over 
 Israel to David, for ever, to him, and to his sons, by a covc- 
 7uint of salt ?" It is very properly, as we suppose, suggested, 
 in answer to the inquiry, What means this covenant of 
 salt 7 that salt preserves from decay and putrefaction; it 
 maintains a firmness and durability. There is a kind of 
 salt so hard, that it is used as money, and passes from hand 
 to hand no more injured than a stone would be, says Mr. 
 Bruce. Salt may therefore very properly be made an em- 
 blem of perpetuity. 
 
 But the covenant of salt seems to refer to an agreement 
 made, in which salt was used as a token of confirmatif n. 
 We shall give an instance from Baron du Tott. " He, 
 (Moldovanji Pacha,) was desirous of an acquaintance with ■ 
 me, and seeming to regret that his business would not per- 
 mit him to stay long, he departed, promising in a short 
 time to return. I had already attended him half way down 
 the staircase, when stopping, and turning briskly to one of 
 my domestics who followed me, ' Bring me directly,' said 
 he, ' some bread and salt.'' I was not less surprised at this 
 fancy, than at the haste which was made to obey him: 
 What he requested was brought ; when, taking a little salt 
 between his fingers, and putting it with a mysterious air on 
 a bit of bread, he ate it with a devout gravity, assuring me 
 that I might now rely on him. I soon procured an expla- 
 nation of this significant ceremony; but this same man, 
 when become vizier, was tempted to violate this oath thus _ 
 taken in my favour. Yet if this solemn contract be not 
 always religiously observed, it serves, at least, to moderate 
 the spirit of vengeance so natural to the Turks." The Ba- 
 ron adds in a note : " The Turks think it the blackest in- 
 gratitude, to forget the man from whom we have received 
 food : which is signified by the bread and salt in this cere- 
 mony."— (Baron du Tott, part i. page 214.) The Baron 
 alludes to this incident in part iii. page 36. Moldovanji 
 Pacha, being ordered to obey the Baron, was not pleased 
 at it. " I did not imagine I ought to put any great confi- 
 dence in the mysterious covenant of the bread and salt, b]/ 
 which this man had formerly vowed inviolable friendship tu 
 
96 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 Chap. 20. 
 
 me." Yet he " dissembled his discontent," and " his pee- 
 vishness only showed itself in his first letters to the Porte." 
 It will now, we suppose, appear credible, that the phrase " a 
 covenant of salt" alludes to some custom in ancient times; 
 and without meaning to symbolize very deeply, we take the 
 liberty of asking, whether the precept. Lev. ii. 13, " With 
 all thine oiferings thou shalt ofier salt," may have any ref- 
 erence to ideas of a similar nature 1 Did the custom of 
 feasting at a covenant-making include the same 1 accord- 
 ing to the sentiment of the Turks hinted at in the Baron's 
 note. We ought to notice the readiness of the Baron's do- 
 mestics, in proof that they, knowing the usages of their 
 country, well understood what was aboui to take place. 
 Also, that this covenant is nsuallij punctually observed, 
 and where it is not punctually observed, yet it has a re- 
 straining influence on the party who has made it ; and his 
 non-observance of it disgraces him. 
 
 We proceed to give a remarkable instance of the power 
 of this covenant of salt over the mind : it seems to imply 
 a something attributed to salt, which it is very difficult for 
 us completely to explain, but which is not the less real on 
 that account : " Jacoub ben Lairh, the founder of a dynasty 
 of Persian princes called the Saftarides, rising, like many 
 others of the ancestors of the princes of the East, from a 
 very low state to royal power, being in his first setting out 
 in the use of arms, no better than a freebooter or robber, is 
 yet said to have maintained some regard to decency in his 
 depredations, and never to. have entirely stripped those 
 that he robbed, always leaving them something to soften 
 their affliction. Among other exploits that are recorded 
 of him, he is said to have broken into the palace of the 
 prince of that country, and having collected a very large 
 booty, which he was on the point of carrying away, he 
 found his foot kicked something which made hmi stumble ; 
 he imagined it might be something of value, and putting it 
 to his mouth, the belter to distinguish what it was, his 
 tongue soon informed him it was a himp of salt. Upon this, 
 according to the morality, or rather superstition, of the 
 country, where the people considered salt as a symbol and 
 pledge of hosplMity, he was so touched, that he left all his 
 booty, retiring without taking away any thing with him. 
 The" next morning, the risk they had run of losing many 
 valuable things being perceived, great was the surprise, 
 and strict the inquiry, what could be the occasion of their 
 being left. At length Jacoub was found to be the person 
 concerned ; who having given an account, very sincerely, 
 of the whole transaction to the prince, he gained his es- 
 teem so effectually, that it might be said, with truth, that it 
 was his regard for salt that laid the foundation of his after 
 fortune. The prince employing him as a man of courage 
 and genius in many enterprises, and finding him successful 
 in all of them, he raised him, by little and little, to the 
 chief posts among his troops; so that, at that prince's 
 death, he found himself possessed of the command in chief, 
 and had such interest in their affections, that they pre- 
 ferred his interests to those of the children of the deceased 
 prince, and he became absolute master of that province, 
 from whence he afterward spread his conquests far and 
 wide."— (D'Herbelot, Bibl. Orient, p. 466. Also, Harmer's 
 Obs.) — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 19. And the children of Israel said unto him, 
 We will go by the highway ; and if I and my 
 cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it : 
 I will only (without doing any thing else) go 
 through on my feet. 
 
 The scarcity of water, and the great labour and expense 
 cf digging away so much earth, in order to reach it, ren- 
 der a well extremely valuable. As the water is often sold 
 at a very high price, a number of good wells yield to the 
 proprietor a large revenue. Pitts was obliged to purchase 
 water at sixpence a gallon; a fact which illustrates the 
 force of the offer made by Moses to Edom ; " If I, and my 
 cattle, drink of thy water, then will I pay for it." It is prop- 
 erly mentioned as a very aggravating circumstance in 
 the overthrow of Jerusalem, that the. ruthless conqueror 
 forced the Jews to purchase with money, the water of their 
 own wells and the wood of their own trees: "We have 
 drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto 
 
 us." Even a cup of cold water cannot always be obtained 
 in Syria, without paying a certain price. It is partly on 
 this account our Lord promises, "Whosoever shall give 
 to drink unto one of those little ones, a cup of cold water, 
 in the name of a disciple, should in no wise lose his reward " 
 — Paxton. 
 
 How little do the people of England understand /eeZm^Zjf 
 those passages of scripture which speak of want of water, 
 oi paying for that necessary fluid, and of the strife for such 
 a valuable article as a well ! So we read, " Abraham re- 
 proved Abimelech, because of a well of water, which 
 Abimelech's servants had violently taken away." Gen. xxi. 
 25. So, chap. xxvi. 20 : " The herdsmen of Gerar did 
 strive with Isaac's herdsmen ; and he called the well Esekf 
 contention." — To what extremities contention about a sup- 
 ply of water may proceed, we learn from the following ex- 
 tracts : — " Our course lay along shore, betwixt the main- 
 land and a chain of little islands, with which, as likewise 
 with rocks and shoals, the sea abounds in this part; and 
 for that reason, it is the practice with all these vessels to 
 anchor every evening : we generally brought up close to 
 the shore, and the land-breeze springing up about midnight, 
 w^afted to us the perfumes of Arabia, with which it was 
 strongly impregnated, and very fragrant ; the latter part ot 
 it carried us off in the morning, and continued till eight, 
 when it generally fell calm for two or three hours, and 
 after that the northerly wind set in, after obliging us to 
 anchor under the lee of the land by noon ; it happened that 
 one morning, when we had been driven by stress of weather 
 into a small bay, called Birk Bay, the country around it 
 being inhabited by the Budoes, [Bedow^eens] the Noquedah 
 sent his people on shore to get water, for which it is always 
 customary to pay." 
 
 Tliis extract, especially illustrates the passage, Num. xx. 
 17, 19; — " We will not drink of the water of the wells : — 
 if I, and my cattle, drink of thy water, then will I pay for 
 it." — This is always expected ; and though Edom might in 
 friendship have let his brother Israel drink gratis, had he 
 recollected their consanguinity, yet Israel did not insist on 
 such accommodation. How strange would it sound in 
 England, if a person in travelling, should propose to pay 
 for drinking water from the wells by the road-side ! Never- 
 theless, still stronger is the expression. Lam. v. 4 ; " We 
 have drank our own water for money ;" we bought it of our 
 foreign rulers ; although we were the natural proprietors 
 of the wells which furnished it. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 22. And the children of Israel, et'en the 
 whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh, 
 and came unto mount Hor, 23. And the Lord 
 spake unto Moses and Aaron in mount Hor, by 
 the coast of the land of Edom, saying, 24. Aaron 
 shall be gathered unto his people : for he shall 
 not enter into the land which I have given unto 
 the children of Israel, because ye rebelled 
 against my word at the water of Meribah. 
 25. Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and 
 bring them up unto mount Hor : 26. And strip 
 Aaron of his garments, and put them upon 
 Eleazar his son ; and Aaron shall be gathered 
 VMto his people, and shall die there. 27. And 
 Moses did as the Lord commanded : and they 
 went up into mount Hor in the sight of all the 
 congregation. 28. And Mose* stripped Aaron 
 of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar 
 his son ; and Aaron died there in the top of the 
 mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down 
 from the mount. 
 
 The evidence already adduced leaves unquestionable the 
 possibility that excavations in rocks may continue unim- 
 paired for many ages. That monuments so extremely an- 
 cient as the days of Moses and Aaron should still bear 
 their testimony to facts of other times, is too wonderful to 
 be received without due circumspection. — If they were re- 
 ferred to buildings, to structures erected by human power, 
 they would be something more than dubious : but this 
 
^. 
 
Chap. 21. 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 97 
 
 hesitation does not apply to chambers cut in rocks, or on 
 the sides of rocky mouniains : it' the identity of such places 
 can be established, their antiquity need occasion no difficul- 
 ty ; if the tomb of Aaron be not the tomb of any other per- 
 son, it may be admitted to all the honours of the distant age 
 to which it is ascribed. The rock and the mountain origi- 
 nated with the world, and will endure to the end of time. 
 At least, it is proper that what is said of the tomb of Aaron, 
 ' should find its place in a work like the present. 
 
 Our travellers left Petra, and taking a south-westerly 
 direction, arrived at the foot of Mount Hor, by three 
 o'clock in the afternoon. They climbed the rugged ascent, 
 and found "a crippled Arab hermit, about eighty years of 
 age, the one half of which time he had spent on the top of the 
 mountain, living on the donations of the few Mohammedan 
 pilgrims who resort thither, and the charity of the native 
 shepherds, who supply him with water and milk. He con- 
 ducted us into the small white building, crowned by a 
 cupola, that contains the tomb of Aaron. The monument 
 is of stone, about three feet high, and the venerable Arab, 
 having lighted a lamp, led us down some steps to a chamber 
 below, hewn out of the rock, but containing nothing ex- 
 traordinary. Against the walls of the upper apartment, 
 where stood the lomb, were suspended beads, bits of cloth 
 and leather, votive offerings left by the devotees ; on one 
 side, let into the wall, we were shown a dark looking 
 stone, that was reputed to possess considerable virtues 
 in the cure of diseases, and to have formerly served as a 
 seat to the prophet." — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among 
 the people, and they bit the people : and much 
 people of Israel died. 
 
 The seraph, to a biblical student, is one of the most inter- 
 esting creatures that has yet fallen under our notice. It 
 bears the name of an order among the hosts of heaven, 
 whom Isaiah beheld in vision, placed above the throne of 
 Jehovah in the temple ; the brazen figure of this serpent, 
 is supposed to be a type of our blessed Redeemer, who was 
 for our salvation lifted up upon the cross, as the serpent 
 was elevated in the camp of Israel, for the preservation of 
 that people. It is the only species of serpent which the al- 
 mighty Creator has provided with wings, by means of 
 which, instead of creeping or leaping, it rises from the 
 ground, and, leaning upon the extremity of its tail, moves 
 wi|h great velocity. It is a native of Egypt, and the des- 
 ert's of Arabia ; and receives its name from the Hebrew 
 verb saraph, which signifies to burn, in allusion to the vio- 
 lent inflammation which its poison produces, or rather its 
 fiery colour, wbich the brazen serpent was intended to rep- 
 resent. Bochart is of opinion, that the seraph is the same 
 as the hydrus, or, as Cicero calls it, the serpent of the wa- 
 ters. For, in the book of Isaiah, the land of Egypt is call- 
 ed the region from whence come the viper and flying ser- 
 aph, or burning serpent, ^lian says, they come from 
 the deserts of Libya and Arabia, to inhabit the streams of 
 the Nile ; and that they have the form of the hydrus. 
 
 The existence of winged serpents is attested by many 
 writers of modern times. A kind of snakes were discover- 
 ed among the Pyrenees, from whose sides proceeded carti- 
 lages in the form of wings ; and Scaliger mentions a peas- 
 ant who killed a serpent of the same species which attack- 
 ed him, and presented it to the king of France. Le Blanc, 
 as quoted by Bochart, says, at the head of the lake Chia- 
 may, are extensive wooj^s and vast marshes, which it is very 
 dangerous to approach, because they are infested by very 
 large serpents, which, raised from the ground on wings re- 
 sembling those of bats, and leaning on the extremity of 
 their tails, move with great rapidity. They exist, it is" re- 
 ported, about these places in so great numbers, that they 
 have almost laid waste the neighbouring province. And, 
 in the same work, Le Blanc affirms that he has seen some 
 of them of immense size, which, when hungry, rushed im- 
 petuously on sheep and other tame animals. But the origi- 
 nal term ri3i!;r! Moopheph, does not always signify flying 
 with wings ; it often expresses vibration, swinging back- 
 ward and forward, a tremulous motion, a fluttering; and 
 this is precisely the motion of a serpent, when he springs 
 from one tree to another. Niebuhr mentions a sort of ser- 
 pents at Bassorah, which they call Heie thiare. " Thev 
 13 ' 
 
 commonly keep upon the date trees ; and as it would be la- 
 borious for them to come down from a very high tree, in 
 order to ascend another, they twist themselves by the tail 
 to a branch of the former, which making a spring by the 
 motion they give it, throws them to the branches of the sec- 
 ond. Hence it is, that the modern Arabs call them fly- 
 ing serpents, Heie thiare. Admiral Anson also speaks of 
 the flying serpents, that he met with at the island of Cluibo ; 
 but, which were without wings." From this account it 
 may be inferred, that the flying serpent mentioned in the 
 prophet, was of that species of serpents which, from their 
 swift darting motion, the Greeks c?i\\ Acontias, and the Ro- 
 mans, Jacuius. The seraph is classed by the Hebrews, 
 among those animals which emit an offensive odour ; 
 which corresponds with the character given of the hydrus 
 by the poet: '• graviter spirantibus hydris." This circum- 
 stance is confirmed by ^lian, who states, that in Corcvra, 
 the hydras turn upon their pursuers, and exhale from their 
 lungs an air so noisome, that they are compelled to desist 
 from the attack. It is an obvious objection to these- argu- 
 ments, that the hydrse are produced, and reared in marshy 
 places ; not in burning and thirsty deserts, where the peo- 
 ple of Israel murmured because they could find no water. 
 But, although that people might find no water to drink, it 
 will not follow, that the desert contained no marshy place, 
 or muddy pool, where the hydrse might lurk. Besides, it 
 is well known, that when water fails, these serpents do not 
 perish, but become chersydri, that is, seraphim or burners, 
 ^lian says they live a long time in the parched wilder- 
 ness, and lie in wait for all kinds of animals. These cher- 
 sydri, it is extremely probable, were the serpents which bit 
 the rebellious Israelites : and in this state they were more 
 terrible instruments of divine vengeance ; for, exasperated 
 by the want of water, and the intense heat of the season, 
 they injected a deadlier poison, and occasioned to the mis- 
 erable sufferer more agonizing torments. The time of the 
 year when Jehovah sent these serpents among his people, 
 proves that this is no vain conjecture. According to Ni- 
 cander, the hydrae become chersydri, and beset the path of 
 the traveller about the dog days. Now, Aaron died on the 
 first day of the fifth month, that is, the month Abib, which 
 corresponds with the nineteenth day of July. The Israelites 
 mourned for him thirty days ; immediately after which, 
 they fought a baUle with Arad, the Canaanite, and destroy- 
 ed his country : then recommencing their journey, they 
 murmured for want of water, and the serpents were sent. 
 This, then, must have happened about the end of August; 
 the season when the hydras become seraphim, and inflict 
 the most cruel wounds. Nor is it a fact, that the frightful 
 solitudes which Israel traversed, were totally destitute of 
 water; for, in their fourth journey they came to the river 
 Arnon ; in the fifth, to Beer, a well greatly celebrated in 
 scripture; and soon after the death of Aaron, they arrived 
 at a region watered by numerous streams. In these irrig- 
 uous places, which were at no great distance from the 
 camp of Israel, the hydrse might be produced, and sent to 
 chastise the rebellious tribes. The words of Moses also 
 seem to countenance the idea, that the hydrse employed on 
 this occasion, were not generated on the spot, but sent Irom 
 a distance: "And the Lord sent fiery serpents, or sera- 
 phim, among the people." From these words it is natural 
 to conclude, that they came from that "land of rivers," 
 through which the congregation had lately passed. Nor 
 will this be reckoned too long a journey, when it is recol- 
 lected that they travelled from both the Libyan and Arafcian 
 deSerts, to the streams of the Nile. They inflicted on this 
 memorable occasion, an appropriate chastisement on the 
 perverse tribes. That rebellious people had opened their 
 mouth against the heavens; they had sharpened their 
 tongues like serpents; and the poison of asps was under 
 their lips : therefore they were made to suffer, by the burn- 
 ing poison of a creature which they so nearly resembled. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. The princes dig-ged the well, the nobles 
 of the people digged it, by the direction of the 
 lawgiver, with their staves. And from the 
 wilderness they went to Mattanah. 
 
 Michaelis observes on this passage, that Moses seems to 
 have promised the Israelites that they would discover in 
 this neighbourhood, and that by ordinary human industry 
 
^8 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 Chap. 22—24. 
 
 and skill, a spring hitherto unknown ; and that this promise 
 was fulfilled. The discovery of springs, which olten flow 
 at a considerable depth below the surface of the earth, is of 
 great importance to a country so poor in water as Arabia. 
 Often a spot that is dry above'has even subterraneous lakes, 
 to reach which it is necessary to dig to some depth. We 
 have a remarkable instance in a part of Africa which Shaw 
 describes at the end of the eighth chapter of his geographi- 
 cal remarks on Algiers:—" The villages of Wadreag are 
 supplied in a particular manner with water: they have, 
 properly speaking, neither fountains nor rivulets ; but by 
 digging wells to the depth of a hundred, and sometimes two 
 hundred fathoms, they never want a plentiful stream. In 
 order, therefore, to obtain it, they dig through different layers 
 of sand and gravel till they come to a flaky stone, like 
 slate, which is known to lie immediately above the bahar 
 iaht el erd, or the sea below the ground, as they call the 
 abyss. This is easily broken through, and the flux of wa- 
 ter, which follows the stroke, rises generally so suddenly, 
 and in such abundance, that the person let down for this 
 purpose has sometimes, though raised up with the greatest 
 dexterity, been overtaken and suffocated by it." In some 
 parts of Arabia, as at Faranard in the valley of Dsch iron- 
 del, water is found, according to Niebuhr, on digging only 
 a foot and a half deep. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 Ver. 4. And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, 
 Now shall this company lick up all that are 
 round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass 
 of the field. 
 
 A native gentleman, who has many people depending 
 upon him, says, " Yes, they are all grazing upon me." 
 " If I am not careful, they will soon graze up all I have." 
 Of people who have got all they can out of one rich man, 
 and who are seeking after another, " Yes, yes, they have 
 done grazing there, and are now looking out for another 
 place." " These bulls are grazing in every direction." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. Come now therefore, I pray thee, curse 
 me this people ; for they are too mighty for me: 
 perad venture I shall prevail, that we may smite 
 them, and that I may drive them out of the 
 land : for I wot that he whom thou blessest is 
 blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed. 
 
 The Orientals, in their wars, have always their magi- 
 cians with them to curse their enemies, and to mutter in- 
 cantations for their destruction. Sometimes they secretly 
 convey a potent charm among the opposing troops, to 
 cause their destruction. In our late war with the Burmese, 
 the generals had several magicians, who were much en- 
 gaged in cursing our troops; but, as they did not succeed, 
 a number of witches were brought for the same purpose. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. And Balaam rose up in the morning, 
 and saddled his ass, and went with the princes 
 of Moab. 
 
 We learn from Niebuhr, that in Egypt the asses are 
 very handsome, and are used for riding by the greater part 
 of the Mohammedans, and by the most distinguished women 
 of that country. The same variety serves for the saddle 
 m Persia and Arabia ; and must therefore have been com- 
 mon in Palestine. They are descended from tamed ona- 
 pers, which are taken young, and sold for a high price to 
 the nobles of Persia, and the adjacent countries, for their 
 studs. They cost seventy-five ducats; and Tavernier 
 s^ays, that fine ones are sold in Persia dearer than horses, 
 even to a hundred crowns each. He distinguishes them 
 properly from the baser race of ordinary asses, which are 
 employed in carrying loads. These saddle asses, the issue 
 of onagers, are highly commended by all travellers into 
 the Levant. Like" the wild ass, they are extremely swift 
 ftnd rapid in their course ; of a slender form, and animated 
 i'ait. They have vigorous faculties, and can discern ob- 
 slacles readily ; at the sight of danger they emit a kind 
 
 of cry ; they are obstinate to excess, when beaten behind^ 
 or when they are put out of their way, or when attempts 
 are made to control them against their will : they are also 
 familiar and attached to their master. These particulars 
 exactly correspond with several incidents in the history 
 of Balaam's ass; from whence it may be inferred, that 
 he rode one of the superior breed, and by consequence, 
 was a person of considerable wealth and eminence in his 
 own country. The high value which people of rank 
 and fashion in the East set upon that noble race of asses, 
 excludes them from the purchase of the commonalty, and 
 restricts the possession of them to the great, or the affluent. 
 This fact is confirmed by the manner in which the sacred 
 writers express themselves on this subject. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 21. The Lord his God is with him, and the 
 shout of a king is among them. 
 
 When people pass along the road, if they hear a great 
 noise of joy or triumph, they say, " This is like the shout 
 of a king." " What a noise there was in your village last 
 evening ! why, it was like the shout of a king." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 6. As the valleys are they spread forth, as 
 gardens by the river's side; as the trees of 
 lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted, and 
 as cedar-trees beside the waters. 
 
 Gabriel Sionita, a learned Syrian Maronite, thus describes 
 the cedars of Mount Lebanon, which he had examined on 
 the spot. " The cedar-tree grows on the most elevated part 
 of the mountain ; is taller than the pine, and so thick, that 
 five men together could scarce fathom one. It shoots out 
 its branches at ten or twelve feet from the ground; they 
 are large, and distant from each other, and are perpetually 
 green. The cedar distils a kind of gum, to which different 
 effects are attributed. The wood of it is of a brown colour, 
 very solid, and incorruptible if preserved from wet ; it 
 bears a small apple, like that of the pine. De la Roque re- 
 lates some curious particulars concerning this tree, which 
 he learned from the Maronites of Mount Libanus : " The 
 branches grow in parallel rows round the tree, but lessen 
 gradually from the bottom to the top, shooting out parallel 
 to the horizon, so that the tree is, in appearance, similar to 
 a cone. As the snows, which fall in vast quantities on this 
 mountain, must necessarily, by their weight on such a vast 
 surface, break down these branches, nature, or rather the 
 God of nature, has so ordered it, that at the approach of 
 winter, and during the snowy season, the branches erect 
 themselves, and cling close to the body of the tree, and thus 
 
 Srevent any body of snow from lodging on them." Maun- 
 rell, who visited Mount Libanus in 1697, gives the follow- 
 ing description of the cedars still growing there : " These 
 noble trees grow among the snow, near the highest part of 
 Lebanon, and are remarkable, as well for their own age 
 and largeness, as for those frequent allusions to them in 
 the word of God. Some of them are very old, and of a 
 prodigious bulk ; others younger, and of a smaller size. 
 Of the former I could reckon only sixteen, but the latter 
 are very numerous. I measured one of the largest, and 
 found it twelve yards and six inches in girth, and yet sound ; 
 and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its branches. At 
 about five or six yards from the ground it was divided into 
 five limbs, each of which was equal to a great tree." 
 
 The aloe-tree here meant is the aloe which grows in the 
 East Indies, to the height of eight or ten feet, and (not to 
 be confounded with the aloe-plant originally from Amer- 
 ica) its stem is the thickness of a thigh. At the top grow.s 
 a tuft of jagged and thick leaves, which is broad at the 
 bottom, but becomes gradually narrower towards the point, 
 and is about four feet long; the blossom is red, intermingled 
 with yellow, and double like cloves. From this blossom 
 comes a red and white fruit, of the size of a pea. This 
 tree has a very beautiful appearance, and the wood has ?o 
 fine a smell, that it is used for perfume. The Indians con- 
 sider this tree as sacred, and are used to fell it with various 
 religious ceremonies. The Orientals consider this aloe as 
 a tree of Paradise, on which account the Dutch call it 
 the tree of Paradise. Therefore, Rabbi Solomon Jarctti 
 
Chap. 31 -^35. 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 99 
 
 explains the Hebrew word as ' myrrh and sanderswood, 
 which God planted in the garden of Eden." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 Ver. 50. We have therefore brought an oblation 
 for the Lord, what every man hath gotten, of 
 jewels of gold, chains, and bracelets, rings, 
 ear-rings, and tablets, to make an atonement for 
 our souls before the Lord. 
 
 There is not a man in a thousand who does not wear an 
 ear-ring or a finger-ring, for without such an ornament a 
 J;person would be classed among the most unfortunate of 
 jlnis race. Some time ago a large sacrifice was made for 
 the purpose of removing the cholera morbus, when vast 
 numbers came together with their oblations. The people 
 seemed to take the greatest pleasure in presenting their ear- 
 rinses, finger-rins:s, bracelets, and other ornaments, because 
 they were dearer to them than money, and consequently 
 were believed to be more efficacious in appeasing the gods. 
 When people are sick, they vow to give a valuable jewel 
 to their god on being restored. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 Ver. 55. Then it shall come to pass, that those 
 which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in 
 your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall 
 vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. 
 
 People in the East, in consequence of their light clothing, 
 of the exposed state of their feet, and the narrowness of the 
 paths, have a great dread of thorns. Those who carry the 
 alankeen, or who travel in groups, often cry aloud, MuUu, 
 nllul A thorn, a thorn ! The sufferer soon throw^s him- 
 If on the earth, and some one, famous for his skill, ex- 
 tracts the thorn. Does a person see something of a distress- 
 ing nature, he says, " That was a thorn in my eyes." A 
 father says of his bad son, " He is to me as a thorn." " His 
 vile expressions were like thorns in my body." A person 
 going to live in an unhealthy place, or where there are 
 quarrelsome people, is said to be going " to the thorny des- 
 ert." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 Ver. 19. The revenger of blood himself shall 
 slay the murderer : when he meeteth him he 
 shall slay him. 
 
 fc The interest of the common safety has for ages estab- 
 fehed a law among the Arabians, which decrees that the 
 Tblood of every man who is slain must be avenged by that 
 of his murderer. This vengeance is called tar, or retalia- 
 tion, and the right of exacting it devolves on the nearest 
 a-kin to the deceased. So nice are the Arabs on this point 
 of honour, that if one neglects to seek his retaliation, he is 
 disgraced for ever. He therefore watches every opportu- 
 nity of revenge ; if his enemy perish from any other cause, 
 •^till he is not satisfied, and his vengeance is directed against 
 the nearest relation. These animosities are transmitted 
 as an inheritance from father to children, and never cease 
 but by the extinction of one of the families: unless they agree 
 to sacrifice the criminal, or purchase the blood for a stated 
 price in money or in fiocks. Without this satisfaction, 
 there is neither peace, nor truce, nor alliance between 
 them, nor sometimes even between whole tribes. There 
 Is blood between us, say they, on every occasion ; and this 
 ^-Ypression is an insurmountable barrier. — Volney. 
 
 " Among the Bedouin Arabs," says D'Arvieux, " the re- 
 venge of blood is implacable. If one man has killed an- 
 other, the friendship between the two families and their 
 descendants is dissolved. If an opportunity should occur 
 to join in some common interest, or if one family propose 
 a marriage to the other, they answer quite coolly, * You 
 know that there is blood between us, we cannot accept your 
 proposal, and must consider our honour.' They do not 
 forgive each other till they have had their revenge, with 
 which, however, they are not m haste, but wait for time 
 and opportunity." This is confirmed by Niebuhr, Descrip- 
 tion of Arabia. " The Arabs seldom wish to see the mur- 
 
 derer put to death by the magistrates, or take his life them- 
 selves, because they would deliver his family from a bad 
 mernber, and, consequently, from a great burden. The 
 family of the person murdered generally reserve to them- 
 selves the right to declare war, as it were, against the 
 murderer and his relations. But an honourable Arab 
 must observe some equality of strength ; it would be con- 
 sidered disgraceful if a strong person should attack one 
 old or sick, or many, a single individual. They are, how- 
 ever, permitted to kill even the most distinguished, and, 
 as it were, the support of the family : for they require that 
 he in particular, who is considered as the chief, and who 
 acknowledges himself as such, should have a watchful eye 
 on the conduct of all the members. The murderer is, 
 however, arrested by the magistrates, and released again, 
 after paying a certain sum, for instance, two hundred dol- 
 lars. This is, probably, the reason why the law is not 
 abolished. After this, every member of both families 
 must live in constant fear of anywhere meeting his enemy, 
 till at length one of the family of the murderer is killed. 
 There have been instances that similar family feuds have 
 lasted fifty years, or more, because they do not challenge 
 each other to single combat, but fight only when opportu- 
 nity offers. A man of consequence at Loheia, who used 
 to visit us frequently, besides the usual Arabian weapon, 
 that is, a broad and sharp-pointed knife, always carried a 
 small lance, which he hardly ever put out of his hands, 
 even in the company of his friends. As we were not ac- 
 customed to see such a weapon in the hands of the other 
 Arabs, and inquired about it, he complained that some 
 years before he had had the misfortune to have one of his 
 family killed. The injured family had then reserved to 
 revenge themselves in single combat, of the murderer or 
 his relations. One of his enemies, and the very one whom 
 he principally feared, was also in this town. He once 
 met him m our house also, armed with a lance. They 
 might have terminated their quarrel immediately, but they 
 did not speak one word to each other, and much less diit 
 any combat ensue. Our friend assured us, that if he should 
 meet his enemy in the open country, he must necessarily 
 fight him ; but he owned at the same time,' that he strove 
 to avoid this opportunity, and that he could not sleep in 
 peace for fear of being surprised." After the bombardment 
 of Mocha by the French, and when peace was already 
 concluded, the captain of a French ship was stabbed before 
 his own door, where he sat asleep, by an Arab soldier, one 
 of whose relations had been killed by a bomb. — Rdsen- 
 
 MULLER. 
 
 I must now speak of a person quite unknown in our law, 
 but very conspicuous in tne Hebrew law, and in regard to 
 whom Moses has left us, I might almost say, an inimitable, 
 but, at any rate, an unexampled proof of legislative wisdom. 
 In German, we may call him by the name which Luther 
 so happily employs, in his version of the Bible, Der Blut- 
 rdcher, the blood-avenger ; and by this name we must 
 here understand " the nearest relation of a person mur- 
 dered, Avhose right and duty it was to seek after and kill 
 the murderer with his own hand ; so much so, indeed, that 
 the neglect thereof drew after it the greatest possible infa- 
 my, and subjected the man who avenged not the death of 
 his relation, to unceasing reproaches of cowardice or 
 avarice." If, instead of this description, the reader pre- 
 fers a short definition, it may be to this effect; "the nearest 
 relation of a person murdered, whose right and duty it war? 
 to avenge the kinsman's death with his own hand." Among 
 the Hebrews, this person was called Sk), GoU, according, 
 at least, to the pronunciation adopted from the pointed 
 Bibles. The etymology of this word, like most forensic 
 terms, is as yet unknown. Yet we cannot bu^ be curious 
 to find out whence the Hebrews had derived the name, 
 which they applied to a person so peculiar to their own 
 law, and so totally unknown to ours. Unquestionably the 
 verb bm, Gaal, means to bicy off, ransom, redeem ; but th is 
 signification it has derived from the noun ; for original Iv 
 it meant to pollute, or stain. If I might here mention a 
 conjecture of my own, Goel of blood, (for that is the term at 
 full length,) implies blood-stained ; and the nearest kin^^^ 
 man of a murdered person was considered as stained wit'" 
 his blood, until he had. as it were, washed away the sta*- - 
 and revenged the death of his relation. The name, thej- 
 fore, indicated a person who continued in a state of dl" 
 honour, until he again rendered himself honourable, bj 
 
100 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 Chap. 
 
 the exercise and accomplishment of revenge ; and in this 
 very light do the Arabs regard the kinsman of a person 
 murdered. It was no doubt afterward used in a more ex- 
 tensive sense, to signify the nearest relation in general, and 
 although there was no murder in the case ; just as in all 
 languages, words are gradually extended far beyond their 
 etymological meaning. Etymology may show the circum- 
 stances from which they may have received their signifi- 
 cation ; but it is by no means a definition suited to all their 
 derivative meanings, else would it be prophetic. In Arabic, 
 this personage is called Tair, or according to another pro- 
 nunciation, Thsair. Were this Arabic word to be written 
 Hebraically, it would be ^av, {Shaer) that is, the survivor. 
 It appears, therefore, according to its derivation, to be 
 equivalent to the surviving relation, who teas bound to avenge 
 the death of a murdered person. The Latin word, Superstes, 
 expresses this idea exactly. In Arabic writings, this word 
 occurs ten times for once that we meet with Goel in He- 
 brew ; for the Arabs, among whom the point of honour 
 and heroic celebrity, consists entirely in the revenge of 
 blood, have much more to say of their blood-avenger than 
 the Hebrews ; among whom, Moses, by the wisdom of his 
 laws, brought this character in a great measure into obliv- 
 ion. The Syrians have no proper name for the blood- 
 avenger, and are of course obliged to make use of a 
 circumlocution, when he is mentioned in the Bible. Hence 
 they must either not have been acquainted with the office 
 itself, or have lost their knowledge of it at an early period, 
 during their long subjection to the Greeks, after the time 
 of Alexander the Great. 
 
 If this character, with which the Hebrews and Arabs 
 were so well acquainted, be unknown to us, this great dis- 
 similarity is probably not to be ascribed to the effects of 
 difference of climate, but rather to the great antiquity of 
 these nations. Nations, how remote soever in their situa- 
 tion, yet resemble each other while in their infancy, much 
 in the same way as children in every country have certain 
 resemblances in figure and manners, proceeding from their 
 age, by which we can distinguish them from adults and 
 old people ; and of this infancy of mankind, or, to speak 
 more properly, of that state of nature, whence they soon 
 pass into the state of civil society, the blood-avenger seems 
 to me to be a relic. Let us figure to ourselves a people 
 without magistrates, and where every father of a family 
 is still his own master. In such a state, men's lives would 
 of necessity be in the highest degree insecure, were there 
 no such blood-avenger as we have above described. Ma- 
 gistrate, or public judicial tribunal, to punish murder, there 
 is none ; of course acts of murder might be daily perpe- 
 trated, were there no reason to dread punishment of ano- 
 ther description. For their own security, the people would 
 be forced to constitute the avengement of blood an indis- 
 pensable duty, and not only to consider a murderer as an 
 outlaw, but actually to endeavour to put him to death, and 
 whithersoever he might flee, never to cease pursuing him, 
 until h^ became the victim of vengeance. As, however, 
 every one would not choose to undertake the dangerous of- 
 fice of thus avenging a murder, the nearest relations of the 
 unfortunate sufi"erer would find it necessary to undertake 
 it themselves. It would naturally be deemed a noble deed, 
 and the neglect of it, of course, highly disgraceful, and just- 
 ly productive of such infamy and reproach as blood alone 
 could wash away. Nor would any one obstruct, but rather 
 aid them, in the prosecution of their revenge, if he had a 
 proper regard to his own security. Allowing, however, 
 that the murderer's relations were to protect him against 
 the blood-avenger, or to revenge his death by a fresh murder 
 in their turn, this would still be a proof that they regarded 
 such revenge as an honourable duty, and that they would 
 liave looked upon the family of the murdered person as 
 despicable cowards, if they had left his death unrevenged. 
 And this is in fact the language of nature among nations 
 who have not even the most remote connexion with the 
 Hebrews and Arabs. I remember to have read somewhere 
 in Labat's Voyages, that the Caraibs practise the same sort 
 of revenge, and that it gives rise to family contests of long 
 tluration, because the friends of the murderer take his 
 pirt, and revenge his death on the relatives of the first vic- 
 tim. We can scarcely conceive the human race in a more 
 perfect state of nature than immediately after the deluge, 
 when only Noah and bis three sons were on the face of the 
 carih. Each of them was independent of the other ; the 
 
 father was too old to be able to enforce obedience, had s.v.y 
 of them been refractory ; and besides, a fether is not expect- 
 ed to inflict capital nunishment on his sons or grandsons. 
 Add to this, that Noah's sons and their families were not 
 to continue all together, and to form one commonwealih, 
 but to spread themselves in perfect independence over the 
 whole earth. In order, therefore, to secure their lives, Gud 
 himself gave this command, Gen. ix. 5, 6: " Man's blood 
 shall not remain unrevenged ; but whoever killeth a moji, 
 be it man or beast, shall in his turn be put to death by other 
 men." If the reader wishes to know more of this passage, 
 which has been generall)'' misunderstood, and held out as 
 containing a precept still obligatory on magistrates, let hint 
 consult my Covimentationes ad leges divinas dc peena Hovii- 
 cidii, in Part I. of my Syntagma Commentationum. Here, 
 the only difference from the law now under consideration 
 is, that God imposes this duty, not upon the nearest relation, 
 but on mankind in general, as bound to provide for their 
 common security, and that he gives every individual a right 
 to put a murderer to death, although we hav^e no connex- 
 ion with the person murdered — a law which remained in 
 force, until mankind introduced civil relations, made laA\ s, 
 nominated magistrates, and thus established a better secu- 
 rity to the lives as well as the property of individuals. — 
 
 MiCHAELIS. 
 
 Ver. 25. And the congregation shall deliver thei 
 slayer out of the hand of the revenger of blood, ! 
 and the congregation shall restore him to thei 
 city of his refuge, whither he was fled : and hei 
 shall abide in it unto the death of the high-i 
 priest, which was anointed with the holy oil. | 
 
 Moses found the Goel already instituted, and speaks of; 
 him in his laws as a character perfectly known, and there-' 
 fore unnecessary to be described ; at the same time that lie, 
 expresses his fear of his frequently shedding innocent 
 blood. But long before he has occasion to mention him as: 
 the avenger of murder, he introduces his name in his laws 
 relating to land, as in Lev. xxv. 25, 2G, where he gives bini| 
 the right of redeeming a mortgaged field ; and also in thei 
 law relative to the restoration of any thing iniquitouslyj 
 acquired. Num. v. 8. The only book that is possibly more! 
 ancient than the Mosaic law, namely, the book of J()b,| 
 compares God, who will re-demand our ashes from the 
 earth, with the Goel, chap. xix. 25. From this term, thC; 
 verb h*<i, which otherwise signifies properly to pollute, had! 
 already acquired the signification of redeeming, settivg free, 
 vindicating, in which we find Moses often using it, beforc' 
 he ever speaks of the blood-avenger, as in Gen. xlviii. 15. 
 Exod. vi. 6. Lev. xxv. 25, 30, 33. xxvii. 20, &c. ; and even 
 re-purchase itself is, in Lev. xxv. 31. 32, thence termed 
 n^NJ geulla. Derivatives in any language follow their 
 primitives but very slowly : and when verba denomi/iinHra 
 descend from terms of law, the law itself must be ancient. 
 In the first statute given by Moses concerning the pur'ish- 
 ment of murder, immediately after the departure of the 
 Israelites from Egypt, although he does not mention the 
 Goel by name, he yet presupposes him as well knov>-n. 
 For he says, God will, for the man who has unintentionally 
 killed another, appoint a place to which he may flee, Exod. 
 xxi. 12, 13. There must, of course, have been some one 
 who pursued him, and who could only be stopped by the 
 unhappy man reaching his asylum. At any rate, he need- 
 ed not to flee from justice ; and it was quite enough if the 
 magistrate acquitted him, after finding him innocent. The 
 first passage in which Moses expressly speaks of the Goel, 
 as the avenger of blood, is in the xxxvth chapter of Num- 
 bers : but even there he certainly does not institute his 
 office, but only appoints (and that too merely by-tbe-by, 
 while he is fixing the inheritances of the Levites^ certain 
 cities of refuge, to serve as asyla from the pursuit of the 
 blood-avenger, (ver. 12,) for which there was no necessity, 
 had there been no such person. In the second statute, 
 Deut. xix. 6, he manifests great anxiety lest the Goel 
 should pursue the innocent slayer in a rage, and overtake 
 him, when the place of refuge" happened to be too far dis- 
 tant. Now these are evidently the ordinances of a legislator 
 not instituting an office before unknown, but merely guard- 
 ing against the danger of the person who happened to hold 
 it, being led by the violence of prejudice ct passion, to 
 
(^HAP. 35. 
 
 NUMBERS 
 
 101 
 
 abuse its rights — that is, in the case in question, being 
 hurried, by a false refinement of ideas on the score of 
 honour, to shed the blood of an innocent man. I think I 
 can discover one trace of the terrors which the GoH occa- 
 sioned, as early as the history of the patriarchal families. 
 When Rebecca learned that Esau was threatening to kill 
 his brother Jacob, she endeavoured to send the latter out 
 of the country, saying, " Why should I be bereft of you 
 both in one day 1" Gen. xxvii. 45. She could not be afraid 
 of the magistrate punishing the murder; for the patriarchs 
 were subject to no superior in Palestine ; and Isaac was 
 much too partial to Esau, for her to entertain any expecta- 
 tion, that he would condemn him to death for it. It would, 
 therefore, appear, that she dreaded lest he should fall by 
 the hand of the blood-avenger, perhaps of some Ishmaelite. 
 Now to this Goiil although Moses leaves his rights, of which 
 indeed he would in vain have endeavoured to deprive him, 
 considering that the desire of revenge forms a principal 
 trait in the character of southern nations ; he nevertheless 
 avails himself of the aid of certain particulars of those 
 rights, in order to bring the prevalent ideas of honour un- 
 der the inspection of the magistrate, without hurting their 
 energy, and to give an opportunity of investigating the 
 circumstances of the crime meant to be avenged, before its 
 punishment should be authorized. 
 
 We see that sacred places enjoyed the privileges of 
 asyla : for Moses himself took it for granted, that the mur- 
 derer would flee to the altar, and, therefore, he commanded 
 that when the crime was deliberate and intentional, he 
 should be torn even from the altar, and put to death, Exod. 
 I xxi. 14. Among the Arabs we find that revenge likewise 
 i ceased in sacred places, as for instance (long before Mo- 
 ' hammed's time) m the country round about Mecca, par- 
 ticularly during the holy month of concourse. In such 
 places, therefore, honour did not bind the avenger to put a 
 murderer to death.— Now Moses appointed, as places of 
 refuge, six cities, to which ideas of sanctity were attached, 
 because they were inhabited by the priests, Numb. xxxv. 
 9 — 35. Deut. xix. 1 — 10. To these every murderer might 
 llee, and they were bound to protect him, until the circum- 
 i stances of the case should be investigated; and, in order 
 ;that the Goel might not lie in wait for him, or obstruct his 
 {flight, it was enjoined, that the roads to these six cities 
 ! should be kept in such a state, that the unfortunate man 
 might meet with no impediment in his way, Deut. xix. 3. 
 I do not by this understand, such a state of improvement 
 as is necessary in our highways on account of carriages, 
 but, 1. That the roads were not to make such circuits, as 
 that the Goel could overtake the fugitive on foot, or catch 
 'jhim by lying in wait, before he reached an asylum; for, 
 |in fact, the Hebrew word' (:i3) properly signifies to make 
 ^{Straight ; 2. That guide-posts were to beset up, to prevent 
 i'him from mistaking the right way; and, 3. That the 
 bridges were not to be defective ;— in short, that nothing 
 should retard his flight. If the Goel happened to find the 
 fugitive before he reached an asylum, and put him to 
 •death, in that case Moses yielded to the established preju- 
 i idices respecting the point of honour. It was considered as 
 «jdone in the ardour of becoming zeal, and subjected him to 
 'ino inquisition, Deut. xix. 6. If he reached a place of 
 s refuge, he was immediately protected, and an inquiry was 
 "then made, as to his right to protection and asylum; that 
 ' is, whether he had caused his neighbour's death undesign- 
 ! edly, or was a deliberate murderer. In the latter case he 
 i- was judicially delivered to the Goel, who might put him to 
 death in whatever way he chose, as we shall state at more 
 length, under the head of capital punishments. Even 
 , although he had fled to the altar itself, which enjoyed the 
 ^ius asyli in the highest degree, it could not save him, if he 
 K had committed real murder, Deut. xix. 14. If, however, 
 the person was killed accidentally, and unintentionally, the 
 ; author of his death continued in the place of refuge, and 
 .; the fields belonging to it, which extended to the distance of 
 V. 1,000 ells all around the walls of Levitical cities ; and he 
 ( was there secure, in consequenc|Jr*f the sanctitv of the 
 i place, without any reflection upon me honour of the Goel, 
 ;; even in the opinion of the people. But further abroad he 
 - durst not venture ; for if the Goel met with him without 
 i; :the limits of the asylum, Moses paid no respect to the pop- 
 > ;Ular point d'honneur ; he might kill him without subjecting 
 i '^miself to any criminal accusation. The expression of 
 3 iMo es is, It is no blood, or blood-guilt, Numb. xxxv. 26, 27. 
 
 This confinement to one place may, perhaps, be thought 
 a hardship: but it was impossible 'in any other way to 
 secure the safety of an innocent manslayer, without 
 attacking the popular notions of honour ; that is, without 
 making a law which would have been as little kept as are 
 our laws against duelling. But by this exile in a strange 
 city, Moses had it besides in view, to punish that impru- 
 dence which had cost another man his life ; and we shall, 
 in the sequel, meet with more instances of the severity of 
 his laws against such imprudences. Allowing that it was 
 an accident purely blameless, still its disagreeable conse- 
 quences could not fail to make people more on their guard 
 against similar misfortunes ; a matter to which, in many 
 cases, our legislators, and our police-regulations, pay too 
 little attention. For that very reason, Moses prohibited 
 the fugitive from being permitted, by any payment of a 
 fine, to return home to his own city before the appointed 
 time, Numb. xxxv. 32. His exile in the city of refuge 
 continued until the death of the high-priest. As soon as 
 that event took place, the fugitive mJght leave his asylum, 
 and return to his home in perfect security of his life, "under 
 the protection of the laws. It is probable that this regula- 
 tion was founded on some ancient principle of honour 
 attached to the office of the Goel; of which, however, I 
 have not been able to find any trace remaining. It would 
 seem as if the death of the priest, or principal person in 
 the nation, had been made the period beyond which the 
 avengement of blood was not to extend, in the view of thus 
 preventing the perpetual endurance of family enmities and 
 outrages. We shall perhaps hereafter find an opportunity 
 of giving a more particular illustration of this point. 
 
 By these regulations, borrowed from those very notions 
 of honour which influenced the Goel, Moses did not, it is 
 true, effect the complete prevention of the shedding of inno- 
 cent blood, (for so Moses terms it, in the case of the GoeVs 
 killing the innocent manslayer in his flight ;) for civil laws 
 cannot possibly prevent all moral evil ; nor yet was he able 
 to protect the' man who had through mere inadvertence 
 deprived another of his life, from all the vexatious conse- 
 quences of such a misfortime : but thus much he certainly 
 did effect, that the Goel could but very rarely kill an inno- 
 cent man, and that a judicial inquiry always preceded the 
 exercise of his revenge ; and that inquiry, even when it 
 terminated in condemnation, drew after it no fresh blood- 
 shed on the part of the murderer's family, because every 
 one knew that no injustice was done him. Of course, ten 
 murders did not now proceed from one, as was the case 
 when the Goiil's procedure was altogether arbitrary, and 
 subject to no restraint. It would appear that Moses had 
 thus completely attained the object of his law. At least, in 
 the history of the Israelitish nation, we find no examples of 
 family enmities proceeding from the avengement of blood, oi 
 of murders either openly or treacherously perpetrated from 
 that national idea of honour ; and but one single instance 
 of the abuse oi'Goelism, or rather where it was used merely 
 for a pretext, and the transaction carried on in complete 
 opposition to the acknowledged principles of honour. This 
 instance we find in the history of David, in which the 
 three following particulars relative to this subject deserve 
 notice. 
 
 1. David, in his elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan, 
 seems, in one of his expressions, to allude to the avenge- 
 ment of blood. The Arabs, in their poems, very commonly 
 observe, that no dew falls on the place where a murder has 
 been committed, until the blood has been avenged; and 
 David thus exclaims. Ye mountains of Gilboa, on you fall 
 neither deiv nor rain, 2. Sara. i. 21 ; which was as mucn as 
 saying, the Philistines may look for my avengement of the 
 death of Saul and Jonathan. This, however, is merely a 
 poetical allusion ; for the law of Goelism did not extend to 
 those slain in battle. 
 
 2. Joab assassinated Abner under the pretext of revenge 
 for his having killed Asahel his brother in battle, 2 Sam. 
 iii. 19 — 23. iii. 22 — 27. This, however, was a mere pre- 
 text ; for Joab's only obje(?t was to get that man put out of 
 the way, whom David had appointed to the chief command 
 of the war. He afterward acted in the same manner to 
 Amasa, who had killed no brother of his, but had been only 
 guilty of the same crime of getting himself made general- 
 issimo to Absalom, 2 Sam. xvii. 25. xx. 10. David, when 
 he lay on his death-bed, made this remark on Joab's con- 
 duct in these two instances, that blood shed in war was not, 
 
i02 
 
 NUMBERS 
 
 Chap. 36. 
 
 according to the Hebrew ideas of honour, to be avenged in 
 peace ; and that he therefore regarded Joab as a wilful mur- 
 derer : and he gave it in charge to Solomon his son to have 
 nim punished as such, 1 Kings ii. 5, 6 
 
 3. When we take a connected view of the whole story 
 related in 2 Sam. xiii. 37 to xiv. 20, we should almost sup- 
 pose that David had for a time pursued his son Absalom, 
 on account of his murdering his elder brother, not so much 
 in discharge of his duty as a king, as in the capacity of 
 Gotl, and that the idea of his honour, as such, had prevent- 
 ed him from forgiving him. Absalom stayed out of tlie 
 country with the king of Geshur, and yet David withdrew 
 for a time in quest of him, chap. xiii. 39. This is proper- 
 ly not the business of a magistrate, who is not required to 
 punish a murderer who has fled from the country, but of a 
 Goel. 
 
 Allowing, however, that I were here in a mistake, thus 
 much still is certain from chap. xiv. 10, 11, that there was 
 yet a Gotl ; that to mothers he was an olaject of terror ; and 
 that David, on some occasions, took upon him to prohibit 
 him by an arbitrary decree from pursuing an actual mur- 
 derer, when there were any particular circumstances in 
 the case. So much concerning the rights of the Goel, as 
 modified by the Mosaic statute. There is yet to be noticed 
 one additional circumstance relative to it, entirely conform- 
 able to oriental ideas of honour, and of great importance 
 to the security of lives. Moses (Numb. xxxv. 31) positive- 
 ly prohibits the receiving of a sum of money from a mur- 
 derer in the way of compensation. By the ancient Arabian 
 manners, too, we have seen that this was deemed disgrace- 
 ful, tlere, therefore, Moses acted quite differently from 
 Mohammed, and, as will be universally acknowledged, 
 much more judiciously. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 31. Moreover, ye shall take no satisfaction 
 for the life of a murderer, which is guihy of 
 death ; but he shall be surely put to death. 
 
 Moses absolutely forbids the acceptance of any compen- 
 sation for the life of a murderer. Through the influence 
 of money it appears that punishment was often evaded in 
 .'jome countries, and probably till this time among the Jews. 
 The Baron du Tott tells us, that in case of a duel, if one 
 of the parties is killed, the other is tried for the offence, 
 and if condemned, " the criminal is conducted to the place 
 of punishment ; he who performs the office of execution- 
 er takes on him likewise that of mediator, and negotiates 
 till the last moment with the next of kin to the deceased, 
 or his wife, who commonly follows, to be present at the 
 execution. If the proposals are refused, the executioner 
 performs the sentence ; if they are accepted, he reconducts 
 the criminal to the tribunal to receive his pardon." — Bur- 
 
 DER, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 V"er. 8. And every daughter, that possesseth an 
 inheritance in any tribe of the children of Israel, 
 shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe 
 of her father, that the children of Israel may 
 enjoy every man the inheritance of his fathers. 
 
 The assertion that no Israelite durst marry out of his 
 tribe, and which we find repeated in a hundred books, is a 
 
 silly fiction, directly confuted by the Mosaic writings* 
 Even the high-priest himself was not obliged to confine him- 
 .self to his own tribe ; nothing more being enjoined him, 
 than to look out for an Israelitish bride. It was only in the 
 single case of a daughter being the heiress of her father's 
 land, that she was prohibited from marrying out of her 
 tribe, in order that the inheritance might not pass to ano- 
 ther tribe, Num. xxxvi. From that law, it clearly follows, 
 that any Israelitess that had brothers, and of course was 
 not an heiress, might marry whomsoever she pleased, and 
 to me it is incomprehensible how this chapter should ever 
 have been quoted as a proof of the assertion, that the Israel- 
 ites durst not marry out of their tribes. A strange over- 
 sight has been comniitted, in support of this erroneous opin- 
 ion, which was devised for the purpose of proving (what 
 scarcely required a proof) that Jesus was of the tribe of 
 Judah ; for, say its advocates, " Had not Mary his true mo- 
 ther been of the tribe of Judah, Joseph, a descendant of 
 David's, could not have married her." Here, by the way, 
 they might improve the proof, and make it still more sub- 
 servient to their purpose, by adding that Mary must have 
 been an heiress, and consequently, for that reason, durst 
 not marry out of her tribe. But how surprising is it, that 
 such incongruous blunders could possibly have been com- 
 mitted 1 Luke expressly says, chap. i. 36, that Mary and 
 Elizabeth were relations, and Elizabeth's husband was a 
 priest. Hence her connexion with Mary is a most manifest 
 proof, that Israelites of one tribe might marry into another, 
 and that a priest, for instance, might marry a virgin of the 
 house of Judah, or a descendant of Judah marry the daugh- 
 ter of a Levite. 
 
 It was even in the power of an Israelite ^o marry a wo- 
 man born a heathen : although this also is denied by those 
 who press upon Moses a law of their own. The statute in 
 Deut. xxi. 10 — 14, already illustrated, puts this liberty be- 
 yond a doubt : and he who disputes it, confounds two 
 terms of very diflferent import and extent, heathen and Ca- 
 Tiaanite. An Israelite might certainly marry a heathen 
 woman, provided she no longer continued an idolatress;, 
 which, however, she could not, as a captive and slave with- 
 in Palestine, have been even previously suffered to be ; but 
 all marriages with Canaanitish women was, by the statute 
 Exod. xxxiv. 16, prohibited. In that statute, Moses had it 
 particularly in view to prevent the Canaanites, who were 
 both an idolatrous, and a very wicked race, from continu- 
 ing to dwell in Palestine, and by intermarriages with Is- 
 raelites, at last becoming one people with them : for he 
 dreaded lest they should infect them with their vices and 
 superstitions. Should I here be asked, " Wherein then did, 
 Solomon sin, who, in 1 Kings, xi. 1,2, is certainly censured 
 for marrying heathens?" my answer would be, (1.) that 
 among the wives and concubines whom he took, there were 
 Sidoni^ns, who belonged to the race of Canaanites, and 
 these were expressly forbidden ; (2.) that, contrary to the 
 positive prohibition of Moses, he kept a great seraglio ; 
 (3.^ that he permitted hi.s wives to practise idolatry ; and, 
 (4.) that he was himself led into it also : as we have only 
 to read down to verse 8, to be convinced. I have only 
 further to observe, what I remarked before, that the peo- 
 ple of Israel must, in consequence of the toleration of po- 
 lygamy, have been in a slate of continual decrease, had 
 not marriages with foreigners, and particularly with the 
 captive daughters of the neighbouring people, been per- 
 mitted. — Michaelis. 
 
 ..All 
 
DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 19. And when we departed from Horeb, we 
 went through all that great and terrible wilder- 
 ness, which ye saw by the way of the mountain 
 of the Amorites, as the Lord our God com- 
 manded us ; and we came to Kadesh-barnea. 
 
 The divine blessing has not bestowed the same degree of 
 fruitfulness on every part of Canaan. This fertile country 
 is surrounded by deserts of immense extent, exhibiting a 
 dreary waste of loose and barren sand, on which the skill 
 and industry of man are able to make no impression. 
 The only vegetable productions which occasionally meet 
 the eye of the traveller in these frightful solitudes, are a 
 coarse sickly grass, thinly sprinkled on the sand ; a plot of 
 senna, or other saline or bitter herb, or an acacia bush ; 
 even these but rarely present themselves to his notice, and 
 afford him little satisfaction when they do, because they 
 warn him that he is yet far distant from a place of abun- 
 dance and repose. Moses, who knew these deserts well, 
 calls them "great and terrible," "a desert land," "the 
 waste howling wilderness." But the completest picture of 
 the sandy desert is drawn by the pencil of Jeremiah, in 
 which, with surprising force and brevity, he has exhibited 
 every circumstance of terror, which the modern traveller 
 details with so much pathos and minuteness; " Neither say 
 they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land 
 of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a 
 laud of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and 
 of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed 
 through, and where no man dwelt 1" — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 44. And the Amorites, which dwelt in that 
 mountain, came out against you, and chased 
 you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even 
 unto Hormah. 
 
 It is said of numerous armies, that they are like bees ; 
 and of a multitude, who go to chastise a few, " Yes, they 
 came upon us as bees." To a person who has proved "a 
 man of numerous connexions, " Yes, you will have them 
 as bees upon you." Of any thing which has come sud- 
 denly, and in great numbers, " Alas, these things come as 
 bees upon us." — Roberts. 
 
 The bee is represented by the ahcients, as & vexatious, 
 and even a formidable adversary ; and the experience of 
 every person who turns his attention to the temper and 
 habits of that valuable insect, attests the truth of their asser- 
 tion. They were so troublesome in some districts of Crete, 
 that, if we may believe Pliny, the inhabitants were actually 
 compelled to forsake their habitations. And, according to 
 ^lian, some places in Scythia, beyonxl the Ister, were for- 
 merly inaccessible, on account of the numerous swarms of 
 bees by which they were infested. The statements of these 
 ancient writers is confirmed by Mr. Park, in the second 
 volume of his Travels. Some of his associates imprudently 
 attempted to rob a numerous hive, which they foimd in 
 their way. The exasperated little animals rushed out to 
 defend their property, and attacked the spoilers with so 
 much fury, that they quickly compelled the whole com- 
 pany, men, horses, and asses, to scamper off in all direc- 
 tions. The horses were never recovered, and a number 
 of the asses were so severely sttmg that they died next day: 
 and so great was the loss our intrepid traveller sustained 
 in the engagement, that he despondingly concluded his 
 jouriiey was at an end. The allusion of Moses, therefore, 
 to thiir fierce hostility, in the beginning of his last words 
 to Israel, is both just and beautiful : " And the Amorites 
 which dwelt in that mountain came out against you, and 
 chased you as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even 
 
 unto Hormah." The Amorites, it appears, were the most 
 bitter adversaries to Israel, of all tha nations of Canaan; 
 like bees that are easily irritated, that attack with great 
 fury, and increasing numbers, the person that dares to 
 molest their hive, and persecute him in his flight, to a con- 
 siderable distance — the incensed Amorites had collected 
 their hostile bands, and chased, with considerable slaughter, 
 the chosen tribes from their territory. The Psalmist also 
 complains, that his enemies compassed him about like 
 bees ; fiercely attacking him on every side. The bee, 
 when called to defend her hive, assails with fearless in- 
 trepidity the largest and the most ferocious animal ; and 
 the Psalmist found from experience, that neither the purity 
 of his character, the splendour of his rank, nor the great- 
 ness of his power, were sufficient to shield him from the 
 covered machinations, or open assaults, of his cruel and 
 numerous enemies. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 11. For only Og king of Bashan remained 
 of the remnant of giants ; behold, his bedstead 
 was a bedstead of iron : is it not in Rabbath of 
 the children of Ammon ? nine cubits was the 
 length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of 
 it, after the cubit of a man. 
 
 This is a very curious account of a giant king: his bed- 
 stead was made of iron, and we are able to ascertain its 
 exact length, nine cubits, i. e. " after the cubit of a man." 
 This alludes to the eastern mode of measuring from the 
 tip of the middle finger to the elbow, which will be found 
 to be in general eighteen inches. Thus his bedstead was 
 thirteen feet six inches in length, and six feet in breadth. 
 The hawkers of cloth very seldom carry with them a yard 
 wand ; they simply measure from the eWow to the tip of the 
 middle finger, counting two lengths of that for a yard. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. I pray thee, let me go over, and see the 
 good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly 
 mountain, and Lebanon. 
 
 The beauties of Lebanon seem to have left a deeper 
 impression in the mind of D'Arvieux. " After travelling 
 six hours in pleasant valleys," says that writer, "and over 
 mountains covered with different species of trees, we 
 entered a small plain, on a fertile hill wholly covered with 
 walnut-trees ana olives, in the middle of which is the vil- 
 lage of Eden.— In spite of my weariness, I could not but 
 incessantly admire this beautiful country. It is truly an 
 epitome of the terrestrial paradise, of which it bears the 
 name. Eden is rather a hamlet than a village. The 
 houses are scattered, and separated from each other by 
 gardens, which are enclosed by walls made of stones pileicl 
 up without mortar. We quitted Eden about eight o'clock 
 in the morning, and advanced to mountains so extremely 
 high, that we seemed to be travelling in the middle regions- 
 of the atmosphere. Here the sky was clear and seren«= 
 above us, while we saw below us thick clouds dissolving 
 in rain, and watering the plains. After three hours of la 
 borious travelling, we arrived at the famous cedars abou* 
 eleven o'clock. We counted twenty-three of them. The 
 circumference of these trees is thirty-six feet. The bark 
 of the cedar resembles that of the pine ; the leaves and 
 cone also bear considerable resemblance. The stem Is 
 upright, the wood is hard, and has the reputation of being 
 incorruptible. The leaves are long, narrow, rough, very 
 green, ranged in tufts along the branches ; they shoot in 
 spring, and fall in the beginning of winter. Its flowers and 
 fruit resemble those of the pine. From the full grown 
 
104 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 4—6. 
 
 trees, a fluid trickles naturally, and without incision •, this 
 is clear, transparent, whitish, and after a time dries and 
 hardens: it is supposed to possess great virtues. — The 
 place where these gi^t trees are stationed, is in a plain of 
 nearly a league in circumference, on the summit of a 
 mount which is environed on almost all sides by other 
 mounts, so high that their summits are always covered 
 with snow. This plain is level, the air is pure, the heav- 
 ens always serene. On otie side of this plain is a fright- 
 ful precipice, from whence flows a copious stream, which, 
 descending into the valley, forms a considerable part of 
 the Holy River, or Nahar Kadisha. The view along this 
 valley is interesting; and the crevices of the rocks are 
 filled with earth of so excellent a quality, that trees grow 
 in them; and being continually refreshed with the vapours 
 rising from the streams below, attain to considerable di- 
 mensions. Nor is the sense of smelling less gratified than 
 *hat of sight, by the fragrance diffiised from the odoriferous 
 plants around." He afterward says, " the banks of the river 
 appeared enchanted. This stream is principally formed 
 by the source which issues below the cedars, but is contin- 
 ually augmented by a prodigious number of rills and 
 fountains, which fall from the mountain, gliding along the 
 clefts of the rocks, and forming many charming natural 
 cascades, which communicate cooling breezes, and banish 
 the idea of being in a country subject to extreme heat. If 
 to these enjoyments we add that of the nightingale's song, 
 it must be g'ranted that these places are infinitely agree- 
 able." The cedars which he visited, encircle the region 
 of perpetual snow. Lebanon is in this part free from 
 rocks, and only rises and falls with small easy uneven- 
 nesses, but is perfectly barren and desolate. The ground, 
 where not concealed by the snow, for several hours' riding 
 appeared to be covered with a sort of white slate, thin and 
 smooth. Yet these dreary summits are not without their 
 use ; they serve as a conservatory for abundance of snow, 
 which, thawing in the heat of summer, furnishes ample 
 supplies of water to the rivers and fountains in the valleys 
 below. In the snow, he saw the prints of the feet of sev- 
 eral wild beasts, which are the sole proprietors of these 
 upper parts of the mountain. Maundrell found only six- 
 teen cedars of large growth, and a natural plantation of 
 smaller ones, which were very numerous. One of the 
 largest was twelve yards six inches in girth, and thirty- 
 seven yards in the spread of its boughs. At six yards from 
 the ground, it was divided into five limbs, each equal to a 
 great tree. Dr. Richardson visited them in 1818, and found 
 a small clump of large and tall and beautiful trees, which he 
 pronounces the most picturesque productions of the vege- 
 table world that he had ever seen. In this clump are two 
 generations of trees; the oldest are large and massy, rear- 
 ing their heads to an enormous height, and spreading their 
 branches to a great extent. He measured one, not the 
 largest in the clump, and found it thirty-two feet in cir- 
 cumference. Seven of these trees appeared to be very old, 
 the rest younger, though, for want of space, their branches 
 are not so spreading. This statement sheds a clear and 
 steady light on those passages of scripture which refer 
 to Lebanon ; and enables us to reconcile with ease several 
 apparent contradictions. So famous was this stupendous 
 mountain in the days of Moses, that to be permitted to see 
 it, was the object of his earnest desires and repeated 
 prayers; and as the strongest expression of his admiration, 
 he connects it in his addresses to the throne of his God, 
 with Zion, the future seat of the divine glory. " I pray 
 thee, let me go over and see the good land that is beyond 
 Jordan ; that goodly mountain and Lebanon." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 20. But the Lord hath taken you, and 
 brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even 
 out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of in- 
 heritance, as 7/e are this day. 
 
 It has been observed by chymical writers, not only that 
 iron melts slowly even in the most violent fire, but also 
 that it ignites, or becomes red-hot, long before it fuses : 
 and any one may observe the excessive brightness of iron 
 when red, or rather 7chile hot. Since, therefore, it requires 
 the strongest fire of all metals to fuse it, there is a peculiar 
 propriety in the expression, a furnace for iron, or an iron 
 furnace, for violent and sharp affiictions. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 14. But the seventh day is the sabbath of 
 the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any 
 work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor 
 thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor 
 thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, 
 nor thy stranger that is within thy gates ; that 
 thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest 
 as well as thou. 
 
 In order to render the situation of slaves more tolerable, 
 Moses made the three following decrees for their benefit. 
 
 1. On the sabbath dav they were to be exempted from 
 all manner of work. Of course every week they enjoyed 
 one day of that rest which is so suitable to the nature of the 
 human frame, and so requisite to the preservation of health 
 and strength, Exod. xx. 10. Deut. v. 14, 15. In the laUcr 
 of these passages it is expressly mentioned, that one design 
 of the sabbath was to give a day of rest to slaves, and the 
 Israelites are reminded of their own servitude in Egypt, 
 when they longed in vain for days of repose. 
 
 2. The fruits growing spontaneously during the sab- 
 batical year, and declared the property of none, were des- 
 tined by Moses for the slaves and the indigent. 
 
 3. The Israelites were wont, at their high festivals, to 
 make feasts of their tithes, firstlings, and sacrifices ;' indeed 
 almost all the great entertainments were offering-feasts. 
 To these, by the statutes of Deut. xii. 17, 18 and xvi. 11, 
 the slaves were to be invited. Such occasions were there- 
 fore a sort of saturnalia to them : and we cannot but extol 
 the clemency and humanity of that law, which procured 
 them twice or thrice a-year a few days' enjoyment of those 
 luxuries, which they would doubtless relish the more, the 
 poorer their ordinary food might be. 
 
 It was a part of the good treatment due to domestic ani- 
 mals, that they were to be allowed to share the enjoyment of 
 the sabbatical rest. On the people's own account this was 
 no doubt necessary; because in general beasts can perform 
 no work without man's assistance : but still Moses expressly 
 declares that his commandment respecting the sabbath had 
 a direct reference to the rest and refreshment of beasts as 
 well as of man. His words are, " On the seventh day thou 
 shalt rest from thy labour; that thine ox and thine ass ma}r 
 also rest, and thy servant and strangqr may be refreshed," 
 Exod. xxiii. 12. xx. 10. Deut. v. 14. In fact, some such 
 alternation of labour and rest seems necessary to the pres- 
 ervation of beasts : for those that perform the same kind 
 of work day after day, without any interruption, soon be- 
 come stupid and useless. At least, we see this the case 
 with horses : and the reader will not take it amiss, that a 
 town-bred writer, having better access to observe the effects 
 of labour on them, than on oxen, should prefer taking an 
 example from the former. A horse that has to travel three 
 German miles every day will not hold out long : but, with 
 intervening days of rest, in the same time, he will be able 
 to go over a much greater space without injury. He will, 
 for example, in ten days travel thirty-five German miles, 
 with three resting days, that is, at the rate of five miles 
 each day of the other seven. This fact is so well known, 
 that in riding schools, one or tAvo days of rest, besides Sun- 
 day, are usually allowed to the horses, in order to preserve 
 their spirit and acrfvity ; whereas the post-horses, which 
 are constantly at work, soon become stiff and unserviceable. 
 The case is probably the same with other beasts of burden, 
 although they do not require so many intervals of rest as 
 horses. And hence the good treatment of beasts enjoined 
 in the Mosaic law, and the sabbatical rest ordained for 
 their refreshment, was highly expedient, even in an eco- 
 nomical point of view, and wisely suited to the circum- 
 stances ot a people, whose cattle formed the principal part 
 of their subsistence. — Michaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 Ver. 7. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto 
 thy children. 
 
 If you inquire how a good schoolmaster teaches his pu- 
 pils, the answer will be, very koormeyana, i. e. " sharply, 
 makes sharp, they are full of points." A man of a keen 
 
Chap. 6—8. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 105 
 
 and cultivated mind, is said to be full of points. " He is 
 wt'U sharpened." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon 
 thy hand, and they shall be as frontlets be- 
 tween thine eyes. 
 
 I look upon the words in Deut. vi. 8, as not properly a 
 law, but an admonition; because they merely occur in an 
 harangue which Moses addressed to the people. The 
 Orientals make great use of amulets ; — a subject on which 
 I cannot here expatiate, but of which I generally treat un- 
 der Art. 26, of my Hebrew Antiquities. These amulets 
 C(jnsist sometimes of jewels and other ornaments, and some- 
 times of certain sentences, or unintelligible lines, and Abra- 
 cadabra, written on billets, or embroidered on pieces of 
 linen. Some such things the Israelites, in those days, seem 
 to have worn on their foreheads, and on their hands ; and 
 the Mohammedans do so still. For how often do we find on 
 their breasts a passage from the Koran, which is said to 
 make them invulnerable, or rather actually does so ; for 
 this I know for certain, that no Turk, wearing any such 
 billet, was ever yet slain or M^ounded in battle, excepting 
 ill the single case (which, indeed, they themselves except) 
 ol' his death-hour being come, according to the decree of 
 God. It would appear, that with regard to these embroi- 
 dered phylacteries, the Israelites, in the days of Moses, did 
 not entertain such superstitious ideas, (else would he prob- 
 ably have forbidden them,) but only wore them as orna- 
 ments, and for fashion's sake. As Moses, therefore, wished 
 to exhort the Israelites to maintain the remembrance of 
 his laws in every possible way, and, in a particular man- 
 ner, to impress it on the hearts of their children, he sug- 
 gested to them a variety of expedients for the purpose ; and 
 this among others, that if they chose to wear any embroi- 
 dered ornament on the hand or forehead, it should not con- 
 sist of any thing useless, and still less of any superstitious 
 nonsense, but rather of sentences out of the laws, which 
 their children would thus be in the way of learning. If, 
 however, the fashion changed, and embroidery was no 
 more worn, the Israelites were no longer bound to wear 
 embroidered linen, or billets inscribed with sentences from 
 the Mosaic law; and that the Jews, during the time of 
 prayer, still use them under the name of Thefdlin, pro- 
 ceeds from a misconception of the statute in question. A 
 further detail on this subject, with the proofs that the words 
 of Moses in this passage are not to be understood as only 
 f]2:urative, I cannot here give : but I give it, as I have 
 said, in my Hebrew Antiquities. To most of the read- 
 ers of the present work, who may be desirous of having 
 a philosophical glance at the ancient laws of mankind, 
 researches merely antiquarian would not afford much 
 gratification. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 9. And thou shalt write them upon the posts 
 of thy house, and on thy gates. 
 
 The observation made in the beginning of the preceding 
 article is equally applicable to the subject of the present 
 one. The words of Moses in Deut. vi. 9, immediately fol- 
 lowing those just illustrated, are in like manner to be under- 
 stood, not as a positive injunction, but as an exhortation to 
 inscribe his laws on the door-posts of their houses. In 
 Syria and the adjacent countries, it is usual at this day to 
 place inscriptions above the doors of the houses, not, as 
 the vulgar among us do, in doggerel rhyme, but consisting 
 of passages from the Koran, or from the best poets ; and 
 some of them, that are quoted in books of travels, are truly 
 elegant. This must now be a very ancient practice, as It 
 existed in the time of Moses, For when he exhorts the 
 Israelites to take every opportunity in inculcating his laws 
 on their children, we find him suggesting to them this as 
 one means of doing so ; " Write them on the doors of your 
 touses, and on the gates of your cities." In these words 
 we have not properly a statute ; for if the Israelite did not 
 choose to have an inscription over his door, he had no oc- 
 casion to make one; but they are merely introduced in an ex- 
 t| hortatory discourse to the people, as furnishing an instance 
 ' of the means which they might take, to impress the laws 
 upon the minds of their posterity in their earliest years. 
 Among us, where, by the aid of printing, books are so 
 abundantly multiplied, and may be put into the hands of 
 14 
 
 every child, such measures would be quite superfluous; 
 but if we would enter into the ideas of Moses, we must 
 place ourselves in an age, when the book of the law could 
 only come into the hands of a few opulent people. — Mi- 
 chaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 20. Moreover, the Lord thy God will send 
 the hornet among them, until they that are left, 
 and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed. 
 
 To the people of England this may appear a puerile 
 way of punishing men, but they should recollect that the 
 natives of the East wear scarcely any clothes, having, gen- 
 erally speaking, only a piece of cloth round their loins. 
 They are, therefore, much more exposed than we are to 
 the sting of insects. The sting of the hornet and wasp of 
 those regions is much more poisonous than in Europe, and 
 the insect is larger in size. I have heard of several who 
 died from having a single sting; and not many days ago, 
 as a woman was going to the well " to draw water,"' a hor- 
 net stung her in the cheek, and she died the next day. I 
 have many times seen the hornet attack and kill the taran- 
 tula. Under large verandahs the former may be seen fly- 
 ing near the roof, searching in every direction for his foe, 
 and never will he leave them, till he has accomplished his 
 destruction. Sometimes they both fall from the roof to- 
 gether, when the hornet may be seen thrusting his sting 
 most furiously in the tarantula, and it is surprising to see 
 with what dexterity the former eludes the bite of the latter. 
 The people often curse each other by saying, Unsuttar- 
 Aniverum-KuUive Kuttam, i. e. " May all around thee be 
 stung by the hornet!" (meaning the person and his rela- 
 tions.) The toddy drawers use this imprecation more than 
 other people, because the hornet's nest is generally found in 
 the top of the palmirah or cocoa-nut tree, whence they pro- 
 cure tne toddy. When they ascend, iheir hands and feet 
 being engaged, they cannot defend themselves against their x 
 attacks. The god Siva is described as having destroyed 
 many giants by hornets. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 7. For the Lord thy Godbringeth thee into 
 a good land; a land of brooks of water, of 
 fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys 
 and hills. 
 
 The account which has been now given of the soil and 
 productions of Canaan, will enable the reader to perceive 
 with greater clearness, the force and justice of the prom- 
 ise made by Moses to his nation, a little before he died : 
 " The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land; a land 
 of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, that spring out of 
 valleys and hills ; a land of wheat and barley, and vines, and 
 fig-trees, and pomegranates, a land of oil olive, and honey," 
 If to the natural fertility of this highly-favoured country be 
 added, the manner in which it was divided among the tribes 
 of Israel, it will furnish an easy and satisfactory answer to 
 the question which the infidel has often put : " How could 
 so small a country as Canaan maintain so immense a popu- 
 lation, as we find in the writings of the Old Testament '?" 
 That rich and fertile region was divided into small inheri- 
 tances, on which the respective proprietors lived and reared 
 their families. Necessity, not less than a spirit of industry, 
 required that no part of the surface capable of cultivation 
 should be sufiered to lie waste. The husbandman carried his 
 improvements up the sides of the steepest and most rugged 
 mountains, to the very top ; he converted every patch of 
 earth intoavineyard,oroliveplantation ; he covered the bare 
 rocks with soil, and thus turned them into fruitful fields ; 
 where the steep was too great to admit of an inclined plane, 
 he cut away the face of the precipice, and built walls around 
 the mountain to support the earth, and planted his terraces 
 with the vine and the olive. These circles of excellent 
 soil were seen rising gradually from the bottom to the top 
 of the mountains, where the vine and the olive, shading 
 the intermediate rocks with the liveliest verdure, and bend- 
 ing under the load of their valuable produce, amply reward- 
 ed the toils of the cultivator. The remains of <hose hang- 
 ing gardens, those terrace plantations, after the lapse of so 
 many 'jenturies, the revolutions of empire, am', the long de- 
 
106 
 
 DEUTERONOxMY. 
 
 Chap. S, 
 
 cline of industry among the miserable slaves that now oc- 
 cupy that once highly-favoured land, may still be disiincily 
 traced on the hills and mountains of Judea. Every sywt of 
 ground was in this manner brought into a state of cuUiva- 
 tion; every particle of soil was rendered productive; and 
 by turning a stream of water into every field where it was 
 practicable, and leading the little rills into which they di- 
 vide it, to every plantation, every tree, and every plant, "they 
 secured, for the most part, a constant succession of crops. 
 
 *' Thus much is certain," says Volney, " and it is the ad- 
 vantage of hot over cold countries, that in the former, 
 wherever there is v/ater, vegetation may be perpetually 
 maintained; and made to produce an uninterrupted suc- 
 cession of fruits to flowers, and flowers to fruiis. In cold, 
 nay even in temperate climates, on the contrary, nature, 
 benumbed for several months, loses in a steril slumber 
 the third part, or even half the year. The soil which has 
 produced grain, has not time before the decline of sum- 
 mer heat to mature vegetables; a second crop is not to be 
 expected; and the husbandman sees himself condemned 
 to a long and fatal repose. Syria is exempt from these in- 
 conveniences ; if, therefore, it so happens, that its produc- 
 tions are not such as its natural advantages would lead us 
 to expect, it is less owing to its physical than to its political 
 slate." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, 
 and fig-trees, and pomegranates : a land of oil- 
 olive, and honey. 
 
 If Palestine were now cultivated and inhabited as much 
 as it was formerly, it would not be inferior in fertility and 
 agreeableness to any other country. The situation and 
 nature of the country favour agriculture, and amply re- 
 ward the farmer. Between the 31st and 32d degrees of 
 north latitude, it is sheltered towards the south by lofty 
 mountains, which separate it from the sandy deserts of 
 Arabia ; breezes from the Mediterranean cool it from the 
 west side ; the high Mount Lebanon keeps ofl^ the north 
 wind, and Mount Hermon the northeast. Mountains 
 which decline into hills, are favourable for the cultivation 
 of the vine and olive, and the breeding of cattle ; the plains 
 and valleys are watered by innumerable streams. The 
 fame of the fertility of Palestine, and its former riches in 
 corn, wine, and dates, is even immortalized by ancient 
 coins which are still in existence. But since the land has 
 been several times devastated, greatly depopulated, and 
 come under the Turkish dominion, and the Arab tribes, 
 who rove about it, not only make it insecure for natives 
 and strangers, but also have continual feuds among each 
 other, agriculture has decreased, and the country has ac- 
 quired its present desert appearance, particularly near the 
 roads ; but the traces of its original fertility and beauty are 
 not even now wholly obliterated. As a proof, we may ad- 
 duce the following passage from D'Arvieux. " "We left 
 the road to avoid the Arabs, whom it is always disagreea- 
 ble to meet with, and reached, by a side path, the summit 
 of a mountain, where we found a beautiful plain. It must 
 be confessed, that if one could live secure in this country, 
 it would be the most agreeable residence in the world, part- 
 ly on account of the pleasing diversity of mountains and 
 valleys, partly on account of the salubrious air which Ave 
 breathe th^re, and which is at all times filled with balsam- 
 ic odours from the wild flowers of these valleys, and from 
 the aromatic herbs on the hills. Most of the mountains 
 are dry and arid, and more rock than mould adapted for 
 cultivation ; but the industry of its old inhabitants had tri- 
 umphed over the defects of the soil. They had hewn these 
 rocks from the foot to the summit into terraces, carried 
 mould there, as on the coast of Genoa, planted on them the 
 fig, olive, and vine ; sowed corn and all kinds of pulse, 
 M'^hich, favoured by the usual spring and autumnal rains, 
 by the dew which never fails, by the warmth of the sun 
 and the mild climate, produced the finest fruit, and most 
 excellent corn. Here and there you still see such terraces, 
 which the Arabs, who live in the neighbouring villages, 
 keep up, and cultivate with industry. We then came 
 through a valley about six hundred feet long; and, to judge 
 from the fineness and fresh verdure of the grass, it appear- 
 ed to be an excellent pasture ; at the end of which we found 
 R deeper, longer, broader, and by far more agreeable val- 
 ey than the former, in which the soil was so rich and fer- 
 
 tile, and so covered with plants and fruit-trees, that it 
 seemed to be a garden cultivated by art." Remains of the 
 practice of making terraces on the hills for the purpose of 
 cultivation, were also found by Maundrell, as he states in 
 the account of his journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem. The 
 produce of Palestine is still considerable, not only serving 
 for the supply of the inhabitants, but also affording an over- 
 
 Elus for exportation. Corn and pulse are excellent in their 
 ind, and much corn is annually sent from Jaffa to Con- 
 stantinople. Though the Mohammedan religion does not 
 favour the cultivation of the vine, there is no want of vine- 
 yards in I'alestine. Besides the large quantities of grapes 
 and raisins which are daily sent to the markets of Jerusa- 
 lem and other neighbouring places, Hebron alone, in the 
 first half of the eighteenth century, annually sent three 
 hundred camel loads, that is, nearly three hundred thou- 
 sand weight of grape-juice or honey of raisins to EgA'pt. 
 The cotton which is grown on the plains of Ramie and 
 Esdraelon, is superior to the Syrian, and is exported partly 
 raw and partly spun. Numerous herds of oxen and sheep 
 graze on the verdant hills of Galilee, and on the well-wa- 
 tered pastures of the northern valley of the Jordan. Count- 
 less swarms of wild bees collect honey in the trees and clefts 
 of the rock ; and it is still literally true that Palestine 
 abounds in milk and honey. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 It is, I think, highly probable, that in the time of the most 
 remote antiquity, pomegranate juice was used, in those 
 countries where lemon juice is now used^ with their meat, 
 and in their drinks, and that it was not till afterward, that 
 lemons came among them : I know not how else to account 
 for the mention of pomegranates in describing the fruitful- 
 ness of the Holy Land, Deut. viii. 7, 8 ; Numb. xx. 5. They 
 would not now, I think, occur in such descriptions : the 
 juice of lemons and oranges have, at present, almost super- 
 seded the use of that of pomegranates. Sir John Chardin 
 supposes that this pomegranate wine means, wine made of 
 that fruit ; which he informs us is made use of in consid- 
 erable quantities, in several places of the East, and particu- 
 larly in Persia: his words are, On fait, en diverses parts 
 de I'Orient, du vin de grenade, nomme roubnar, qu'on 
 Iransporte par tout. II y en a sur tout en Perse. My reader 
 must determine for himself, whether pomegranate wine, or 
 wine commonly so called mixed with pomegranate juice, 
 was most probably meant here. The making the first ol 
 these was a fact unknown to me, till I saw this manuscript, 
 I confess, though it seems it is made in such large quanti- 
 ties as to be transported. — Harmer. 
 
 Hasselquist, in the progress of his journey from Acre to 
 Nazareth, tells us, that he found " great numbers of bees, 
 bred thereabouts, to the great advantage of the inhabitants. 
 They make their bee-hives, with little trouble, of clay, four 
 feet long, and half a foot in diameter, as in Egypt. " They 
 lay ten or twelve of them, one on another, on the bare 
 ground, and build over every ten a little roof" Mr. 
 Maundrell, (observing also many bees in the Holy Land,) 
 takes notice, " that by their means the most barren places 
 of that country in other respects became useful, perceiving 
 in many places of the great salt-plain near Jericho, a smell 
 of honey and wax, as strong as if he had been in an apia- 
 ry." Hasselquist also tells us, that he ate olives at Joppa, 
 (upon his first arrival in the Holy Land,) which were said 
 to grow on the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem ; and that, 
 independent of their oiliness, they were of the best kind he 
 had tasted in the Levant. As olives are frequently eaten 
 in their repasts, the delicacy of this fruit in Judea ought 
 not to be forgotten ; the oil that is gotten from these trees 
 much less, because still more often made use of In the 
 progress of his journey, he found several fine vales abound- 
 ing with olive-trees. He saw also olive-trees in Galilee, 
 but none farther, he says, than the mountain where it is 
 supposed our Lord preached his sermon. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 9. A land wherein thou shalt eat bread with- 
 out scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing' 
 in it : a land whose stones are iron, and out of 
 whose hills thou mayest dig brass. 
 
 Iron is the only mineral which abounds in these moun- 
 tains, (Lebanon,) and is found in :hose of Kesraouan, and 
 of the Druzes, in great abundance. Every summer the in- 
 habitants work those mines, whizi are simply ochreous. 
 
Chap. 11. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY 
 
 lor 
 
 Report says, there was anciently a copper-mine near Alep- 
 po, which Volney thinks must have been long since aban- 
 doned : he was also informed by the Druzes, that in the 
 declivity of the hill formerly mentioned, a mineral was 
 discovered w' hich produced both lead and silver ; but as 
 such a discovery would have proved the ruin of the whole 
 district, by attracting the attention of the Turks, they quick- 
 Iv destroyed every vestige of it. These statements estab- 
 lish the Accuracy of Moses, in the account which he gave 
 his nation of the promised inheritance: "A land whose 
 stones are iron, and out of whose mountains thou mayest 
 dig brass." A different temperature prevails in different 
 parts of these mountains ; hence, the expression of the Ara- 
 bian poets, That Lebanon bears winter on his head, sprmg 
 upon his shoulders, and autumn in his bosom, while sum- 
 mer lies sleeping at his feet. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. Who led thee through the great and ter- 
 rible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, 
 and scorpions, and drought ; where there was 
 no water ; who brought thee forth water out of 
 the rock of flint. 
 
 The sacred historian gives here a most accurate and 
 luminous description of an African desert. It is not only 
 descriptive of that desert at the north end of Africa, in 
 which the Israelites sojourned for forty years, but equally 
 so of those at the southern end, on its western side, the 
 greater part of which, for about two thousand miles along 
 the coast, is covered with deep sand. A desert is great 
 when it is extensive ; and such a desert may be called ter- 
 rible, from the anxiety, dread, or fear, which it causes to 
 the persons travelling in it, from what they experience, 
 and from their doubts as to the result. He comes to pools, 
 but he finds that they are like broken cisterns, which, 
 though they once contained water, contain none now ; it 
 has sunk into the ground. He observes two rows of trees 
 anA bushes at a distance, which raises hope in his mind, 
 expecting there to find a river. He hastens to the spot ; 
 but on reaching the banks, he finds the stream is dried up, 
 not a drop of water is visible, for it only runs after rains. 
 He then digs a few feet under the surface in the bed or 
 channel of the river, in hopes of reaching some remnant of 
 its waters, but finds his labour is fruitless ; the water has 
 either sunk beyond his reach, or has been exhaled into the 
 heavens. He has no expectation of relief from a shower 
 falling that evening, or week, or month, for it is a land of 
 DROUGHT, as no rain hjis fallen for the preceding six, twelve, 
 or eighteen months. Would it be surprising to hear the 
 traveller's assistants express themselves thus — " This is 
 indeed a great and terrible wilderness, a land of drought, 
 where no water is !" There were also fiery serpents, and 
 scorpions. It is believed in Africa that the most poisonous 
 serpents were in the most arid parts, and where the heat 
 was greatest. In such parts I uniformly found the scor- 
 pions most numerous. The knowledge of this being the 
 case might render the wilderness through which the Is- 
 raelites travelled, more terrible to them. — African Light. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Ver. 10. For the land whither thou goest in to 
 possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from 
 whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy 
 seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden 
 of herbs. 
 
 To water a large garden requires three men, one of 
 whom stands on a lever near the well, (which has a rope 
 and a bucket attached to it;) on this he moves backward 
 or forward, as the bucket has to ascend or descend. Ano- 
 ther person stands on the ground near the well, to pour the 
 water into a basin. From this a channel, of about eight 
 inches deep and nine broad, runs through the garden ; and 
 . connected with it are smaller water-courses, which go to 
 the different beds and shrubs. The business of the third 
 person, then, is to convey the water to its destined place, 
 which he does by stopping the mouth of eadi course (where 
 sufficient water has been directed) with a little earth ; so 
 that it flows on to the next course, till the whole be water- 
 ed. On those herbs or shrubs which require an extra 
 
 quantity he dashes ilie water plentifidly with his foot I — 
 Roberts. 
 
 The custom of watering with the foot. Dr. Shaw thus 
 explains, from the present practice of the Egyptians: 
 " When their various sorts of pulse, safranon, musca, mel- 
 ons, sugar-canes, &c. (all of which are commonly planied in 
 rills) require to be refreshed, they strike out the pings that 
 are fixed in the bottoms of the cisterns, [wherein ihey pre- 
 serve the water of the Nile,] and then the water gushing 
 out is conducted from one rill to another by the gardener, 
 who is always ready as occasion requires, to stop and di- 
 vert the torrent, by turning the earth against it with hisfoot^ 
 and opening at the same time, with his mattock, a new 
 trench to receive it. This method of conveying moisture 
 and nourishment to a land rarely or never refreshed with 
 rain, is often alluded to in the holy scriptures ; where also 
 it is made the distinguishing quality betwixt Egypt and the 
 land of Caiman, Deut. xi. 10, 11." Mr. Parkhurst is in- 
 clined to adopt another interpretation of the expression, 
 watering with the foot. He says, " it seems more probable 
 that Moses alluded to drawing up water with a machine 
 which was worked hj the foot. Such a one, Grotius long 
 ago observed, that Philo, who lived in Egypt, has describ- 
 ed as used by the peasants of that country in his time ; and 
 the ingenious and accurate Niebuhr, has lately given us a 
 representation of a machine which the Egyptians make use 
 of for watering the lands, and probably the same, says le, 
 that Moses speaks of. They call it sakki tdir beridsjei,, or 
 an hydraulic machine worked fry the feet." — Burdkr. 
 
 In the gardens in Africa, into which they can lead water 
 for irrigation, they have small trenches between each row 
 of plants, made by a rake or hoe. The water being led into 
 the first trench, runs along it until it reaches the other end, 
 when a slave, with his foot, removes any mould which 
 might have slid into the little trench, that it may have a free 
 unobstructed course ; then again clearing a way for it with 
 his foot round the end of the second row of plants, the wa- 
 ter freely runs into the next trench ; and in this way 1 have 
 seen a slave lead the httle stream from one trench to ano- 
 ther, zigzag, over the whole garden ; which is much easier 
 done with the foot than by stooping down and doing it with 
 the hands. The first time I witnessed this operation^ it 
 cleared up, to my satisfaction, the meaning of the above 
 text. — African Light. 
 
 Sometimes the drought of summer renders frequent wa- 
 terings necessary even in Judea. On such occasions,, the 
 water is drawn up from the wells by oxen, and carried by 
 the inhabitants in earthen jars, to refrigerate their planta- 
 tions on the sides of the hills. The necessity to which the 
 Jewish husbandman is occasionally reduced, to water his 
 grounds in this manner, is not inconsistent with the words 
 of Moses, which distinguish the Holy Land from Egypt, by 
 its drinking rain from heaven, while the latter is watered 
 by the foot. The inspired prophet alludes, in that passage, 
 not to gardens of herbs, or other cultivated spots on the 
 steep declivities of the hills and mountains, where,, in so 
 warm a climate as that of Canaan, the deficiency of rain 
 must be supplied by art, but to their corn-fields ; which, in 
 Egypt, are watered by artificial canals, in the manner just 
 described ; in Canaan, by the rain of heaven. The lands 
 of Egypt, it must be granted, are supplied with water by 
 the overflowing of the Nile, and are so saturated with moist- 
 ure, that they require no more watering for the producing 
 of corn, and several other vegetables ; while the gardens 
 require fresh supplies every three or four days. But then 
 it is to be remembered, that immense labour was requisite 
 to conduct the waters of the river to many of their lands ; 
 and those works of the ancient kings of Egypt, by whicK 
 they distributed the streams of the Nile through their 
 whole country, are celebrated by Maillet, as the most mag- 
 nificent and the most admirable of their undertakings; 
 and those labours which they caused their subjects to under- 
 go, doubtless were designed to prevent much heavier, to 
 which they must otherwise have submitted. The words of 
 Moses, addressed to the people of Israel, probably contain- 
 ed a significancy and force of which we can form but a 
 very imperfect idea, and which has not of late been at all 
 understood. Maillet was assured, that the large canal 
 which filled the cisterns of Alexandria, and is at least fif- 
 teen leagues long, was entirely paved, and its sides were 
 lined with brick, which were as perfect as in the days of 
 the Romans. If bricks were used in the constructioK of 
 
lOS 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 11— 13. 
 
 their more ancient canals, a supposition extremely proba- 
 ble ; and if ttiose made by the people of Israel were design- 
 ed for purposes of this kind, — they must have heard with a 
 peculiar satisfaction, that the country to which they were 
 going, required no canals to be dug, no bricks to be prepar- 
 ed for paving and lining them, in order to water it ; . a- 
 bours which had so greatly imbittered their lives in Egypt. 
 This idea is favoured by the account which Moses gives of 
 their former servitude : hard bondage, in mortar and brick; 
 is joined with other services of the field, among which 
 may be numbered the digging and cleansing of their canals ; 
 and in this view, the mortar and brick are very naturally 
 joined with those laborious and standing operations.— Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 11. But the land, whither ye go to possess 
 it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh 
 water of the ram of heaven. 
 
 The striking contrast, in this short but glowing descrip- 
 tion, between the land of Egypt, where the people of Israel 
 had so long and cruelly sufiered, and the inheritance prom- 
 ised to their fathers, where Jehovah reserved for them and 
 their children every blessing that a nation can desire, must 
 have made a deep impression upon their minds. In Egypt, 
 the eye is fatigued with wandering over an immense'feit 
 plain, intersected with stagnant canals, and studded with 
 mud-walied towns and cottages ; seldom refreshed with a 
 single shower ; exhibiting, for three months, the singular 
 spectacle of an extensive sheet of water, from which the 
 towns and villages that are built upon the higher grounds, 
 are seen like islands in the midst of the ocean — marshy and 
 rank with vegetation for three others — and parched and "dusty 
 the remainder of the year. They had seen a population of 
 naked and sun-burnt peasants, tending their buffaloes, or 
 driving their camels, or sheltering themselves from the 
 overwhelming heat beneath the shade of the thinly scattered 
 date or sycamore trees ; below, natural or artificial lakes, 
 cultivated fields, and vacant groimds of considerable ex- 
 tent — overhead, a burning sun, darting his oppressive 
 rays from an azure sky, almost invariably free from 
 clouds. In that " weary land," they were compelled to 
 water their corn-fields with the foot, a painful and labori- 
 ous employment, rendered necessary by the want of rain. 
 Those vegetable productions which require a greater quan- 
 tity of moisture than is furnished by the periodical inun- 
 dations of the Nile, they were obliged to refresh with water 
 drawn out of the river by machinery, and lodged afterward 
 in capacious cisterns. When the melons, sugar-canes, and 
 other vegetables that are commonly disposed in rills, re- 
 quired to be refreshed, they struck out the plugs which 
 are fixed in the bottom of the cisterns ; and then the water 
 gushing out, is conducted from one rill to another by the 
 husbandman, who is always ready, as occasion requires, to 
 stop and divert the torrent, by turning the earth against it 
 with his foot, opening at the same time with his mattock a 
 new trench to receive it. Such is the practice to which 
 Moses alludes; and it continues to be observed without va- 
 riation to this day. But from this fatiguing uniformity of 
 surface, and toilsome method of watering their grounds, 
 the people of Israel were now to be relieved ; they were 
 going to possess a land of hills and valleys, clothed with 
 woods — beautiful and enriched with fountains of water- 
 divided by rivers, streams, and brooks, flowing cool and 
 pure from the summits of their mountains— and, with little 
 attention from the cultivator, exciting the secret powers of 
 vegetation, and scattering plenty wherever they came. The 
 highlands, which are not cultivated Dy irrigation, are to 
 this day more prized in the East than those which must be 
 watered by means of dikes and canals ; both because it re- 
 quires no labour, which in the low country is necessary, to 
 watch the progress of the water through "the channels, in 
 order to give it a proper direction, and because every ele- 
 vation produces an agreeable change of temperature, where 
 the hills display the loveliness of paradise, while the plains 
 are burnt up with insufferable heat. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. And ye shall teach them your children, 
 speaking of them when thou sittest in thy 
 house, and when thou walkest by the way, 
 when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 
 
 When a heathen sits down, he makes mention of the 
 name of his god. Thus, the worshippers of Siva say, 
 when they sit down, "Siva, Siva:" and when they arise, 
 they repeat the same name. At night, when thev retire to 
 rest, also when they arise in the morning, or when they 
 stumble in the way, they utter, " Siva, Siva." They have 
 a proverb to the same purport, " When I stumtte in the 
 way, I know only to mention thy holy name."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. * 
 
 Ver. 31. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord 
 thy God : for every abomination to the Lord 
 which he hateth have they done unto their 
 gods ; for even their sons and their daughters 
 they have burnt in the fire to their gods. 
 
 See on chap. 18. 10. 
 
 Some have doubted whether parents could be so cruel as 
 to compel their offspring to pass through the fire, or to be 
 burnt as a sacrifice to the gods ; but we have only to look 
 at modern India, at the numerous infants thrown into the 
 sacred waters, and at the burning alive of widows on the 
 funeral pile of their husbands, to see what human nature 
 is capable of doing. There is reason to believe that, 
 though the British legislature has covered itself with un- 
 fading honour in abolishing, by law, these fiendish practi- 
 ces, there are still those of a private nature. Not long ago 
 there were two children offered to the cruel goddess Kali ; 
 and one of the supposed perpetrators was arraigned and 
 tried before the Supreme Court, but escaped for want of 
 evidence. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 5. And that prophet, or that dreamer of 
 dreams, shall be put to death ; because he hath 
 spoken to turn you away from the Lord your 
 God, which brought you out of the land 6[ 
 Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of 
 bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which 
 the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk 
 in : so shalt thou put the evil away from the 
 midsf of thee. 
 
 The Hindoos may be called a nation of dreamers; they 
 are often elevated or depressed by the gay or sorrowful 
 scenes of their sleeping hours. The morning is the time 
 for the young and the old to tell their wondrous stories, and 
 many a sage prognostication is then delivered to the atten- 
 tive hearers. Men and women often take long journeys, 
 perform arduous penances, and go through expensive cere- 
 monies, from no other cause than a dream. The crafty 
 Bramin finds this to be a powerful medium of access to the 
 superstition and purses of the people. How many a splendid 
 temple has been built or repaired ; how many a rest-house 
 erected ; how many a costly present has been the result of a 
 real or pretended dream ! Mendicants, pandarams, priests, 
 and devotees, have all had their profitable revelations from 
 the gods. Does a needy impostor wish to have a good berth 
 and a settled place of abode, he buries an idol in some lone- 
 ly place, and atthe expiration of about twelve months he has 
 a dream, and a vision into the bargain, for the god actual- 
 ly appears to him when he is not asleep, and says, "Go to 
 such a place, and you will find my image : there" long, long 
 has it been in disgrace ; but now you must build a temple 
 to my glory." The knave affects to be greatly excited, and 
 relates the whole as a profound secret to a few of his se- 
 lect friends. The story soon gets abroad, and numbers of 
 people beg of him to go to the sacred place in search of the 
 deity. At last he consents ; but expresses many a fear, as 
 they proceed, that he has been deceived, or that his or their 
 unbelief will hinder him from finding out the place, li 
 approaching the scene of operation, he hesitates, thinks he 
 cannot be far off—" the country had just such an appear- 
 ance in his dream:" he then says, " Dig;" and numbers of 
 the people fall to work in good earnest. After some time^ 
 he shakes his head, repeats his incantations, and says;, " Ic 
 is not here." He then points to the real spot, and again his 
 gulled attendants commence their meritorious operations. 
 At last the god is found, and the multitude make the wel- 
 
Chap. 13—15. 
 
 DEUTERONOxMY. 
 
 109 
 
 kin ring with their shouts cf joy. The}' fall before the 
 gi-ave impostor, and worship at his feet. His object is 
 gained ; money and materials come in on every hand ; and 
 shortly after a temple and its goodly courts arise, in which 
 he dwells for life. 
 
 Tha good or evil of dreams is minutely described in 
 some of their scientific works •, and it is not a little amusing 
 to see that some of their notions agree with the English, 
 and especially with those of the inhabitants of North Brit- 
 ai^^i. Does a man dream about the sun, moon, the gods, a 
 mountain, river, well, gold, precious stones, father, child, 
 mother, elephant, horse, car, temple, Bramin, lotus, flesh 
 of animals, flowers, fruits, swan, cow, fowl, toddy ; or that 
 he has his hands tied, or is travelling in a palanquin; that 
 the gods are making ceremonies ; that he sees a beautiful 
 and fair woman, arrayed in white robes, coming into his 
 house ; that his house is on fire ; that he sees a chank, or 
 lamp, or full water-pot ; that he roasts and eats his own 
 flesh; — he will be a king: that he wears new cloth; that he 
 plays in the mud ; that he climbs trees ; that swarms of 
 ants creep over his body ; — these are all good — " he will 
 have great felicity." But to dream the gods laugh, dance, 
 run, sing, weep, or clap their hands, is for the country very 
 evil. That you see a crow, eagle, hawk, ass, black cobra 
 capella, pig, monkey, jackal, or salt, curds, milk, sandals, 
 butter, lime, cotton, mud, red flowers, firewood, a black 
 dog, a devil, a giant, a water-melon, jack-fruit, pumpkin, 
 a hare, an alligator, a bear, a tiger, a ghost ; that you go 
 to, or come from, the sea ; that the teeth fall out ; that the 
 hand is broken ; that you wear dirty clothes ; that the walls 
 of the temple fall ; that you miss your way; that you tr£<Vel 
 towards the south ; that you fall into a pit ; or that you see 
 a company of serpents ; — these are all evil tokens. To 
 avert the evil implied by those dreams, (and a thousand 
 others not enumerated,) a person must make oflTerings to 
 the Bramins, and give articles of food. Alms must be 
 bestowed on the poor, and on the Pandarams and other 
 religious mendicants, and the person must bathe in holy 
 ■water. Let him also listen to the song of Paratham, and 
 all the malignity of his nightly visitations shall be removed. 
 — Roberts. ^ 
 
 Ver. 6. If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or 
 thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy 
 bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own 
 soul, entice thee secretly, saying-, Let us go and 
 serve other gods, which Ihou hast not known, 
 thou, nor thy fathers. 
 
 These, and many other passages, show how much the 
 tQYmbosom is used in the scriptures, and that it generally 
 denotes something of great value or security, affection and 
 happiness. Any thing which is valuable or dear to a per- 
 son is said to be madeyWa, i. e. in his bosom. When a 
 husband wishes to express himself affectionately to his wife, 
 he says, " Come hither, thou wife of my bosom." Is she 
 dead, " Ah ! I have lost the wife of my bosom." In the 
 Scanda Purana, the goddess of Vishnoo is said to rest in 
 the bosom of the god " Vishnoo, whose bosom is the abode 
 of Lechimy." To a father it is said respecting a bad son, 
 " Notwithstanding this, you press him to your bosom ;" — 
 and of a flatterer,' " He would cause the child to fall from 
 the bosom of its mother." (See on Luke xvi. 22.) — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 1. Ye are the children of the Lord your 
 God. Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make 
 any baldness between your eyes for the dead. 
 
 Not only common readers, but even the learned them- 
 selves appear to be perplexed about the meaning of that 
 prohibition of the law of Moses, contained in the latter 
 part of the first verse of the 14th of Deuteronomy, Ye shall 
 not cut yourself, nor make any baldTiess between your eyes for 
 the dead ; but it seems to be clearly explained by a passage 
 of Sir John Chardin, as to its expressing sorrow, though°it 
 is probable the idolatrousness of the practice may, at this 
 distance of time, be irrecoverably lost. Sir John tells us, 
 "that black hair is most esteemed among the Persians, as 
 well on the head, as on 'he eyebrows, and in the beard. 
 That the largest and thickest eyebrows are the most beau- 
 
 tiful, especially when they are of such a size as to touch 
 one anoiher. The Arab women have the most beautiful 
 eyebrows of this sort. The Persian women, when they 
 have them not of this colour, tinge them, and rub them 
 with black, to make them the larger. They also make in 
 the lower part of the forehead, a little below the eyebrows, 
 a black spot, in form of a lozenge, not quite so large as the 
 nail of the little finger." This is probably not of a lasting 
 nature, but quickly wears oft'. These notions of beauty 
 diflfer very much from those of the ladies of Europe. 
 None of tiiem, I think, are fond of having their eyebrows 
 meet ; but, on the contrary, take pains to keep the separation 
 between them very distinct. But if the eastern people are 
 of a different opinion, it is not at all surprising, that at the 
 same time that they laid aside the hair of their heads, with 
 their more artificial ornaments, in a time of mourning, they 
 should make a space bald between their eyes too, since it 
 was their pride to have them meet when in a joyful state, 
 and even to join them with a black perishable spot, rather 
 than have an interruption appear between the eyebrows. 
 But as the sacred writers admitted the making their heads 
 bald in mourning, while Moses, forbids not only idolatrous 
 cuttings of the flesh, but this making the space bald between 
 the eyebrows, it appears there was something of idolatry in 
 this too, as M'ell as in those cuttings, though it is not easily 
 made out. After this circumstance, relating to eastern 
 beauty, is known, the addition to bishop Patrick's account 
 of the heathens being wont to shave the eyebrows, in times 
 of mourning, will, I presume, give no pleasure: " Or," says 
 this worthy writer, " (which some think is the meaning of 
 between the eyes,) the hair in the forepart of the head, or 
 near the temples, as R. Solomon interprets it. Which 
 seems to be the meaning of the Hierusalem Targum, which 
 translates it, 'Ye shall not make any baldness in the house 
 of your countenance.' " — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 4. These are the beasts which ye shall eat ; 
 the ox, the sheep, and the goat. 
 
 See on Lev. 11. 2. y 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Ver. 6. For the Lord thy God blesseth thee, as 
 he promised thee: and thou shall lend unto 
 many nations, but thou shall not borrow ; and 
 thou shalt reign over many nations, but they 
 shall not reign over thee. 
 
 From the numerous allusions in the sacred writings, to 
 the subject of lending and of usury, it is easy to perceive 
 that this was a very common practice among the ancients 
 of the East. There are thousands at this day who live on 
 the interest of a very small capital, and thousands who 
 make immense fortunes by nothing but lending. So soon 
 as a man has saved a small sum, instead of locking it up 
 in his box, it goes out to interest at the rate of twelve, and 
 sometimes twenty, per cent. People of great property, on 
 account of their anxiety to put out every farthing, often 
 leave themselves in considerable difficulty. Children are 
 taught, in early life, the importance of this plan : hence, 
 striplings may be heard to boast that they have such and 
 such sums out at interest. This propensity often places 
 government in circumstances of great loss m reference to 
 their shroflTs, or native treasurers. They lend out money 
 from the chest to a great amount, merely to gain the inter- 
 est. " Ah ! you shall lend money to many people," is one 
 of the blessings pronounced on a youthful pair. When a 
 person acquires a new situation, when a man is prosperous, 
 it is said, " He will lend to many people;" which means, he 
 will be rich, and have much influence. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. But thou shalt open thy hand wide unto 
 him, and shalt surely lend hhn sufficient for 
 his need, in that which he wanteth. 
 
 Of a liberal man, it is said, "He has an open hand." 
 " That man's hand is so open, all will soon be gone." When 
 a poor man asks a favour of a rich man, in the presence 
 of another, the bystanders will say, " Open your hand 
 wide to him." i\"^person who has been refused a favour, 
 says, on his return, " Alas ! he would not open his hand ; 
 no, not a little." — Roberts. 
 
110 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 16. 
 
 Ver. 16. And it shall be, if he say unto thee, 
 I will not go away from thee, (because he 
 loveth thee and thy house, because he is well 
 with thee,) 17. Then thou shalt take an awl, 
 and thrust it through his ear unto the door, 
 and he shall be thy servant for ever : and also 
 unto thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise. 
 18. It shall not seem hard unto thee, when 
 thou sendest him away free from thee ; for he 
 hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, 
 
 • in serving thee six years : and the Lord thy 
 God shall bless thee in all that thou doest. 
 
 Moses specifies two periods, at which the Hebrew ser- 
 vant was to regain his freedom ; the seventh year, Exod. 
 xxi. and Deut. xv ; and the fiftieth, or year of jubilee, 
 Lev. XXV. How these periods are reconcijed with each 
 other, considering that the year of jubilee must always 
 have immediately followed a sabbatical year, and that of 
 course the servants must have been already free, before its 
 arrival, deserves inquiry. Here then all depends upon 
 the sense in which Moses understands the seventh year ; 
 whether as the sabbatical year, in which the land lay fallow, 
 »r as the seventh year from the time when the servant was 
 Dought 1 Maimonides was of the latter opinion, and to 
 me also it appears the more probable. For Moses uni- 
 formly calls it the severith year, without using the term sab- 
 batical year. What then is more natural than to under- 
 stand the seventh year of servitude ] And besides, when 
 he describes the sabbatical year in Lev. xxv. 1 — 7, we 
 find not a word of the manumission of servants. The ap- 
 parent inconsistency of the two laws thus ceases. The 
 servant was regularly restored to freedom after six years' 
 service ; but supposing him bought in the forty-sixth year 
 of the Jewish calculation, that is, four years before the jubi- 
 lee, he did not, in that case, wait seven years, but received 
 his freedom in the year of jubilee, and with it the land he 
 might have sold. In this way Moses took care that too 
 great a proportion of the people should not be slaves at one 
 time, and thus the state, instead of free citizens to defend it 
 with arms in their hands, have only the protection of a 
 number of unarmed servants. There might still be other 
 cases in which a slave only recovered his freedom in the 
 riftieth year. For instance, if a man was sold for debt, or 
 for theft, and the sum which he had to pay exceeded what 
 a servant sold for six years was worth, it is certainly con- 
 formable to reason that the said debtor or thief should have 
 been sold for a longer period, at least for twice six years : 
 but still, in that case, his servitude would cease on the 
 coming of the jubilee, when every thing reverted to its 
 former state. It has been generally supposed, that those 
 servants who did not choose to accept their freedom in the 
 seventh year, and of whom I shall immediately speak, be- 
 came free at the year of jubilee. Here, however, a doubt 
 has occurred to me, Avhether any such servant could, after 
 he had become so much older, have ventured to accept 
 freedom in the fiftieth year; and whether he would not 
 rather wish and expect, that the master to whose service 
 he had, from attachment, generously sacrificed his best 
 days, should keep and maintain him in his old age 1 At 
 the same time, it occurs to me to observe, on the other 
 hand, that in the fiftieth year every Israelite received the 
 land he had sold : so that the servant, who before refused 
 his freedom, because he had nothing to live on, might now 
 accept it with joy, when his paternal inheritance returned 
 to him quite unincumbered. 
 
 Moses, as I have just remarked by the way, presupposes 
 it a possible and probable case, that a servant, who had a 
 goo«J master, miglit wish to remain with him constantly 
 durm;^ fe, without seeking to be free ; particularly if he 
 had lived in contvbemin with one of his master's female 
 slaves, and had children by her, from whom, as well as 
 from hims' T, he must separate, if he left his master's house. 
 In .such a care, he permits the servant to bind himself for 
 ever to thf service of the master, with whose disposition 
 he had by six years' experience become acquainted. But, 
 in order to guard against all abuse of this permission, it 
 was necessary that the transaction should be gone about 
 judicially, ani that the magistrate should know of it. The 
 
 servant was therefore brought before the magistrate, ana 
 had his ear bored at his master's door. It does not belong 
 to my present subject, but to that of Hebrew antiquities, Co 
 enter into a particular illustration of this custom, which, 
 in Asia, where men generally wear ear-rings, was not un- 
 common, and was, besides, among the other Asiatic nations a 
 mark of slavery; and, therefore, I here merely remark, that 
 it was the intention of Moses, that every Hebrew who wished 
 to continue a servant for life, should, with the magistrate s 
 
 Erevious knowledge, bear a given token thereof in his own 
 ody. He thus guarded against the risk of a master hav- 
 ing it in his power either to pretend that his servant had 
 promised to serve him during life, when he had not ; or, 
 by ill usage, during the period that he had him in his ser- 
 vice, to extort any such promise from him. I may further 
 ohservQ, en passant, that the statute of Moses made boring 
 the ears in some degree ignominious to a free man ; be- 
 cause it became the sign whereby a perpetual slave was to 
 be known. And if the Israelites had, for this reason, 
 abandoned the practice, Moses would not have been dis- 
 pleased. Indeed, this was probably the very object which 
 he had in view to get imperceptibly effected by his law ; 
 for in the wearing of ear-rings, superstition was deeply 
 concerned. They were very frequently consecrated to 
 some of the gods, and were thus considered as amulets to 
 prevent the sounds of enchantment from entering the ear 
 and proving hurtful. If, however, the servant was willing 
 to accept his freedom, not only was it necessarily granted 
 him, but Moses besides ordained in one of his latter laws, 
 as an additional benefit, that the master, instead of send- 
 ing him empty away, should make him a present of sheep, 
 fruits, oil, and wine, to enable him to begin housekeeping 
 anew, Deut. xv. 13 — 15. On this occasion he observes, 
 that such a servant does his master twice as much service 
 as a servant hired by the day; which I thus understand. 
 If a man bought a servant for six years, he only paid half 
 as much as a hireling would in that period have received 
 beside^ his maintenance : because the purchase money was 
 necessarily paid down on the spot, and the purchaser had 
 to run the risk of his servant dying before the term of his 
 service was ^cpired. But when this risk was passed, and 
 the servant had actually earned him his daily hire, his 
 master was bound, in recompense of the advantages he 
 thus brought him, to grant him some little gratification. 
 At the same time, Moses reminds the Israelites that their 
 forefathers had all been slaves in Egypt, and that therefore 
 it was their duty to act with kindness towards those of their 
 brethren, whose fate it was to feel the hardships of bondage. 
 
 MiCHAELIS. * 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 •Ver. 16. Three times in a year shall all thy males 
 appear before the Lord thy God in the place 
 which he shall choose ; in the feast of unleav- 
 ened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in 
 the feast of tabernacles : and they shall not ap- 
 pear before the Lord empty. 
 
 Moses instituted other festivals besides the Sabbath ; and 
 three of them, which we usually denominate High Festivals, 
 were distinguished from the Sabbath and all other holy- 
 days, by this remarkable difference, that they lasted ior 
 seven, one of them, indeed, for eight, successive days ; nrui 
 that all the males in Israel were then obliged to assemble 
 at the place where the sanctuary stood. That every peo- 
 ple interested in the preservation of their religion, must 
 set apart, I will not say a day, but certainly a specific time 
 for divine worship, is obvious. This is a point, the proofs 
 of which I willingly leave to theology, or even to philo- 
 sophical ethics, from which I may here assume it as well 
 understood. But besides this, (and here I must beg leave, 
 as it is more agreeable to present usage, to employ the wor«l 
 days for times, without meaning, by day, either the precise 
 period of 24 hours, or that from sunrise to sunset,) there is 
 a necessity for days of rest and pleasure. By unintermitted 
 labour, the body becomes weakened, loses that activity and 
 vigour which the alternations of labour, rest, and amuse 
 ment, produce, and grows soon old. Bodily labour other- 
 wise, no doubt, increases strength ; and the peasant who 
 works with his hands, will always be a stronger man than 
 the person who folds them across his breast, or only write* 
 
 i 
 
Chap. 16. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 in 
 
 |L^witIi them ; but then it must not be unceasing labour, and 
 "without repose, or else it will have the contrary effect. 
 The man who is obliged to toil day after day without in- 
 termission, and especially if he lias done so from infancy, 
 becomes in a manner cramped, stiff, and awkward, at all 
 other bodily exercises; continues, as it were naturally, of 
 small siatu're, and, like a horse daily hacked, is premature- 
 ly worn out. Alternation is the grand maxim of dietet- 
 ics; which, indeed, holds good so universally, that the 
 very best rules of diet prescribed by the ablest physician, 
 will be found in most cases detrimental, if too strictly ob- 
 served. Even the exercises which serve to strengthen and 
 refresh us, if we constantly use any one of them without 
 variation, such as walking or riding, will become irksome 
 and hurtful, if we are obliged to take it every day without 
 intermission. The daily runner, who knows no intervals 
 of rest, will not, it is true, be affected with hypochondria, 
 but will, nevertheless, feel his health otherwise impaired. 
 The postillion, who rides every day, Sunday not excepted, 
 commonly grows old before his time ; and his whole figure 
 .shows, that he has not had a healthy occupation. We see 
 this, even in countries where posts travel so intolerably 
 slow, that the violence of the motion can certainly not be 
 blamed for the injury which incessant riding occasions to 
 their health. The trooper in the field, and the sportsman 
 in the chase, ride perhaps more and harder, and that too in 
 all weathers, but yet we do not remark in them the appear- 
 ances of premature old age and decrepitude, visible in the 
 postillion, who sits on horseback day after day, and must 
 soon be discharged in consequence of his infirmities. Put- 
 ting all this, however, out of the question, that man can 
 have no enjoyment of life, who is obliged to toil perpetual- 
 ly, and in the 'same irksome uniformity of employment. 
 Yet every man ought to have some enjoyment of life, were 
 it only for a single day of recreation occasionally : where- 
 fore else is he in the world 1 If he never tastesthe pleas- 
 ures of life; he soon dwindles into wrinkled insignificance. 
 Nor is It merely rest from his daily toil that he ought, in 
 justice, to enjoy on such occasions ; but he should have it 
 m his power to sport away the time in social enjoyment, 
 in feasting, dancing, or whatever else is most agreeable to 
 his taste, if not contrary to good morals. By this variety 
 of pleasure, the mind is roused from its usual dull uni- 
 formity, enlivened, and restored ; the powers of the body 
 are renovated ; and it becomes more supple, and fitted for 
 greater exertion. In short, the common man throws off 
 the slave, the porter, the hind, the tailor ; and the man of 
 learning the dull pedant. It were cruel to deprive even 
 the slave of a share in such enjoyments, for they are, as it 
 A^ere, a recompense for the hardships of his life ;'and every 
 man who lives, manifestly has a right to partake in them : 
 and it were no less foolish than cruel ; for his health, viva- 
 city, and bodily vigour will suffer in consequence of such 
 privations. It is, therefore, prudent to allow him seasons 
 of recreation : although selfish and tyrannical masters, who 
 only look to immediate advantages," are, from their igno- 
 rance of human nature, and the effects of unceasing labour, 
 sometimes inclined to be of a different opinion. 
 
 In this way, the three annual festivals were, in fact, so 
 many additional and prolonged seasons of pleasure, in which 
 the people were to indulge themselves, exclusive of the 
 weekly enjoyment of the Sabbath. Seven successive days ] 
 .spent in such a manner, serve as a recreation both to body 
 and mind, and we think ourselves after them, as it were, 
 regenerated. To bodily health, such relaxations undoubt- 
 edly contribute ; for that man will always have more 
 strength and activity, who, from his youth, has occasion- 
 ally mingled in the cheerful dance, than the person who 
 has been subjected to unvaried and uninterrupted labour. 
 For that particular sort of labour, the latter may. no doubt, 
 manifest great strength ; but he will become stiff, and in all 
 other applications of his bodily powers, awkward, and al- 
 most as if lamed. This is a dietetical remark, in regard 
 to which, we find a coincidence of opinion, between learned 
 phvsicians and those officers who have to enlist or select 
 soldiers. And as to the mind, by festivities of this nature, 
 it likewise becomes better humoured, and more cheerful : 
 We return to our ordinary labours with more spirit and 
 activity, after spending a whole week in the enjoyment of 
 the pleasures of such extraordinary occasions ; which, how- 
 ever, certainly must not be the constant business of our 
 "Whole lives, but only that of festal seasons. Hence it seems 
 
 to have been one of the great objects of the Mosaic polity, 
 that every individual, without exception, should, along 
 with the evils, occasioually taste also the pleasures of life; 
 the legislator having taken care, that not even the poorest 
 persons, not even the very slaves, should be excluded from 
 sharing in these, during the festivals. The words which, 
 without once thinking of any thing learned, or of the sub» 
 ject of the present work, I have, in the poem entitled 3Toses, 
 and annexed to the second edition of my " Poetical Sketch 
 of the Ecclesiastes of Solomon," put into the mouth of Mo- 
 ses, when he is entreating Pharaoh for a three-days festival 
 to the Israelites, will, perhaps, be found to express, with 
 tolerable accuracy, his real ideas on this point, as far as 
 the tenor of his laws enables us to portray them. 
 
 But three days rest they ask, to keep the feast 
 Commanded by their God; through all the year, besides, 
 Thy duteous slaves. They seek not to rebel 
 Against thy sway ; e'en though the sacred rest 
 Of Sabbath, in thy house of bondage dire. 
 They ne'er enjoy. And canst thou then withhold 
 From these pooi slaves, this respite from their toils'? 
 Or grudge, that they should taste the sweets of life 
 For three short day-s, and then, as too much blest, 
 Serve thee for ever? 
 
 But without reference to this point, the institution of the 
 three high festivals had, in many other respects, salutary 
 influences on the community. The most important of these, 
 and what the legislator, without doubt, had principally 
 in his view, was, that the whole people would thus become 
 more closely connected together, learn to regard each other 
 as fellow-citizens and brethren, and not be so likely to be 
 perpetually splitting into different petty states. They con- 
 sisted, as has been already mentioned, of twelve tribes, of 
 which eaph had its own common weal, and sometimes one 
 was jealous of another. The consequences of this might 
 have been, coiisidering the narrow-minded patriotism of 
 those ancient times, that they might have hated, and, in 
 process of time, been completely alienated from each other. 
 The yearly festivals had the greatest possible effect in pre- 
 venting this misfortune. For while the Israelites thus fre- 
 quently assembled all together for the purposes of religiou.v 
 worship and social enjoyment, they learnt to be more inti- 
 mately acquainted with each other, "and laid the foundations- 
 of firm friendships. That such friendships often have their 
 origin in social intercourse of this kind, and that when peo- 
 ple are met at the festive board, many little grudges are 
 forgotten or removed, is an ancient and" well-known obser- 
 vation. If, on a day of mirth and jollity, we experience 
 pleasure in the society of others, we naturally wish for its fre- 
 quent repetition ; we seek fresh opportunities of intercourse 
 with them, and thus form friendships before we are aware. 
 It was, indeed, only specially commanded, that OT^7e5 should 
 go to the Israelitish festivals ; but fathers, no doubt, gratified 
 their daughters, by taking them along with them to these 
 solemnities, which con.sisted in dancing, and entertain- 
 ments; and thus the men had an opportunity of seeing all 
 the young beauties of the different tribes. This must nat- 
 urally have occasioned intermarriages of one tribe with 
 another, by which the interests of families belonging to 
 different tribes would become more and more closely con- 
 nected, and thus the twelve petty states, be not merely 
 nominally, but really, and from social love, united into 
 one great people. If any of the tribes happened to be jeal- 
 ous of each other, or, as was sometimes the case, involved 
 in civil war, still their meeting together in one place for 
 the purposes of religion and sociality, had a tendency to 
 prevent their being completely alienated, and forming 
 themselves into two or more unconnected states : and even 
 though this had at any time happened, it gave them an op- 
 portunity of again ceinenting their differences and re-unit- 
 ing. This is so correctly true, that the separation of the 
 ten tribes from the tribe of Judah under Rehoboam and Jer- 
 oboam, could never have been permanent, had not the 
 latter abrogated one part of the law of Moses relative to 
 the festivals. In every case it is quite a sufl^cient recom- 
 mendation of any measure of legislative policy, when ex- 
 perience has proved that the evil, which it was its object 
 to prevent, could n(3t possibly have taken place without an 
 abrogation of the law; and' that the destroyer or revolu- 
 tionizer of the state, could not have effected his purpo-^e, 
 without annulling the statutes that regard religion; diff.- 
 cult though it always be to manage such an attempt without 
 
112 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 16. 
 
 discomposing and exasperating the minds of the people. 
 Now, Jeroboam immediately perceived, that the ten tribes 
 would one day re-unite with the tribe of Judah, and sub- 
 ject themselves again to the rightful sovereign of the house 
 of David, if they continued to frequent the high festivals at 
 Jerusalem ; which, by reason of the suspension of arms, 
 at the holy place, would still have been quite in their power 
 with perfect safety : and, therefore, in order to maintain 
 his own authority, and to perpetuate the separation, he pro- 
 hibited the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and, contrary 
 to the law of Moses, appointed two places for divine ser- 
 vice, within his own territories, (1 Kings xii. 27 — 30;) in 
 which, no doubt, the true God was worshipped, but, in or- 
 der to gratify the propensity of the Israelites to idolatry, 
 it was under the similitude of a golden calf. In order to 
 make still surer of his point, he transferred the celebraiion 
 of the feast of tabernacles, and probably of the other two fes- 
 tivals likewise, to a different season from that appointed by 
 Moses ; making it a month later, (1 Kings xii. 33 ;) in do- 
 ing which, he very likely availed himself of the harvest 
 and vintage being, in the tract adjacent to Lebanon, and 
 which extended through the mountains, sometimes a little 
 later than in the other parts of Palestine. 
 
 Another effect of these festivals regarded the internal 
 commerce of the Israelites. I will not positively assert, that 
 Moses had this effect in his view ; but God, who instructed 
 him as to the laws which he was to enact, certainly fore- 
 saw all the future uses of those laws ; and it was an object 
 in AzsAaew, though Moses might not have known it. From 
 the annual conventions of the whole people of any country 
 for religious purposes, there generally arise, without any 
 direct intention on their part, annual fairs and internal 
 commerce ; for, even if it were for no other purpose, mer- 
 ciiants, who are always on the watch to espy and embrace 
 every favourable opportunity of a sale, will resort thither, 
 in order to dispose of their commodities. That our yearly 
 fairs in Germany originally arose in this manner, is evi- 
 dent from the name, which the principal ones bear, Mcssen, 
 or Masses. In ancient Catholic times, masses were said 
 on certain days in particular places, in memory of different 
 saints ; as, for instance, on the Wednesday fifter Easter, 
 near Querfurt, in the place called the Asses-mead ov^, from 
 the Ass, which is so much celebrated in the history of the 
 church , and, as many people assembled for devotion on 
 such occasions, merchants, who had various wares to sell, 
 likewise made their appearance; and so from the masses 
 then read by the Catholic priests, arose what we now, in 
 mercantile language, denominate Messen. Our country, 
 therefore, is indebted to religion, or rather to religious meet- 
 ings, not indeed enjoined by God, but merely devised by 
 men, for a great part of its trade and commerce ; which 
 still subsists, long after people destitute of education have 
 ceased to know wherefore our great yearly fairs, that are 
 of such impoi'tance, have been called "Messen. 
 
 Among the Mohammedans similar festivals have had 
 the very same effect ; for, notwithstanding the difhculties 
 of travelling through the deserts, and the dangers to which 
 the caravans are exposed from banditti, and the great in- 
 tolerance of Islamism, which is such, that no uncircumcised 
 person dare approach Mecca, without the risk of circum- 
 cision ; not to mention the perpetual variation of the time 
 of the pilgrimage thither, in consequence of their strange 
 mode of reckoning by lunar years; — circumstances which, 
 anywhere else, would ruin the most flourishing fairs — still 
 the annual pilgrimage of the Mohammedans to Mecca, has 
 given birth to one of the greatest markets in the world, 
 where people from the extremities of the East and of the 
 "West, meet for the purpose of trade and commerce. Now 
 the very same effects, and to a still higher degree, must, 
 without any effort on the part of the legislator, have resulted 
 from the high festivals of the Israelites, to which the whole 
 people were bound to assemble ; and more particularly, as 
 far as regards internal trade, which is always the most 
 essential branch of commerce to any people. Let us only 
 figure to ourselves, what would follow from such festivals 
 being once set a-going. Every man would bring along 
 with him every portable article which he could spare, and 
 wished to turn into money; and, as several individuals 
 would go from the same place, they would contrive various 
 expedi'Mits to render their goods portable : for they would, 
 for ony thing, have to carry the ipsa corpora of their tithes, 
 .hat were to be consumed during the festivals ; not to men- 
 
 tion other articles necessary to their accommodation, ani 
 which would require means of conveyance (or, as I migw 
 perhaps more properly term them, voitures) expensive in 
 the regions of the East; for they consist, not as with us, of 
 wagons and horses, but of asses and camels ; beasts ol- 
 burden which are highly serviceable in promoting the 
 commerce of Arabia, and the neighbouring country ol 
 Palestine. There never could be any want of buyers, 
 when the whole people were convened ; and the wholesale 
 merchants would soon find it for their advantage to attend 
 and purchase the commodities offered to sale by individ- 
 uals, especially manufactured articles ; nor would the 
 owners of goods, as they must require money to make 
 good cheer on such occasions, hold them at unreasonable 
 rates. Whoever wished to buy any particular articles, 
 would wait the festivals, in order to have a choice ; and 
 this too would lead great merchants to attend with all 
 manner of goods for sale, for which they could hope to 
 find purchasers. That Moses was by no means anxious to 
 engage the Israelites actively in foreign commerce, I have 
 already admitted. The most important species of com- 
 merce, however — that whereby every man has it in his 
 power to convert at a particular place whatever he can 
 spare, that is at all portable, into money, and with that 
 money to buy, at first hand, whatever he wants from any 
 other quarter — must have been, by means of their festivals, 
 much brisker among the Israelites, than we could ever 
 hope to see it in Europe on such occasions. That people, 
 having a national religion from God, and having God 
 himself for their king, enjoyed, in this respect, an advan- 
 tage, which no other people ca7i enjoy : for if it is not God, 
 but only the sovereign, who enjoins a pilgrimage to a fes- 
 tival, every one who can, will endeavour lo get quit of the 
 trouble of the journey, or, at best, to make it with reluc- 
 tance ; and if religious imposture is resorted to, in order to 
 enforce attendance, the fraud will soon be discovered, and 
 the political artifice thereby come to naught. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 18, Judges and officers shalt thou make 
 thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God 
 giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they 
 shall judge the people with just judgment. 
 
 Among the persons that appear in the Israelitish Diet, 
 besides those already mentioned, we find the Schoterim, 
 (n-'Tiiic) or scribes. They were different from the judges ; 
 for Moses had expressly ordained (Deut. xvi. 18) that in 
 every city there should be appointed, not only judges, but 
 Schoterim likewise. It is very certain that Moses had not 
 originally instituted these officers, but already found them 
 among the people while in Egypt. For when the Israelites 
 did not deliver the required tale of bricks, the Schoterim 
 were called to account, and punished ; Exod. v. 6—14. 
 Now, as satar in Arabic, signifies to write ; and its deriva- 
 tive, Mastir, a person whose duty it is to keep accounts, and. 
 collect debts, I am almost persuaded that these Schoterim 
 must have been the officers who kept the genealogical 
 tables of the Israelites, with a faithful record of births, 
 marriages, and deaths ; and, as they kept the rolls of fam- 
 ilies, had, moreover, the duty of apportioning the public 
 burdens and services on the people individually. An office 
 exactly similar, we have not in our governments, because 
 they are not so genealogically regulated ; at least we do 
 not institute enumerations of the people by families. But 
 among a people whose notions were completely clannish, 
 and among whom all hereditary succession, and even all 
 posthumous fame, depended on genealogical registers, this 
 must have been an office fully as important as that of a 
 judge. In Egypt, the Levites had not yet been consecratecf ' 
 and set apart from the rest of the tribes; there, of course^ 
 the Schoterim must have been chosen ejther out of evei 
 family, or, perhaps, merely according to the opinion enter 
 tained of their fitness for the office. In the time of th« 
 kings, however, we find them generally taken from th< 
 tribe of Levi ; 1 Chron. xxiii. 4. 2 Chron. xix. 8— 11^ 
 xxxiv. 13. This was a very rational procedure, as th« 
 Levites devoted themselves particularly to study; and 
 among husbandmen and unlearned people, few were likely 
 to be so expert at writing, as to be intrusted with the keep-' 
 ing of registers so important. Add to this, that in latei 
 times, the genealogical tables were kept in the tempk 
 We find these Schoterim mentioned in many other pas 
 
Chap. 17, 18. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 lis 
 
 sages besides those quoted above. In Numb. xi. 16, they 
 are the persons of respectability from among whom the 
 supreme senate of 70 is chosen. In Deut. i. 15, mention is 
 made of Schoterim appointed by Moses in the wilderness, 
 although the people had previously had such magistrates 
 in Egypt ; most probably he only filled the places of those 
 who were dead. In Deut. xx. 5, we see them charged 
 with orders to those of the people that were selected to go 
 to war ; which is perfectly suited to my explanation of the 
 nature of their office. In Deut. xxix. 10, xxxi. 28, Josh, 
 viii. 33, xxiii. 2, we find them as representatives of the 
 people in the Diets, or when a covenant with God is en- 
 tered into. In Josh. i. 10, they appear as the officers who 
 communicated to the people the general's orders respecting 
 military affairs ; and this, again, corresponds to the prov- 
 ince of muster-masters. In 2 Chron. xxvi. 11, we have 
 the chief Sckoter, under whose command the whole army 
 stands after the general, if indeed he himself he not so. In 
 1 Chron. xxvii. 1, the name of the office alone is men- 
 tioned. — MiCHAELlS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 16. But lie shall not multiply horses to him- 
 self, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, 
 
 ^ to the end that he should multiply horses ; for- 
 asmuch as the Lord hath said unto you, Ye 
 shall henceforth return no more that way. 
 
 The king was not to keep a strong body of cavalry, nor 
 an immoderate number of horses. As Palestine was a 
 mountainous country, and on the more level side bounded 
 by the Arabian deserts, in which an enemy's cavalry could 
 not advance for want of forage, a powerful cavalry was 
 almost unnecessary for its defence ; and nothing but the 
 spirit of conquest could prompt any king to violate the 
 prohibition of Moses. But how little such a spirit accord- 
 ed with the views of their divine lawgiver, we have 
 already seen, in treating of the boundaries of the land. 
 For agricultural purposes, the Israelites made no use of 
 horses ; but only (which in an economical point of view is 
 far more profitable) of oxen and asses. The latter were 
 also most commonly employed as beasts of burden in trav- 
 elling; but the people made most of their journeys on foot. 
 A king, therefore, could have no occasion for a great 
 number of horses, unless he had it in view to carry on 
 foreign wars. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 17. Neither shall he multiply wives to him- 
 self, that his heart turn not away : neither shall 
 he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. 
 
 The king was not to take many wives, ver. 17. This 
 lav/ stands most in need of illustration ; for as Moses did 
 not forbid polygamy to the Israelites in general, it could 
 not be his intention to confine the king within narrower 
 limits, m this respect, than the citizen. Most probably, 
 therefore, Moses had no objectiian to his having /bwr wives, 
 as seems to have been allowed to every Israelite. Even 
 the high-priest, Jehoiada, of whom the Bible always gives 
 a good character, gave tioo wives to King Joash : nor did 
 he think that in this he was trespassing the Mosaic precept, 
 of which he was by his office the authentic expounder; 
 2 Chron. xxiv. 3. — But the oriental seraglio now goes far 
 beyond this moderate polygamy. There, more for state 
 than for connubial purposes, grant multitudes of women 
 are brought together, and compelled to be miserable. 
 Now it is only this excessive polygamy, this seraglio, as a 
 part of royal state, that Moses appears to have forbidden. 
 The nature of the thing itself shows, that it tends to make 
 kings effeminate ; and history confirms this to a much 
 greater extent than could have been presupposed. That it 
 exposes a reigning family to ^e danger of becoming ex- 
 tinct, we have at present a proof in the Turkish empire ; 
 for of the house of Othman there are so few heirs remain- 
 ing, that now (1774) while I am adding this remark for the 
 second edition, they are apprehensive of losing the very 
 last of them in infaiicy. — The imitation of the practice too, 
 by people of rank and opulence, carries polygamy to such 
 a pitch, that, as contributing to the depopulation of a coun- 
 tiv, it is much more destructive than even the pestilence. 
 To the Mosaic polity it was peculiarly unsuitable, for this 
 15 
 
 special reason, that the most beautiful women of all nations 
 are collected for a seraglio : and Moses, as he expressly 
 mentions, was afraid lest such foreign beauties should win 
 the heart of the king, and make him a proselyte to idolatry; 
 and that his fears were not groundless, the example of Sol- 
 omon is a striking proof. No law of Moses was less ob- 
 served than this. It would appear that Saul had a seraglio, 
 and that too belonging to him as king ; for David (2 Sam. 
 xii. 8) is said to have succeeded to it. David, before he 
 was King, had, besides Michal, other two wives, Abigail 
 and Ahinoam, 2 Sam. ii. 2. His first wife, Michal, had 
 indeed been taken from him by his father-in-law ; but he 
 received her again while king of Judah. But after he had 
 reigned some years in Hebron, we find him, besides these, 
 in possession of four new wives, Maacha, Haggith, Abital, 
 and Eglah, 2 Sam. iii. 2 — 8. This, however, was but a 
 moderate superabundance for the king of a single tribe, con- 
 sidering, that seven years after, when he could less plead 
 youth and passion in excuse, we find him, as king of all 
 Israel, with still more wives and concubines, 2 Sam. v. 13; 
 the latter, indeed, in such numbers^ that on his flight from 
 Absalom, he left ten of them to look after the palace, 2 Sam. 
 XV. 16. — To what excess Solomon, the father of but one 
 son, carried polygamy, is known to every one who has but 
 heard of the Bible. It is difficult to believe that he could 
 have knoxon all the inmates of his seraglio ; indeed it re- 
 quired a good memory to have been able to call them by 
 their names. After his time, we have, in the books of the 
 Chronicles, accounts of the polygamy of the kings, not 
 indeed on such an immoderate and magnificent scale, but 
 still far exceeding the degree permitted by Moses". — Mi- 
 chaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 10. There shall not be found among you 
 any one that maketh his son or his daughter to 
 pass through the fire, or that useth divination, 
 or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a 
 witch. 
 
 All idolatrous ceremonies, and even some which, though 
 innocent in themselves, might excite suspicions of idolatry, 
 were prohibited. Of these, human sacrifices are so con- 
 spicuous, as really the most abominable of all the crimes to 
 which superstition is capable of hurrying its votaries, in de- 
 fiance of the strongest feelings of humanity, that I must 
 expatiate a little upon them. For this species of cruelty is 
 so unnatural, that to many readers of the laws of Moses^ it 
 has appeared incredible. Against no other sort of idola- 
 try, are the Mosaic prohibitions so rigorous, as against this; 
 and yet we find that it continued among the Israelites to a 
 very'late period; for even the prophets Jeremiah and Eze- 
 kiel, who survived the ruin of the state, and wrote in the 
 beginning of the Babylonish captivity, take notice of it, and 
 describe it, not as an antiquated or obsolete abomination, but 
 as what was actually in use but a little before, and even 
 during their own times. For a father to see his children 
 suffering, is in the highest degree painful; but that he 
 should ever throw them to the flames, appears so utterly 
 improbable, that we can Jiardly resist the temptation of de- 
 claring any narrative of such inhuman cruelty an absolute 
 falsehood. But it is nevertheless an undoubted fact, that 
 the imitation of the neighbouring nations, of which Moses 
 expresses such anxious apprehensions in his. laws, had, in 
 spite of all the punishments denounced against it, kept up 
 the abominable custom of offering children in sacrifice ; 
 and hence we see how necessary it was to enact the most 
 rigorous laws against the idolatry, which required sacrifi- 
 ces of such a nature. The lives of children were to be se- 
 cured against the fury of avaricious priests, and the fears 
 of silly fools; and if the punishments of the law did not 
 completely produce that effect, we can hardly avoid think- 
 ing, how much it is to be regretted that they were not more 
 severe. To many, both Jewish and Christian expositors, 
 it has appeared so incredible that the Israelites should have 
 sacrificed their own children, that wherever, in the laws, 
 or in the history, they find the expression, making their sons 
 pass thro^tgh the fire to Moloch, (for it was chiefly to th'at god 
 that human sacrifices were offered,) they are fain to explain 
 it on the more humaneprincipleof their merely dedicating 
 their sons to Moloch, and in token thereof, making them 
 pass between two sacrifice-fires^ In confirmatioc of thas ide;a, 
 
il4 
 
 DEUTERONOMY, 
 
 Chap. 18. 
 
 the Vulgate version of Deut. xviii. 10, may be adduced ; 
 Qui kistret filium suum aut Jiliam, ducens per ignem. In 
 this way, the incredible barbarity of human sacrifices would 
 appear to have no foundation in truth ; and I very readily 
 admit, that of some other passages, such as Lev. xviii. 21. 
 2 Kings xxi.6. xxiii. 10. Jer. xxxii. 35, an explanation on the 
 «ame principle may be given with some show of truth. — 
 More especially with regard to the first of these passages, 
 .1 may remark, as Le Clerc has done before me, that we find 
 a variety of lection which makes a material alteration of 
 the sense ; for instead of (■^"'^lyn") Haobir, to cause to pass 
 through, the Samaritan text, and the LXX., read (^"2)7n) 
 Haabid, to cause to serve, or, to dedicate to the service of. In 
 my German version, I have, on account of this uncertain- 
 ty, here made use of the general term Weihem, to dedicate, 
 as the Vulgate had already set me the example, in render- 
 ing the clause, De semine tuo non dabis, ut consecretur idolo 
 Moloch. I was the less inclined to employ the term burn 
 here, because no mention is made of fire, transire facere 
 fer ignem, as in other passages ; but it is merely said, tran- 
 sire facere. At the same time I really believe, from the 
 strain of other passages to be mentioned immediately, that 
 burning is here meant. — With regard, in like manner, to 
 2 Chron. xxviii. 3, where it is expressly said, that Ahaz 
 had, in imitation of the abominable practice of the nations 
 whom Jehovah drove out before the Israelites, burnt his sons 
 with fire, the weighty objection may be made, that there is 
 a various reading, and that, instead of (^y^^i) Veibor, he 
 burnt, almost all the ancient versions, such as the LXX., 
 Syriac, Chaldee, and Vulgate, had read (~>35;">i) Veiober, he 
 'made to pass through, by the mere transposition of the sec- 
 ond radical into the place of the first. The following 
 passages, however, are decisive of the reality of sacrifi- 
 cing their children. 
 
 1. Ezek. xvi. 21, (where we find the first-mentioned ex- 
 pression,) Thou hast slain my sons, and. given them, to cause 
 them pass through to them. Here it is evident thai, to pass 
 through, or to cause to pass through the fire, can be nothing 
 else than burning, because the sons were previously slain. 
 
 2. The passages where the word (jpv) Saraf, to burn, is 
 used ; and where no suspicion of any various reading can 
 take place ; Deut. xii. 31. Jer. vii. 31. xix. 5. 
 
 '3. Psalm cvi. 37, 38. " Their sons and daughters they 
 sacrificed unto devils. They shed the innocent blood of 
 iJieir children, and offered it to the gods of Canaan, and 
 the land was profaned with blood." 
 
 The punishment of those who offered human sacrifices 
 was stoning;, and that, as I think, so summarily, that the 
 bystanders, when any one was caught in such an act, had 
 alright to stone him to death on the spot, without any judi- 
 cial inquiry whatever. Whatever Israelite, says Moses, in 
 Lev. XX. 2, or stranger dwelling among you, gives oiie of his 
 children to Moloch, shall die ; his neighbours shall stone him, to 
 d^ath. These are not the terms in which Moses usually 
 speaks of the punishment of stoning judicially inflicted ; but, 
 all the people shall stone him ; the hands of the witnesses' shall be 
 the first upon him. Besides, what follows a little after, in 
 verses 4 and 5, does not appear to me as indicative of any 
 thing like a matter of judicial procedure ; If the neigh- 
 hours shut their eyes, and will not'see him giving his children 
 to Moloch, nor put him to dea.th, God himself loill be the aven- 
 ger of his crime. I am therefore of opinion, that in regard 
 to this most extraordinary and most unnatural crime, 
 which, however, could not be perpetrated in perfect secre- 
 cy, Moses meant to give an extraordinary injunction, and 
 to let it be understood, that whenever a parent was about 
 to sacrifice his child, the first person who observed him 
 was to hasten to its help, and the people around were in- 
 rtantly to meet, and to stone the unpatural monster to death. 
 In fact, no crime so justly authorizes extrajudicial ven- 
 geance, as this horrible cruelty perpetrated on a helpless 
 child ; in the discovery of which we are always sure to 
 have either the lifeless victim as a proof, or else the living 
 testimony of a witness who is beyond all suspicion ; and 
 where the mania of human sacriifices prevailed to such a 
 pitch as among the Canaanites, and got so completely the 
 netter of all the feelings of nature, it was necessary to 
 ( ounteract its effects by a measure equally extraordinary 
 mid summary. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 11. Or a charmer, or a consulter with fa- 
 joaih'ar spijits, or a wizard, or a necromaricer. 
 
 Sorcery is the fruitful source of numerous evils in the 
 East. Charms and counter-charms call for the ingenuity, 
 the property, the hopes, and fears of thousands. They are 
 often used lo efi'eci ihe most diabolical purposes, and many 
 a seduction is attributed to their supernatural power. The 
 prophet Isaiah gives a description of the voice of a famil- 
 iar spirit, and of its proceedmg like a whisper from the 
 dust. " Thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out 
 of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, 
 and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, 
 out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the 
 dust." Isa. xxix. 4. The margin has, for whisper, " peep 
 or chirp." Lev. xix. 31. 1 Sam. xxviii. 7. The deluded 
 Hindoos, in great emergencies, have recourse to familiar 
 spirits, for the purpose of knowing how they may avoid the 
 evil which is expected, or has in part already come. In 
 the distraction of their minds, they run to the " consulter 
 with familiar spirits," make known their desperate case, 
 and entreat him to lend his assistance. Those " wizards 
 that peep and that mutter," and who seek " for the living 
 to the dead," Isa. viii. 19, are generally frightful in their 
 persons, and disgusting in their manners. See the aged 
 impostor, with a staff in his hand: his person bent by 
 years ; his wild, piercing, cat-like eye ; a scowling, search- 
 ing look; a clotted beard ; a toothless mouth ; dishevelled 
 hair ; a mumbling unearthly voice ; his more than half-na- 
 ked body, covered with ashes; a wild unsteady gait, joined 
 with the other insignia of his office; — give a fearful inliu- 
 ence to his infernal profession. A man who is in distress, 
 and who has resolved to consult with a familiar spirit, 
 sends for two magicians: the one is called the Mavihera- 
 vdthe, i. e. he who repeats the incantations; the other, the 
 Anjanam-Pdrkeravan, i. e. he who looks, and who answers 
 to the questions of the former. His hand is rubbed with 
 the Anjanam, which is made of the burnt bones of the 
 sloth, and the scull of a virgin ; and when the ceremonies 
 have commenced, he looks steadily into his hand, and can 
 never wink or take off his eyes till all shall be finished. 
 On the ground are placed rice, cocoa-nuts, plantains, areca 
 nuts, betel leaves, milk, camphire, and frankincense. The 
 chief magician then, with a loud voice, begins to invoke the 
 nine gods — Ammon, Pullidr, Scandan, Aiyenar, lyaner, 
 Veerapatteran, Anjana, Anuman, Viraver. He then falls 
 to the earth (as do all present) nine times, and begins to 
 whisper and "mutter," while his face is in the "dust," 
 and he who looks in the hand " peeps" and stares for the 
 beings who have to appear. All then stand up, and the 
 first wizard asks the second, " What do you see V He re- 
 plies, " My hand is cracked, has opened, and I see on the 
 groimd." "What else do you see?" — "All around me is 
 light — come, Pulliar, come." " He comes ! he comes !" 
 (His person, shape, and dress, are then described.) The 
 other eight gods are now entreated to appear ; and as they 
 approach, the second person says, "They come! they 
 come !" and they are invited to be seated in the places pre- 
 pared for them. The first magician then inquires of the 
 assembled gods, what is the cause of the affliction, adversi- 
 ty, or danger of the person, for whom the ceremonies have 
 been instituted 1 He who " peeps" in the hand then re- 
 plies, and mentions the name of the evil spirit, who has 
 produced all the mischief The malignant troubler is 
 summoned to appear, and to depart ; but should he refuse, 
 he is bound, and carried off by the gods. Is it not probable 
 that Saul, and the woman who had " a familiar spirit at 
 Endor," were engage^ in a similar way 1 Saul was in 
 great distress, for the Lord would' neither answer him " by 
 dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets;" and being wound 
 up to desperation, he determined to consult " with familiar 
 spirits." He took " two men" with him, who were proba- 
 bly qualified like the two used by the Hindoos. From the 
 fear which the woman showed, it is probable her incanta- 
 
 tions had not exactly answered her expectations, because . 
 
 ytce" when she saw Samuel, pr 
 vingthat she did not expect to see him, and that, therefore, 
 
 " she cried with a loud voice" when she saw Samuel, prt> 
 
 he was sent by some other power; Saul inquired, " What 
 sawest thou 1" which agrees with the question proposed by 
 the first magician to his assistant, as to what he saw through 
 the crack of his hand in the earth. The witch then replied 
 to Saul, " I saw gods ascending out of the earth," which 
 naturally reminds u^> of the nine gods which are believed 
 to ascend after the incantations of the wizard. Saul then 
 asked, " What form is he of 1" and the witch said he was 
 
 J 
 
Ghap. 19—21. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 115 
 
 old, and covered with a mantle, which also finds a parallel 
 in the description of " the shape and dress" given of Pulliar 
 by the second magician. I am, therefore, of opinion, that 
 God allowed Samuel to come to Saul, or sent him ; and 
 that the witch was confounded and terrified at the result of 
 her incantations. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ver. 14. Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's 
 land-mark, which they of old time have set in 
 thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the 
 land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to pos- 
 sess it. 
 
 When the sons of Israel had conquered the land of prom- 
 ise, it was, by the divine command, surveyed and divi- 
 ded by lot, first among the twelve tribes ; and then the por- 
 tion of each tribe was laid out in separate inheritances, 
 according to the number of the families composing the 
 tribe ; and thus every man in the nation had his field, which 
 he was directed to cultivate for the support of himself and 
 his family. To prevent mistake and litigation, these fields 
 were marked off by stones set up on the limits, which 
 could not be removed without incurring the wrath of heav- 
 en. The divine command, in relation to this matter, 
 runs in these terms. " Thou shalt not remove thy neigh- 
 bour's land-mark, which they of old time have set in thine 
 inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land which the 
 Lord thy God giveth thee to possess." In Persia, land- 
 jnarks are still used: in the journey from Arzroum to 
 Amasia, Morier found the boundaries of each man's pos- 
 session, here and there, marked by large stones. Land- 
 marks were used in Greece long before the age of Homer ; 
 for when Minerva fought with Mars, she seized with her 
 powerful hand, a piece of rock, lying in the plain, black, 
 rugged and large, which ancient men had placed to mark 
 -he boundary of the field. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Ver. 19. When thou shalt besiege a city a long 
 time, in making war against it to take it, thou 
 shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing 
 an axe against them : for thou mayest eat of 
 theni, and thou shalt not cut them do\vn, (for 
 the tree of the field is man's life,) to employ 
 them in the siege. 
 
 Can it be a matter of surprise that the Orientals have a 
 great aversion to cut down any tree which bears fruit, when 
 it is known that they principally live on vegetable produc- 
 tions 1 Ask a man to cut down a cocoa-nut or palmirah 
 tree, and he will say, (except when in want, or to oblige a 
 great person,) " What ! destroy that which gives me food? 
 from which I have thatch for my house to defend me from 
 the sun and the rain '? which gives me oil for my lamp, a 
 ladle for my kitchen, and charcoal for my fire? from which 
 I have sugar for my board, baskets for my fruits, a bucket 
 for my well, a mat for my bed, a pouch for my betel leaf, 
 leaves for my books, a fence for my yard, and a broom for 
 my house'? Destroy such a tree 1 Go to some needy wretch 
 who has pledged his last jewel, and who is anxious to eat 
 his last meal." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 6. And all the elders of that city, that are 
 next unto the slain ma?i, shall wash their hands 
 over tlie heifer that is beheaded in the valley. 
 
 When a great man refuses to grant a favour to a friend 
 or relation, the latter asks, " What ! are you going to wash 
 your hands of me?" " Ah ! he has washed bis hands of 
 all his relations ;" which means, he will not have any thing 
 more to do with them ; he is entirely free, and will" not be 
 accountable for them. Hence the Tamul proverb, Avon 
 elldtilum kai kaluvi nitkerdn, i. e. " He has washed his 
 hands of all."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Then thou shalt bring her home to thy 
 house, and she shall shave her head, and pare 
 her nails; 13. And she shall put the raiment 
 
 of her captivity from off her, and shall remain 
 in thy house, and bewail her father and her 
 mother a full month : and after that thou shalt 
 go in unto her, and be her husband, and she 
 shall be thy wife. 
 
 The margin has, instead of pare her nails, " or suffer 7C 
 GROW ;" which is, I doubt not, the true meaning. This wo- 
 man was a prisoner of war, and was about to become the 
 wife of the man who had taken her captive. Having thus 
 been taken from her native land, having had to leave her 
 earliest and dearest connexions, and now to become the 
 wife of a foreigner, and an enemy, she would naturally be 
 overwhelmed with grief. To acquire a better view of hei 
 state, let any woman consider herself in similar circum- 
 stances. She accompanies her husband, or father, to the 
 battle ; the enemy becomes victorious, and she is carried 
 off by the hand of a ruthless stranger, and obliged to sub- 
 mit to his desires. Poignant indeed would be the sorrow 
 of her mind*. The poor captive was to " shave her head" in. 
 token of her distress, which is a custom in all parts of the 
 East at this day. A son on the death of his father, or a 
 woman on the decease of her husband, has the head shaved 
 in token of sorrow. To shave the head also, is a punish- 
 ment inflicted on females for certain crimes. The fair 
 captive, then, as a sign of her misery, was to shave her 
 head, because her father or mother was among the slain, 
 or in consequence of having become a prisoner of war. 
 It showed her sorrow ; and was a token of her submission. 
 (See also Job i. 20. See on 2 Chronicles xvi. 14. Isa. vii. 
 20, and xviii. 2.) But this poor woman was to suffer her 
 nails to grow, as an additional emblem of her distress. 
 That it does not mean she was to pare her nails, as the 
 text has it, is established by the custom in the East, of al- 
 lowing them to grow, when in sorrow. The marginal 
 reading, therefore, would have been much better for the 
 text. When people, either in the church or state, are per- 
 forming penance, or are in captivity, or disgrace, or pris- 
 on, or are devotees, they suffer their nails to grow ; and 
 some may be seen; as were those of the monarch of Baby- 
 lon, in his sorrow, " like birds' claws," literally folding 
 round the ends of the fingers, or shooting through the backs 
 of their hands. But when men fast, which is sometimes 
 done for one or two years, or when husbands fast during 
 their wives' first pregiiancy, they suffer their nails to grow ; 
 also a'female, when in sorrow from other causes, does not 
 "pare her nails" until she has performed the ceremony call- 
 ed Antherette. — Roberts. 
 
 There is a passage in Deuteronomy xxi. 12, about the 
 sense of which our translators appear to have been extreme- 
 ly uncertain : translating one- clause of the 12th verse, a^ul 
 pare her nails, in the text ; and the margin giving the claust; 
 a quite opposite sense, " suffer to grow." So that, according 
 to them, the words signify, that the captived woman should 
 be obliged, in the case referred to by Moses, to pare her 
 nails, or, to suffer them to gr(hc, but they could not tell which 
 of th6sei two contradictory things the Jewish legislator re- 
 quired; the Jewish doctors are, in like manner, divided in 
 their opinion on this subject. To me it seems very plain, 
 that it was not a management of afl^iction and mourning 
 that was enjoined; such an interpretation agrees not witli 
 the putting off the raiment of her captivity ; but then I very 
 much question whether the paring her nails takes in the 
 whole of the intention of Moses. The precept of the law 
 was, that she should make her nails: so the Hebrew words 
 literally signify. Making her nails, signifies making her 
 nails neat, beautifying them, making them pleasing to the 
 sight, or scmething of that sort : dressing them is the word 
 our translators have chosen, according to the margin. The 
 2 Sam. xix. 24, which the critics have cited on this occa- 
 sion, plainly proves this : " Mephibosheth, the son of Saul, 
 came down to meet the king, and had neither made his 
 feet, nor made his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the 
 day the kingdeparted, until the day he came again m peace." 
 It is the same word with that in the text, and our translator «j 
 have rendered it in one clause dressed, in the margin of 
 Deut. xxi. dressed his feet: and in the other trimmed, nor 
 trimmed his heard. Making the feet, seems here to mean 
 washing the feet, paring their nails, perhaps anointing, or 
 otherwise perfuming them, as he was a prince; see Luke 
 vii. 46. As making his beard may mean combing, curling, 
 
16 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 22. 
 
 perfuming it ; every thing, in a word, that those that were 
 people of distinction, and in a state of joy, were wont to do. 
 Making her ruiils, undoubtedly means paring them ; but it 
 must mean too every thing else relating to them, that was 
 wont to be done for the beautifying them, and rendering 
 them beautiful. We have scarcely any notion of any thing 
 else but paring them ; biit the modern eastern women have ; 
 they stain them with the leaves of an odoriferous plant, 
 which they call Al-henna, of a red, or, as others express it, 
 a tawny saffron colour. But it may be thought, that is only 
 a modern mode of adorning their nails : Hasselquist, how- 
 ever, assures us, it was an ancient oriental practice. " The 
 Al-henna," he tells us, " grows in India, and in Upper and 
 Lower Egypt, flowering from May to August. The leaves 
 are pulverized, and made into a paste with water: they 
 bind this paste on the nails of their hands and feet, and 
 keep it on all night. This gives them a deep yellow, which 
 is greatly admired by the eastern nations. The colour 
 lasts for three or four weeks, before there is occasion to re- 
 new it. The custom is so ancient in Egypt, that I have 
 seen the nails of mummies died in this manner. The pow- 
 der is exported in large quantities yearly, and may be 
 reckoned a valuable commodity." It appears by this to be 
 a very ancient practice ; and since mummies were before 
 the time of Moses, this custom of dying the nails might be 
 as ancient too ; though we do not suppose the mummies Has- 
 selquist saw, with their nails thus coloured, were so old as 
 his time. 
 
 If it was practised in Egypt before the law was given, 
 we may believe the Israelites adopted it, since it appears 
 to be a most universal custom now in the eastern coun- 
 tries : Dr. Shaw observing that all the African ladies that 
 can purchase it, make use ©f it, reckoning it a great beauty ; 
 as we learn from Rauwolff, it appears also to the Asiatic 
 females. I cannot but think it most probable then, that 
 making the nails, signifies tinging as well as paring them. 
 Paring alone, one would imagine too trifling a circum- 
 stance to be intended here. No commentator, however, 
 that I know of, has taken any notice of ornamenting the 
 nails by colouring them. As for shaving the head, which 
 is joined with making the nails, it was a rite o.f cleansing, 
 as appears from Lev. xiv. 8, 9, and Num. vi. 9, and used 
 by those v/ho, after having been in an afflicted and squalid 
 state, appeared before persons to whom they desired to 
 render themselves acceptable, and who were also wont to 
 change their raiment on the same occasion. See Gen. xli. 
 14. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 17. But he shall acknowledge Ihe son of 
 the hated for the first-born, by giving him a 
 double portion of all that he hath: for he zsthe 
 beginning of his strength; the right of the 
 first-born is his. 
 
 Next to the father, the first-born of a family possessed 
 the greatest rights. There were not, however, in a family 
 as many first-born as mothers ; in other words, fo be so 
 called, It was not enough that a man should be the first 
 Irait of the mother, or, as the Hebrews term it, Pheter Re- 
 ckem, (om -itas) but that he should, at the same time, be the 
 first son of bis father, who was called Becor, (-»^33) ai.d the 
 hegimiing of his strength. The law of Deut. xxi. 15 — 17, 
 places this beyond dAubt, and the familv history of Jacob 
 confirms it. For though Jacob had four wives, and chil- 
 dren by them all, yet he gave the birthright to one son only, 
 1 Chron. v. 1, 2. That right Reuben had forfeited by a 
 great crime ; but if he had not done so, he would certainly 
 have been considered as the only first-born, as he alone is 
 indeed called so in the history, Gen. xlix. 3. If, instead of 
 this, the first son of every mother had been denominated 
 the first-born, it would have been impossible that, among a 
 people consisting of 600,000 adult males, and where there 
 mast have been at least 300,000 males above 20 years of 
 age, there could be numbered no more than 22,000 first- 
 born of a month old, and above it; because this would have 
 required that every mother, one with another, had brought 
 40 (but because it is so incredible I will write the word at 
 length, /or^y) children into the world. In my Dissertation, 
 r>e Censihis Uebrdornm, to which I here refer the reader, 
 I have illustrated this point at greater length. How the mat- 
 ter was settled when a father had his first-born son by a 
 
 widow, that had had children by her former marriage, 1 
 do not historically know ; but this'much is certain, that such 
 son could not be called Pheter Bechem, the first-fruit of 
 the mother ; and, therefore, could be none of the first-born 
 who, by the Levitical law, (Exod. xiii. 12. Numb. iii. 40— 
 51,) were consecrated to the Lord ; but still he probably 
 enjoyed the rights of a first-born in relation to his brothers. 
 This, however, was a case that could rarely occur, because 
 it appears that the Hebrews seldom married widows who 
 had been mothers ; although I do find one example of such 
 a marriage. Besides his double share of the inheritance, 
 the first-born in patriarchal families had great privileges, 
 and a sort of authority over his l^rethren ; just as at present 
 an Arab emir is, for the most part, only the first-born oj 
 the first-horn of his family, and, as such, rules a horde, com- 
 posed merely of his kinsmen. This was also the case under 
 the Mosaic polity, though with some limitation in point of 
 authority ; and hence we find in the genealogies of the first 
 book of Chronicles, the first-bom is often likewise termed 
 the head (iPfs-^n) of the family ; and in chap. xxvi. 10, it is 
 stated as a circumstance somewhat singular and unusual, 
 that a father constituted one, who was not a first-born, 
 the head. How much further these rights extended, I know 
 not, excepting only in this particular, that the first-born was 
 only the head of the lesser family. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 19. Then shall his father and his mother 
 lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the 
 elders of the city, and unto the gate of his place. 
 
 The gates of cities, in these days, and for many ages af- 
 ter, were the places of judicature and common resort. 
 Here the governors and elders of the city went to hear 
 complaints, administer justice, make conveyances of titles 
 and estates, and, in short, to transact all the public afiairs of 
 the place. And from hence is that passage in the Psalmist, 
 " They shall not be ashamed when they speak to their ene- 
 mies in the gate." (Ps. cxxvii. 5.) It is probable that the 
 room, or hall, where the magistrates sat, was over the gate, 
 because Boaz is said to go up to the gate ; and the reason 
 of having it built there, seems to have been for the con- 
 venience of the inhabitants, who, being all husbandmen, 
 and forced to pass and repass every morning and evening 
 as they went and came from their labour, might be more 
 easily called, as they went by, whenever they'were wanted 
 to appear in any business.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 23. His body shall not remain all night 
 upon the tree, but thou shalt in anywise bury 
 him that day. 
 
 An Englishman is astonished in the East, to see how soon 
 after death the corpse is buried. Hence a new-comer, on 
 hearing of the death of a servant, or native officer, who 
 died in the morning, and who is to be interred in the even- 
 ing, is almost disposed to interfere with what is to him ap- 
 parently a barbarous practice. When the cholera prevails, 
 it is truly appalling to see a man in one hour in health, and 
 the next carried to his long-home. The reason assigned 
 for this haste is the heat of the climate. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 4. Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass oi 
 
 his ox fall down by the way, and hide thysel 
 
 from them : thou shalt surely help him to li( 
 
 them up again. 
 
 Whoever saw a beast tottering or lying under the weighl? 
 of his burden, was bound to help him ; and that with the 
 same exertion and perseverance as the owner himself was 
 doing, or would have done. Nor durst he (for this the, 
 words of Moses seem to imply) desist, but irith the owner 
 that is, until the owner himself left the beast, seeing hin 
 past relief, Exod. xxiii. 5. Both these were incumbent di? 
 ties even when the beast belonged to an enemy; and thi 
 passages above referred to, expressly mention tlie ox an( 
 ass of an enemy. This is reasonable ; for we expect tha 
 even our enemy will be hurnane enough to foreget his en< 
 mity, and give us his aid in a time of need, or, at any rate 
 that he will not be so little as to extend his enmity to i 
 beast quite innocent of our quarrel, and that lies in distre 
 
Chap. 22. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 117 
 
 before his eyes. What we expect, we should do in our 
 turn ; and if we will not listen to the suggestions of moral 
 obligation, still we must see, that among a nation of hus- 
 bandmen and herdsmen, it was a matter of great import- 
 ance to preserve the lives of work-beasts. And upon the 
 same principle, we might perhaps be enjoined to extinguish, 
 if need were, a fire in our enemy's house, as if it were our 
 own. How humane soever this law of Moses may appear, 
 we must at the same time recollect, that it was not given to 
 a people like ourselves, but to a people among whom every 
 individual generally had cattle ; so that they could not but be 
 iniliienced by the great duty of reciprocity, which among us, 
 at least in towns, does not here hold, because but few have 
 cattle. — Amon^ the Israelites, none almost could be so unac- 
 c nstomed to their management, or to their relief in distress, as 
 our town's-people are. This last circumstance is peculiarly 
 deserving of notice. I grant that such a law would, in Ger- 
 ]nany, be a very strange one, if accompanied with no limita- 
 tion to certain classes of the community ; for he who is not 
 from his infancy conversant withbeasts, seldom acquires the 
 confidence or dexterity requisite for their aid when in dan- 
 ger, without hurting himself He, perhaps, sits perfectly well 
 (ai horseback, and can do all that belongs to a good rider, 
 when mounted; but to help up with a horse fallen down 
 uncier his load, or to stop one that has run off, would not 
 be his forte. — Add to this, that among us, neither the ox, 
 nor the ass, but the horse alone, is so honourable, that a 
 gentleman could help up with him, without demeaning him- 
 self, and being laughed at. But among a nation of farm- 
 ers, who ploughed with oxen and asses, and where there 
 were no hereditary noblesse, such a foolish idea, which a 
 legislator must have attended to, could have no place. 
 
 We shall find that Moses, throughout his laws, mani- 
 fests even towards animals a spirit of justice and kind- 
 ness, and inculcates the avoidance, not only of actual 
 cruelty, but even of its appearance. A code of civil law 
 does not, indeed, necessarily provide for the rights of ani- 
 mals, because they are not citizens ; but still, the way in 
 'Which animals are treated, so strongly influences the man- 
 ners and sentiments of a people even towards their fellow- 
 creatures, (for he who habitually acts with cruelty and want 
 of feeling to beasts, will soon become cruel and hard-heart- 
 'cd to men,) that a legislator will sometimes find it necessary 
 ;to attend to it, to prevent his people from becoming savage. 
 
 MiCHAELIS, 
 
 Ver. 6. If a bird's-nest chance to be before thee 
 in the way in any tree, or on the ground, 
 whether they be young ones or eggs, and the 
 dam sitting upon the young or upon the eggs, 
 thou shalt not take the dam with the young, 
 7. But thou shalt in anywise let the dam go, 
 , and take the young to thee ; that it may be well 
 with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy 
 days. 
 
 It is the command of Moses, that if a person find a 
 bird's-nest in the way, whether on a tree or on the ground, 
 •though he may take the eggs, or the young, he shall not 
 take the mother, but always allow her to escane. It is clear 
 that he here speaks, not of those birds whicli nestle upon 
 people's property; in other words, that he does not, for in- 
 .'stance, prohibit an Israelite from totally destroying a spar- 
 jrow's or a swallow's nest, that might happen to be trouble- 
 jsome to him, or to extirpate to the utmost of his power the 
 birds that infested his field or vineyard. He merely en- 
 joins what one was to do on finding such nests on the v:mj, 
 that is, loithout one's property : thus guarding against either 
 the utter extinction, or too great diminution of any species 
 of bird indigenous to the country. And this in some coun- 
 jtries is still, with respect to partridges, an established rule ; 
 which, without a special law, is observed by every real 
 sportsman, and the breach of which subjects him to the re- 
 proaches of his brethren. ]Nor would any further illustra- 
 ^tion be necessary, if Moses spoke only of edible birds, and 
 ^as if merely concerned for their preservation. But this is 
 ,not the case. His expression is so general, that we must 
 'needs understand it of all birds whatever, even those that 
 ;are most destructive, besides what are properly birds of 
 |prey. And here many readers may think it strange, that 
 i Moses should be represented as providing for the preser- 
 
 vation of noxious birds; yet, in fact, nothing can be more 
 conformable to legislative wisdom, especially on the intro- 
 duction of colonies into a new country. To extirpate, or 
 even to persecute, to too great an extent, any species of 
 birds in such a country, from an idea, often too hastily en- 
 tertained, of its being hostile to the interests of the inhabit- 
 ants, is a measure of very doubtful policy. It ought, in 
 general, to be considered as a part of Nature's bounty, be- 
 stowed for some important purpose ; but what that is, we 
 certainly discover too late, when it has been extirpated, and 
 the evil consequences of that measure are begun to be felt. 
 In this matter, the legislator should take a lesson from the 
 naturalist. Linnagus, whom all will allow to be a perfect 
 master in the science of natural history, has made the above 
 remark in his Dissertation, entitled, Historia Naimralis cui 
 Bono ? and gives two remarkable examples to confirm it : 
 the one, in the case of the Little Crmo of Virginia, {Gracv^ 
 la Quiscnla,) extirpated, at great expense, on account of its 
 supposed destructive effects, and which the inhabitants 
 would soon gladly have re-introduced at double expense; 
 the other, in that of the Egyptian Vulture, orRacham, ( Vultur 
 Percnopterus, Linn.) In the city of Cairo, every place is so 
 full of dead carcasses, that the stench of them would not fail 
 to produce putrid diseases; and where the caravans trav^el,. 
 dead asses and camels are always lying. The liacham, 
 which molests no living thing, consumes these carcasses, and 
 clears the country of them ; and it even follows the track of 
 the caravan to Mecca, for the same purpose : and so grate- 
 ful are the people for theserviceit thusdoesthecountry,that 
 devout and opulent Mohammedans are wont to establish 
 foundations for its support, by providing for the expense of a 
 certain number of beasts to be daily killed, and given every 
 morning and evening to the immense flocks of Radiants 
 that resort to the place where criminals are executed, and 
 rid the city, as it would seem, of their carcasses in like man- 
 ner. These eleemosjmary institutions, and the sacred re- 
 gard shown to these birds by the Mohammedans, are like- 
 wise testified by Dr. Shaw, in his Trave.'s. These exam- 
 ples serve pretty strongly to show, that in respect, at least, 
 to birds, we ought to place as much confidence in the wis- 
 dom and kindness of Nature, as not rashly to extirpate any 
 species which she has established in a country, as a great, 
 and, perhaps, indispensable blessing. Limit its numbers 
 we certainly may, if they incommode us ; but still so as 
 that the race shall not become extinct. Of quadrupeds and 
 insects I say nothing, because; with regard to them, we have 
 not such experience to guide us. No inconvenience has 
 arisen in England, nor even in th''- populous part of Ger- 
 many between the Weser and the Oder, from the loss of 
 the wolves ; although I cannot understand, but must leave 
 it to naturalists to find out, how it should happen, that, in^ 
 any country, beasts of prey can be extirpated with less in- 
 convenience than birds ; wild cats, for instance, and to 
 bring that parallel closer, than owls, both of which live 
 upon mice 1 There are yet three peculiar circumstances 
 to be noted, which would naturally make the Israelitish 
 legislator singularly attentive to the preservation of birds. 
 
 1. He was conducting a colony of people into a coun- 
 try with which they were unacquainted, and where they 
 might very probably attempt to extirpate any species of 
 bird that seemed troublesome, without adverting to its real 
 importance ; just as the Virginian colonists did, in the case 
 of their crow. 
 
 2. Palestine is situated in a climate producing poisonous 
 snakes and scorpions, and between deserts and mountains, 
 from which it would be inundated with those snakes, if 
 the birds that lived on them were extirpated. 
 
 3. From the same deserts too, it would be overwhelmed 
 with immense multitudes of locusts and mice, if it were des- 
 titute of those birds, that resort thither to feed on them ; not 
 to mention the formidable swarms of flies in the East, and 
 particularly in Palestine, of which I have taken notice in 
 my Dissertation on this law. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 8. When thou buildest a new house, then 
 thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that 
 thou bring not blood upon thy house, if any 
 man fall from thence. 
 
 The roof is always flat, and often composed of branches 
 of wood laid across rude beams, and to defend it from the 
 injuries of the weather, to which it is peculiarly exposed 
 
118 
 
 DEUTERONOMY 
 
 Chap. 23. 
 
 in the rainy season, it is covered with a stitmg plaster of 
 terrace. It is surrounded by a wall breast high, which 
 forms the partition with the contiguous houses, and pre- 
 vents one from falling into the street on the one side, or into 
 the court on the other. This answers to the battlements 
 which Moses commanded the people of Israel to make for 
 the roof of their houses, for the same reason. " When 
 thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battle- 
 ment (npya) for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon 
 thy house, if any man fall from thence." Instead of the 
 parapet wall, some terraces are guarded, like the galleries, 
 with balustrades only, or latticed work. Of the same 
 kind, probably, was the lattice or net, as the term (p22rff 
 shebaca) seems to import, through which Ahaziah, the 
 king of Samaria, fell down into the court. This incident 
 proves the necessity of the law which Jehovah graciously 
 dictated from Sinai, and furnishes a beautiful example of 
 his naternal care and goodness ; for the terrace was a place 
 where many offices of the family were performed, and bu- 
 sine«:s of no little importance was occasionally transacted. 
 Rahab concealed the spies on the roof, with the stalks of 
 flux which she had laid in order to dry; the king of Israel, 
 according to the custom of his country, rose from his bed, 
 and walked upon the roof of his house, to enjoy the refresh- 
 ing breezes of the evening; upon the top of the house, the 
 prophet conversed with Saul, about the gracious designs of 
 God, respecting him and his family; to the same place, 
 Peter retired to offer up his devotions ; and in the feast of 
 tabernacles, under the government of Nehemiah, booths 
 were erected, as well upon the terraces of their houses, as 
 in their courts, and in the streets of the city. In Judea, the 
 inhabitants sleep upon the tops of their houses during the 
 heats of summer, in arbours made of the branches of trees, 
 or in tents of rushes. When Dr. Pococke was at Tiberias 
 in Galilee, he was entertained by the sheik's steward, and 
 with his company supped upon the lop of the house for 
 coolness, according to their custom, and lodged there like- 
 wise, in a sort of closet of about eight feet square, formed 
 of wicker-work, plastered round towards the bottom, but 
 v/ithout any door, each person having his cell. In like 
 manner, the Persians take refuge during the day in sub- 
 terraneous chambers, and pass the night on the flat roofs of 
 their houses. — Paxton. 
 
 We have repeated intimations in scripture, of a custom 
 which would be extremely inconvenient in England ; — 
 that of sleeping on the top Of the house, exposed to the 
 open air, and sky: so we read, " Samuel came to call Saul 
 
 about the spring of the day, not to — but on — the top of the 
 house ; and communed with him on the house-top " 
 
 So 
 
 Solomon observes, " It is better to dwell in a corner on the 
 house-top, than with a brawling Avoman in a wide street." 
 The same idea may be noticed elsewhere. " It has ever 
 t)een a custom with them, [the Arabs in the East,] equally 
 connected with health and pleasure, to pass the nights in 
 summer upon the house-tops, which for this very purpose 
 are made flat, and divided from each other by walls. We 
 found this wav of sleeping extremely agreeable ; as we 
 thereby enjoyed the cool air, above the reach of gnats and 
 vapours, without any other covering than the canopy of the 
 heavens, which unavoidably presents itself in different 
 pleasing forms, upon every interruption of rest, when si- 
 lence and solitude strongly dispose the mind to contempla- 
 tion." (Wood's Balbec, Introduction.) " I determined he 
 should lodge in a kiosque, on the top of my house, where I 
 Icept him till his exaltation to the patriarchate, which, after 
 a long negotiation, my wife's brother obtained, for a pretty 
 large sum of money, to be paid in new sequins." (Baron 
 du Tott.) The propriety of the Mosaic precept (Deut. xxii. 
 8,) which orders a kind of balustrade, or parapet, to sur- 
 round the roof, lest any man should fall from thence, is 
 strongly enforced by this relation ; for, if we suppose a per- 
 son to rise in the night, without being fully awake, he 
 might easily kill himself by falling from the roof. Some- 
 fhing of the kind appears in the history of Amaziah, 
 2 Kings i. 2. In several places scripture hints at grass 
 gro jv ing on the house-tops, but which comes to nothing. 
 The following quotation will show the nature of this : " In 
 the morning the mastei of the house laid in a stock of 
 earth; which was carried up, and spread evenly on the 
 top v^r the house, which is flat. The whole roof is thus 
 fo.mfd of mere earth, laid on, and rolled hard and flat. 
 On t.bi- lop of every house is a large stone roller, for the 
 
 purpose of hardening and flattening this layer of made soil, 
 so that the rain may not penetrate : but upon this surface, 
 as may be supposed, grass and weeds grow freely. It is to 
 such grass that the Psalmist alludes, as useless' and bad." 
 (Jowett's Christian Researches in Syria.) There is also 
 mention of persons on the house-top hastily escaping from 
 thence without entering the house to secure their properly 
 — as if hastily awaked out of sleep, or, &c. by the clamours 
 of an invading enemy.— Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 10. Thou shalt not plough with an ox and 
 an ass together. 
 
 Le Clerc and some others think that this text is to be ta- 
 ken in a symbolical sense, and that intermarriages with 
 pagans and unbelievers are forbidden by it, Maimonides 
 and the Jewish rabbles are of opinion, that this prohibition 
 was given in consequence of the ox being a clean, and the 
 ass an unclean animal. But no other interpretation need 
 be sought than that which arises from the humanity shown 
 to animals in various parts of the Mosaic laws. The ass 
 is lower than the ox, and when in a yoke together must 
 bear the principal weight, and that in a very painful posi- 
 tion of the neck ; his steps are unequal, and his strength is 
 inferior, which must occasion an irregular draught, and 
 great oppression to both. The ass is a stubborn, refractory, 
 and, in these countries, a spirited creature ; the ox, on the 
 contrary, is gentle, tractable, and patient : writers on agri- 
 culture, therefore, have given the same precept as Moses ; 
 and Calpurnius says generally, Ne pecora quidem jugo 
 nisi paria succedant. — " Let no cattle be yoked together 
 except they match." Cruel and unnatural'as this practice 
 is, we may suppose it was not uncommon; for we find it 
 alluded to in the Artlularia of Plautus, act i. s. 4. Old 
 Euclio, addressing himself to Megadorus, says. Nunc si 
 filiam locassem meam tibi, in mentem venit. Te bovem 
 esse, et me esse asellum, ubi tecum conjunctus sim. " If I 
 were to give my daughter to you, it occurs to me, that Avhen 
 we had formed^ this alliance, I should be the ass, and you 
 
 the ox." — BuRDERi 
 
 In the sandy fields of Syria and Egypt, where deep 
 ploughing, by draining off" the moisture necessary to vege- 
 tation, would be hurtful, a single ass is occasioiially seen 
 drawing the plough. The implement employed, is made 
 to correspond with the strength of the animal ; it is so light, 
 " that a man of moderate strength," says Dr. Russel, " may 
 easily carry it with one hand ; a little cow, or at most two, 
 and sometimes only an ass, is sufficient to draw it." But 
 this is done only in very light soils ; where the ground is 
 stiffer, and a deeper furrow required, two beasts are yoked 
 together in one plough. In Syria, where the distinction 
 between clean and unclean beasts did not exist, and where 
 unnatural associations were disregarded, they very often 
 joined an ox and an ass in the same yoke. But the law of 
 Moses prohibited, by an express statute, such incongruous 
 mixtures: " Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass 
 together." The chosen people might employ them both iir 
 tilling their ground ; but, in every instance, they were to 
 be joined only with those of their own species. This pre- ■ 
 cept embraced at once, the benefit of the tribes, and the 
 comfort of their cattle. The benevolent legislator would 
 not have animals of unequal strength, and of discordant 
 habits and dispositions, forced into a union to which they 
 are naturally averse, and where the labour could not be 
 equally divided. But Jehovah, whose care extends to the 
 happiness even of an ox or an ass, had certainly a higher, 
 object in view. He meant, by this prohibition, to instruct 
 his people to preserve, with solicitude, the unaffected sim- 
 plicity of the patriarchal ages, in their manner of living ; 
 to avoid unnatural associations among themselves, and un- 
 due familiarity with the idolatrous nations around them, by 
 contracting marriages with them, entering into alliances, 
 or engaging in extensive mercantile transactions, still more, 
 by joining in the impure rites of their worship. To this 
 moral aspect of the law, the great apostle of the Gentiles 
 evidently refers in his charge to the Corinthians: " Be ye 
 not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what 
 fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness ? and 
 what communion hath light with darkness," — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 19. Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy 
 
Chap. 24. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 \\d. 
 
 brother ; usury of money, usury of victuals, 
 usury of any thing that is lent upon usury. 
 20. Unto a stranger thou may est lend upon 
 usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend 
 upon usury : that the Lord thy God may bless 
 thee in all that thou settest thy hand to in the 
 land whither thou goest to possess it. 
 See on Lev. 25. 26. 
 
 Ver. 24. When thou comest into thy neighbour's 
 vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill, 
 at thine own pleasure ; but thou shah not put 
 any in thy vessel. 25. When thou comest 
 into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then 
 thou mayest pluck the ears with thy hand; 
 but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy 
 neighbour's standing corn. 
 
 If a man was passing along another's field, he was allow- 
 ed to pluck ears of corn to eat, but forbidden to use the 
 1 sickle, Deut. xxiii. 25. This pretty much accords with 
 :, what is common among ourselves ; for no owner of a field, 
 ; unless he wishes to render himself ridiculous by his nig- 
 gardliness, will hinder a passenger from plucking his ears 
 of corn, and eating them. But the liberty of the stranger, 
 by the Mosaic law, perhaps extended still further : for if 
 the i)oor man had plucked up whole handfuls of ears, and 
 I carried them off, I do not thence see how he could have 
 been found punishable, or how it could have been prevent- 
 ed. I do not take upon me absolutely to decide the point, 
 because the law is very briefly expressed. I only remark, 
 that this very law, which among us would be very unjust 
 and pernicious, had quite another aspect among a people 
 consisting entirely of husbandmen : for where every citi- 
 2en, or, in other words, every one belonging to the nation, 
 has his own land, one will not be apt, from avarice, to tear 
 up another's corn, because he must expect that his neigh- 
 bour will retaliate in like manner upon his. It will, there- 
 fore, most probably be only as he travels along, that he will 
 eat a few ears for pleasure, and that may readily be allow- 
 ed him. In the verse immediately preceding, (Deut. xxiii. 
 24,) Moses has an ordinance respecting vineyards, which 
 may to us appear more singular, and to bear harder on their 
 owners. The stranger that came into another's vineyard, 
 was authorized to eat as many grapes as he pleased, only 
 he might not carry any off in his basket, or other such ves- 
 sel. To my illustration of this law, I must premise, that I 
 am not a native of a wine country ; having been born at 
 Halle, on the extreme verge of the wine district of Germa- 
 ny, and where vineyards are so rare, that under such a law 
 they could not possibly exist. In such a climate, every indi- 
 vidual bunch of grapes is not indeed a rarity, (for that I can- 
 not say of my native country,) but, at any rate, an article 
 of sale, arid worth money. Perhaps, therefore, a native of 
 a more southern region, where wine is produced in greater 
 abundance, would be able to explain this part of the Mosaic 
 law better, and would find it more agreeable to justice. 
 But besides all that persons acquainted with wine countries 
 could say, there is this additional circumstance here to be 
 attended to, and which is quite inapplicable to all mir wine 
 countries, viz. that every Israelite had his paternal land; 
 and if he lived in a district where wine was grown, (which 
 was the case in most parts of Palestine, the country being 
 mountainous,) he probably had a vineyard of his own, as 
 well as his neighbour. The right, therefore, to eat one's 
 fill in another's vineyard, was, in most cases, merely a 
 jm reciprocum : and thus I might with freedom satisfy 
 my appetite, wherever I saw grapes before me ; single 
 bunches being there no article of sale. This to travellers 
 was a gratification always acceptable, and a piece of cour- 
 tesy that cost the owners but little ; and to those who had 
 no land, that is, to the poor, it was a sort of alms, or, at 
 least, a comfort, that they could thus satisfy their appetite 
 without being chargeable with theft, or injustice. If the 
 owner of a vineyard found them too assiduous, or their 
 visits too frequently repeated, there was nothing in the law 
 that hindered him fr6m enclosing it, or turning them out. 
 Only they could not be declared thieves, if they but plucked 
 
 the grapes, and ate thftj) wjthin the vineyard. We shall 
 frequently see, that the laws of Moses manifest a certain 
 degree of indulgence and kmdnesstothe cravings of nature; 
 which, far from wishing to lurture, they v/ould not even 
 have exposed to any temptation, that might lead a man to 
 theft. This is a point of great importance to the preserva- 
 tion of the moral character of a people. Hunger, or ap- 
 petite, often hurries a man of the most honourable princi- 
 ples to devour grapes and other eatables that are not 
 watched; if his conscience make this theft, the great 
 boundary that distinguishes the man of honour from the 
 thief, is in a manner overstepped, and if this happen often, 
 he will at last become a thief in a higher sense, having 
 lost all conscience and regard to character. It is, therefore, 
 certainly better, if it can be done without any material in- 
 jury to property, to allow him the liberty of eating a little 
 of such things, in order to keep him a conscientious, hon- 
 ourable man. Legislators sometimes attend but too little 
 to moral niceties of this nature ; and yet it is possible there- 
 by to corrupt a whole people, and rob them of their honesty. 
 Moses, on the other hand, Avould give no sanction to the 
 practice of free pasturage, although he gave his laws to a 
 people sprung from wandering herdsmen, to whose cattle^ 
 the whole country where they lived was a common ; and 
 herein he is a most perfect antipode to our laws of indis- 
 criminate pasturage, which prove so great a misfortune to 
 Germany. Whoever drove his cattle into another's field 
 or vineyard, and fed therein, was obliged to pay a grazing 
 rent ; but whether for the whole year, or only for the pre- 
 cise time of occupation, I am uncertain, Exod. xxii. How- 
 ever favourable, therefore, he may have been to the poor, 
 in authorizing them to pluck a few ears of corn, or to glean 
 what was left in the fields, he by no means thought it just 
 that, by any law of free pasturage, a man should be obstruct- 
 ed in using his field as his own property solelv, and in 
 turning it to the best account, even after harvest. Whoever 
 has heard the complaints of economists against commons, 
 which with us, without injustice to individuals, it is so 
 diflicult to abolish, while yet they so eflfectually obstruct the 
 full improvement of the fields, will perceive the importance 
 and the wisdom of this law, the enforcing of which was 
 P attended with no difl&culty after the conquest of a new 
 country. — Michaelis, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 10. When thou dost lend thy brother any 
 thing, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch 
 his pledge. 11. Thou shalt stand abroad, and 
 the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out 
 the pledge abroad unto thee. 12. And if the 
 man he poor, thou shalt not sleep with his 
 pledge : 13. In any case thou shalt deliver him 
 the pledge again when the sun goeth down, 
 that he may sleep in his own raiment, and 
 bless thee : and it shall be righteousness unto 
 thee before the Lord thy God. 
 
 Among the Israelites in the time of Moses, it must have 
 been very common to lend on pledge — and that, according 
 to the meaning of the word, in natural law, which allows 
 the creditor, in the case of non-payment, to appropriate the 
 pledge to his own behoof, without any authoritative inter- 
 position of a magistrate, and to keep it just as rightfully as 
 if it had been bought with the sum which has been lent for 
 it, and which remains unpaid. But while pledges are un- 
 der no judicial regulation, much extortion and villany 
 may be practised, when the poor man who wishes to bor- 
 row is in straits, and must of course submit to all the terms 
 imposed by the opulent lender. This we know from daily 
 experience: the persons who lend money extrajudicially. 
 on pledge, being generally odious or contemptible usurers. 
 Among a poor people, such as wq must suppose every 
 people to be in their infancy, the evils of pledging are still 
 more oppressive. The poor man often finds himself under 
 a far greater necessity of borrowing, than we can easily 
 imagine, because there is nothing to be earned; and the- 
 husbandman, who has had a bad harvest, or his crop 
 destroyed by hail, or locusts, must often borrow, not money, 
 but bread, or else starve. In such cases, he will give in 
 
120 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 25. 
 
 pledge, whatever the rich lender requires, however greatly 
 it may be to his loss. Nor has he, like borrowers in our 
 days, many articles which he can dispense with, and 
 pledge ; such as superfluous apparel, numerous shirts, and 
 changes of linen, household furniture, and various little 
 luxuries, that are become fashionable among our poorest 
 people ; but he must instantly surrender things of indispen- 
 sable use and comfort, such as the clothes necessary to 
 keep him warm, his implements of husbandry, his cattle, 
 and (who could suppose it '?) his very children. Here the 
 avaricious lender on pledge cannot but be most heartily 
 detested, and incur the universal execration of the people. 
 And hence, in the book of Job, whibh giv^s us some views 
 of Arabian manners, such as they were a little before the 
 departure of the Israelites from Egypt, when the picture of 
 a villain is drawn, the author does not forget, as one trait 
 of his character, to represent him as a lender upon fledge. 
 Thus in chap. xxii. 6, xxiv. 7. He extorts fledges without 
 having lent, (an act of extreme injusiice, which, however, 
 may take place when the pledge is given, before the loan is 
 paid down,) and makes his debtors go naked ; probably be- 
 cause he has taken their most necessary clothes in pledge, 
 and as unfeelingly as illegally detained them. — In chap, 
 xxiv. 3. He takes the widow's ox for a fledge ; so that she 
 cannot plough her land, to gain the needfuffor clearing off 
 the debt; and the ox, thus pledged perhaps for a trifle, if it 
 cannot be redeemed on the day of payment, becomes the 
 certain property of the greedy creditor. But the poor widow 
 thus loses ten times as much as he unjustly gains, unless he 
 yet think fit to repair the injury done to her land ; for she 
 can now no more cultivate it, and must be every day 
 plunging deeper in debt and misery. — At ver. 9. He takes 
 even the infant of the needy for a fledge, and, of course, if 
 not duly redeemed, keeps it, for bond-service, however 
 disproportioned to its value the loan may have been. Mo- 
 ses by no means attempts to abolish the practice of extra- 
 judicial pledging, or to make such regulations, as we have 
 in our laws, whereby the pledge, under what agreement 
 soever given, may be sold to the highest bidder, while of 
 the price the creditor can only receive the real amount of 
 his debt. These are inventions to be found only in the 
 more elaborate laws of nations further advanced in opu- 
 lence and refinement; and which, in the present situation 
 of the Israelites, would have been impracticable and una- 
 vailing. Indeed, among a people so poor, they must have 
 proved detrimental, had it been possible to put them in 
 practice: for no one would have been inclined to lend a 
 trifle (and to a poor borrower even trifles are important) 
 on pledge, under so many formalities, and when the way 
 to arrive at payment, instead of being short and simple, 
 was through the interference of a magistrate. In this way 
 a needy person must always have found it diificult, if not 
 impossible, to obtain a loan, particularly a small one: 
 which, among a poor people, is just as great an evil, as can 
 arise from fraudulent practices in pledging. It will not, 
 therefore, be imputed to Moses as a fault, that his statutes 
 contain not those legal refinements, which probably were 
 not then invented, and which even yet may be said rather 
 to be in record in our statute books, than to be in our prac- 
 tice. They would have been dangerous to his people, and 
 peculiarly oppressive to the poor. He let fledge remain 
 m its proper sense, pledge ; and thus facilitated the obtain- 
 ing of loans : satisfying himself with making laws against 
 some of the chief abuses of pledging. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 13. In any case thou shalt deliver him the 
 pledge again when the sun goeth down, that 
 he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless 
 thee : and it shall be righteousness unto thee 
 before the Lord thy God. 
 
 The Talmudists enumerate eighteen several garments, 
 which belonged to the full dress of an ancient Jcav. A 
 woollen shirt was worn next the skin, although some had 
 shirts of linen in which they slept, because these were 
 more cleanly and wholesome. But this part of their dress 
 is to be distinguished from the caffetan or shirt, which the 
 oridegroom and the bride sent to each other ; which they 
 wore over their clothes at their solemn festivals ; and in 
 which they were at last buried. Next to it was the coat, 
 which reached to their feet, and was accounted a modest 
 
 and honourable article of dress. This greatly aggravated 
 the indignity which the king of Ammon offered to the am- 
 bassadors of David, by cutting off their garments in the 
 middle to their buttocks ; he insulted them b} spoiling the 
 most esteemed part of their dress ; he exposed them tc 
 shame, by uncovering their nakedness, as they seem to 
 have worn no breeches under their upper garments. The 
 tunic was the principal part of the Jewish dress ; it was 
 made nearly in the form of our present shirt. A round 
 hole was cut at top, merely to permit the head to pass 
 through. Sometimes it had long sleeves, which reached 
 down to the wrists; at other times short sleeves, which 
 reached to the elbow ; some had very short sleeves, which 
 reached only to the middle of the upper arm, and some had 
 no sleeves at all. The tunic was nearly the same with the 
 Roman stola ; and was, in general, girded round the waist, 
 or under the breast, with the zona or girdle. Descending 
 to the ground, and floating round the feet, it was, in the 
 days of our Lord, a distinguishing badge of the prond 
 Pharisee: " Beware of the scribes," said he, " who love to 
 walk in long robes," in tunics at full length, and reaching 
 to the ground. These coats were collared at the neck, and 
 fringed at the bottom. Over the tunic they wore a blanket, 
 which the Arabs call a hyke, and is the very same wiih the 
 plaid of the Scotch Highlanders. These hykes are of dif- 
 ferent sizes, and of different quality and fineness. They 
 are commonly six yards long, and five or six feet broad ; 
 serving the Kabyle and Arab for a complete dress in the 
 day ; and " as they sleep in raiment," like the Israelites of 
 old, it serves likewise for their bed and covering by night. 
 It is a loose but troublesome garment, frequently discom- 
 posed, and falling upon the ground ; so that the person who 
 wears it, is every moment obliged to tuck it up, and fold il 
 anew about his body. This shows the great use of a girdle 
 whenever they are concerned in any active employment, 
 and by consequence the force of the scripture injunction, 
 alluding to that part of the dress, to have our loins girded, 
 in order to set about it with any reasonable prospect of 
 success. The method of wearing these garments, and the 
 use they are put to at other times in serving as coverlets to 
 * their beds, should induce us to take the finer sorts of them, 
 at least such a&are worn by the ladies and persons of dis- 
 tinction, to be the fsflus of" primitive times. Ruth's veil, 
 which held six measures of barley, might be of a similar 
 fashion, and have served, upon extraordinary occasions, 
 for the same use ; as were also the clothes, or upper gar- 
 ments, worn by the Israelites, in which they folded up 
 their kneading troughs, as the Arabs and others do to this 
 day, things of similar burden and encumbrance, in their 
 hykes. It is very probable, likewise, that the loose folding 
 garment, the toga of the Romans, was of this kind ; for il 
 we may form our opinion from the drapery of their statues, 
 this is no other than the dress of the Arabs, when they ap- 
 pear in their hykes. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Ver. 4. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he 
 treadeth out the corn. 
 
 The custom of thrashing com by the trampling of bul- 
 locks, still prevails in the East. The floor is made in the 
 open air, of cows' dung and clay. In its centre a post is 
 driven into the ground, and the corn is placed in order 
 around it; and the bullocks, being fastened to the post, 
 begin to move in the circle, enjoying themselves, as they 
 work, by eating the corn. — Roberts. 
 
 This statute, which has been seldom sufliciently under- 
 stood, establishes, in the first place, certain rights, as belong- 
 ing even to the beasts which man uses for the purpose of 
 labour. We must not here think of our mode of thrashing, 
 but on that used in the East, where the corn being laid o'n 
 the thrashing-floor, is trodden out by oxen or asses, or by 
 thrashing-wagons and thrashing-planks drawn over it by 
 oxen. Here, then, Moses commands that no muzzle be put 
 on the ox, but that he be allowed, as long as he is employed 
 in thrashing, to eat both of the grain and straw. It appeans 
 that an ancient consuetudinary usage which Moses adopted 
 in his written law, had established this as nothins: more 
 than equitable; for we find it still observed in places of 
 the East, where the Mosaic law is not in force ; as, for in- 
 stance, according to Dr. Russel's testimony, at Aleppo, 
 among the Arabs that dwell in that neighbourhood ; anc 
 
Chap. 25, 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 121 
 
 likewise, even among the inhabitants of the coast of Mala- 
 bar. Russell, in his Natural History of Aleppo, says, that 
 there beef is pretty good at all seasons, but particularly ex- 
 cellent in summer, because, to this day, the inhabitants 
 sacredly adhere to the ancient custom of allowing the ox, 
 while thrashing, to eat as much as he chooses. In the pe- 
 riodical accounts of the INIalabar mission, we are told that 
 they have a proverb to this effect, " What an ox thrashes, 
 is his profit." The people of the most ancient ages, in gen- 
 eral, gave the ox a high preference above other beasts, on 
 account of his great and indispensable usefulness in agri- 
 culture, and conferred upon him, as man's assistant, many 
 privileges, insomuch that mythology speaks of a time when 
 it was unlawful to kill him. T believe, however, that the 
 statute before us does not extend to oxen only, but includes 
 also other beasts employed by man in thrashing ; for Moses 
 is wont to represent general principles, by particular and 
 well-known examples. This point, however, is too incon- 
 siderable to occupy more room in its illustration, else might 
 I quote Isa. xxx. 24, in proof that the ass had the same right 
 as the ox ; for as to the horse, he was not then used in hus- 
 bandry. 
 
 The origin of this benevolent law with regard to beasts, 
 is seemingly deducible from certain moral feelings or sen- 
 timents prevalent among the people of the early ages. They 
 thought it hard that a person should be employed in the 
 collection and preparation of edible and savoury things, 
 and have them continually before his eyes, without being 
 once permitted to taste them ; and there is in fact a degree 
 of cruelty in placing a person in such a situation; for the 
 sight of suchdamties is tormenting, and the desire to partake 
 of them increases with the risk of the prohibition. If any 
 of my readers has a heart so devoid of sensibility towards 
 the feelings of his inferiors, that he can form no idea of any 
 thing torturous in such circumstances, let him endeavour 
 to recollect from the heathen mythology, the representations 
 which the Greek and Roman poets gave of the torments of 
 hell; such as tables spread with the most costly dainties, 
 and placed before the eyes of the damned, without their be- 
 ing permitted so much as to touch them; or again, the water 
 in which thirsty Tantalus was immersed to his lips, and 
 which fled from him whenever he bowed to taste it. Add 
 to this, that by prohibitions of this nature, the moral char- 
 acter of servants and day-labourers, to the certain injury 
 of their master's interest, seldom fails to become corrupted ; 
 for the provocation of appetite at the sight of forbidden grat- 
 ification will, with the greater number, undoubtedly over- 
 power all moral suggestions as to right and wrong. They 
 will learn to help themselves without leave, that is, in other 
 words, (for although not in civil, yet in moral law, it is 
 theft,) they will learn to steal ; and if the attempt is frequent- 
 ly repeated, the wall of partition between right and wrong, 
 which was at first so formidable to conscience, is at length 
 broken through : they soon learn to go greater and greater 
 lengths, and thus in this school are bred arrant thieves. 
 Our laws, it is true, pay no attention to such things ; but 
 still, the voice of nature, if we will but listen to it, will 
 teach us, that in evei'y country, servants imagine, that to 
 steal eatables is no crime ; or, as the saying is in Upper 
 Saxony, that " what goes into the mouth, brings no sin with 
 it." Here they are certainly quite in the wrong : and among 
 a people that had already a taste for foreign and expensive 
 luxuries, such a benevolent law as that now under consid- 
 eration, could not be introduced, without the complete de- 
 struction of domestic economy ; although indeed, after all, 
 cooks and butlers cannot well be prohibited from tasting 
 the dishes and the wine of which they have the charge. 
 But without dwelling on what our modern luxury renders 
 necessary in this matter, I only say, that to the people of 
 the East, in those times of ancient simplicity, it appeared 
 very cruel to debar a slave or a hireling from tasting of the 
 food which he had under his hand. When Job wishes to 
 describe a perfect monster of insensibility and hardhearted- 
 ness, he says, " The hungry carry his sheaves ; immured 
 in workhouses they prepare his oil ; they tread his wine- 
 presses, and yet they thirst." Job xxiv. 10, 11. I seldom 
 appeal to Jewish testimonies, or, to speak more accurately, 
 to the Talmud and Rabbins, because they are too recent 
 for illustration of the Mosaic statutes ; but here I cannot 
 altogether overlook the following Jewish doctrine, laid 
 down in the BoM Mezia, fol. 83. " The workman may law- 
 fully eat of what he works among ; in the vintage he may 
 16 
 
 eat of grapes ; when gathering figs, he may partake of 
 them; and in harvest he may eat of the ears of corn. Of 
 gourds and dates he may eat the value of a denarius ;" that 
 is, of four groschen, or one fourth of a florin. The mention 
 of this specific sum, which was, perhaps, rather too great an 
 allowance, seems to have proceeded from the circumstance 
 of the Jews reckoning a denarius the price of a day's la- 
 bour, because it was introduced so lately before the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem. I quote the passage, however, not for 
 proof, but merely as a relic of ancient manners among 
 the Jews. 
 
 This kindness, then, the Hebrews and Arabs extended 
 unto oxen, to which, by reason of their great utility in agri- 
 culture, they conceived that they were bound to manliest 
 a certain degree of gratitude. And therefore when Moses, 
 in terms of this benevolent custom ordained, that the ox 
 was not to be muzzled while thrashing, it would seem that 
 it was not merely his intention to provide for the welfare of 
 that animal, but to enjoin with the greater force and effect, 
 that a similar right should be allowed to human labourers, 
 whether hirelings or slaves. He specified the ox, as the 
 lowest example, and what held good in reference to him, 
 was to be considered as so much the more obligatory in 
 reference to man. That he wished to be understood in 
 this way, we have the less reason to doubt, from this con- 
 sideration, that in the sequel we shall meet with other stat- 
 utes, in which he carries his attention to the calls of hunger 
 so far, as to allow the eating of fruits and grapes in other 
 people's gardens and vineyards, without restraint. It would 
 appear, therefore, that not only servants, but also day-la- 
 bourers, might eat of the fruits they gathered, and drink of 
 the must which they pressed. The wages of the latter 
 seems to have been given them over and above their meat, 
 and, in consideration of this privilege, to have been so much 
 the less ; for with a labourer, who found his own victuals, 
 and yet had the right of eating and drinking of whatever 
 came under his hands, a master would have stood on a very 
 disadvantageous footing. In fact, if they did not aflford food 
 to day-labourers, it would be impossible to understand how 
 the value of a servant could be compared with the hire of 
 a labourer, Deut. xv. 18, and found double ; for that a 
 master maintained his servants, is unquestionable. But it 
 they likewise gave the labourer his victuals, the value of a 
 servant, and the wages of a labourer, might be compared. 
 
 — MiCHAELIS. 
 
 Ver. 9. Then shall his brother's wife come onto 
 him in the presence of the elders, and loose his 
 shoe from off his foot, anSf spit in his face, and 
 shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto 
 that man that will not build up his brother's 
 house. 
 
 The last mark of disrespect, which is by no means con- 
 fined to the East, is to spit in the face of another. Chardin 
 observes, that spitting before any one, or spitting upon 
 the ground in speaking of any one's actions, is, through 
 the East, an expression of extreme detestation. It is, there- 
 fore, prescribed by the law of Moses, as a mark of great 
 disgrace to be fixed on the man who failed in his duty to 
 the house of his brother. To such contemptuous treat- 
 ment, it will be recollected, our blessed Redeemer sub- 
 mitted in the hall of the high-priest, for the sake of his 
 people. The practice has descended to modem times ; for 
 m the year 1744, when a rebel prisoner was brought before 
 Nadir Shah's general, the soldiers were ordered to spit in 
 his face ; which proves that the savage conduct of the Jews 
 corresponded with a custom which had been long establish- 
 ed over all the East. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 13. Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers 
 weights, a great and a small. 
 
 The prophet Micah also speaks of "the bag of deceitful 
 weights." As in former times, so now, much of the busi- 
 ness in the East is transacted by travelling merchants. 
 Hence all kinds of spices, and other articles, are taken 
 from one village to another by the Moors, Avho are in those 
 regions, what the Jews are in "the West. The pedler comes 
 to your door, and vociferates the names of his wares ; and, 
 so soon as he catches your eye, begins to exhibit bis very 
 
m 
 
 DEUTERONOMl^. 
 
 Chap. 27. 
 
 cheap, and valuable articles. Have you agreed as to the 
 price, he then produces the bag of " divers weights," and 
 after fumbling some time in it, he draws forth the weight 
 by wliich he has to sell; but, should he have to purchase 
 any thing of you, he will select a heavier weight. The 
 man who is not cheated by this trader, and his " bag of 
 divers weights," must be blessed with more keenness than 
 most of his fellows.— Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIL 
 
 Ver. 2. And it shall be, on the day when you 
 shall pass over Jordan unto the land which the 
 Lord thy God giveth thee, that thou shalt set 
 thee up great stones, and plaster them with 
 plaster: 3. And thou shalt write upon them 
 7, all the words of this law, when thou art passed 
 over, that thou mayest go in unto the land which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee, a land that 
 flovveth with milk and honey; as the Lord 
 God of thy fathers hath promised thee. 
 
 The book of the law, in order to render it the more sa- 
 cred, was deposited beside the ark of the covenant, Deut. 
 xxxi. 26; and we find the same procedure likewise ob- 
 served afterward with regard to other laws, such as that 
 which was made on the first establishment of regal author- 
 ity, or, in other words, the compact between the king and 
 the estates, 1 Sam. x. 26 ; but I cannot precisely determine 
 whether that was kept in the holy of holies beside the ark, 
 or only in the holy place. The guardians of the law, to 
 whom" was intrusted the duty of making faithful transcripts 
 of it, were the priests, Deut. xxvii. 19. But Moses did not 
 account even this precaution suflicient for the due preser- 
 vation of his law in its original purity ; for he commanded 
 that it should besides be engraven on stones, and these 
 stones kept on a mountain near Sichem, in order that a 
 genuine exemplar of it might be transmitted even to the 
 latest generations, Deut. xxvii. 1 — 8. In his ordinance for 
 this purpose, there are one or two particulars that require 
 illustration. He commanded that the stones should be 
 coated with lime ; but this command would have been quite 
 absurd had his meaning only been, that the laws should 
 be cut through this coating ; for after this unnecessary trou- 
 ble, they could by no means have been thus perpetuated 
 with such certainty, nor have nearly so long resisted the 
 effects of wind and weather, as if at once engraven in the 
 stones themselves. K^nicott, in his Second Dissertation 
 on the printed, Hebrew Text, p. 77, supposes that they might 
 have been cut out in black marble, with the letters raised, 
 and the hollow intervals between the black letters filled up 
 with a body of white lime, to render them more distinct 
 and conspicuous. But even this would not have been a 
 good plan for eternizing them: because lime cannot long 
 withstand the weather, and whenever it began to fall off in 
 any particular place, the raised characters would, by a 
 variety of accidents, to which writing deeply engraved is 
 not liable, soon be injured, and become illegible. No one 
 that wishes to write any thing in stone, that shall descend 
 to the most remote periods of time, will ever think of giving 
 a preference to characters thus in relief. And besides, 
 Moses, if this was his meaning, has expressed himself very 
 indistinctly ; for he says not a word of the colour of the 
 stone, on which, however, the whole idea turns. I rather 
 suppose, therefore, that Moses acted in thisniatter with the 
 same view to future ages, as is related of Sostratus, the ar- 
 chitect of the Pharos, who, while he cut the name of the 
 then king of Egypt in the outer coat of lime, took care to 
 engrave his own name secretly in the stone below, in order 
 that it might come to light in after times, when the plaster 
 with the king's name should have fallen off. In like man- 
 ner, Moses, in my opinion, commanded that his laws should 
 be cut in the stones themselves, and these coated with a 
 thick crust of lime, that the engraving might continue for 
 many ages secure from all the injuries of the weather and 
 atmosphere, and then, when by the decay of its covering it 
 should, after hundreds or thousands of years, first come to 
 light, serve to show to the latest posterity whether they had 
 suffered any chang:e. And was not the idea of thus pre- 
 serving an inscription, not merely for hundreds, but for 
 thousands of years, a conception evceedingly sublime 1 It 
 
 is by no means impossible that these stones, if again di&- 
 covered, might be found still to contain the whole engra- 
 ving perfectly legible. Let us only figure to ourselves what 
 must have happened to them amid the successive :levas- 
 tations of the country in which they were erected. The 
 lime would gradually become irregularly covered with 
 moss' and earth ; and now, perhaps, the stones, by the soil 
 increasing around and over them, many resemble a little 
 mount; and were they accidentally disclosed to our view, 
 and the lime cleared away, all that was inscribed on them 
 3500 years ago would at once become visible. Probably, 
 however, ;his discovery, highly desirable though it would 
 be both to literature and religion, being in the present state 
 of things, and particularly of the Mosaic law, now so long 
 abrogated, not indispensably necessary, it is reserved for 
 some future age of the w-orld. What Moses commanded, 
 merely out of legislative prudence, and for the sake of his 
 laws, as laws, God, who sent him, may have destined to 
 answer likewise another purpose ; and may choose to bring 
 these stones to light at a time when the laws of Moses are 
 no longer of any authority in any community whatever. 
 Thus much is certain, that nowhere in the Bible, is any 
 mention made of the discovery of these stones, nor indeed 
 any further notice taken of them, than in Josh. viii. 30 — 35, 
 where their erection is described ; so that we may hope they 
 will yet be one day discovered. Moses' whole procedure 
 in this matter, is precisely in the style of ancient nations, 
 who generally took the precaution, now rendered unneces- 
 sary by the invention of printing, to engrave their laws in 
 stones; only that he studied, by a new contrivance, to give 
 to his stony archives a higher degree of durability than 
 was ever thought of by any other legislator. What was to 
 be inscribed on the stones, whether the whole Pentateuch, 
 or only the book of Deuteronomy, or but the blessings and 
 curses pronounced in Deut. chap, xxvii, or merely the ten 
 commandments alone, has been the subject of a controver- 
 sy, for particulars concerning which, I again refer the 
 reader to Kennicott's Second Dissertation. In my judg- 
 ment, the expression, all the words of this law, implies, at 
 least, that all the statutory part of the Mosaic books was to 
 be engraved on the stones, which is far from being impos- 
 sible, if we make but a distinction between the stones and 
 the altar, which must, no doubt, have been too small for 
 that purpose. It is well known that iij very ancient times, 
 nations were wont to engrave their laws in stones ; and 
 the Egyptians had recourse to stone pillars (o-rr/Auts) for 
 perpetuating their discoveries in science, and the history 
 of their country. All these circumstances considered, to- 
 gether with this above all, that the Israelites had just come 
 out of Egypt, where writing in stone was employed for so 
 many further purposes, (although, indeed, hieroglyphic 
 characters were used which Moses prohibited, because, 
 when not understood, they might give a handle to idolatry,\ 
 I do not see why the phrase, all tJie words of thislaw, should 
 not be left in its full force, nor what should oblige us to 
 limit it, with Dr. Kennicott, merely to the decalogue.— 
 
 MiCHAELIS. 
 
 Ver. 15. Cursed he the man that maketh any 
 graven or molten image, an "abomination unto 
 the Lord, the work of the hands of the crafts- 
 man, and putteth it in a secret place. And all 
 the people shall answer and say, Amen. 
 
 The images of the Hindoos are generally made of cop- 
 per or stone, but some are of silver or gold. It is not easy 
 to find out the difference betwixt the gravenund molten im- 
 age, except the firsi mean that which has been produced 
 by the chisel from stone, and the second that which has 
 been cast in a mould by the action of fire. These images, 
 however, have all of them to be graven, or filed, before 
 they are consecrated. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 17. Cursed he he that remoyeth his neigh- 
 bour's land-mark : and all the people shall say, 
 Amen. 
 
 Fields in the East have not fences or hedges, as in Eng- 
 land, but a rid2:e, a stone, or a post; and, consequently, it 
 is not very difficult to encroach on the property of another 
 Should a man not be very careful, his neighbour will take 
 
Chap. 28, 29. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 123 
 
 away a liltle every year, and keep pushing his ridge into 
 the "other's ground. Disputes of the most serious nature 
 ofien occur on this account, and call for the greatest dili- 
 gence and activity of the authorities. An injured man re- 
 peats to his aggressor the proverb, " The serpent shall bite 
 iuiu who steps over the ridge," i. e. he who goes beyond. 
 the landmark. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Ver. 5. Blessed shall he thy basket and thy store. 
 
 Ileb. " dough or I'neading- trough." Eastern farmers have 
 large baskets made of Palmirah leaves, or other materials, 
 foi the purpose of keeping their grain: they will contain 
 1 rom one hundred to one hundred and fifty parrahs. These 
 buckets, then, were to be blessed ; they were not to be injur- 
 ed by animals, nor robbed by man. But corn is also kept 
 ill a store which is made of sticks and clay, in a circular 
 I'orm. This little building is always elevated, to keep the 
 H-rain from the damp, and is situated near to the house. 
 When beggars have been relieved, they often say, " Ah ! 
 may the place where you make ready your food ever be 
 blessed." "May the rice-pot ever prosper." Thus, that 
 which corresponds with the " kneading-trough" of the He- 
 biews, has also its benediction. — Roberts. 
 
 Hasselquist informs us, that baskets made of the leaves 
 of the palm-tree are used by the people of the East on jour- 
 neys, and in their houses. Harmer conjectures that such 
 baskets are referred to in these words, and that the store 
 >iit,mifies their leathern bags, in both which they used to 
 carry things in travelling. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 13. And the Lord shall make thee the 
 head, and not the tail ; and thou shalt be above 
 only, and thou shalt not be beneath ; if that 
 thou hearken unto the commandments of the 
 Lord thy God, which I command thee this 
 day, to observe and to do them. 
 
 The prophet Isaiah, chap. ix. 14, says, " The Lord will 
 cut off from Israel head and tail :" meaning, no doubt, those 
 who were high,, and those who were low. It is amusing to 
 hear men of rank in the East speak of their dependants as 
 tails. Has a servant not obeyed his master, the former 
 asks, " Who are you 1 are you the head or tail 1" Should 
 a person begin to partake of food before those of high 
 caste, it is asked, " What! is the tail to begin to wag be- 
 fore the head V A husband, when angry with his wife, 
 
 . inquires, " What are you 1 are you the head or the tail 1" 
 
 , -Roberts. 
 
 *" Ver. 24. The Lord shall make the rain of thy 
 land powder and dust: from heaven shall it 
 come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. 
 
 It may be of use to inquire a little into the nature and 
 properties of such a kind of rain ; in which the following 
 extracts may assist us. " Sometimes there [in India] the 
 wind blows very high in those hot and dry seasons— rais- 
 ing up into the air a very great height, thick clouds of dust 
 and sand. . . .These dry showers most grievously annoy all 
 those among whom they fall ; enough to smite them all with 
 a present blindness ; filling their eyes, ears, nostrils ; and 
 their mouths are not free, if they be not also well guarded : 
 searching every place, as well within, as without, our tents 
 or houses ; so that, there is not a little keyhole of any trunk, 
 or cabinet, if it be not covered, but receives some of that 
 dust into it; the dust forced to find a- lodging anywhere, 
 everywhere, being so driven and forced as it is by the ex- 
 treme violence of the wind." (Sir T. Roe's Embassy.) To 
 the same purpose speaks Herbert. " And now the danger 
 is past, let me tell you, most part of the last night we crossed 
 over an inhospitable sandy desert, where here and there we 
 beheld the ground covered with a loose and flying sand, 
 which by the fury of the winter weather is accumulated in- 
 to such heaps, as upon any great wind the track is lost ; and 
 passengers (too ofc) overwhelmed and stifled; yea, camels, 
 norses, mules, and other beasts, though strong, swift, and 
 .steady in their going, are no' able to shift for themselves, 
 but perish without recovery : those rolling sands, when agita- 
 ted by the winds, move and remove more like sea than land, 
 
 and render the way very dreadful to passengers. Indeed 
 in Ihis place I thought that curse fulfilled, (Dent, xxviii. 
 24,) where the Lord, by Moses, threatens instead of rain 
 to give showers of dust." These instances are in Persia: 
 but such storms might ha known to the Israelites ; as, no 
 doubt, they occur, also, on the sandy deserts of Arabia, 
 east of Judea : and to this agrees Toumefort, who men- 
 tions the same thing — " At Ghetsci there arose a lem];est of 
 sand : in the same mangier as it happens sometimes i7i Arabia, 
 and in Egypt, especially in the spring. It was raised by a 
 very hot south wind, which drove so much sand, that one 
 of the gates of the Caravansary was half stopped up with 
 it ; and the way could not be found, being covered over, 
 above a foot deep, the sand lying on all hands. This sand 
 was extremely fine, and salt ; and was very troublesome to 
 our eyes, even in the Caravansary, where all our baggage 
 was covered over with it. The storm lasted from noon to 
 sunset; and it was so very hot the night following, without, 
 any wind, that one could hardly fetch breath, which in my 
 opinion was partly occasioned by the reflection of the hot 
 sand. Next day I felt a great pain in one eye, which 
 made it smart, as if salt had been melted into it," &c. 
 This may give us, a lively idea of the penetrating powers 
 of the dust of the land of Egypt ; which (Exod. viii. 16) 
 was converted into lice : — also, chap. ix. 8, of the effect of 
 the ashes of the furnace, which Moses took, and sprinkled 
 " up towards heaven, and it became a bile, breaking forth 
 in blains upon man and beast." — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 27. The Lord will smite thee with the 
 botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with 
 the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst 
 not be healed. 
 
 This is a complaint which is far more common, and 
 more formidable in the East, than in England. Those 
 who live on bad food, or reside in the vicinity of a swamp, 
 are the most subject to it. See the poor object with a small 
 piece of cloth round his loins, a staff* in his hand, his body 
 " from the sole of his foot unto his crown" literally cover- 
 ed with sores, an imploring piteous look, a weak tremu- 
 lous voice, and bowing to the earth to excite your charity. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 39. Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress 
 them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor 
 gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat 
 them. 
 
 This threatening has often been fulfilled to the great 
 disappointment and injury of the inhabitants of those coun- 
 tries where wine is produced or consumed. An insect, 
 called the vine weevil, which is a small beautiful beetle, 
 is extremely hurtful to the vines. The caterpillar, which 
 mines or cuts the leaves of the vine, has no feet ; and yet, by 
 a singular expedient, can make a progressive motion in all 
 positions, and even over the smoothest and most polished 
 bodies. It advances its body out of its oval pod, (constructed 
 of the two outer skins of a vine leaf,) forms a kind of hil- 
 lock of silk, and, by means of a thread which attaches it to 
 it, draws its pod or case to the hillock. It continually re- 
 peats the same operation, and in this (laborious) manner 
 advances pros:ressively. The traces of its progress are 
 maiked by hillocks of silk at the distance of half a line from 
 each other. Its food is the parenchyma or pith of the vine 
 leaf, between the two epidermes, of which it eats out its 
 oval habitation or pod. When it is taken out of its habita- 
 tion, it never attempts to make a new one : it writhes about 
 very much, but can make no progressive motion; and after 
 having overspread the place in which it is with threads of 
 silk, in an irregular manner, it dies at the end of twenty- 
 four hours. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Ver. 23. And that the whole land thereof is brim- 
 stone, and salt, and burning. 
 
 When a place is noted for being unhealthy, or the land 
 very unfruitful, it is called a kenthaga poomy, a place or 
 country of brimstone. Trincomalee, and some other pla- 
 
124 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Chap. 30—32. 
 
 ces, have gained this appellation on account of the heat 
 and sterility of the soils. — Roberts. 
 
 The effect of salt, where it abounds, on vegetation, is de- 
 scribed by burning. '* Thus Volney, speaking of the borders 
 of the Asphaltic Lake, or Dead Sea, says, " the true cause 
 of the absence of vegetables and animals, is the acrid salt- 
 ness of its waters, which is infinitely greater than that of 
 the sea. The land surrounding the lake being equally im- 
 pregnated with that saltness, refuses to produce plants ; the 
 air itself, which is by evaporation loaded with it, and which 
 moreover receives vapours of sulphur and bitumen, cannot 
 suit vegetation; whence the dead appearance which reigns 
 around the lake." Hence the ancient custom of sowing an 
 enemy's city, when taken, with salt, in token of perpetual 
 desolation. Judges ix. 45. And thus in aftertimes, the 
 city of Milan was burnt, razed, sown with salt, and plough- 
 ed, by the exasperated emperor Frederick Barbarossa. — 
 Border. f 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Ver. 14. But the word is very nigh unto thee, in 
 thy mouth, and in thy heart, th^at thou mayest 
 do it. 
 
 "Z^ca a person pretend that he cannot understand an- 
 other, that he must make additional inquiries, it will be 
 said, "Do you not understand! In thy mouth are the 
 words." Should a child at school be troublesome to the mas- 
 ter, he will peevishly exclaim. In thy mouth are the words; 
 meaning the inquiry was unnecessary, that the subject was 
 well understood. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. I call heaven and earth to record this 
 day against you, that I have set before you life 
 and death, blessing and cursing : therefore 
 choose life, that both thou and thy seed may 
 live. 
 
 In solemn oaths, people point to the clouds, to the earth, 
 to the grass, to the herbs, to the trees, as witnesses to the 
 truth of what they have said. " O ye clouds above ! have I 
 not said the truth 1 Ah ! well do you know it : speak to this, 
 unbeliever." " Ah ! these trees can bear testimony to my 
 veracity." When mariners are at sea, they appeal to it, 
 or to Varuna the god. In storms, they say to the water, 
 " O mother ! be calm." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 * Ver. 2. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my 
 speech shall distil as the dew; as the small 
 rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers 
 upon the grass. 
 
 Oriental writers often speak of beautiful language as 
 dropping upon the hearers. The Hebrew has for " proph- 
 esy," in Micah ii. 6, " drop." The same word is used 
 for drops of rain, for tears, or for the dew dropping from 
 flowers. When a man has received consolation from an- 
 other, he says, " His words were like rain upon the scorch- 
 ed corn." Of a beautiful speaker, and an appropriate sub- 
 ject, " Ah ! his speech is like the honey rain, upon the pan- 
 dal bower of sugar." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5. Their spot is not the spot of his children. 
 
 There may be here an allusion to the marks which the 
 worshippers of particular idols had on different parts of 
 their bodies, particularly on their foreheads. The differ- 
 ent sects of idolaters in the East are distinguished by 
 their sectarian marks, the stigma of their respective idols. 
 These sectarian marks, particularly on the forehead, 
 amount to nearly one hundred among the Hindoos, and es- 
 pecially among the two sects, the worshippers of Siva 
 and the worshippers of Vishnoo. In many cases these 
 marks are renewed daily; for they account it irreligious to 
 perform any sacred rite to their god without his mark on 
 the forehead. The marks are generally horizontal and 
 perpendicular lines, crescents, circles, leaves, eyes, (Sr.c. in 
 red, black, white, and yellow. It is pleasing to see the 
 Hindoos every morning perform their ablutions in the sa- 
 
 cred lakes, and offer an innocent sacrifice under the solemn 
 grove. After having gone through their religii^as cere- 
 monies, they are sealed by the officiating Bramin with the 
 mark either of Vishnoo or Siva, the followers of whom 
 respectively form the two great sects among the Hindoos. 
 The mark is impressed on the forehead with a composition 
 of sandal-wood dust and oil, or the ashes of cow-dung and 
 turmeric : this is a holy ceremony, which has been adopted 
 in all ages by the eastern nations, however differing in re- 
 ligious profession. — Forbes. 
 
 Ver. 10. He found him in a desert land, and in 
 the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, 
 he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of 
 his eye. 
 
 Where the wild beasts are, is called the place of howl- 
 ing. Thus relations, when their friends are on a journey, 
 say, " Ah ! they are noAv in the place of howling." " My 
 friend, go not through the howling desert." Precious 
 things are spoken of as being the apple of the eye. Affec- 
 tionate husbands say to their wives, " En Jean mulli," i. e. 
 " apple of my eye." Of a beloved child, in relation to his 
 parents, it is said, " He is the apple of their eye." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 11. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fiut- 
 tereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her 
 wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings. 
 
 It is pretended by some writers, that when the eaglets 
 are somewhat grown, the mother kills the weakest or the 
 most voracious of them ; but were the fact admitted, it is 
 no satisfactory proof that she is without natural affection. 
 It is well known that several animals of the mildest dispo- 
 sitions forsake their young, when they find it impossible 
 to provide for their subsistence. The parent eagles, says 
 Buffon,not having sufficient for themselves, seek to reduce 
 their family ; and as soon as the young ones are strong 
 enough to fly and provide for themselves, they chase them 
 from the nest, and never permit them to return. The ac- 
 count of this celebrated naturalist so far agrees M"ith the 
 statement of the sacred writer; according to whom, the 
 eagle stirreth up her nest, that is, rouses her young from their 
 sloth and inactivity, and provokes them to try their wings 
 by fluttering about her nest. When she sees them indiffer- 
 ent to her admonitions, or afraid to follow her example, 
 " she spreadeth abroad her wings ; taketh them, and bear- 
 eth them upon her wings." The remarkable circumstance 
 of bearing them upon her wings, is alluded to in another 
 part of scripture : " Ye have seen," said Jehovah to Israel, • 
 " what I did unto Egypt, and how I bare you on eagles' 
 wings, and brought you unto myself" Many passages in 
 the writings of ancient authors countenance the idea, that 
 the eagle actually takes up her timid young ones, and bears 
 them on her wings till they venture to fly. jElian says, 
 that when Tilgamus, a Babylonian boy, fell from the top 
 of a tower, before he reached the ground, an eagle received 
 and bore him up on her back. A similar story is recorded 
 in the writings of Pausanias, who tells us, that an eagle 
 flew under Aristimenes, who was cast by the Lacedemo- 
 nians from the top of a tower, and carried him on her wings 
 till he reached the ground in safety. These stories, although 
 the mere creatures of imagination, show that the idea cf . 
 the eagle bearing a considerable weight on her wings, was 
 familiar to the ancients. It is not to be supposed, that she 
 wafts her unfledged young through the void of heaven, or 
 to distant places; the meaning probably is, that she aids 
 with her wings their feeble and imperfect attempts to fly, 
 till, imboldened by her example, and their own success, 
 they fearlessly commit themselves to the air. So did Jeho- 
 vah for his chosen people : when they w^re slumbering 
 in Goshen, or groaning in despair of recovering their free- 
 dom, he sent liis servant Moses to rouse them from their 
 inglorious sloth, to assert their liberty, and to break their 
 chains upon the heads of their oppressors. He carried 
 them out of Egypt, and led them through the wilderness 
 into their promised inheritance. He tanght them to know 
 their strength : he instructed them in the art of war; he 
 led them to battle, and by his almighty arm routed their 
 enemies. — Paxton. 
 
Chap. 32—34. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 125 
 
 Ver. 13. He made him ride on the high places 
 of the earth, that he might eat the increase of 
 the fields ; and he made him to suck honey out 
 of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. 
 
 This must mean the procuring of it from the olive-trees 
 growing there. Maundrell, speaking of the ancient fertil- 
 ity and cultivation of Judea, says, " the most rocky parts 
 of all, which could not well be adjusted for the production 
 of corn, might yet serve for the plantation of vines and 
 olive-trees, which delight to extract, the one its fatness, the 
 other its sprightly juice, chiefly out of such dry and flinty 
 places."--- BuRDER. 
 
 In Africa the bees deposits their honey on the trunks of 
 trees and on rocks. Trees in some countries being scarce, 
 the honey in most parts is found upon the front of rocks or 
 cliffs, plastered on the outside, having a covering of wax 
 to protect it from intruders. This outside coating, after a 
 short exposure to the weather, assumes nearly the same 
 colour as the rock, which, at a little distance, cannot easily 
 be distinguished from the rock, so that a person making an 
 incision with a knife, and putting his mouth to it to suck it, 
 were a person a little way off" to notice some of the honey 
 dropping from his chin, would believe that he saw a man 
 sucking honey from a rock ; so that the scripture method 
 of ex:pressing it is very beautiful. — African Light. 
 
 Ver. 15. But Jeshu run waxed fat, and kicked: 
 thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou 
 art covered with fat?iess ; then he forsook God 
 which made him, and lightly esteemed the 
 Rock of his salvation. 
 
 This does not appear to mean that Jeshurun had become 
 fat in person, but fat or proud in spirit. Thus, of people 
 who have risen from obscurity, and who conduct them- 
 selves proudly, it is said, " They have become fat." To 
 hear, " how fat that man is now," might lead a stranger to 
 suppose it was meant so literally ; whereas the individual 
 alluded to may be as meagre as one of Pharaoh's lean 
 cattle. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass. 
 
 The Hebrew word here translated slioes, signifies bolts. 
 The proper translation of this word is, thy bolts shall be iron 
 and brass : that is, thy cities must be strong and secure 
 against your enemies. To understand the force of these 
 words, \ve must knoM' that in the East, and even in modern 
 times, the locks and bolts of houses, and even of city gates, 
 were of wood. " Their doors and houses," says Rauwolff", 
 " are mostly closed with wooden bolts, which are hollow 
 within; to open which they have wooden keys, which are 
 a span long, and a thumb thick, and have on one side, 5, 6, 
 7, 8, 9, &c. short nails or strong wires, so placed as to catch 
 in others that fit into them, and thus move the bolt back- 
 ward and forward." Thevenot observes, " all their locks 
 and keys are made of wood; they have none of iron, not 
 even those of the city gates, which are, therefore, also 
 opened walhout keys." He describes the keys like Rau- 
 wolff, and adds, that the door may be opened without the 
 kej, by smearing the finger with clay. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Ver. 22. And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's 
 whelp ; he shall leap from Bashan. 
 
 Although the lion fearlessly meets his antagonist in the 
 open field, in this respect diflfering from leopards and some 
 other beasts of prey, that never openly attack the fated vic- 
 tim, yet this bold and noble animal often descends to strat- 
 agem and ambuscade : " He couches in his den, and abides 
 in the covert to lie in wait." He ws.tches thi- approach of 
 his victim with cautious attention, carefully avoiding the 
 least noise, lest he should give warning of his presence and 
 designs. Such has the glowing pencil of David painted 
 the insidious conduct of the murderer : " He lieth in wait 
 secretly as a lion in his den : he lieth in wait to catch the 
 poor — ^^he croucheth and humbleth himself, t^iaX the poor 
 may fall by his strong ones." " Like as a lion t.iat is greedy 
 
 of his prey, and as it were a young lien lurking in secret 
 places." From his lurking-place, he commonly leaps upon 
 the victim at one spring. So, in the farewell prediction 
 of Moses, it is foretold, " Dan is a lion's whelp, he shall 
 leap from Bashan." This fact is attested by all the ancient 
 historians : Aristotle asserts, that when the Hon judges him- 
 self within reach, he throws himself upon his prey; Pliny 
 says, he leaps with a bound ; and Solinus, when he is in 
 full pursuit, he springs forward upon thfe game. When 
 he leaps on his prey, says Buffbn, he makes a spring of 
 twelve or fifteen feet. In the same manner acted Dan-, 
 proceeding, as it were, by a single bound, from the one 
 extremity of Canaan to the other, he invaded the city of 
 Laish, which, after its reduction, he called by his own 
 name. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. And of Asher he said. Let Asher be 
 blessed with children ; let him be acceptable to 
 his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil. 
 
 The juice of the grape, it is well known, is expressed in 
 the East by treading, an operation which Dr. Chandler 
 had an opportunity of seeing near Smyrna. Black grapes 
 were spread on the ground in beds, and exposed to the sun 
 to dry for raisins ; while in another part, the juice was ex- 
 pressed for wine, a man with feet and legs bare, treading 
 the fruit in a kind of cistern, with a hole or vent near the 
 bottom, and a vessel beneath it to receive the liquor. When 
 a few clusters of grapes are to be squeezed, it may be done 
 commodiously enough by the hand ; in this Avay, Pharaoh's 
 butler supposed he took the grapes and pressed them into 
 his master's cup. This, it is true, was only a visionary 
 scene, but we must suppose it was agreeable to the custom 
 of the country. But when a large quantity of juice was 
 required, the grapes were subjected in the wine-press to 
 the feet of a treader. Oil of olives was expressed in the 
 same way, before the invention of mills. The existence of 
 this practice in Palestine, is ascertained by that threatening 
 in the prophecies of Micah : " Thou shalt sow, but thou 
 shalt not reap ; thou shalt tread the olives, but shalt not 
 anoint thee with oil; and sweet Avine, but shalt not drink 
 wine." But unequivocal traces of it may be discovered in 
 ages long anterior to the days of that prophet ; for in the 
 blessing of Asher, we find Moses praying: " Let Asher dip 
 his foot in oil." Whether any preparation was used in 
 those ancient times to facilitate the expression of the juice, 
 we are not informed ; but it is certain thai mills are now 
 used for pressing and grinding the olives which grow in 
 the neighbourhood of Athens, and probably in other eastern 
 countries. These mills are in the town, aiid not in the spot 
 where the olives grow; and seem to be used in consequence 
 of its being found, that the mere weight of the human body 
 is insuflficient for the purpose of etfeclually extracting the 
 oil. — Paxton. "^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 Ver. 1. And Moses went up from the plains of 
 Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of 
 Pisgah, that is over against Jericho : and the 
 Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto 
 Dan. 
 
 Mr. Buckingham, travelling through the mountains of 
 Gilead, says, " We were now in a land of extraordinary 
 richness, abounding with the most beautiful prospects, 
 clothed with thick forests, varied with verdant slopes, and 
 possessing extensive plains of a fine red soil, now covered 
 with thistles as the best proof of its fertility, and yielding 
 in nothing to the celebrated plains of Zabulon and Esdrae- 
 lon, in Galilee and Samaria. We continued our way to 
 the northeast, through a country, the beauty of which so 
 surprised us, that we often asked each other, what were our 
 sensations ; as if to ascertain the reality of what we saw, 
 and persuade each other, by mutual confession of our de- 
 light, that the picture before us was not an optical illusion. 
 The landscape alone, which varied at every tuin, and 
 gave us new beauties from very ditferent points of view, 
 was, of itself, worth all the pains of an excursion to the 
 eastward of Jordan to obtain a sight of; and the park-like 
 scenes, that sometimes softened the romantic wildness of 
 the general character as a whole, reminded us of similar 
 spots in less neglected lands." 
 
JOSHUA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 1. Now, after the death of Moses, the ser- 
 vant of the Lord, it came to pass, that the Lord 
 spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' 
 minister, saying, 2. Moses my servant is dead : 
 ngw therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, 
 and all this people, unto the land which I do 
 give to them, even to the children of Israel. 
 
 The conquest of Canaan, by the Israelites, having so oft- 
 en been the subject of cavil among the enemies of revela- 
 tion, and being adverted to in terms of approbation above, 
 may properly be considered in this place. Their conduct 
 in this affair is satisfactorily vindicated by Mr. Townsend, 
 m his " Old Testament historically and chronologically ar- 
 ranged," from which we transcribe the following pas- 
 sages : — God, the great governor, who possesses all power 
 over his creatures, and may justly punish those who vio- 
 late his laws, in that manner which to his wisdom may 
 seem most impressive and useful, commanded the Israel- 
 ites to exterminate the Canaanites, as th^ just retribution 
 for their crimes and idolatries. God might have destroyed 
 them by famine, by earthquake, by pestilence : He might 
 have drowned by a local deluge, or consumed them by fire 
 from heaven ; instead of these, he commissioned the people 
 of Israel to root them out by the sword. In so doing, the 
 Almighty not only demonstrated to the whole world his 
 hatred of the corruptions and pollutions of superstition, but 
 he more particularly enforced on the Israelites the purity 
 of his law, the certainly of their own punishment if they 
 apostatized, and the freedom from temporal evil which 
 they should consequently enjoy if they persevered in their 
 allegiance to hhn, their sovereign. Lest this invasion of 
 Canaan by the Israelites, however, should be drawn into 
 precedent by other nations, for ambition or religious perse- 
 cution ; they were assured by continued and powerful mira- 
 cles, that their cause was just, that they should be successful, 
 and that they were not subject at that period to the common 
 laws of nations. The people of Israel was the sword of 
 God, the great magistrate of earth, and they were no more 
 to be condemned in thus acting in conformit}'' to the com- 
 mands of God, than the executioner can be who fulfils the 
 last sentence of the law. Before, then, other nations in- 
 vade theterritory of their neighbours on the same supposed 
 authority as the Israelites, the same commission from 
 heaven must be given ; and that commission must be au- 
 thenticated by miracles equally evident, perpetual, and 
 wonderful. Many, however, have not been satisfied with 
 this argument; and would discard the doctrine of the pecu- 
 liar providence, which regulated by a visible theocracy 
 the conduct of the chosen people : they would defend the 
 invasion of Palestine on other grounds. They would 
 judge of the transactions of that period, (regardless of the 
 peculiar circumstances under which they took place,) by 
 modern ideas, and the present law of nations. Some sup- 
 pose that the conduct of the Israelites was solely defensi- 
 ble, on the supposition that there had been a partition of 
 the whole earth by the sons of Noah ; and that Canaan had 
 been allotted to Shem : the sons of Shem, therefore, were jus- 
 tified in claiming their ancient inheritance from the Ca- 
 naanites, who were descended from Ham. Others have 
 asserted that the Canaanites commenced the war by at- 
 tacking the Israelites : an assertion that cannotbe defended 
 from the history. While others have affirmed, without 
 any well-gi' unded arguments, that the Israelites, as a wan- 
 dering people, having no certain home, were justified in 
 forcibly invading, and taking possession of an adjoining 
 territory. Rut Michaelis is of opinion that the right of the 
 Israelites originated in their being actually the proprietors 
 
 of Canaan, of which they had been unjustly dispossessed 
 by the intruding and hostile Canaanites. 
 
 The laws of nations are always the same. If any na- 
 tion, or tribe, or part of a tribe, take possession of an un- 
 known, undiscovered, unoccupied, or uninhabited coun- 
 try, the right of properly vests in them; they are its proprie- 
 tors and owners. After the deluge, the world might be 
 said to be in this state ; and Michaelis has endeavoured to 
 prove, that the ancestors of Abraham were the original 
 occupiers of the pasture land of Canaan. Canaan, there- 
 fore, by the law of nations, as well as by the promises of 
 God, was the lot of Abraham's inheritance, and the right- 
 ful land of his descendants. The Canaanite and the Periz-' 
 zite had only just established themselves in Canaan when 
 Abraham removed from Haran to that country ; and were 
 so weak and few in number, that they never interfered 
 with the right of sovereignty assumed and exerted by 
 Abraham. The Canaanites were merchants and adven- 
 turers who had been originally settled near the borders of 
 the Indian Ocean ; and who, having been dispossessed by 
 the Cuthic Sidonians, had migrated westward, to form es- 
 tablishments on the seacoasts of Palestine, and carry on 
 commerce with the herdsmen who traversed it. They 
 were for some time contented with their factories on the 
 seacoasts, but they gradually obtained possession of the 
 inland country. The Perizzites, too, were a warlike tribe, 
 who now first made their appearance in Canaan ; they had 
 originally inhabited the northeast of Babylonia. Wheth- 
 er they had been dispossessed of their settlements ; whether 
 they were seeking new establishments ; or for whatever 
 purpose they were now in Palestine, they gave no inter- 
 ruption to the progress of Abraham, although Abraham 
 entered upon the Holy Land and continued his journey 
 ings with a large retinue, and as a powerful prince. He 
 took possession of Canaan as the territory of his ances- 
 tors; not indeed as a fixed habitation, but as a pasture land 
 adapted to his numerous flocks and herds. He traversed 
 the whole country as a proprietor, without a competitor. 
 He had the power of arming three hundred and eighteen 
 of his own servants, born in his own house; and it is 
 most probable that he had others who are not enumerated. 
 He declared war as an independent prince of this country 
 against five neighbouring princes; and formed an alliance 
 with Abimelech, as an equal and as a sovereign. It is 
 true, he purchased land of the Canaanitish family of Heth, 
 but this was because the Hittites had gradually made a 
 more fixed settlement in that part of the country; their 
 intrusion had not been at first prevented by the ancestors 
 of Abraham; and by this sufferance they made that dis- 
 trict their peculiar property. As Abraham thus traversed 
 and possessed Canaan, with undisputed authority, so too ■ 
 did Isaac and Jacob in like manner. No one opposed 
 their right: They exercised, as Abraham had done 'be- 
 fore them, sovereign power; they never resigned that 
 power; nor gave up toothers the property of that land, 
 which now, by long prescription, as well as by the promise 
 of God, had become. entirely their own. 
 
 The ancestors, then, of the Israelites, Michaelis argues, 
 were either the sole sovereigns, or the most powerful of 
 those princes who possessed, in early ages, the Holy Land. 
 By the famine which occurred in the days of Joseph, they 
 were compelled to leave their own country, and take ref- 
 uge in Egypt : yet they never lost sight of the sepulchre of 
 their fathers. And though we do not read that acts of 
 ownership were continued to maintain and perpetuate their 
 right, we can have but little doubt, that something of the 
 kind took place, for Jacob was taken from Egypt to be 
 buried there; Joseph assured them that they should re-' 
 turn; and the Egyptians, their oppressors, a kindred 
 branch of the powerful tribes which had by this time en- 
 tirely taken possession of Palestine, kept them in bond- 
 
Chap. 2, 3. 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 127 
 
 age, and refused to let them go, lest they should claim the 
 inheritance of their fathers. If this claim of the Israelites 
 can be proved to be well founded, they would have been 
 entitled, by the law of nations, forcibly to take possession of 
 the Holy Land; and it will be interesting to observe how 
 .he merciful providence of God afforded them the opportu- 
 nity of successfully regaining their lawful inheritance, 
 ancl at the same time accomplishing his own divine pur- 
 poses, to the fulfilment of his prophecies, and to the hap- 
 piness and security of his church. The Israelites may be 
 considered as the servants and ministers of God, punish- 
 ing the idolatry of the Canaanites, and instituting in its 
 place, in the midst of an apostate world, the religion of the 
 one true God. In every victory they obtained, they must 
 have admired the faithfulness of that promise which had 
 foretold their entire possession of this land; and they must 
 have been persuaded, that if they served other gods, they 
 would bring down upon themselves the punishments pre- 
 dicted by Moses. — Vide Michaelis, Comment. <S:c. vol. i. 
 book ii. ch. iii. p. 155, &c. ; Horae Mosaicae, vol. i. p. 
 458 ; Faber's Origin of Pag. Idol. vol. iii. p. 561, &c. — 
 Townsend's Old Testament, vol. j. pp. 411 ■ 41 6. — Criti- 
 
 CA BiBLICA. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 1. And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of 
 Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go 
 view the land, even Jericho. And they went, 
 and came into a harlot's house, named Rahab, 
 and lodged there. 
 
 Most of the eastern cities contain one caravansary at least, 
 for the reception of strangers; smaller places, called choul- 
 tries, are erected by charitable persons, or munificent 
 princes, in forests, plains, and deserts, for the accommo- 
 dation of travellers. Near them is generally a well, and 
 a cistern for the cattle : a bramin or faquir often resides 
 there to furnish the pilgrim with food, and the few necessa- 
 ries he may stand in need of When benighted in a dreary 
 solitude, travellers in India were thus certain, within a 
 moderate distance, to find one of these buildings appro- 
 priated for their accommodation, and were often supplied 
 with the necessaries of life gratis. (Forbes.) Dr. Franklin 
 says, that among the Indians of North America, there is in 
 every village a vacant dwelling, called the stranger's house. 
 Hither ihe traveller is led by two old men, who procure him 
 victuals, and skins to repose on, exacting nothing for the 
 entertainment. Among the ancients, women generally 
 kept houses of entertainment. " Among the Egyptians, the 
 women carry on all commercial concerns, and keep tav- 
 erns, while the men continue at home and weave." Herod- 
 otus asserts, that "the men were the slaves of the women 
 in Egypt, and that it is stipulated in the marriage contract, 
 that the woman shall be the ruler of her husband, and that 
 he shall obey her in all things." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 15. And as they that bare the ark were 
 come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests 
 that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of 
 the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks 
 all the time of harvest.) 
 
 The largest and most celebrated stream in Palestine, is 
 the Jordan. It is much larger, according to Dr. Shaw, 
 than all the brooks and streams of the Holy Land united 
 together ; and, excepting the Nile, is by far the most con- 
 siderable river, either of the coast of Syria or of Barbary. 
 He computed it to be about thirty yards broad, and found 
 it nine feet deep at the brink. This river, which divides 
 the country into two unequal parts, has been commonly 
 said to issue from two fountains, or to be formed by the 
 junction of two rivulets, the Jor and the Dan ; but the as- 
 sertion seems to be totally destitute of any solid foundation. 
 The Jewish historian, Josephus, on the contrary, places its 
 source at Phiala, a fountain which rises about fifteen miles 
 from Cesarea Philippi, a little on the right hand, and not 
 much out of the w^ay to Trachonitis. It is called Phiala, or 
 the Vial, from its roimd figure ; its water is always of the 
 same depth, the basin being brimful, without either shrink- 
 
 ing or overflowing. From Phiala to Panion, which was 
 long considered as the real source of Jordan, the river flbw? 
 under ground. The secret of its subterraneous course was 
 first discovered by Philip, the tetrarch of Trachonitis, who 
 caststraws intothe fountain of Phiala, Avhichcame out again 
 at Panion. Leaving the cave of Panion, it crosses the 
 bogs and fens of the lake Semichonitis ; and after a course 
 of fifteen miles, passes ifhder the city of Julias, the ancient 
 Bethsaida; then expands into a beautiful sheet of water, 
 named the lake of Gennesareth ; and after flowing a long 
 way through the desert, empties itself mto the lake Ai^phal- 
 tites, or Dead Sea. As the cave Panion lies at the foot of 
 mount Lebanon, in the northern extremity of Canaan, and 
 the lake Asphaltites extends to the southern extremity, the 
 river Jordan pursues it course through the whole extent of 
 the country from north to south, li is evident also, from 
 the history of Josephus, that a wilderness or de?ert c«f con- 
 siderable extent, stretched along the river Jordan in the 
 times of the New Testament ; which was undoubtedly the 
 wilderness mentioned by the evangelists, v.here John the 
 Baptist came preaching and baptizing. The Jordan has a 
 considerable depth of water. Chateaubriand makes it 
 six or seven feet deep close at the shore, and about fifty 
 paces in breadth a considerable distance from its entrance 
 mto the Dead Sea. According to the computation of Vol- 
 ney, it is hardly sixty paces wide at the mouth ; but the 
 author of Letters from Palestine, states that the stream, 
 when it enters the lake Asphaltites, is deep and rapid, 
 rolling a considerable volume of waters ; the width ap- 
 pears from two to three hundred feet, and the current is 
 so violent, that a Greek servant belonging to the author 
 who attempted to cross it, though strong, active, and an ex- 
 cellent swimmer, found the undertaking impracticable. 
 It maybe said to have two banks, of which the inner marks 
 the ordinary height of the stream; and the outer, its ancient 
 elevation during the rainy season, or the melting of the 
 snows on the summits of Lebanon. In the days of Joshua, 
 and it is probable for many ages after his time, the har- 
 vest was one of the seasons when the Jordan overflows 1 
 his banks. This fact is distinctly recorded by the sacreii 
 historian : " And as they that bare the ark were come unto 
 Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark. were 
 dipped in the brim of the water (for Jordan overfloweth all 
 his banks all the time of harvest.") This happens in the 
 first month of the Jewish year, which corresponds with 
 March. But in modern times, (whether the rapidity of the 
 current has worn the channel deeper than formerly, or 
 whether its waters have taken some other direction,) the 
 river seems to have forgotten his ancient greatness. When 
 Maundrell visited Jordan on the thirtieth of March, the 
 proper time for these inundations, he could discern no sign 
 or probability of such overflowing ; nay, so far was it from 
 overflowing, that it ran, says our author, at least two yards 
 below the brink of its channel. After having descended 
 the outer bank, he went about a furlong upon the level 
 strand, before he came to the immediate bank of the river. 
 This inner bank was so thickly covered with bushes and 
 trees, among which he observecl the tamarisk, the willoAV, 
 and the oleander, that he could see no water till he had 
 made his way through them. In this entangled thicket, so 
 conveniently planted near the cooling stream, and remote 
 from the habitations of men, several kinds of wild beasts 
 were accustomed to repose till the swelling of the river 
 drove them from their retreats. This circumstance gave 
 occasion to that beautiful allusion of the prophet : " He 
 shall come up like a lion, from the swelling of Jordan, 
 against the habitation of the strong." The figure is highly 
 poetical and striking. It is not easy to present a more ter- 
 rible image to the mind, than a lion roused from his den 
 by the roar of the swelling river, and chafed and irritated 
 by its rapid and successive encroachments on his chosen 
 haunts, till forced to quit his last retreat, he ascends to the 
 higher grounds and the open country, and turns the fierce- 
 ness of his rage against the helpless sheep-cots, or the un- 
 suspecting villages. A destroyer equally fierce, and cruel, 
 and irresistible, the devoted Edomites were to find in Nebu- 
 chadnezzar and his armies. The water of the river, at 
 the time of Mr. Maundrell's visit, was very turbid, and too 
 rapid to allow a swimmer to stem its course. Its breadth 
 might be about twenty yards ; and in depth, it far exceeded 
 his height. The rapidity and depth of the river, which are 
 admitted by every traveller, although the volume of water 
 
128 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 seeiris now to be much diminished, illustrate those parts 
 of scripture, which mention the fords and passages of Jor- 
 dan. It no longer indeed rolls down into the Salt Sea so 
 majestic a stream as in the days of Joshua, yet its ordinary 
 depth is still about ten or twelve feet, so that it cannot 
 even at present be passed but at certain places. Of this 
 well-known circumstance, the men of Gilead took advan- 
 tage in the civil war, which th«y were compelled to wage 
 Vv^ith their brethren: "The Gileadites took the passages 
 of Jordan before the Ephraimites : . . . then they took him, 
 and slew him at the passages of Jordan." The people of 
 Israel, under the command of Ehud, availed themselves of 
 the same advantage in the war with Moab : " And they 
 went down after him, and took the fords of Jordan towards 
 Moab, and suffered not a man to pass over," But although 
 the state of this river in modern times, completely justifies 
 the incidental remarks of the sacred writers, it is evident, 
 that Maundrell was disconcerted by the shallowness of the 
 stream, at the time of the year when he expected to see it 
 overflowing all its banks ; and his embarrassment seems 
 to have increased, when he contemplated the double margin 
 within which it flowed. This difficulty, which has perhaps 
 occurred to«ome others, may be explained by a remark 
 which Dr. Pococke has made on the river Euphrates. 
 " The bed of the Euphrates," says that writer, "was meas- 
 ured by some English gentlemen at Beer, and found to be 
 six hundred and thirty yards broad ; but the river only- 
 two hundred and fourteen yards over ; that they thought it 
 to be nine or ten feet deep in the middle ; and were in- 
 formed, that it sometimes rises twelve feet perpendicularly. 
 He observed that it had an inner and outer bank ; but says, 
 it rarely overflows the inner bank : that when it does, they 
 sow watermelons and other fruits of that kind, as soon as 
 the water retires, and have a great produce." From this 
 passage, Mr. Harmer argues ; " Might not the overflow- 
 ings of the Jordan be like those of the Euphrates, not an- 
 nual, but much more rare V The difficulty, therefore, 
 will be completely removed, by supposing that it does not, 
 like the Nile, overflow every year, as some authors by mis- 
 take had supposed, but, like the Euphrates, only in some 
 particular years; but when it does, it is in the time of har- 
 vest. If it did not in ancient times annually overflow its 
 hanks, the majesty of God in dividing its waters, to make 
 way for Joshua and the armies of Israel, was certainly the 
 more striking to the Canaanites ; who, when they looked 
 upon themselves as defended in an extraordinary manner 
 by the casual swelling of the river, its breadth and rapidity 
 being both so extremely increased, yet, found it in these 
 circumstances part asunder, and leave a way on dry land 
 for the pec^le of Jehovah. 
 
 The casual overflowing of the river, in Mr. Harmer's 
 opinion, seems to receive some confirmation from a pas- 
 sage in Josephus, where that writer informs his readers, 
 that the Jordan was sometimes swelled in the spring, so 
 as to be impassable in places where people were wont to 
 go over in his time ; for, speaking of a transaction on 
 the fourth of the month Dystrus, which answers to our 
 March, or, as others reckon, to February, he gives an 
 account of great numbers of people who perished in this 
 river, into which they were driven by their enemies ; 
 which, by the circumstances, appears to have happened 
 in a few days after what was done on the fourth of Dystrus. 
 But the solution offered by this respectable author is rather 
 strained and unsatisfactory. The inspired writer of the 
 book of Joshua uses language on that subject, which natu- 
 rally suggests the idea of periodical inundations : " Jordan 
 overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest." The 
 present time certainly indicates the general habit of the 
 subject to which it refers, and in this case, what commonly 
 happens to the river. It may be swelled in the spring occa- 
 sionally ; but it is not easy to discover a reason for the gen- 
 eral remark of the sacred writer, if the inundations in the 
 time of harvest were not annual. The causes of these in- 
 undations, the melting of the snows on the top of Lebanon, 
 and the former and latter rain, uniformly take place at 
 their appointed seasons ; but a steady periodical cause will 
 certainly produce a corresponding effect. But if this rea- 
 soning be just, why did not Maundrell see the effect when 
 he visited the river at the appointed time 1 This question 
 may be answered by another, Why do the inundations 
 even of the Nile sometimes fail 1 The reason is obvious ; 
 the rains in Abyssinia are not every season equally copious. 
 
 In the same manner, if the snows on Lebanon, and the 
 periodical rains, are less abundant in some seasons, it will 
 easily account for the state of the river when it was visited 
 by Maundrell. Admitting the fact, that the volume of wa- 
 ter in the Jordan is diminished, and that he never overflows 
 his banks as in ancient times, that intelligent traveller him- 
 self has sufficiently accounted for the circumstance : some 
 of the waters may be drained off by secret channels, which 
 is not uncommon in those parts of the world ; and if the 
 rapidity of the current be so great that he could not swim 
 against it, the depth of the channel must be greatly increas- 
 ed since the days of Joshua and the Judges. To these,, 
 some other causes of considerable power may be added ; 
 the present state of Lebanon, now for a long time deprived 
 of its immense forests of cedar, which formerly exerted a 
 powerful attraction on the humidity of the atmosphere, and 
 served to accumulate the snows on the Sannin, while they 
 screened from the burning rays of the sun, the fountains 
 and rills that fed the Jordan and his tributary streams : and 
 the great extent to which the declivities of that noble moun- 
 tain have been subjected to the arts of cultivation, by the 
 Maronites, and other nations, who have taken refuge in its 
 sequestered retreats from the intolerable oppression of the 
 Turks, by which its numerous streams have been still 
 further diminished, — must, it is imagined, produce a very 
 sensible difference in the volume of water which that river, 
 once so celebrated for its full and majestic tide, now pours 
 into the Salt Sea. Still, however, taking the mean depth 
 of the stream during the whole year at nine feet, and ad- 
 mitting that it runs about two miles an hour, the Jordan 
 will daily discharge into the Dead Sea, about 6,090,000 tons 
 of water. 
 
 But although these causes must have produced a consid- 
 erable diminution in the swellings of Jordan, we have the 
 authority of a recent traveller for asserting, that they still 
 take place at the appointed season, and exhibit a scene of 
 no inconsiderable grandeur. In winter, the river overflows 
 its narrow channel, which between the two principal lakes 
 is not more than sixty or eighty feet broad, and, swelled by 
 the rains, forms a sheet of water sometimes a quarter of a 
 league in breadth. The time of its overflowing is gener- 
 ally in March, when the snows melt on the mountain of 
 the Shaik ; at which time, more than any other, its waters 
 are troubled and of a yellow hue, and its course impetu- 
 ous. The common receptacle into which the Jordan 
 empties his waters, is the lake Asphaltites, from whence 
 they are continually drained off by evaporation. Some 
 writers, unable to find a discharge for the large body of 
 water which is continually rushing into the lake, have been 
 inclined to suspect, it had some communication with the 
 Mediterranean ; but, besides that we know of no snch gulf, 
 it has been demonstrated by accurate calculations, that 
 evaporation is more than sufficient to carry off' the waters 
 of the river. It is in fact very considerable, and frequently 
 becomes sensible to the eye, by the fogs with which the lake 
 is covered at the rising of the sun, and which are after- 
 ward dispersed by the heat. 
 
 How large the common receptacle of the Jordan was, 
 before the destruction of Sodom, cannot now be determined 
 with certainty; but it was much smaller than at present; 
 the whole vale of Siddim, which, before that awful catas- 
 trophe, was crowded Avith cities, or covered with rich and 
 extensive pastures, and fields of corn, being now buried in 
 the waters of the lake. The course of the stream, which is,™ 
 to the southward, seems clearly to indicate, that the origin- 1 
 al basin was in the southern part of the present sea. But, a 
 although the waters of the river at first presented a much 1 
 less extended surface to the action of the sun and the at- 
 mosphere, still a secret communication between the lake ■. 
 and the Mediterranean, is not perhaps necessary to account 
 for their discharge. By the admission of Volney, evapo- , 
 ration is more than sufficient to carry them off at present : and 
 if to this be added, the great quantity of water consumed 
 in the cities, and required by the cultivator, to refresh his 
 plantations and corn-fields, under the burnrng rays of an 
 oriental sun, it is presumed, a cause equal to the effect is 
 provided. This is not a mere conjecture, unsupported by 
 historical facts ; for only a very small portion of the Bar- 
 rady, the principal river of Damascus, escapes f)om the 
 gardens that environ the citv, through which it is con- 
 ducted in a thousand clear and winding streams, to main- 
 tain their freshness and verdura — PaxtOn. 
 
Chap. 5—9. 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 129 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 15. And the captain of the Lord's host 
 said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy 
 foot; for the place whereon thou standest is 
 holy. And Joshua did so. 
 
 Every person that approaches the royal presence in the 
 East, is obliged to take off his shoes, because they consider 
 as sacred the ground on which the king sits, whom they dig- 
 nify with the title of the Shadow of God. Allusive to this 
 .-custom, perhaps, is the command given to Joshua : " Loose 
 hyshoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest 
 IS holy. And Joshua did so." And so strictly was this cus- 
 om observed, that the Persians look upon the omission of it 
 as the greatest indignity that can be offered to them. The 
 king (says Morier) is never approached by his subjects with- 
 out frequent inclinations of the body : and when the person 
 mtroduced to his presence has reached a certain distance, 
 he waits until the king orders him to proceed ; upon which 
 he leaves his shoes, and walks forward with a respectful step 
 to a second spot, until his majesty again directs him to ad- 
 vance. The custom which is here referred to, not only 
 constantly prevailed all over the East, from the earliest 
 ages, but continues to this day. To pull off the sandals, 
 or slippers, is used as a mark of respect, on entering a 
 mosque or temple, or the room of any person of distinction ; 
 in which case they were either laid aside, or given to a 
 servant to bear. Ives {Travels, p. 75) says, that, " at the 
 doors of an Indian pagoda, are seen as many slippers and 
 sandals as there are hats hanging up in our churches." 
 The same custom prevails among the Turks. Maundrell 
 describes exactly the ceremonials of a Turkish visit, 
 on which (though a European and a stranger) he was 
 obliged to comply with this custom. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver, 26. And Joshua adjured them at that time, 
 saying, Cjirsed be the man before the Lord 
 that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho : 
 he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first- 
 born, and in his youngest so7i shall he set up 
 the gates of it. 
 
 It appears from the following passage from Strabo's 
 Geography of Troy, (b. xiii. chap. 1. § 42,) that it was not 
 unusual in remote antiquity to pronounce a curse upon 
 those who should rebuild a destroyed city. " It is believed 
 that those who might have afterward wished to rebuild 
 Ilium, were deterred from building the city in the same 
 place, either by what they had suffered there, or because 
 Agamemnon had pronounced a curse against him that 
 should rebuild it. For this was an ancient custom. Thus 
 Croesus, after he had destroyed Sidene, into which the ty- 
 rant Glaucias had thrown himself, uttered a curse upon 
 him who should rebuild the walls of that place." Zonaras 
 says, that the Romans pronounced a curse upon him who 
 should rebuild Carthage. Joshua's curse on the rebuilder 
 of Jericho, was fulfilled, according to 1 Kings xvi. 34, on 
 one Hiel, who lost his eldest son, Abiram, when he laid the 
 foundation, and his youngest son, Segub, when he built the 
 
 gate. — -ROSENMULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 6. And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to 
 the earth upon his face before the ark of the 
 Lord until the even-tide, he and the elders of 
 Israel, and put dust upon their heads. 
 
 Joshua and the elders of Israel were in great distress, 
 because they had been defeated by the men of Ai, and be- 
 cause they saw in that a token of the divine displeasure. 
 They therefore fell prostrate before the ark of the Lord, 
 and put dust on their heads as an emblem of their sorrow. 
 (1 Sam. iv. 12. 2 Sam. i. 2. Neh. ix. 1.) How often is the 
 mind afFectingly thrown back on this ancient custom by 
 similar scenes at this day ! See the poor object bereft of 
 wife, children, property, friends ; or suffering under some 
 deep affliction of body : he sits on the ground, with his 
 eyes fixed thereon, a dirty rag round his loins, his arms 
 17 
 
 folded, his jewels laid aside, his hair dishevelled and cov- 
 ered with dust, and bitterly bemoaning his condition, say- 
 ing, lyol iyol iyol — " Aias 1 alas! alasl" — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 4. They did Avork wilily, and went and made 
 as if they had been ambassadors, and took old 
 sacks upon their asses, and wine-bottles, old, 
 and rent, and bound up. 
 
 Chardin informs us that the Arabs, and all those that lead 
 a wandering life, keep their water, milk, and other liquors, 
 in leathern bottles. " They keep in them more fresh than 
 otherwise they Avould do. These leathern bottles are made 
 of goat-skins. When the animal is killed, they cut off its feet 
 and its head, and they draw it in this manner out of the 
 skin, without opening its belly. They afterward sew up 
 the places where the legs were cut ofi; and the tail, and 
 when it is filled, they tie it about the neck. These nations, 
 and the countrypeople of Persia, never go a journey 
 without a small leathern bottle of water hanging by their 
 side like a scrip. The great leathern bottles are made of 
 the skin of a he-goat, and the small oneSj'that serve in- 
 stead of a bottle of water on the road, are made of a kid's • 
 skin." These bottles are frequently rent, when old and 
 much used, and are capable of being repaired by being 
 bound up. This they do, Chardin says, " sometimes by 
 setting in a piece ; sometimes by gathering up the wounded 
 place in the manner of a purse ; sometimes they put in a 
 round flat piece of wood, and by that means stop the hole." 
 Maundrell gives an account exactly similar to the above. 
 Speaking of the Greek convent at Bellmount, near Tr^)oli, 
 in Syria, he says, " the same person whom we saw officia- 
 ting at the altar in his embroidered sacerdotal robe, brought 
 us the next day, on his own back, a kid and a goat-skin of 
 wine, as a present from the convent." These bottles are 
 still used in Spain, and called borrachas. Mr. Bruce gives 
 a description of the girba, which seems to be a vessel of the 
 same kind as those now mentioned, only of dimensions 
 considerably larger. " A girba is an ox's skin, squared, and 
 the edges sewed together very artificially, by a double 
 seam, which does not let out water, much resembling that 
 upon the best English cricket balls. An opening is left at 
 the top of the girba, in the same manner as the bunghole 
 of a cask ; around this the skin is gathered to the size of a 
 large handful, which, when the girba is full of water, is 
 tied round with whip-cord. These girbas generally con- 
 tain about sixty gallons each, and two of them are the load 
 of a camel. They are then all besmeared on the outside 
 with grease, as well to hinder the water from oozing 
 through, as to prevent its being evaporated by the heat of 
 the sun upon the girba, which, in fact, happened to us> 
 twice, so as to put us in imminent danger of perishing with 
 thirst." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 23. Now therefore ye are cursed ; and there 
 shall none of you be freed from being bond- 
 men, and hewers of wood, and drawers of wa- 
 ter, for the house of my God. 
 
 In the kingdom of Algiers, the women and children are 
 charged with the care of their flocks and their herds, with 
 providing food for the family, cutting fuel, fetching water, 
 and when their domestic affairs allow them, with tending 
 their silk worms. The daughters of the Turcomans in 
 Palestine, are employed in the same mean and laborious 
 offices. In Homer, Andromache fed the horses of her he- 
 roic husband. It is probable, the cutting of wood was an- 
 other female occupation. The verv great antiquity of these 
 customs, is confirmed by the prophet Jeremiah, who com- 
 plains that the children were sent to gather wood for idol- 
 atrous purposes ; and in his Lamentations, he bewails the 
 oppressions which his people suffered from their enemies, 
 in these terms: " They took the young men to grind, and 
 the children fell under the wood.'' Hence the servile con- 
 dition to which the Gibeonites were reduced by Joshua, for 
 imposing upon him and the princes of the congregation, ap- 
 pears to have been much more severe than we are apt at 
 first to suppose : " Now, therefore, ye are cursed, and there 
 shall none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hew- 
 ers of vood., and drawers of water, for the house of my God." 
 
130 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 Chap. 10. 
 
 The bitterness of their doom did not consist in being sub- 
 jected to a laborious service, for it was the usual employ- 
 ment of women and children ; but in their being degraded 
 from the characteristic employment of men, that of bearing 
 arms, and condemned with their posterity for ever to the 
 employment of females. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Be not 
 afraid because of them ; for to-morrow, about 
 this time, will I deliver them up all slain be- 
 fore Israel: thou shalt hough their horses, 
 and burn their chariots with fire. 
 
 With the enemy's horses, the Israelites had a different 
 procedure from other booty. For their direction, indeed, 
 on this point, they had no general and permanent law, pre- 
 scribed them, but merely the order from God, issued by 
 Joshua (x. 6) before the battle at the waters of Merom ; 
 according to which order, they were naturally led to regu- 
 late their conduct in aftertimes. In their wars before the 
 reign of Sol(jmon, they made no use of horses, though 
 some of their enemies did ; and this same cavalry of their 
 enemies was wont to be very formidable, and sometimes 
 gave them the superiority of the Israelites in the plains. 
 At the same time, the event has often shown, that a brave, 
 steady, close infantry, without the support of horse, will 
 stand the shock of hostile cavalry without the smallest dis- 
 order ; of which, although our cavalry is far more formi- 
 dable by reason of their close charge, modern history fur- 
 nishes examples. Indeed, on one occasion, besides more 
 than 20,000 infantry, David took, I know not whether 1700, 
 or 7000 cavalry, prisoners ; their retreat across the Eu- 
 phrates having been probably cut off, or that they were 
 compelled to surrender for want of subsistence. But when 
 the Israelites did get a booty of horses, they did not know 
 what use to make of them. Their husbandry was carried 
 on in the ancient way, and to much more advantage, with 
 oxen, which are not so expensive to maintain ; and to this 
 their whole rural economy was directed. In war, they did 
 not employ cavalry, and would have been bad horsemen ; 
 and for travelling, they commonly made use of the ass, to 
 which whoever is accustomed from his youth, will not wil- 
 lingly venture to ride a mettled horse, particularly such a 
 one as is employed in war. Horses, therefore, were to 
 them quite a useless sort of plunder, unless they had sold 
 them, which was not advisable, because their enemies, in 
 a roundabout way, might have bought them again. It was 
 far better policy for them to diminish as far as possible this 
 race of animals, by means of which their enemies might, 
 .on some occasions, obtain a manifest advantage over them; 
 just as the Romans put the elephants of their enemies to 
 death, because they had no desire to make use of this for- 
 eign and dubious expedient to help them to victory, and 
 yei saw that elephants might sometimes be dangerous to 
 tiieir troops. In the first engagement which the Israelites 
 had with an enemy whose cavalry and war-chariots made 
 him formidable, God commanded them to hough or ham- 
 string, that is, to cut the thigh-sinew of the horses which 
 they took; and they did so, Josh. x. 6 — 9. From ignorance 
 of military affairs, most expositors have understood this 
 command as if it meant, not that the horses should be kill- 
 ed, but merely lamed in the hmd-legs, and then let go : and 
 into this mistake, by following Bochart, as he had Kimchi, 
 I was led in the first edition of this work. — I have never 
 been in war, and know just as little of the veterinary art ; 
 nor have I ever seen a ham-strung horse. But a horse so 
 treated, must, instead of running off, fall instantly back- 
 ward, and writhe about miserably till he die, which gen- 
 erally happens from loss of blood, by the stroke of the sabre 
 cutting the artery of the thigh. This is still, as military 
 people have since informed me, the plan adopted to make 
 those horses that are taken, but cannot be easily brought 
 away, unserviceable to the enemv again. They ham-string 
 them, which can be done in an instant; and they generally 
 die of the wound, by bleeding to death ; but though they 
 should not, the wound never heals ; so that if even the en- 
 emy recover them alive, he is forced to despatch them : and 
 every compassionate friend of horses, who has ever seen 
 one in that situation, will do so, in order to terminate his 
 misery. There is, therefore, no foundation for Kimchi's 
 
 opinion, that mere landing was enjoined, because it would 
 be wrong to put an animal unnecessarily to death. For 
 thus to lame a horse that would still live, in my opinion, 
 would rather have been extreme cruelty; because, being 
 then useless, nobody would be likely to give him any food, 
 
 MiCHAELIS. 
 
 Ver. 11. And it came to pass, as they fled from 
 before Israel, and were in the going down to 
 Belh-horon, that the Lord cast down great 
 stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, 
 and they died: they were more which died 
 with hailstones, than they whom the children 
 of Israel slew with the sword. 
 
 Some writers are of opinion that this was hail, larger 
 and more violent than usual; others maintain that Joshua 
 is to be understood literally, of a shower of stones. Such 
 a circumstance, so far from being impossible, has several 
 times occurred. The Romans, who looked upon showers 
 of stones as very disastrous, have noticed many instances 
 of them. Under the reign of Tullius Hostilius, when it 
 was known to the people of Rome that a shower of stones 
 had fallen on the mountain of Alba, at first it seemed in- 
 credible. They sent out proper persons to inquire into this 
 prodigy, and it was found that stones had fallen after the 
 same manner as a storm of hail driven by the wind. Some 
 time after the battle at Cannoe, there was seen upon the same 
 mountain of Alba a shower of stones, which continued for 
 two days together. In 1538, near a village in Italy called 
 Tripergola, after some shocks of an earthquake, there was 
 seen a shower of stones and dust, which darkened the air 
 for two days, after which they observed that a mountain 
 had risen up in the midst of the Lucrine Lake. — Burder. 
 
 A similar phenomenon in modern times is thus described 
 in Com. Porter's Letters from Constantinople and its En- 
 virons, (vol. J. p. 44,) as having occurred in the summer 
 of 1831 :— 
 
 " We had got perhaps a mile and a ^alf on our way 
 when a cloud rising in the west, gave indications of an ap- 
 proaching rain. In a few minutes we discovered some- 
 thing falling from the heavens with a heavy splash, and of 
 a whitish appearance. I could not conceive what it was, 
 but observing some gulls near, I supposed it to be them 
 darting for fish ; but soon after discovered that they were 
 large balls of ice falling. Immediately we heard a sound 
 like rumbling thunder, or ten thousand carriages rolling 
 furiously over the pavement. The whole Bosphorus was 
 in a foam, as though heaven's artillery had been discharged 
 upon us and our frail machine. Our faie seemed inevita- 
 ble, our umbrellas were raised to protect us ; the lumps of 
 ice stripped them into ribands. We fortunately had a bul- 
 lock's hide in the boat, under which we crawled and saved 
 ourselves from further injury. One man, of the three 
 oarsmen, had his hand literally smashed ; another much 
 injured in the shoulder ; Mr. H. received a severe blow in 
 the leg; my right hand was somewhat disabled, and alf 
 more or less injured. A smaller kaick accompanied, with 
 my two servants. They were both disabled, and are now 
 in bed with their wounds; the kaick was terribly bruised. 
 It was the most awful and terrific scene that I ever wit- 
 nessed, and God forbid that I should be ever exposed to 
 such another. Balls of ice as large as my two fists, fell 
 into the boat, and some of them came with such violence 
 as certainly to have broken an arm or leg, had thev struck 
 us in those parts. One of them struck the blade of an oar 
 and split it. The scene lasted, may be, five minutes; but 
 it was five minutes of the most awful feeling that I ever ex- 
 perienced. When it passed over, we found the surround- 
 ing hills covered with masses of ice, I cannot call it hail ; 
 the trees stripped of their leaves and limbs, and every thing 
 looking desolate. We proceeded on our course, however, 
 and arrived at our destination, drenched and awe-struck. 
 The ruin had not extended so far as Candalie, and it was 
 difficult to make them comprehend the cause of the ner- 
 vous and agitated condition in which we arrived ; the Reis 
 Effendi asked me if I was ever so agitated when in action ? 
 I answered no, for then I had something to excite me, and 
 human means only to oppose. He asked the minister if he 
 ever was so a ffected in a gale of wind at sea 7 He answered 
 no, for then he could exercise his skill to disarm or render 
 
Chap. 10—17. 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 19\ 
 
 harmless the elements. He asked him why he siculd 
 be afiected now 1 He replied, ' From the awful idea of 
 being crushed to death by the hand of God with stones from 
 heaven, when resistance would be vain, and where it would 
 be impious to be brave.' He clasped his hands, raised his 
 eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, ' God is great !' 
 
 " Up to this hour, late in the afternoon, I have not reco- 
 vered my composure ; my nerves are so affected as scarcely 
 to be able to hold my pen, or communicate my ideas. The 
 scene was awful beyond all description. I have witnessed 
 repeated earthquakes ; the lightning has played, as it were, 
 about my head ; the wind roared, and the waves have at 
 one moment thrown me to the sky, and the next have sunk 
 me into a deep abyss. I have been in action, and seen death 
 and destruction around me in every shape of horror; but 
 1 never before had the feeling of awe which seized upon me 
 on this occasion, and siill haunts, and I feel will ever haunt 
 me. I returned to the beautiful village of Buyucdere. 
 The sun was out in all its splendour ; at a distance all 
 looked smiling and charming ; but a nearer approach dis- 
 covered roofs covered with workmen repairing the bro- 
 ken tiles; desolated vineyards, and shattered windows. 
 My porter, the boldest of my family, who had ventured an 
 instant from the door, had been knocked down by a hail- 
 stone, and had they not dragged him in by the heels, would 
 have been battered to death. Of a flock of geese in front 
 of our house, six were killed, and the rest dreadfully man- 
 gled. Two boatmen were killed in the upper part of the 
 village, and I have heard of broken bones in abundance. 
 Many of the thick brick tiles with which my roof is cover- 
 ed, are smashed to atoms, and my house was inundated by 
 the rain that succeeded this visitation. It is impossible to 
 convey an idea of what it was. Imagine to yourself, how- 
 ever, the heavens suddenly froze over, and as suddenly 
 broken to pieces in irregular masses, of from half a pound 
 to a pound weight, and precipitated to the earth. My own 
 servants weighed several pieces of three quarters of a 
 pound ; and many were found by others of upwards of a 
 pound. There were many which fell around the boat in 
 which I was, that appeared to me to be as large as the swell 
 of the large sized water decanter. You may think this 
 romance. I refer to the bearer of this letter, who was with 
 me, and witnessed the scene, for the truth of every word 
 it contains," — Letters from Constantinople. 
 
 Ver. 12. Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the 
 day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites 
 before the children of Israel, and he said in 
 the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon 
 Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of 
 Ajalon. 
 
 {See Engraving.) 
 
 Ver. 21. And all the people returned to the 
 camp to Joshua at Makkedah in peace : none 
 moved his tongue against any of the children 
 of Israel. 
 
 When a person speaks of the fear to which his enemy is 
 reduced, he says, "Ah! he dares not now to shake his 
 tongue against me." " He hurt you ! the fellow will not 
 shake his tongue against you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. And said unto the captains of the men of 
 war which went with him, Come near, put 
 your feet upon the necks of these kings. And 
 they came "near, and put their feet upon the 
 necks of them. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 44. 21. 
 
 This in the East is a favourite way of triumphing over 
 a fallen foe. In the history of the battles of the gods, or 
 giants, particular mention is made of the closing scene, 
 how the conquerors went and trampled on their enemies. 
 When people are disputing, should one be a little fSressed, 
 and the other begin to triumph, the former will say, " I 
 will tread upon thy neck, and after that beat thee." A low- 
 caste man insulting one who is high, is sure to hear some 
 one say to the offended individual, " Put your feet on his 
 neck." (See on Isa. xviii. 2, 7.)— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 12. Now therefore give me this mountain, 
 whereof the Lord spake in that day ; for thou 
 heardest in that day how the Anakims were 
 there, and that the cities we7e great and fenced ; 
 if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall 
 be able to drive them out, as the Lord said. 
 
 The mountainous parts of the Holy Land are so far 
 from being inhospitable, unfruitful, or the refuse of the 
 land of Canaan, that in the division of this country, the 
 mountain of Hebron was granted to Caleb as a particular 
 favour ; " Now, therefore, give me this mountain of which 
 the Lord spake in that day." In the time of Asa, the " hilt 
 country of Judah" mustered five hundred and eighty thou- 
 sand men of valour ; an argument beyond dispute, that the 
 land was able to maintain them. Even in the present times, 
 though cultivation and improvement are exceedingly neg- 
 lected, while the plains and valleys, although as fruitful as 
 ever, lie almost entirely desolate, every little hill is crowded 
 with inhabitants. If this part of the Holy Land was com- 
 posed, as some object, only of naked rocks and precipices, 
 why is it better peopled than the plains of Esdraelon, Rama, 
 Acre, or Zabulon, which are all of them extremely fertile 
 and delightful 1 It cannot be urged that the inhabitants 
 live with more safety on the hills and mountains, ihan on 
 the plains, as there are neither walls nor fortifications to 
 secure their villages and encampments ; and except in the 
 range of Lebanon, and some other mountains, few or no 
 places of difficult access ; so that both of them are equally 
 exposed to the insults of an enemy. But the reason is ob- 
 vious ; they find among these mountainous rocks and 
 precipices, sufficient convenience for themselves, and much 
 greater for their cattle. Here they have bread to the full, 
 while their flocks and their herds browse upon richer herb- 
 age, and both man and beast quench their thirst from 
 springs of excellent water, which is but too much wanted, 
 especially in the summer season, through all the plains of 
 Syria. This fertility of Canaan is fully confirmed by 
 writers of great reputation, whose impartiality cannot be 
 justly suspected. Tacitus calls it a fruitful soil, uber 
 solum ; and Justin affirms, that in this country the purity 
 of the air, and the fertility of the soil, are equally admira- 
 ble: Sed non minor loci ejus apricitatis quam ubertatis 
 admiratio est. The justice of these brief accounts, Dr. 
 Shaw, and almost every modern traveller, fully verifies. 
 When he travelled in Syria and Phenicia, in December 
 and January, the whole country, he remarks, looked ver- 
 dant and cheerful ; and the woods particularly, which are 
 chiefly planted with the gall-bearing oak, were every- 
 where bestrewed with a variety of anemonies, ranuncu- 
 lusses, colchicas, and mandrakes. Several pieces of ground 
 near Tripoli were full of licorice ; and at the mouth of a 
 famous grotto he saw an elegant species of the blue lily, 
 the same with Morrison's lilium Persicum florens. In the 
 beginning of March, the plains, particularly between Jaffa 
 and Rama, were everywhere planted with a beautiful 
 varietv of fritillaries, tulips of innumerable hues, and a 
 profus'ion of the rarest and most beautiful flowers ; while 
 the hills and the mountains were covered with yellow 
 pollium, and some varieties of thyme, sage, and rosemary. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 16. And all the Canaanites that dwell in 
 the land of the valley have chariots of iron, 
 loth they who are of Bethshean and her towns, 
 and they who are of the valley of Jezreel. 
 
 The warriors of primitive times were carried to the firld 
 in chariots, drawn for the most part by two horses. The 
 custom of riding and fighting upon horses, was not intro- 
 duced into Greece, and the regions of Asia bordering on 
 the Hellespont, till some time after the Trojan war: for 
 Homer, whose authority in such cases is indisputable, 
 alwavs conducts his heroes to battle in chariots, never on 
 horseback. In what age the chariot was first used in battle, 
 cannot now be ascertained ; but by the help of the sacred 
 volume, we can trace the practice to a very remote an- 
 tiquity, for the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan aj)pear, 
 
132 
 
 JOSHUA. 
 
 Chap. 18—24. 
 
 from the number of armed chariots which they possessed, 
 when Joshua invaded their country, to have been trained 
 to that mode of warfare long before. " And the children 
 of Joseph said. The hill is not enough for us ; and all the 
 Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have char- 
 iots of iron, both they who are of Bethshean and her towns, 
 and they who are of the valley of Jezreel." This by no 
 means intimates, that the chariots were made of iron, but 
 only that they were armed with it. Such chariots were by 
 the ancients called currus falcati, and in Greek Spezwofvpai. 
 They had a kind of scythes, of about two cubits long, fast- 
 ened to long axle-trees on both wheels ; these being driven 
 swiftly through a body of men, made great slaughter, mow- 
 ing them down like grass or corn. The efficacious resist- 
 ance which the Canaanites, from their chariots of iron, 
 opposed to the arms of Israel, is emphatically remarked 
 by the sacred historian : " And the Lord was with Judah, 
 and they drave out the inhabitants of the mountain, but 
 could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because 
 they had chariots of iron." The native princes of Canaan, 
 /nlly aware of the great advantages to be derived from this 
 rpecifcs of force, in combating the armies of Israel, which 
 consisted, as has been already observed, entirely of infantry, 
 continued to improve it with a care and diligence propor- 
 tioned to its importance. In the time of the judges, not 
 long after the death of Joshua, Jabin the king of Canaan, 
 sent nine hundred chariots of iron into the field against the 
 people of Israel : and in a succeeding war, between this 
 people and their inveterate enemies the Philistines, the 
 latter met them in the fiel^ with " thirty thousand chariots, 
 and six thousand horseme'n, and people as the sand which 
 is on the seashore for multitude." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 25. Gibeon, and Ramah, and Beeroth. 
 
 The oriental geographers speak of Ramah as the metrop- 
 olis of Palestine ; and ev^ery appearance of its ruins even 
 laow confirms the opinion of its having been once a consid- 
 erable city. Its situation, as lying immediately in the high 
 road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, made it necessarily a place 
 of great resort ; and from the fruitfulness of the country 
 around it, it must have been equally important as a mili- 
 larj' station or a depot for supplies, and as a magazine for 
 the collection of such articles of commerce as were export- 
 ed from the coast. In its present state, the town of Ramah 
 is about the size of Jaffa, in the extent actually occupied. 
 The dwellings of this last, however, are crowded together 
 around the sides of a hill, while those of Ramah are scat- 
 tered widely over the face of the level plain on which it 
 stands. The style of building here is that of high square 
 houses, with flattened domes covering them ; and some of 
 the old terraced roofs are fenced around with raised walls, 
 in which are seen pyramids of hollow earthenware pipes, 
 as if to give air and light, without destroying the strength 
 of the wall itself The inhabitants are estimated at little 
 more than five thousand persons, of whom about one third 
 are Christians of the Greek and Catholic communion, and 
 the remaining two thirds Mohammedans, chiefly Arabs ; 
 the men of power and the military being Turks, and no 
 Jews residing there. The principal occupation of the 
 people is husbandry, for which the surrounding country is 
 highly favourable, and the staple commodities produced 
 by them are corn, olives, oil, and cotton, with some soap and 
 coarse cloth made in the town. There are still remains 
 
 of some noble subterranean cisterns at Ramah, not inferior 
 either in extent or execution to many of those at Alexan- 
 dria : they were intended for the same purpose, namely, to 
 serve in time of war as reservoirs of water." — Buckingham. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Ver. 7. But they shall be snares and traps unto 
 
 you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in 
 
 your eyes, until ye perish from off this good 
 
 land which the Lord your God hath given you. 
 
 "What!" says a wife to her angry husband, "am la 
 thorn in your eyes 1" " Alas ! alas ! he has seen another ; 
 I am now a thorn in his eyes." " Were I not a thorn in his 
 eyes, his anger would not burn so long." " My old friend 
 Tamban never looks at my house now, because it gives 
 thorns to his eyes." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Ver. 12. And I sent the hornet before you, which 
 drave them out from before you, even the tw(» 
 kings of the Amorites ; but not with thy sword, 
 nor with thy bow. 
 
 See on Ex. 24. 28. 
 
 Ver. 32. And the bones of Joseph, which the 
 children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, 
 buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground 
 which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, the 
 father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of sil 
 ver : and it became the inheritance of the chil 
 dren of Joseph. 
 
 Joseph was not interred in Shechem, but, according to 
 the ancient custom, in a field adjoinmg. Probably the 
 other children of Jacob received the like honour, each 
 tribe taking care to bury its ancestor, either at Machpelah, 
 or elsewhere in the land of Canaan. Josephus asserts that 
 it was so, upon the credit of an ancient tradition. St. Ste- 
 phen confirms the relation. Acts vii. 16. Savages consider 
 the tombs of their ancestors as titles to the possession of the 
 lands which they inhabit. This country is ours, say they ; 
 the bones of our fathers are here laid to rest. When they 
 are forced to quit it, they dig them up with tears, and carry 
 them off with every token of respect. About thirty miles 
 below the falls of "St. Anthony, (saj^s Carver,) in North 
 America, several bands of the Naudowessie Indians have 
 a burying-place, where these people, though thev have no 
 fixed residence, living in tents, and abiding but a few 
 months on one spot, always contrive to deposite the bones 
 of their dead. At the spriiig equinox these bands annually 
 assemble here to hold a grand council with all the othei 
 bands ; wherein they settle their operations for the ensuing 
 year. At this time, in particular, they bring with them 
 their dead, for interment, bound up in buffaloes' skins. If 
 any of these people die in the cummer, at a distance from 
 the burying-ground, and they find it impossible to remove 
 the body before it would putrify, they bum the flesh from 
 the bones, and preserving the latter, bur}' them in the 
 I manner described. — Burder. 
 
JUDGES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 7. Threescore and ten kings, having their 
 thumbs and their great toes cut off 
 
 The Hebrew has this, " the thumbs of their hands and 
 of their feet." The Hindoos call the thumb the reria-viril, 
 the great finger of the hand, and the large toe is named the 
 great finger of the foot. This punishment was exceeding- 
 ly common in ancient times, and was inflicted principally 
 on those who had committed some flagrant oflTence with 
 their hands and their feet. Thus, those convicted of for- 
 gery, or numerous thefts, had their thumbs cut off. The 
 practice is abolished, but its memory will remain, as it is 
 now one of the scarecrows of the nursery and domestic life : 
 " If you steal any more, I will cut off your thumbs." " Let 
 me find out the thief, and I will soon have his thumbs." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 1 7. And he broug-ht the present unto Eglon 
 king of Moab : and Eglon was a very fat man. 
 18. And when he had made an end to offer the 
 present, he sent away the people that bare the 
 present. 
 
 See on Gen. 43. 45. 
 
 There is often in the East a great deal of pomp and pa- 
 rade in presenting their gifts. " Through ostentation," says 
 Maillet, " they never fail to load upon four or five horses 
 what might easily be carried by one. In like manner as 
 to jewels, trinkets, and other things of value, they place in 
 fifteen dishes, what a single plate would very well hold." 
 Something of this pomp seems to be referred to in this pas- 
 sage, where we read of making an end of offering the pres- 
 ent, and of a number of people who conveyed it. This re- 
 mark also illustrates 2 ICings viii. 9. So Hazael went to 
 meet him, and took a present with him, even of every good 
 thing of Damascus, forty camels^ burden. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 19. But he himself turned again from the 
 quarries that we^-e by Gilgal, and said, I have 
 a secret errand unto thee, O king : who said. 
 Keep silence. And all that stood by him went 
 out from him. 
 
 From a circumstance mentioned by Mr. Bruce, it ap- 
 pears that Ehud acted in strict conformity to the customs 
 of the time and place, so that neither the suspicion of the 
 king nor his attendants should be excited by his conduct. 
 It was usual for the attendants to retire when secret mes- 
 sages were to be delivered. " I drank a dish of coffee, and 
 told him, that I was a bearer of a confidential message from 
 All Bey of Cairo, and wished to deliver it to him without 
 witnesses, whenever he pleased. The room was accord- 
 ingly cleared without delay, excepting his secretary, who 
 was also going away, when t pulled him back by the clothes, 
 saying, stay, if you please; we shall need you to write the 
 answer." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 20. And Ehud came unto him ; and he was 
 sitting in a summer-parlour, which he had for 
 himself alone. 
 
 Dr. Shaw tells us, their doors are large, and their cham- 
 bers spacious; conveniences, as he observes, very well 
 adapted to those hotter climates. But when Eglon is rep- 
 resented as receiving Ehud and Death, in a parlour of 
 cooling, as it is called, in the margin of Judges iii. 20, or 
 rather in a chamber of cooling^ something more seems to be 
 
 meant than merely its having a large door, or bemg spa- 
 cious ; at least there are iiow other contrivances in the East, 
 to give coolness to particular rooms, which are very com- 
 mon ; and though the time in which Eglon lived, is ac- 
 knowledged to be of very remote antiquity, yet we are to 
 remember he was a prince, and in the palaces of such these 
 contrivances without doubt began. The doctor is silent 
 upon this point, but Russell has given us the following ac- 
 count of one of their methods of cooling rooms. Their 
 great houses at Aleppo ai'e composed of apartments on each 
 of the sides of a square court, all of stone ; and consist of 
 a ground door, which is generally arched, and an upper 
 story, which is flat on the top, and either terraced with hard 
 plaster, or paved stone ; above-stairs is a colonnade, if not 
 round the whole court, at least fronting the West, off from 
 which are their rooms and kiosques ; these latter are a sort 
 of wooden divans, that project a little way from their other 
 buildings, and hang over the street ; they are raised about 
 a foot and a half higher than the floor of the room, to which 
 they are quite open, and by having windows in front and 
 on each side, there is a great draught of air, which makes 
 them cool in the summer, the advantage chiefly intended 
 by them. They have another way of cooling their rooms 
 in Egypt. It is done by openings at the top, which let the 
 fresh air into them. Egmont and Hey man, as well as 
 Maillet, make mention of them, but the last-mentioned au- 
 thor gives the most distinct account of these contrivances : 
 they make, he tells us, their halls extremely large and 
 lofty, with a dome at the top, which towards the North has 
 several open windows ; these are so constructed as to throw 
 the north wind down into these rooms, and by this means, 
 though the country is excessively hot, they can make the 
 coolness of these apartments such as, oftentimes, not to be 
 borne without being wrapped in furs. Egmont and Hey- 
 man speak of chambers cooled after this manner, as well 
 as halls. Eglon's appears to have been a chamber, and 
 what Shaw calls an olee, which gives a propriety to the 
 mention that is made of Ehud's passing through the porch, 
 which no interpreter before the doctor has, that I know of, 
 remarked : but whether it was cooled by a kiosque, as they 
 are called at Aleppo, or by an Egyptian dome, or by some 
 contrivance distinct from both, is of no consequence to de- 
 termine. That some contrivance to mitigate the extreme 
 heat of that climate began early to obtain, in the palaces pi 
 princes, is natural to believe ; that it began as early as the 
 time of Eglon, this passage puts out of all doubt. It was 
 the more necessary, as Eglon appears to have kept his 
 court at Jericho, where the heat is so excessive, that it has 
 proved fatal to some even in March. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 25. And they tarried till they were ashamed ; 
 and, behold, he opened not the doors of the 
 parlour : therefore they took a key and open- 
 ed them; and, behold, their lord was fallen 
 down dead on the earth. 
 
 The wooden locks commonly used in Egypt, " consist of 
 a long hollow piece of wood, fixed in the door, so as to slide 
 backward and forward, which enters a hole made for it 
 in the doorpost, and is there fastened by small bolts of iron 
 wire, which fall from above into little orifices made for them 
 in the top of the lock. The key is a long piece of wood, 
 having at the end small pieces of iron wire of diflferent 
 lengths, irregularly fixed in, corresponding in number and 
 direction with the bolts which fall into the lock ; these it litt> 
 upon being introduced into the lock, which it then pulls 
 back. The bolts of wire differ in number from three to 
 fourteen or fifteen, and it is impossible to guess at the num- 
 ber a lock contains', or at the direction in which they are 
 placed." — Turner's Journal o^ a Ton: in the Levant. 
 
134 
 
 JUDGES 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 Ver. 31, And after him was Shamgar the son of 
 Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hun- 
 dred men with an ox-goad: and he also de- 
 livered Israel. 
 
 Mr. Maundrell has an observation which at once ex- 
 plains this transaction, and removes every difficulty from 
 the passage. He says, " the countrypeople were now every- 
 where at plough in the fields, in order to sow cotton. It 
 was observable, that in ploughmg they used goads of an ex- 
 traordinary size ; upon measuring of several, I found them 
 about eight feet long, and at the bigger end six inches in 
 circumference. They were armed at the lesser end with 
 a sharp prickle for driving the oxen, at the other end with 
 a small spade, or paddle of iron, strong and massy, for 
 cleansing the plough from the clay that encumbers it in 
 working. May we not from hence conjecture, that it was 
 with such a goad as one of these, that Shamgar made that 
 prodigious slaughfer related of him, Judges iii. 21. I am 
 confident that whoever should see one of these mstruments, 
 would judge it to be a weapon not less fit, perhaps fitter, 
 than a sword for such an execution. Goads of this sort I 
 saw always used hereabouts, and also in Syria ; and the 
 reason is, because the same single person both drives the 
 oxen, and also holds and manages the plough ; which 
 makes it necessary to use such a goad as is above described, 
 to avoid the encumbrance of two instruments." — Burdkr. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 6. And she sent and called Barak the son of 
 Abinoam out of Kedesh-naphtali, and said unto 
 him, Hath not the Lord God of Israel com- 
 manded, saying, Go, and draw towards Mount 
 Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of 
 the children of Naphtali, and of the children of 
 Zebulun ? 
 
 Arriving at the top, we found ourselves on an oval 
 plain, of about a quarter of a mile in its greatest length, 
 covered with a bed of fertile soil on the west, having at its 
 eastern end a mass of ruins, seemingly the vestiges of 
 churches, grottoes, strong walls, and fortifications, all deci- 
 dedly of some antiquity, and a few appearing to be the 
 works of a very remote age. First were pointed out to us 
 three grottoes, two beside each other, and not far from tAVo 
 cisterns of excellent water; which grottoes are said to be 
 the remains of the three tabernacles proposed to be erected 
 by St. Peter, at the moment of the transfiguration, when 
 Jesus, Elias, and Moses, were seen talking together. In 
 one of these grottoes, which they call more particularly the 
 Sanctuary, there is a square stone used as an altar ; and on 
 the sixth of August in every year, the friars of the convent 
 come from Nazareth, with tlieir banners and the host, to 
 say mass here ; at which period they are accompanied -by 
 all the Catholics of the neighbourhood, who pass the night 
 in festivity, and light large bonfires, by a succession of 
 which they have nearly iDared the southern side of the 
 mountain of all the wood that once clothed it. Besides 
 these grottoes, no particular history is assigned to any other 
 of the remains, though among them there seem to have been 
 many large religious buildings. The whole of these ap- 
 pear to have been once enclosed with a strong wall, a large 
 portion of which still remains entire on the north side, 
 having its firm foundation on the solid rock. This ap- 
 peared to me the most ancient part. Traditions here speak 
 of a city built on the top, which sustained a five years' 
 siege, drawing its supplies byskirmish from different parts 
 of the fertile plains below, aiid being furnished with water 
 from two excellent cisterns still above ; but as no fixed 
 period is assigned to this event, it may probably relate to 
 the siege of Vespasian. As there still remained the frag- 
 ments of a wall on the southeast angle, somewhat higher 
 than the rest, we ascended it over heaps of fallen buildings, 
 and enjoyed from thence a prospect truly magnificent, want- 
 ing only the verdure of spring to make it beautiful as well 
 as grand. Placing my compass before me, we had on the 
 northwest a view of the Mediterranean sea, whose blue sur- 
 face filled up an open space left by a downward bend in the 
 outline of the western hills : to west-northwest a smaller 
 portion of its waters were seen : and on the west again the 
 
 slender line of its distant horizon was just perceptible over 
 a range of land near the seacoast. From west to south 
 the plain of Esdraelon extended over a vast space, being 
 bounded on the south by the range of hills, generally 
 considered to be the Hermon, whose dews are poeti- 
 cally celebrated. Psalm cxxxiii. 3, and having in the 
 same direction, nearer the foot of Tabor, the springs of 
 Ain-el-Sherrar, which send a perceptible stream through 
 its centre, and form the brook Kishon of antiquity. Psalm 
 Ixxxiii. 9. From southeast to the east is the plain of Gali- 
 lee, being almost a continuation of Esdraelon, and, like it, 
 appearing to be highly cultivated, being now ploughed for 
 seed throughout. Benearth the range of this supposed 
 Hermon is seated Endor, famed for the witch who raised 
 the ghost of Samuel, to the terror of the affrighted Saul ; and 
 Nain, equally celebrated as the place at which Jesus raised 
 the only son of a widow from death to life, and restored 
 him to his afflicted parent. The range which bounds the 
 eastern view is thought to be the mountains of Gilboa, 
 where the sam.e Saul, setting an example of self-destruction 
 to his armour-bearer and his three sons, fell on his own 
 sword, rather than fall wounded into the hands of the un- 
 circumcised, by whom he was defeated. The sea of Tibe- 
 rias, or the Lake of Gennesareth, famed as the scene of 
 many miracles, is seen on the northeast, filling the hollow 
 of a "deep valley, and contrasting its light blue waters with 
 the dark brown shades of the barren hills by which it is 
 hemmed around. Here, too, the steep is pointed out down 
 which the herd of swine, who were possessed by the legion 
 of devils, ran headlong into the sea. In the same direction, 
 below, on the plain of Galilee, and about an hour's distance 
 from the foot of Mount Tabor, there is a cluster of buildings, 
 used as a bazar for cattle, frequented on Mondays only. 
 Somewhat farther on is a rising ground, from which it is 
 said that Christ delivered the long and excellent discourse, 
 called the Sermon on the Mount ; and the whole view in 
 this quarter is bounded by the high range of Gebel-el-Telj, 
 or the Mountain of Snow, whose summit M'as at this mo- 
 ment clothed with one white sheet, without a perceptible 
 breach or dark spot in it. The city of Saphet, supposed 
 to be the ancient Bethulia, a city said to be seen far and 
 near, and thought to be alluded to in the apophthegm which. 
 says, " a city set on a hill cannot be hid," is also pointed 
 out in this direction : but though the day was clear, I could 
 not distinguish it, its distance preventing its being defined, 
 from hence without a glass. To the north were the stony 
 hills over which we had journeyed hither, and these com- 
 pleted this truly grand and interesting panoramic view.. 
 — Buckingham. 
 
 Van Egmont and Heyman give the following account of 
 Tabor : — " This mountain, though somewhat rugged and' 
 difficult, we ascended on horseback, making several cir- 
 cuits round it, which took u*-- about three quarters of an 
 hour. It is one of the highf'st in the whole country, being 
 thirty stadia, or about four English miles, a circumference 
 that rendered it more famous. And it is the most beauti- 
 ful I ever saw, with regard to verdure, being everywhere 
 decorated with small oak-trees, and the ground universally 
 enamelled with a variety of plants and flowers, except oh 
 the south side, where it is not so fully covered with verdure.. 
 On this mountain are great numbers of red partridges, and 
 some wild-boars ; and we were so fortunate as to see the 
 Arabs hunting them. We left, but not without reluctance, 
 this delightful place, and found at the bottom of it a mean 
 village, called Deboura, or Tabour, a name said to be de- 
 rived from the celebrated Deborah mentioned in Judges." 
 Pococke notices this village, which stands on a rising, 
 ground at the foot of Mount Tabor westward; and the 
 learned traveller thinks, that it may be the same as the Da- 
 berath, or Daberah, mentioned in the book of Joshua, as on 
 the borders of Zebulun and Issachar. " Any one," he adds, 
 " who examines the fourth chapter of Judges, may see that' 
 this is probably the spot where Barak and Deborah met at 
 Mount Tabor with their forces and went to pursue Sisera ; 
 and on this account, it might have its name from that great 
 proph'^tess, who then judged and governed Israel ; for Jo- 
 sephus relates, that Deborah and Barak gathered the army 
 together at this mountain." This point Josephus was not. 
 required to prove, as the sacred history contains explicit in- 
 formation on this head, to which the Jewish historian was 
 incapable of adding a single particular. The name of the 
 village seems, however, more probably to be derived from 
 
Chap. 4. 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 135 
 
 the mountain, than from the prophetess. Deborah, the 
 name of the place where she dwelt, and to which the chil- 
 dren of Israel came up to her for judgment, was between 
 Ramah and Bethel in Mount Ephraim, and consequently 
 much farther to the south. Whereas in Deboura, or Da- 
 bour, we have the very Dabor or Thaboor of the scrip- 
 tures, with only that slight corruption which the Hebrew 
 names receive, as pronounced by the Arabs. The moun- 
 tain itself they call Djebel Towr.— Modern Traveller. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Barak called Zebulun and Naph- 
 tali to Kedesh; and he went up with ten thou- 
 sand men at his feet: and Deborah went up 
 with him. 
 
 The phrase " men at his feet," did not, I believe, refer to 
 any particular class of soldiers, but applied to all, whether 
 they foiight in chariots, on horses, or on foot. This form of 
 speech is used in eastern books to show how many obey or 
 serve under the general. It may be taken from the action of 
 a slave being prostrate at the feet of his master, denoting 
 submission or obedience. In this way devotees, when ad- 
 dressing the gods, always speak of themselves as being at 
 their feet. When the Orientals speak of his Majesty of 
 Britain, they often allude to the millions who are at his 
 feet. The governors, generals, or judges in the East, are 
 said to have the people of such countries, or armies, or dis- 
 tricts, at their feet. Nay, it is common for masters, and 
 {)eople of small possessions, to speak of their domestics as 
 )eing at their feet. It is therefore heard every day, for 
 " I will send my servants," e-nrkdl-adiyila, " those at my 
 feet." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 18. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and 
 said unto him, Turn in, mv lord, turn in to 
 me ; fear not. And when he had turned in 
 unto her into the tent, she covered him with a 
 mantle. 
 
 The Arabs are not so scrupulous as the Turks about 
 their women ; and though they have their harem, or yo- 
 men's apartment, in the tent, they readily introduce their 
 acquaintances into it, or those strangers whom they take 
 under their special protection. Pococke's conductor, in his 
 journey to Jerusalem, led him two or three miles to his 
 tent, where he sat with his wife and others round a fire. 
 The faithful Arab kept him there for greater security, the 
 wife being always with him ; no stranger ever daring to 
 come into the women's apartment unless introduced. We 
 discover in this custom, the reason of Jael's invitation to 
 Sisera, when he was defeated by Barak: " Turn in, my 
 lord, turn in to me, fear not." She invited him to take ref- 
 uge in her own division of the tent, into which no stran- 
 ger might presume to enter ; and where he naturally sup- 
 posed himself in perfect safety. — Paxton. 
 
 There is an apparent treachery in the conduct of Jael to 
 Sisera ; and it appears from the following account as if the 
 inhabitants of that country were still actuated by the same 
 principle of interested dissimulation. " It was about noon 
 when we reached the small village of Deborah, where we 
 alighted to refresh, not suspecting that the treachery for 
 which it is traditionally infamous, both in holy and profane 
 records, was still to be found here at so distant a period. 
 We entered into this village, and, like the unfortunate Sis- 
 era, demanded only a little water to drink, for with every 
 thing else our scrip was well provided. It was furnished 
 to us, as we desired, with provender for our beasts, and the 
 offer of all that the village possessed. While the animals 
 were feeding, I was desirous of ascending to the summit of 
 Mount Tabor, for the enjoyment of the extensive view 
 which it commands. Our guide from the convent offering 
 to accompany me, we took with us a man from the village, 
 who promised to facilitate our ascent by directing us to the 
 easiest paths ; and taking our arms with us, while my 
 servant and the muleteer remained below to take care of 
 the beasts, we all three set out together ; by forced exer- 
 tions we reached the summit in about half an hour. In our 
 descent from Moimt Tabor we entered a grotto, in which 
 there had formerly been a church, and had scarcely got 
 within it, before we heard the rushing of persons before 
 the outer part of the passage by which we had entered. On 
 turning round to ascertain the cause of this noise, we ob- 
 
 served five or six armed men, three of whom we recog- 
 nised to be those who had made such oflers of their hospi- 
 tality in the village of Deborah below. They called out 
 to us in a loud voice, that if we attempted the slightest 
 resistance we should be murdered, but that if we submit- 
 ted to be quietly stripped, no violence should be offered to 
 our persons. - There was no time for parley, though my 
 companions at first cried for mercy, but as I rushed out 
 with my musket cocked, and presented, they instantly fol- 
 lowed me, and an unexpected discharge drove our assail- 
 ants to seek shelter behind the masses of rock near the 
 cave. A regular skirmish now commenced, in which we 
 kept up a retreating fire, and often exposed ourselves to 
 their shot, for the sake of getting to our mules at the foot of 
 the hill. During a full hour of this kind of running fight, 
 none of our party was hurt. From the first it seemed 
 evident to us that we had been betrayed by our Deborah' 
 guide, and our notion was at length confirmed by his going 
 over to the assailing party, and using his arms against us. 
 Fortunately, and justly too, this man was himself wounded 
 by a ball from my musket, and when he fell shrieking, on 
 the side of the hill, his companions hastened to his relief, 
 while we profited by the alarm of the moment to continue 
 our retreat, and rejoin our mules below. Here we drew off 
 at a short distance from the village of Deborah, and, with 
 arms in our hands, being exhausted and fatigued, refreshed 
 ourselves beneath a tree ; but we had not yet remounted, 
 when a large party, professing to be from the sheik of 
 Deborah, a village consisting only of a few huts, came to 
 sequester our beasts, for what they called the public service. 
 We treated this with a proper degree of warmth, and 
 threatened death to the first that shouW dare to lay hands 
 on any thing belonging to us : so that the brave villagers 
 kept aloof." — Buckingham. 
 
 Ver. 19. And he said unto her, Give me, I pray 
 thee, a little water to drink ; for I am thirsty. 
 And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him 
 drink, and covered him. 
 
 The method of making butter in the^East, illustrates the 
 conduct of Jael, the wife of Heber, described in the book 
 of Judges : " And Sisera said unto her. Give me, I pray 
 thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty : and she open- 
 ed a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him." 
 In the song of Deborah, the statement is repeated : " He 
 asked water, and she gave him milk, she brought forth 
 butter in a lordly dish." The word (nNon hemah) which 
 our translators rendered butter, properly signifies cream ; 
 which is undoubtedly the meaning of it in this passage, for 
 Sisera complained of thirst, and asked a little water to 
 quench it, a purpose to which butter is but little adapted. 
 Mr. Harmer indeed urges the same objection to cream, 
 which, he contends, few people would think a very proper 
 beverage for one that was extremely thirsty; and con- 
 cludes, that it must have been buttermilk which Jael, who 
 had just been churning, gave to Sisera. But the opimon 
 of Dr. Russell is preferable, that the hemah of the scrip- 
 tures, is probably the same as the haymak of the Arabs, 
 which is not, as Harmer supposed, simple cream, but 
 cream produced by simmering fresh sheeps^ milk for some 
 hours over a slow fire. It could not be butter newly churn- 
 ed, which Jael presented to Sisera, because the Arab but- 
 ter is apt to be foul, and is commonly passed through a 
 strainer before it is used ; and Russell declares, he never 
 saw butter offered to a stranger, but always haymak: nor 
 did he ever observe the Orientals drink buttermilk, but al- 
 ways leban, which is coagulated sour milk, diluted with 
 water. It was leban, therefore, which Pococke mistook lor 
 buttermilk, with which the Arabs treated him in the Holy 
 Land. A similar conclusion maybe drawn concerning the 
 butter and milk which the wife of Heber presented to Sise- 
 ra; they were forced cream or haymak, and leban, or coag- 
 ulated sour milk diluted with water, which is a common 
 and refreshing beverage in those sultry regions. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 21. Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail oi 
 the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and 
 went softly unto him, and smote the nail into 
 his temples, and fastened it into the ground: 
 (for he was fast asleep and weary:) so he died. 
 
136 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 Shaw, describing the tents of the Bedouin Arabs, says, 
 " these tents are kept firm and steady, by bracing or stretch- 
 ing down their eaves with cords tied down to hooked wood- 
 en pins well pointed, which they drive into the ground with 
 a mallet ; one of these pins answering to the nail, as the 
 mallet does to the hammer, which Jael used in fastening 
 to the ground the temples of Sisera." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 6. In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, 
 in the days of Jael, the highways were unoc- 
 cupied, and the travellers walked through by- 
 ways. 
 
 There are roads in these countries, but it is very easy to 
 turn out of them, and go to a place by winding about over 
 the lands, when that is thought safer. Dr. Shaw takes no- 
 tice of this circumstance in Barbary, where, he says, they 
 found no hedges, or mounds, or enclosures, to retard or 
 molest them. To this Deborah doubtless refers, though 
 the doctor does not apply this circumstance to that passage, 
 when she says, " In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, 
 in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the 
 travellers walked through byways," or crooked ways, ac- 
 cording to the margin. Judges v. 6. The account Bishop 
 Pococke gives of the manner in which that Arab, under 
 whose care he had put himself, conducted him to Jerusa- 
 lem, illustrates this with great liveliness, which his lordship 
 tells us was by night, and not by the highroad, but through 
 the fields ; " and I observed," says he, " that he avoided as 
 much as he could going near any village or encampment, 
 and sometimes stood still, as I thought, to hearken." And 
 just in that manner people were obliged to travel in Judea, 
 in the days of Shamgar and Jael. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 10, Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye 
 that sit in judgment, and walk by the way. 
 
 The ancient Israelites preferred the young ass for the 
 saddle. It is on thfs account, the sacred writers so fre- 
 quently mention riding on young asses and on ass colts. 
 They must have found them, from experience, like the 
 young of all animals, more tractable, lively, and active, 
 than their parents, and, by consequence, better adapted to 
 this employment. Buffbn remarked particularly of the 
 young ass, that it is a gay, nimble, and gentle animal, 
 " and therefore, to be preferred for riding to the same ani- 
 mal, when become lazy and stubborn through age." " In- 
 deed the Hebrew name of the young ass, ~cy," from a root 
 which signifies to rouse or excite, " is expressive of its 
 character for sprightliness and activity." On public and 
 solemn occasions, they adorned the asses which they rode, 
 with rich and splendid trappings. " In this manner," says 
 an excellent writer of Essays on Sacred Zoology, " the 
 magistrates in the time of the Judges, appear to have rode 
 in state. They proceeded to the gate of their city, where 
 they sat to hear causes, in slow procession, mounted on 
 asses superbly caparisoned with white cloth, which cover- 
 ed the greater part of the animal's body. It is thus that we 
 must interpret the words of Deborah : ' Speak, ye that ride 
 on white asses,' on asses caparisoned with coverings made 
 of white woollen cloth, 'ye that sit in judgment, and walk,' 
 or march in state, ' by the way.' The colour is not that of 
 the animal, but of his hiran or covering, for the ass is com- 
 monly dun, and not white." No doubt can be entertained 
 in relation to the existence of the custom alluded to in this 
 quotation. It prevails among the Arabs to the present day ; 
 but it appears rather unnatural, to ascribe the colour of a 
 covering to the creature that wears it. "We do not call a man 
 white or black, because he happens to be dressed in vest- 
 ments of white or black cloth ; neither did the Hebrews. 
 The expression naturally suggests the colour of the animal 
 itself, not of its trappings; and the only point to be ascer- 
 tained, is, whether the ass is found of a white colour. 
 BufTon informs us, that the colour of the ass is not dun but 
 flaxen, and the belly of a silvery white. In many instances 
 the silvery white predominates ; for Cartw right, who trav- 
 elled into the East, affirms that he beheld on the banks of 
 the Euphrates, great droves of wild beasts, among which 
 were many wild asses all white. Oppian describes the 
 wild ass, as having a coat of silvery white ; and the one 
 
 which professor Gmelin brought from Tartary, was of the 
 same colour. White asses, according to Morier, come 
 from Arabia ; their scarcity makes them valuable, and gives 
 them consequence. The men of the law count it a dignity, 
 and suited to their character, to ride on asses of this colour. 
 As the Hebrews always appeared in white garments at 
 their public festivals and on days of rejoicing, or when the 
 courts of justice were held ; so, they naturally preferred 
 white asses, because the colour suited the occasion, and 
 because asses of this colour being more rare and costly, 
 were more coveted by the great and wealthy. The same 
 view is taken of this question by Lewis, who says, the 
 asses in Judea " were commonly of a red colour ; and 
 therefore white asses were highly valued, and used by per- 
 sons of superior note and quality." In this passage, he 
 clearly speaks of the colour of the animals themselves, not 
 of their coverings. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. They that are delivered from the noise 
 of archers in the places of drawing water. 
 
 Dr. Shaw mentions a beautiful rill in Barbary, which is 
 received into a large basin, called shrub we krub, drink 
 and away, there being great danger of meeting there with 
 rogues and assassins. If such places are proper for the 
 lurking of murderers in times of peace, they must be 
 proper for the lying in ambush in times of war : a circum- 
 stance that Deborah takes notice of in her song. Judges v. 
 11. But the writer who is placed first in that collection, 
 which is entitled Gesta Dei per Francos, gives a more 
 perfect comment still on that passage : for, speaking of the 
 want of water, which the Croisade army so severely felt, 
 at the siege of Jerusalem, he complains, that besides their 
 being forced to use water that stunk, arwi barley bread, 
 their people were in continual danger from the Saracens, 
 who, lying hid near all the fountains, and places of water, 
 everywhere destroyed numbers of them, and carried ofi* 
 their cattle. To which may be added a story from William 
 of Tyre, relating to Godfrey, Duke of Lorrain, afterward 
 king of Jerusalem, whxj, stopping short of Antioch five or 
 six miles, to which place he was returning, in order to 
 take some refreshment in a pleasant grassy place near a 
 fountain, was suddenly set upon by a number of horsemen 
 of the enemy, who rushed out of a reedy fenny place near 
 them, and attacked the duke and his people. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 17. Gilead abode beyond Jordan : and Avhy 
 did Dan remain in ships ? Asher continued 
 on the seashore, and abode in his breaches. 
 
 Though the coast of that part of Syria which is denomi- 
 nated Palestine, is not remarkable for the number of its 
 ports, yet besides Joppa, St. John d'Acre, Caipha under 
 Mount Carmel, and a few others that might be named, 
 there are some creeks, and small convenient places, where 
 little vessels, and such are those that are used for fishing, 
 may shelter themselves, and land what they take, though 
 there are very few rivers on all that coast. To these places 
 Deborah seems to refer, when she says, Asher continued on 
 the seashore, and abode in his breaches, or creeks, as it is 
 translated in the margin. — Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 21. The river of Kishon swept them away, 
 that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my 
 soul, thou hast trodden down strength. 
 
 The Kishon, whose furious current swept away the 
 routed legions of Sisera, though mentioned in scripture as 
 a river, is only a small stream, except when swelled by the 
 rain or melting snow. " That ancient river" pursues his 
 course down the middle of the plain of Esdraelon, and then 
 passing close by the side of Mount Carmel, falls into the 
 sea at a place named Caipha. When Maundrell crossed 
 this stream, on his way to Jerusalem, its waters were low 
 and inconsiderable ; but in passing along the side of the 
 plain, he observed the tracts of many tributary rivulets fall- 
 ing down into it from the mountains, by which it must be 
 greatly swelled in the rainy season. It was undoubtedly 
 at the season when the Kishon, replenished by the streams 
 of Lebanon, becomes a deep and impetuous torrent, that 
 the bands of Sisera perishea in its waters. The Kishon, 
 like several other streams in Palestine, does not run with 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 a full current into the sea, except in the time of the rains, 
 but percolates through the sands which interpose between 
 it and the Mediterranean. It has been immortalized in the 
 song of Deborah and Barak: " The kings came and fought; 
 then fought the kings of Canaan in Tanach by the waters 
 of Megiddo ; they took no gain of money. They fought 
 from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against 
 Sisera." The confederate kings took no gain for money ; 
 they were volunteers in the war, stimulated only by hatred 
 and revenge. But they strove in vain ; the hosts of heaven 
 fought for Israel ; the stars in their courses, against the 
 powerful bands of Jabin. By the malignant influences of 
 the heavenly bodies, by the storms of hail, thunder, and 
 rain, produced, it is probable, by the power, and directed 
 by the sagacity of holy angels, the confident hopes of Sisera 
 were blasted, and a mark of eternal infamy stamped upon 
 his name. From heaven, says the Chaldee Paraphrast, 
 from heaven, the place where the stars go forth, war was 
 commenced against Sisera ; the God of heaven shot forth 
 his arrows, and discomfited the hostile armies; and the 
 river of Kishon, swelled over all its banks by the furious 
 tempests, engaged also in the warfare, by the command of 
 its sovereign Lord, and swept the fugitives awav. For 
 this stroke of vengeance, the Kishon was ordained of old: 
 and this is the reason the inspired bard applies to it the 
 distinguishing epithet in the text : " The river of Kishon 
 swept them away; that ancient river, the river Kishon. O 
 my soul, thou hast trodden down strength."— Paxton. 
 
 . Ver. 25. He asked water, and she gave him milk ; 
 she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. 
 
 Though the bowls and dishes of the vulgar Arabs are of 
 wood, those of their emirs are, not unfrequently, of copper, 
 tinned very neatly : La Roque takes notice of this circum- 
 stance in more places than one. I have met with a like 
 account, I think, in other travellers. May we not believe 
 that the vessel which Jael made use of, to present butter- 
 milk to Sisera, and which Deborah in her hymn calls a 
 lordly dish, or a dish oi nobles, was of this sort"? Her hus- 
 band certainly was an Arab emir; the working of metals 
 much more ancient than her time, Gen. iv. 22; and the 
 mere size of the vessel hardly could be the thing intended. 
 La Roque, indeed, tells us, that the fruits that were brought 
 in at the collation, that the grand emir of the Arabs, whom 
 he visited, treated him with, were placed in a large painted 
 basin of wood ; its being painted was, without doubt, a 
 mark of honour set on this vessel of the grand emir, which 
 distinguished it from the wooden bowls of the commonalty; 
 but a painted wooden vessel would have been not so proper 
 for buttermilk, as one of copper tinned, which therefore 
 most probably was the sort Jael used. — Harmer. 
 
 Speaking of the hospitable manner in which he was 
 received at a house in Tronyen in Norway, Dr. Clarke 
 says, " If but a bit of butter be called for in one of these 
 houses, a mass is brought forth weighing six or eight 
 pounds ; and so highly ornamented, being turned out of 
 moulds, with the shape of cathedrals set off with Gothic 
 spires, and various other devices, that, according to the 
 language of our English farmers' wives, we should deem 
 it almost a pity to cut it. Throughout this part of Norway, 
 the family plate of butter seemed to be the state dish of the 
 house : wherever we sat down to make a meal, this ofFer- 
 T ing was first made, as in the tents of the primeval Arabs, 
 ; when Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, brought forth 
 butter in a lordly dish." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 30. Have they not sped ? have they not di- 
 vided the prey ; to every man a damsel or two ; 
 to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of di- 
 vers colours of needle-work, of divers colours 
 of needle- work on both sides, meet ioi \h.Q necks 
 of them that take the spoil 1 
 See on Is. 3. 18. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 19. And Gideon went in, and made ready a 
 kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour : 
 the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the 
 18 
 
 JUDGES. ISr 
 
 broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him 
 under the oak, and presented it. 
 
 All roasted meat is a delicacy among the Arabs, and 
 rarely eaten by them, according to La Roque ; sieit-cd meat 
 also is, according to him, only to be met with among them 
 at feasts, and great tables, such as those of princes, and 
 consequently a delicacy also ; the common diet being only 
 boiled meat, with rice pottage and piliaw. This is agree- 
 able to Dr. Pococke's account of an elegant entertainment 
 he met with at Baalbeck, where he tells us they had for, 
 supper a roasted fowl, piliaw, stewed meat, with the soup, 
 &c. ; and of a grand supper prepared for a great man of 
 Egypt, where he was present, and which consisted, he tells 
 us, of piliaw, a small sheep boiled whole, a lamb roasted 
 in the same manner, roasted fowls, and many dishes of 
 stewed meat in soup, &c. This soup, in which the stewed 
 meat is brought to table, or something very much like it, 
 was, we believe, the broth that Gideon presented to the 
 angei, whom he took Tor a mere mortal messenger of God. 
 Many a reader may have wondered why he should bring 
 out his broth ; they may have been ready to think it would 
 have been better to have kept that within, and have given 
 it to the poor after the supposed prophet, whom he desired 
 to honour, should be withdrawn, but these passages explain 
 it : the broth, as our translators express it, was, I imagine, 
 the stewed savoury meat he had prepared, with such sort 
 of liquor as the eastern people at this day bring their 
 stewed meat in, to the most elegant and honourable tables. 
 What then is meant by the flesh put into the basket, Judg. 
 vi. 19 1 " And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and 
 unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour ; the flesh he put in 
 a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out 
 to him under the oak, and presented it." The preceding^ 
 quotations certainly do not decipher this perfectly ; but I 
 have been inclmed to think, there is a passage in Dr. Shaw 
 that entirely unravels this matter, and affords a perfect 
 comment on this text. It is in his preface: "Besides a 
 bowl of milk, and a basket of figs, raisins, or dates, which 
 upon our arrival were presented to us, to stay our appetites, 
 the master of the tent where we lodged, fetched us from his 
 flock, according to the number of our company, a kid or a 
 goat, a lamb or a sheep, half of which was immediately 
 seethed by his wife, and served with cuscasoe ; the rest was 
 made kabab, i. e. cut into pieces and roasted; which we 
 reserved for our breakfast or dinner next day." May we 
 not imagine that Gideon presenting some slight refresh- 
 ment to the supposed prophet, according to the present 
 Arab mode, desired him to stay till he could provide some- 
 thing more substantial for him ; that he immediately killed 
 a kid, seethed part of it, made kabab of another part of it, 
 and when it was ready, brought the stewed meat in a pot, 
 with unleavened cakes of bread which he had baked ; and 
 kabab in a basket for his carrying away with him, and 
 serving him for some after repast in his journey 1 Nothing 
 can be more conformable to the present Arab customs, or a 
 more easy explanation of the text ; nothing more conve- 
 nient for thft carriage of the reserved meat than a light 
 basket ; so Thevenot informs us he carried his ready dressed 
 meat with him in a maund. What others may think of the 
 passage I know not, but I never could, till I met with these 
 remarks, account for his bringing the meat out to the angel 
 in a basket. As for Gideon's leaving the supposed prophet 
 under a tree, while he was busied in his house, instead of 
 introducing him into some apartment of his habitation, and 
 bringing the repast out to him there, we have seen some- 
 thing of it under the last observation ; I would here add, 
 that not only Arabs that live in tents, and their dependants, 
 practise it still, but those also that live in houses, as did 
 Gideon. Dr. Pococke frequently observed it among the 
 Maronites, and was so struck with this conformity of theirs 
 to ancient customs, that he could not forbear taking partic- 
 ular notice of it : laymen of quality and ecclesiastics, the 
 patriarchs and bishops, as well as poor obscure priests, thus 
 treating their guests. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 37. Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the 
 
 floor ; a7id if the dew be on the fleece only, and 
 
 it be dry upon all the earth besides, then shall 
 
 I know that thou wilt save Israel by my hand, 
 
 I as thou hast said. 
 
138 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 Chap. 7 
 
 In Palestine, as in Greece and Italy, the floor was for the 
 most part in the open air. Thus the thrashing-floor of 
 Gideon appears to have been an open uncovered space, upon 
 which the dews of heaven fell without interruption, "I 
 will put a fleece of wool in the floor, and if the dew be on 
 the fleece only, and it be dry on all the earth besides, then 
 shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by my hand as 
 thou hast said," But a barn, or covered space, had b6en 
 unfit for such an experiment. The thrashing-floor of 
 Araunah the Jebusite, seems also to have been an open 
 area, else it had not been a proper place for erecting an 
 < altar, and offering sacrifice. In the prophecies of Hosea, 
 the idolaters of Israel are compared to the chaff that is 
 driven with the whirlwind out of the floor. Hence it was 
 designed. y prepared in a place to which the wind had free 
 access on all sides ; and from this exposed situation it de- 
 rived its name in Hebrew. In Greece, the same kind of 
 situation was chosen ; for Hesiod advises his farn^^r to 
 thrash his corn in a place well exposed to the wind. From 
 this statement, it appears that a thrashing-floor (rendered in 
 our translation a void place) might .well be formed near 
 the gale of Samaria, which was built on the summit of a 
 hill; and afforded a very convenient place for the kings of 
 Israel and Judah giving audience to the prophets. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 38. And it was so : for he rose up early on 
 the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and 
 wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full 
 of water. 
 
 It may seem a httle improbable to us who inhabit these 
 northern climates, where the dews are inconsiderable, how 
 Gideon's fleece, in one night, should contract such a quan- 
 tity, that when he came to wring it, a bowl full of water was 
 produced. Irwin, in his voyage up the Red Sea, when on 
 the Arabian shores, says, "difficult as we find it to keep 
 ourselves cool in the daytime, it is no easy matter to defend 
 our bodies from the damps of the night, when the wind 
 is loaded with the heavest dews that ever fell ; we lie exposed 
 to the whole weight of the dews, and the cloaks in which we 
 wrap ourselves, are as wet in the morning as if they had been 
 immersed in the sea." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 4. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The 
 people are yet too many; bring them down 
 unto the water, and I will try them for thee 
 there ; and it shall be, that of whom I say unto 
 thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall 
 go with thee ; and of whomsoever I say unto 
 thee, This shall not go with thee, the same 
 shall not go. 5. So he brought down the peo- 
 ple unto the water : and the Lord said unto 
 Gideon, every one that lappeth of the water 
 with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shall 
 thou set by himself; likewise every one that 
 boweth down upon his knees to drink. 6. And 
 the number of them that lapped, putting their 
 hand to their mouth, were three hundred men : 
 but all the rest of the people bowed down upon 
 their knees to drink water. 
 
 The Arabs lap their milk and pottage, but not their water. 
 On the contrary, D'Arvieux tells us, that after they have 
 eaten, they rise from table, and go and drink large draughts 
 out of a pitcher, or, for want of that, out of a leathern bottle, 
 which they hand to one another round and round. Few of 
 ' the Israelites, if they did in common sup their milk and pot- 
 tage out of their hands, as the Arabs do, would have been 
 disposed to lap water in the same manner, if they drank too 
 as the Arabs now drink. Two considerations more will 
 complete the illustration of this part of the history of Gideon. 
 The one is. that the eastern people are not wont to drink 
 standing. Busbequius, the imperial ambassador at Con- 
 stantmople, in his celebrated letters concerning the eastern 
 people, affirms this in a very particular manner ; the 
 other, that the lapping with their hands is a very expe- 
 ditious way of takmg in liquids. " They are not restrained 
 in their choice," says Dr. Russell. " When they take 
 
 water with the palms of their hands, they naturally places 
 themselves on their hams to be nearer the water; but when 
 they drink from a pitcher, or gourd, fresh filled, they do not 
 sit down on purpose to drink, but drink standing, and 
 very often put the sleeve of their shirt over the mouth of 
 the vessel, by way of strainer, lest small leeches might have 
 been taken up with the water. It is for the same reason 
 they often prefer taking water with the palm of the hand, to 
 the lapping it from the surface. D'Arvieux, in that accu- 
 rate account^ of the Arabs of Mount Carmel, expressly 
 takes notice of this, observing that this may be the reason 
 why spoons are so universally neglected among the Arabs, 
 as a man would eat upon very unequal terms with a spoon, 
 among those that use the palms of their hands instead of 
 them. Until I met with this passage of Busbequius, I could 
 not tell what to make of that particular circumstance of the 
 history of the Jewish judge, that all the rest of the people 
 bowed down upon their knees to drink water. It appeared' 
 to me rather the putting themselves into an attitude to lap 
 water, than any thing else : as I supposed the words signi- 
 fied that they kneeled down by the side of some water in 
 order to drink. But the matter is now clear : three hun- 
 dred men, immediately upon their coming to the water, 
 drank of it in the quickest manner they could, in order to 
 be ready without delay to follow Gideon; the rest took up 
 water in pitchers, or leathern bottles, or some kind of vessel, 
 and bending down so as to sit jointly upon their heels and 
 knees, or with their knees placed upright before them, 
 either of which might be called bowing their knees to drink, 
 though the last is the posture Busbequius refers to, they 
 handed these drinking vessels with ceremony and slowness 
 from one to another, as they were wont to do in common, 
 which occasioned their dismission. So two-and-twenty 
 thousand of those that were faint-hearted were first sent 
 away ; then all the rest, excepting three hundred men of 
 peculiar alacrity and despatch, the most proper for the 
 business for which they were designed, but visibly unequa. 
 to the task of opposing the Midianites ; and without some 
 miraculous interposition of God, absolutely unequal,"-— 
 Harmer, 
 
 A dbg lappeth by means of forming the end of his tongue 
 into the shape of a shallow spoon, by which he laves or 
 throws up the water into his mouth. The Hottentots have 
 a curious custom, resembhng the dog and the three hun- 
 dred chosen men of Gideon's army. On a journey, imme- 
 diately on coming to water, they stoop, but no farther 
 than what is sufficient to allow their right hand to reach 
 the water, by which they throw it up so dexterously, that 
 their hand seldom approaches nearer to their mouth than 
 a foot ; yet I never observed any of the water to fall down 
 upon their breasts. They perform it almost as quickly a* 
 the dog, and satisfy their thirst in half the time taken by 
 another man, I frequently attempted to imitate this practice, 
 but never succeeded, always spilling the water on my clothes, 
 or throwing it against some other part of the face, instead 
 of the mouth, which greatly amused the Hottentot spectators, 
 who then, perhaps for the first time, perceived that there 
 was some art in it, — African Light. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 Ver. 12. And the Midianites, and the AmaleKites, 
 and all the children of the East, lay along in 
 the valley like grasshoppers for multitude ; and 
 their camels were without number, as the sand 
 by the seaside for multitude. 
 
 This animal remembers an injury long, and seizes witn 
 great keenness a proper opportunity of revenge. A camel's 
 anger is, among the Arabians, a proverb for an irreconci- 
 lable enmity. They estimate their riches by the number 
 of their camels. They can sustain great labour and fatigue 
 upon the poorest means of subsistence ; travelling four or 
 five days without water, while half a gallon of beans and 
 barley, or a few balls made of the flour, will sustain him 
 f )r a whole day. Dr. Shaw says, that before drinking, they 
 disturb the water with their feet, first of all thrusting their 
 heads a great way above the nostrils into the water, and 
 then, after the manner of pigeons, make several successive 
 draughts. " Nature has furnished the camel with parts and 
 qualities adapted to the office he is employed to discharge, 
 
 
Chap. 7—9. 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 139 
 
 The driest thistle and the barest thorn is all the food this 
 useful quadruped requires; and even thise, to save time, 
 he eats while advancing on his journey, without stopping, 
 or occasioning a moment of delay. As it is his lot to cross 
 immense deserts, where no water is found, and countries 
 not even moistened with the dew of heaven, he is endued 
 ■with the power, at one watering-place, to lay in a store, 
 with which he supplies himself for thirty days to come. 
 To contain this enormous quantity of fluid, nature has 
 formed large cisterns within him, from which, once filled,: 
 he draws at pleasure the quantity he wants, and pours it 
 into his stomach, with the same effect as if he then drew it 
 from a spring; and with this he travels patiently and vig- 
 orously all day long ; carrying a prodigious load upon him, 
 through countries infected with poisonous winds, and glow- 
 ing with parching and never-cooling sands." (Bruce.)— 
 
 BUHDER. 
 
 Ver. 13. And when Gideon was come, behold, 
 i there was a man that told a dream unto his fel- 
 low, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, 
 lo, a cake of barley-bread tumbled into the host 
 of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it 
 that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay- 
 along. 
 
 Barley-bread is in some regions of Persia commonly 
 used by the lower orders. It must not however be omitted, 
 that in making bread, barley was used before any other 
 sort of corn ; for it is reported, says Artemidorus, that this 
 was the first food which the gods imparted to mankind ; 
 and it was, according to Pliny, the most ancient sort of pro- 
 vision. But in more civilized ages, to use the words of the 
 same author, barley-bread came to be the food of beasts 
 only ; yet it was still used by the poorer sort, who were not 
 able to furnish their tables with better provisions; and in 
 the Roman camp, as Vegetius and Livy inform us, soldiers 
 who had been guilty of any offence, were fed with barley, 
 instead of bread corn. An example of this punishment is 
 recorded in the history of the second Punic war. The 
 cohorts that lost their standards, had an allowance of bar- 
 ley assigned by Marcellus. And Augustus Cesar com- 
 monly punished the cohorts which gave way to the enemy, 
 by a decimation, and allowing them no provision but barley. 
 So mean and contemptible, in the estimation of the numer- 
 ous and well-appointed armies of Midian,. was Gideon, 
 with his handful of undisciplined militia ; but guided by 
 the wisdom, and supported by the power of the living God, 
 he inflicted a deserved and exemplary punishment on these 
 proud oppressors. The meagre barley-cake was put into 
 the hand of Midian by the God of armies, as a punishment 
 for disobedience of orders, not to make a full end of his 
 j chosen people. " And when Gideon was come, behold, 
 there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and 
 said. Behold, I dreamed a dream, and lo, a cake of barley- 
 bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a 
 tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the 
 tent lay along. And his fellow answered and said. This 
 is nothing else save the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, 
 a man of Israel ; for into his hand hath God delivered 
 Midian, and all the host." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And he divided the three hundred men 
 into three companies, and he put a trumpet in 
 every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and 
 lamps within the pitchers. 
 
 Though it must, one would think, be much more con- 
 venient to carry water in skins or leathern bottles, when 
 water must be carried, and accordingly, such we find are 
 generally made use of in the East in travelling; yet, what- 
 ever the cause may be, they sometimes content themselves 
 with earthen jars. Thus we find, in the beginning of Dr. 
 Chandler's expeditions, in search of the antiquities of these 
 countries, though he was equipped under the direction of a 
 Jew of that countrv, of such eminence as to act as the Brit- 
 ish consul at the JDardanelles, and was attended at first by 
 him, yet the vessel in which their water was to be carried, 
 was an earthen jar, which not only served them in the 
 wherry in which they coasted some of the nearer parts of 
 
 Asia Minor, but was carried upon the ass of a poor peasant, 
 along with other luggage, when they made an excursion 
 from the seaside up into the country, to visii the gieat luin 
 at Troas. This may serve to remove our wonder thai 
 Gideon should be able to collect three hundred water-jars 
 from among ten thousand men, for we have no reason to 
 suppose the method he was to make use of, to surprise the 
 Midianites, was not suggested to him before he dismissed all 
 the army to the three hundred. In an army of ten thousand 
 Israelitish peasants, collected together on a sudden, there 
 might be many goat-skin vessels for water, but many might 
 have nothing better than earthen jars, and three hundred 
 water-jars, collected from the whole army, were sufficient 
 to answer the views of divine Providence. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 7. And Gideon said, Therefore, when the 
 Lord hath delivered Zebah and Zalmunna 
 into my hand, then I will tear your flesh Avith 
 the thorns of the wilderness, and with briers. 
 
 Thus did Gideon threaten the inhabitants of Succoth ; 
 and thus do masters, fathers, and schoolmasters, swear 
 they will punish, those who have offended them. To see 
 the force of the figure, it must be kept in mind that the 
 people are almost in a state of nudity. To tear a man's 
 naked body, therefore, with briers and thorns, would be no 
 small punishment. See poor travellers sometimes, who, in 
 consequence of a wild beast, or some other cause, have to 
 rush into the thicket ; before they can get out again, in con-, 
 sequence of thorns, they are literally covered Avith blood. 
 There have been instances where a master, in his anger,, 
 has taken the jagged edge of the palmirah branch, to tear 
 the naked body of his slave, and nothing can be more 
 common than to threaten it shall be done to those who 
 have given offence. People also often menace each other 
 with the repetition of the old punishment of tying the naked 
 body in a bundle of thorns, and rolling it on the ground. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 This threat probably relates to a cruel method of torture 
 used in those times for putting captives to death, by laying 
 briers and thorns on their naked bodies, and then drawing- 
 over them some heavy implements of husbandry. Drij- 
 sius thinks, that pensons put to death in this manner were 
 laid naked on thorns and briers, and then trampled on. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 18. As ihoxxart, so wer eihey\ each one re- 
 sembled the children of a king. 
 
 Of a person who is beautiful or of a fair complexion, 
 who is courageous and stately in his gait, it is said in the 
 East, " He is like the son of a king." " He is as the so\\ 
 of Mannaaihon (Cupid.") " He is the ^on of a god." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 8. The trees went forth on a time to anoinl 
 a king over them ; and they said unto the olivv-^.- 
 tree. Reign thou over us. 
 
 The people of the East are exceedingly addicted to apo- 
 logues, and use them to convey instruction or reproof, 
 which with them could scarcely be done so well in any 
 other way. Has a man been told a secret, he says, in re- 
 peating it, for instance, " A tree told me this morning, that 
 Kandan offered a large bribe to the Modeliar, lo get Mut- 
 too turned out of his situation." Does a man of low caste 
 wish to unite his son in marriage to the daughter of one 
 who is high, the latter will say, " Have you heard that the 
 pumpkin wants to be married to the plantain tree"?" Is a 
 wife steril, " The cocoa-nut tree in Viraver's garden does 
 not bear any fruit." Has a woman had children by im- 
 proper intercourse, it is said of her husband's garden, 
 " Ah, the palmirah-trees are now giving cocoa-nuts." 
 Has a man given his daughter in marriage to another 
 who uses her unkindly, he says, " I have planted the sugar- 
 cane by the side of the margossa (bitter) tree." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 27. And they went out into the fields, and 
 gathered their vineyards, and trode the grafes^^ 
 
140 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 Chap. 9— 11. 
 
 and made merry, and went into the house of 
 their god, and did eat and drink, and cursed 
 Abimelech. 
 
 In the East they still tread their grapes after the ancient 
 manner. " August 20, 1765, the vintage (near Smyrna) 
 was now begun, the juice (of the grapes) was expressed for 
 wine ; a man, with his feet and legs bare, was treading the 
 fruit in a kind of cistern, with a hole or vent near the bot- 
 tom, and a vessel beneath to receive the liquor." (Chand- 
 ler's Travels in Greece.) — Border. 
 
 Ver. 33. Then may est thou do to them as thou 
 shalt find occasion. 
 
 The Hebrew has, " As thy hand shall find." (1 Sam. 
 X. 7, margin.) In asking a favour, it is common to say, 
 *' You must not deny me, sir ; but as your hand finds op- 
 portunity, so you must assist me." — " Well, my friend, 
 when I have the opportunity of the hand, I will assist you." 
 " The man has assisted me according to the opportimity of 
 his hand ; what can he do more V — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 36. And when Gaal saw the people, he said 
 to Zebul, Behold, there come people down from 
 the top of the mountains. And Zebul said 
 unto him, Thou seest the shadow of the mount- 
 ains as if they were men. 
 
 Our translation of the book of Judges, from the Hebrew, 
 represents Zebul as saying to Gaal, upon his being alarm- 
 ed at seeing troops of men making to him. Thou seest the 
 skadows of Uve mountains as if they were men; whereas, 
 Josephus represents him as telling him, he mistook the 
 shadow of the rocks for men. A commentator might be at 
 a loss to account for this change, that had not read Doub- 
 dan's representation of some part of the Holy Land, in 
 which he tells us, that in those places there are many de- 
 tached rocks scattered up and down, some growing out of 
 the ground, and others are fragments, broken ofi' from 
 rocky precipices, the shadow of which, it appears, Jose- 
 pljus thought might be most naturally imagined to look 
 like troops of men at a distance, rather than the shadow of 
 the mountains. — Shaw. 
 
 The dreariness of the far-stretching ruins was dismally 
 increased by the shadowy hour of our approach; and be- 
 ing again in the region of the Bactriani descents, our own 
 flitting shades, as we passed between old mouldering walls 
 and the moonlight, sometimes bore an alarming interpre- 
 tation. Our mehmander was ready to embattle every 
 frowning heap with a murderous legend. — Sir R, K. Por- 
 
 TEE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 4. And he had thirty sons that rode on thirty 
 ass-colts, and they had thirty cities, which are 
 called Havoth-jair unto this day, which are in 
 the land of Gilead. 
 
 To ride upon an ass was, in the days of the Judges, a 
 mark of distinction, to which it is probable the vulgar 
 might not presume to aspire. This is evident from the 
 brief notices which the inspired historian gives of the great- 
 ness and richness of Jair, the Gileadite, one of these judges : 
 " he had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts; and they 
 had thirty cities, which are called Havoth-jair unto this 
 day. " Abdon the Pirathonite, another of these judges, 
 '• had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on three- 
 score and ten ass-colts. " It is reasonable to suppose, that 
 the manners and customs of the chosen tribes underwent 
 a change when the government became monarchical, and 
 the fascinating pleasures of a court began to exert their 
 usual influence; still, however, the ass kept his place in 
 the service of the great, Mephibosheth, the grandson of 
 Saul, rode on an ass ; as did Ahithophel, the prime minister 
 of David, and the greatest statesman of that age. Even no 
 late as the reign of Jehoram, the son of Ahab, the services 
 of this animal were required by the wealthy Israelite : the 
 Shunamite, a person of high rank, saddled her ass, and 
 ifode to Carmel, the residence of Elisha, to announce the 
 
 death of her son to the prophet, and to solicit his assist- 
 ance. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 8. And that year they vexed and oppressed 
 the children of Israel eighteen years. 
 
 The Hebrew has, " crushed." Of a severe master it is 
 said, " He crushes his servants. " " Ah ! my lord, crush 
 me not." "When will the king cease to crush his peo- 
 y pie 7 " — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Ver. 30. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the 
 Lord, and said. If thou shalt without fail de- 
 liver the children of Ammon into my hands, 
 31. Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh 
 forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when 
 I return in peace from the children of Ammon, 
 shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it 
 up for a burnt-offering. 
 
 One species of vow called Cherem, (for which, in Ger- 
 man, we generally use the terms Bann, Verbannen, &c. ; 
 but in a thing altogether foreign to us, I rather choose to 
 abide by the Hebrew word,) was, from ancient usage, more 
 sacred and irremissible than all others. Moses nowhere 
 mentions what Cherem was, nor by what solemnities or 
 expressions it was distinguished from other vows ; but pre- 
 supposes all this as already well known. But from Lev. 
 xxvii. 21, every one must see, that there was a difference 
 between a Cherem and other vows ; for if a man had vow- 
 ed his field, and omitted to redeem it, it devolved unto God 
 in the same way as the field of Cherem, for ever, and be- 
 yond the power of future redemption ; and in ver. 28, 29, 
 it is expressly ordained, that a Cherem can never be re- 
 deemed like other vows, but continues consecrated to God ; 
 and if it be a man, that he shall be put to death. I have al- 
 ready stated, that of the formalities which distinguished the 
 Cherem from common vows, we know nothing ; nor does 
 the etymology of the term at all aid our conjectures, for 
 the radical word in Arabic means, to consecrate ; but every 
 thing vowed or devoted, was consecrated. The species of 
 Cherem with which we are best acquainted, was the previ- 
 ous devotement to God of hostile cities, against which they 
 intended to proceed with extreme severity ; and that wiih 
 a view the more to inflame the minds of the people to war. 
 In such cases, not only were all the inhabitants put to death, 
 but also, according as the terms of the vow declared, no 
 booty was made by any Israelite ; the beasts were slain ; 
 what would not burn, as gold, silver, and other metals, was 
 added to the treasure of the sanctuary ; and every thing 
 else, with the whole city, burnt, and an imprecation pro- 
 nounced upon any attempt that should ever be made to re- 
 build it. Of this tJie history of Jericho (Josh. vi. 17—19, 
 21—24, and vii. 1, 12—26) furnishes the most remarkable 
 example. In Moses' lifetime we find a similar vow against 
 the king of Arad, Numb. xxi. 1 — 3. The meaning, how- 
 ever, as we see from the first-mentioned example, was not, 
 that houses might never again be built on the accursed spot; 
 for to build a city, here means to fortify it. Joshua him- 
 self seems to explain it thus ; for in his curse he makes 
 use of this expression, " Cursed be he who rebuilds this 
 city Jericho ; for his first-born son shall he found it, and for 
 his latest, set up its gates." The beginning, therefore, of 
 the building of a city, is to found it ; which can hardly be 
 to lay the foundation stone of a single house, (for who, 
 whether Hebrew or not, ever called that founding a city 1) 
 but of the city walls; and its conclusion, isto set up its gates. 
 The history still further confirms this, as the meaning of 
 the term to build ; Jericho was so advantageously situated 
 for all manner of trade, because near the usual passage 
 a,cross the Jordan, that it could not long remain a place en- 
 tirely desolate. In fact, as early as the time of the Judges, 
 Jericho, or, as it was then called, the city of palms, ap-^ 
 peared again as a town, subdued by the Moabites; (Judg.l 
 iii. 13, compared with Deut. xxxiv. 3;) and in David's time, | 
 we have unquestionable proof of ti e existence of a city of* 
 the name of Jericho. See 2 Sam. x. 5. But notwithstand- 
 ing all this, Joshua's imprecation was not yet trespassed; 
 but, at least 100 years after David's death, Jericho was first 
 rebuilt (that is, fortified) by Hiel the Bethelite ; and in lay- 
 
Chap. 12. 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 141 
 
 ing its foundation he lost his first-born son, and in setting 
 up the gates, his youngest, 1 Kings xvi. 34. 
 
 If an Israelitish city introduced the worship of strange 
 gods, it was in like manner to be devoted, or consecrated to 
 God, and to remain unrebuilt for ever ; Deul. xiii. 16 — 18. 
 In these cases, therefore, consecrated, or devoted, is nearly 
 equivaleu. to the Latin phrase, ejus caput Jovi sacrum esto, 
 or sacer esto. The consecration of the transgressor to God 
 made the remission of his punishment impossible. It is 
 easy to perceive, that this master-piece of legislative policy- 
 ought never to have its importance lessened by an injudi- 
 cious application to common crimes, that do not affect the 
 principles of the constitution : and therefore, so much the 
 greater was the abuse which Saul made of the Cherem, 
 when, in issuing an arbitrary inconsiderate order, he swore 
 that whoever trespassed it should die ; this was, in fact, 
 making the offender against his whim, a Cherem ; and ac- 
 cordingly we see, that the people did not mind the oath of 
 their king, but insisted on saving Jonathan, whom, because 
 he had eaten a little honey, his father had devoted to death. 
 1 Sam. xiv. 24 — 45. But a still grosser abuse of the Che- 
 rem, proceeding from imitation of foreign and heathenish 
 practices, w^e shall probably find in the history of Jephthah, 
 ' Judges, chap. xi. This brave barbarian, an illegitimate 
 child, and without inheritance, who had from his youth 
 i been a robber, and was now, from being the leader of ban- 
 ditti, transformed into a general, had vowed, if he con- 
 j quered the Ammonites, to make a burnt-offering to the 
 \ Lord of whatever should first come out of his house to meet 
 '< him, on his return. This vow was so absurd, and at the 
 i same time so contrary to the Mosaic law, that it could not 
 j possibly have been accepted of God, or obligatory. For, 
 what if a dog, or an ass, had first met him"? Could he have 
 offered it ? By the law of Moses no unclean beast could be 
 brought to the altar ; nor yet even all clean ones ; but of 
 quadrupeds, only oxen, sheep, and goats. Or, what if a 
 man had first met him"? Human sacrifices Moses had 
 most rigidly prohibited, and described as the abomination 
 of the Canaanites ; of which we shall afterward say more, 
 under criminal law ; but Jephthah, who had early been 
 driven from his home, and had grown up to manhood 
 among banditti in the land of Tob, might not know much 
 of the laws of Moses, and probably was but a bad lawyer, 
 and jqst as bad a theologian. The neighbouring nations 
 used human sacrifices: the Canaanites, especially, are hy 
 Moses and the other sacred writers often accused of this 
 abominable idolatry, of which we find still more in the 
 Greek and Latin authors ; and possibly, therefore, Jephthah, 
 when he made the vow, may have thought of being met, 
 not merely by a beast, but by a slave, whom,, of course, he 
 would sacrifice, after the heathen fashion. His words are, 
 " If thou givest the Ammonites into my hands, whatever 
 first Cometh forth from my house to meet me on my happy 
 return from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord's, and I will 
 bring it to him as a burnt-offering." — Most unfortunately, 
 his only daughter first came out to congratulate him : and 
 I the ignorant barbarian, though extremely afl^ected at the 
 ! sight, was yet so superstitious, and so unacquainted with 
 the religion and laws of his country, as to suppose he 
 could not recall his vow. His daughter too was heroic 
 enough to fulfil it, on her part ; requesting only two months 
 respite, for the romantic purpose of going with her com- 
 panions into lonely dales, there to lament that she must 
 die a virgin. Then, after two months' absence, this hap- 
 less maid, who, either from ambition or superstition, was 
 a willing victim to her father's inconsiderate vow, actually 
 returned ; and Jephthah, it is said, did with her as he had 
 vowed ; which cannot well mean any thing else, than that 
 he put her to death, and burnt her body as a burnt-offering. 
 The greater number of expositors, indeed, would fain ex- 
 plain the passage differently, because they look upon Jeph- 
 thah as a saint, who could not have done any thing so abom- 
 inable. " Human sacrifices," say they, " are clearly con- 
 trary to the law of Moses."— Very true. — But how many 
 tilings have ignorance and superstition done in the world, 
 thai expressly contradict the law of God ! Have we not, 
 among Christians, seen persecutions and massacres on ac- 
 , count of religion, with various other atrocities, and abom- 
 inable proceedings, that are just as directly repugnant to 
 the gospel, as any human sacrifice could be to the laws of 
 ] Moses 1—" But would the high-priest have accepted such 
 !j an offering, and brought it to the altar V'—l certainly be- 
 
 lieve not ; but we find not a word spoken of the high-priest, 
 but only of Jephthah. What if he had performed the sacri- 
 fice himself? This would certainly have been a trans- 
 gression of the Levitical law ; which enjoined that every 
 offering should be made by the hand of the priest, and at 
 the place where the tabernacle and altar stood. But that 
 injunction had, on numberless occasions, been violated by 
 the Israelites, and had, by the opposite usage, become al- 
 most abrogated. Jephthah, who, from superstitious igno- 
 rance, was, in the sacrifice of his daughter, after the Ca- 
 naanitish fashion, about to perpetrate a most abominable 
 act, forbidden not only by the law of his country, but also 
 by the law of nature, might very well have been guilty of 
 the lesser fault, now actually a very common one, of ma- 
 king his offering in the country beyond Jordan, of which he 
 was himself master. Amid all the doubts that we start 
 concerning this clearly-related story, we do not consider 
 who Jephthah was ; a fugitive from his country, who, in for- 
 eign lands, had collected and headed a band of robbers; 
 nor yet where he now ruled,-^beyond Jordan, in the land 
 of Gilead. And a still more important circumstance men- 
 tioned in the chapter (xii.) immediately following our sto- 
 ry, has been most inadvertently overlooked. Immediately 
 after his victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah went to war 
 with the tribe of Ephraim : but the tabernacle was at Shi- 
 loh, within the limits of that tribe ; and the .high-priest, 
 therefore, could certainly have had no concern with an of- 
 fering that Jephthah meant to make on account of his suc- 
 cess, nor would it have been brought to the altar at Shiloh, 
 but made in the land where Jephthah himself ruled. It is 
 unaccountable, that not a single expositor should have at- 
 tended to this war with the Ephraimites : but that the one 
 half of them should be so simple as to deny, that Jephthah 
 did offer up his daughter, because the high-priest would 
 not have accepted the offering: and the other, in other 
 respects more correct in their opinion, so obliging, as to 
 obviate that objection, by presuming that the high-priest 
 must have been deposed for making such an offering. — 
 This, however, is a controversy into which I will not enter 
 further, because it does not deserve it. That carelessness 
 is too gross, which forgets the end of the eleventh chapter, 
 at the beginning of the twelfth. — Michaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 3. And when I saw that ye delivered me not, 
 I put my life in my hancls, and passed over 
 against the children of Ammon. 
 
 The Ephraimites had found fault with Jephthah because 
 he did not call them to war against the Ammonites, but he 
 vindicated himself, and addressed them in the language of 
 the verse, as a proof of his courage, and that he had been 
 exposed to danger. The Hindoos use the same figure ; and 
 the idea appears to be taken from a man carrying some- 
 thing very precious in his hands, and that under circum- 
 stances of great danger. When a son who has been long 
 absent returns home, his father says, " My son has returned 
 from the far country with his life in his hand;" which 
 means, he has passed through many dangers. " Last night, 
 as I went home through the place of evil spirits, I put my 
 life in my hands." " The other day, in passing through 
 the forest, I put my life in my hands, for the beasts were 
 near to me in every direction." " Danger ! truly so ; I put 
 my life in my bosom." " O that divine doctor! my son was 
 at the point of death, but he brought his life in his hand." — 
 Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 14. And he had forty sons, and thirty 
 nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass- 
 colts : and he judged Israel eight years. 
 
 To an Englishman, this may appear almost incredible, 
 but we have a great number of similar cases. A man oi 
 property has as many wives as he thinks proper to support; 
 and such is the state of morals, that he finds no difficulty 
 in procuring them. I have known men who have had, in 
 each of the neighbouring villages, a wife or concubine. 
 Santherasega, Modeliar of Oodeputty, who has been dead 
 about thirty vears, had two wives and six concubines, who 
 bare to him thirty children. The old man is described as 
 being of large stature, and as having indulged in strong ' 
 
143 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 Chap. 13. 14. 
 
 kinds of food. — A friend of mine in Manilla knew a man 
 who was the father of forty children. — Lieutenant-colonel 
 Johnson says (in his ' Travels through Persia) of the king, 
 " The number of his cidldren I could not exactly ascertain: 
 it is generally agreed that he has at least sixty boys and 
 sixty girls living ; and many persons add, that there are an 
 equal number deceased, so that their total number must 
 kave been two hundred and forty. He has already given 
 HI marriage twelve of his daughters ; and about twenty-five 
 of the elder of his sons are governors of the principal prov- 
 inces and cities of the empire. Preparations of fireworks, 
 &c. were at this time making at the palace to celebrate the 
 nuptials of one of his sons, which were to take place in 
 about three weeks." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Yer. 5. For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a 
 son ; and no razor shall come on his hea^ : for 
 the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from 
 the womb. 
 
 Tbis command was given to the wife of Manoah, the 
 fatLt 1- of Samson, who had previously been steril. Han- 
 nah, the mother of Samuel, was also steril, " and she vowed 
 a v-iw, and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look 
 on -ne affliction of thy handmaid, and remember me, and 
 not forget thy handmaid, but will give unto thy hand- 
 maid a man-child, then I will give him unto the Lord all 
 the ays of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his 
 head." (Numbers vi. 5. Acts xviii. 18.) All who are 
 married in the East, have an intense desire for children. 
 It is considered disgraceful, and a mark of the displeasure 
 of the gods, to have a childless house. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, husbands and wives perform expensive cere- 
 monies ; and vow, that should the gods favour them with 
 a son, " no razor shall come upon his head," (i. e. except- 
 ing "the corners,") until he shall be ten or twelve years 
 of age. In all schools, boys may be seen with elf-locks of 
 ten jr twelve' years standing, giving a testimony to the 
 solicitude, superstition, and affection of the parents, and a 
 memorial of the favour of their deities. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1":^ So Manoah took a kid with a meat- 
 ofTeriij?-, and offered it upon a rock unto the 
 Lord: and the angel did wonderously ; and 
 ManoaVt and his wife looked on. 20. For it 
 came tc pass, when the flame went up towards 
 heaven ^ua:, off the altar, that the ang-el of the 
 Lord asceii':ied in the flame of the altar : and 
 Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on 
 their faces to the ground. 
 
 The circumstances in the histories of Gideon and Manoah 
 are well illustrated, by some things mentioned occasionally 
 by Doubdan, in the account of his journey to the Holy- 
 Land, for he speaks of many rocks which he found rising 
 up out of the earth there, and some as parts of great rocks 
 fallen down. Some of them are described in such a manner, 
 as shows they resembled altar-tombs, or altars. Speaking 
 of his return from a town called St. Samuel, to Jerusalem, 
 by a way leading to the sepulchres of the judges of Israel, 
 he tells us, (p. 98, 99,) that he found them in a great field 
 planted with vines, in which were great rocks, which rose 
 out of the earth ; among them, one, near the wayside, was 
 so large, as to be hollowed out into several rooms, in 
 whose sides were long and narrow holes cut out, proper 
 for placing the dead in, even with the floor. When he 
 was at Joppa, waiting to embark, upon his return, he 
 describes himself and his companion as placing them- 
 sei'.vs, after they had walked until they were tired, on the 
 beach, viewing some Greek pilgrims, who were also wait- 
 ing to take ship, and who amused themselves with dancing 
 on the shore, as placing themselves in the shade of a great 
 rock, newly fallen down from the moimtains, (p. 4.5.5.) 
 Rocks appear in this countrv : some in their original situ- 
 ation, rising out of the ground ; others are fragments, that 
 have been detached from rockv eminences, and have fallen 
 down on the ground below. Of this considerable number 
 of rocks, some were flat, or nearly flat, on the top, so as 
 
 conveniently to be used for altars. There are some such 
 now found in that country. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 7. And he went down and talked with the 
 woman ; and she pleased Samson well. 8. And 
 after a time he returned to take her. 
 
 Ten or twelve months commonly intervened between 
 the ceremony of espousals, and the marriage ; during this 
 interval, the espoused wife continued with her parents, 
 that she might provide herself with nuptial ornaments 
 suitable to her station. This custom serves to explain a 
 circumstance in Samson's marriage, which is involved in 
 some obscurity: " He went down," says the historian, " and 
 talked with the woman, (whom he had se^n at Timnath,) 
 and she pleased him well." These words seem to refer to 
 the ceremony of espousals ; the following to the subsequent 
 marriage, " And after a time he returned to take her."' 
 Hence, a considerable time intervened between the espou- 
 sals, and their actual union. — Paxton. 
 
 V^er. 8. And, behold, there was a swarm of bees 
 and honey in the carcass of the lion. 
 
 The bee is a gregarious insect, living in a state of 
 society, and subject to a regular government. From this 
 circumstance, its Hebrew name mm, from a root which 
 signifies to speak, to rule, to lead, is derived. It is an 
 opinion commonly received among the ancients, that bees 
 were propagated in two ways, either by those of their own 
 species, or in the cavities of a dead carcass. Their opinion 
 is beautifully stated by Virgil in these lines : 
 
 "Hie vero subitum ac dictu mirablle monstrum 
 Aspiciunt, liquefacta boum per viscera t.oto 
 Stridere apes utero et ruptis effervere costis, 
 Immensas que trahi nubes jamque arbore summa 
 Confluere, et lentis uvam demittere ramis." 
 
 *' But here they behold a sudden prodigy, and wondrous to 
 relate, bees through all the belly, burn amid the putrid 
 bowels of the cattle, pour forth with the fermenting juices 
 from the burst sides, and in immense clouds roll .along, 
 then swarm together on the top of a tree, and hang down 
 in a cluster from the bending boughs." This opinion, 
 however, is directly contradicted by another, which was 
 held by some writers of the greatest reputation in ancient 
 times. Aristotle taught, that the bee will not light upon a 
 dead carcass, nor taste the flesh. Varro asserts, that she 
 never sits down in an unclean place, or upon any thing 
 which emits an unpleasant smell. They are never seen, 
 like flies, feeding on blood or flesh ; while wasps and 
 hornets all delight in such food, the bee never touches a 
 dead body. So much they dislike an impure smell, that 
 when one of them dies, the survivors immediately carry 
 out the carcass from the hive, that they may not be aii- 
 noyed by the effluvia. The discovery which Samson made, 
 when he went down to Timnath, may seem to contradict 
 the latter, and confirm the former opinion : " And after 
 time, he returned to take her, and he turned aside to se 
 the carcass of the lion ; and behold there was a swarm oi_ 
 bees, and honey in the carcass of the lion." But it is not" 
 said the swarm was generated there, but only that Samson 
 found them in the carcass ; nor is it said that the lion had 
 been recently killed, and that the carcass was in a state o£ 
 putrefaction: the contrary seems to be intimated by the 
 phrase after a time, literally, after days, one of the most 
 common expressions in scripture for a year. Hence the 
 lion was killed a whole year before this visit to Timnath, 
 when he discovered the swaim in the carcass. But the 
 flesh of the carcass, which Samson lefl in the open field at 
 whole year, the prey of wild beasts and ravenous birds" 
 must have been entirely consumed long before his return 
 or so completely dried by the violent heat of the sun, tha' 
 n thing but the skeleton, or exsiccated frame, remained. 
 Within the bare, or withered enclosure of the bones, which 
 had exhaled their last putrid effluvia, the swarm, in perfect 
 consistency with their usual delicacy, might construct their 
 cells and deposite their honey. This conjecture is con- 
 firmed by the testimony of Herodotus, who declares thai 
 bees have swarmed in dry bones. — Paxton. 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
Chap. 15. 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 143 
 
 Ver. 12. And Samson said unto them, I will now 
 put forth a riddle unto you : if ye can certainly 
 declare it me within the seven days of the 
 feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty 
 shefets and thirty change of garments. 
 
 It is customary for the Turks and Moors, according to 
 Dr. Shaw, to wear shins of linen, or cotton, or gauze, 
 under their tunics ; but the Arabs wear nothing but wool- 
 len. This is frequently the case also with the Arabs of 
 Palestine, it seems, though D'Arvieux gives a contrary ac- 
 count of the Arabs of the camp of the grand emir whom 
 he visited ; for Egmont and Heyman assure us, that they 
 saw several Arabian inhabitants of Jaffa going along al- 
 most naked, the greatest part of them without so much as 
 a shirt or a pair of breeches, though some wore a kind of a 
 mantle; as for the children there, they ran about almost as 
 naked as they were born, though they had all little chains 
 about their legs as an ornament, and some of silver. — Har- 
 
 JVIER. 
 
 Many of the Arabian inhabitants of Palestine and Bar- 
 bary wear no shirts, but go almost entirely naked, or with 
 only a cloth cast about their bodies, or a kind of mantle. It 
 is not improbable, that the poorer inhabitants of Judea were 
 clothed in much the same manner as the Arabs of those 
 countries in modern times, having no shirts, but only a 
 sort of mantle to cover their naked bodies. If this be just, 
 it greatly illustrates the promise of Samson to give his 
 companions thirty sheets, or, as it is more properly rendered 
 in the margin of our Bibles, thirty shirts, if they could dis- 
 cover the meaning of his riddle. It cannot easily be im- 
 agined they were what we call sheets, for Samson might 
 have slain thirty Philistines near Askelon, and not have 
 found one sheet ; or if he slew them who were carrying 
 their beds with them on their travels, as they often do in 
 present times, the slaughter of fifteen had been sufficient, 
 for in the East, as in other countries, every bed is provided 
 with two sheets; but he slew just thirty, in order to obtain 
 thirty sediuim, or shirts. If this meaning of the term be 
 admitted, the deed of Samson must have been very provo- 
 king to the Philistines ; for since only people of more easy 
 circumstances wore shirts, they were not thirty of the com- 
 mon people that he slew, but thirty persons of figure and 
 consequence. The same word is used by the prophet 
 Isaiah, in his description of the splendid and costly dress 
 in which people of rank and fashion then delighted, ren- 
 dered in our translation fine linen ; which seems to place 
 it beyond a doubt that they were persons of rank that fell 
 tby the hand of Samson on that occasion. 
 
 But it is by no means improbable, that these sheets were 
 the hykes or blankets already described, which are worn 
 by persons of all ranks in Asia. (See on Deut. 24. 13.) 
 Pococke, who gives a description of this vestment, and of 
 the way in which it is wrapped about the body, which does 
 not materially differ from the account of it in a preceding 
 section, particularly observed, that the young people, and 
 the poorer -ort about Faiume, had nothing on whatever, 
 but this blanket; hence it is probable, that the young man 
 was clothed in this manner who followed our Saviour when 
 he was taken, having a linen cloth cast about his naked 
 body. " When the young man," who came to apprehend 
 Jesiis, " laid hold of" him, " he left the linen cloth, and fled 
 ^rom them naked:" but this language by no means re- 
 
 f 'quires us to suppose that he was absolutely naked, but only 
 that he chose rather to quit his hyke or plaid, than run the 
 risk of being made a prisoner, although by doing so he 
 , became unduly exposed. This view is confirmed by the 
 observations formerly made on the hyke and tunic; and by 
 the state of the weather, which was" so cold, that the ser- 
 vants of the high-priest were compelled to kindle a fire in 
 ! the midst of the hall to warm themselves. It is very im- 
 probable, that he would go into the garden on such a night 
 so thinly clothed; and we have no reason to think he was 
 so poor, that this linen cloth was the only article of clothing 
 j in his possession. But Mr. Harmer, and other expositors, 
 I considering that the apostles were generally poor men, and 
 I that the poor in those countries had often no other covering 
 tthan this blanket, rather suppose, that the terrified disciple 
 \ lied away in a state of absolute nudity. But if it was the 
 I apostle John, where was he furnished with clothes to 
 1 appear almost immediatelv after in the high-priest's hall 7 
 
 This difficulty Mr. Harmer endeavours to remove by sup- 
 posing, that from the garden he might go to his usual place 
 of residence in the city, and clothe himself anew before he 
 went to the palace. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. And it came to pass on the seventh day, 
 that they said to Samson's wife. Entice thy 
 husband, that he may declare unto us the rid- 
 dle, lest we burn thee and thy father's house 
 with fire : have ye called us to take that we 
 have ? is it not so ? 
 
 The marriage feast was of old, frequently protracted to 
 the length of seven days ; for so long Samson entertained 
 his friends at Timnath.' To this festival, Laban is thought 
 by many divines to refer, in his answer to Jacob's com- 
 plaint, that he had imposed Leah upon him instead of 
 Rachel; "Fulfil the week of the marriage, and we will 
 give thee this also." This feast was callea the nuptial joy, 
 with which no other was to be intermixed; all labour 
 ceased while it continued, and no sign of mourning or sor- 
 row was permitted to appear. It may be only further 
 observed, tnat even in modern times, none but very poor 
 people give a daughter in marriage without a female slave 
 for a handmaid, as hired servants are scarcely known in 
 the oriental regions. Hence Laban, who was a man of 
 considerable property in Mesopotamia, "gave unto his 
 daughter Leah, Zilpah his maid, for a handmaid;" and 
 " to Rachel his da^jghter, Bilhah his handmaid, to be her 
 maid." In Greece also, the marriage solemnity lasted 
 several days. On the third day, the bride presented her 
 bridegroom with a robe ; gifts were likewise made to the 
 bride and bridegroom, by the bride's father and friends ; 
 these consisted of golden vessels, beds, couches, plates, ami 
 all sorts of necessaries for housekeeping, which were car- 
 ried in great state to the house by women, preceded by a 
 person carrying a basket, in the manner usual at proces- 
 sions, before whom went a boy in white vestments, with a 
 torch in his hand. It was also customary for the bride- 
 groom and his friends to give presents to the bride, after 
 which, the bridegroom had leave to converse freely with 
 her, and she was permitted to appear in public without her 
 veil. The money, says Dr. Russell, which the bridegrooms 
 of Aleppo pay for their brides, is laid out in furniture for 
 a chamoer, in clothes, jewels, or ornaments of gold, for the 
 bride, whose father makes some addition, according to his 
 circumstances : which things are sent with great pomp to 
 the bridegroom's house three days before the wedding. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And he said unto her, Behold, I have 
 not told it my father nor my mother, and shall 
 ItelHnhee? 
 
 In all parts of the world, I believe, people are pretty 
 much aliKe as to their capability of keeping secrets. The 
 Hindoos, however, improperly reflect upon the female sex 
 in their proverb, " To a woman tell not a secret." . That 
 secret must be great indeed which will prevent a son or 
 daughter from telling it to the father or mother. The 
 greatest proof of confidence is to say, " I have told you 
 what I have not revealed to my father." In proof of the 
 great affection one has for another, it is said, "He has told 
 things to him that he would not have related to his parents." 
 "My friend, do tell me the secret." — "Tell youl yes, 
 when I have told my parents." — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 4. And Samson went and caught three hun- 
 dred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail 
 to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst be- 
 tween two tails. 
 
 The book of Judges contains a singular anecdote, of the 
 mischief which Samson did by means of this animal to the 
 property of his enemies. He " went and caught three hun- 
 dred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to fail, and 
 put a firebrand in the midst, between two tails ; and when 
 he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the stand- 
 ing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both tte shocks, 
 
144 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 Chap. 16. 
 
 and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives." 
 On reading this curious statement, the infidel asks with an 
 air of triumph, How could Samson procure so many foxes 
 m so short a time 1 To this question it may be answered, 
 the concurring testimony of travellers clearly proves, that 
 the land of promise abounded with foxes. The same fact 
 is suggested by the prediction of David, that his enemies 
 .should become the prey of foxes ; and by the invitation of 
 Solomon already quoted from the Song. Some districts 
 and cities in that country, take their name from the fox ; a 
 sure proof of their numbers in those parts : " Thus, the 
 land of Shual, mentioned in the first book of Samuel, sig- 
 nifies the land of the fox ;" and Hazarshual, the name of a 
 city, belonging to the tribe of Judah, or Simeon, means the 
 fox's habitation. Besides, the term foxes, in the opinion 
 of Bochart, embraces the thoes, a species of wolf, which 
 very much resemble the fox, and are extremely numerous 
 in Judea, particularly about Cesarea. Bellonius asserts, 
 that they may be seen in troops of two or three hundred, 
 prowling about in quest of their prey ; and Morizon, who 
 travelled in Palestine, says, that foxes swarm in that coun- 
 try, and that very great numbers of them lurk in hedges 
 and in ruinous buildings. To find so many of these ani- 
 mals, therefore, could be no great difficulty io a person ac- 
 customed to the chase, as this renowned Israelite may be 
 reasonably supposed to have been. Nor is it said, that 
 Samson caught all these foxes in one, or even in two days ; 
 a whole week, or even a month, might be spent in the cap- 
 ture, for any thing that appears to the contrary. Add to 
 this, that,' although Samson himself m%ht be a most expert 
 hunter, we have no reason to think he caught all these ani- 
 mals alone. So eminent a personage as the chief magis- 
 trate of Israel might employ as many people as he pleased, 
 in accomplishing his purpose. When, for example, it is 
 said, that Solomon built the temple at Jerusalem, no man 
 supposes, that he executed the work with his own hands ; 
 he only caused the work to be done : and, in the same man- 
 ner, Samson may be said to do what he only commanded 
 to be done, or assisted in doing. Nor can it be reasonably 
 denied, that the God who made the world, and by his spe- 
 cial providence, watched over the prosperity of his ancient 
 people, and intended, at this time, to deliver them from 
 their enemies, could easily dispose matters, so as to facili- 
 tate or secure the capture of as many foxes, as the design 
 of Samson required. In this singular stratagem, he is 
 thought, by some writers, to have had two things in view ; 
 at once, to deliver his country from those noxious animals, 
 and to do the greatest possible mischief to his enemies. No 
 kind of animals could be more suited to his purpose, espe- 
 cially when coupled together in this manner ; for they run 
 long and swiftly, not in a direct line, but with many wind- 
 ings, so that, while they dragged in opposite directions, they 
 .spread the fire over all the fields of the Philistines with the 
 greater rapidity and success, and were at the same time 
 prevented from getting into the woods, or holes in the 
 rocks, where the firebrands had been extinguished, and 
 the stratagem rendered ineffectual. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. And he was sore athirst, and called on 
 the Lord, Thou hast given this great deliver- 
 ance into the hand of thy servant : and now 
 shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of 
 the uncircumcised ? 19. But God clave a hol- 
 low place that was in the jaw, and there came 
 water thereout ; and when he had drunk his 
 spirit came again, and he revived : wherefore 
 he called the name thereof Bn-hakkore, which 
 is in Lehi unto this day. 
 
 The impression ordinarily received from this passage 
 by the English reader, viz. that a fountain was opened in 
 the jaw-bone, the instrument of Samson's victory, is proba- 
 bly erroneous. From a preceding verse in this chapter it 
 appears that the Philistines had gone up, and pitched in 
 Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. But as it happens 
 Jjchi is the original word for jaw, or jaw-bone, and our 
 translators, following some of the ancient versions, have 
 confounded the name of the place with that of the object 
 from which it was derived. There is no good reason to 
 suppose that the hollow place was cloven in the jaw itself, 
 
 for what can be understood by God's cleaving a cavity 
 which was already in the bone 1 For if he clave a cavity 
 previously existing, would not the water naturally run 
 through it and empty itself upon the ground 1 But let the 
 word Lehi stand untranslated, and all is plain. ^ A certain 
 cavity in the earth, in the place called Lehi, ^^'^s miracu- 
 lously cloven and opened, and a refreshing fountain of wa- 
 ter gushed forth, which continued thenceforth to flow down 
 to the time when the history was written. This was call- 
 ed, in memory of the circumstance which gave rise to it, 
 " En-hakkore,"i. e. the well or fountain of him that cried. — B. 
 All that this passage affirms is, that in the place where 
 Samson then was, and which, from this transaction, he called 
 Lehi, or the Jaw-bone, there was a hollow place which God 
 clave, from whence a fountain flowed, which relieved 
 Samson when ready to perish, and which continued to 
 yield a considerable supply of water, at the time this sa- 
 cred book was written, and possibly may flow to this day. 
 Doubdan, in one single day, when he visited the countr}"- 
 about Jerusalem, met with two such places. On Easter 
 Monday, the first of April, 1652, he set out, he informs us, 
 with about twenty in company, to visit the neighbourhood of 
 Jerusalem. They went the same road the two disciples 
 are supposed to have taken, when our Lord joined them, 
 when he made their hearts burn within them. A convent 
 was afterward built in the place where our Lord is ima- 
 gined to have met them. Only some pieces of the walls of 
 freestone are now remaining, with some walls and half- 
 broken arches, and heaps of rubbish, together with a great 
 cistern full of water, derived partly from rain, and partly 
 from the springs in the mountain there, particularly from 
 a most beautiful and transparent fountain, a little above it, 
 which breaks out at the farther end of the grotto, naturally 
 hollowed out in the hard rock, and which is overhung 
 with small trees, where they made a considerable stop to 
 refresh themselves. The water of this spring running by 
 a channel into the cistern, and afterward turning a mill 
 which was just by the cistern, and belonged to the monas- 
 tery, and from thence flowed, as it still does, into the tor- 
 rent-bed of that valley, from whence David collected the 
 five smooth stones, of which one proved fatal to Goliath. 
 Here we see a hollow place, a grotto, in which the God 
 of nature had divided the rock for the passage of the water 
 of a beautiful spring. It was a grotto in Lehi, in which 
 God, on this occasion, made the water to gush out, and run 
 in a stream into the adjoining coimtry, where the exhaust- 
 ed warrior stood. — Burdjer. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 6. And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I 
 pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and 
 wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict 
 thee. 7. And Samson said unto her, If they 
 bind me with seven green withes that were 
 never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as 
 another man. 
 
 That is, any kind of pliant, tough wood, twisted in the 
 form of a cord or rope. Such are used in many countries^ 
 formed out of osiers, hazle, &c. In Ireland, very long and 
 strong ropes are made of the fibres of bog- wood, or th^ 
 larger roots o/ the fir, which is often dug up in the bogs or 
 mosses of that country. In some places, they take the skia 
 of the horse, cut it lengthwise from the hide, into thongs 
 about two inches broad ; and after having laid them in salt 
 for some time, take them out for use. This is frequently 
 done in the country parts of Ireland; and is chiefly use 
 for agricultural purposes, particularly for drawing th« 
 plough and the harrow, instead of iron chains. — Buhder. 
 
 Ver. 7. And Samson said unto her, If they bind 
 me with seven green withes that were never 
 dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another 
 man. j 
 
 People in England would be much surprised to see what 
 powerful ropes are made from the withes of shrubs or trees. 
 While they are in a green state, they are stronger than ^ 
 any other ropes that are made in the country. Wild ele- 
 phants, or bufl^aloes just caught, generally have their legs 
 bound with green withes. — Roberts. 
 
 alt 
 
 i 
 
 j 
 
 1 
 
Ghap. 19. 
 
 JUDGES, 
 
 145 
 
 Ver, 19, And she made him sleep upon her 
 knees. 
 
 It is very amusing to see a full-grown son, or a husband, 
 asleep on his mother's or wife's knees. The plan is as 
 follows: the female sits cross-legged on the carpet or mat, 
 and the man having laid himself down, puts his head in her 
 lap, and she gently taps, strokes, sings, and sooths him to 
 sleep. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. But the Philistines took him, and put 
 out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, 
 and bound him with fetters of brass ; and he 
 did grind in the prison-house. 
 
 With the Greeks and Asiatics, the way of putting out 
 the eyes, or blinding, was not by pulling or cutting out the 
 eyes, as sc^e have imagined ; but by drawing, or holding 
 a red-hot iron before them. This method is still in use in 
 Asia. According to Chardin, however, the pupils of the 
 eyes' were pierced and destroyed on such occasions. But 
 Thevenot says, that " the eyes in these barbarous acts are 
 taken out whole, with the point of a dagger, and carried to 
 the king in a basin." He adds, that, " as the king sends 
 whom he pleases to do that cruel oifice, some princes are 
 so butchered by unskilful hands, that it costs them their 
 lives." In Persia it is no unusual practice for the king to 
 punish a rebellious city or province by exacting so many 
 pounds of eyes ; and his executioners accordingly go and 
 scoop out from every one they meet, till they have the 
 weight required. — Burder. 
 
 The custom of daily grinding their corn for the family, 
 shows the propriety of the law : " No man shall take the 
 nether or the upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a 
 man's life to pledge ;" because if he take either the upper 
 or the nether millstone, he deprives him of his daily pro- 
 vision, which cannot be prepared without them, and, by 
 cc nsequence, exposes him and all his house to utter destruc- 
 tion. That complete and perpetual desolation which, by 
 the just allotment of heaven, is ere long to overtake the 
 mystical Babylon, is clearly signified by the same precept : 
 " The sound of the millstone shall be heard no more at all 
 in thee." The means of subsistence being entirely destroyed, 
 no human creature shall ever occupy the ruined habitations 
 more. In the book of Judges, the sacred historian alludes, 
 with characteristic accuracy, to several circumstances im- 
 plied in that custom, where he describes the fall of Abim- 
 elech. A woman of Thebez, driven to desperation by 
 his furious attack on the tower, started up from the mill 
 at which she Avas grinding, seized the upper millstone, 
 (nann'^s) and rushing to the top of the gate, cast it on his 
 head, and fractured his skull. This was the feat of a 
 woman, for the mill is worked only by females : it is not a 
 piece of a millstone, but the rider, the distinguishing name 
 of the upper millstone, which literally rides upon the other, 
 and is a piece or division of the mill : it was a stone of " two 
 feet broad," and therefore fully sufficient, when thrown 
 from such a height, to produce the effect mentioned in the 
 narrative. It displays also the vindictive contempt which 
 suggested the punishment of Samson, the captive ruler of 
 Israel. The Philistines, with barbarous contumely, com- 
 pelled him to perform the meanest service of a female slave ; 
 they sent him to grind in the prison, but not for himself 
 alone ; this, although extremely mortifying to the hero, had 
 been more tolerable ; they made him grinder for the prison, 
 1 while the vilest malefactor was permitted to look on and 
 join in the cruel mockery of his tormentors. Samson, the 
 ruler and avenger of Israel, labours, as Isaiah foretold the 
 virgin daughter of Babylon should labour : " Come down, 
 and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babvlon ; there 
 is no throne, (no seat for thee,) O daughter of the Chal- 
 deans . . . Take the millstones and grind meal," but not 
 with the wonted song : " Sit thou silent, and get thee into 
 darkness,"»there to conceal thy vexation and disgrace. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. And it came to pass, when their hearts 
 were merry, that they said, Call for Sanxson, 
 that he may make us sport. 
 
 I " By this time all the kaavy in that house was exhausted, 
 the drinkers therefore removed to another, and Staus, the 
 ' 19 
 
 prisoner, was told to follow ; his legs were then tied together, 
 and he was told to jump, while they laughed and shouted, 
 See, our meat is jumping. He asked if this was the place 
 where he was to die. No, his master replied ; but these 
 things were always done with foreign slaves. Having seen 
 him dance, they now ordered him to sing; he sung a 
 hymn; they bade him interpret it, and he said it was, in 
 praise of God. They then reviled his God ; their blasphe- 
 mies shocked him, and he admired in his heart the won- 
 derful indulgence and long-suffering of God towards them." 
 (Southdey's Brazil.) Don Gabriel de Cardenas gives an 
 account nearly similiar of the treatment of prisoners by the 
 Iroquois Indians. He describes the sufferings of ather 
 Bresano, a Spanish priest, who had the misfortune to be 
 captured by them. As soon as he arrived at the place of 
 assembly, they inflicted many wounds, and treated him in 
 the most cruel manner ; as soon as the warriors appeared, 
 he was commanded to sing like the other prisoners ; he was 
 also commanded to dance : in vain he excused himself on 
 the plea of inability. Forced into the middle of the circle 
 by these barbarians, he was by one ordered to sing, by 
 another to dance ; if he persisted in keeping silence, he 
 was cruelly beaten, and when he attempted to comply with 
 their requests, his treatment was nearly the same. For 
 upward of a month during their revels, he endured the 
 most exquisite sufferings, which were to have been termi- 
 nated by his being burnt to death, had not one of the chiefs 
 mitigated his s'^ntence, and delivered him to an old woman 
 in place of her grandson, who had been killed some yeais 
 before. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 27. Now the house was full of men and 
 women ; and all the lords of the Philistines 
 were there : and there were upon the roof about 
 three thousand men and women, that beheld 
 while Samson made sport. 
 
 The method of building in the East, may assist us in ac- 
 counting for the particular structure of the temple or house 
 of Dagon, and the great number of people that were buried 
 in its ruins, by pulling down the two principal pillars upon 
 which it rested. About three thousand persons crowded 
 the roof, to behold while the captive champion of Israel 
 made sport to his triumphant and unfeeling enemies. Sam- 
 son, therefore, must have been in a court or area beneath'; 
 and consequently, the temple will be of the same kmd with 
 the ancient reitevri, or sacred enclosures, which were only 
 surrounded, either in part or on all sides, with some plain 
 or cloistered buildings. Several palaces and dou-wanas, as 
 the halls of justice are called in these countries, are built 
 in this fashion, in whose courts, wrestlers exhibit for the 
 amusement of the people, on their public festivals and re- 
 joicings ; while the roofs of these cloisters are crowded 
 with spectators, that behold their feats of strength and 
 agility. When Dr. Shaw was at Algiers, he frequently 
 saw the inhabitants diverted in this manner, upon the root 
 of the dey's palace ; which, like many more of the same 
 quality and denomination, has an advanced cloister over 
 against the gate of the palace, made in the form of a large 
 pent-house, supported only by one or two contiguous pillars 
 in the front, or else in the centre. In such open structures 
 as these, the great officers of state distribute justice, and 
 transact the public affairs of their provinces. Here, like- 
 wise, they have their public entertainments, as the lords ol 
 the PhiHstines had in the temple of their god. Supposing, 
 therefore, that in the house of Dagon, was a cloistered 
 building of this kind, the pulling down of the front or centre 
 pillars which supported it, would alone be attended with 
 the catastrophe which happened to the Philistines. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ver. 8. And he arose early in the morning on the 
 fifth day to depart ; and the damsel's father said. 
 Comfort thy heart, I pray thee. And they 
 tarried until afternoon, and they did eat both ot 
 them. 
 
 "Until aflernoon." Hebrew, "till the day declined." 
 In this way also do the people of the East speak, when the 
 sun has passed the meridian; " I shall not go till the sur 
 
146 
 
 JUDGES. 
 
 Chap. 19. 
 
 decline ;" " I must not go till the declining time." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 27. And her lord rose up in the morning, 
 and opened the doors of the house, and went 
 out to go his way ; and, behold, the woman his 
 concubine was fallen down at the door of the 
 house, and her hands were upon the threshold. 
 28. And he said unto her. Up, and let us be 
 going: but none answered. Then the man 
 took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, 
 and gat him unto his place. 29. And when 
 he was come into his house, he took a knife, 
 and laid hold on his concubine, and divided 
 her, together w'vOd her bones, into twelve pieces, 
 and sent her into all the coasts of Israel. 30. And 
 it was so, that all that saw it said. There was 
 no such deed done nor seen, from the day that 
 the children of Israel came up out of the land 
 of Egypt unto this day : consider of it, take ad- 
 vice, and speak your minds. 
 
 The interpreters say little or nothing of the real views 
 of the Levite, in thus cutting to pieces the body of his con- 
 cubine, and sending a part to each tribe of Israel. They 
 only say that the Levite was induced to this seeming out- 
 rage, merely " to excite a general indignation against the 
 authors of so black a crime ; that he committed no sin in 
 thus maltreating a dead body, though it was his own con- 
 cubine's ; as being so far from having any intention to offer 
 it the least indignity, that he only considered the reparation 
 of the ignominy with which his concubine had been treated : 
 and that, after all, the success fully' justified his action and 
 conduct." It is certain that the Levite's motives were good 
 and regular: he intended to unite the whole nation in 
 vengeance of a crime in which it was interested, and which 
 covered it with infamy; but it was not, as some have 
 thought, the horror of the spectacle Which the Levite held 
 forth to the view of everybody, which produced this effect, 
 and constrained their minds; that is, it was not the sight of 
 these human limbs, thus cut and torn to pieces, which made 
 the Jews conspire, and obliged them to take a striking ven- 
 geance of so black a crime. 
 
 The bare relation of an outrage so enormous, was suffi- 
 cient to put the whole nation to the necessity of exacting 
 punishment for an infamy of this nature : natural equity 
 spoke for the Levite ; the most sacred rights were violated 
 to the utmost ; never was adultery more glaringly commit- 
 ted, or more insolently countenanced : it had involved a 
 whole tribe ; a general and universal punishment, therefore, 
 was indispensably necessary ; the text of scripture is ex- 
 press in a hundred places ; and the Israelites could not be 
 ignorant. But they might be checked by the extent of the 
 punishment ; by the great number, the credit, the forces and 
 powerof the offenders; by the natural commiseration which 
 is felt for those who are of the same blood ; in a word, by 
 an aversion to destroy a city, and to involve it utterly in the 
 vengeance due to it. To oblige the nation to hear none of 
 these reasons, the Levite sought and seized a method 
 which might bind it, and by no means allow it to avoid his 
 pursuits; which, in short, might put them to the indispen- 
 sable necessity of espousing his and his concubine's* inter- 
 ests, or to speak more properly, of taking up the cause of 
 both. The only part, then, which he had to take, was to 
 cut in pieces either the body of his wife, as he did, or else 
 that of an ox, or other like ani&al, which had been either 
 devoted, or offered in sacrifice, and to send a part of it to 
 each tribe. In consequence of this, every tribe entered into 
 a covenant and indissoluble engagement with them, to see 
 justice done him, for the injury he had received. This is 
 what the interpreters of scripture seem not to have known, 
 and which it is necessary to explain. The ancients had 
 several ways of uniting themselves together by the strictest 
 ties, and these ties lasted for as long as the parties had stipu- 
 lated. Among these, there were two principal ; both ad- 
 mirably well described in the sacred books. The first is 
 Jhat sacrifice of Abraham, the circumstances of which are 
 mentioned, Gen. xv. 9, &c. The second is as follows : — A 
 
 bullock was oflTered in sacrifice, or devoted: it was cut in 
 pieces and distributed; all who had apiece of this sacrificed 
 or devoted bullock, were from thenceforward connected, 
 and were to concur in the carrying on the afiair which had 
 given place to the sacrifice. But this sacrifice or devoting, 
 and this division, was variously practised, which also pro- 
 duced engagements somewhat different. If he who was at 
 the expense of the sacrifice or devoting, were a public per- 
 son, in a high office — a king, for instance, a prince, or judge 
 — that is to say, a chief magistrate, or had the principal 
 authority in a city, or state ; he sent, of his own accord, a 
 piece of the victim or animal devoted, to all who were sub- 
 ject to him ; and by this act they were obliged to enter intc 
 his views, to obey'him, and to execute his orders without 
 examination, or pretending difficulty or incapacity. If, on 
 the contrary, the sacrifice were offered by a private person, 
 those only who voluntarily took a piece of the sacrificed or 
 devoted portions, entered into a strict engagement^o espouse 
 the interest of him who sacrificed or devoted, and to em- 
 ploy therein their fortunes and their persons. Connexions 
 of this kind derived their force from the deities in honour 
 of whom the sacrifice was offered, or the devotion made : 
 from the true God, when the devotion was made by the 
 Jews ; from idols, when the sacrifice was offered by the 
 gentiles. The devotion was adopted by the Jews, and th'? 
 sacrifice by the pagans. This diflference betwixt them, pro- 
 duced a second : the Jews were content to invoke and take 
 to witness the Lord ; whereas the pagans never failed to 
 place in the midst of them, upon an altar of green turf, the 
 deities who presided over their covenant ; and these kind 
 of deities were called common, because in fact they were 
 the common deities of all who are thus united, and receiv- 
 ed in common the honours which they thought proper to 
 pay them. 
 
 These facts place the Levite's intents in their full light. 
 His cutting in pieces the body of his concubine, was an 
 anathema, a devoting which he made to the Lord ; and 
 his sending a part of the pieces to each tribe, clearly signi- 
 fied that he considered all the tribes as subject to the same 
 anathema. God authorized these kinds of consecrations. 
 The scripture is full of examples, which represent some- 
 times persons, sometimes whole nations, whon* he had him- 
 self smitten with a curse. He would have no sacrifices, 
 however, of human victims ; but he approved of devotions 
 to death : and yet, to consider both in certain points of view, 
 they amounted nearly to the same thing. Again, devotion 
 to death was a much stronger obligation than the promise 
 of a sacrifice. A sacrifice vowed might be dispensed with, 
 and redeemed ; whereas, so soon as the anathema was pro- 
 nounced, the party was for ever bound, and there was no 
 room for redemption. Lev. xxvii. 28, 29. It is certain that 
 the Levite had a right to devote his wife to death, while 
 she lived ; much more reasonably, then, might he devote 
 her body when dead. It is so much the more probable that 
 he really did so, as there was no other method of devotion 
 and anathema that could induce the whole nation to be 
 bound to declare itself in his favour. This anathema, as 
 has been already remarked, extended not only to the body 
 of his wife, but also to the twelve tribes, whom he involved 
 in it, in case they took not effectual means to avenge both 
 the indignity which the Benjamites of Gibeah would have 
 offered him, and the horrible outrages which they had 
 committed upon his concubine. What confirms this opin- 
 ion, is, that m fact the twelve tribes assembled subscribed 
 to this devotion. First, by taking up arms, as they did. 
 Secondly, by swearing before the ark, not to return to their 
 tents or "into their houses, till they had punished the offend- 
 ers. Judges XX. 8, 9. Thirdly, by putting to the sword all 
 that remained in the city of Gibeah, both man and beast, 
 and burning all the cities and iovpas of Benjamin, Judges 
 XX. 48. Fourthly, by swearing with an imprecation, not 
 to give their daughters in marriage to the children of Ben- 
 jamin, and by cursing him who should do so, ch. xxi. 1 — 18. 
 Fifthly, and lastly, by engaging themselves by a terrible 
 oath, to kill every Israelite who should not lake arms against 
 the Benjamites, ib. ver. 5. 
 
 These are all of them marks of anathema and devoting; 
 and it would be to shut one's eyes to the light, not to discern 
 in them the most express anathemas and devotions. Some,'^ 
 perhaps, will object, that a private individual, as was this 
 Levite, could not, of his own authority, subject to the anath- 
 ema his whole nation. It is true, this Levite could devote 
 
Chap. 1—2. 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 147 
 
 to death only his wives, his children, and his slaves, and 
 submit to the anathema only his fields, vineyards, houses, 
 household stuff, and, in short, his goods and what belonged 
 to him. His authority extended no further. Only a judge 
 of the Israelites, or their king, or perhaps the high-priest, 
 could do this. So that the Levite had no intention to devote 
 his whole nation, as he devoted the body of his concubine. 
 He included his authority within its natural bounds ; he 
 contented himself with declaring, by the sending the flesh 
 and limbs of his concubine, that the whole nation was sub- 
 ject to the anathema: this anathema was pronounced by 
 God himself, and clearly declared in the law ; if just meas- 
 ures were not taken to punish in a body the infamous 
 crimes of the Benjamites, these crimes no way yielded to 
 those of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, so sol- 
 emnly anathematized. A like fate, therefore, was to await 
 them. 
 
 God had expressly forbidden adultery, and had placed it 
 in the number of those crimes, of which the simple fact 
 rendered the offenders accursed. They were not only to 
 be put to death, (Lev. xx. 10 ; Deut. xxii. 22, &c.,) but also 
 to perish from among God's people, Lev. 19 ; that is, they 
 were to be cut off from the synagogue ; they could no longer 
 pretend to the promises of the covenant, or the prerogatives 
 of true and faithful Israelites ; in a word, they were to be 
 excommunicated and anathematized. The nation, there- 
 fore, could not leave unpunished the crimes of the inhabit- 
 ants of Gibeah, without charging themselves with the 
 crime, and whatever was attached to it. The Levite, bv 
 announcing the crime, by declaring the obligation which 
 there lay to punish, and by placing in full view the anathe- 
 ma which they incurred who should refuse to league, to 
 contribute to the effectual punishment, did nothing more 
 than he might do ; nothing inconsistent with his condition, 
 his rank, his quality, his dignity : he was even obliged to 
 do so by his function of Levite : he explained the text of 
 the law, 2 Esdras viii. 9. There was, properly speaking, 
 
 no other method than that which he took, to specify the 
 greatness of the crime of the inhabitants of Gibeah ; and 
 he confined himself to that. The whole nation mstantly 
 understood it as a universal anathema, without being in- 
 formed of the nature of the crime which had incurred it. 
 Thus, it is remarkable, that all the tribes expressly assem- 
 bled at Mizpeh, to know of the Levite what was the mat- 
 ter. He answered, " That the Benjamites of Gibeah had 
 threatened to kill him, unless he consented to their in- 
 famous passion ; that, moreover, they had injured his con- 
 cubine with so mad and incredible a brutality, that, in 
 short, she had died of it." Judg. xx. 3 — 5. tlpon this, 
 every one was convinced of the reality of the anathema, 
 and they not only all obliged themselves by oath not to re- 
 turn to their houses, without chastising the inhabitants of 
 Gibeah, in a manner suitable to the extent and blackness 
 of their crime, ver. 10 ; but also to treat, in like manner, 
 all those of the nation who should not march with the 
 army of- the Lord against the Benjamites of Gibeah, ch. 
 xxi. 5 ; which was, in fact, executed with regard to the 
 inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, who were all put to the sword, 
 without regard to sex or age, ver. 10. Thus is tlje anathe- 
 ma sufficiently made out. — Critica Biblica. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 Ver. 19. Then they said, Behold, there is a feast 
 of the Lord in Shiloh yearly, in a place which 
 is on the north side of Beth-el, on the east side 
 of the highway that goeth up from Beth-el to 
 Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah, 
 
 " On the east side." The Hebrew has, " towards the sun- 
 rising." Does a person ask the way to a place which lies 
 towards the east, he will be told to go to the rising place, 
 to the rising sky. If to the west, walk for the departed place, 
 the gone down place. -rRoBERTa, 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 Ver. 11. Are there any more sons in my womb? 
 
 , Sc said Naomi to the widows of her sons who were fol- 
 lowing her. When a mother has lost her son, should his 
 widow only come occasionally to see her, the mother will 
 be displeased, and affect^to be greatly surprised when she 
 does come. " Do I again see you !" " Is it possible !" " Are 
 there any more sons in my womb 1" But the mother-in-law 
 also uses this form of expression when she does not wish to 
 see the widow. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. Where thou diest, will I die, and there 
 will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, and 
 more also, if aught but death part thee and me. 
 
 Tbe dreadful practice of widows burning themselves on 
 the funeral pile with the dead bodies of their husbands, has 
 made the declaration of the text familiar to the native mind. 
 Hence a wife, when her husband is sick, should he be in 
 danger, will say, " Ah ! if he die, I also will die ; I will 
 go with him ; yes, my body, thou also shalt be a corpse." 
 A slave, also, to a good master, makes use of the same 
 language. Husbands sometimes boast of the affection of 
 their wives, and compare them to the eastern stork, which 
 if it lose its mate in the night is said immediately to shriek 
 and die. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 2. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, 
 Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of 
 corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. 
 And she said unto her, Go, my daughter. 
 
 The word glean comes from the French glaner, to gather 
 ears or grains of corn. This was formerly a general cus- 
 tom in England and Ireland : the poor went into the fields, 
 and collected the straggling ears of corn after the reapers; 
 and it was long supposed that this was their right, and that 
 the law recognised it : but although it has been an old 
 custom, it is now settled by a solemn judgment of the 
 Court of Common Pleas, that a right to glean in the har- 
 vest-field cannot be claimed by any person at common law. 
 Any person may permit or prevent it in his own grounds. 
 By certain acts of Henry VIII., gleaning and leasing are 
 so restricted, as to be, in fact, prohibited in that part of the 
 united kingdom. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 4. And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, 
 and said unto the reapers, The Lord be with 
 you. And they answered him, The Lord 
 bless thee. 
 
 He went into the field to see how his workmen per- 
 formed their service, and to encourage them by his 
 
w 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 presence. Though he was both rich and great, he did 
 not think it beneath him to go into his field, and personally 
 inspect his servants. Thus Homer represents a king 
 among his reapers, with his sceptre in his hand, and dis- 
 covering great cheerfulness on the occasion. 
 
 iaai\evs 6' sv rotcn viwTrr) 
 
 JlKrjTtTpov ex"^^ eS'TIKSi ct' oyfiov yv^ocrvvos Krjp. 
 
 Iliad, xviii. ver. 556, 557. 
 
 Amid them, staff in hand, the master stood 
 Enjoying mute the order of the field, 
 WhQe, shaded by an oak, apart, his train. 
 Prepared the banquet. ( Cowper.) — Burder. 
 
 The reapers go to the field very early in the morning, 
 and return home betimes in the afternoon. They carry 
 provisions along with them, and leathern bottles, or dried 
 bottle-gourds, filled with water. They are followed by 
 their own children, or by others, who glean with much 
 success; for a great quantity of corn is scattered in the 
 reaping, and in their manner of carrying it. The greater 
 part of these circumstances, are discernible in the manners 
 of the ancient Israelites. Ruth had not proposed to Naomi, 
 her mother-in-law, to go to the field, and glean after the 
 reapers ; nor had the servant of Boaz, to whom she applied 
 for leave, so readily granted her request, if gleaning had 
 not been a common practice in that country. When Boaz 
 inquired who she was, his overseer, after informing him, 
 observes, that she came out to the field in the morning ; 
 and that the reapers left the field early in the afternoon, as 
 Dr. Russel states, is evident from this circumstance, that 
 Ruth had time to beat out her gleanings before evening. 
 They carried water and provisions with them ; for Boaz 
 invited her to come and drink of the water which the 
 voung men had drawn ; and at meal-time, to eat of the 
 bread, and dip her morsel in the vinegar. And so great 
 was the simplicity of manners in that part of the world, 
 and in those times, that Boaz himself, although a prince of 
 high rank in Judah, sat down to dinner, in the field, with 
 his reapers, and helped Ruth with his own hand. Nor 
 ought we to pass over in silence, the mutual salutation of 
 Boaz and his reapers, when he came- to the field, as it 
 strongly marks the state of religious feeling in IsraeUat the 
 time, and furnishes another proof of the artless, the happy, 
 and unsuspecting simplicity, which characterized the man- 
 ners of that highly favoured people. " And, behold, Boaz 
 came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers. The Lord 
 be with you. And they answered him. The Lord bless 
 thee." Such a mode of salutation continued among that 
 people till the coming of Christ ; for the angel saluted 
 Mary in language of similar import: "Hail, highly fa- 
 voured, the Lord is with thee ; blessed art thou among 
 Avomgn." It appears from the beautiful story of Ruth, that 
 in Palestine, the women lent their assistance in cutting 
 down and gathering in the harvest ; for Boaz commands 
 her to keep fast by his maidens : — the women in Syria 
 shared also in the labours of the harvest; for Dr. Russel 
 informs us, they sang the Ziraleet, or song of thanks, when 
 the passing stranger accepted their present of a handful of 
 corn, and made a suitable return. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. And Boaz said unto her, At meal-time 
 come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip 
 thy morsel in the vinegar. 
 
 When Boaz is represented as having provided vinegar 
 for his reapers, into which they might dip their bread, and 
 kindly invited Ruth to share with them in the repast, we 
 are not to understand it of simple vinegar, but vinegar 
 mingled with a small portion of oil, if modern manage- 
 ments in the Levant be allowed to be the most natural 
 comment on those of antiquity. For even the Algerines 
 indulge their miserable captives with a small portion of oil 
 to the vinegar they allow them with their bread, according 
 to the account Pitt gives of the treatment he and his com- 
 panions received from them, of which he complains with 
 some asperity. What the quality of the bread was, that 
 the reapers of Boaz had, may be uncertain, but there is all 
 imaginable reason to suppose the vinegar into which they 
 dipped it, was made more grateful by the addition of oil. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 14. And she sat beside the reapers: and he 
 
 reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and 
 was sufficed, and left. 
 
 " To-day we crossed the valley of Elassar, and bathed in 
 the hot-baths of Solomon, situated on the southern side, 
 nearly at the bottom, near some corn-fields, where one of 
 our Arabs plucked some green ears of corn, parched them 
 for us, by putting them in the fire, and then, when roasted, 
 rubbed out the grain in his hands." (Macmichel.) " After 
 a ride of two hours from the valley of Zebulon," says 
 Korte, "we came to a place where the disciples of the 
 Lord are said to have plucked and eaten ears of corn on 
 the sabbath day. The wheat in this country is not difler- 
 ent from ours, only the grains are as hard as a stone from 
 the heat, and therefore not so good to eat as with us. But 
 in Egypt, in the Holy Land, and in all Syria, there grows 
 a kind of beans, or peas, which are superior to our peas ; 
 the stalk grows almost like the lentil: in the pod, which is 
 very thick, and mostly hangs in bunches, there is general- 
 ly only one grain. This kind is eaten green in the coun- 
 try, and also in the towns, whither they are brought in 
 bunches: when they are too old, they are roasted over 
 coals, and so eaten, when they taste better. This is doubt- 
 less the parched corn mentioned in the book of Ruth, and 
 several other places." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 They have other ways of preparing their corn for food, 
 besides making it into bread. Burgle is very commonly 
 used among the Christians of Aleppo ; which is wheat boil- 
 ed, then bruised in a mill so as to separate it from the 
 husk, after which it is dried, and laid up for use. The 
 drying of burgle, though mentioned by some writers as a 
 modern operation, seems to throw light on a remarkable 
 passage in the history of David ; the concealment of his two 
 spies in a well whose mouth was covered with corn. The 
 custom of exposing corn in this way, must have been very 
 common in Judea, else it had rather excited suspicion in 
 the minds of the pursuers, than diverted their attention from 
 the spot where the spies were concealed. That the well's 
 mouth was covered on that occasion with burgle or boiled 
 wheat, is exceedingly probable ; for Dr. Russel observes, 
 that in preparing it after it has been softened in warm wa- 
 ter, it is commonly laid out in the courtyard to dry. It 
 could not be flour or meal; for they grindit only in small 
 quantities, and as they want it, and never are known to ex- 
 pose it in this way. Bishop Patrick supposes it was corn 
 newly thrashed out, she pretended to dry; but if this was 
 practised at all, of which we have no evidence, it was by 
 no means common, and therefore calculated rather to be- 
 tray, than to conceal the spies. Besides, the same word is 
 used to signify corn beaten in a mortar with a pestle, not 
 on the barn-floor with a thrashing instrument;" now burgle 
 is actually pounded in this manner. It was therefore bur- 
 gle or boiled wheat, which D'Arvieux expressly says is 
 dried in the sun ; adding that they prepare a whole year's 
 provision of it at once. Wheat and barley were prepared 
 in the same way by the ancient Romans; which renders it 
 very probable that the custom was universal among the 
 civilized nations of antiquity. -This is the reason that nei- 
 ther the exposure of the corn, nor the large quantity, pro- 
 duced the least suspicion; every circumstance accorded 
 with the public usage of the country, and by consequence, 
 the preparation of this species of food is as ancient as the 
 days of David. Sawick is a different preparation, and 
 consists of corn parched in the ear ; it is made, as well of 
 barley and rice, as of wheat. It is never called, in the in- 
 spired volume, parched flour or meal, but always parched 
 corn ; and consequently, seems to remain after the roasting, 
 and to be eaten in the state of corn. In confirmation of this 
 idea, we may quote a fact stated by Hasselquist, that in 
 journeying from Acre to Sidon, he saw a shepherd eating 
 his dinner, consisting of half-ripe ears of wheat roasted, 
 which he ate, says the traveller, with as good an appetite 
 as a Turk does his pillaw. The same kind of food, ho 
 says, is much used in Egypt by the poor ; they roast the 
 ears of Turkish wheat or millet ; but it is in his account 
 far inferior to bread. Dr. Shaw is of a diflferent opinion ; 
 he supposes the kali, or parched corn of the scriptures,' 
 which he translates parched pulse, means parched cicers. 
 But we frequently read in scripture of dried or parched; 
 corn ; and the word used in those passages is most natural- 
 ly to be understood of corn, and not of pulse. Besides, 
 Rauwolf asserts that cicers are used in the East only as a 
 
Chap. 3, 4. 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 i^ 
 
 part of the dessert after their meals. But it cannot be rea- 
 sonably supposed, that Boaz would entertain his reapers 
 with things of this kind; or that those fruits which in mod- 
 ern times are used only in desserts, formed the principal 
 part of a reaper's meal, in the field of so wealthy a propri- 
 etor. This, however, the opinion of Dr. Shaw requires to 
 be supposed ; for it is said in the inspired record, " He 
 reached Ruth parched corn, and she did eat, and was suf- 
 ficed, and left.'^ — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 2. And now is not Boaz of our kindred, 
 with whose maidens thou wast ? Behold, he 
 winnoweth barley to-night in the thrashing- 
 floor. 
 
 In these regions much of the agricultural labour is per- 
 formed in the night. The sun is so hot, and so pernicious, 
 that the farmers endeavour, as much as possible, to avoid 
 its power. Hence numbers plough and irrigate their fields 
 and gardens long after the sun has gone down, or be- 
 fore it rises in the morning. The wind is also generally 
 stronger in the night, which might induce Boaz to prefer 
 that season. From the next two verses we learn that he 
 took his supper there, and slept among the barley. Corn 
 in the East is not kept in stacks, but after being reaped, is, 
 in a few days, thrashed on the spot. The thrashing-floor 
 is a circle of about forty feet in diameter, and consists 
 generally of clay, and cowdung, without wall or fence. 
 Under these circumstances, it is necessary for some of the 
 people to sleep near the corn, till all shall have been 
 thrashed and taken home. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, 
 and' his heart was merry, he went to lie down 
 at the end of a heap of corn : and she came 
 softly, and uncovered his feet, and laid her down. 
 
 Margin to the fourth verse, " lift up the clothes that are 
 on his feet." All inferiors, all servants, sleep at the feet of 
 their master. It is no uncommon thing for those who have 
 a great favour to procure, to go to the house of the rich, 
 and sleep with the head at his door, or in the verandah. 
 Thus, when he arises in the morning, he finds the suppliant 
 at his door. Should a master wish to dismiss his servants, 
 they often say, " My lord, turn us not away ; how many 
 years have we slept at your feetT' — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 9. And he said, Who art thou? And she 
 answered, I am Ruth thy handmaid: spread 
 therefore thy skirt over thy handmaid ; for thou 
 art a near kinsman. 
 
 The prophet Ezekiel, in describing the Jewish church 
 as an exposed infant, mentions the care of God in bringing 
 her up with great tenderness, and then, at the proper time, 
 marrying her; which is expressed in the same way as the 
 
 request of Ruth : " I spread my skirt over thee" " and 
 
 thou becamest mine." Dr. A. Clarke says, "Even to the 
 present day, when a Jew marries a woman, he throws the 
 skirt or end of his talith over her, to signify that he has 
 taken her under his protection." I have been delighted, at 
 the marriage ceremonies of the Hindoos, to see among 
 them the same interesting custom. The bride is seated on 
 a throne, surrounded by matrons, having on her veil, her 
 gayest robes, and most valuable jewels. After the thali 
 has been tied round her neck, the bridegroom approaches 
 her with a silken skirt, (purchased by himself,) and folds it 
 round her several times over the rest of her clothes. A 
 common way of saying he has married her, is, " he has 
 given her the koori," has spread the skirt over her. There 
 are, however, those who throw a long robe over the shoul- 
 ders of the bride, instead of putting on the skirt. An angry 
 husband sometimes says to his wife, " Give me back my 
 skirt," meaning, he wishes to have the marriage compact 
 dissolved. So the mother-in-laAV, should the daughter not 
 treat her respectfully, says, " My son gave this woman the 
 koori, skirt, and has made her respectable, but she neglects 
 me." The request of Ruth, therefore, amounted to nothing 
 'n^ore than that Boaz should marry her. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 1. Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat 
 him down there : and, behold, the kinsman of 
 whom Boaz spake came by ; unto whom he 
 said. Ho, such a one ! turn aside, sit down here. 
 And he turned aside, and sat down. 
 
 The word gate is often used in 'scripture, to denote the 
 place of public assemblies where justice is administered. — 
 This definition of the word gate, in its first sense, agrees 
 exactly with the usages of the Hindoos. People, therefore, 
 who understand it literally, as meaning always a gate fixed 
 in the walls of the city, do not comprehend its meaning. 
 At the entrance of every town or village, there is a public 
 building, called a rest-house, where travellers remain, and 
 where people assemble to hear the news, or talk over the 
 affairs of the place. There mav be seen many a Boaz 
 asking for the advice of his relations and friends, and 
 many an Abraham as he sat " at the gate of his city," bar- 
 gaining " for the field," and " the cave of Machpelah," in 
 which to bury his beloved Sarah.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he took ten men of the elders of the 
 city, and said. Sit ye down here. And they sat 
 down. 
 
 Among the Hebrews, and, before them, among the Ca- 
 naanites, the purchase of any thing of consequence was 
 concluded, and the price paia, publicly, at the gate of the 
 city, as the place of judgment, before all that went out and 
 in. Gen. xxiii. Ruth iv. — As those who wanted amuse- 
 ment, and to pass away the time, were wont to sit in the 
 gates, purchases there made could always be testified by 
 numerous witnesses. Their care to have them so attested, 
 might, perhaps, be a relic of the custom of the times pre- 
 ceding the invention of the art of writing; (which, by the 
 way, took place probably not very long before the days of 
 Abraham ;) and it did not even after that period cease to be 
 useful, because among the Hebrews writing not being very 
 common, the memory of witnesses had often to supply the 
 place of a document of purchase. At the same time, it 
 would seem that such documents were not altogether unu- 
 sual. For the xxiii. chapter of Genesis is in its style 'so 
 different from that of Moses on other occasions, and has so 
 much of the appearance of the record of a solemn jurid- 
 ical procedure, that it almost seems to be a deed of pur- 
 chase. From Ruth iv. 7, we learn another singular usage 
 on occasions of purchase, cession, and exchange, viz. that 
 the transference of alienable property had, in earlier times, 
 been confirmed by the proprietor plucking off his shoe, and 
 handing it over to the new owner. We see at the same 
 time, that in the age of David this usage had become anti- 
 quated; for the writer introduces it as an unknown custom 
 of former times, in the days of David's great-grandfather. 
 I have not been able to find any further trace of it in the 
 East; nor yet has the Danish travelling mission to Arabia, 
 as Captain Niebuhr himself informs me. Bynseus, in his 
 book, De Calceis Hebrceornm^ treats of it at great length; 
 but, excepting the mere conjectures of modern literati, he 
 gives no account of the origin of this strange symbol of the 
 transfer of property. In the time of Moses it was so famil- 
 iar, that barefooted was a term of reproach, and probably 
 signified a man that had sold every thing, a spendthrift, 
 and a bankrupt ; and we see from Deut. xxv. 9, 10, that 
 Moses allowed it to be applied to the person who would not 
 marry his brother's widow. Could it have been an Egyptian 
 custom, as we do not find it again in the East 1 The Egyp- 
 tians, when they adored the Deity, had no shoes on ; and 
 of this the Pythagoreans gave the following explanation : 
 " The philosopher, who came naked from his mother's 
 womb, should appear naked before his Creator ; for God 
 hears those alone who are not burdened with any thing 
 extrinsic. " — Among the Egyptians too, barefooted was 
 equivalent to naked, and naked synonymous with having no 
 property, but one's self. This same custom of pulling off 
 the shoe, and that at the gate before all who went out and 
 in, was also usual in important cases of the exchange or 
 resignation of propertv; as for instance, (to take the exam- 
 ple just quoted from Ruth iv. 7, 9,) when the nearest kins- 
 man abandoned his right of redemption to a distant rela- 
 tion ; and we may, perhaps, thence conclude, that a simi- 
 
150 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 lar form took place in cases of great donations, when not 
 made on a sick-bed, but by persons in health. — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 7. Now this was the manntr in former time 
 in Israel, concerning redeeming, and concern- 
 ing changing, for to confirm all things ; a man 
 plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neigh- 
 bour; and ih\s* was a testimony in Israel. 
 8. Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy 
 it for thee. So he drew off his shoe. 
 
 See on Matt. 22. 24. 
 
 The simple object, therefore, in taking off the shoe, was 
 to confirm the bargain: it was the testimony or memorial 
 of the compact. In Deuteronomy it is mentioned that the 
 brother of a deceased husband shall marry the widow, but 
 should he refuse, then the widow is to " go up to the gate 
 unto the elderfj and say, My husband's brother refuseth to 
 raise up unto his brother a name in Israel ; he will not 
 perform the duty of my husband's brother." Then the 
 elders were to call the man, and if he persisted in his re- 
 fusal, the woman was to come forward " and loose his shoe 
 from off his foot, and spit in his face ; was to answer and 
 say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build 
 up his brother's house. " From that time the man was dis- 
 graced, and whenever his person or establishment was 
 .spoken of, it was contemptuously called " the house of him 
 that hath his shoe loosed. " To be spit at in the face is 
 the most degrading ceremony a man can submit to. This 
 was done by the widow to her husband's brother, and she 
 CONFIRMED his iguomiuy by taking off his shoe. But this 
 taking off the shoe (as we shall hereafter see) may also 
 allude to the death of her husband, whose shoes were taken 
 off and of no further use to him. And as she said, when 
 she had taken off the shoe from her husband's brother's 
 foot "thus shall it be done unto that man that will not 
 build up his brother's house," may mean, he also shall 
 soon follow his brother, and have his shoes taken off his 
 Icei '1 death. When Ramar had to go to reside in the 
 desefu for fourteen years, his brother Parathan was very 
 unwilling for him to go; and tried, in every possible way, 
 to dissuade him from his purpose. But Ramar persisted in 
 his resolution, having fuUy made up his mind to take his 
 departure. When the brother, seeing that his entreaties 
 were in vain, said, " Since you are determined to go, promise 
 me iaithfully to return." Then Ramar, having made the 
 
 {)romise, gave his shoes to Parathan as a confirmation of 
 lis vow. Does a priest, a father, or a respectable friend, 
 resolve to go on a pilgrimage to some distant country ; 
 some one will perhaps say, "Ah ! he will never return, he 
 intends to remain in those holy places. " Should he deny 
 it, then they say, " Give us your shoes as a witness of your 
 promise," and having done so, never will he break it. An 
 affectionate widow never parts with her late husband's 
 shoes: they are placed near her when she sleeps, she 
 kisses and puts her head upon them, and nearly every time 
 after bathing, she goes to took at them. These, therefore, 
 are the " testimony," the melancholy confirmation of her 
 husband's death. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10 Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the wife 
 of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to 
 raise up the name of the dead upon his in- 
 heritance, that the name of the dead be not cut 
 off from among his brethren, and from the gate 
 of his place : ye are witnesses this day. 
 
 I now proceed to the explanation of a singular law, 
 which I must however preface, with entreating, in behalf of 
 the lawgiver, that it may not be considered as an inven- 
 tion of his own; as it was in fact several centuries older 
 than his laws, and as he very much limited and mitigated 
 its operation. The law I mean, is what has been termed 
 the Levirate law : in obedience to which, when a man died 
 without issue, his brother was obliged to marry the widow 
 he left, and that with this express view, that the first son 
 produced from the marriage should be ascribed, not to the 
 natu al father, but to his deceased brother, and become his 
 heir. This has been denominated Levi rate-marriage, from 
 
 the word Ijevir, which though it appears not in the ancient 
 classic authors, but only in the Vulgate and the Pandects, 
 is nevertheless really an old Latin word, and is explained 
 by Festus to signify a husband's brother. The Hebrews 
 had in like manner an ancient law term, which we meet 
 not with elsewhere, {py^ Jaba/ii,) of the very same import ; 
 Avhence come nn2-> {Jebemet,) a brother's u-ife, and nni {Jeb- 
 bem,) to marry such a person. The ChalJlee, Syriac, and 
 Samaritan versions of the Bible do indeed retain this word, 
 but it is not otherwise at all current in these languages, 
 nor can we find in them the least trace of an etymology for 
 it, and in the Arabic tongue it is altogether unknown. 
 This is often the case with respect to the Hebrew law 
 terms. The Hebrew language alone has them, and with- 
 out all etj-mology, while in the kindred languages, they are 
 ei.her not to be found at all, or m quite a diflerent sense. 
 How that happens I am ignorant, with this exception, that 
 I frequently remark, in like manner, among ourselves, an- 
 cient law terms, whose etymology is obscure, because old 
 words have been retained in law, while the language has 
 in other respects undergone alterations. The law which 
 obliged a man to marry the widow of his childless brother, 
 was much more ancient than the time of Moses ; having 
 been in use in Palestine among the Canaanites, and the 
 ancestors of the Israelites, at least more than 250 years 
 previous to the date of his law, and indeed with such rig- 
 our, as left a person no possible means of evading it, how- 
 ever irksome and odious compliance with it might appear 
 to him. The law, however, was unquestionably attended 
 with great inconveniences : for a man cannot but think it 
 the most unpleasant of all necessities, if he must marry a 
 woman whom he has not chosen himself Must, in mat- 
 ters of love and marriage, is a fearful word, and almost 
 quite enough to put love to flight, even where beauty ex- 
 cites it. We see, likewise, that the brother, in some in- 
 stances, had no inclination for any such marriage, (Gen. 
 xxxviii. Ruth iv.) and stumbled at this, that the first son 
 produced from it could not belong to him. Whether a 
 second son might follow, and continue in life, was very 
 uncertain ; and among a people who so highly prized gene- 
 alogical immortality of name, it was a great hardship for a 
 man to be obliged to procure it for a person already dead, 
 and to run the risk, meanwhile, of losing it himself. Nor 
 was this law very much in favour of the morals of the other 
 sex ; for not to speak of Tamar, who, in reference to it, 
 conceived herself justified in having recourse to a most 
 infamous action, I will here only observe, that what Ruth 
 did, (chap. iii. 6—9,) in order to obtain, for a husband, the 
 person whom she accounted as the nearest kinsman of her 
 deceased husband, is, to say the least, by no means conform- 
 able to that modesty and delicacy which we look for in the 
 other sex. A wise and good legislator could scarcely have 
 been inclined to patronise any such law. But then it is not 
 advisable directly to attack an inveterate point of honour ; 
 because in such a case, for the most part, noihing is gain- 
 ed ; and in the present instance, as the point of honour 
 placed immortality of name entirely in a man's leaving de- 
 scendants behind him, it was so favourable to the increase 
 of population, that it merited some degree of forbearance 
 and tenderness. Moses, therefore, left the Israelites still 
 in possession of their established right, but at the same time 
 he studied as much as possible to guard against its rigour 
 and evil effects, by limiting and moderating its operation 
 in various respects. 
 
 In the y?r5< place, he expressly prohibited the marriage of 
 a brother's widow, if there were children of his own alive. 
 Before this time, brothers were probably in the practice of 
 considering a brother's widow as. part of the inheritance, 
 and of appropriating her to themselves, if unable to buy a 
 wife, as the Mongols do; so that this was a very necessary 
 prohibition. For a successor precsumptivus in thoro, whom 
 a wife can regard as her future husband, is rather a dan- 
 gerous neighbour for her present one's honour; and if she 
 happen to conceive any predilection for the younger bro- 
 ther, her husband, particularly in a southern climate, will 
 hardly be secure from the risk of poison. 
 
 In the second place, he allowed, and indeed enjoined, 
 the brother to marry the widow of his childless brother 
 but if he was not disposed to do so, he did not absolutely 
 compel him, but left him an easy means of riddance ; for 
 he had only to declare in court, that he had no inclination 
 to marry her, and then he was at liberty. This, it is true, 
 
Chap. 4. 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 151 
 
 jjubjected hnn to a punishment which at first appears suf- 
 ftcienily severe: Uie flighted widow had a right to revile* 
 him in courc as much as she pleased ; and from his pulling 
 off his shoe, and delivering it to the widow, he received the 
 appellation of Ba-esok, which any body might apply to 
 himwii-hout beiUj^ Jiaole to a prosecution. A little consid- 
 eration, however, will show that this punishment was not 
 so severe in reality as in appearance. For if Baresole is 
 once undersiood, accbrding to the usage of the language, 
 to mean nothing more than a man who has given a woTimn 
 Ike rejusal, it is no longer fell as a term of great reproach, 
 and any one will rather endure it, than have his own re- 
 fusal talked of To be once in his lifetime solemnly abused 
 in a public court by a woman, is at any rate much easier 
 to be borne, than the same treatment from a man, or extra- 
 judicially ; and if, besides, the cause is known, and that the 
 court allows her this liberty, in order to give free vent to 
 her passion, because the man will not marry her according 
 10 her wish; the more violent the emotions of her rage are, 
 the more flattering to him must they prove ; and he will 
 go out of court with more pride than if she had excused 
 him from marrying her, with much coolness, or without 
 any emotion at all. — I have often heard vain fops mention 
 in company, how many women in o^Aer places would glad- 
 ly have married them, and were greatly enraged that thev 
 would not take them. On persons of this description, such 
 a judicial punishment would indeed have been very justly 
 bestowed. But it is at worst more flattering than even the 
 very politest language with which a lady begs leave to de- 
 cline an offer of marriage, or but distantly yields to it. A 
 legislator, in ordaining a punishment of this nature, could 
 hardly have had it in view to insist very particularly on 
 the observance of a statute, that but ratified an old custom 
 by way of a compliment. If it had been a point in which 
 he was interestei, he would have ordained a very different 
 punishment. 
 
 3. The person whose duty it was to marry a childless 
 widow, was the brother of her deceased husband, in the 
 strict sense of the word, as the story in Gen. xxxviii. clear- 
 ly shows. I would not have thought it necessary to make 
 'his remark, had not the contrary opinion been maintained 
 m a Dissertation delivered here at Gottingen, in which it 
 is asserted, that the word brother^ in Deut. xxv. 5 — 10, is to 
 be taken in a general sense, and means a relation^ exclu- 
 ding the real brother. The law, however, only extended to 
 a brother living in the same city or country, not to one re- 
 siding at a greater distance. Nor did it affect a brother 
 having already a wife of his own. At least, if it had its 
 origin in this, that by reason of the dearness of young wo- 
 
 • The Hebrew expression in Deut. xxv. 9, >>3B3 npT>i has been by 
 some so understood, as if the widow had a right to spit in his face. And 
 no doubt it may signify as much ; but then that act in a pubhc court is 
 so indecent, that if any other interpretation is admissible, this one ouglit 
 not to be adopted. Now there are two others : 1. She shall spit before 
 his face. The Arabs, at this day, when they wish to affront any one, 
 spit, and cry J^' ; even people of rank do so, just as the common peo- 
 
 Sle do with us. This account we find even in lexicons ; but I know it 
 esides, from the information furnished both by Solomon Negri, a na- 
 tive Arab, and by travellers. 2. p-\> may also mean to revile ; proper- 
 ly Bilem evomere, which signification is famihar in Arabia ; only that, 
 according to the usual rule, the Hebrew Jod must be changed into Van, 
 and the word written Varak. 
 
 men, often only one brother could marry, and the others 
 also wished to do the same, it could only affect such as 
 were unmarried ; and in the two instances that occur in 
 Gen. xxxviii. and Ruth iv. we find the brother-in-law, 
 whose duty it was to marry, apprehensive of its proving 
 hurtful to himself and his inheritance, which could hardly 
 have been the case, if he had previously had another wife, 
 or (but that was at least expensive) could have taken one 
 of his own choice. When there was no brother alive, or 
 when he declined the duty, the Levirate-Jaw, as we see 
 from the book of Ruth, extended to the next nearest rela- 
 tion of the deceased husband, as for instance, to his pater- 
 nal uncle, or nephew ; so that at last, even pretty remote 
 kinsmen, in default of nearer ones, might be obliged to un- 
 dertake it. Boaz does not appear to have been very nearly 
 related to Ruth, as he did not so much as know who site 
 was, when he fell in love with her, while she gleaned in 
 his fields. Nor did she know that he was any relation to 
 her, until apprized of it by her mother-in-law. Among the 
 Jews of these days, Levirate-marriages have entirely ceased ; 
 so much so, that in the marriage contracts of the very 
 poorest people among them, it is generally stipulated, that 
 the bridegroom's brothers abandon all those rights to the 
 bride, to which they could lay claim by Deut, xxv, — Mi- 
 ch aelis, 
 
 Ver. 11. And all the people ihsit were in the gate, 
 and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The 
 Lord make the woman that is come into thy 
 house like Rachel and like Leah, which two 
 did build the house of Israel; and do thou 
 worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Beth- 
 lehem. 
 
 The marriage ceremony was commonly performed in a 
 garden, or in the open air ; the bride was placed under a 
 canopy, supported by four youths, and adorned with jewels 
 according to the rank of the married persons ; all the com- 
 pany crying out with joyful acclamations, Blessed be he 
 that Cometh. It was anciently the custom, at the conclu- 
 sion of the ceremony, for the father and mother, and kin- 
 dred of the woman, to pray for a blessing upon the parties. 
 Bethuel and Laban, and the other members of their family, 
 pronounced a solemn benediction upon Rebecca before her 
 departure : " And they blessed Rebecca, and said unto her, 
 thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of mil- 
 lions ; and let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate 
 them." And in times long posterior to the age of Isaac, 
 when Ruth the Moabitess was espoused to Boaz, " All the 
 people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, we are 
 witnesses. The Lord make the woman that is come into 
 thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did 
 build the house of Israel ; and do thou worthily in Ephratah, 
 and be famous in Bethlehem." After the benedictions, the 
 bride is conducted, with great pomp, to the house of her 
 husband ; this is usually done in the evening ; and as the 
 procession moved along, money, sweetmeats, flowers, and 
 other articles, were thrown among the populace, which 
 they caught in cloths made for such occasions, stretched in 
 a particular manner upon frames. — Paxton. 
 
THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 1. Now there was a certain man of Rama- 
 thaim-zophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name 
 was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of 
 Elihu, the son of Tohn, the son of Zuph, an 
 Ephrathite: 2. And he had two wives; the 
 name of the one was Hannah, and the name of 
 the other Peninnah. 
 
 How much soever some may have denied it, nothing 
 is more certain, than that by the civil laws of Moses 
 a man was allowed to have more wives than one. No 
 doubt, all the proofs of this fact, which it is usual to adduce, 
 are not valid ; and to the maintainers of the opposite opin- 
 ion, it may be an easy matter to controvert such as are 
 weak or inaccurate ; but the following arguments appear 
 to me to place the matter beyond all doubt. 
 
 1. It is certain that before the time of Moses, polygamy 
 was in use among the ancestors of the Israelites, and that 
 even Abraham and Jacob lived in it. It is also certain, 
 that it continued in use after the time of Moses. I will not 
 interrupt the text with a multitude of examples ; but there 
 are two of such weight as to merit particular notice. — One 
 of them we find in 1 Chron. vii. 4, where not only the five 
 fathers, named in the preceding verse, but also their de- 
 scendants, forming a tribe of 36,000 men, had lived in polyg- 
 amy, which also shows, by the way, that it must have been 
 more common in some families than in others. — The other 
 occurs in 2 Chron. xxv. 3, where we see the high-priest 
 himself, who was of course the authentic expounder of the 
 Mosaic statutes, taking for Joash, who clave to him as a 
 son, two wives, which shows that he had not at any rate 
 looked upon bigamy as prohibited by the law of Deut. xvii. 
 17. As then, Moses, adhering to established, usage, no- 
 where prohibited a man's taking a second or a third wife, 
 along with the first, it is clear that, as a civil right, it con- 
 tinued allowable ; for what has hitherto been customary, 
 and permitted, remains so, in a civil sense, as long as no 
 
 Eositive law is enacted against it. Therefore, the objection 
 ere made, that Moses nowhere authorizes polygamy, by an 
 express statute, amounts to nothing ; more especially when 
 it is considered, that, as we shall immediately see under 
 Nos. 2, 3, 4, it is implied in three several texts, that he ac- 
 tually did authorize it. But although he had not done so, 
 his silent acquiescence in, and non-prohibition of, the prac- 
 tice previously held lawful, is quite enough to sanction our 
 opinion of his having left it still allowable as a civil right. 
 And, 
 
 2. This proof becomes still stronger, when we remark 
 how very common polygamy must have been at the very 
 time when Moses lived and gave his laws. For, when 
 Moses caused the Israelites to be numbered, he found 
 603,550 males above 20 years of age. Now, according to 
 political calculations, the proportion of those under 20, to 
 those above it, is in general reckoned as 12 to 20, or, at any 
 rate, as 12 to 15 ; but admitting, in the present case, that 
 it was but as 10 to 20, to the above number of adult males, 
 we should thus have still to add a half more, or 301,775, 
 for those under 20, besides 22,000 Levites that were reck- 
 oned separately ; so that the whole number of males must 
 have amounted to at least 927,325. Now among all this 
 people, we find from Numb. iii. 43, that there were no more 
 than 22,273 first-born males, of a month old and upward ; 
 that is, only one first-born among 42 : so that, had the Is- 
 raelites lived in monogamy, it would follow that every 
 marriage had on an average given birth to 42 children, 
 which, however, is hardly possible to be conceived ; whereas 
 if every Israelite had four or more wives, it was very pos- 
 sible that of every father on an average that number might 
 
 have sprung, and, of course, of 42 Israelites, there would 
 be but one first-born. At the same time, this being the case, 
 polygamy must certainly have gone great lengths, and been 
 very universally practised among them ; and if it was so, 
 and Moses forbade it by no law, it is obvious that it con- 
 tinued allowable as a civil right. If in this deduction there 
 appear any thing dubious or obscure, I must refer the reader 
 to my Dissertation, De Censibus HebrcBorum, in paragraphs 
 4, 5, and 6 of which, I have considered this argument at 
 greater length. 
 
 3. The law of Deut. xxi. 15 — 17, already explained, 
 presupposes the case of a man having two wives, one of 
 whom he peculiarly loves, while the other, whom he hates, 
 is the mother of his first-born. Now this is the very case 
 which occurs in Genesis, in the history of Jacob, and his 
 wives Leah and Rachel ; and this law ordains, that in such 
 a case the husband was not to bestow the right of primo- 
 geniture upon the son of the favourite wife, but to acknow- 
 ledge as his first-born the son that actually was so. 
 
 4. The law of Exod. xxi. 9, 10, in like manner already 
 explained, expressly permits the father, who had given his 
 son a slave for a wife, to give him, some years after, a 
 second wife, of freer birth ; and prescribes how the first 
 was then to be treated. The son was bound to pay her 
 matrimonial duty as often as she could have claimed it 
 before his second marriage ; and, therefore, if he did so, 
 the marriage still subsisted. If he refused, the marriage 
 immediately ceased, and the woman received her liberty. 
 When Moses, in Lev. xviii. 18, prohibits a man from mar- 
 rying the sister of his wife, to vex her while she lives, it 
 manifestly supposes the liberty of taking another wife 
 besides the first, and during her lifetime, provided only it 
 was not her sister. But because the sense of this passage 
 has been much disputed, and others, in opposition to the 
 plain words of Moses, consider it as a general prohibition 
 of polygamy ; as I cannot with propriety expatiate fully on 
 their explanation here, I must refer the reader to my Dis- 
 sertation already quoted. On the Mosaic Statutes prohibitory 
 of Marriages betwixt Near Relations. 
 
 It does not appear, however, that Moses permitted po- 
 lygamy willingly, or as a matter of indifference in either a 
 moral or a political view, but, as Christ expresses it, merely 
 on account of the hardness of the people's hearts. In other 
 words, he did not approve it, but found it advisable to toler- 
 ate it, as a point of civil expediency. His first book, which 
 is entirely historical, includes many particulars that are by 
 no means calculated to recommend polygamy. According 
 to him, God, even at the very time when the rapid popula- 
 tion of the earth was his great object, gave to the first man 
 but one wife, although it is evident that with /oiir wives, he 
 could have procreated more children than with one ; and 
 when, in consequence of the flood, the earth was to be re- 
 duced anew to its original state in this respect, and God 
 resolved to preserve alive only Noah and his three sons, 
 we still find that each of them had but one wife with him. 
 Now had God approved of polygamy, he would have com- 
 manded each of JVoah's sons to marry as many wives as 
 possible, and take them with him into the ark. From these 
 two historical facts, the natural proportion between the sexes, 
 which, where population is numerous, cannot be discovered 
 without much trouble, becomes at once obvious ; and this 
 very proportion, considering that we actually find much 
 about the same number of men as of women fit for the mar- 
 ried state, is the strongest possible argument against polyg- 
 amy ; the lawfulness or unlawfulness of which, as Mon- 
 tesquieu very justly observes, resolves itself, properly 
 speaking, into a question of arithmetic. Moses did not 
 permit eunuchs to be made among the Israelites. Indeed he 
 went so far as to prohibit even the castration of cattle, Lev. 
 xxii. 24; and besides this, a eunuch that came from another 
 country to reside among the Israelites, was by a special 
 
Chap 1. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 153 
 
 statute excluded from ever .becoming one of the people of 
 God, that is, was incapable of enjoying the privileges and 
 rights of an Israelite, both sacred and civil, Deut. xxiii, 2. 
 This was an ordinance highly unfavourable to polygamy. 
 We commonly find polygamy and eunuchism going to- 
 gether; and in those countries in which the former pre-- 
 vails, such as Turkey, Persia, and China, there are thou- 
 sands, and even millions of eunuchs. Where so many of 
 the males that are born, can never become husbands and 
 obtain wives, it is nothing less than merciful to place them 
 beyond the temptation of longing for a wife ; and, in early 
 infancy, before ihey know what has befallen them, to assign 
 them that intermediate state, in which, without properly 
 belonging to either sex, they are to live, and earn their 
 bread. Besides, where polygamy is carried to great lengths, 
 there is in the nature of the case an imperious necessity for 
 rigilant watchers of their chastity. In a word, without 
 (uni^chs, a great seraglio cannot be guarded; and of 
 course, a law prohibiting castration imperceptibly counter- 
 acts polygamy. This is also an observation of M. de Fre- 
 mont val. 
 
 It would appear, that in the course of time, polygamy 
 had very much decreased among the Israelites, and become 
 rather uncommon. Solomon, in Prov. xxxi. 10 — 31, in his 
 description of that wife whom he accounted a blessing to 
 her husband, represents her entirely as a mater-familias, 
 that is, the mistress and ruler of the whole household ; 
 which a wife in the state of polvgamy can never be, being 
 destined solely for her husband s bed, and having no per- 
 mission to concern herself at all about domestic economy. 
 It would therefore seem, that although Solomon himself 
 lived in boundless polygamy, his subjects were contented 
 with one wife. Besides, had polygamy continued as com- 
 mon as in the days of Moses, the price of wives would have 
 advanced in proportion to the increased value of other 
 commodities ; but we find that in the time of the prophet 
 Hosea, a wife was still the same as the medium rate in the 
 time of Moses ; for that was about 30 shekels ; and Hosea 
 (iii. 2) bought Ms for 15 shekels, -and 15 ephahs of barley. 
 Every thing else had risen in price, (as I have shown m 
 my Dissertation, De pretiis rerum apud Hebmos, in the 3d 
 Part of the Commentaria of the Gottingen Society of Sci- 
 ences,) except wives ; and consequently, polygamy, which 
 makes them scarce and dear, must have been much dimin- 
 ished, or have ceased almost altogether among the Israel- 
 ites. That it ceased entirely after the return of the Jews 
 from the Babylonish captivity, is, indeed, certain ; but with 
 that fact we have here nothing to do, as it was neither an 
 article nor an effect of the Mosaic law, but proceeded from 
 Qther accidental causes. 
 
 But how came it to pass that Moses, who certainly did 
 jnot approve of polgyamy, and counteracted its increase by 
 Various impediments, did not rather at once prohibit it al- 
 together 1 This is indeed an important question, and has 
 not hitherto received a satisfactory answer. Many of 
 IVJontesquieu's readers will perhaps think, that nothing can 
 be easier than lo answer it fully in the following .terms : 
 " The lawfulness or unlawfulness of polygamy depends 
 ^entirely on the proportion of females born to that of males, 
 or is, as Montesquieu very properly terms it, a problem of 
 arithmetic. Now in Asia there are many more females 
 than males, and consequently, polygamy should be there 
 permitted for the very same reason for which it is prohib- 
 ited in Europe. Where the numbers of both sexes are 
 equal, there both nature and arithmetic prescribe monoga- 
 ifliy ; but where the procedure of nature is different, and 
 ■^everal girls are born for one boy, there she allows, or, I 
 .should rather say, there she authorizes polygamy." Here, 
 however, and in what he says of Asia, Montesquieu is un- 
 doubtedly mistaken. For without very clear proofs, and 
 without having accurate enumerations, and birth-lists, of 
 all the Asiatic nations, who will believe either him or any 
 other traveller, asserting that, in regard to the proportion 
 of the sexes born, the procedure of nature in Asia, partic- 
 ularly in Turkey, Persia, China, and Japan, is altogether 
 different from what we find it in Europe % It cannot be 
 supposed that the circumstance of these countries lying 
 j more to tfie east than our European regions, can have any 
 i effect in this respect ; for the difference of climate depends 
 I not on the easterly or westerly, but on the southerly or 
 ' northerly position of a country ; in other words, not on the 
 degree of longitude, but of latitude. Now, Minorca lies 
 20 
 
 under the 39th degree of latitude, and of course, some de- 
 grees more to the south than Constantinople, and the coun- 
 tries between the Black and Caspian Seas, whence the 
 Turks and Persians purchase young women for their se- 
 raglios, but in the very same latitude with a great part of 
 Turkey, Persia, China, and Japan ; and yet this Island, 
 according to Armstrong's account, in letter 15th, of his his- 
 tory of it, had, in the year 1742, exclusive of the English 
 garrison, 15,000 male inhabitants, and but only 12,000 fe- 
 male. Now, how can we believe, after this, that under the 
 very same climate, but farther eastward, nature should, on 
 the contrary, produce more persons of the other sex than 
 of ours, merely because there it is noon, when the sun but 
 begins to rise on Minorca"? The English colonies in 
 America have, part of them at least, a still more southerly 
 position ; but even there, no other proportion of births, in 
 the two sexes, has been remarkea, than what is found in 
 England itself. The whole mistake, into which even the 
 venerable Montesquieu himself has been betrayed, proceeds 
 from this, that in some of the great capitals of Asia, there 
 are a great many more women than men, owing to the 
 residence of monarchs and people of fortune, who keep 
 great seraglios, for which girls are purchased in other 
 places, and brought to the metropolis. It does not, however, 
 thence follow, that in Asia there are more females borft 
 than males, but only that the former being more numerous 
 in the rich cities, are in the provinces, whence they are 
 bought, less so, in the very same proportion. Mr. Porter, 
 the British ambassador at Constantinople, makes this re- 
 mark in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlix. art. 
 21st ; so that it is not matter of speculation, but of experi- 
 ence. But the conclusion drawn from the oriental cap- 
 itals, to the state of whole countries, in regard to the pro- 
 portion of the sexes, is much in the same style a^'ould be 
 that of the traveller, who on seeing a German army of 
 100,000 troops, and remarking that there was scarcely one 
 woman with it to ten men, should go home and assert that 
 he had discovered, that in Germany there were ten times 
 as many males born as females. I am therefore of opinion, 
 that with regard to the polygamy allowed among the Is- 
 raelites, we can say nothing else than what Christ has said 
 on the subject of divorce. Moses tolerated it on account of 
 their hardness of heart, and because it would have been 
 found a difficult matter to deprive them of a custom al- 
 ready so firmly established. The Egyptian monarchs en- 
 deavoured to prevent the multiplication of the Israelites, 
 and for this purpose, went so far as to order all their male 
 children, as soon as born, to be thrown into the Nile; and 
 yet Moses found polygamy among them, which, of course, 
 could not have been prohibited by the Egyptian govern- 
 ment. A people, whose children a tyrant drowned to hin- 
 der their mcrease, while yet he dared not to check their 
 polygamy, must have clung very closely to that privilege, 
 and not have been likely to surrender it without rebelling. 
 Whether the climate may have, in any degree, contribu- 
 ted to produce this hardness of heart, I will neither confi- 
 dently affirm nor deny, so long as we are destitute of what 
 I would call a geographical history of polygamy and mo- 
 nogamy, which a person might survey at a short glance ; 
 for thus much is certain, that in the most northerly regions 
 of Siberia and Tartary, there are nations that live in po- 
 lygamy ; and in the very warmest climates, on the contra- 
 ry, we find Christians, and even nations, satisfied with mo- 
 nogamy. If the former is more prevalent towards the 
 south, we must bear in mind, that in regard to laws, though 
 much depends on climate, yet every thing does not, but still 
 more on accidental circumstances ; and that ancient usage, 
 or religion, may have a very powerful influence on the na- 
 ture of the law. But should even the climate actually 
 cause a difference in the point in question, and make it 
 more difficult to put a stop to polygamy, by law, among 
 southern than northern nations, because they are naturally 
 more addicted to it ; still the cause thereof would not be 
 referable to any inequality in the proportion of the sexes, 
 but to the earlier puberty of southern nations, and the ear- 
 lier violence of libidinous propensities therewith connect- 
 ed. The natural consequence of these early and strong 
 feelings of love, are early marriages ; the wife, in such a 
 case, can hardly be more than two years younger, and the 
 appropriated concubine is perhaps even older than the boy 
 that becomes her husband: and when he has reached his 
 25*h or 30th, and still more, his 37th year, which Aristotle 
 
154 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 1. 
 
 fixed as the fittest time for a man to marry, his wife, or 
 concubine, particularly if she has borne many children, has 
 by that time become too old for him, and then he either 
 meditates a divorce, or taking a younger wife in addition 
 to the former. This last is indeed the least of the two 
 evils for the unfortunate first wife ; and the legislator who 
 wishes that she, particularly if a slave, that can have no 
 will of her own, may experience the least possible hard- 
 ship or injustice, will in this view tolerate polygamy. In- 
 deed if he were to prohibit it, it is probable the people 
 w^ould not submit to the privation without some disturb- 
 ance. — If what I have now said, merely by way of conjec- 
 ture, be correct, the consideration of climate might have 
 had some influence with Moses in his toleration of polyga- 
 my, as a civil right; for Palestine is certainly to be num- 
 bered among southern climates, although indeed the Israel- 
 ites, at the time when Moses may be said to have taken 
 them under his protection, had. been accustomed to a 
 country somewhat farther south, and much warmer. 
 
 There is yet another circumstance to be taken into the 
 account, which made polygamy in Palestine more tolerable 
 in a political light, than among us, where it would soon 
 depopulate ?. country, because we have not, as was then the 
 case, any opportunity of purchasing, or of carrying off as 
 captiv^es, the young women of other natijns. The laws of 
 war, in those days, gave the victors a right to make slaves 
 of young women, and these they might employ for the 
 purposes of polygamy, without thereby depriving any Is- 
 raelite of a wife borri to him among his own people. No 
 doubt this was a very severe war law, and detrimental to 
 the general interests of mankind : but it w^as once estab- 
 lished, and although the Israelites had not acted up to it, 
 their neighbours would not therefore have lost any oppor- 
 tunity of doing so, which the fortune of war put into their 
 power. It must also be considered thai the Israelites lived 
 in the vicinity of a poor people, whose daughters they could 
 purchase: for nature has been so unkind to Arabia, that 
 most of its inhabitants must always be in a state of indi- 
 gence, with the exception of any particular family or city 
 that may happen to be enriched by trade, or by singular 
 good-fortune in rearing sheep. Mr. Wood in his Essay on 
 the original genius of Homer, has given a very faithful 
 description of the natural poverty of Arabia, which, after 
 all the improvements it can receive from fortune and art, 
 uniformly sinks back to its original state; and Mr. Nie- 
 buhr has orally given me an account of the poverty of 
 the Arabs, which far exceeded even what I should have 
 expected. 
 
 Although the Mosaic laws do not prohibit more than one 
 wife, still they did not thereby authorize polygamy in the 
 whole extent of the word, and that a man might have as 
 many wives as he pleased. This is not perhaps altogether 
 the consequence of those statutes, which enjoined the hus- 
 band to perform the conjugal rites with every wife within 
 stated periods ; for Moses, (as we have already seen,) 
 most expressly prohibited even the future king/rom having 
 many loives. (Deut. xvii. 17:) and of course, that could not 
 but be forbidden to the people at large. But if more than 
 one wife was allowed, and many forbidden, the question 
 comes to be, what is meant by many *? And to that ques- 
 tion I can only give what may be called a probable answer, 
 and to this effect: that by many seems to be meant more 
 than four, that number being permitted, but not more. 
 This is the doctrine of the Talmud and the Rabbins, of 
 which the reader will find a more detailed account in 
 Selden de TJxore Hebraica. To their testimony and opinion 
 I would indeed pay but little respect, in most points relating 
 to the original Mosaic jurisprudence : but here they seem 
 for once to be in the right. For Mohammed, who generally 
 follows the ancient Arabian usages, in the fourth chapter 
 of the Koran, also fixes four as the number of wives to be 
 allowed, and commands that it be not exceeded : and be- 
 fore the time of Moses, there would seem to have likewise 
 been an ancient usage, in the patriarchal families, which 
 limited polygamy to this same number, and which may 
 also have continued among the Jews and Arabs. "We 
 have reason to presume that this was the case from a pas- 
 sage in Gen. chap. xxxi. 50. Jacob had four wives, Leah, 
 Rachel, and their two maids. Laban, his father-in-law, 
 was so little an enemy to polygamy, that instead of one of 
 his daughters, whom Jacob wished to have, he contrived 
 by a piece of artifice, and contrary to Jacob's inclination, 
 
 to force them both upon him. But notwithstanding this, 
 we find him in this passage requiring Jacob to take an oath 
 that he would not take any more wives. He seems to hav<» 
 thought with the poet, 
 
 Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines : 
 
 nnd this modus was, in his opinion, what Jacob already 
 hadj/oiir wives. Now as Moses does not explain what he 
 calls many, he must, from such established custom, have 
 presupposed it perfectly known. — Michaelis. 
 
 Marriage is evidently meant by scripture and reason, to 
 be the union of one man with one woman. When God 
 said, " It is not good that the man should be alone ;" he 
 promised him the help only of a single mate: " I will make 
 him a help-meet for him." This gracious promise he 
 soon performed in the formation of one woman ; a clear 
 intimation of his will that only one man and one woman 
 should be joined in wedlock. This design Adam recog- 
 nised, and acknowledged in express terms : and his decla- 
 ration was certainly meant as a rule for his descendants in 
 every succeeding age : " Therefore shall a man leave his 
 father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and 
 they shall be one flesh." These quotations, whict are all 
 couched in terms of the singular number, are inc nsistent 
 with the doctrine of polygamy. The original appointment 
 was confirmed by our Lord in these words : " Have ye not 
 read, that he which made them at the beginning, made them 
 male and female ; and said, for this cause, shall a man 
 leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his m- ife ; and 
 they twain shall be one flesh 1 Wherefore they are no 
 more twain, but one flesh." The apostle is not less de- 
 cisive in his direction to the churches: "Nevertheless, to 
 avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife ; and 
 let every woman have her own husband." But though 
 the law is so decisive, it cannot be doubted that polygamy 
 was introduced soon after the creation; Lamech, one of 
 the descendants of Cain, and only the sixth person from 
 Adam, married two wives ; he was probably the first who 
 ventured, in this respect, to transgress the law of his Maker. 
 This unwarrantable practice, derived from the antedilu- 
 vian world, seems to have become very common soon 
 after the flood ; for it is mentioned as nothing remarkable 
 that Sarah, when she despaired of having childre;i, took 
 her handmaid Hagar, and gave her to Abraham her 
 husband, by whom she had a son. Both Esau and Jacob 
 had a number of wives ; and that is undoubtedly one of the 
 practices which Moses suffered to remain among his people, 
 because of the hardness of their hearts, prohibiting only the 
 high-priest to have more than one wife. 
 
 Every transgression of the divine law is attended by its 
 corresponding punishment. Polygamy has proved in all 
 ages, and in all countries where it has been suffered, a 
 teeming source of evil. The jealousy and bitter conten- 
 tions in the family of Abraham, and of his grandson Jacob, 
 which proceeded from that cause, are well known ; and 
 still more deplorable were the dissensions which convulsed 
 the house, and shook the throne of David. Such mischiefs 
 are the natural and necessary effects of the practice ; for 
 polygamy divides the affections of the husband, and by 
 consequence, generates incurable jealousies and conten- 
 tions among the unhappy victims of his licentious desires. 
 To prevent his abode from becoming the scene of unceas- 
 ing confusion and uproar, he is compelled to govern it, as 
 the oriental polygamist still does, with despotic authority, 
 which at once extinguishes all the rational and most 
 endearing comforts of the conjugal state. The husbantj 
 is a stem and unfeeling despot; his harem, a group of 
 trembling slaves. The children espouse, with an ardour 
 unknown to those who are placed in other circumstances, 
 the cause of their own mother, and look upon the children 
 of the other wives as strangers or enemies. They regard 
 their common father with indifference or terror; while 
 they cling to their own mother with the fondest aflfection, 
 as the only parent in whom they feel any interest, or from 
 whom they expect any suitable return of attention and 
 kindness. This state of feeling and attachment, is attested 
 by every writer on the manners of the East ; and accounts 
 for a way of speaking so common in the scriptures : ** It is 
 my brother, and the son of my mother." " They were my 
 brethren," said Gideon, "the sons of my mother; as the 
 Lord liveth, if ye had saved them alive, I would not slay 
 you." It greatly aggravated the aflliction of David, that 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 155 
 
 he had become an alien to his mother's children ; the en- 
 mity of his brethren, the children of hi? father's other 
 wives, or his more distant relatives, gave him less con- 
 cern ; " I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an 
 alien to my mother's children." The same allusion occurs 
 in the complaint of the spouse: "Look not upon me, be- 
 cause I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me : 
 my mother's children were angry with me ; they made me 
 the keeper of the vineyards." The children of one wife, 
 scarcely looked upon the children of the other wives as 
 their brothers and sisters at all ; and they scarcely felt 
 more regard for their father. An Oriental, in consequence 
 of this unnatural practice, takes little notice of an insult 
 oflered to his father ; but expresses the utmost indignation 
 when a word is spoken to the disadvantage of his mother. 
 To defame or to curse her, is the last insult which his 
 enemy can offer ; and one which he seldom or never for- 
 gives. " Strike," cried an incensed African to his antagonist, 
 " but do not curse my mother." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he had two wives ; the name of the 
 one was Hannah, and the name of the other 
 Peninnah. 
 
 The names the eastern people give to women and slaves, 
 appear to us to be oftentimes not a little odd ; something of 
 the same kind may, however, be remarked in the scrip- 
 tures, though they are there more frequently of the devout 
 kind. The author of the History of AH Bey mentions a 
 female, whose name, Laal, signified ruby. One of the wives 
 of Elkanah, the father of the prophet Samuel, seems to 
 have been named in the same way, for such was the mean- 
 ing of the word Peninnah. The plural word peninim 
 signifies rubies, or precious stones that are red. Lam. iv. 7. 
 If both these ladies were called by names that in their 
 respective languages signified a ruby, probably both one 
 and the other were so denominated, either from the florid- 
 ness of their complexion, or the contrary to a ruby teint : 
 for it may be understood either way. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 11. And she vowed a vow, and said, O 
 Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the 
 affliction of thy handmaid, and remember me, 
 and not forget thy handmaid, but wilt give unto 
 thy handmaid a man-child, then I will give 
 him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and 
 there shall no razor come upon his head. 
 
 Among these vows of abstinence, may be classed those 
 c. " IS'azaritism, although they have also something in com- 
 n on with the first species, and are, as it were, a mixture of 
 both kinds. A Nazarite, during the continuance of his 
 vow, durst drink no wine nor strong drink ; nor eat of the 
 fruit of the vine, either grapes or raisins ; nor come near 
 any dead body ; or otherwise wittingly defile himself. He 
 was also obliged to let his hair grow. At the termination 
 of the period of his- vow, he had to make certain offerings 
 prescribed by Moses, and what other offerings he had 
 vowed besides ; as also to cut off his hair, and burn it on 
 the altar, and then first drink wine again at the offering- 
 feast. These ordinances, however, rather belong to the 
 ceremonial law, than to the Mosaical jurisprudence, of 
 which I here treat. It is only necessary to attend to this 
 further circumstance, that vows of Nazaritism were not an 
 original institution of Moses, but of more ancient, and 
 probably of Egyptian, origin ; and that, in his laws, he only 
 gives certain injunctions concerning them, partly to estab- 
 lish the ceremonies and laws of such vows, and partly to 
 prevent people from making them to, or letting their hair 
 grow in honour of, any other than the true God. What 
 typical views he may have had in the ceremonies he pre- 
 scribed, it forms no part of my present subject, in which I 
 nverely consider the Mosaic laws on the principles of juris- 
 prudence, but rather belongs to theology, to ascertain. But 
 that before the Mosaic law was given there had been Naza- 
 rites among the Israelites, is manifest from the following 
 circumstance: The ordinance of Moses concerning the 
 Nazarites, which stands in chap. vi. of Numbers, was 
 given in the second year after the departure from Egypt ; 
 but in an earlier law concerning the sabbatical year, which 
 
 was made in the Jirst year, Moses adopts a figurative ex- 
 pression from Nazaritism, calling the vines, which in that 
 year were not to be pruned, Nazarites, Lev. xxv. 5. The 
 thing itself must, therefore, have been already in use, and 
 that for a long period ; because such figurative expressions, 
 particularly in agriculture, gardening, and rural economy, 
 do not succeed to the proper signification even of the most 
 familiar and best-known terms, till after a lapse of many 
 years. The vow of Nazaritism was not necessarily, nor 
 usually, of perpetual endurance; and hence Moses ordain- 
 ed what offerings should be made at its termination or dis- 
 continuance. In latter times, it is true, we have, in the 
 case of Samson, an example of a person devoted by his 
 parents to be a Nazarite for life ; but even here, Nazaritism 
 was not understood in its whole extent, as prescribed in the 
 Mosaic law; for Samson plainly deviated from it, when 
 he attacked and defeated the Philistines, from whose dead 
 bodies a strict Nazarite must have fled, to avoid defilement. 
 Of such perpetual Nazaritism, however, Moses does not at 
 all treat in his laws; and, of course, does not say whether, 
 like other vows, it could have been redeemed, had it proved 
 a hardship to a son to abstain from wine all his life. Ac- 
 cording to the analogy of the other laws of Moses on this 
 subject, it should have been redeemable. — Michaelis. 
 
 It frequently happens after the birth of a son, that if 
 the parent be in distress, or the child sick, or that there be 
 any other cause of grief, the mother makes a vow, that no 
 razor shall come upon the child's head for a certain portion 
 of time, and sometimes for all his life. 1 Sam. i. II. If the 
 child recovers, and the cause of grief be removed, and if 
 the vow be but for a time, so that the mother's vow be ful- 
 filled, then she shaves his head at the end of the time pre- 
 scribed, makes a small entertainment, collects money and 
 other things from her relations and fAends, which are sent 
 as Tiezers (offerings) to the mosque at Kerbelah, and are 
 there consecrated. Numbers vi. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 12. And it came to pass, as she continued 
 praying before the Lord, that Eli marked her 
 mouth. 
 
 Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, was steril, but she had an 
 intense desire to be the mother of a " man-child," and she 
 went to the " temple of the Lord" to vow, if he would give 
 her one, that she would " give him unto the Lord all the 
 days of his life — there shall no razor come upon his head." 
 How often do we witness a similar scene. See the afflicted 
 wife prostrate in the dust before the temple of her god : she 
 earnestly entreats the deity to give unto her a "male child,'* 
 " Ah ! then will my husband love me~then will my neigh- 
 bours cease to reproach me — Ah ! my god, a male child, a 
 male child— he shall be called by thy name— and sacred 
 shall be his hair." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 1. And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart 
 rejoiceth in the Lord ; my horn is exalted in 
 the Lord. 
 
 In this and many other parts of scripture, mention is made 
 of the exaltation of the horn. Colonel Light thus describes 
 the dress of the Druses. " The females of both Maronixs 
 and Druses appear in a coarse blue jacket and petticoat, 
 without stockings, their hair platted, hanging down in long 
 tails behind. On their heads they wore a tin or silver coni- 
 cal tube about twelve inches lorig, and perhaps t-wace the 
 size of a common post-horn ; over which was thrown a 
 white piece of linen, that completely enveloped their body, 
 and gives a most singular and ghost-like appearance. Upon 
 Mount Lebanon the wife of the emir sometimes made hex 
 appearance in the costume of the country, adorned with a 
 golden horn on her head, enriched with" precious stones, 
 instead of the ordinary one of the other women of the coun- 
 try." — Burder. 
 
 "One of the most extraordinary parts of the attire of the 
 female Druses is a silver horn, sometimes studded with 
 jewels, worn on their heads in various positions, distin- 
 gruishing their different conditions. A married womaij 
 has it affixed on the right side of the head, a widow on i^* 
 left, and a virgin is pointed out by its being placed on tbi 
 very crown; over this silver projection the long veil t 
 
156 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 ChAjP. 4 
 
 thrown, with which they so completely conceal their 
 faces, as rarely to leave more than one eye visible."— 
 Macmichel. 
 
 This woman, who was a Christian, wore on her head 
 a hollow silver horn, rearing itself upward obliquely 
 from her forehead, being four or five inches in diameter 
 at the root, and pointed at its extreme. — Buckingham. 
 
 About two years ago, some of our Indian ships brought 
 over a number of Sepoys, who did duty as marines on the 
 voyage ; these were newly clothed in England, and pre- 
 sented to the king. Perhaps there were but few, possibly 
 not one, who, having the opportunity of seeing these soldiers, 
 made the same observations as the writer of this article, 
 respecting the helmets worn on their heads. These helmets 
 appeared to be made of stout leather, or other strong sub- 
 stance ; they were oval and nearly flat, like the trencher 
 caps worn at our universities : in the centre rose a head- 
 piece, or crown, ornamented with feathers, &c. and on the 
 front, directly over the forehead, was a. steel Horn, rising as 
 it were from a short stem, and then assuming the form of 
 one of our extinguishers, used to extinguish the light of a 
 ::andle. 
 
 It appeared, also, that the comparison of such a military 
 horn to the horn of a reem, (the unicorn of our translators,) 
 the rhinoceros, was extremely applicable : for having seen 
 the great rhinoceros at the menagerie at Versailles, we rec- 
 ollected the resemblance perfectly. Whether we should 
 be justified in referring this part of dress to the military 
 only, may be questioned ; because Hannah, for instance, 
 .says, " My horn is exalted." I Sam. ii. 1. But women, oc- 
 casionally, might adopt, as parts of dress, ornaments not 
 altogether unlike this horn, even if this form of speech were 
 not derived originally from the soldiers' dress, and trans- 
 ferred to a notorious disposition of mind ; or to other in- 
 stances. This also diminishes the apparent strangeness 
 of Zedekiah's conduct, 1 Kings xxii. 11, who made himself 
 HORNS of iron, and said, " Thus saith the Lord, With these" 
 military insignia, " shalt thou push the Syrians until thou 
 hast consumed them." We are apt to conceive of these 
 horns, as projecting, like bulls' horns, on each side of Zede- 
 kiah's head. How different from the real fact ! Zedekiah, 
 though he pretended to be a prophet, did not wish to be 
 thought mad, to which imputation such an appearance 
 would have subjected him : whereas, he only acted the 
 hero, — the hero returning in military triumph : it was little 
 more than a flourish with a spontoon. In corroboration of 
 this idea, let us hear Mr. Bruce, who first elucidated this 
 subject by actual observation : — 
 
 " One thing remarkable in this cavalcade, which I ob- 
 served, was the headdress of the governors of provinces. 
 A large broad fillet was bound upon their forehead, and 
 tied behind their head. In the middle of this was a horn, 
 or conical piece of silver, gilt, about four inches long, much 
 in the shape of our common candle extinguishers. This is 
 called kern {\'^\>) or horn, and is only worn in reviews, or 
 parades after victory. This I apprehend, like all other of 
 their usages, is taken from the Hebrews, and the several 
 allusions made in scripture to it, arises from this practice : 
 — ' I said to the wicked. Lift not up the horn,' — ' Lift not 
 up your horn on high ; speak not with a stiff neck.' — ' The 
 horn of the righteous shall be exalted with honour.' "—Tay- 
 lor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 5. They that were full have hired out them- 
 selves for bread. 
 
 A man of high caste, or one who was once in affluence, 
 will almost as soon die as work for food; and, generally 
 speaking, such is the pity felt for those people, that there 
 are alvi'ays some who will give a trifle to supply their 
 wants. It is a phrase indicative of great misery to say, 
 " The once rich man is now hiring himself out for conjee," 
 (gruel.) — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, 
 and Hfteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to 
 set them among princes, and to make them in- 
 herit the throne of glory. 
 
 In preparing their victuals, the Orientals are, from the 
 extreme scarcity of wood in many countries, reduced to 
 use cowdung for fuel. At Aleppo, the inhabitants use 
 
 wood and charcoal in their rooms, but heat their bath? 
 with cowdung, the parings of fruit, and other things of a 
 similar kind, which they employ people to gather lor that 
 purpose. In Egypt, according to Pitts, the scarcity oi 
 wood is so great, "that at Cairo they commonly heat iheir 
 ovens with horse or cow dung, or dirt of the streets ; what \ 
 wood they have, being brought from the shores of the 
 Black Sea, and sold by weight. Chardin attests the same 
 fact : " The eastern people always used cowdung for ba- 
 king, boiling a pot, and dressing all kinds of victuals that 
 are easily cooked, especially in countries that have but 
 little wood ;" and Dr. Russel remarks, in a note, that " the 
 Arabs carefully collect the dung of the sheep and camel, as 
 well as that of the cow; and that the dung, offals, and other 
 matters used in the bagnios, after having been new gather- 
 ed in the streets, are carried out of the city, and laid in 
 great heaps to dry, where they become very offensive. 
 They are intolerably disagreeable, while drying, in the 
 town adjoining to the bagnios ; and are so at all times when 
 it rains, though they be stacked, pressed hard together, and 
 thatched at top." These statements exhibit, in a very strong 
 light, the extreme misery of the Jews, who escaped from 
 the devouring sword of Nebuchadnezzar : " They that 
 fed delicately, are desolate in the streets ; they that were 
 brought up in scarlet, embrace dunghills." To embrace 
 dunghills, is a species of wretchedness, perhaps unknown 
 to us in the history of modern warfare ; but it presents a 
 dreadful and appalling image, when the circumstances to 
 which it alludes are recollected. What can be imagined 
 more distressing to those who lived delicately, than to wan- 
 der without food in the streets^ What more disgusting 
 and terrible to those who had been clothed in rich and splen- 
 did garments, than to be forced by the destruction of their 
 palaces, to seek shelter among stacks of dung, the filth and 
 stench of which it is almost impossible to endure. The 
 dunghill, it appears from holy writ, is one of the common 
 retreats of the mendicant, which imparts an exquisite force 
 and beauty to a passage in the song of Hannah : " He 
 raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifleth the beggar 
 from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make 
 them inherit the throne of glory." The change in the cir- 
 cumstances of that excellent woman, she reckoned as great, 
 (and it was to her not less unexpected,) as the elevation of 
 a poor despised beggar, from a nauseous and polluting 
 dunghill, rendered ten times more foetid by the intense heat 
 of an oriental sun, to one of the highest and most splendid 
 stations on earth. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. Nay, my sons ; for yt is no good report 
 that I hear: ye make the Lord's people to 
 transgress. 
 
 This affectionate form of speech may be heard in the 
 mouth of every father. Thus, it is not common to mention 
 the name, but my eldest, my youngest son, (or some other 
 epithet to designate the one he wants.) " My sons, listen to 
 the voice of your father." In passing through a village, a 
 man or woman maybe heard in every corner bawling out, 
 " Maganea," i. e. O son, or " Magalea," O daughter, " come 
 hither ; I want you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 31. Behold, the days come that I will cut 
 off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's 
 house, that there shall not be an old man in thy 
 house. 
 
 People, in cursing each other, say, " In thy family may 
 there never be an old man," meaning, may all die in youth. 
 " Alas! alas ! there has not been an old man in that family 
 for many generations." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 12. And there ran a man of Benjamin out 
 of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day, 
 with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his 
 head. 
 
 He indulged his grief to a violent degree, beating his 
 breast, and, among his other exclamations, frequently mnde 
 use of one, very illustrative of that ancient act of grie* 
 
Chap. 4 — 7. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 157 
 
 heaping ashes on the /lead. He said, Ahi cheh hak be ser-e- 
 mun amed, What earth has come on my head 1 repeating 
 this with a constant intermixture of Ah, wahi, which he 
 would continue to repeat for above fifty limes, in a whining 
 piteous voice, lowering its tone till it became scarcely audi- 
 ble, and then continuing it solo voce, until he broke out 
 again into a new exclamation. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 13. And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a 
 seat by the wayside watching: for his heart 
 trembled for the ark of God. And when the 
 man came into the city, and told it, all the city 
 cried out. 
 
 Sitting on a cushion is, with the Orientels, an expression 
 of honour, and the preparing a seat for a person of distinc- 
 tion seems to mean, laying things of this kind on a place 
 where such a one is to sit. " It is the custom of Asia,^' Sir 
 J. Chardin informs us, " for persons in common not to go 
 into the shops of that country, which are mostly small, but 
 there are wooden seats, on the outside, where people sit 
 down, and if it happens to be a man of quality, they lay a 
 cushion there." He also informs us, " that people of qual- 
 ity cause carpets and cushions to be carried everywhere, 
 that they like, in order to repose themselves upon them 
 more agreeably." When Job speaks of his preparing his 
 seat, ch. xxix. 7, it is extremely natural to understand him 
 of his sending his servants, to lay a cushion and a car- 
 pet on one of the public seats there, or something of that 
 sort, as Sir John supposes ; but I do not imagine a seat in 
 the street, means a seat by a shop. Job is speaking evi- 
 dently of his sitting there as a ruler among his people. 
 Eli's seat by the wayside, was a seat adorned, we may 
 believe, after the same manner. He did not sit in a man- 
 ner unbecoming so dignified a personage. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 4. Then said they, What shall he the tres- 
 pass-offering which we shall return to him ? 
 They answered, Five golden emerods, and five 
 golden mice, according to the number of the 
 lords of the Philistines : for one plague was on 
 you all, and on your lords. 5. Wherefore ye 
 shall make images of your emerods, and images 
 of your mice that mar the land ; and ye shall 
 give glory unto the God of Israel : peradven- 
 ture he will lighten his hand from off you, 
 and from off your gods, and from off your land. 
 
 This animal (the mouse) is so very diminutive, that the 
 Jewish naturalist places it among the reptiles, refusing it 
 the honour of appearing among the quadrupeds. But, 
 small and apparently insignificant as it is, in the oriental 
 regions it often produces greater calamities than are expe- 
 rienced from all the beasts of prey with which they are in- 
 fested. Formidable by its activity, its voraciousness, and 
 its countless numbers, it lays waste the fields of Palestine 
 and Syria, devours their harvests, and spreads famine and 
 wretchedness among the helpless inhabitants. The extent 
 and severity ofthe distress in which its ravages frequently in- 
 volve the people of those countries, are sufliciently attested 
 by the offering of five golden mice, from the lords of the 
 Philistines, to appease the wrath of God, and a vert the plague 
 under which they had so greatly suffered. The account of 
 this transaction is recorded in the first book of Samuel, and 
 runs in these terms : " Then said they, what shall be the 
 trespass-offering which we shall return to him 1 They an- 
 swered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, accord- 
 ing to the number of the lords of the Philistines : for one 
 plague was on you all, and on your lords. Wherefore ye 
 shall make images of your emerods, and of your mice that 
 martheland; and ye shall give gloryuntothe God of Israel: 
 perad venture he will lighten his hand from off you, and from 
 off your gods, and from off your land." These words un- 
 doubtedly intimate, that Palestine was very often visited by 
 this scourge, and that the sufferings of its inhabitants were 
 very severe, Thedevastationsof thislittle destructive crea- 
 ture were so frequent, so extensive, and followed by con- 
 sequences so dreadful, that even the unenlightened Philis- 
 
 tines considered them as an immediate judgment from God 
 himself. But this terrible scourge was not peculiar to Pal- 
 estine: Strabo mentions that so vast a multitude of mice 
 sometimes invaded Spain, as to produce a destructive pesti- 
 lence ; and in Cantabria, the Romans, by setting a price 
 on a certain measure of these animals, escaped With diffi- 
 culty from the same calamity. In other parts of Italy, the 
 number of field-mice was so" great, that some ofthe inhab- 
 itants were forced to leave the country. In Thrace, the 
 frogs and mice sometimes united their hordes, and com- 
 pelled the inhabitants to seek new settlements. In modern 
 times, instances of the same calamity are not wanting. 
 About the beginning of the twelfth century, innumerable 
 swarms of locusts and mice, during four successive years, 
 so completely ravaged that country, as to produce almost 
 a total failure of the necessaries of life. So great and 
 general was the distress of the people, that a kind of peni- 
 tential council was held at Naplouse, in the year 1120, for 
 the reformation of manners, and to invoke the mercy of 
 the Almighty, who had been provoked by their sins to in- 
 flict upon them such terrible judgments. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. Wherefore ye shall make images of your 
 emerods, and images of your mice that mar the 
 land ; and ye shall give glory unto the God of 
 Israel. 
 
 This command was given by the heathen priests and di- 
 viners to the Philistines, who were smitten with emerods, 
 and whose land was nearly destroyed by the mice. It is a 
 remarkable fact, that when the Hindoos ar^ afllicted in any 
 particular member, (or in the person generally,) they make 
 an image to represent the afflicted part, and send it to the 
 temple of Kanda Swamy, the Scandan of Bengal, in order 
 to get relieved from their trouble. The temple of Kattara- 
 gam (sacred ■ to Scandan) is famous, in all parts of the 
 East, for the cures which have been performed by the deity 
 there. Hence may be seen pilgrims at its shrine, suffering 
 under every kind of disease, "who have walked, or have 
 been carried, from an immense distance. The images 
 presented are generally made of silver, and I have seven 
 of them in my possession, which are offerings in the 
 famous temple already mentioned. The first represents a 
 boy with a very large belly, which has probably been pre- 
 sented by the parents for'their child labouring undei that 
 (very common) complaint. The second is that of an in- 
 fant, probably sent by a mother who had a sick infant, or 
 who, being herself in a state of pregnancy, had some fears 
 respecting the future. The third is, I suppose, intended 
 to represent an old man, who may have made a vow in his 
 sickness, that he would present an image of silver to the 
 temple, should he recover. — Roberts. {See Engraving.^ 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 5, And Samuel said, Gather all Israel to 
 Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord. 
 
 Aware ofthe dangers and calamities of war, ancient Is- 
 rael were accustomed to perform very solemn devotions 
 before they took the field: and it would seem, they had 
 certain places particularly appropriated to this purpose. 
 Samuel convened the people to Mizpeh, in order to pre- 
 pare, by a solemn address to the throne of Jehovah, for the 
 war which they meditated against the Philistines. " And 
 Samuel said. Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray 
 for you unto the Lord." At other times, they asked coun- 
 sel of God by the Urim and Thummim, or by a prophet of 
 the Lord. Such a custom was common in Eg\'pt, when 
 Pococke visited that country. Near Cairo, says that trav- 
 eller, beyond the mosque of Sheik Duisse, and in the neigh- 
 bourhood of a burial-place ofthe sons of some pashas, on a 
 hill, is a solid building of stone about three feet wide, built 
 with ten steps, being at the top about three feet square, on 
 which the sheik mounts to pray on an extraordinary oc- 
 casion, as when all the people go out at the beginning of a 
 war; and also when the Nile does not rise as they expect it 
 should ; and such a place, they have without ail the towns 
 of Turkey. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. And they gathered together to Mizpeh, 
 and drew water, and poured it out before the 
 
158' 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 7— -9. 
 
 Lord, and fasted on that da5^ and said there, 
 We have sinned against the Lord. 
 
 Samuel had been reproving the people for their sins, and 
 exhorting them to repent, and come to Mizpeh to fast and 
 pray, and confess their sins. They complied with his di- 
 rections, and in confirmation of the solemn vows, they 
 poured out water before the Lord, to show that their words 
 and promises had gone forth, and were " as water spilt on 
 the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." To pour 
 water on the ground is a very ancient way of taking a 
 solemri, oath in the East. When the god Vishnoo, in the 
 disguise of a dwarf, requested the giant Maha-Ville (Bali) 
 to grant him one step of his kingdom, the favour was con- 
 ceded, and CONFIRMED by Maha-Ville pouring out water 
 before the dwarf. But in that ancient work, "the Scanda 
 Purcina, where the account is given of the marriage of the 
 god Siva with Parvati, it is said of the father, " He placed 
 the hand of the goddess Parvati, genitress of the world, in 
 the hand of Parama Easuran, (Siva,) and, pouring out the 
 WATER, said, ' I give her with a joyful heart.' " This, there- 
 fore, was also done in confirmation of the compact. The 
 children of Israel,, in their misery, came before the Lord : 
 they wept, they fasted, and prayed, and made their solemn 
 vows ; and, in confirmation of their promises, they "poured 
 out water before the Lord ! " — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 6. But the thing displeased Samuel, when 
 they said, Give us a king to judge us. And 
 Samuel prayed unto the Lord. 
 
 Hebrew, " was evil in the eyes of Samuel." When any 
 thing gives displeasure to another, it is said to be evil in his 
 eyes. " This thing is evil in his sight." " Alas ! my lord, 
 I am evil in your sight !" — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 7. Then said Saul to his servant, but, behold, 
 
 if we go, what shall we bring the man ? for 
 
 the bread is spent in our vessels, and there is 
 
 not a present to bring to the man of God : what 
 
 ^ have we? 
 
 In no quarter of the world, is the difference of ranks in 
 society maintained with more scrupulous exactness than 
 in Asia. The intercourse among the various classes of 
 mankind, which originate in the unequal distributions of 
 creating wisdom, or providential arrangement, is regulated 
 by laws,, which, like those of the Medes and Persians, suf- 
 fer almost no change from the lapse of time, or the fluc- 
 tuation of human affairs. To these laws, which have ex- 
 tended their influence far beyond the limits of the East, the 
 sacred writers make frequent allusions. No mark of es- 
 teem is more common through all the oriental regions, 
 none more imperiously required by the rules of good breed- 
 ing, than a present. WheA Mr. Maundrell and his party 
 waited upon Ostan, the basha of Tripoli, he was obliged 
 to send his present before him to secure a favourable re- 
 ception. It is even reckoned uncivil in that country, to 
 make a visit without an offering in the hand. The no- 
 bility, and officers of government, expect it as a kind of trib- 
 ute due to their character and authority ; and look upon 
 themselves as affronted, and even defrauded, when this 
 compliment is omitted. So common is the custom, that in 
 familiar intercourse among persons of inferior station, they 
 seldom neglect to bring a flower, an orange, a few dates or 
 .•A±.snes, or some such token of respect, to the person whom 
 they visit. In Egypt the custom is equally prevalent : the 
 visits of that people, which are very frequent in the course 
 of the year, are always preceded by presents of various 
 kinds, according to their station and property. So essential 
 to human and civil intercourse are presents considered in 
 the East, that, says Mr. Bruce, " whether it be dates or 
 diamonds, they are so much a part of their manners, that 
 without them an inferior will never be at peace in his own 
 .nind, or think that he has a hold of his superior for his 
 favour or protection." Sir John Chardin affirms, that "the 
 custom of making presents to the great, was universal in 
 the East ; and that every thing is received even by the great 
 
 lords of the country, fruit, pullets, a lamb. Every one gives 
 what is most at hand, and has a relation to his profession ; 
 and those who have no particular profession, give money. 
 As it is accounted an honour to receive presents of this 
 sort, they receive them in public ; and even choose to do it 
 when they have most company." " Throughout the East," 
 says Du Tott, '■ gifts are always the mark of honour." 
 This custom is, perhaps, one of the most ancient in the 
 world. Solomon evidently alludes to it in that proverb: 
 " A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him 
 before great men." We recognise it in the reply of Saul 
 to his servant, when he proposed to consult the prophet 
 Samuel about the object of their journey: " If we go, what 
 shall we bring the man of God 1 for the bread is spent in 
 our vessels, and there is not a present to bring to the man 
 of God. What have we V Saul was inclined at first to 
 offer the seer, who was at the same time the chief magis- 
 trate in Israel, a piece of bread, till he recollected it was 
 all spent, and then agreed to present him with " the fourth 
 part of a shekel of silver," in value about a sixpence. It 
 could not then be their design, by offering such a trifle, to 
 purchase his services, but merely to show him that custom- 
 ary mark of respect to which he was entitled. Nor were 
 the prophets of the Lord a set of mercenary pretenders to 
 the knowledge of future events, who sold their services to 
 the anxious mquirer for a large reward. Had they refused 
 to accept of such presents, they would have been guilty of 
 transgressing an established rule of good manners, and of 
 insulting the persons by whom they were offered. When 
 Elisha refused, with an oath, to accept of the present which 
 Naaman the Syrian urged him to receive, it was not be- 
 cause he thought it either unlawful or improper to receive 
 a gift, for he did not hesitate to accept of presents from his 
 owti people ; nor was the prophet regardless of an estab- 
 lished custom, which offended no precept of the divine 
 law, or disposed to wound, without necessity, the feelings 
 of the Syrian grandee ; but because he would not put it in 
 the power of Naaman to say he had enriched the prophet 
 of Jehovah ; and by this act of self-denial, it is probable he 
 was desirous of recommending the character and service 
 of the true God to that illustrious stranger. — Paxton. 
 
 Such as are prejudiced against the sacred history, and 
 unacquainted with eastern customs, may be ready, from 
 the donations to the prophets, to imagine they were a mer- 
 cenary set of people, and rudely to rank them with cunning 
 men and fortunetellers, who will not from principles of 
 benevolence reveal those secrets, or foretel those future 
 events, of the knowledge of which they are supposed to be ■ 
 possessed ; but demand of the anxious inquirer a large re- 
 ward. This, however, will make impressions on none but 
 those who know not the oriental usages, which Maundrell 
 long since applied, with such clearness and force, to one 
 of the most exceptionable passages of the Old Testament,, 
 that he has sufficiently satisfied the mind upon this point. 
 As he has expressly applied it to a passage of scripture, it 
 would not have been agreeable to my design to have men- 
 tioned this circumstance, had I not had some additional 
 remarks to make upon this head, which possibly may not 
 be ungrateful to the curious reader, and which therefore 1 
 shall here set down. I suppose my reader acquainted with 
 Maundrell ; but it will be proper, Yor the sake of perspicu- 
 ity, first to recite at full length that passage in him I refer t ■). 
 
 " Thursday, March 11. This day we all dined at Con- 
 sul Hastings's house ; and al\er dinner went to wait upon 
 Ostan, the basha of Tripoli, having first sent our present, 
 as the manner is among the Turks, to procure a propitious 
 reception. It is counted uncivil to visit in this country 
 withc^ut an ofl^ering in hand. All great men expect it as a 
 kind of tribute due to their character and authority; and 
 look upon themselves as affronted, and indeed defrauded, 
 when this compliment is omitted. Even in familiar visits, 
 among inferior people, you shall seldom have them come 
 without bringing a flower, or an orange, or some other such 
 token of their respect to the person visited : the Turks in 
 this point keeping up the ancient oriental customs hinted 
 1 Sam. ix. 7. If we go, says Saul, what shall we bring th€ 
 man of GodI there is not a present, &c. which words are 
 questionless to be understood in conformity to this eastern 
 custom, as relating to a token of respect, arid not a price of 
 divination." 
 
 Maundrell does not tell us what the present was which 
 they made Ostan. It will be more entirely satisfying to 
 
Chap. 9. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 159 
 
 the mind to observe, that in the East they not only univer- 
 sally send before them a present, or carry one with them, 
 especially when they visit superiors, either civil or ecclesi- 
 astical ; but that this present is frequently a piece of money, 
 and that of no very great value. So Dr. Pococke tells us, 
 that he presented an Arab sheik of an illustrious descent, 
 on whom he waited, and who attended him to the ancient 
 Hierapolis, with a piece of money, which he was told he 
 expecLed ; and that in Egypt an aga being dissatisfied with 
 the present he made him, he sent for the doctor's servant, 
 and told him, that he ought to have given him a piece of 
 cloth, and, if he had none, two sequins, worth about a guinea, 
 must be brought to him, otherwise he should see him no 
 more, with which demand he complied. In one case a 
 j)iece of money was expected, in the other two sequins de- 
 manded. A trifling present of money to a person of dis- 
 tinction among us would be an affront ; it is not however, 
 it seems, in the East. Agreeably to these accounts of 
 Pococke, we are told in the travels of Egmont and Heyman, 
 that the well of Joseph in the castle of Cairo is not to be 
 seen without leave from the commandant ; which having 
 obtained, they, in return, presented him with a sequin. 
 These instances are curious exemplifications of Mr. Maun- 
 drell's account of the nature of some of the eastern presents, 
 and ought by no means to be omitted in collections of the 
 kind 1 am now making. How much happier was the cul- 
 tivation of Mr. Maundrell's genius than of St. Jerome's ! 
 Though this father lived so many years in the East, and 
 might have advantageously applied the remains of their 
 ancient customs to the elucidation of scripture, to which, 
 if he was a stranger, he must have been an egregiously 
 negligent observer ; yet we find him, in his comment on 
 Micah iii. 11, roundly declaring, that by a prophet's re- 
 ceiving money, his prophesying became divination. And 
 when he afterward mentions this case of Saul's application 
 to Samuel, as what he fojresaw might be objected to him, 
 he endeavours to avoid 'the difficulty, by saying, We do 
 not find that Samuel accepted it, or that they even ventured 
 to offer it ; or if it must be supposed that he received it, that it 
 was rather to be considered as money presented to the taber- 
 nacle, than the reward of prophesying. How embarrassed 
 was the saint by a circumstance capable of the most clear 
 explanation ! Fond of allegorizing, he neglected the surest 
 methods of interpretation, for which he had peculiar ad- 
 vantages ; how different are the rewards of divination, 
 which were to be earned, from the unconditional presents 
 that were made to persons of figure upon being introduced 
 into their presence ! Before I quit this observation, I can- 
 not forbear remarking, that there are other things present- 
 ed in the East, besides money, which appear to us extremely 
 low and mean, unworthy the quality of those that ofi'er 
 them, or of those to whom they are presented ; and conse- 
 quently that we must be extremely unqualified to judge of 
 these oriental compliments. In what light might a Euro- 
 pean wit place the present of a governor of an Egyptian 
 village, who sent to a British consul fifty eggs as a mark 
 of respect, and that in a country wherethey are so cheap as 
 to be sold at the rate of ten for a penny ? — Harmer. 
 
 A present always precedes the man who is to ask a fa- 
 vour. Those who come on a complimentary visit, or to 
 ask a favour, always present a lime, or a nosegay, with a 
 graceful bow, to propitiate their benefactor. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Now the Lord had told Samuel in his 
 
 The priests have a remarkable custom of whispering 
 
 something in the ear of those who are to be initiated. 
 
 When a boy has reached the age of eight, he is eligible to 
 
 have the IJhatheasum whispered in his right ear. The 
 
 I communication is generally made in the Grandam lan- 
 
 ! guage, which, of course, is not understood: they do, how- 
 
 I ever, sometimes speak in familiar speech ; but it will never 
 
 I be repeated, for the priest assures him, should he do this, 
 
 j his head will split in two. This ceremony is believed to 
 
 j have the power of a charm, and to possess talismanic in- 
 
 I fluence. It is sometimes very expensive, but the benefits 
 
 are believed to be so great as to warrant the expense. — 
 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. And Samuel said unto the cook, Bring- 
 the portion which I gave thee, of which I said 
 
 unto thee, S^. t it by ih^e. 24. And the cook 
 took up the sJi0!J;dr". and that which was upon 
 it, and set it be:bro Saul. And Samuel said, 
 Behold that which is left ! set it before thee, 
 and eat : for unto this time hath it been kept 
 for thee, since I said, 1 have invited the people. 
 So Saul did eat with Samuel that day. 
 
 The shoulder of a lamb well roasted, and covered with 
 butter and milk, is another d? \cacy, which the oriental 
 greatly value. This explains the reason why Samuel or- 
 dered it to oe set before his future sovereign, as well as 
 what that was which was upon it, the butter and milk of 
 which the sacred historian takes so particular notice. — 
 This was by no means a contemptible dish for a royal enter- 
 tainment, as some have alleged; but on the contrary, one 
 of the most delicious which could be set before the future 
 anointed of Jehovah. It appears from the accounts of 
 travellers, that lamb is, in those parts of the world, ex- 
 tremely delicate. One, says Chardin, must have eaten of 
 it in several places of Persia, Media, and Mesopotamia, 
 and of their kids, to form a conception of the moisture, 
 taste, delicacy, and fat of this animal; and as the eastern 
 people are no friends of game, nor of fish, nor fowls, their 
 most delicate food is the lamb and the kid. It is therefore 
 not without reason, the sacred writers often speak of the 
 lamb and the kid, as the most agreeable food in those 
 countries ; and that the holy Psalmist celebrates the bless- 
 ings of salva'ion, and particularly the spiritual comforts of 
 the heaven-born soul, under the figure of " marrow and 
 fatness." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver, 25. And when they were come down from 
 the high place into the city, Samuel communed 
 with Saul upon the top of the house. 26. And 
 they arose early : and it came to pass, about 
 the spring of the day, that Samuel called Saul 
 to the top of the house, saying, Up, that I may 
 send thee away. And Saul arose, and they 
 went out both of them, he and Samuel, abroad. 
 
 Egmont and He5rman tell us, that at Caipha, at the foot 
 of Mount Carmel, " the houses are small and flat-roofed, 
 where, during the summer, the inhabitants sleep in arbours 
 made of the boughs of trees." They mention also tents of 
 rushes on the flat roofs of the houses at Tiberias, which 
 are doubtless for the same purpose, though they do not say 
 so. Dr. Pococke in like manner tells us, "that when he 
 was at Tiberias in Galilee, he was entertained by the 
 sheik's steward, the sheik himself having much company 
 with him, but sending him provisions from his own kitch- 
 en, and that they supped on the top of the house for cool- 
 ness, according to their custom, and lodged there likewise, 
 in a sort of closet, about eight feet square, of a wicker-work, 
 plastered round towards the bottom, but without any door, 
 each person having his cell." In Galilee then we find they 
 lodged a stranger, whom they treated with respect, on the 
 top of the house, and even caused him to sup there. Thi"^ 
 was the latter end of May. This writer is more distinct 
 than the others on this point, and I have recited his ac- 
 count at large, because it may perhaps lead to the true ex- 
 planation of 1 Sam. ix. 25, 26, which verses tell us, that 
 after they descended from the high place, Samuel con- 
 versed with Saul (ijn Vj? til haggag) on the house-top; and 
 that at the spring of the day Samuel called Saul to the 
 housetop ; or, as it may be equally well translated, on the 
 housetop; that is, Samuel conversed with him for coolness 
 on the housetop in the evening, and in the mornirg called 
 Saul, who had lodged there all night, and was not got up, 
 saying. Up., that 1 may send thee away. The Septuagini 
 seem to have understood it very much in this light, for they 
 thus translate the passage, And. they spread a bed for Saul 
 on the housetop^ and he slept ; which shov/s how suitable this 
 explanation is to those that are acquainted with eastern 
 customs. As it is represented in our translation, Samuel 
 called Saul to the housetop in the morning; but no account 
 can be easily given for this ; it does not appear to have been 
 for secrecy, for he did not anoint then, but after he had lefll 
 Samuel's house, for which transaction the prophet ex- 
 
160 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 10—14; 
 
 pressly required secrecy, " As they were going down to 
 the end of the city, Samuel said to Saul, bid the servant 
 pass on before us, and he passed on, but stand thou still 
 awhile, that I may show thee the word of God." This 
 sleeping on the terraces of their houses is only in summer- 
 time. By this then we may determine, in the general, that 
 this secret inauguration of Saul»was in that part of the year. 
 Dr. Shaw has cited this passage concerning Samuel and 
 Saul, when mentioning the various uses to which the peo- 
 ple of the East put the flat roofs of their houses, though 
 without explaining it; but he has not mentioned, among the 
 other scriptures, that relating to Nebuchadnezzar, who is 
 described by the prophet as Avalking on the roof of his 
 palace, and taking a view of Babylon, when he fell, upon 
 surveying that mighty city, into that haughty soliloquy 
 which brought after it a dreadful humiliation. This is rhe 
 more to be regretted, because though many have, all have 
 not considered the passage in this light. Our own translation 
 in particular has not, but renders the words, " He walked in 
 the palace of the kingdom of Babylon," Dan. iv. 29, and 
 has thrown the other reading ''upon the palace," into the 
 margin, as less preferable. But to those that are acquaint- 
 ed with eastern customs, who recollect the passage, which 
 Dr. Shaw, it seems, did not, there cannot be any doubt how 
 it is to be understood. "Sur la terrasse," says Sir J. 
 Chardin, in his MS. note on this place, " pour le plaisir de 
 la vue, pour de la considerer la ville, et pour prendre la 
 frais, et c'est ce que prouve, le verset suivant." That is, 
 he walked upon the terrace, for the pleasure of the pros- 
 pect, to take a view of the city, and to enjoy the fresh air, 
 which the following verse proves. Nothing can be more 
 natural than this interpretation. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 5, When thou art come hither to the city, 
 thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming- 
 down from the high place, with a psaltery, and 
 a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp before them ; and 
 they shall prophesy. 
 
 The prophets in the ordinary modes of prophesying, 
 were accustomed to compose their hymns to some musical 
 instrument ; and there could be but little difficulty in adapt- 
 ing their effusions to a measure which required, probably, 
 no great restrictions in a language so free and uncontrolled 
 as the Hebrew. The Jews conceived that music calmed 
 the passions, and prepared the mind for the reception of 
 the prophetic influence. It is probable, that the prophets 
 on these occasions did not usually perform themselves on 
 the musical instruments, but rather accompanied the strains 
 of the minstrel with their voice. — (Lowth.) It has been the 
 practice of all nations to adapt their religious worship to 
 music, which the fabulous accounts of antiquity derived 
 from heaven, — Burder. 
 
 Yer. 27. But the children of Belial said, How 
 shall this man save us? And they despised 
 him, and brought him no presents : but he held 
 his peace. 
 
 See on Ps. 76. 11. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Ver. 2. Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, 
 and encamped against Jabesh-gilead : and all 
 the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a 
 covenant with us, and we will serve thee. 2. And 
 Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this 
 condition will I make a covenant with you, that 
 I may thrust out all your right eyes. 
 
 This cruel practice was very common, formerly, in the 
 East, and even yet prevails in some places. Mr. Hanway 
 gives several instances of it. " Mohammed Khan, (not 
 long after I left Persia,) his eyes were cut out." Page 224. 
 " The close of this hideous scene of punishment, was an 
 order to cut out the eyes of this unhappy man : the soldiers 
 were dragging him to this execution, while he begged. 
 With bitter cries, that he might rather suffer death." 'Page 
 
 203. " Sadoc Aga had his beard cut off, his face was 
 rubbed with dirt, and his eyes were cut out." Page 204. 
 " As we approached Astrabad, we met several armed 
 horsemen, carrying home the peasants whose eyes had 
 been put out, the blood yet running down their faces.* 
 Page 201. Chardin relates an instance of a king of Imi- 
 retta, who lived in this condition. Page 160. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 4. Then came the messengers to Gibeah of 
 Saul, and told the tidings in the ears of the 
 people : and all the people lifted up their voices, 
 and wept. 
 
 See on Jer, 6. 1. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 16. Now therefore stand and see this great 
 thing which the Lord will do before your eyes. 
 17. /5 i^ not wheat-harvest to-day ? I will call 
 unto the Lord, and he shall send thunder and 
 rain ; that ye may perceive and see that your 
 wickedness is great, which ye have done in 
 the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king. 
 
 Though the summer in Syria is commonly dry, the 
 heavens are sometimes overcast, and a smart thunder- 
 shower suddenly rushes down to refresh the parched soil. 
 One of these fell at Aleppo in the night between the first 
 and second of July, 1743 ; but it was regarded as a yery 
 uncommon occurrence at that season. It is probably still 
 more extraordinary at Jerusalem; for Jerome, who lived 
 long in Palestine, denies, in his commentary on Amos, 
 that he had ever seen rain in those provinces, and espe- 
 cially in Judea, in the end of June, or in the month of July. 
 It may, however, occasionally tall, though Jerome had 
 never seen it, as it did at Aleppo, while Dr. Russel resided 
 in that city. But such an occurrence by no means inval- 
 idates the proof which ihe prophet Samuel gave of his 
 divine mission, when he called for thunder and rain from 
 heaven in the time of wheat-harvest ; since a very rare 
 and unusual event immediately happening without any 
 preceding appearance of it, upon the prediction of a person 
 professing himself to be a prophet of the Lord, and giving 
 it as an attestation of his sustaining that character, is a suf- 
 ficient proof that his affirmation is true, although a similar 
 event has sometimes happened without any such declared 
 interposition of God, and therefore universally understood 
 to be casual and without design. Nor should it be forgotten, 
 that this thunderstorm in the laook of Samuel, seems to have 
 happened in the daytime, while the people of Israel were 
 celebrating the accession of Saul to the throne; a circum- 
 stance which, from its singularity, added considerable 
 energy to this event, and, perhaps, was to them a sufficient 
 proof of the miraculous interference of Jehovah. Dr. 
 Russel informs us, that the rains in those countries usually 
 fall in the night, as did those extraordinary thunderstorms 
 already mentioned, which happened in the month of July 
 — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 18. And another company turned the way 
 to Beth-horon : and another company turned t.o 
 the way of the border that looketh to the valley 
 of Zeboim, towards the wilderness. 
 See on Jer. 12. 9. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 25. And all ^Aey o/ the land came to a wood; 
 
 and there was honey upon the ground. 
 See on Ps. 81. 16. 
 
 Ver, 26. And when the people were come into 
 the wood, behold, the honey dropped. 
 
 Bees, in the East, are not, as in England, kept in hives : 
 they are all in a wild state. The forests literally flow with 
 honey; large combs may be seen hanging on the trees as 
 you pass along, full of honey. Hence this article is cheap 
 and plentiful, and is much lised by the Vedahs to preserve 
 
Chap. 15—17. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 IGl 
 
 the flesh of animals they catch in the chase. The ancient 
 poets take great pleasure in speaking of the value of milk 
 and honey.— Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 '-ti-fm^ev. 9. But Saul and the people spared Agag, 
 and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and 
 of the failings, and the lambs. 
 
 The margin has, instead of " fatlings," of the " second 
 sort" This curious way of designating the quality of 
 animals finds an exact parallel among the Hindoos. They 
 do not usually compare, as we do, by good, better, best; but 
 first, second, or third sort. An animal of the finest pro- 
 portions is said to be of the first sort ; the next, of the 
 second ; and the last, the third. All the productions of art 
 and nature are compared, as to their value, in the same 
 way. They tell us there are three kinds of fruit they pre- 
 fer to all others : first, gold ; second, precious stones ; and 
 third, land. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 33. And Samuel said, As thy sword hath 
 made women childless, so shall thy mother be 
 childless among women. And Samuel hewed 
 Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. 
 
 See on Ezra 4. 14. 
 
 Criminals were sometimes hewed in pieces, and their 
 mangled bodies given as a prey to ravenous beasts. This 
 punishment seems to have been extremely common in 
 Abyssinia, when Mr. Bruce was there, and was probably 
 handed down from the founders of that kingdom: " Coming 
 across the market-place," says the traveller, " I had seen 
 Za Mariam, the Ras's doorkeeper, with three men bound, 
 one of whom he fell a-hacking to pieces in my presence ; 
 and upon seeing me running across the place, stopping my 
 nose, he called me to stay till he should despatch the 
 other two, for he wanted to speak with me, as if he had 
 been engaged about ordinary business ; that the soldiers, 
 in consideration of his haste, immediately fell upon the 
 other two, whose cries were still remaining in my ears ; 
 that the hyenas at night would scarcely let me pass in the 
 streets, when I returned from the palace; and the dogs fled 
 into my house, to eat pieces of human carcasses at their 
 leisure." This account elucidates the mode of execution 
 adopted by the prophet Samuel, in relation to Agag, the 
 king of Amalek : " And Samuel said, (-upnd) As (or, in 
 the same identical mode) thy sword hath made women 
 childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. 
 And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in 
 Gilgal." This was not a sudden and passionate act of 
 vengeance, but a deliberate act of retributive justice. 
 That savage chieftain had hewed many prisoners to death; 
 and therefore, by the command of Jehovah, the judge of all 
 the earth, he is visited with the same punishment which he 
 had cruelly used towards others. — Paxton. 
 
 In Light's Travels, we are informed, that " Djezzar had 
 reason to suspect fraud in the conduct of some of the 
 ofticers of the seraglio : and, as he could not discover the 
 offenders, he had between fifty and sixty of them seized, 
 stripped naked, and laid on the ground : and to each was 
 placed a couple of janizaries, who were ordered to hew 
 them in pieces with their swords." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 6. And he had greaves of brass upon his 
 legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. 
 
 These were necessary to defend the legs and feet from 
 the iron stakes placed in the way by the enemy, to gall 
 and wound their opponents. They were a part of ancient 
 military harness, and the a-rtifices made use of by contend- 
 ing parties rendered the precaution important,— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 7. And the staff of his spear was like a 
 weaver's beam ; and his spear's head loeighed 
 six hundred shekels of iron ; and one bearing 
 a shield went before him. 
 
 The oriental warrior had a person who went before him 
 21 
 
 in the hour of danger, whose office it was to bear the great 
 massy buckler, behind which he avoided the missile 
 weapons of his enemy. Goliath had his armour-bearer 
 carrying a shield before him, when he came up to defy the 
 armies of Israel. When David went first to court, he was 
 made armour-bearer to Saul ; and Jonathan had a young 
 man who bore his armour before him in the day of battle. 
 Besides the large and ponderous buckler, the gigantic 
 Philistine had another ol smaller size called cidoti^ which 
 we render target in one part of our version, and shield in 
 another. It might either be held in the hand when the 
 warrior had occasion to use it, or, at other times, be con- 
 veniently hung about his neck, and turned behind ; and, 
 therefore, the historian observes he had " a target of brass 
 between his shoulders," — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 1 8. And carry these ten cheeses unto the 
 captain of their thousand, and look how thy 
 brethren fare. 
 
 The art of coagulating milk, and converting it into 
 cheese, was known among the Syrian shepherds, from the 
 remotest times. Instead of runnet, they turn the milk, 
 especially in the summer season, with sour buttermilk, the 
 flowers of the great-headed thistle, or wild artichoke ; and, 
 putting the curds afterward into small baskets made with 
 rushes, or with the dwarf palm, they bind them up close, 
 and press them. These cheeses are rarely above two or 
 three pounds weight ; and in shape and size, resemble our 
 penny loaves. Oriental cheeses are sometimes of so very 
 soft a consistence, after they are pressed, and even when 
 they are set upon the table, that they bear a very near re- 
 semblance to curds, or to coagulated milk, which forms a 
 very considerable part of eastern diet. But the ten cheeses 
 which David carried to the camp of Saul, seem to have 
 been fully formed, pressed, and sutficiently dried, to admit 
 of their being removed from one place to another, without 
 the frames in which they were made. — Paxton, 
 
 The sons of Jesse \^ere serving in the army of Saul ; 
 and as he probably had not heard from them for some 
 time, he sent their brother David to take a present to the 
 captain, to induce him to be kind to his sons ; also to bring 
 a pledge, or token, from his sons themselves, to assure him 
 that they were well. A person in a distant country sends 
 to those who are interested in his welfare a ring, a lock of 
 hair, or a piece of his nail. This is his " pledge" of health 
 and prosperity. A man who has returned from a far coun- 
 try, in calling upon an old friend (should he not be at home) 
 will leave a handkerchief as a token, to testify that he had 
 called. — Roberts. 
 
 The Vulgatg illustrates this passage by translating the 
 Hebrew words, decem formellas casei, ten little baskets of 
 cheese, or, ten cheeses made in such baskets. To this day, 
 in Barbary, " after turning the milk with the flowers of the_ 
 great-headed thistle, or wild artichoke, they put the curds 
 into small baskets, made with rushes or with the dwarf 
 palm, and bind them up close and press them." (Shaw.) 
 "Another offeted me milk in baskets; a circumstance that 
 astonished me. What, exclaimed I, milk in baskets! These 
 baskets, he continues, are very pretty, and fabricated with 
 reeds so closely interwoven, that they will hold water, and 
 were afterwards of much service to me for that use," 
 (Vaillant.) " In the evening they sent us in return some 
 baskets of milk. These baskets were made from a species 
 of cyperus, a strong reedy grass that grew in the springs 
 of Zaure Veld. The workmanship was exceedingly clever 
 and neat, and the texture so close that they were capable of 
 containing the thinnest fluid." (Barrow.) " The girls also 
 twist cotton yam for fringes, and prepare canes, reeds, and 
 palmetto leaves, as the boys also do, for basket making: 
 but the making up the baskets is the men's work, who first 
 die the materials of several curious lively colours, and then 
 mix and weave them very prettily. They weave little bas- 
 kets like cups also very neat, with the twigs wrought so 
 very fine and close, as to hold any liquor without anymore 
 to do, having no lacker or varnish: and they as ordinarily 
 drink out of these woven cups, as out of their calabashes, 
 which they paint very curiously. They make baskets ol 
 several sizes for carrying their clothes, or other uses, with 
 great variety of work; and so firm, that you may crush 
 them, or throw them about how you will, almost with little 
 or no damage to them." — Burder. 
 
162 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 17. 
 
 Ver. 20. And David rose up early in the morn- 
 ing, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, 
 and went, as Jesse had commanded him : and 
 he came to the trench as the host was going 
 forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle. 
 
 After the introduction of trumpets into Greece, her ar- 
 mies generally began the attack at the sound of this war- 
 like instrument ; but the Lacedemonians were particularly 
 remarkable for beginning their engagements with the soft 
 tones of the flute, which were intended to render the com- 
 batants cool and sedate, and enable them to march with a 
 firm and majestic step against their enemies. In the armies 
 of Israel, the courage of the soldiers was roused and sus- 
 tained by a concert of various instruments; in which were 
 distinguished the martial sounds of the silver trumpet, and 
 the gentler notes of the harp and the psaltery. In the be- 
 ginning of their onset, they gave a general shout to en- 
 courage and animate one another, and strike terror into 
 their enemies. This circumstance is distinctly stated in 
 the first book of Samuel : " And David rose up early in 
 the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, 
 and went, as Jesse had commanded him ; and he came to 
 the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and 
 shouted for the battle. For Israel and the Philistines had 
 put the battle in array, army against army." This custom 
 seems to have been used by almost every nation under 
 heaven ; and is mentioned by all writers, who treat of 
 martial affairs. Homer compares the confused noise of 
 two armies in the heat of battle, to the deafening roar of 
 torrents rushing With impetuous force from the mountains 
 into subjacent valleys. 
 
 In the wars which the Hebrews prosecuted in Canaan, 
 and in the surrounding countries, the generals fought at 
 the head of their armies, performing at once the part of a 
 private soldier, and the various duties of a resolute cap- 
 tain. In the heroic ages, the Grecian generals exposed 
 their persons in the same way. Homer, in all his battles, 
 places the principal officers in the front, and calls them 
 Tpi)naj(^ai and rpi^iioi^ because they fought before their ar- 
 mies. Thus when he led up the Trojans, the godlike Paris 
 fought at their head ; and when Achilles sends out his sol- 
 diers to defend the Grecian ships, having allotted to the rest 
 of his officers their several posts, he places Patroclus and 
 Automedon, as chief commanders, before the front. — Pax- 
 
 -ON. 
 
 Ver. 23. And as he talked with them, behold, 
 there came up the champion (the Philistine of 
 Gath, Goliath by name) out of jjfie armies of 
 the Philistines, and spake according to the 
 same words : and David heard them. 24. And 
 all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, 
 fled from him, and were sore afraid. 
 
 The ancient Hebrews, like the nations around them, 
 were wholly unacquainted with the refinements of modern 
 warfare. From the age of Abraham, the renowned fa- 
 ther of their tribes, they had little other business to employ 
 their leisure hours, but feeding their flocks and herds, or 
 tilling a few acres of land in the districts which they visited, 
 except in Egypt, where their severe bondage was still more 
 unfavourable to the cultivation of military habits. In such 
 circumstances, the defence of their flocks and herds from 
 the violence of roving hordes, which occasionallv scoured 
 the country in quest of spoil, generally produced the only 
 wars in which they engaged. The rapid history of the 
 patriarchs records a sufficient number of incidents, to show, 
 that how rude and unpolished soever they may be deemed, 
 they were by no means deficient in personal courage ; and 
 in the expedition of Abraham against the confederate kings, 
 we can discern the rudimentsof that military conduct, which 
 has ^o often siiice his time filled the world with admiration 
 or dismay. It will be readilv admitted, that when the 
 chosen people went up out of Egypt, where they had been 
 long and cruelly oppressed, and in consequence of their 
 miseries had contracted the abject and cowardly disposi- 
 tions of the slave, they were quite incapable of warlike 
 enterprises; but when their ^inds recovered that vigour 
 and elevation which the fr'-.edom and hardships of the wil- 
 
 derness inspired, they discovered on many trying occasions, 
 a boldness and resolution which were never surpassed by 
 any of their antagonists. Till the reign of David, the ar- 
 mies of Israel were no better than a raw and undisciplined 
 militia ; and the simplicity of their behaviour sufficiently # 
 appears from the story of Goliath, who defied all the \p,r-* 
 riors that fought under the banners of Saul ; and with a 
 haughty look, and a few arrogant words, struck them with 
 so great a terror that they fled before him. But the troops 
 of the surrounding kingdoms were neither more courage- 
 ous nor more skilful in the use of arms, which is evident 
 from the history of David's captains, the first of whom en- 
 gaged, single handed, three hundred men, and slew them at 
 one time. And this is not the only instance of such daring 
 and successful valour ; he was one of three warriors who 
 defended a plot of barley, after the people had fled, eigainst 
 the whole force of the Philistines, whom they routed with 
 prodigious slaughter, after a desperate conflict. Nor is 
 the sacred historian justly chargeable with transgressing 
 the rules of probability in such relations, which, however 
 strange and incredible they may appear to us, exactly ac- 
 cord with the manners of the times in which he wrote. 
 Homer often introduces Achilles, Hector, and other heroes 
 engaging, and, by the valour of their own arm, putting 
 to flight whole squadrons of their enemies. Such feats 
 are by no means uncommon in the history of the rude 
 and unpolished nations, who, in the revolution of a few 
 ages, became not less celebrated for their steady and dis- 
 ciplined heroism in the field, than for the sagacity of their 
 measures in the cabinet. Under the banners of David, a 
 prince of a truly heroic mind, the tribes of Israel often put 
 to flight vast numbers of their enemies^ and became a terror 
 to all the circumjacent kingdoms. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 34. And David said unto Saul, Thy servant 
 kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion 
 and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock. 
 
 Although the lion is the terror of the forest, and has been 
 known to scatter destruction over the fairest regions of the 
 East ; yet he is often compelled to yield to the superior 
 prowess or address of man. When Samson, the champion 
 of Israel, went down to Timnath, a city belonging to the 
 tribe of Dan, situated in the valley of Sorek, so renowned 
 for the excellence of its vines, a young lion roared against 
 him ; " and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, 
 and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had 
 nothing in his hand." In this > instance, the lion was only 
 giving the usual signal for the attack which he meditated, 
 and consequently his kindling passions had not reached 
 their highest excitement; but it appears from the authentic 
 page of history, that the prey is sometimes rescued from 
 his devouring jaws, when his fury is excited to the highest 
 degree of intensity. To this circumstance, the prophet 
 Amos refers, in that part of his prophecy where he de- 
 scribes the extreme difficulty with which a few of the 
 meaner and poorer inhabitants of Samaria, should escape 
 from the power of their enemies: " Thus saith the Lord, 
 as the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion, two 
 legs or a piece of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be 
 taken out that dwell in Samaria." The daring intrepidity, 
 the admirable presence of mind, and great strength of Da- 
 vid, when he tended his father's flocks in the wilderness, 
 were subjected to a severe trial, by the attack of a lion, 
 which he thus relates to Saul : " Thy servant kept his fa- 
 ther's sheep; and there came a lion and a bear, and took a 
 lamb out of the flock; and I went out after him, and smote 
 him, and delivered it out of his mouth ; and when he rose 
 against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and 
 slew him : thy servant slew both the lion and the bear." 
 In these words, the youthful shepherd indisputably details 
 the particulars of two exploits performed on different occa- 
 sions ; for the lion and the bear never hunt in company. 
 Like the greater part of other wild beasts, they prowl alone, 
 rejecting the society of even one of their own species. " It 
 is not therefore to be supposed, they will associate on such 
 occasions with other animals. A careless reader might 
 imagine that David encountered them both at the same 
 time, and Castalio has been so inconsiderate as to make 
 the text speak this language; for he translates it, There 
 came a lion, una cum, together or in company with a bear. 
 But are We to suppose, that these two animals, contrary tw 
 
Chap. 17. 
 
 I SAMUEL. 
 
 163 
 
 their nature, entered into partnership on this occasion, and 
 that to seize upon one poor lamb, and divide it between 
 theml Or if no miracle was wrought in the case, but 
 the victory was achieved by the natural strength and reso- 
 ld liition of David, aided by the good providence of God, how 
 many hands must we suppose him to have had, in order at 
 once to seize two such animals, to smite them both, and to 
 rescue the lamb" from their jaws 1 How was it possible 
 for a single youth, for at that time he was not more than 
 twenty years of age, to encounter with success two of the 
 strongest and fiercest beasts that range the forest 1 Or if 
 David vanquished these terrible depredators, not by his 
 own courage and address, but by the miraculous assistance 
 of heaven, still the difficulty is not removed ; for he could 
 have no warrant from such a victory to encounter Goliath. 
 It became him to enter the lists with the giant, depending 
 upon the ordinary assistance of God, and the usual vigour 
 of his own arm, not upon a miracle, which God had not 
 promised. To avoid these inconveniences, it is necessary 
 to admit, that David mentions two different rencounters, 
 one with a lion, and another with a bear; in both which he 
 succeeded in rescuing the prey from the devourer. This 
 hypothesis has the advantage of being perfectly consistent 
 with the text; for the particle rendered and, is often dis- 
 junctive, and ought to be translated or. Thus, in the law 
 of the passover, it is commanded, " Ye shall take it out 
 from the sheep or from the goats ;" and in the precept for 
 securing reverence to parents, " He that smiteth his father 
 or his mother, shall surely be put to death ;" " and he that 
 curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to 
 death;" in all which, the connecting particle is the same. 
 But by the law of Moses, only one lamb, or one kid, was to 
 be taken for each household, not two; and if a person 
 smote, or cursed one of his parents, he was guilty of death ; 
 in these cases, therefore, the particle is properly rendered 
 or ; and by consequence, may be so rendered in the text 
 under consideration. The words of David would then run 
 thus: There came a lion or a bear, and took a lamb out of 
 the flock. This version is also required by the verb, 
 which, instead of being in the plural, as the conjunctive 
 particle demands, is in the singular number, which clear- 
 ly indicates a disjunctive sense. This is confirmed by the 
 next verse, in which David speaks of them in the singular 
 number : " And I went out after him, and smote him, and 
 delivered it out of his mouth ; and when he rose against 
 me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew 
 him." If these two animals had been in company, he 
 could with no propriety have spoken of them in tnis man- 
 ner. The meaning therefore is, there came a lion on one 
 occasion, and on another a bear, and took each a lamb out 
 of the flock ; and he went out against each of them and res- 
 cued the lamb from his mouth. Thus, by the favour of 
 Providence, did the future shepherd of Israel, on two dif- 
 ferent occasions, slay both the lion and the bear. Nor 
 ought this to be reckoned an achievement beyond the 
 power of a single combatant ; for an ancient poet only ad- 
 mits it to be extremely dangerous, and almost beyond the 
 powers of man, to deliver the prey from the mouth of a 
 hungry lion, but does not venture to pronounce it imprac- 
 ticable : — 
 
 "Esurienti leoni ex ore exculpere praedam." 
 Nor is any mistake imputable to David, when he speaks of 
 seizing a bear by the beard ; for the original term sometimes 
 denotes the chin ; as in this precept of the ceremonial law : 
 " If a man or woman have a plague upon the head or beard; 
 then the priest shall see the plague." He, therefore, seized 
 the l.on by his beard, and the bear, that was not favoured 
 with this "ornament, by the chin ; which entirely removes 
 the difficulty. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 38. And Saul armed David with his ar- 
 mour, and he put a helmet of brass upon his 
 head ; also he armed him with a coat of mail. 
 
 A principal piece of defensive armour entitled to our no- 
 tice, is the nelmet, which protected the head. This has been 
 used from the remotest ages by almost every nation of a 
 martial spirit. The champion of the Philistines had a 
 helmet of brass upon his head, as had also the king of Is- 
 rael, who commanded the armies of the living God. This 
 martial cap was also worn by the Persians and Ethiopians 
 
 in the day of battle. The Grecian helmets were very often 
 made of the skins of beasts ; but the helmet of the Jewish 
 warrior seems to have been uniformly made of brass or 
 iron ; and to this sort of casque only, the sacred writer 
 seems to refer. In allusion to this piece of defensive ar- 
 mour, Paul directs the believer to put on for a helmet 
 the hope of salvation, which secures the head in every con- 
 test, till through him that loved him, he gain a complete 
 victory over all his enemies. That well-grounded hope 
 of eternal life, which is attended with ineffable satisfaction, 
 and never disappoints the soul, like a helmet of brass shall 
 guard it against fear and danger, enable it patiently to en- 
 dure every hardship, and fortify it against the most furious 
 and threatening attacks of Satan and all his confederates. 
 Such adversaries, this solid hope is not less calculated to 
 strike with dismay, than was the helmet of an ancient war- 
 rior in the day of battle his mortal foes, by its dazzling 
 brightness, its horrific devices of Gorgons and Chimeras, 
 and its nodding plumes which overlooked the dreadful 
 cone. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 43. And the Philistine said unto David, Am, 
 I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves ? 
 And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 
 
 Men of high caste will not strike those who are of low 
 caste with the hand, because the touch would defile them : 
 they therefore beat'them with a stick or some other weapon. 
 Hence to offer to strike any person with a stick is very 
 provoking, and the person so struck will ask, " Am I a 
 dog 1" When a man wishes to make another angry, he 
 pretends to be looking for a stick, which will produce a 
 similar question and feeling. Sometimes, however, they 
 only repeat the proverb, " Take up a stick, and the dog will 
 run off. As did the Philistines, so do these people curse 
 each other by their gods. The imprecations are generally 
 of such a kind as it would be improper to repeat. The ex- 
 tremes of filthiness, of sin and hell, are put under contribu- 
 tion, to furnish epithets and allusions for their execrations. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 44. And the Philistine said to David, Come 
 to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls 
 of the air, and to the beasts of the field. 
 
 The rhodomontade of Goliath is still the favourite way 
 of terrifying an enemy. " Begone, or I will give thy flesh 
 to the jackals." " The crows shall soon have thy carcass." 
 "Yes, the teeth of the dogs shall soon have hold of thee." 
 " The eagles are ready."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 51. Therefore David ran, and stood upon 
 the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it 
 out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut 
 off his head therewith. And when the Philis- 
 tines saw their champion was dead, they fled. 
 
 The ancient Grecians frequently committed their cause 
 to the issue of a single combat, and decided their quarrels 
 by two or more champions on each side ; and their kings 
 and great commanders were so eager in the pursuit of 
 glory, and so tender of the lives of their subjects, that they 
 frequently sent challenges to their rivals, to end the quar- 
 rel by a single encounter, that by the death of one of them, 
 the effusion of more blood might be prevented. Ancient 
 history contains many remarkable instances of such com- 
 bats; Xanthus, king of BcEotia, challenged the king of 
 Attica, to terminate the dangerous war in which their 
 states were engaged in this way, and lost his life >n the 
 contest; and Pittacus, the famous Mitylenian, hilled 
 Phryno the Athenian general, in a single combat. This 
 custom was not unknown in Palestine and other tastern 
 countries, for the champion of the Philistines challenged 
 the armies of Israel, to give him a man to fight with him ; 
 and when he fell by the valour of David, his countrymen, 
 struck with dismay, immediately deserted their standards, 
 and endeavoured to save themselves by flight' The chal- 
 lenge given on those occasions, was generally couched in 
 the most insolent language, and delivered with a very con- 
 temptuous air. Thus, Homer makes one chief address 
 another in these terms : " Bold as thou art, too prodigal of 
 
164 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 18. 
 
 ife, approach and enter the dark gates of death," But 
 his is a tame spiritless defiance, compared with the proud 
 ind insulting terms which Goliath addressed to his young 
 and inexperienced antagonist: " Come to me, and I will 
 give thy flesh to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the 
 field;" or the bold and manly, but devout reply of the 
 youthful warrior : " Thou comest to me with a sword, and 
 w'th a spear, and with a shield, but I come to thee in the 
 name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, 
 whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver 
 thee into my hand, and I will smite thee, and take thy 
 head from thee, and I will give the carcasses of the hosts of 
 the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the 
 wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that 
 there is a God in Israel." The Philistines no sooner saw 
 their champion fallen, and his head severed from his body, 
 than, seized with a panic fear, they fled, and the armies of 
 Israel pursued with loud acclamations. Another instance 
 of panic which struck the army of the Philistines, a short 
 time before, when Jonathan and his armour-bearer fell 
 upon their garrison and put them to flight, is described in 
 these terms : " And there was trembling in the host, in the 
 field, and among all the people; the garrison and the 
 spoilers, they a/so trembled ; and the earth quaked ; so it 
 was a very great trembling." In the Hebrew, it is a trem- 
 ^Ung of God ; that is, a fear which God sent upon them, 
 and consequently which the strongest mind could not reason 
 down, nor the firmest heart resist. This fear, the Greeks 
 and other heathen nations called a panic ; because Pan, 
 one of their gods, was believed to be the author of it. 
 Bacchus, in his Indian expedition, led his army into some 
 defiles, where he was surrounded by his enemies, and re- 
 duced to the last extremity. By the advice of Pan, his 
 lieutenant-general, he made his army give a sudden shout, 
 which struck the enemy with so great astonishment and 
 terror, that they fled with the utmost precipitation. Hence, 
 it was ever afterward called a panic, and supposed to 
 come directly from heaven. It is thus expressed by Pindar : 
 " When men are struck with divine terrors, even the chil- 
 dren of the gods betake themselves to flight." The flight 
 of the Syrians, in the reign of Jehoram, king of Israel, 
 was produced by a panic, which so completely unmanned 
 them, that, says the sacred historian, " all the way was 
 full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast 
 away in their haste." The flight of Saladin's army, 
 which was defeated by Baldwin IV. near Gaza, in the 
 lime of the crusades, was marked with similar circum- 
 stances of consternation and terror. To flee with greater 
 expedition, they threw away their arms and clothes, their 
 coats of mail, their greaves, and other pieces of armour, 
 and abandoned their bagg^age, and fled from their pursuers, 
 almost in a state of complete nudity. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 55. And when Saul saw David go forth 
 against the Philistine, he said unto Abner, the 
 captain of the host, Abner, whose son is this 
 youth ? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 
 O king, I cannot tell. 
 
 It is a favourite way of addressing a person by saying, 
 " You are the son of such a person," or, " Is he not the son 
 of such a man V How Saul could have forgotten David, 
 is im.possible to account for. "When a person has to ask a 
 number of questions, though he know well the name, of the 
 individual he has to address, he often begins by asking, 
 *' Whose son are you 1" Many people never go by their 
 proper name : they are known by the son of such a person, 
 as Nellindderin Maggan, i. e. the son of Nellindder. — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 57. And as David returned from the slaugh- 
 ter of the Philistine, Abner took him, and 
 brought him before Saul, with the head of the 
 Philistine in his hand. 
 
 On some occasions the victor cut off the head of his ene- 
 my, and carried it in triumph on the point of a spear, and 
 presented it, if a person of inferior rank, to his prince or 
 the commander-in-chief. Barbarossa, the dey of Algiers, 
 returned in triumph from the conquest of the kingdom of 
 Cucco, with the head of the king, who had lost his life in 
 
 the contest, carried before him on a lance. Mr. Harmer 
 thinks it probable that the Philistines cut off" the head of 
 Saul, whom they found among the slain, on Gilboa, to car- 
 ry it in triumph on the point of a spear to their principal 
 city, according to the custom of those times ; and that Da- 
 vid, in a preceding war, severed the head of Goliath from 
 his body, for the purpose of presenting it to Saul, in the 
 same manner, on the point of a lance. The words of the 
 inspired historian do not determine the mode in which it 
 was presented ; we must therefore endeavour to form oup 
 opinion from the general custom of the East. The words 
 of the record are : " And as David returned from the 
 slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought 
 him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his 
 hand." It is scarcely to be supposed that the youthful war- 
 rior was introduced with the sword in the one hand, and 
 the head of his enemy in the other, like one of our execu- 
 tioners holding up the head of a traitor ; it is more reason- 
 able to imagine, says Mr. Harmer, that he appeared in a 
 more graceful and warlike attitude, bearing on the point 
 of a lance the head of his adversary. But it must be con 
 fessed that the other idea, after all that respectable writer 
 has said, is more naturally suggested by the words of the 
 inspired historian. It is a common practice in Turkey to 
 cut ofif the heads of enemies slain in battle, and lay them in 
 heaps before the residence of their emperor, or his princi- 
 pal oflScers. In Persia Mr. Hanway saw a pyramid of 
 human heads at the entrance of Astrabad. They were . 
 the heads of Persians who had rebelled against their sov- 
 ereign. This barbarous custom may be traced up to a 
 very remote antiquity ; and it was probably not seldom re- 
 duced to practice in the various governments of Asia. 
 When Jehu conspired against Ahab, he commanded the 
 heads of his master's children, seventy in number, to be cut 
 ofif, and brought in baskets to Jezreel, and " laid in two 
 heaps at the entering in of the gate until the morning." 
 The renowned Xenophon says, in his Anabasis, that the 
 same custom was practised by the Chalybes ; and Herod- 
 otus makes the same remark in relation to the Scythians. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 4. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe 
 that was upon him, and gave it to David, and 
 his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, 
 and to his girdle. 
 
 See on Est. 6. 7, 8. 
 
 An ancient mode of ratifying an engagement, was 
 by presenting the party with some article of their own 
 dress; and if they were warriors, by exchanging their 
 arms. The greatest honour which a king of Persia can 
 bestow upon a subject, is to cause himself to be disrobed, 
 and his habit given to the favoured individual. The cus- 
 tom was probably derived from the Jews ; for when Jona- 
 than made his covenant with David, " he stripped himself 
 of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and 
 his garments ; even to his sword, and to his bow, and to 
 his girdle." — In a similar way, Julus, and the other Trojan 
 chiefs, confirmed their solenin engagements to Nisus and 
 Euryalus : " Thus weeping over him, he speaks ; at the 
 same time divests his shoulders of his gilded sword — On 
 Nisus Mnestheus bestows the skin and spoil of a grim 
 shaggy lion ; trusty Alethes exchanges with him his hel- 
 met." This instance proves, that among the ancients, to 
 part with one's girdle was a token of the greatest confi- 
 dence and aflfection ; in some cases it was considered as 
 an act of adoption. The savage tribes of North America, 
 that are certainly of Asiatic origin, ratify their covenants 
 and leagues in the same way ; in token of perfect recon- 
 ciliation, they present a belt of wampum. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. And it came to pass, as they came, when 
 David Avas returned from the slaughter of the 
 Philistine, that the women came out of all the 
 cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet 
 king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with in- 
 struments of music. 
 
 Has a long absent son returned, is a person coming who 
 has performed some great exploit, are tne bride and bride* 
 
Chap. 19. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 161 
 
 groom with their attendants expected ; then, those in the 
 house go forth with tabrets and pipes to meet them, and 
 greet them, and conduct them on the way. When a great 
 man is expected, the people of the village always send the 
 tabrets and pipes to meet him. It is amusing to see with 
 what earnestness and vehemence they blow their instru- 
 ments, or beat their tom-toms, and stamp along the load. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 The dancing and playing on instruments of music, be- 
 fore persons of distinction, when they pass near the dwell- 
 ing-places of such as are engaged in country business, still 
 continue in the East. When the Baron de Tott was sent by 
 the French government, to inspect the factories of that na- 
 tion in the Levant, having proceeded from Egypt to the 
 maritime cities of Syria, he went from them to Aleppo, 
 and returnmg from thence to Alexandretta, in order to visit 
 Cyprus, and some other places of which he has given an 
 account in his memoirs, he tells us, that between Aleppo 
 and Alexandretta, he saw, on a sudden, the troop the gov- 
 ernor of Aleppo had sent with him, to escort him, turn 
 back and ride towards him. " The commander of the de- 
 tachment then showed me the tents of the Turcomen, 
 pitched on the banks of the lake, near which we were to 
 pass. It was no easy task to keep my company in good 
 spirits, within sight of six or seven thousand Asiatics, 
 whose peaceable intentions were at least doubtful." "I 
 took care to cover my escort with my small troop of Euro- 
 peans ; and we continued to march on, in this order, which 
 nad no very hostile appearance, when we perceived a mo- 
 tion in the enemy's camp, from which several of the Tur- 
 comen advanced to meet us, and I soon had the musicians 
 of the different hordes, playing and dancing before me all 
 thef^ime we were passing by the side of their camp." The 
 translation does not determine, whether these musicians 
 were of the male or female sex; but I doubt not but that it 
 would appear, on consulting the original French, that they 
 were women that played and danced before M. de Tott, 
 the French inspector, while passing along' the side of that 
 large encampment. We cannot after this wonder at the 
 account of the sacred historian, that when Saul and David 
 were returning from the slaughter of Goliath, the great hero 
 of the Philistines, the ii-omen came out of all the cities of 
 Israel, singing and dancing to meet King Saul, with tabrets, 
 with joy, and with instruments of music. That is, as I ap- 
 prehend, the women of the several villages of Israel near 
 which he passed, in returning to his settled abode, univer- 
 sally paid him the honour of singing and playing before him 
 for some considerable way, while he passed along in the 
 road near to them. All Israel were engaged in rural em- 
 ployments, as Veil as these Turcomen. De Tott ascribes 
 the honours paid him by these Asiatics to the hope of a re- 
 ward : " I took leave of them, by presenting them with that 
 reward, the hope of which had brought them to attend us, 
 and with which they were very civil to go away contented." 
 I would remark, that the eastern princes sometimes cause 
 money to be scattered in processions on joyful occasions, 
 according to this very writer ; however, the satisfaction that 
 succeeded great terror, upon the death of Goliath, was 
 enough to engage the Israelitish women universally to ppy 
 this honour to their own king, and an heroic youth of their 
 own nation, who had been the instrument of effecting such 
 a great salvation for their country, without any lucrative 
 considerations whatever.— Harmer. 
 
 When leaving the city of Lattakoo, to visit the king of 
 the Matslaroos, on the confines of the great southern Za- 
 hara desert, a party of men was returning from a distant 
 exped ition, afler an absence of several months. The news 
 of their approach had reached the town, and the women 
 were hastening to meet them. On joining the party, they 
 marched at their head, clapping their hands, and singing 
 with all their might, till they arrived at their homes in the 
 town. On witnessing this scene, my mind was carried 
 back three thousand years, to the very occurrence recorded 
 in the above passage. The occasion, no doubt, was a joy- 
 ful one to the females, some of whom had their husbands, 
 and others their fathers and brothers, in the expedition, for 
 whose safety they were interested, and had been anxiously 
 concerned. The same must have been the case with re- 
 spect to the Israelitish women, while Saul's army were re- 
 turning victorious from the Philistine war. — African Light. 
 
 Ver. 25. And Saul said. Thus shall ye say to Da- 
 
 vid, The kingf desireth not any dowry, but a 
 hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be 
 avenged of the king's enemies. But Saul 
 thought to make David fall by the hand of the 
 Philistines. 
 
 In the remote ages of antiquity, women were literally 
 purchased by their husbands; and the presents made to 
 their parents or other relations were called their dowry. 
 The practice still continues in the country of Shechem ; 
 for when a young Arab wishes to marry, he must purchase 
 his wife; and for this reason, fathers, among the Arabs, 
 are never more happy than when they have many daugh- 
 ters. They are reckoned the principal riches of a touse. 
 An Arabian suiter will offer fifty sheep, six camels, cr * 
 dozen of cows ; if he be not rich enough to make such of- 
 fers, he proposes to give a mare or a colt; considering in 
 the offer, the merit of the young woman, the rank of her 
 family, and his own circumstances. In the primitive 
 times of Greece, a well-educated lady was valued at four 
 oxen. When they are agreed on both sides, the contract 
 is drawn up by him that acts as cadi or judge among these 
 Arabs. In some parts of the East, a measure of corn is 
 formally mentioned in contracts for their concubines, or 
 temporary wives, besides the sum of money which is stipu- 
 lated by way of dowry. This custom is probably as an- 
 cient as concubinage, with which it is connected ; and if so, 
 it will perhaps account for the prophet Hosea's purchasing 
 a wife of this kind, for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a 
 homer of barley, and a half homer of barley. When the 
 intended husband was not able to give a dowry, he offered 
 an equivalent. The patriarch Jacob, who came to Laban 
 with only his staff, offered lo serve him seven years for 
 Rachel ; a proposal which Laban accepted. This custom 
 has descended to modern times; for in Cabul, the young 
 men who are unable to advance the required dowry, " live 
 with their future father-in-law and earn their bride by their 
 services, without ever seeing the object of their \Vishes." 
 Saul, instead of a dowry, required David to bring him a 
 hundred foreskins of the Philistines, under the pretence of 
 avenging himself of his enemies. This custom has pre- 
 vailed in latter times ; for in some countries they give their 
 daughters in marriage to the valiant men, or those whoN 
 should bring them so many heads of the people with whom 
 they happen to be at war. It is recorded of a nation in 
 Caramania, that no man among them was permitted to 
 marry, till he had first brought the head of an enemy to the 
 king. Aristotle admits, that the ancient Grecians were ac- 
 customed to buy their wives ; but they no sooner began to 
 lay aside their barbarous manners, than this disgusting 
 practice ceased, and the custom of giving portions to their 
 sons-in-law, was substituted in its place. The Romans 
 also, in the first ages of their history, purchased their wives ; 
 but afterward, they required the wife to bring a portion to 
 the husband, that he might be able to bear the charges of 
 the matrimonial state more easily. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ver. 12. So Michal let David down through a 
 window; and he went, and fled; and escaped. 
 13. And Michal took an image, and laid it m 
 the bed, and put a pillow of goats' hair for his 
 bolster, and covered iMvith a cloth. 14. And 
 when Saul sent messengers to take David, she 
 said, He is sick. 15. And Saul sent the mes- 
 sengers again to see David, saying, Bring him 
 up to me in the bed, that I may s.ay him 
 16. And when the messengers were come in 
 behold, there was an image in the bed, with a 
 pillow of goats' hair for his bolster. 17. And 
 Saul said unto Michal, Why hast thou deceived 
 me so, and sent away mine enemy, that he is 
 escaped ? And. Michal answered Saul, He said 
 unto me, Let me go ; why should I kill thee ? 
 
 An accident led me into a train of thought, relating to 
 that piece of furniture the Romans called a canopeum, and 
 
166 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 20,21, 
 
 which is said to denote a canopy or pavilion made of net- 
 work, which hung about beds, and was designed to keep 
 away gnats, which are someiimes insupportably trouble- 
 some to the more delicate. I recollected that it is at this 
 time used in the East ; and that if it may be supposed to 
 have obtained so early there as the time of King Saul, it 
 may very happily illustrate the above passage of scripture, 
 of which our commentators have given a very unsatisfac- 
 tory account. I should suppose a canopeum, or guard 
 against gnats, is what is meant by the word translated a 
 pillow of goals' hair, f cannot conceive what deception 
 could arise from the pillow's being stutfed with goats' nair, 
 or for making a truss of goats' hair serve for a pillow. This 
 last must have been, on the contrary, very disagreeable to 
 a sick man ; especially one who, having married a princess, 
 must be supposed to have been in possession of agreeable ac- 
 commodations of life, such at least as were used at that time, 
 und in that country. A piece of fine net-work to guard 
 L.o from gnats, and other troublesome insects, that might 
 ■irtfnib the repose of a sick man, was extremely natural, if 
 tiiC use of them was as early as the days of Saul. It is in 
 one place translated a thick cloth, in another, a sieve ; now 
 a cloth of a nature fit to use for a sieve, is just such a thing 
 as I am supposing, a fine net-work or gauze like cloth. 
 Here it is translated a pillow, but for no other reason, but 
 because it appeared to be something relating to the head ; 
 but a canopeum relates to the head as well as a pillow, 
 laeing a canopy Suspended over the whole bed, or at least 
 so far as to surround the head, and such upper part of the 
 body as might be uncovered. Modern canopies of this 
 nature may be of other materials : they may be of silk or 
 thread, but goats' hair was in great use in those earlier 
 ages, and may be imagined to have been put to this use in 
 those times, as our modern sieves still continue frequently 
 to be made of the hair of animals. 
 
 After this preparatory remark, I would produce a proof, 
 that this kind of defence against gnats is used in the East. 
 '• Among the hurtful animals that Egypt produces," says 
 Maillet,'" those that we call gnats ought not to be forgotten. 
 If their size prevents all apprehensions of dangerous acci- 
 dents from them, their multitudes make them insupportable. 
 The Nile water, which remains in the canals and the lakes, 
 into which it makes its way every year, produces such a 
 prodigious quantity of these insects, that the air is often 
 darkened by them. The nighttime is that in which people 
 are most exposed to receive punctures from them ; and it 
 is with a view to guard themselves from them, that they 
 sleep so much here on the tops of their houses, which are 
 flat-roofed. These terraces are paved with square flat 
 stones, very thin ; and as in this country, they have no ap- 
 prehensions from rain or fogs, they are wont to place their 
 beds on these roofs every night, in order to enjoy their re- 
 pose more undisturbedly and coolly, than they could any- 
 where else. Gnats seldom rise so high in the air. The 
 agitation of the air at that height is too much for them ; 
 they cannot bear it. However, for greater precaution, 
 persons of any thing of rank never fail to have a tent set 
 up in these terraces, in the midst of which is suspended 
 a pavilion of fine linen, or of gauze, which falls down to 
 the ground, and encloses the mattress. Under the shelter 
 of this pavilion, ^hichrthe people of the country call na- 
 'Mousie, from the word namous, which in their language 
 signifies Jly, or gnat, people are secured against these in- 
 sects, not only on the terraces, but everywhere else. If 
 they were to make use of them in Europe, I do not doubt 
 but that people that sleep in the daytime, and above all the 
 sick, would find the advantage of them ; for it must be 
 acknowledged, that in summer-time those small insects, 
 which introduce themselves into all places, are insupporta- 
 ble to people that would take their repose, and much 
 more so to those that are ill." No curious carved statue, 
 which indeed one can hardly imagine was to be found in 
 the house of David, was necessary; any thing formed in a 
 tolerable resemblance of the body of a man was sufficient 
 for this deception, covered over with the coverlet belonging 
 to the mattress on which it was laid, and where the bead 
 should have been placed, being covered all over with a 
 pavijion of goats' hair, through which the eye could not 
 penetrate. A second visit, with a more exact scrutiny, 
 .iiscovered the artifice. 
 
 There is another passage in which the word occurs, and 
 in the same sense. It is in the account the historian gives 
 
 us of the real cause of the death of Benhadad, the king of 
 Syria, 2 Kings viii. 15 ; " And it came to pass on the mor- 
 row, that he took a thick cloth, and dipped it in water, and 
 spread it over his face, so that he died : and Hazael reigned 
 in his stead." If Hazael stifled him, why all this parade % 
 the drawing the pillow from under his head, and clapping 
 it over his mouth, would have been sufficient. Why the 
 procuring a thick cloth, according to our translators '] why 
 the dipping it in water 1 It is the same word (I'-ns kebeer) 
 with that in Samuel, and, it is reasonable therefore to sup- 
 pose, means the same thing, a gnat pavilion. The dipping 
 it in water may well be supposed to be under the pretence 
 of coolness and refreshment. So Pitts tells us, that the 
 people of Mecca " do usually sleep on the tops of the houses 
 for the air, or in the streets before their doors. Some lay 
 the small bedding they have on a thin mat on the ground ; 
 others have a slight frame, made much like drink-stalls, ou 
 which we place barrels, standing on four legs, corded with 
 palm cordage, on which they put their bedding. Before 
 they bring out their bedding, they sweep the streets, and 
 water them. As for my own part, I usually lay open with- 
 out any bed-covering, on the top of the house ; only I took 
 a linen cloth, dipped in the water, and after I had v/rung it, 
 covered myself with it in the night : and when I awoke, if I 
 should find it dry, then I would wet it again -, and thus I 
 did two or three times in a night." In like manner, 
 Niebuhr tells us, in his description of Arabia, that " as ii 
 is excessively hot, in the summer-time, on the eastern 
 shore of the Persian gulf, and they do not find that the dew 
 there is unwholesome, they sleep commonly in the open 
 air." He goes on, "in the island of Charedsj, I never 
 enjoyed my repose better than when the dew moistei^i 
 my bed in the night." Hazael then had a fair pretence 
 to oflfer to moisten the gnat pavilion, if Benhadad did 
 not himself desire it, on the account of his extreme heat, 
 which might prove the occasion of his death, while the dis- 
 temper itself was not mortal. Whether the moisture of 
 that piece of furniture proved at that time destructive from 
 the nature of the disease, or whether Hazael stifled him 
 with it, we are not told by the historian, and therefore 
 cannot pretend absolutely to determine. Conjecture is not 
 likely to be very favourable to Hazael. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 30. Then Saul's anger was kindled against 
 Jonathan, and he said unto him, Thou son ot 
 the perverse rebellious woman, do not I know 
 that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine 
 own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy 
 mother's nakedness. 
 
 In the East, when they are angry with a person, they 
 abuse and vilify his parents. Saul thought of nothing bu, 
 venting his anger against Jonathan, nor had any design to 
 reproach his wife personally ; the mention of her was only 
 a vehicle by which, according to oriental modes, he was 
 to convey his resentment against Jonathan into the minds 
 of those about him. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 9. And the priest said, The sw.ord of Goliath 
 the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley 
 of Elah, behold, it is here, wrapped in a cloth 
 behind the ephod : if thou wilt take that, take 
 it ; for there is no other save that here. And 
 David said. There is none like that ; give it me. 
 
 To the jewels of silver and gold, which the Hebrew 
 soldier was accustomed to bring as a free-will 6flering 
 into the treasury of his God, must be added the armour ot 
 some illustrious foe, which, in gratitude for his preserva- 
 tion, he suspended in the sanctuary. The sword of Go- 
 liath was wrapped up in a cloth, and deposited behind the 
 ephod ; and in a succeeding war, the Philistines proving 
 victorious, took their revenge by depositing the armour of 
 Saul in the temple of Ashtaroth. The custom of dedica- 
 ting to the gods the spoils of a conquered enemy, and placing 
 them in their temples as trophies of victory and testimonies 
 of gratitude, is verv ancient, and universally received in 
 Asia and Greece. Hector promises to dedicate his enemy's 
 
Chap. 22, 23. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 167 
 
 armour in the temple of Apollo, if he would grant him the 
 victory : " But if I shall prove victorious, and Apollo 
 vouchsafe me the glory to strip off his armour, and carry 
 it to sacred Trov, then will I suspend it in the temple of 
 the far-darting Apollo." Virgil alludes to this custom in 
 his description of the temple, where Latinus gives audi- 
 ence to the ambassadors of -£neas : 
 
 " Multaque prseterea sacris in postibus arma," &c. 
 
 JSn. lib. vii. 1. 183. 
 
 " Besides, on the sacred doorposts, many arms, captive 
 chariots, and crooked cimeters are suspended, helmets, 
 crested plumes, and massy bars of gates, and darts, and 
 shields, and beaks torn from ships." Nor was it the cus- 
 tom only to dedicate to heaven the weapons taken from an 
 enemy; when the soldier retired from the tumults of war 
 to the bosom of his family, he frequently hung up his own 
 arms in the temple, as a grateful acknowledgment of the 
 protection he had received, and the victories he had won. 
 In this custom, the Greeks and Romans imitated the Asiatic 
 nations, and particularly the Hebrews ; for when David 
 resigned the command of his armies to his generals, he 
 laid up his arms in the tabernacle, where they continued 
 for several ages ; and there is reason to believe his conduct 
 in this respect, was followed by many of his companions in 
 arms. When Joash, one of his descendants, was crowned, 
 Jehoiada the high-priest, imder whose care he had been 
 educated, delivered to the captains of hundreds, spears, 
 and bucklers, and shields, that had been King David's, 
 which were in the house of God. — P.4Xton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Ver. 6. When Saul heard that David was dis- 
 covered, and the men that were with him, (now 
 Saul abode in Gibeah under a tree in Ramah, 
 having his spear in his hand, and all his ser- 
 vants were standing about him.) 
 
 Though mean people in travelling might make use of 
 trees for shelter from the heat, we may perhaps think it 
 almost incredible that kings should not imagine that either 
 proper houses would be marked out for their reception ; or 
 if that could not be convenientlv done in some of their 
 routes, that at least they would have tents carried along 
 with them, as persons of more than ordinary rank and 
 condition are supposed by Dr. Shaw now to do. For these 
 reasons we may possibly have been extremely surprised at 
 that passage concerning Saul, 1 Sam. xxii. 6, Now Swul 
 aiode in Gibeah, under a tree in Ramah, or, according to the 
 margin, under a grove in a high place, having his spear in 
 his hand, and all his servants were standing about him. 
 Yet strange as this may appear to us, it is natural enough 
 according to the present customs of the East, where we 
 know the solemnity and awfulness of superiority is kept up 
 as high as ever. Thus when Dr. Pococke was travelling 
 in the company of the governor of Faiume, who was 
 treated with great respect as he passed along, they passed 
 one night, he tells us, in a grove of palm-trees. The 
 governor might, no doubt, had he pleased, have lodged in 
 some village; but he rather chose a place which we think 
 very odd for a person of figure. The position of Saul, 
 Which was on a high place according to the margin, 
 reminds me of another passage of this author, where he 
 gi-'-es us an account of the going out of the Caya, or lieu- 
 tenant of the governor of Meloui, on a sort of Arab expe- 
 dition, towards a place where there was an ancient temple, 
 attended by many people with kettledrums and other 
 music : the doctor visited that temple, and upon his return 
 from it went to the caya, he says, "whose carpets and 
 cushions were laid on a height, on which he sat with the 
 standard by him, which is carried before him when he 
 goes out in this manner, I sat down with him, and coffee 
 was brought; the sadar himself, came after as incognito." 
 Saul seems, by the description given, as well as by the fol- 
 lowing part of the history, to have been pursuing after 
 David, and stopping, to have placed himself, according to 
 the present oriental mode, in the posture of chief Whether 
 the spear in his hand, or at his hand, as it might be trans- 
 lated according to Noldius, and as appears by the use of 
 that prefix in Ezek, x. 15, was the same thing to Saul's 
 I, people that the standard was to those of the caya, I know 
 1 not; if it was, there is a third thing in this text illustrated 
 
 by the dot. tor's accounts, the stopping under a tree or grove; 
 the stopping on a high place; and the sacred historian's 
 remark, that he had his spear by him. It is certain, that 
 when a long pike is carried before a company of Arabs, it 
 is a mark that an Arab sheik, or prince, is there, which 
 
 Eike is carried before him ; and when he alights, and the 
 orses are fastened, the pike is fixed, as appears by a story 
 in Norden. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 18. And the king said to Doeg, Turn thou, 
 and fall upon the priests. And Doeg the 
 Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, 
 and slew on that day fourscore and five persons 
 that did wear a linen ephod. 
 
 In ancient times, persons of the highest rank and station 
 were employed to execute the sentence of the law. The) 
 had not then, as we have at present, public executioners ; 
 but the prince laid his commands on any of his courtiers 
 whom he chose, and probably selected the person for whom 
 he had the greatest favour. Gideon commanded Jether, 
 his eldest son, to execute his sentence on the kings of 
 Midian : the king of Israel ordered the footmen who stood 
 around him, and were probably a chosen body of soldiers 
 for the defence of his person, to put to death the priests of 
 the Lord ; and when they refused, Doeg, an Edomite, one 
 of his principal officers. Long after the days of Saul, the 
 reigning monarch commanded Beniah, the chief captain 
 of his armies, to perform that duty. Sometimes the chief 
 magistrate executed the sentence of the law with his own 
 hands; for when Jether shrunk from the duty which his 
 father required, Gideon, at that time the supreme magis- 
 trate in Israel, did not hesitate to do it himself In these 
 times such a command would be reckoned equally barba- 
 rous and unbecoming; but the ideas which were entertained 
 in those primitive ages of honour and propriety, were in 
 many respects extremely different from ours. In Homer, 
 the exasperated Ulysses commanded his son Telemachu'' 
 to put to death the suiters of Penelope, which was imme- 
 diately done. The custom of employing persons of high 
 rank to execute the sentence of the law, is still retained in 
 the principality of Senaar, where the public executioner is 
 one of the principal nobility ; and, by virtue of his office, 
 resides in the royal palace. — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER XXin. 
 
 Ver. 16. And Jonathan Saul's son arose, and 
 went to David into the wood, and strengthened 
 his hand in God. 
 
 A passage in the Travels of Pietro della Valle, which 
 bears a strong resemblance to this part of David's history, 
 considerably illustrates it Speaking of his passing through 
 a forest or wood in Mazanderan, a province of Persia, into 
 which they entered on the 11th of February, and com- 
 plaining of the moisture and heaviness of the roads there, 
 he tells us, " We did at length master them, but with so 
 much, difficulty that we could not get forward above two 
 leagues that day, and night overtook us before we got 
 through the forest. We endeavoured to find some place 
 of retreat in different parts, to which the barking of dogs, 
 or noise made by other animals, seemed to guide us. But 
 at last, finding no inhabited place near us, we passed the 
 night in the same forest, among the trees, under which we 
 made a kind of intrenchment with our baggage, in a place 
 where we found many leaves that had fallen from the 
 trees. These served us for a carpet and for bedding both, 
 without any other tent than the branches of the great trees 
 there, through which the moonshine reached us, and made 
 a kind of pavilion of cloth of silver. There was no want 
 of wood for the making a great fire, any more than of pro- 
 visions for supper, which we sent for from the nearest 
 village in the forest, seated by the highway-side, where, 
 after some contest with the people, of a savage and sus- 
 picious temper, who were ready to come to blows with my 
 messengers, without knowing any reason why they should; 
 they, after coming to a right understanding with us, be- 
 came very civil, would have lodged us, and made us 
 presents : but on our refusal on account of the distance of 
 the way, the chief person of the town, with other principal 
 inhabitants, came of their own accord to our camp, laden 
 
168 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 23—25: 
 
 with good meat, and other provisions, and spent the night 
 with us with great gayety. They even brought us a coun- 
 try musician, who regaled us during supper, and all night 
 ,ong, with certain forest songs, in the language of the 
 country, that is, of Mazanderan, where a coarse kind of 
 Persian is spoken, sung to the sound of a miserable violin, 
 which was sufficiently tiresome." — Harmes. 
 
 Ver. 19. Then came up the Ziphites to Saul to 
 Gibeah, saying, Doth not David hide himself 
 with us in strongholds in the wood, in the hill 
 of Hachilah, which is on the south of Jeshimon? 
 
 The margin has, for south, "on the right hand." " The 
 Hebrews express the east, west, north, and south, by words 
 which signify before, behind, left, and right, according to 
 the situation of a man with his face turned towards the 
 south." In the same way do the Hindoos speak on this 
 subject, the north is shown by the left, the south by the 
 right hand, the face being considered to be towards the east. 
 When the situation of any thing is spoken of, it is always 
 mentioned in connexion with the cardinal points. Often, 
 when people wish to give intelligence respecting any thing, 
 they begin by asking a question which conveys the inform- 
 ation required. Thus the situation of poor David was 
 described by asking a question. " Have not the elephants 
 been ravaging the fields of Tamban last night T' is a 
 question asked when such a circumstance has taken place. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. And David went up from thence, and 
 dwelt in strongholds at En-gedi. 
 
 The village of Engedi, situated in the neighbourhood of 
 Jericho, derives its name from the Hebrew word (r*;) Ain, 
 a fountain, and ("ni) a kid. It is suggested by the situation 
 among lofty rocks, which, overhanging the valleys, seem 
 to threaten the traveller with immediate destruction. A 
 fountain of pure water rises near the summit, which the 
 inhabitants call Engedi, the fountain of the goat, because 
 it is hardly accessible to any other creature. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 8. And when Saul looked behind him, Da- 
 vid stooped with his face to the earth, and 
 bowed himself 
 
 " Some time after this, the ambassador had his public 
 audience, when we saw the king in great splendour : he 
 was decked in all his jewels, with his crown on his head, 
 his bazubends or armlets on his arms, seated on his throne. 
 We approached him, bowing after our own manner ; but 
 the Persians bowed as David did to Saul, who stooped with 
 his face to the earth, and bowed himself. 1 Sam. xxiv. 8. 
 That is, not touching the earth with the face, but bowing 
 with their bodies at right angles, the hands placed on the 
 knees, and the legs somewhat asunder. It is only on 
 remarkable occasions that the prostration of the Rouee 
 Zemeen, the face to the earth, is made, which must be the 
 falling upon the face to the earth, and worshipping as 
 Joshua did." — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 12. The Lord judge between me and thee, 
 and the Lord avenge me of thee : but my hand 
 shall not be upon thee. 
 
 The attitudes and expression of respect, which the rules 
 of good-breeding require from the Oriental, are far more 
 diversified and servile than ours ; yet he uses a freedom 
 with his equals, and even with persons of superior condi- 
 tion, which we are uniformly taught to regard as im- 
 proper. It is reckoned among us a sure mark of vulgarity, 
 in any person to mention his own name before that of his 
 equal ; and an instance of great arrogance to name himself 
 before hi? superior ; but in the East, it is quite customary 
 for the speaker to name himself first. This was also the 
 habitual practice in Israel, and quite consistent with their 
 notions of good-breeding : for David, who had been long 
 at the court of Saul, and could be no stranger to the rules 
 of ffood manners, addressed his sovereiern in these words: 
 " The Lord judge between me and thee ;" and this at a time 
 
 too, when he treated that prince with great reverence; for 
 " he stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed himself 
 immediately before. In the same manner, Ephron the 
 Hittite replied to the patriarch Abraham, who was at least 
 his equal, more probably his superior : " My lord, hearken 
 unto me ; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver ; 
 what is that between me and thee T* Hence David was 
 guilty of no rudeness to Saul, in naming hiriiself first ; his 
 conduct was quite agreeable to the modern ceremonial of 
 eastern courts, at least to that of Persia, which seems to 
 have been established soon after the flood. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. After whom is the king of Israel come 
 out ? after whom dost thou pursue ? after a dead 
 dog, after a flea ? 
 
 It is highly contemptible and provoking to compare a 
 man to a dead dog. Has a servant offended his master; 
 he will say, " Stand there and be like a dead dog to me." 
 Does a creditor press much for his money ; the debtor will 
 say, " Bring your bond, and then he is a dead dog to me." 
 " I care as much for that fellow as for a dead dog." " I w^ll 
 tell you what that fellow is worth ; a dead dog !" — RoBERf s. 
 
 Ver. 16. And it came to pass, when David had 
 made an end of speaking these words unto 
 Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son 
 David 1 And Saul lifted up his voice and wept. 
 
 When a man in great sorrow is spoken of, it is said, 
 " Ah, how he did lift up his voice and weep !" '* Alas, how 
 great is their trouble, they are all lifting up the voice." 
 — Roberts. ' ' 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Ver. 1. And Samuel died; and all the Israelites 
 were gathered together, and lamented him, and 
 buried him in his house at Ramah. And Da- 
 vid arose, and went down to the wilderness of 
 
 Paran. 
 
 / 
 
 While walking out one evening, a few fields' distance 
 from Deir el Kaner, with Hanna Doomani, the son of 
 my host, to see a detached garden belonging to his father, 
 he pointed out to me, near it, a small solid stone building, 
 apparently a house ; very solemnly adding, " Kahbar beify," 
 the sepulchre of our family. It had neither door nor 
 window. He then directed my attention to a considerable 
 number of similar buildings, at a distance ; which to the 
 eye are exactly like houses, but which are in fact family 
 mansions for the dead. Perhaps this custom may have 
 been of great antiquity; and may serve to explain some 
 scripture phrases. The prophet Samuel was buried in 
 his house at Ramah : it could hardly have been his dwell- 
 inghouse, compare 1 Kings ii. 34, Job xxx. 23. Possibly 
 also the passages in Prov. ii. 18, 19, and vii. 27, and ix. 18, 
 describing the house of a wanton woman, may have drawn 
 their imagery from this custom. — Jowett. 
 
 Ver. 5. Go to Nabal, and greet him in my name. 
 Job xxix. 8. The aged arose and stood up. 
 Acts xxviii. 10. Who also honoured me with 
 many honours. 
 
 In the Old and New Testaments we have some striking 
 examples of what may be termed good-breeding. Look at 
 the patriarchs and others in their renunciation of self, their 
 anxiety to please, to show respect to the aged, and learned, 
 the dignified, or those of the sacerdotal character ; listen to 
 their affecting eulogies and their touching appeals, and 
 then say, have we not in them some of the most pleasing 
 instances of gentility and good-breeding 1 On their great 
 anniversary festivals, the Hindoos always send to " greet" 
 each other. Has a son or daughter got married ; has a 
 " male child" been bom ; has prosperity attended the mer- 
 chant in his pursuits ; does a traveller pass through a town 
 or village where some of his friends or acquaintances re- 
 side: then, those concerned send greeting expressive of 
 their joy, and best wishes for future prosperity. See them 
 on receiving company. A servant, or friend, stands at tht 
 
Chap. 25. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 169 
 
 gate to watch for the approach of the guests, and to give 
 notice to the master of the house. When they appi ">ach 
 the premises the host goes out to meet them, and bow. and 
 expresses his joy at seeing them ; he then puts his arm over 
 their shoulders, or takes them by the hand, and conducts 
 them into the house. When they retire also, he always 
 accompanies them to the gate, and expresses the great joy 
 he has had in their company. Before people take their 
 food they always wash their hands, feet, and mouth ; and 
 when they sit down, they take their places according to rank 
 and seniority. Should any man presume to sit down " in 
 the highest" place when he has not a title to it, he will be 
 sure (as in the parable) to hear the master say to him, in 
 respect to "a more honourable man,"-" Give this man 
 place ;" and then, " with shame," he will be compelled " to 
 take the lowest" place. In supplying the guests, the chief 
 person present is always served the first, and generally by 
 the hands of the host himself They are also particular 
 as to the order of serving up their viands and condiments ; 
 to set on the table certain articles first would be there con- 
 sidered as much out of place as it is in England to set on 
 the dessert before the more substantial dishes. Epicures at 
 home would smile, and pout the lip, at the vegetable feast 
 of a Saiva man. His first course consists of pulse, green 
 gram, rice, trnd ghee, or butter ; the second, of numerous 
 curries, and -ickles made of half-ripe fruits, vegetables, 
 and spices : tlid third, an acid kind of broth ; the fourth, 
 curds, honey, and rice ; the fifth, a rich supply of mellow 
 fruits. From this humble repast the guests arise with more 
 pleasure and at less expense of health, than the luxurious 
 Englishman does from his half-medicated meal, to which 
 science is now the footman, and a few French terms its 
 fashionable vocabulary. When the visiters have taken 
 what they require, the principal person arises from his seat, 
 and all present follow nis example. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Nabal answered David's servants, 
 and said, Who is David ? and who is the son 
 of Jesse % There be many servants now-a-days 
 that break away every man from his master. 
 
 When a man has gained some ascendency over others, 
 or when he assumes authority which is offensive to some 
 one present, it will be inquired, by way of contempt, as 
 Nabal did respecting David, " Who is he'? and whose son 
 is he 1"— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16, They were a wall unto us, both by 
 nig-ht and day, all the while we were with them 
 keeping the sheep. 
 
 This was said of David and his men, who had been kind 
 unto the servants of Nabal, and had probably been a defence 
 to them while they had been in the wilderness tending their 
 sheep. And the same figure is also used among us, in ref- 
 erence to those who have been a defence to others. " Ah ! 
 my friend ; you have been a mathil, i. e. a wall, unto me." 
 " Alas ! my wall is fallen," means, th» friend is dead, or be- 
 come weak. " What care I for that jackal 1 I have a good 
 wall before me." — Roberts. 
 
 "V er. 23. And when Abigail saw David, she hasted, 
 and lighted off the ass, and fell before David on 
 her face, and bowed herself to the ground. 
 
 A rider was expected to dismount, when he met a person 
 of more elevated rank. Under the influence of this ancient 
 i custom, the Egyptians dismount from their asses, when 
 i they approach the tombs of their departed saints; and both 
 : Christians and Jews are obliged to submit to the same Qer- 
 emony. Christians in that country must also dismoiint 
 wh..n they happen to meet with officers of the army. In 
 Palestine, the Jews, who are not permitted to ride on horse- 
 back, are compelled to dismount from their asses and pass 
 by a Mohammedan on foot. This explains the reason that 
 Achsah, the daughter of Caleb, and Abigail the wife of 
 ' Nabal, alighted from their asses ; it was a mark of respect 
 which the former owed to her father, and the latter to Da- 
 vid, a person of high rank and growing renown. It was 
 tindoubtedly for the same reason, that Rebecca alighted 
 from the camel on which she rode, when the servant in- 
 23 
 
 formed her, that the stranger whom she descried at a dis- 
 tance in the field, was his master ; and that Naaman, the 
 Syrian grandee, alighted from his chariot, at the approach 
 of Gehazi, the servant of Elisha. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 29. Yet a man is risen to pursue thee, and 
 to seek thy soul : but the soul of my lord shall 
 be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord 
 thy God ; and the souls of thine enemies, them 
 shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a 
 sling. 
 
 Any thing which is important or valuable is called a 
 kattu, i. e. " a bundle, a pack, a bale." A young man who 
 is enamoured of a female, is said to be " bound up in the 
 kattu, bundle, of love." Of a just judge the people say, " He 
 is bound up in the bundle of justice." When a man is very 
 strict in reference to his caste, " he is bound up in the bun- 
 dle of high caste." When a pesson is spoken to respecting 
 the vanities or impurities oi his system, he often replies, 
 " Talk not to me, I am bound up in the bundle of my reli- 
 gion." " Why do those people act so 1— Because they are 
 bound up in the bundle of desire." David, therefore, was 
 to be bound up in the bundle of life— nothing was to harm 
 him. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 35. So David received of her hand thai 
 which she had brought him, and said unto her, 
 Go up in peace to thy house : see, I have heark- 
 ened to thy voice, and have accepted thy person. 
 
 Does a person ask a favour of his superior ; it will not 
 be, in general, said in reply, " I grant your request ;" or, 
 ** You shall have your desire :" but, Nan un muggatli parf- 
 tain, " I have seen thy face." Has a man greatly offended 
 another, and does he plead for mercy ; the person to whom 
 offence has been given will say, " I have seen thy face ;" 
 which means, that he is pardoned. Should a friend in- 
 quire, "Well, what punisnment do you intend to inflict on 
 that fellow 7" he will reply, " I have seen his face." In ap- 
 plying fcr help, should there be a denial, the applicant will 
 ask, " In whose face shall I now look T' When a man 
 has nearly lost all hope, he says, " For the sake of the 
 face of God grant me my request." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 36. And Abigail came to Nabal ; and, be- 
 hold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast 
 of a king : and Nabal's heart was merry within 
 him, for he was very drunken : wherefore she 
 told him nothing, less or more, until the morn- 
 ing light. 
 
 Sheep-shearing is an operation to which allusion is more 
 frequently made in the sacred volume. The wool in very 
 remote times was not shorn with an iron instrument, but 
 plucked off" with the hand. From the concurrent testi- 
 mony of several writers, the time when it is performed in 
 Palestine, falls in the month of March. If this be ad- 
 mitted, it fixes the time of the year when Jacob departed 
 from Laban on his return to his father's house, for he left 
 him at the time he went to shear his sheep. In like man- 
 ner, the sheep of Nabal were shorn in the spring; for 
 among the presents which Abigail made to David, five 
 measures of parched corn are mentioned. But we Iriow, 
 from other passages of scripture, that they were accus- 
 tomed to use parched com when it was full grown, but 
 not ripe ; for the people of Israel were commanded in the 
 law not to eat parched corn nor green ears, until the self- 
 same day they had made an offering to the Lord. This 
 time seems to have been spent by the eastern swains, in 
 more than usual hilarity. And it may be inferred from 
 several hints in the scriptures, that the wealthier proprietors 
 invited their friends and dependants to sumptuous entertain- 
 ments. Nabal, on that joyous occasion, which the servants 
 of David called a good, or festive day, although a churlish 
 and niggardly man, "held a feast in his house, like the 
 feast of a king;" and on a similar occasion, Absalom treat- 
 ed his friends and relations in the same magnificent style 
 .'he modern Arabs are more frugal and parsimonious; 
 
m 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 26. 
 
 yet their hearts, so little accustomed to expand wii i joyous 
 leelings, acknowledge the powerful influence of increasing 
 wealth, and dispose them to indulge in greater jollity than 
 usual. On these occasions, they perhaps kill a lamb, or a 
 goat, and treat their relations and friends ; and at once to 
 testify their respect for their guests, and add to the luxury 
 of the feast, crown the festive board with new chee!>e and 
 milk, dates and honey. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 41. And she arose, and bowed herself on 
 her face to the earth, and said, Behold, let thy 
 handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the 
 servants of my lord. 
 
 # 
 The necessity for washing the feet in the East has been 
 attributed to their wearing sandals ; but it is very requisite, 
 according to Sir John Chardin, let the covering of the feet 
 be of what kind it will. " Those that travel in the hot 
 countries of the East," he tells us, " such as Arabia is, be- 
 gin, at their arriving at the end of their journey, with pull- 
 ing off the coverings of their feet. The sweat and the dust, 
 which penetrate all sorts of coverings for the feet, produce 
 a filth there, which excites a very troublesome itching. 
 And though the eastern people are extremely careful to 
 preserve the body neat, it is more for refreshment than 
 cleanliness, that they wash their feet at the close of their 
 journey." 
 
 According to DArvieux, the little yellow morocco boots, 
 worn by the Arabs, which are made very light, so as that 
 they may walk in them afoot, and even run in them, are 
 yet so tight as not to be penetrated by water ; but none of 
 the eastern coverings for the foot, it seems, can guard 
 against the dust ; consequently this custom of washing the 
 feet is not to be merely ascribed to their use of sandals ; 
 a circumstance that has not, I think, been attended to, and 
 which therefore claims our notice.— Harmer, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Ver. 5, And David rose, and came to the place 
 where Saul had pitched ; and David beheld the 
 place where Saul lay, and Abner the son of 
 Ner, the captain of his host : and Saul lay in 
 the trench, and the people pitched round about 
 him. 
 
 The encampments of Israel in Canaan seem to have 
 been opened and unguarded on all sides. When David rec- 
 onnoitred the camp of Saul, the king " lay in the trench, 
 and all the people pitched round about him." The Hebrew 
 term magal never signifies a ditch and rampart, as our 
 translators seem to have understood it, biit achariolor wag- 
 on way, or highway, or the rut of a wheel in the ground. 
 Nor is it to be understood of a ring of carriages, as the mar- 
 ginal reading seems to suppose, and as Buxtorf interprets 
 the word; for it is not probable that Saul would encumber 
 his army with baggage in so rapid a pursuit, nor that so 
 mountainous a country was practicable for wagons. It 
 seems then simply to mean, the circle these troops formed, 
 in the midst of which, as being the place of honour, Saul 
 reposed. An Arab camp is always circular, when the dis- 
 positions of the ground will permit, the chieftain being in 
 the middle, and the troops at a respectable distance around 
 him. Their lances are fixed near them in the ground, all 
 the day long, ready for action. This was precisely the 
 form and arrangement of Saul's camp, as described by the 
 sacred historian. As it is a universal custom in the East 
 to make the great meal at night, and consequently to fall 
 into a deep sleep immediately after it, a handful of resolute 
 men might easily .beat up a camp of many thousands. This 
 circumstance undoubtedly facilitated the decisive victory 
 which Gideon obtained over the combined forces of Midian. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. The Lord forbid that I should stretch 
 forth my hand against the Lord's anointed; 
 but I pray thee, take thou now the spear that 
 is at his bolster, and the cruse of water, and let 
 us go. 
 
 Thus did Saul sleep, with his head on the bolster, and 
 a vessel of water by his side ; and in this way do all east- 
 ern travellers sleep at this day. The bolster is round, about 
 eight inches in diameter, and twenty in length. In travel- 
 ling, it is carried roiled up in the mat on which the OAvner 
 sleeps. In a hot climate, a draught of water is very re- 
 freshing in the night ; hence a vessel filled with water is 
 always near where a person sleeps. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Then David went over to the other side, 
 and stood on the top of a hill afar off, a great 
 space being between them : 1 4. And David 
 cried to the people, and to Abner the son of 
 Ner, saying, Answerest thou not, Abner? Theui; 
 Abner answered and said. Who art thou that. 
 criest to the king 1 
 
 The establishment of a colony of Jews in Abyssinia, is 
 an event sufficiently vouched for by history ; and among 
 other things, it has had the etFect of preserving in that 
 country many usages of the Jews of Judea, traces of which 
 we find in the historical books of scripture. The remote 
 situation of this country, with our very imperfect knowl- 
 edge of it, has rendered what evidence i,t furnishes obscure, 
 and consequently feeble : nevertheless we find, occasionally, 
 instances of such close conformity with scripture inci- 
 dents, that their resemblance strikes even the least obser- 
 vant. This has been stated in strong terms by Mr. Salt, 
 one of our latest travellers into Abyssinia ; and has been 
 lourd not less remarkable by Mr. Pearce, who resided 
 there reveral years. It will be elucidated by the following 
 extracts, which scarcely admit of additional remarks. 
 " While the army er.iained encamped on this spot, Mr. 
 Pearce went out on an excurs.ion with Badjerund Tesfos 
 and Shalaka Lafsgee, and others ci ;ne Ras's people, for 
 the purpose of carrymg oif some cattle which were known 
 to be secreted in the neighbourhood. In this object the 
 
 Earty succeeded, getting possession of more than three 
 undred oxen ; but this was effected with very considera- 
 ble loss, owing to a stratagem put in practice by Guebra 
 Guro, and about fourteen of his best marksmen, who had 
 placed themselves in a recumbent position on the over- 
 hanging brow of a rock, which was completely inaccessi- 
 ble, whence they picked oflT every man that approached 
 within musketshot. At one lime Mr. Pearce was so near 
 to this dangerous position, that he could understand every 
 word said by Guebra Guro to his companions; and he 
 distinctly heard him ordering his men not to shoot at either 
 him (Mr. Pearce) or Ayto Tesfos, calling out to them at 
 the same time with a strange sort of savage politeness, to 
 keep out of the range of his matchlocks, as he was anxious 
 that no harm should personally happen to them ; address- 
 ing them very kindly by the appellation of friends. Oa 
 Mr. Pearce's relating this incident to me, I was instantly 
 struck with its similarity to some of the stories recorded in 
 the Old Testament, particularly that of David, ' standing 
 on the top of a hill afar off", and crying to the people ana 
 to Abner, at the mouth of the cave, Answerest thou not, 
 Abner % and now see where the king's spear is, and the 
 cruse of water at his bolster.' The reader conversant in 
 scripture cannot fail, I conceive, to mark, in the course of 
 this narrative, the general resemblance existing through- 
 out, between the manners of this people and those of the 
 Jews previously to the reign of Solomon ; at which pe- 
 riod the connexions entered into by the latter with for- 
 eign princes, and the luxuries consequently introducei" 
 seem in a great measure to have altered the Jewish cha 
 acter. For my own part, I confess, that I was so mucj 
 struck with the similarity between the two nations, durin] 
 my stay in Abyssinia, that I could not help fancying r 
 litnes that I was dwelling among the Israelites, and that 
 had fallen back some thousand years upon a period whe 
 the king himself was a shepherd, and the princes of th 
 land went out, riding on mules, with spears and slings, " 
 combat against the Philistines. It will be scarcelv nee ^ 
 sary for me to observe, that the feelings of the Abyssin- 
 ians towards the Galla partake of the same inveterate spirit 
 of animosity which appears to have influenced the Israel 
 ites with regard to their hostile neighbours." Taylor ' 
 Calmet. 
 
 
Chap. 27. 
 
 1 S^AMUEL. 
 
 ^7 
 
 Ver. 19. If the Lord have stirred thee up against 
 me, let him accept an offering. 
 
 The Hebrew has, for accept, " smell." Valuable gifts 
 are said to have a pleasant smell. A man, also, of great 
 property, " has an agreeable smell." " Why are you 
 taking this siiiall present to the great man 1 it has not a 
 good smell." " Alas ! I have been with my gifts to the 
 Modeliar, but he will not smell of them;" .which means, he 
 will not accept them. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. Now therefore, let not my blood fall to 
 the earth before the face of the Lord : for the 
 king of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as 
 when one doth hunt a partridge in the mount- 
 ains. 
 
 Thus did David compare himself to a flea, to show his 
 insignificance before the king. When a man of rank de- 
 votes his lime and talents to the acquirement of any thing 
 which is not of much value, it is asked, " Why does he 
 trouble himself so much about a flea 1" In asking a favour, 
 should it be denied, it will be said, " Ah ! my lord, this is 
 as a flea to you." " Our head man gave me this ring the 
 other day, but now he wishes to have it again ; what is this 1 
 it is but a flea." When poor relations are troublesome, 
 the rich say, "As the flea bites the long-haired dog, so are 
 you always biting me." Should an opulent man be redu- 
 ced to poverty his friends forsake him, and the people say, 
 *' Yes, the same day the dog dies the fleas leave him." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 We find only two allusions to the partridge in the holy 
 scriptures. The first occurs in the history of David, where 
 he expostulates with Saul concerning his unjust and foolish 
 pursuit : " The king of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as 
 when one doth hunt a partridge on the mountains." The 
 other in the prophecies of Jeremiah : " As the partridge sit- 
 leth on eggs, and hatcheth them not ; so he that getteth riches, 
 and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, 
 and at his end shall be a fool." The Hebrew name for the 
 partridge is (m-^^p) kore, from the verb kara to cry, a name 
 suggested by the narsh note of that bird. Bochart indeed 
 denies that kore signifies the partridge ; he thinks the 
 woodcock is intended, because the kore of which David 
 speaks in the first quotation, is a mountain bird. But that 
 excellent writer did not recollect that a species of partridge 
 actually inhabits the mountains, and by consequence his 
 argument is of no force. Nor is the opinion of others more 
 tenable, that the kore hatches the eggs of a stranger, because 
 Jeremiah observes, " she sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them 
 not ;" for the passage only means, that the partridge often 
 fails in her attempts to bring forth her young. To such 
 disappointments she is greatly exposed from the position of 
 her nest in the ground, where her eggs are often spoiled by 
 wet, or crushed by the foot. The manner in which the 
 Arabs hunt the partridge and other birds, affords an excel- 
 liMit comment on the complaint of David to his cruel and 
 rmrelenting sovereign; for observing that they become 
 languid and fatigued after they have been hastily put up 
 two or three times, they immediately run in upon them and 
 knock them down with their bludgeons. It was precisely 
 in this manner that Saul hunted David ; he came suddenly 
 upon him, and from time to time drove him from his hiding- 
 places, hoping at last to make him weary of life, and find 
 an opportunity of effecting his destruction. When the 
 prophet says the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth 
 them not, the male seems to be understood ; because both 
 the verbs are masculine, and the verb yalad in the mascu- 
 Kne gender cannot signify to lay eggs. The red partridges 
 of Prance, says Buffbn, appear to differ from the red par- 
 tridges of Egypt; because the Egyptian priests chose for 
 the emblem of a well-regulated family, two partridges, the 
 one male, the other female, sitting or brooding together. 
 And by the text in Jeremiah, it seems that in Judea the 
 male jjartridge sat as well as the female. But while the 
 V[ incubation of other birds, which are by no means so atten- 
 tive, is generally crowned with success, the hopes of the 
 partridges are frequently disappointed by circumstances 
 already noticed, which she can neither see nor prevent.— 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Ver. 2. And David said to Achish, Surely thou 
 shalt know what thy servant can do. And 
 Achish said to David, Therefore will I make 
 thee keeper of my head for ever. 
 
 The head is always spoken of as the principal part of the 
 body, and when a man places great confidence in another, 
 he say;s, " I will make him the keeper of my life or head." 
 An injured man expostulating with another, to whom he 
 has been kind, asks, " Why is this % have I not been the 
 keeper of your life." A good brother is called, " the life- 
 keeping brother." But any thing valuable also is spoken 
 of as being on the head. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Achish said, Whither have ye made 
 a road to-day ? And David said, Against the 
 south of Judah, and against the south of the 
 Jerahmeelites, and against the south of the 
 Kenites. 
 
 After the expedition was over, David returns to Achish, 
 and upon being asked where he had made his incursion, 
 David answers : Against the south of Judah, and against 
 the south of the Jerahmeelites, and against the south of the 
 Kenites. Mr. Bayle, not with extreme good manners, calls 
 this A LIE. But, with his leave, the answer was literally 
 true, but ambiguous; for all those people dwelt on the 
 south of Judah, &c. Achish, through self-partiality, under- 
 stood the answer to mean, that the incursion was made on 
 the southern borders of Judah, the Jerahmeelites and Kenites 
 themselves, though David asserted no such thing. David 
 therefore was not guilty of any falsity ; and if he was in 
 any thing to blame, it was for giving an ambiguous answer 
 to a question to which he was not obliged to give any direct 
 reply. Mr. Bayle says, " This conduct was very unjusti- 
 fiable, in that he deceived a king to whom he had oW.iga- 
 tions." But David's answer was not such as necessarily 
 to impose on Achish, and therefore it may be as truly said^ 
 that Achish put a deceit upon himself, as that David de- 
 ceived him. I allow he intended to conceal from Achish 
 who the people were that he invaded, and this he did, not 
 by a lie, but by an answer true in fact. The precise deter- 
 mined truth was, that he had made an incursion on the 
 south of Judah and the Kenites. The Amalekites dwelt 
 on the south of Judah, and the Kenites lived intermingled 
 with them, till they removed by Saul's order, when he was 
 sent to destroy the Amalekites, and probably returned to 
 their former dwellings, after that expedition was over. It 
 is certain at least, that they were much in the same situa- 
 tion as before; viz. on the south of Judah, and at no great 
 distance from the country of the Amalekites ; and therefore 
 Achish might as reasonably have understood David's an- 
 swer to mean, that he invaded the Amalekites and neigh- 
 bouring hordes, who dwelt beyond the south parts of Judah, 
 as that he invaded the southern parts of the very country 
 of Judah. For the original words will equally bear this 
 double version : against the country south of Judah, &c. 
 and, against the south country of Judah. If Achish took 
 David in a wrong sense, I do not see that David, in his cir- 
 cumstances, was obliged to undeceive him. For as he 
 had done Achish no injury in the expedition against the 
 Amalekites, &c. so neither did he, in permitting him qui- 
 etly to impose on himself. Whereas, had he convinced 
 Achish of his mistake, he would have endangered his own 
 life, and the destruction of all his people. The greatest 
 and best casuists have allowed, that ambiguous answers 
 are not always criminal, but sometimes justifiable, and par- 
 ticularly in the critical situation in which David now was. 
 Thus Grotius.: " When any word, or sentence, admits of 
 more significations than one, whether from common use, or 
 the custom of art, or by any intelligible figure ; and if the 
 sense of one's own mind agrees to any one of these inter- 
 pretations, it is no lie, though we should have reason to 
 think, that he who hears us should take it in the other. 
 Such a manner of speaking should not be used rashly ; but 
 it may be justified by antecedent causes ; as when it is 
 for the instruction of him who is committed to our care, of 
 when it is to avoid an imjust interrogation ; i. e. as Grono-- 
 vius erolains it, such an interrogation, which, if we gav« 
 
171^. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 28. 
 
 a simple plain answer to, would hazard our own safety, or 
 that of other innocent persons." Of this sentiment were 
 Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, the Stoics, Aristotle, 
 Cluintilian, and others mentioned by Grotius ; and it may 
 oe reasonably expected, that those who condemn David 
 for his ambiguous answers to Achish, should fairly prove, 
 that they are ia their nature, and therefore always, crimi- 
 nal ; or in what circumstances they are so ; or that there is 
 somewhat in thisanswer of David that peculiarly renders 
 it so. Mr. Bayle thinks he savs something very considera- 
 ble, when he says, " that he deceived ,a king to whom he 
 had obligations ; others charge him with ingratitude, be- 
 cause he deceived his patron and benefactor." This woald 
 be an objection of some weight, if it could be proved that he 
 deceived him to his real injury or that of his country. But 
 this, as hath been shown, cannot be proved. A man may 
 lawfully conceal his sentiments, on some occasions, even 
 from a real friend and benefactor, who asks him questions, 
 which, if clearly answered, may be prejudicial to his in- 
 terest. 
 
 Bat he had obligations to Achish, who was his patron 
 and benefactor. What were these great obligations, and 
 in what respects was Achish a benefactor to David *? Why, 
 he allowed him, and his followers, a safe retreat into his 
 country from the persecutions of Saul, for about sixteen 
 months; first, at Gath his capital, and soon after, upon 
 David's request, at Ziglag. But with what view did 
 Achish allow him this retreat 1 Not with the noble gener- 
 ous view of giving refuge to a brave man, ungratefully 
 persecuted, and driven into exile by the unrelenting mal- 
 ice of an arbitrary prince ; but merely from political mer- 
 cenary considerations ; to detach so great a general, and 
 so brave a body of soldiers, from the interest of their coun- 
 try, and to prevent their joining with the Hebrew army in 
 the defence of it, against that invasion which the Philistines 
 were now meditating, and to engage him in actual hostili- 
 ties with his own nation, that he might make him and 
 them perpetual and irreconcilable enemies to each other. 
 This appears from what Achish said, either to himself, or 
 ■ some of the Philistine princes, upon the invasion of the 
 Geshurites, «&c. He hath made his people Israel utterly 
 to abhor him, therefore he shall be my servant for ever. 
 Both Achish and David seem to have acted merely upon 
 political principles in this affair, and their obligations to 
 each other to be pretty equal. David fled for protection to 
 Achish, but with no design to assist him agamst the He- 
 brews. Achish received Da-vid, not out of any love and 
 friendship to him, but to serve himself, by engaging David 
 and his forces against the Hebrews, and thereby to put him 
 under a necessity of continuing in his service for ever. 
 They both appear to act with great confidence in each 
 other, without either letting the other into their secret and 
 real views ; and therefore as Achish was under no obliga- 
 tion to David for his retiring to Gath, David was really 
 under as little to Achish for the reception he gave him ; 
 for as David would not have put himself under his pro- 
 tection, but to serve his own purposes ; so neither would 
 Achish have received him, had he not had his own views 
 of advantage in doing it. David's deceiving Achish there- 
 fore received no aggravation from any ingratitude in David 
 towards him ; but the shelter Achish gave him was upon 
 the mean, dishonourable, perfidious principle, of making 
 David a detestable traitor to his king and country. — Chand- 
 ler, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVni. 
 
 Ver. 1 . And it came to pass in those days, that the 
 Philistines gathered their armies together for 
 warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said 
 unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou 
 shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy 
 men. 2. And David said to Achish, Surely 
 thou shalt know what thy servant can do. And 
 Achish said to David, Therefore will I make 
 thee keeper of my head for ever. 
 
 Soon after these transactions, while David yet remained 
 jnthe territories of the Philistines, they formed their army 
 to invade the Hebrews, when Achish said to David : 
 fciow thou assuredly, that thou and thy men shall go with 
 
 me to the camp ; his troops being now increased by a party 
 from the tribe of Manasseh. David answered him : There- 
 fore thou shalt know what thy servant witl do ; i. e. as 
 some interpret the words : Achish met with a cheerful 
 compliance from David ; and Mr. Bayle aiiirms, that it 
 was not owing to David, that he did not fight under the 
 standard of this Philistine prince, against the Israelites, in 
 the unhappy war wherein Saul perished; or, as he further 
 says, that when the Philistines had assembled their forces, 
 David and hisbrave ad venturers joined the army of Achich, 
 and would have fought like lions against their brethren, if 
 the suspicious Philistines had not forced Achish to dis- 
 miss them. I am extremely glad, however, that the prin- 
 ces of the Philistines, who may reasonably be supposed to 
 know as much of David's dispositions and views as any 
 modern writers can do, were of a quite different opinion 
 from Mr. Bayle and his followers ; who instead of believ- 
 ing with Achish and Mr. Bayle, that David would have 
 been so very fierce against his own people, made no doubt 
 but he would have fought like a lion, or a tiger, against 
 Achish and the Philistines. And indeed David's answer 
 to Achish implies nothing like a cheerful compliance with 
 him, to engage with his forces against his own people. 
 Achish did not directly ask this, and therefore David had 
 no occasion to make the promise. The demand was only 
 that he would go to the camp. And the answer was, that 
 he would there make Achish witness to his conduct. But 
 this was so far from promising that he would employ his 
 men, as Achish promised himself, as that it seems rather 
 to imply a kind of denial ; and would appear, I believe, 
 very unsatisfactory to most persons in like circumstances : 
 " You shall see what I will do. I make no promise, but I 
 will go with you to the camp, where you yourself will be 
 judge of my conduct." An evidently cold and evasive 
 answer. 
 
 Thus far there appears to be nothing blameablein David's 
 conduct, and it is worthy of observation, that David's going 
 to the camp was not his own forward officious proposal to 
 Achish, but the order of Achish to him, which he was not then 
 in circumstances to dispute, and which, in his situation, he 
 was forced to obey ; and therefore it is not true, that David 
 voluntarily oflfered his assistance against Saul and the He- 
 brews, to the Philistine army. If he was in any thing to blame, 
 it was for throwing himself in the power of the Philistines. 
 But he thought that this was the only method left him for 
 the preservation of his life from the power and malice of 
 Saul, who was therefore in reality responsible for David's 
 conduct in this instance, and the real cause of that embar- 
 rassment, in which he now unhappily found himself. His 
 situation was undoubtedly very delicate and difficult, and 
 it hath been thought impossible for him to have performed 
 an honourable part, let him have acteflhow he would ; and 
 that in his circumstances, he would not have deserved a 
 much better character, had he betrayed his benefactor for 
 the sake of his country, than he would, had he betrayed his 
 country for the sake of his benefactor. But it hath been 
 shown, that David owed Achish little thanks for the refuge 
 he gave him, and that his debt of gratitude on this account 
 was too small, to prevent him from exerting himself in his 
 country's service, whenever he had an opportunity. But 
 supposing his obligations to Achish were real, yet surely 
 the affection and duty he owed his country were infinitely 
 superior to any demands of friendship and gratitude thai 
 Achish could have upon him. I will therefore suppose 
 that David was reduced to the necessity of acting contrary 
 to the gratitude he owed Achish, or the natural affisction 
 and duty he owed his country. And can there be a mo- 
 ment's doubt, whether private affection should not g-ive 
 place to public 1 Or, whether one particular acciden- 
 tal obligation to the avowed enemy of a man's country, and 
 that greatly lessened by political views of interest in him 
 who conferred it, should not yield to innumerable obliga- 
 tions, arising out of nature, constant and immutable, and 
 which to counteract would argue the most detestable base- 
 ness, perfidy, and iniquity 1 Had David therefore been 
 reduced to the hard nccessitv of fighting against Achish, or 
 his country, though the alternative would have been gra- 
 ting to a gienerous mind ; yet his preferring his duty, which 
 he owed to his country, to his personal obligations to 
 Achish, was right in itself, would have been truly heroic, 
 and deserved immortal applause and commendation. Such 
 was the virtue of the ancient Romans, that they would 
 
Chap. 28. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 173 
 
 have sacrificed the love of father, son, brother, the nearest 
 relations by blood and affinity, the obligations of friend- 
 ship, and even life itself, to their affection to their country. 
 And would they have scrupled, or thought it dishonour- 
 able, to have sacrificed some personal obligations to an 
 avowed enemy of it, when such sacrifice was necessary to 
 it.s preservation and safety 7 
 
 But it is possible, that if David had continued with the 
 Pliilistine.army, he might not have been reduced to the 
 necessity of employing his arras against either his country, 
 or the Philistines. May we not suppose, that before the 
 engagement, David might have proposed terms of peace, 
 in order to prevent if? Might he not have told Achish, 
 that notwithstanding his personal obligations to him, he 
 li;;d none to the Philistines in general, and therefore could 
 not stand still, and see his countrymen destroyed by the 
 Philistine forces 1 That unless they would give over the 
 expedition, he should think himself obliged to join the army 
 of Saul, and do his utmost to prevent their destruction 1 
 And would not this have been acting like a man of honour, 
 a lover of his country, and been consistent with any grati- 
 tude that he owed to Achish for his protection 1 This, I 
 think, I may safely affirm, that it is in all views of policy 
 impossible that, as Mr. Bayle asserts, he could have fought 
 under the standard of the Philistine princes against the 
 Israelites. For as he had in immediate view the throne of 
 Israel, had he fought in the Philistine army against his 
 own nation, it must have irritated all the tribes of Israel 
 against him, and according as Achish wished, made all his 
 people abhor him for ever ; whereby he would have cut 
 off every possible prospect of succeeding to the crown. 
 But David was too pruaent a man to take such a step, and 
 if Achish endeavoured, by forcing him into his camp, to 
 ensnare and ruin him with his own nation ; as he well 
 knew the intention of Achish, he had a right to guard 
 against it, to counteract policy by policy, and though 
 obliged to give an answer, to give him such a one, as 
 .should leave himself at liberty to act as prudence and duty 
 should direct him. And finally, had he turned his arms 
 against the Philistines, he might have shoMTi his gratitude 
 to Achish, without injuring his country, by affording him 
 protection in his turn, and securing his person, and the 
 lives of many of his people, had the Israelites been victo- 
 rious in the engagement. However, Achish had such an 
 opinion of his interest in David's friendship, that he took his 
 answer in good part, and concluding that he was entirely 
 gained over to his interest, and the more effectually to se- 
 cure and encourage him, promises him: " I will make you 
 keeper of my head for ever:" you shall be always near 
 me, and have the charge of my person. David made no 
 reply, but kept himself entirely upon the reserve, without 
 idisclosing the real sentiments of his mind. He followed 
 Achish with his forces, who marched into the territories 
 of the Hebrews, and encamped at Shunem, in the tribe of 
 Naphtali ; while Saul, with his army, pitched their tents 
 on the famous mountains of Gilboa. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 7. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek 
 me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I 
 may go to her, and inquire of her. And his 
 servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman 
 that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. 8. And 
 Saul disguised himself, and put on other rai- 
 ment, and he went, and two men with him, and 
 they came to the woman by night ; and he said, 
 1 pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar 
 spirit, and bring me him up whom I shall name 
 unto thee. 9. And the woman said unto him, 
 i Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, 
 how he hath cut off those that have familiar 
 spirits, and the wizaras, out of the land : where- 
 fore then layest thou a snare for my life, to 
 cause me to die? 10. And Saul sware to her 
 by the Lord, saying, As the Lord liveth, there 
 shall no punishment happen to thee for this 
 thing. 1 1 . Then said the woman, Whom.shall 
 I bring up unto thee ? And he said, Bring me 
 
 up Samuel. 12. And when the woman saw 
 Samuel, she cried with a loud voice : and the 
 woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou 
 deceived me? for thou art Saul. 13. And the 
 king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what 
 sawest thou ? And the woman said unto Saul, 
 I saw gods ascending out of the earth. 
 
 How long the profession of necromancy, or the art of 
 i raising up the dead, in order to pry into future events, or 
 ! to be informed of the fate of the living, has obtained in the 
 j world, we have no indications from hiVtory. We perceive 
 I no footsteps of it in the ages before the flood, apd yet it is 
 ' strange that a people, abandoned to all kind of wickedness 
 in a manner, could keep themselves clear of this ; but our 
 account of these times is very short. The first express 
 mention that we meet with of magicians and sorcerers is 
 almost in the beginning of the book of Exodus, where 
 Moses is soliciting the deliverance of the children of Israel 
 out of Egypt ; and therefore Egypt, which affected to be 
 the mother of most occult sciences, is supposed to have been 
 the inventress of this. From Egypt it spread itself into the 
 neighbouring countries, and soon infected all the East ; for, 
 as it imderiook to gratify man's inquisitiveness and super- 
 stitious curiosity, it could not long want abetters. From 
 Egypt, it is certain that the Israelites brought along with 
 them no small inclination to these detestable practices, and 
 were but too much addicted to them, notwithstanding all 
 the care that the state had taken to suppress them, and the 
 provision which God had made, by establishing a method 
 of consulting him, to prevent their hankering after them. 
 The injunction of the law is very express : — " When thou 
 art come into the land which the Loru thy God giveth thee, 
 thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those 
 nations. There shall not be found among you any that 
 useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, 
 or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar 
 spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer ; for all that do 
 these things are an abomination to the Lord." And there- 
 fore their punishment was this : — " A man or a woman that 
 hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put 
 to death: they shall stone them with stones, their blood shall 
 be upon them." Nor was it only the practisers of such vile 
 arts, but those likewise that resorted to them upon any oc- 
 casion, that were liable to the same punishment; for " the 
 soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and 
 after wizards, to go a-whoring after them, I will even set 
 my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among 
 his people, saith the Lord." Such was the severity of the 
 Jewish laws against those who either practised or encour- 
 aged any manner of magical arts ; and it must be said in 
 Saul's commendation, that he had put the laM's in execu- 
 tion against such vile people ; he had destroyed and drove 
 away those that had familiar 'spirits, and the wizards out 
 of the land ; and yet, (observe the weakness as well as 
 wickedness of the man !) when himself fell into distress, 
 and had abundant reason to believe that God had forsaken 
 him, he flees to one of these creatures for relief, and re- 
 quests of her to raise up his old friend Samuel, as expecting, 
 very probably, some advice from him : but, whether this 
 was really done or not, or, if done, in what manner it was 
 effected, are points that have so much exercised the heads 
 and pens, both of ancient and modern, both of Jewish and 
 Christian writers, that little or nothing new can be said 
 upon them ; and therefore all that I shall endeavour to do, 
 will be, to reduce their several sentiments into as narrow a ' 
 compass, and to state them in as fair a light, as I can, by 
 inquiring into these three particulars: — 
 
 1. Whether there was a real apparition. 
 
 3. What this apparition (if real) was ; and, 
 
 3. By what means, and for what purposes, it was effected. 
 
 1. It cannot be denied, indeed, but that those who explode 
 the reality of the apparition, and make it to be all nothing 
 but a cheat and juggle of the sorceress, have found out 
 some arguments that, at first sight, make a tolerable ap- 
 pearance. They tell us that the sacred history never once 
 makes mention of Saul's seeing Samuel with his own eyes 
 It informs us, indeed, that Saul knew him by the descrip- 
 tion M^hich the woman gave, and that he held, for some 
 considerable time, a conversation with him ; but since it is 
 nowhere said that he really saw him, " why might not the 
 
tU 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 28, 
 
 woman couiterfeit a voice, say they, and pretend it was 
 Samuel's 1 Wiien Saul asked her to raise him up Samuel, 
 i. e. to disturb the ghost of so great a prophet, she might 
 think he was no common man ; and when he swore unto 
 her by the Lord, that he would defend her from all danger, 
 he gave her intimation enough that he was the king. The 
 crafty woman therefore having picked up the knowledge 
 of this, might retire into her closet, and there, having her 
 familiar, i. e. some cunning artful man, to make proper 
 responses, in a different voice, might easily impose upon 
 one who was distracted with anxious thoughts, and 
 had already shown suflicient credulity, in thinking there 
 was any efficacy in magical operations to evocate the dead. 
 The controversy betAveen Saul and David every one knew ; 
 nor was it now become a secret, that the crown was to de- 
 volve upon the latter ; and therefore that part of the dis- 
 course, which passed between Saul and Samuel, any man 
 of a common genius might have hit off, without much diffi- 
 culty. Endor was not so far distant from Gilboa or Shunem, 
 but that the condition of the two armies might easily be 
 known, and that the Philistines were superior both in 
 courage and numbers ; and therefore his respondent, with- 
 out all peradventure, might prognosticate Saul's defeat ; 
 and though there was some hazard in the last conjecture, 
 viz. that he and his sons would die in battle ; yet there was 
 this advantage on the side of the guess, that they were all 
 men of known and experienced valour, who would rather 
 sacrifice their lives than turn their backs upon their ene- 
 mies." Upon the whole, therefore, the maintainers of this 
 system conclude, that as there is no reason, so there was no 
 necessity, for any miraculous interposition in this affair, 
 since this is no more than what any common gipsy, with 
 another in confederacy to assist her, might do to any 
 credulous person who came to consult her. 
 
 They who undertake to oppose this opinion lay it down 
 for a good rule, in the interpretation of scripture, that we 
 should, as far as we can, adhere to the primary sense of 
 the words, and never have recourse to any foreign or sin- 
 gular explications, but where the literal is inconsistent, 
 either with the dictates of right reason, or the analogy of 
 faith. Let any indifferent person then, say they, take into 
 his hand the account of Saul's consulting this sorceress, and 
 upon the first reading it he must confess, that the notion 
 which it conve5''s to his mind, is that of a real apparition ; 
 and since the passages that both precede and follow it, are 
 confessedly to be taken in their most obvious meaning, why 
 should a strange and forced construction be put upon this 1 
 Apparitions indeed are not very common things ; but both 
 Sacred and profane history inform us, that they are realities, 
 as the examples of Moses and Elias, conversing with our 
 •Saviour on the mount, and the several bodies of saints, 
 which slept, coming out of their graves after his resurrec- 
 tion, and appearing unto many, do abundantly testify. 
 It is owned, indeed, that according to the series of the nar- 
 ration, Saul did not see the spectre (be it what it will) so soon 
 as the woman did, because, probably, the woman's body, or 
 some other object, might interpose between him ana the 
 first appearance; or perhaps, because the vehicle which 
 Samuel assumed upon this occasion, was not as yet con- 
 densed enough to be visible to Saul, though it was to the 
 woman: but, that he did actually see him is manifest, 
 because, when he perceived (which word in the original 
 signifies seeing so as to be assured of our object) that it was 
 Samuel, he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed 
 himself, which a man is not apt to do to bare ideas or im- 
 aginations. 
 
 Persons of this woman's character, who are under the 
 displeasure of the government, generally affect obscurity, 
 live privately, and are Httle acquainted with affairs of state ; 
 but suppose her to have been ever so great a politician, and 
 ever so intimate with what had passed between Saul and 
 Samuel heretofore, ever so well assured that God had 
 rejected him, and elected David in his stead ; yet how 
 could she come to the knowledge of this, viz., that the 
 battle should be fought the next day, the Israelites be routed, 
 Saul and his sons slain, and their spoils fall into the ene- 
 my's hands ; since each of these events (even in the present 
 situation of Saul's affairs) were highly casual and uncer- 
 tain 1 For mis:ht not this prince lose a battle without losing 
 his lifel Or if he himself fell in the action, why must his 
 three sons be all cut off in the same day 1 Whatever de- 
 monstrations of innate bravery he had given in times past, 
 
 after such severe menaces as he now received from the ap- 
 parition, prudence, one would think, would have put him 
 upon providing for his safety, either by chicaning with the 
 enemy, or retiring from the field of battle, without going 
 to expose himself, his sons, and his whole army, to certain 
 and inevitable death. These are things which nd human 
 penetration could reach, and which only he whb is the ab- 
 solute and Almighty ruler of all causes and events, could 
 either foresee or predict. But the truth is, those menacing 
 predictions, how proper soever for a messenger* sent from 
 God to utter, were highly imprudent either in this witch's, 
 or her accomplice's, mouth: for since they knew nothing 
 of futurity, and were, at the best, but put to conjecture, it is 
 much more reasonable to believe, that at such a juncture 
 as this, they would have bethought themselves of flattering 
 the king, and giving him comfort, and promising success, 
 and not of thundering out such comminations against him 
 as might probably incense him, but could do them no good. 
 They could not but know that the temper of most kings is, 
 to hate to hear shocking truths, and to receive with the ut- 
 most despite those that bring them ill news : and there- 
 fore it is natural to suppose, that had these threatening re- 
 plies been of the woman's or her confederate's forming, 
 they would have given them quite another turn, and not 
 ran the hazard of disobliging the king to no J)urpose, by 
 laying an additional load of trouble upon him. The truth 
 is, the woman, by her courteous entertainment of Saul, 
 seems to be a person of no bad nature; and therefore, if 
 she had an accomplice, who understood to make the most 
 of his profession, his business, at this time, must have been 
 to sooth and cajole the king, which would have both put 
 money in his pocket, and saved the credit of his predictions. 
 For, had he foretold him of success and victory, and a 
 happy issue out of all his troubles, he and the woman had 
 been sure of reputation, as well as further rewards, in case 
 it had happened to prove so ; and if it had not (since no one 
 was privy to their communion) the falsehood of the predic- 
 tion upon Saul's defeat and death, must, in course, have 
 been buried with him. 
 
 From these reasons then we may infer, that the woman, 
 in this transaction, did not impose upon Saul, since he had 
 a plain sight of the apparition ; what the apparition fore- 
 told him, was above human penetration ; and (upon the 
 supposition of a juggle) the witch and her confederate 
 would have certainly acted clean contrary to what they 
 did. And so the next, 
 
 2, Inquiry meets us, namely, What this apparition wasi 
 Some of the ancient doctors, both of the Jewish and Chris- 
 tian church, have made an evil angel the subject of this 
 apparition, in pure regard to the honour of God. " God, 
 say they, had sufficiently declared his hatred against nec- 
 romancy, and all kinds of witchcraft, in the severe laws 
 which he enacted against them ; but it is certainly denying 
 himself, and cancelling his own work, to seem in the least 
 to countenance or abet them, as he necessarily must do, if, 
 upon the evocation of an old hag, any messenger is permit' 
 ted to go from him. Far be it from us therefore to have 
 such conceptions of God. He is holy, and just, and uni- 
 form in all his ways ; and therefore this coming at a call, 
 and doing the witch's drudgery, must only appertain to 
 some infernal spirit, who might possibly find his account 
 in it at last. It was one of this wicked crew, that either 
 assumed a phantom, or a real body, appeared in a mantle 
 like Samuel, spake articulately, and held this conversation 
 with Saul ; which, considering his knowledge and foresight 
 of things, he was well enough qualified to do, notwithstand- 
 ing the sundry predictions relating to future contingencies, 
 which are contained in it." How far the honour of God 
 is concerned in this transaction, will more properly fall 
 under our next inquiry: in the mean time, I cannot but 
 observe, that whatever incongruity may be supposed in the 
 real appearance of Samuel, it is not near so much, as to 
 find one of the apostate spirits of hell expressing so much 
 zeal for the service of the God of heaven, and upbraidin" 
 Saul with those very crimes which he himself tempt 
 him to commit ; as to find this wicked and impure spirj 
 making use of the name of God (that sacred and treme 
 dous name, whose very pronunciation was enough to mal 
 him quake and shiver") no less than six times, in this inter- 
 course with Saul, without any manner of uneasiness or 
 hesitation ; as to find this angel of darkness and father of 
 lies, prying into the womb of futurity, anc determining th 
 
 
Ghap. 28. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 175 
 
 most casual events positively and precisely. We do not 
 indeed deny but that the devil's knowledge is vastly supe- 
 • rior to that of the most accomplished human understand- 
 ing; that his natural penetration, joined with his long 
 experience, is such, that the greatest philosophers, the 
 subtlest critics, and the most refined politicians, are mere 
 novices in comparison of him ; yet what genius, (however 
 exacted and improved,) without a divine revelation, could 
 (as we said before) be able to foretel things that were 
 lodged in God's own breast, viz. the precise time of the 
 two armies engaging, the success and consequence of the 
 victory, and the very names of the persons that were to 
 fall in battle. This is what the apparition plainly revealed 
 to Saul: and yet this, we dare maintain, is more than 
 any finite understanding, by its own mere capacity, could 
 ever have been able to find out. But (without this multi- 
 tude of arguments) if we are to take the scripture in its 
 plain and literal sense, read we over the story of Saul and 
 the witch of Endor ever so often, we shall not so much as 
 once find the devil mentioned in it. And therefore it is 
 somewhat wonderful that he should be brought upon the 
 stage by many learned men, merely to solve a difficulty 
 which, upon examination, appears to be none at all. But 
 now on the other hand, it appears that through the whole 
 narration, Samuel is the only thing that is mentioned. 
 It is Samuel whom Saul desires to be called up ; Samuel, 
 who appeared to the woman ; Samuel, whom the woman 
 describes ; Samuel, whom Saul perceives and bows him- 
 self to, with whom he converses so long, and, because of 
 whose words, he was afterward so sore afraid. The 
 scripture indeed speaks sometimes according to the ap- 
 pearance of things, and may call that by the name of Sam- 
 uel, which was only the semblance or phantom of him : 
 but that this cannot be the sense of the matter here, we 
 have the testimony of the wise son of Sirach, (an excellent 
 interpreter of canonical scriptures,) who tells us expressly, 
 that Samuel, after his death, prophesied and showed the 
 king his end ; pursuant to what we read in the version of 
 the Septuagint, viz. that Saul asked counsel of one that 
 had a familiar spirit, and Samuel answered him. So that, 
 upon the whole, we may be alloAved to conclude, that it 
 was the real soul of Samuel, clothed in some visible form, 
 which, at this time, appeared to the king of Israel : but by 
 what means, or for what purposes, it appeared, is the other 
 question we are now to determine. 
 
 3. Several of the fathers of the Christian church were of 
 opinion, that the devil had a certain limited power over 
 the souls of the saints, before Jesus Christ descended into 
 hell, and rescued them from the tyranny of that prince of 
 darkness. St. Austin, in particular, thinks that there is no 
 absurdity in saying, that the devil was as able to call up 
 Samuel's soul, as he was to present himself among the 
 sons of God, or set our Saviour on one of the pinnacles of 
 the temple ; and a learned Jewish doctor supposes that 
 devils have such a power over human souls, for the space 
 of a year after their departure, as to make them assume 
 what bodies they nlease; and thereupon he concludes, (but 
 very erroneously,) that it was not a year from the time of 
 Samuel's death to his appearance. But these are such 
 wild and extravagant fancies as deserve no serious confu- 
 tation. It is absurd to say that the souls of saints (such as 
 we are now speaking of) were ever in hell, and more 
 absurd to say, that if they are in heaven it is in the power 
 of any magical, nay, of anv diabolical incantation, to call 
 them "down from thence. Great, \f ithout all doubt, is the 
 power of apostate angels ; but miserable, we may say, 
 would the state of the blessed be, if the other had any 
 license to disturb their happiness, when, and as long as 
 they pleased: "For God forbid," says Tertullian, "that we 
 should believe the soul of any holy man, much less of a 
 prophet, should be so far under his disposal, as to be brought 
 up at pleasure by the power of the devil." Since the devil 
 then has no power to disturb the happiness of souls depart- 
 ed, this apparition of Samuel could not proceed from any 
 magical enchantments of the sorceress, but must have been 
 effected by the sole power and appointment of God, who is 
 the sovereign Lord, both of the living and of the dead : and, 
 accordingly, we may observe from the surprise which the 
 woman discovered upon Samuel's sudden appearing, that 
 the power of her magic was not concerned therein, but 
 : that it was the effect of some superior hand. The scripture 
 i 'dates the matter thus : " When the woman saw Samuel, 
 
 she cried with a loud voice, lard the woman spake unto 
 Saul, ! laying. Why hast thou deceived me, for thou art 
 Saul 1 And the king said anto her. Be not afraid, what 
 sawest thoul And the woman said unto Saul, 1 saw gods 
 ascending out of the earth." Now it is plain from this nar- 
 ration, that the woman saw something she was not accus- 
 tomed to see. Her necromancy had ordinary power over 
 demons only, or such wretched spirits as were submitted 
 to the devil's tyranny; but, on this occasion, she saw an 
 object so august, so terrible, so majestic, so contrary indeed 
 to any thing she had ever raised before, and that coming 
 upon her before she had begun her enchantments, that she 
 could not forbear being frightened, and crying out with a 
 loud voice, as being fully satisfied that the apparition 
 came from God. 
 
 " But since the scripture assures us, that God had 
 wholly withdrawn himself from Saul, and would answer 
 him, neither by prophets nor by dreams; how can we 
 imagine that he should, all on a sudden, become so kind 
 as to send Samuel to him, or that Samuel should be in 
 any disposition to come, when it was impossible for him 
 to do any good by his coming 1" Now there seems to be 
 some analogy between God's dealing with Saul in this 
 particular, and his former treatment of the prophet Ba- 
 laam. Balaam was for disobeying the orders which God 
 had given him to bless the Israelites ; and was searching 
 into magical secrets for what he could not obtain of God, 
 viz. a power to change into curses the blessings which God 
 pronounced by his mouth. In this case there was but 
 small likelihood that God would continue to communicate 
 himself to a person so unworthy of any extraordinary rev- 
 elation ; and yet he did it : but then, it was with a design 
 to reveal to him those very miseries from which his mer- 
 cenary mind was so desirous to rescue the Midianites. 
 The application is easy: and it further suggests this 
 reason why God appointed Samuel at this time to appear 
 unto Saul, viz. that through him he might give him a 
 meeting, where he least of all expected one; and might 
 show him that the fate which his own disobedience had 
 brought upon him was determined ; that there was no re- 
 versing the decrees of heaven, no procuring aid against 
 the Almighty's power, no fleeing (though it were to hell) 
 from his presence, no hiding himself in darkness from his 
 inspection ; with whom darkness is no darkness at all, but 
 the night is as clear as the day, and the darkness and light 
 are both alike. That the soiils of men departed have a 
 capacity, and, no doubt, an inclination to be employed in 
 the service of men alive, as having the same nature and 
 affections, and being more sensible of our infirmities than 
 any pure and abstracted spirits are, can hardly be contest- 
 ed ; that in their absent state, they are imbodied with 
 aerial, or ethereal vehicles, which they can condense or 
 rarify at pleasure, and so appear, or not appear to human 
 sight, is what some of the greatest men, botn of the heathen 
 and Christian religion, have maintained; and that frequent 
 apparitions of this kind have happened since the world 
 began, cannot be denied by any one that is conversant in 
 its history : if therefore the wisdom of God (for reasons 
 already assigned) thought proper to despatch a messenger 
 to Saul upon this occasion, there may be some account 
 given why the soul of Samuel (upon the supposition it was 
 left to its option) should rather be desirous to be sent upon 
 that errand. For, whatever may be said in diminution of 
 Saul's religious character, it is certain that he was a brave 
 prince and commander ; had lived in strict intimacy with 
 Samuel ; professed a great esteem for him in all things ; 
 and was by Samuel not a little lamented, when he had 
 fallen from his obedience to God. Upon these considera- 
 tions we may imagine, that the soul of Samuel might have 
 such a kindness for him as to be ready to appear lo him in 
 the depth of his distress, in order to settle his mind, by 
 telling him the upshot of the whole matter, viz. that he 
 should lose the battle, and he and his sons be slain ; that 
 so he might give a specimen (as the Jews love to speak in 
 commendation of him) of the bravest valour that was ever 
 achieved by any commander ; fight boldly when he was 
 sure to die ; and sell his life at as dear a price as possible ; 
 that so, in his death, he might be commemorated with 
 honour, and deserve the threnodia which his son-in-law- 
 made on him ; " The beauty of Israel is slain upon tht. 
 high places ; how are the mighty fallen ! From the blood 
 of the slain, from ^he fat of the mighty, the bow of Jona- 
 
176 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 29. 
 
 than turned not back, and the sword of Saul turned not 
 empty. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the 
 battle !"— Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 14. And he said unto her, What form is he 
 of? And she said, An old man cometh up ; 
 and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul 
 perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped 
 with his face to the ground, and bo wed. himself. 
 
 In»augury it seems to have been usual to represent those 
 who were to be consulted, and whose oracular declarations 
 were to be received, as covered with a mantle, or some 
 garment. This certainly gave an appearance of mystery 
 to such transactions. Thus it appears the Roman acted, 
 according to what Plutarch says in his Life of Numa. 
 " Taking with him the priests and augurs, he went up to 
 the capitol, which the Romans at that time called the Tar- 
 peian Rock. There the chief of the augurs covered the 
 head of Numa, and turned his face towards the south." It 
 appears from Livy that the augur covered his own head, 
 not that of Numa. The augur always wrapped up his 
 head, in a gown peculiar to his office, when he made his 
 observations. — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 20. Then Saul fell straightway all along on 
 the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the 
 words of Samuel : and there was no strength in 
 him ; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor 
 all the night. 
 
 When people are under the influence of great sorrow or 
 fear, they always do the same thing, and roll themselves 
 along, making bitter lamentations. And when men have 
 escaped great danger, they roll themselves on the earth to 
 the distance of a quarter of a mile, after the car of the tem- 
 ple, in performance of their vow. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. But he refused, and said, I will not eat. 
 But his servants, together with the woman, 
 compelled him ; and he hearkened unto their 
 voice ; so he arose from the earth, and sat upon 
 the bed. 
 
 Saul, no doubt, on account of his sorrow and fear, refused 
 to eat, as do others under similar circumstances at this day. 
 But when people are angry also they decline taking their 
 food. Should the wife not bring the dinner to her lord! at 
 the proper time, or should it not be properly prepared, he 
 declares he will not partake of it, and that he has made up 
 his mind to die of hunger. She entreats him by the love 
 she bears for him, she touches his feet with her hands, and 
 strokes his chin, but no ! he has made up his mind ; die he 
 will. " She shall have no more trouble." The afflicted 
 woman then runs to call the mother or sisters of her inex- 
 orable lord, who has determined to commit suicide by star- 
 vation. They all come round him, but his eyes are fixed 
 on the ground, and there are the viands just as left by his 
 weeping wife. Then commence their tender entreaties, 
 backed by the eloquence of tears ; the mother, the sisters, 
 the wife, all beseech him to take a little, and then the 
 matron, from whose hand he has often been fed before, 
 
 Euts a little into his mouth, and it is merely to please them 
 e begins to eat. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. And the woman had a fat calf in the 
 house ; and she hasted, and killed it, and took 
 
 • flour and kneaded it, and did bake unleavened 
 bread thereof: 25. And she brought it before 
 Saul, and before his servants ; and they did eat. 
 Then they rose up, and went away that night. 
 
 This calf was killed, dressed, cooked, and eaten in as 
 short a time as possible ; which might be called for from 
 the necessity of the guest. But it is evident from other pas- 
 sages that it was a custom to kill, cook, and eat an animal 
 in a very short time. The heat of the climate certainly 
 prevents flesh from being kept many hours, but there is no 
 need to put the animal on the fire while its flesh is still 
 
 warm. The people affect to be disgusted with us for keep- 
 ing fowls six or eight hours before they are cooked, and 
 say we are fond of eating chettareyche, i. e. dead flesh: 
 There are some Englishmen who become so accustomed 
 to these things, that they have the chicken grilled, and on 
 their table, which a quarter of an hour before was playing 
 in their yard. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Ver. 1. Now the Philistines gathered together all 
 their armies to Aphek : and the Israelites 
 pitched by a fountain which is in Jezreel. 
 
 The Archbishop of Tyre tells us, (^Gesta dei,) that 
 the Christian kings of Jerusalem used to assemble their 
 forces at a fountain between Nazareth and Sepphoris, which 
 was greatly celebrated on that accoimt. This being looked 
 upon to be nearly the centre of their kingdom, they could 
 from thence, consequently, march most commodiously to 
 any place where their presence was wanted. He mentions 
 also another fountain near a town called Little Gerinum, 
 which, he says, was the ancient Jezreel ; near this Saladin 
 pitched his camp, for the benefit of its waters, while Bald- 
 win, king of Jerusalem, had, as usual, assembled his army 
 at the first-mentioned place. » 
 
 Of the fountain Ain-el-Scanderoni, Buckingham re- 
 marks, " This is a modern work ; the charitable gift, per- 
 haps, of some pious Mussulman, being well built, with a 
 cistern beneath an arch, whence issue two streams, and over 
 which is an Arabic inscription of several lines. It has, 
 besides, a square platform, walled in, for prayers, shelter, 
 or refreshment, and a flight of steps ascending to it, with a 
 dome of a sepulchre, now partly buried by the falling in of 
 adjacent ruins." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 2. And the lords of the Philistines passed 
 on by hundreds and by thousands ; but David 
 and his men passed on in the rearward with 
 Achish. 3. Then said the princes of the Phi- 
 listines, What do these Hebrews here ? And 
 . Achish said unto the princes of the Philistines, 
 Is not this David, the servant of Saul the king 
 of Israel, which hath been with me these days, 
 or these years, and I have found no fault in 
 him since he fell unto me unto this day? 
 
 The situation of Saul's mind, after this 'adventure, must 
 have been very anxious and distressed, as he received no 
 directions from Samuel how to behave in, or extricate 
 himself out of, the difficulties in which he found himself 
 involved. Nor were David's circumstances much easier, 
 who had been pressed into the Philistine camp and service 
 by Achish, whereby he was reduced to the greatest straits, 
 and scarce knew how to behave himself, consistently with 
 the confidence which that prince placed in him, the duty 
 he owed to his own country, and his own interest and 
 views, as an expectant of the crown and kingdom of Is- 
 rael But happily for David, providence extricated him 
 from th'is embarrassment ; for as the troops of the Philis- 
 tines were passing in review before their principal officers, 
 David also with his corps marched in the rear, under the 
 command of Achish J^ing of Gath. This gave great un- 
 easiness to the Philistine princes, who immediately expos- 
 tulated with Achish, and said. What business havethese 
 Hebrews in our army'? Achish answered: Is not this the 
 gallant David, formerly the servant and officer of Saul the 
 king of Israel ; who, to save himself from the persecution 
 and cruelty of his ungrateful master, hath put himself un- 
 der my protection, and of whose fidelity and attachment to 
 my person and service, I have had long experience 1 For 
 though he hath been with me now a considerable time, I 
 have not had the least reason to suspect his integrity, or 
 find fault with his conduct. But this was far from remov- 
 ing the jealousy of the Philistine officers, who, highly dis- 
 pleased with Achish for what they judged his ill-placed 
 confidence in David, said in great anger to him: Com- 
 mand this man immediately to retire from the army, and 
 to go back to Ziklag, the place thou hast appointed for his 
 residence. We will not suffer him to go with us to the 
 battle, lest in the engagement he should turn his forces 
 
Chap. 30. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 17 
 
 against us. Poi wh|t more effectual method can he take 
 to.reconcile him^^elf to his former master, than by lending 
 his assistance to defeat and destroy our army 1 Is not this 
 that very David whose praises were publicly celebrated in 
 songs and dances 1 And in honour of whom the Israelitish 
 women cried out in triumph : Saul hath slam his thousands, 
 and David his ten thousands. Such a man is too danger- 
 ous to trust in our present critical situation. Achish find- 
 ing the princes peremptorily fixed in their resolution not 
 to permit David and his forces to go with them to the en- 
 gagement, immediately sent for him, and said, " By the life 
 of Jehovah, I acknowledge thy integrity in the whole of thy 
 conduct towards me, and there is nothing that I more en- 
 tirely approve, or more sincerely wish, than thy continu- 
 ance in the army, and joining with us in the engagement, 
 for I have nothing to reproach thee with, from the time 
 thou didst first put thyself under my protection, to the present 
 day. But the lords of the Philistines have not that opink)n 
 of thy attachment to our interest and cause that I have, so 
 that i am forced to dismiss thee from thy attendance. You 
 must therefore return peaceably, and are allowed by them 
 to do it in safety, to the town I have given you, because 
 your longer continuance with us is disagreeable to them, 
 and may be attended with very dangerous consequences." 
 David, with seeming displeasure replied, " What have I 
 done to incur their displeasure, or what hast thou found in 
 thy servant, ever since 1 have been with thee, to forfeit thy 
 confidence and favour'? Etowever, since it is their pleas- 
 ure, I must submit, and will not, in obedience to their order, 
 fight against the enemies of my lord the king." Achish 
 told him, that " he was so far from entertaining any sus- 
 picion of him, that he esteemed him for his integrity and 
 worth, and regarded him as an angel, or messenger "from 
 God, immediately sent to his assistance ; but that as the 
 princes of the Philistines had resolved that lie should not 
 go with them to the battle, he could not but order him to 
 march away by daybreak with his master's servants to the 
 place he had appointed for him and his followers." David 
 accordingly returned with his troops into the territories of 
 the Philistines, while their army penetrated farther into 
 the dominions of Saul, and encamped at Jezreel. 
 
 It appears from the answer given by David to Achish, 
 as I have rendered the words, that David was not in the 
 least displeased at his being dismissed, but gladly took 
 Achish at his word, and laid hold of the first opportunity 
 of disengaging himself from the service in which that 
 prince expected his assistance. However, if we take 
 David's answer in that sense, which is given it in our ver- 
 sion : " What -have I done that I may not go fight 
 
 against the enemies of my lord the king V it will appear 
 to be a very prudent one, and such as became the circum- 
 stances in which he then found himself, by which he 
 promised nothing, and laid himself under no manner of 
 engagement. It was a general, ambiguous, and cautious 
 one ; in which he neither denies what the Philistines sus- 
 pected, that he would fall off to Saul in the battle, nor 
 makes the least mention of his readiness to fight with the 
 Philist\'nes against Saul and the Hebrew army. He only 
 asks, why he should be refused to fight againsl^the enemies 
 of the king 1 If he had some obligations to him, to the 
 Philistines he had none. Against the enemies of Achish 
 he wou!d have fought, where he could have done it with 
 honour; where he could not, as a man of honour, he must 
 have refused it. Against the enemies of the Philistines, 
 neither his inclination, or duty, or interest, would have 
 permitted him to fight ; and the Philistines themselves did 
 aot think his personal obligations to Achish a sufficient 
 security for his assisting them ; and even Achish himself 
 c^ems to have been at last in some doubt, whether or not he 
 rould depend on him, when he says to him: "Rise up 
 e'ctr?,y in the morning, Avith thy master's servants that are 
 coiris with thee ;" hereby more than intimating, that he 
 could, not but consider Saul as David's king and master, 
 and all David's forces as servants to Saul; and actually 
 urging this as a reason for their immediate departure from 
 him. Had David made such a speech to Achish, previous 
 to his dismission, or to the Philistine princes to prevent 
 their dismissing him, it would have looked as though he 
 had been uneasy at his not being suffered to assist them in 
 th^ engagement. But as they had determined he should 
 not go with them to battle, and Achish had peremptorily 
 ordered him to march off; David, who could not but be 
 23 
 
 highly pleased that he was now wholly extricated from 
 the difticulties he was involved in, artfully chose to ex- 
 press himself to Achish in such terms, which, though they 
 implied a real truth, yet might lead Achish to put a further 
 meaning on them than David intended, in order to give 
 Achish the highest opinion of his zeal for his service; by 
 a general assurance, that he was always ready to assist 
 him against his enemies, though he was now dismissed by 
 the lords of the Philistines in a very reproachful and dis- 
 honourable manner. I would further observe, that if there 
 is any thing wrong in David's ambiguous reply to Achish, 
 we should make the proper allowances for the circum- 
 stances of the times, when morality was not carried to that 
 noble height, as it is by the clearer light of the gospel 
 revel ition. It appears from many instances in the Old 
 Testament, that the greatest men did not think these am- 
 biguous evasive answers, in any degree, or, as I appre- 
 hend, at all criminal; especially ^en the preservation 
 of life depended- on it. Let it therefore be allowed, with 
 all my heart, that David, in his equivocal answers, did 
 what, according to our present sentiments of morality, in 
 this very enlightened and conscientious age, was not so 
 perfectly agreeable to the stricter rules of it; he Aight still 
 be an excellent man for the times he lived in; when such 
 equivocations were generally allowed of, almost univer- 
 sally practised, and by no means thought inconsistent with 
 true religion and virtue, but rather in many cases neces- 
 sary and commendable. — Chandler. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Ver. 8. And David inquired at the Lord, saying. 
 Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I over- 
 take them ? And he answered him, Pursue : 
 for thou shalt surely overtake ihem, and with- 
 out fail recover all. 
 
 The chosen people of Jehovah, not less eager than others 
 to know the issue of their military expeditions, or if heaven 
 regarded their undertakings with a favourable eye, had 
 frequent recourse to the holy oracle ; they consulted the 
 prophet of the Lord ; they offered sacrifices, and consulted 
 with the high-driest who bore the Urim and Thummim in 
 his breastplate, by means of which he discovered the will of 
 the Deity; or, presenting himself at the altar of incense, 
 received the desired response by an audible voice from the 
 most holy place. The son of Jesse, in a time of great dis- 
 tress and perplexity, consulted the oracle by means of an 
 ephod, a part of sacerdotal vestments : " And David said 
 to Abiathar the priest, Abimelech's son, I pray thee, bring 
 me hither the ephod; and Abiathar brought hither the 
 ephod to David. And David inquired at the Lord, saying. 
 Shall I pursue after this troop 1 shall I overtake them 1 And 
 he answered him, Pursue ; for thou shalt surely overtake 
 them, and without fail recover all." Here was no bright- 
 ening of arrows, after the custom of superstitious heathens; 
 no consulting with images, nor inspecting of intestines, 
 from which nothing but vague conjecture can result ; but a 
 devout and humble application to the throne of the true God ; 
 and the answer was in every respect worthy of his charac- 
 ter; it was clear and precise, at once authorizing the pur- 
 suit, and promising complete success; or forbidding them, 
 in plain terms, to prosecute their designs. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. And they found an Egyptian in the field, 
 and brouofht him to David, and gave him bread, 
 and he did eat: and they made him drink wa- 
 ter; 12. And they gave him a piece of a cake 
 of figs, and two clusters of raisins : and when 
 he had eaten, his spirit came again to him ; for 
 he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, 
 three days and three nights. 
 
 Thevenot says, " At about five o'clock in the morning, 
 when passing by the side of a bush, we heard a voice that 
 called to us, and being come to the place, we found a poor 
 languishing Arab, who told us, that he had not eaten a bit 
 for five days: we gave him some victuals and drink, with 
 a provision of bread for two days more." This was on the 
 journey from Suez to Tor. — Burder. 
 
178 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 80. 
 
 Ver. 16. And when he had brought him ciown, 
 behold, they were spread abroad upon all the 
 earth, eating and drinking, and dancing, be- 
 cause of all the great spoil that they had taken 
 out of the land of the Philistines, and out of the 
 land of Judah. 
 
 This is said of the Amalekites, after they had spoiled 
 Ziklag. Parkhurst says, under in on the above, also on 
 1 Kings xii. 32, " It plainly denotes dancing round in cir- 
 cles ;" and he believes the word " is applied to the celebra- 
 tion of religious feasts, whether in honour of the true God, 
 or of idols," and he cites several passages in support of his 
 opinion. When the heathen worship their demon gods, 
 they dance in circles round the sacrifices, throw themselves 
 into the most violent contortions; the arms, head, and legs, 
 appear as if they were In convulsions. They throw them- 
 selves suddenly on the ground, then jump up, and again join 
 in the circular dance. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. And David smote them from the twilight 
 even* unto the evening of the next day ; and 
 there escaped not a man of them, save four hun- 
 dred young men which rode upon camels, 
 and fled. 
 
 There were two reasons, exclusive of all religious con- 
 siderations, that fully justified David in this attack upon the 
 Amalekites. He now resided among the Philistines, in 
 whose country these Amalekites had made great depreda- 
 lions, while the Philistines themselves were engaged in war 
 with the Hebrews, and incapable of defending their own 
 frontiers. He was their ally, obliged to act in their favour, 
 and behaved like a soldier of honour in avenging the in- 
 juries that had been done them. This insult of David 
 therefore upon the Amalekites was not unprovoked, if we 
 consider his connexion with the Philistines ; much less, if 
 we add to this, the loss he himself and his men sustained. 
 For surely the burning of the city where he dwelt, the lead- 
 ing captive into slavery his own wives, and the wives and 
 children of above six hundred persons, and the making a 
 booty of all their substance, must have been the highest 
 provocation to men, that had any feeling of natural affec- 
 tion. David and his soldiers thought it so ; and if it be 
 lawful to put to death incendiaries, women and children 
 stealers, thieves, robbers, and vagabonds ; David's execu- 
 ting this vengeance on the Amalekites for their treachery 
 in making this invasion, and committing these unprovoked 
 violences, while neither the Philistines nor Hebrews could 
 defend their territories, was a deserved and necessary se- 
 verity. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 21. And they went forth to meet David, and 
 to meet the people that were with him ; and 
 when David came near to the people, he saluted 
 them. 
 
 This was a usual mode of honouring persons of dignity. 
 "Before any person of rank enters a city, it is usual for 
 him to be received by a deputation. If his rank is very 
 considerable, the Peeshwaz is sent to a great distance. A 
 thousand men were sent to meet the prince, halfwav be- 
 tween Ispahan and Sheeraz, a hundred miles." (Wa- 
 nng's Tour to Sheeraz.) " At this place (Jerusalem) two 
 Turkish officers, mounted on beautiful horses, sumptuous- 
 ly caparisoned, came to inform us, th it the governor, hav- 
 ing intelligence of our approach, had sent them to escort us 
 into town." (Clarke's Travels.) — Burder. 
 
 " Saluted them." Hebrew, " asked them how they did." 
 It is in the East, as in England, a Qommon mode of saluta- 
 tion to inquire after the health. They do not, however, 
 , answer in the same unhesitating way. When a man has 
 perfectly recovered from a fit of sickness, he will not say, 
 •' I am quite well," because he would think that like boasV 
 ing, and be afraid of a relapse; he would, therefore, say, 
 " I am a little better— not quite so ill as I was :" sometimes, 
 when the question is asked, he will reply, "Can you not 
 ^ee for yourself? what answer can I givel" To say you 
 look well, or have become stout, is very annoying. A short 
 time after my arrival in Ceylon, a very stout Brai":Q 
 
 paid me a visit, and on my saying he looked remarkably 
 well, he fell mto a great rage and left the room. I ept- 
 plained to him afterward that I did not mean any offence, 
 and he said it was very unfortunate to be addressed in such 
 language. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. For who will hearken unto you in this 
 matter ? but as his part is that goeth down to 
 the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by 
 the stuff: they shall part alike. 
 
 In Greece, " the whole booty was brought to the general, 
 who had the first choice, divided the remainder among 
 those who had signalized themselves, according to their 
 rank and merits, and allotted to the rest equal portions ; 
 thus in the Trojan war, when the captive ladies were to 
 be chosen, Agamemnon, in the first place, took Astynome, 
 the -daughter of Chryses ; next Achilles had Hippodamia, 
 daughter to Brises ; then Ajax chose Tecmessa, and so of 
 the rest; Achilles therefore complains of Agamemnon, 
 that he had always the best part of the booty, while him- 
 self, who sustained the burden of the war, was content with 
 a small piltapce." From the time of David, the Hebrew 
 warriors, as well those who went to the field, as those who 
 guarded the baggage, shared alike; the law is couched 
 in these terms : " As his part is that goeth down to the bat- 
 lie, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff." But a 
 more satisfactory account of the mode in which the spoils 
 of vanquished nations were divided among the Hebrews, 
 is recorded in the book of Numbers. The whole booty 
 taken from the Midianites, was brought before Moses, an'd 
 Eliezer the priest, and the princes of the tribes ; they, by 
 the divine command, divided it into two parts, between the 
 army and the congregation ; of the army's half they took 
 " one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the 
 beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep, and gave it unto 
 Eliezer the priest, for a heave-offering of the Lord ;" and 
 of the congregation's half they took " one portion of fifty, 
 of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses, and of the flocks, 
 of all manner of beasts, and gave them unto the Levites." 
 This law probably continued in force till the captivity ; and 
 according to its provisions, were the spoils of succeeding 
 wars distributed ; for the regulation which David establish- 
 ed, referred only to this question, whether the soldiers, who' 
 from weakness were obliged to remain with the baggage, 
 should have an equal share of the booty, with their brethren 
 in arms who had been engaged. Before the spoils were 
 distributed, the Greeks considered themselves obliged to 
 dedicate a part of them to the gods, to whose assistance they 
 reckoned themselves indebted for them all. This custom, 
 also, they borrowed from the Orientals ; for the Hebrews, 
 in dividing the spoils of Midian, separated a portion for the 
 service of the tabernacle ; and the practice, so reasonable 
 in itself, being imitated by the surroundmg nations, at last 
 found its way into Greece and other countries of Europe. 
 But besides the public offerings of the nation, the soldiers 
 oflen of their own accord, consecrated a partof their spoils 
 to *he God of battles: they had several methods of doing 
 this. ; at cne time they collected them into a heap, and 
 consumed them with fire ; at another, they suspended their 
 offerings in the temples. Pausanias, the Spartan, is re- 
 ported to have consecrated out of the Persian spoils, a tripod 
 to Delphian Apollo, and a statue of brass, seven cubits long, 
 to Olympian Jupiter. The origin of these customs is easily 
 discernible in the manners of the Hebrews. After the rich 
 and various spoils of Midian were divided, the officers of 
 the army, penetrated with gratitude that they had not lost a 
 man in the contest, " presented an oblation to the Lord, 
 jewe]s of gold, chains, and bracelets, rings, ear-rings, and 
 tablets, to make atonement," as they piously expressed it, 
 " for their souls before the Lord." But the city of Jericho 
 and all its inhabitants, except Rahab and her family, were 
 devoted to utter destruction, as an offering to the justice 
 and holiness of God, whom they had incensed by their 
 crimes ; " And the city," said Joshua, " shall be accursed, 
 even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord; only Rahab 
 the harlot shall live, she and all that are wath her in the 
 house, because she hid the messengers that Avere sent. . . . 
 But all the silver and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, 
 are consecrated unto the Lord; they shall come into the 
 treasury of the Lord. . . . And they burnt the city with fire, 
 and all that was therein ; only the silver, and the gold, 
 
Jhap. 31. 
 
 1 SAMUEL. 
 
 179 
 
 and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put in the treas- 
 ury of the house of the Lord." When the demands of reli- 
 gion were satisfied, the Grecian soldiers commonly reserved 
 articles of extraordinary value which they had obtained, as 
 a present to their a^eneral or commander of their party. To 
 this mark of respect, Deborah perhaps alludes in the words 
 which she puts mto the mouth of Sisera's mother and her 
 attendants : " Have they not sped 1 have they not divided 
 the prey ; to every man a damsel or two ; to Sisera, a prey 
 of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needle-work, 
 of divers colours of needle-work on both sides, meet for 
 the necks of them that take the spoil." " It has been," says 
 Malcom, " the invariable usage of all Asiatic conquerors, 
 from the monarch who subdues kingdoms, to the chief that 
 seizes a village, to claim some fair females as the reward 
 df his conquest." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Ver. 8. And it came to pass on the morrow, 
 when the Philistines came to strip the slain, 
 that they found Saul and his three sons fallen 
 in Mount Gilboa. 9. And they cut off his 
 head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into 
 the land of the Philistines round about, to pub- 
 lish it in the house of their idols, and among 
 the people. 
 
 It was the practice of ancient warriors to strip the dead 
 bodies of their enemies on the field of battle, after the vic- 
 t'ory was secured, and the pursuit had ceased ; and not sat- 
 isfied with this, they often treated them in the most brutal 
 manner, basely revenging the injuries which they had re- 
 ceived from them while living, by disfiguring their remains, 
 and exposing them to scorn anci ignominy. When the 
 Philistines came to strip the dead that fell in the battle on 
 the mountains of Gilboah, they found Saul and his three 
 sons among the slain. But instead of respecting his rank 
 and valour, they " cut off his head, and stripped off his ar- 
 mour, which they put in the house of Ashtaroth ; and they 
 fastened his body, and the bodies of his sons, to the wall of 
 Beth-shan." Capital oflfenceswere sometimes punished by 
 throwing the criminal upon hooks, which were fixed in 
 the wall below, where they frequently hung in the most ex-, 
 quisite tortures, thirty or forty hours before they expired. 
 It is probable that the bodies of Saul and his sons were 
 fixed to such hooks as were placed there for the execution 
 of the vilest malefactors ; but whatever be in this, it was 
 certainly meant as one of the greatest indignities which 
 they could offer to the remains of an enemy whom they both 
 feared and detested. 
 
 The ancient Greeks treated the dead bodies of their ene- 
 mies in a manner equally indecent and inhuman. They 
 mangled, dismembered, dragged them about the field of 
 battle, and suffered them to lie unburied for a long time, 
 and even to become the prey of savage beasts and raven- 
 ous fowls. No instance of this kind is more remarkable 
 than that of the brave, the generous, but unfortunate 
 Hector, whose dead body suffered every mdignity which 
 the infuriate rage of Achilles, or the ferocious brutality of 
 his myrmidons, could invent. Nay, the whole army joined 
 in the brutish and barbarous insult ; which shows that it 
 was their constant practice, and regarded as quite consist- 
 ent with virtue and honour. Tydeus is not treated with 
 more respect in Statius; and in Virgil, the body of Mezen- 
 tius is cruelly lacerated, for though he only received two 
 
 wounds Ironi .^neas, we find his breastp'/ate afterward 
 pierced through in twelve places. These instances, to 
 which many others might be added, prove that it was the 
 common practice of ancient warriors. In the heroic ages 
 too, the conquerors compelled their enemies to pay a large 
 sum of money for permission to bury their dead. Hector's 
 body was redeemed from Achilles ; and that of Achilles 
 was redeemed from the Trojans for the same price he had 
 received for Hector. And Virgil introduces Nisus dis- 
 suading his friend Euryalus from accompanying him into 
 danger, lest, if he were slain, there should be no person to 
 recover by fight, or redeem his body. These statements 
 prove, that it was a common practice in the primitive ages, 
 to redeem the dead body of a warrior ; and if this was neg- 
 lected or refused, it was frequently suffered to remain un- 
 buried. But, in succeeding times, it was considered as the 
 greatest impiety, as the indubitable mark of a savage or 
 ungenerous temper, to deny the rites of burial to an enemy. 
 The more civilized Grecians reckoned it a sacred duty to 
 bury the slain, a debt which they owed to nature ; and they 
 seldom or never neglected it, or refused their permission to 
 pay it, except on extraordinary and unusual provocations. 
 It was a very aggravating circumstance in the desolations 
 of Jerusalem, so feelingly described by the pen of Asaph, 
 that the dead bodies of her inhabitants remained unburied , 
 and the terms in which he mentions it, prove that the He- 
 brews had the same acute feelings, relative to this subject, 
 as the most refined nations of antiquity : " O God, the 
 heathen are come into thine inheritance ; thy holy temple 
 have they defiled ; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. 
 The, dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be 
 meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints 
 unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed 
 like water round about Jerusalem ; and there was none to 
 bury them." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 10. And they put his armour in the house 
 of Ashtaroth; and they fastened his body to 
 the wall of Beth-shan. 
 
 Three Bakhtiarees had been condemned to death by the 
 
 Erince for robbery ; one was beheaded, and the second 
 lown up ; the third weis cut in half, and the two parts of 
 his body hung on two of the most frequented gates of the 
 city as a warning to other thieves. The horrid spectacle 
 was displayed for three days. It illustrates, in some de- 
 gree, an ancient custom exemplified in the case of Saul, 1 
 Sam. 31. 10, whose body was fastened to the wall of Beth- 
 shan by the Philistines. Shekch-kerden is the technical 
 name for this punishment, which consists in cutting the 
 body in two lengthwise, with a sword, beginning between 
 the legs, and terminating in the side of the neck above the 
 shoulder, — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 12. All the valiant men arose, and went all 
 night, and took the body of Saul, and the bodies 
 of his sons, from the wall of Beth-shan, and 
 came to Jabesh, and burnt them there. 
 
 The Chaldeeand other versions render the words, " and 
 they burnt or kindled a light or lamp over them there, as 
 they are accustomed to burn over kings." Upon which a 
 rabbi observes, that this has reference to a custom, deliver- 
 ed down from their ancestors, of burning the beds and other 
 utensils of the dead upon their graves, or to the burning of 
 spices over them. See Jer. xxxiv. 5. — Burdee. 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 2. It came even to pass on the third day, 
 that, behold, a man came out of the camp from 
 Saul, with his clothes rent, and earth upon his 
 head : and so it was, when he came to David, 
 that he fell on the earth, and did obeisance. 
 
 In several passages of scripture mention is made of dust 
 strewed on the head, as a token of mourning, or earth, or 
 ropes carried on the head, as a token of submission. The 
 following instance is remarkably analogous to these acts of 
 humiliation : " He then descended the mountain, carrying, 
 as is the custom of the country, for vanquished rebels, a 
 stone upon his head, as confessing himself guilty of a capi- 
 tal crime." (Bruce.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. And I took the crown that ^'^5 upon his 
 head, and the bracelet that was on his arm,* and 
 have brought them hither unto my lord. 
 
 A bracelet is commonly worn by the oriental princes, as 
 a badge of power and authority. When the calif Cayem 
 Bemrillah granted the investiture of certain dominions to 
 an eastern prince, he sent him letters patent, a crown, a 
 chain, and bracelets. This was probably the reason that 
 the Amalekite brought the bracelet which he found on 
 Saul's arm, along with his crown, to David, It was a royal 
 ornament, and belonged to the regalia of the kingdom. 
 The bracelet, it must be acknowledged, was worn both by 
 men and women of difTerenl ranks ; but the original word, 
 in the second book of Samuel, occurs only in tM'o other 
 places, and is quite different from the term, which is em- 
 ployed to express the more common ornament known by 
 that name. And besides, this ornament was worn by kings 
 and princes in a different manner from their subjects. It 
 was fastened above the elbow ; and was commonly of great 
 value. The people of Israel found the bracelet among the 
 spoils of Midiajij when they destroyed that nation in the 
 time of Moses ; but it will be remembered, that they killed 
 at the same time five of their kings. The prophet Isaiah, 
 indeed mentions the kind of bracelet, which Mr. Harmer 
 considers as the peculiar badge of kings, in his description 
 of. the wardrobe of a Jewish lady, which proves, that in the 
 age when he flourished, it was not the exclusive decoration 
 of regal personages, but had been assumed, and was often 
 worn by persons of inferior rank ; but it is by no means 
 improbable, that the extravagance of the female sex in his 
 time, which seems to have arisen to an unprecedented 
 height, might have confounded, in some measure, the dis- 
 tinctions of rank, by inducing the nobility of Judah to af- 
 fect the state and ornamenrs of their princes. Persons of 
 distinction in various countries of the East, wore chains of 
 silver and gold ; and not satisfied with this, ostentatiously 
 displayed their wealth and rank, by suspending chains of 
 the same precious metals about the necks of their camels. 
 Silver chains, according to Pococke, hung from the bridles 
 of the seven military agas in Egypt, to the breastplates of 
 their horses. The camels of the kings of Midian, whom 
 Gideon discomfited, were, agreeably to this custom, adorn- 
 ed with chains of gold. — Paxton, 
 
 Margin, " My coat of mail, or my embroidered coat." 
 The marginal reading here probably conveys the true 
 meaning of the Hebrew. Saul, for his personal security, 
 most likely wore a close coat, made of rings, or oilets, in 
 the nature of a coat of mail. Montfaucon {Supplement, 
 vol. iii. p. 397) thus represents a combat between a person 
 on horseback and another on foot. " The horseman, repre- 
 sented on an Etruscan vase, of Cardinal Gualtieri's, is 
 armed in such a sinsrular manner, that I thought it neces- 
 
 sary to give the figure here. This horseman is mounted 
 on a naked horse, with only a bridle, though the horse 
 seems to have something on his neck, which passes between 
 his two ears, but it is impossible to distinguish what it is. 
 The armour also of this horseman is as extraordinary as 
 that of the Sarmatian horsemen on Trajan's pillar. His 
 military habit is very close, and fitted to his body, and cov- 
 ers him even to his wrist, and below his ancles, so that ?iis 
 feet remain naked, which is very extraordinary. For, I 
 think, both in the ancient and modern cavalry, the feet were 
 a principal part which they guarded: excepting only the 
 Moorish horse, who have for their whole dress only a short 
 tunic, which reaches to the middle of the thigh : and the 
 Numidians, who ride quite naked, upon a naked horse, ex- 
 cept a short cloak which they have, fastened to their neck, 
 and hanging loose behind them, in warm weather, and 
 ■which they wrap about themselves in cold weather. Our 
 Etruscan horseman here hath his feet naked, but he hath 
 his head well covered, with a cap folded about it, and large^ 
 slips of stuff hanging down from it. He m ears a collar of 
 round stones. The close-bodied coat he wears is wrought 
 all over with zigzags, and large points, down to the girdle, 
 which is broad, and tied round the middle of his body ; 
 the same flourishing is continued lower down his habit, 
 quite to his ankle, and' all over his arms, to his wrist." 
 Something similar to this might be the military dress of 
 Saul. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15. And David called one of the young men, 
 and said, Go near, and fall upon him. And 
 he smote him that he died. 
 
 Others were condemned to be slain with the sword, which 
 was by decapitation, executed in the manner used in mod- 
 ern times. Such was the punishment which David inflict- 
 ed on the Amalekite, for putting Saul to death. It seems 
 also to be the usual punishment in Abyssinia, for taking 
 away the life of a king: for Socinios, an Abj^ssinian mon- 
 arch, being informed that one Mahardin, a Moor, had 
 been the first to break through that respect due to a king, bv 
 wounding Za Denghel, his predecessor, at the baitle of 
 Bartcho, he ordered him to be brought at noonday before 
 the gate of his palace, and his head to be then struck off 
 with an axe, as a just atonement for violated majesty. The 
 punishment of strangling, as described by the Jewish wri- 
 ters, resembled the Turkish punishment of the bowstring, 
 rather than the present mode of executing by the gibbet. 
 The offender Avas placed up to the loins in dung, and a nap- 
 kin was twisted about his neck, and drawn hard by the wit- 
 nesses, till he was dead. Those who had committed great 
 and notorious offences, and who deserved to be made pub- 
 lic examples, were hanged upon a tree after they had actu- 
 ally suffered the death to which they were condemned; 
 which shows, that this punishment was not the same with 
 the Roman crucifixion, in which the malefactors were 
 nailed to the gibbet, and left to expire by slow and excru- 
 ciating torments. The Hebrew custom was no more than 
 hanging up their bodies after they were dead, and expo- 
 sing them for some time to open shame. For this purpose, 
 a piece of timber was fixed in the ground, out of which 
 came a beam, to which the hands of the sufferer were tied, 
 so that his body hung in the posture of a person on the 
 cross. When the sun set, the body was taken down ; for 
 the law says, " He that is hanged on a tree, is accursed of 
 God ;" not that the criminal was accursed because he was 
 hanged, but he was hanged because he was accUrsed.— 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 12. And they mourned and wept, and fasted 
 until even for Saul, and for Jonathan his son 
 
Chap. 1. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 181 
 
 and for the people of the Lord, and for the 
 house of Israel ; because they were fallen by 
 the sword. 
 
 Thus did David, and those that were with him, weep 
 and fast until the evening, because the " mighty were fall- 
 en," and because "the weapons of war" had perished. 
 When a father or mother " falls on the ground," the children 
 have stated periods when they weep and fast in memory 
 of their dead. On the day of the full moon, those who have 
 lost their mothers fast until the sun come to the meridian, 
 and in the evening they take milk and fruit. For a father, 
 the sons fast on the new moon in the same way as for the 
 mother. — Roberts. ■ 
 
 Ver. 18. (Also he bade them teach the children 
 ofJudah the use of the bow: behold, it is writ- 
 ten in the book of Jasher.) 
 
 These words have been generally understood of Jona- 
 than teaching the children of Judah the use of the bow. 
 But a better interpretation of the passage, probably is, that 
 the bow is the name of the lamentation which David ut- 
 tered over Jonathan ; and that it is so denominated, because 
 he met his death from the bow. The following extract, 
 describing a funeral procession of women, to commemorate 
 the death of a merchant, named Mahomet, at Cosire, 
 where he was murdered by two Arabs, who attacked him 
 with swords, will illustrate this representation. Speaking 
 of the murder of Mahomet, Mr. Irwin, ( Travels, p. 254,) 
 says, " The tragedy which was lately acted near Cosire, 
 gave birth to a mournful procession of females, which 
 passed through the different streets of Gmnah, and uttered 
 dismal cries for the death of Mahomet, In the centre was 
 a female of his family, who carried a naked sword in her 
 hand, to intimate the weapon by which the deceased fell. 
 At sundry places the procession stopped, and danced round 
 the sword to the music of timbrels and tabours. They paused 
 a long time before our house, and some of the women 
 made threatening signs to one of our servants, which agrees 
 with the caution we received to keep within doors. It 
 would bft dangerous enough to face this frantic company, 
 whose constant clamour and extravagant gestures gave 
 them all the appearance of the female bacchanals of Thrace, 
 recorded of old." From this custom of carrying in the fu- 
 neral procession the weapon by which the deceased met 
 death, it seems likely that the lamentations of David over 
 Jonathan might have been called Tke Bmo, and sung by 
 the men of Judah in funeral procession. — Border. 
 
 Ver. 21. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no 
 dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor 
 fields of offerings : for there the shield of the 
 mighty i| vilely cast away. 
 
 The want of rain in the East is partly compensated by 
 the copious dews which fall in the night, to restore and re- 
 fresh the face of nature. The sacred writers were too 
 much alive to the beauties of nature, too keen and accurate 
 observers of the works and operations of their God, not to 
 avail themselves of this part of the divine arrangements to 
 give us a visible and lively conception of the purity and in- 
 fluence of his blessing. In the sublime benediction which the 
 dying patriarch pronounced on the future inheritance of Jo- 
 seph, the dew occupies a prominent place, clearly indicating 
 its incalculable value in the mind of an Oriental : " And of 
 Joseph he said, blessed of the Lord be his land, for the pre- 
 cious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that 
 coucheth beneath." When the holy Psalmist many ages 
 afterward poured out the sorrows of his heart over the fall- 
 en house of Saul, he deprived the spot where the king and 
 nis sons fell, of the dew, the rain, and the fields of offerings, 
 as the greatest curse which his lacerated feelings could de- 
 vise : " Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, nei- 
 ther let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings ; for 
 vhere the shield of the mighty is vilely cast awav." So silent. 
 Irresistible, and swift, is the descent of the dew on every 
 field and on every blade of grass, that Hushai, David's 
 "riend, selects it as the most appropriate phenomenon in 
 nature to symbolize the sudden onset of an enemy ; "We 
 will light upon him as the dew falleth on the ground." 
 
 When the chosen peopk- were scattered among the rivers 
 of Babylon, they resembled a %ld burnt up by the scorch- 
 ing sun ; but the favour and ble^sing of heaven are prom- 
 ised to restore them to the high estate from which they had 
 fallen. " For thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth 
 shall cast out the dead." Although they were dried and 
 withered as the grass, yet he promises to' revive, refresh, 
 and strengthen them by the power of his spirit and the 
 riches of his grace. The dewdrops of the morning are 
 not more pure and insinuating, more lovely and ornament- 
 al, when they descend on the tender grass, than the doc- 
 trines of inspiration in the heart and conduct of a genuine 
 Christian. This idea is beautifully expressed by Moses in 
 his dying song ; " My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my 
 speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the 
 lender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." The mu- 
 tual regard which ought to animate the people of God is 
 compared to the dew which moistens the hill of Hermon and 
 clothes it with verdure. The drops of dew are countless 
 and brilliant, glittering over all the field, cheering the heart 
 of the husbandman, and stimulating his exertions ; not less 
 abundant, illustrious, and encouraging, were the first con- 
 verts to the Christian faith, after the ascension of Christ. 
 That splendid manifestation of almighty grace was cele- 
 brated many ages before in the songs of Zion : " Thy peo- 
 ple shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties 
 of holiness from the womb of the rnorning : thou hast the 
 dew of thy youth." But it too frequently happens that the 
 glory of the church, as well as the attainments of her chil- 
 dren, suffers a mournful decline, anjl passes rapidly away: 
 and what emblem more appropriate can be chosen to indi- 
 cate such a change than the sudden evaporation of the dcM^s, 
 by the kindling rays of a vertical sun 1 " O Ephraim, 
 what shall I do unto thee 1 O Judah, w^hat shall I do unto 
 thee 1 for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the 
 early dew "it goeth away." 
 
 The shield was morehighly valued by the ancients than 
 all their other armour. It was their delight to adorn it 
 with all kinds of figures, of birds and beasts, especially 
 those of generous natures, as eagles and lions : they embla- 
 zoned upon its capacious circle the effigies of their gods, 
 the forms of celestial bodies, and all the works of nature. 
 They preserved it with the most jealous care ; and to lose 
 it in the day of battle was accounted one of the greatei-t 
 calamities that could befall them, worse than defeat, or even 
 than death itself; so great was their passion for what i«- 
 termed military glory, and the estimation in which it wa.' 
 held, that they had a profound regard for all sorts of arms 
 the instruments by which they attained it ; and to leave then 
 in the hands of their enemies, to give them for a pledge, o 
 dispose of them in a dishonourable way, was an indelibl- 
 disgrace both in Greece and at 'Rome, for which they coul i 
 hardly ever atone. But these sentiments were, not confined 
 to Greece and Rome ; among no people were they carried 
 higher than among the Jews. To cast away the shield in 
 the day of battle, they counted a national disgrace, and a 
 fit subject for public mourning.. This affecting circum- 
 stance was not omitted in the beautiful elegy which David, 
 a brave and experienced soldier, composed on the death of 
 Saul and the loss of his army : " The shield of the mighty 
 was vilely cast away." On that fatal day, when Saul and the 
 flower of Israel perished on the mountains of Gilboa, many 
 of the Jewish soldiers who had behaved with great bravery 
 in former battles, forgetful of their own reputation and 
 their country's honour, threw away their shields, and fled 
 from the field. The sweet singer of Israel adverts tp that 
 dishonourable conduct, with admirable and touching pathos: 
 " Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let 
 there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings ; for there the 
 shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saui, 
 as though he had not been anointed with oil." The apos- 
 tle has availed himself of this general feeling in his epist'e 
 to the Hebrews, to encourage them in the profession of the 
 gospel, and in a courageous, firm, and constant adherence 
 to the truth : " Cast not away therefore your confidence." 
 Abide without wavering in the profession of the faith, 
 and in the firm belief of the truth ; and aim at the full as- 
 surance of the grace of faith, which, as a spiritual shield, 
 should be sought with unwearied diligence, and retained 
 with jealous care. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 23. Saul and Jonathan icere lovely and 
 
•82 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap 2 
 
 pleasant in their lives, and in their death they 
 were not divided : they were swifter than eagles, 
 they were stronger than lions. 
 
 The military exercises of the Hebrews resembled those 
 of other nations around them. Swiftness of foot was high- 
 ly valued, as it gave the warrior a great advantage over 
 liis slower and more unwieldy antagonist. It is accord- 
 ingly mentioned to the honour of Asahei, one of David's 
 captains, that he was swifter of foot than a wild roe ; and 
 the sweet singer of Israel, in his poetical lamentation over 
 vhose two great captains, Saul and Jonathan, takes partic- 
 ular notice of this warlike quality: " They were sv/iiter 
 than eagles, stronger than lions." Nor were the ancient 
 Greeks less attentive to a qualification which the state of 
 the military art in those days rendered so valuable. The 
 footraces in the Olympic games were instituted by warlike 
 ^^^'eftains, for the very purpose of inuring their subjects to 
 i.ie fatigues of war, and particularly of increasmg their 
 speed, which was regarded as an excellent qualification m 
 a warrior, both because it served for a sudden attack and 
 a nimble retreat. Homer, fully aware of its value in an- 
 cient warfare, says, that swiftness of foot is one of the most 
 excellent endowments with which a man can be favoured. 
 To invigorate the frame, on the strength and firmness of 
 which the victory almost entirely depended in primitive 
 limes, the Hebrew captains are said to have exercised their 
 soldiers in lifting great weights. After the defeat of Saul, 
 which seems to have been chiefly eflfected by the skill and 
 valour of the enemy's archers, David commanded his offi- 
 cers to instruct their troops in the use of the boAv, which, 
 though employed by the Hebrew warriors from the earliest 
 times, appears to have been rather neglected till that terri- 
 ble catastrophe taught them the necessity of forming a body 
 of skilful archers, which might enable them to meet their 
 '"nemies in the field on equal terms. The Hebrew youth 
 were also taught to hurl the javelin, to handle the spear, 
 zmd to use the sling, in which many of them greatly ex- 
 celled. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 26. I am distressed for thee, my brother 
 Jonathan : very pleasant hast thou been unto 
 me : thy love to me was wonderful, passing the 
 love of women. 
 
 Than the love of women ; or, as the word is frequently 
 rendered, wives. This figure hath been censured, as not 
 well chosen, and insinuations dropped highly to the dis- 
 honour of the two noble friends. But the expression gives 
 no countenance to it. It fippears to me, that there was 
 somewhat in the conduct of Michal, David's wife, in too 
 hastily consenting to be married to Phalti, that gave occa- 
 sion to this comparison. It is certain from her behaviour 
 to him, at the bringing the ark to Jerusalem, that she had 
 not that high esteem and affection for him, that she ought 
 to have had, as she took this opportunity so bitterly to 
 reproach him. It is certain also, that her marriage to 
 Phalti must have been preceded by a divorce from David; 
 otherwise her second marriage would have been real adul- 
 tery : and her consenting to. a divorce, though by her 
 father's order, showed great want of affection and fidelity 
 to David. On this supposition, no comparison could be 
 better chosen, nor more tenderly and delicately expressed. 
 The brother's love to him, as a friend, was more generous 
 and constant than the sister's, though a wife. The com- 
 pliment to Jonathan was very high, and just; and the 
 concealing the sister's name, was truly polite. 
 
 He who can read this excellent composure without 
 admiration and pleasure, must be totally destitute of all 
 true taste. The lamentation over the slain heroes of Israel, 
 in the beginning, and several times repeated; the manner 
 in which he expresses his anguish, at the thought of the 
 defeats being published in the cities of the Philistines, and 
 the triumphs of the daughters of the uncircumcised upon 
 account of it; his passionately wishing that neither dews 
 nor rains might ever fall on the mountains of Gilboa, and 
 the fields surrounding them, in which the slaughter of the 
 Israelites happened; his recounting the past victories of 
 Saul and Jonathan, who never drew a bow, or brandished 
 a sword, but it proved fatal to their enemies, to heighten 
 the glory of their character, and set forth in a more lively 
 
 manner the sad reverse of their condition ; his comparing 
 them, the one to an eagle for swiftness, the other to a lion 
 for strength and valour ; the honourable mention of their 
 mutual affection while they lived, and dying bravely to- 
 gether in the field of battle; the exclamation to the daugh- 
 ters of Israel to mourn over Saul, and the reasons he gives 
 for it; his celebrating the mutual lender friendship between 
 himself and Jonathan : in a word, this elegy, in every part 
 of it, both in sentiment and expression, hath all the charms 
 with which the spirit of poetry can adcrn it ; shoM^s the 
 richness of David's genius, and will be a monument to his 
 praise throughout all generations. — Chandler. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. V 
 Ver. 4. And the men of Judah came, and there 
 they anointed David king over the house of 
 Judah. And they told David, saying, That 
 the men of Jabesh-gilead were they thai buried 
 Saul. 5. And David sent messengers unto the 
 men of Jabesh-gilead, and said unto them, 
 Blessed be ye of the Lord, that ye have show- 
 ed this kindness unto your lord, even unto 
 . Saul, and have buried him. 6. And now the 
 Lord show kindness and truth unto you : and 
 I also will requite you this kindness, because 
 ye have done this thing. 7. Therefore now 
 let your hands be strengthened, and be ye val- 
 , iant : for your master Saul is dead, and also the 
 house of Judah have anointed me king over 
 them. 8. But Abner the son of Ner, captain 
 of Saul's host, took Ishbosheth the son of Saul, 
 and brought him over to Mahanaim : 9. And 
 he made him king over Gilead, and over the 
 Ashurites, and over Jezreel, and over Ephraim, 
 and over Benjamin, and over all Israel. 1 0. Ish- 
 bosheth, Saul's son, icas forty years old when 
 he began to reign over Israel, and reigned two 
 years. But the house of Judah followed Da- 
 vid. 11. And the time that David was king 
 in Hebron, over the house of Judah, was seven 
 years and six months. 
 
 David was now thirty years old ; had in many instances 
 shown his courage, fortitude, moderation, and patience ; 
 had been inured by a long persecution, and series of dis- 
 appointments and distresses, to submission to God, and 
 trust in his power and goodness ; and had experienced the 
 care of the Almighty, in the protection afFqrded him, under 
 the innumerable dangers to which the jealousy and enmity 
 of Saul had exposed him. As he had under all his difli- 
 culties strengthened himself in God, left his fate to the 
 divine disposal, and was determined never to hasten his 
 accession to the throne by any acts of treason and violence ; 
 God now began to reward his singular virtue, and from a 
 fugitive and exile he was made king over the most power- 
 ful of all the tribes, by their unsolicited and voluntary con- 
 sent ; as an earnest of what God had in further reserve for 
 him, — the kingdom over all his people. From hence it 
 appears, how unreasonably it hath been alleged, that David 
 had no pretension to the sovereignty, either by right of in- 
 heritance, which was claimed by Ishbosheth, a remaining 
 son of Saul, nor by popular election, but by the clandestine 
 appointment of an old Levite, which inspired him with 
 hopes, of which by arms and intrigues he obtained the 
 fruition. Mr. Bayle also censures the conduct of David in 
 the measures he took to secure himself the crown. For he 
 informs us, that David had gained the principal men of 
 the tribe of Judah by presents ; and that had not Abner 
 prevented it, there is no doubt but he would have become 
 king over all Israel, by the same method, viz. by gaining 
 the principal persons by presents. It is acknoAvledged that 
 David had no pretension to the sovereignty by right of in- 
 heritance ; and in this respect Saul had no more right than 
 David; nor Isl.nosheth than either of them; the hereditary 
 1 ight, if any such there was, being vested in Mephiboshetl^ 
 
 I 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 18S 
 
 Saul's grandson, b}' his eldest son Jonathan. And, thus, I 
 doubt not, MephiDosheth himself thought ; at least Saul's 
 family certainly did. For when David asked Ziba where 
 Mephibosheth was, Ziba answered : " He abideth at Jeru- 
 salem ; for he said, to-day shall the house of Israel restore 
 me the kingdom of ray father." Whether this charge was 
 true or false, it is evident that Mephibosheth, or his family, 
 thought the right of succession to the kingdom of Israel 
 belonged to him, as it most unquestionably did, if the suc- 
 cession had been made hereditary in Saul's family. Be- 
 sides, if Saul himself, as some affirm, had only the show of 
 a popular election, he had no real" popular election at all, 
 and therefore no right to the crown, and therefore Ishbo- 
 sheth could derive no right from him to succeed him. Ish- 
 bosheth further doth not appear to have had, either the 
 show or reality of a popular election ; no, nor the clandestine 
 appointment of the old Levite, which both Saul and David 
 had. He was the mere creature of Abner, the captain of 
 Saul's host ; who, ambitious of retaining the power in his 
 own hand, took Ishbosheth, and, by military force, made 
 him king over Israel ; without, as far as appears, the choice 
 or consent of the eleven tribes, and in direct opposition to 
 he choice and consent of the tribe of Judah, the most con- 
 siderable and powerful of all, and the inclination of the 
 whole body of the people. Ishbosheth therefore was a 
 usurper in every respect, in prejudice of the right heir ; 
 and David, and "every man in Israel, had a natural right to 
 oppose him, and prevent his establishment in the kingdom. 
 Mr. Bayle says, that David did not pretend that Ishbosheth 
 reigned by usurpation ; for he allowed him to be a righteous 
 man, and therefore a lawful king. But this reasoning will 
 not hold good, if Mr. Bayle's own account of David be 
 true. He allows David to have been one of the greatest 
 men in the world, commends him for his conspicuous piety, 
 and extols him as a son of holiness in the chi^rch. And 
 yet he tells us, that David acted like an infidel, and most 
 ambitious prince ; and that his policy and prudence were 
 such, as he can never persuade himself to think that the 
 strict laws of equity, and the severe morals of a good ser- 
 vant of God can possibly approve ; and that his actions were 
 not those of a samt. I therefore say, that according to Mr. 
 Bayle, a person may have a general character for a saint and 
 a righteous man, and yet, in some particular actions, may 
 act contrary to the character of both ; and that therefore it 
 doth not follow, that because David allowed Ishbosheth to be 
 a righteous man, therefore he allowed him to be a lawful 
 ' king. Ishbosheth was undoubtedly a righteous man, with 
 respect to his murderers, whom he had never injured ; 
 ana probably in his private character he might be a man 
 of virtue. But at the same time David could not but know, 
 that he reigned in every view by usurpation, and that con- 
 sequently he was in this respect a very unrighteous man. 
 The right of David to the crown was indisputable, and the 
 highest by which any man could claim it. When Saul 
 was made king, the crown was not made hereditary in his 
 family, and the same power that made him king, be that 
 what it will, declared, that his kingdom should not stand, 
 or be perpetuated in his family, but be transferred to his 
 neighbour. Upon the death of Saul therefore, the throne 
 oecame vacant, and the people were at full liberty, under 
 the direction of God, to choose whom they pleased. The 
 tribe of Judah unanimously chose David" for their king, 
 and it is highly probable, that the M^hole body of the nation 
 would have fallen in with him, had they not been prevented 
 by the influence of Abner. This Abner himself more than 
 intimates, when in order to bring over the eleven tribes to 
 David, he puts them in remembrance, saying : " Ye fought 
 for David in tinges past to be king over you," viz. even in 
 Saul's time, who was abhorred and detested by many of 
 '.he principal men for his tyranny. Nay, we are expressly 
 mformed, that the princes, and captains of hundreds and 
 thousands, and great parties from the Benjamites, Gib- 
 eonites, Gadites, the tribe of Judah and Manasseh revolted 
 \0 him, even before the battle in which Saul was slain, day 
 by day, till it was a great host, like the host of God. These 
 were voluntary in the offer of the crown to David, and no 
 jtind of bribes or force employed by him to bring them to 
 submission. The whole nation was in motion, and nothing 
 prevented their unanimously declaring for him, but the 
 opposition of Abner in favour of Ishbosheth. 
 . But did not David gain in particular the tribe of Judah 
 Jfr bribes or presents 1 Mr. Bayle affirms he did : The 
 
 whole tribe of Judah, of which he had gained the principu 
 men by presents, acknowledged him for king. The histor~ 
 only says, that he once made presents to such of the elders 
 of Judah, as were his friends, consisting of part of the spoil 
 he took from the Amalekites, after the recovery of the prej" 
 they had taken from Ziklag ; and probably that very part 
 which the Amalekites had taken from Judah, the south o 
 which they had just invaded. But if these elders of Judah 
 were his friends, before he sent them this present, then he 
 did not gain them by sending them these presents, and their 
 making him king was not because he made them a pres- 
 ent, but from the greatness of their affection for him before. 
 When Mr. Bayle adds, there is no doubt, had not Abner 
 prevented it, but he would have been king of all Israel, by 
 the same method of presents ; I think there is great reason 
 to doubt of it ; for David doth not appear to have been in 
 circumstances to give .such presents ; nor did they seem to 
 desire or want them, being led by their own inclinations 
 and sense of interest and duty at last to submit to him. 
 David was certainly a man of a generous disposition, and 
 liberal in his favours ; and this temper I never so much as 
 suspected to be criminal, unworthy a great and good prince, 
 or a real saint ; and if by a prudent liberality he could se- 
 cure his own rights, I think he acted much more like a 
 saint, than if he had recovered them by force, without ever 
 first attempting to do it by the gentler methods of liberality 
 and goodness. The true reason of the tribe of Judah's 
 falling in with him, and the readiness of the other tribes 
 to acknowledge him as king, was his excellent character 
 as a brave and generous soldier, under whom they them- 
 selves had formerly served ; and especially his designation 
 by God to the royal dignity, having been anointed king by 
 Samuel, according to the express order of God. It was this 
 latter consideration, that led him to ask the divine direc- 
 tion upon Saul's death, what measures he should take to 
 secure his succession. The very question : " Shall I go up 
 to any of the cities of Judah 1 would have been highly 
 indecent, had he not had the divine promise and assistance 
 to depend on. His claim, by virtue of Samuel's unction, 
 was his only claim, was universally known to the people oi 
 Israel, and the avowed reason why they at last advanced 
 him to the throne. It was known to Jonathan his friend. 
 Saul himself was no stranger to it. I know, says he, that 
 thou shalt be surely king, and that the kingdom of Israel 
 shall be established in thy hand. It was known even to 
 private persons. Nabal's wife confesses this appointment 
 of God. Abner terrified Ishbosheth by putting him in mind 
 of it. " So do God to Abner, and more also, except, as the 
 Lord hath sworn to David, even so I do to him, to translate 
 the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to set up the 
 throne of David over Israel." He declares the same in his 
 message to the elders of Israel. The Lord hath spoken of 
 David, saying, " By the hand of my servant David I will 
 save my people Israel out of the hands of the Philistines, 
 and out of the hand of all their enemies." And when they 
 came to make him king, this was the grand inducement to 
 it. " In time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast 
 he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel, and the Lord 
 said to thee: Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou 
 shalt be captain over Israel ; and they anointed David king 
 over Israel, according to the word of the Lord by Samuel." 
 So that this was the foundation of his claim, was univer- 
 sally known, and justified his pretensions to, and contest 
 for, the crown after the death of Saul. 
 
 To this contest David was forced, by Ishbosheth's usur- 
 pation, supported by the authority arid influence of Abner, 
 a near relation of Saul, and who had been his general. Ii 
 lasted above seven years, and Mr. Bayle is extremely dis- 
 pleased with poor David, and censures him very severely on 
 this account. He says, " That as Abner preserved by his 
 fidelity eleven whole tribes for Ishbosheth, the same thing 
 happened as would have happened between two infidel and 
 most ambitious princes. David and Ishbosheth made inces- 
 sant war on one another, to try which of the two could get 
 the other's share, in order to enjoy the whole kingdom with- 
 out division." But the real question, by which David's con- 
 duct is to be determined, is : Did the free election of the tribe 
 of Judah, neither bought by bribes, nor forced by power, give 
 David a right to be king over it ; and did his appointment by 
 God to succeed Saul, and rule over all Israel, give him a just 
 claim to enjoy the whole kingdom, without division 1 I think 
 in both cases he had an indisputable right, and consequent 
 
1 84 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 
 
 ly he might, consistently even with the character of a saint, 
 defend and maintain his right. Ishbosheth therefore, by 
 keeping David out of part of the kingdom, and endeavour- 
 ing by arms to dispossess him of the whole, might well 
 enough deserve Mr. Bayle's character of an infidel and 
 ambitious prince ; and David, endeavouring only to secure 
 what he had, and to recover what he was unjustly kept out 
 of, may still pass for a very good believer, and doth not 
 seem to have had any more ambition in him, than what 
 was honourable and virtuous. If wars are in their nature 
 ■Liilawful, David's character as a saint will greatly suffer by 
 his carrying on the war with Ishbosheth. ' But it wars are 
 in any case lawful, it must be when waged for supporting 
 those just and important rights, which cannot be secured 
 without them. Such were certainly the rights of David, 
 and therefore his maintaining the war against Ishbosheth, 
 was both his interest and duty, and doth not in the least di- 
 minish the glory of this son of holiness in the church. The 
 promise of God to David, that he should |ge king of Israel, 
 was not a promise to make him so by extraordinary and 
 miraculous methods, but in the use of all prudential and 
 proper ones ; and if he actually employed arms when ne- 
 cessary to vindicate his just claims, and prudence and pol- 
 icy to turn every event to his advantage, it only shows 
 that he was born for empire, worthy of a kingdom, and a 
 man after God's own heart ; or fit for the purposes for 
 'vhich God raised him to the throne. And though these 
 methods should have been, to all appearance, like those 
 which wicked men, or infidel and most ambitious princes, 
 make use of to obtain their ends, they may for all that be 
 very just and honourable. For infidel and wicked princes 
 may sometimes pursue lawful ends, and be forced to main- 
 tain their rights by policy and arms. And therefore unless 
 the means which David used were base and criminal, or 
 employed for wicked and unjustifiable purposes, they may 
 be allowed to be, to external appearance, the same with 
 what wicked, ambitious, infidel princes use, and yet be 
 agreeable to the rules of justice and honour. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 5. And David sent messengers unto the men 
 of Jabesh-g-ilead, and said unto them, Blessed 
 he ye of the Lord, that ye have showed this 
 kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and 
 have buried him. 
 
 The bodies of Saul and his sons were burnt by the men 
 of Jabesh-gilead. Two of the thirty-two charities of the 
 Hindoos are, to burn the bodies of those whose relations 
 cannot do it, and to pay for the beating of the tom-toms to 
 the place of burning. It is therefore considered a work of 
 great merit to perform the funeral rites for a respectable 
 stranger, or for those whose relations are not able to meet 
 the expenses. Hence may be seen the funerals of those 
 who have lived in poverty, or who have seen better days, 
 conducted with great pomp, because the reward is great to 
 him who advances the money, and because he receives 
 great praise from the people.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in 
 health, my brother ? And Joab took Amasa by 
 the beard with the right hand to kiss him. 
 
 Dr. Shaw takes no notice of their taking hold of the 
 beard in order to kiss, but Thevenot does, saying, that 
 among the Turks it is a great affront to take one by the 
 beard „ unless it be to kiss him, in which case they often do 
 it. Whether he means by kissing him, kissing his beard, 
 or no* I do not know; but Joab's taking Amasa by the 
 be{ Tf s iiss htm, 2 Sam. xx. 9, seems to be designed to 
 express his taking his beard to kiss it ; at least this is 
 agreeable to the customs of those that now live in that 
 country ; for D' Ar vieux, describing the assembling together 
 of several of the petty Arab princes at an entertainment, 
 tells us, that " All the "emirs came just together a little time 
 after, accompanied by their friends and attendants, and 
 after the usual civilities, caresses, kissings of the beard, 
 and of the hand, which every one gave and received ac- 
 cording to his hand and dignity, they sat down upon mats." 
 He elsewhere speaks of the women's kissing their husbands' 
 beards, and children those of their fathers, and friends 
 reciprocally saluting one another in this manner ; but the 
 
 doing it by their emirs more exactly answers this history- 
 of Joab and Amasa, and in this stooping posture he could 
 much better see to direct the blow, than if he had only hel^ 
 his beard, and raised himself to kiss his face. — Harmbr. 
 
 Ver. 18. And there were three sons of Zeruiali 
 there, Joab, and Abishai, and Asahel ; an^ 
 Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe. 
 
 The name of the antelope in the Hebrew scripture, '^3 
 >3s {tsehif) and in the version of the Seventy Aop^caj, {dorcas. 
 In our version, the original term is translated roe and roe 
 buck; but Dr. Shaw, and others, have proved by severa. 
 conclusive arguments, that it is not the roe, but the ante- 
 lope, which the sacred writers intend. The former is 
 extremely rare in the oriental regions, while the latter is 
 common in every part of the Levant. But is it to be sup- 
 posed, that the sacred writers would borrow their figures 
 from creatures which are either not known at all in Pales- 
 tine and the surrounding countries, or but rarely seen , 
 while they had not even a name for an animal, which, in 
 large herds of several thousands, fed in their fields, and 
 around their dwellings 1 Such a supposition would con- 
 tradict some of the strongest laws which regulate the 
 operations of the human mind, and is therefore quiie 
 inadmissible. It is equally absurd to suppose that tbe 
 Jewish legislator, when he regulated by fixed laws the 
 food of his people, would mention a creature which tlicy 
 probably had never sf^en, of which perhaps they had not 
 even heard, which was not to be found in the deserts ovei 
 which they had to travel, nor in the country they were to 
 possess ; while he omitted one of daily occurrence, which • 
 was found everywhere, in the wilderness and in the culti- 
 vated field, on the mountains and in the plains ; whose 
 flesh was greatly esteemed, and, by consequence, could not 
 fail to become an important article of subsistence. These 
 considerations are of themselves sufiicient to establish the 
 superior claims of the antelope to a place in the sacred 
 volume. The arguments which have been drawn from 
 the etymological meaning of the Hebrew terms n3s and 
 "«3s, and the authority of the Septuagint, although of infe- , 
 rior importance, are not destitute of weight. The first of 
 these names suggests the idea of a very gregarious animal ; 
 but this is not the character of the roes, for, instead of a.s.so- 
 ciating in herds, they live in separate families; while the 
 antelopes are commonly found in very large herds, some- 
 times to the number of two or three thousand together. * 
 The second term, '>dx, primarily signifies beauty ; and when 
 put for the concrete, as in this instance, by a very common 
 figure of speech in Hebrew, has the force of a superlative, 
 and signifies a thing or animal of uncommon beauty. Thus 
 the land of Canaan is, in the prophet, styled ■'Sxn pN, the 
 land of beauty; or, as it is rendered by oiir translators, the 
 glory of all lands. The tscbi, therefore, is an animal that 
 excels in beauty ; which exactly corresponds with all the 
 accounts that natural historians have given us of the ante- 
 lope. Both the roe and the antelope, it must be admitted, 
 are, in the general opinion of mankind; very beautiful 
 animals; but the preference is commonly given to the 
 latter. Buffon says, the figure of the small antelopes is 
 elegant, and their members are finely proportioned to their 
 size ; and make prodigious bounds. The Septuagint uni- 
 formly translate the terms, n3s and ""^x, by r^o^^-af ; and tlie 
 correctness of their translation is attested by Luke, for he 
 mentions " a certain disciple" who resided " at Joppa, 
 named Tabitha, which, by interpretation, is called Dorca.«:." 
 The name Tabitha is formed by a slight alteration from 
 the Chaldee noun n-'^i: ( Tabia,) and this from the Hebrew 
 term ^yi (tsebi.) The Hebrew term signifies, as has been 
 already observed, a creature of surpassing beauty ; Dorcas, 
 its divinely attested equivalent, limiting somewhat the 
 general signification, denotes a creature remarkable foi 
 the fineness of its eves; and from this last circumstance, it 
 is conjectured that Tabitha received her name. But while 
 the eyes of the roe have attracted no -particular attention, 
 so far as the writer has observed, the antelope has been 
 celebrated for the fineness of its eyes in all the countries of 
 the East. Their beauty, according to Dr. Shaw, is pro- 
 verbial there to this day ; and it is still the greatest com- 
 pliment which, in these countries, can be paid to a fine 
 Avoman, to sav, " You have the eyes of an antelope." From 
 Bochart, and" other authors, we learn that it was equal}}' • 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 185 
 
 celebrated by the ancients for the acuteness of its vision ; 
 its eyes, they pretend, never become bleared ; it sees in the 
 dark ; it sleeps with both eyes open, or, as others will have 
 it, with one eye open and another shut. These circum- 
 stances appear to be much more applicable to the antelope, 
 which is a quadruped well known, than to the roe, which 
 is either not known at all, or very rare, in those parts of 
 the world. The natives of Syria make a distinction be- 
 tween the antelopes of the mountain, and those of the plain. 
 Dr. Russel, who gives us this information, says, "the 
 former is the most beautifully formed, its back and sides 
 are of a dark brown colour, and it bounds with surprising 
 agility ; the latter is of a much lighter colour, its limbs are 
 not so cleanly turned, and it is neither so strong, nor so 
 active ; both, however, are so fleet, that the greyhounds, 
 though reckoned excellent, cannot, without the aid of the 
 falcon, come up with them, except in soft deep ground." 
 This is probably the reason, that the sacred writers fre- 
 quently mention the " antelope upon the mountains," and 
 not siinply the antelope, when they allude to surpassing 
 beauty of form, or amazing rapidity of motion. The 
 swiftness of this beautiful creature, has been celebrated by 
 writers of every age, in terms of high admiration. Its 
 exquisite symmetry, its active form, and the delicate turn 
 of its limbs, clearly show, that it is intended by its Maker 
 to hold a distinguished place among the fleetest animals 
 that scour the desert. Sir John Malcom says, it may be 
 termed the fleetest of quadrupeds. It seems rather to 
 vanish, than to run from the pursuer, and when closely 
 pressed, bounds with so great agility, that it hardly seems 
 to touch the ground in its career. Oppian calls it the 
 swiftest species of goat; and according to ^Elian, it equals 
 the whirlwind in speed. He outruns the antelope, said the 
 Arabians, when they wished to pay the highest compliment 
 to the youthful warrior. To this trait in its character, the 
 sacred writers often allude. The surprising agility which 
 Asahel, the brother of Jdab, displayed in his pursuit of 
 Abner, drew this eulogium from the sacred historian : 
 " And Asahel was light of foot, as one of the antelopes that 
 are in the field." Another allusion to the amazing speed 
 of that animal, occurs in the description of the warlike 
 qualifications which distinguished a troop of Gadites in 
 the service of David : " They were men of might, men of 
 war, fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, 
 whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift 
 as' the roes (the antelopes) upon the mountains." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 28. So Joab blew a trumpet, and all the peo- 
 ple stood still, and pursued after Israel no more, 
 neither fought they any more. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 18. 16. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 12. And Abner sent messengers to David on 
 
 his behalf, saying, Whose is the land ? saying 
 
 I also, Make thy league with me, and, behold, 
 
 my hand shall be with thee, to bring about all 
 
 Israel unto thee. 
 
 Though Abner, with the eleven tribes, asserted Ishbo- 
 sheth's cause for several years, yet he saw that his interest 
 greatly declined, and that he should not long be able to 
 support him, as his forces were worsted in every rencoun- 
 ter; while David prospered in all his affairs, his party 
 li was continually increasing, and every thing seemed to con- 
 j spire to crown his wishes, and soon put him in possession 
 of the kingdom over all Israel. This was the opportunity 
 that Abner had waited for, to bring about that revolution in 
 favour of David, which he had continually in his view, 
 and was determmed to effect, upon the first occasion that 
 : presented itself. He soon found one, that he immediately 
 closed with. Saul had a concubine, whose name was Ris- 
 pah, and Ishbosheth, having found out that Abner had been 
 too intimate with her, took an oppo'tunity to reproach him 
 on that affair, and with an air of displeasure said to him : 
 i Why hast thou gone in unto my father's concubine 1 Ab- 
 ■ ner, enragsd to be thus called to an account, said to Ish- 
 i bosheth with indignation: " What, am I to be used in so 
 1 contemptuous and disagreeable a manner, as tho'iffh I 
 *<ire as insignificant as a dog's head, and thus han<rh i'v 
 24 
 
 questioned, as though I had been guilty of a heinous 
 crime, concerning this woman, whicii you reprove me for 
 having been too free with! What, this to me, who, in op- 
 position to the tribe of Judah, have advanced you to the 
 throne, have been so firm and faithful a friend to the house 
 of Saul thy father, his brethren, and adherents, and have 
 not delivered thee, as I could easily have done, into the 
 hands of David ! » Too long have I already resisted the 
 appointment of God, and may I fall under his heaviest 
 curse, except I perform to David, what the Lord hath 
 sworn to David ; even to translate the kingdom from the 
 house of Saul, and to establish his throne over all Israel 
 and Judah, from Dan even to Beershebah !" This threat- 
 ening so terrified the unhappy prince, that he could not 
 answer him a word, as he knew he was absolutely in Ab- 
 ner's power, and had too much reason to fear that he would 
 put his threatening too soon in execution. He did it with- 
 out delay, and sent private messengers to David to offer 
 him his service, and say to him : " To whom doih the 
 government over the country of Israel belong 1 Even to 
 thyself. Enter therefore into an agreement with me, and 
 I will lend thee my assistance, to bring over all the tribes 
 of Israel to thy interest V David, in return to his message, 
 sent him word, he was willing to enter into a treaty ; but 
 would have no interview with him, but upon condition 
 that he should bring Michal, Saul's daughter, with him, 
 when he admitted him to an audience. He sent at the same 
 time messengers to Ishbosheth, to demand that Michal, his 
 wife, whom he purchased for a hundred foreskins of the 
 Philistines; i. e. at the hazard of his life, should be imme- 
 diately delivered to him ; who had by force been taken 
 from him, and married to Phaltiel, the son of Laish. Here 
 David also falls under censure, as manifesting, in this 
 instance, a too sensual disposition; and Mr. Bayle speaks 
 of this affair in such a manner, as shows that he greatly 
 disapproved it. For he says that Michal, Saul's daughter, 
 was David's first wife, that she was taken from him during 
 his disgrace, that he successively married several others, and 
 yet demanded the first again ; adding, to enhance David's 
 offence, that to restore her to him, they were obliged to 
 force her from a husband, who loved her greatly, and 
 followed her as far as he could, weeping like a child. I 
 confess I cannot help smiling at this last observation, nor 
 perceive that it is to the purpose ; for I can never imagine, 
 that because one man loves another man's wife very dearly, 
 that therefore the husband has no right to reclaim her ; or 
 should relinquish her, because the man cries like a child 
 at parting with her. I think David was most cwtainly in 
 the right to demand her; for whatever may be said as to 
 his other wives, he had certainly the strongest claim to this ; 
 for he had purchased her for a hundred foreskins of the 
 Philistines. And supposing there was nothing of a sensual 
 disposition that influenced David in this instance, there 
 might be other very substantial reasons to induce him to 
 insist upon her being sent to-him. He purchased her at 
 the hazard of his life, and she was a living proof of his 
 military valour and ability. She was his predecessor's 
 daughter, and he did not probably choose to lose the hon- 
 our and advantage of the alliance. It might conciliate 
 some of Saul's family and tribe to his interest, when they 
 saw one of his daughters owned and treated as David s 
 wife, and that he did not pursue his resentment to Saul, to 
 the injury or disgrace of any of the branches of his family. 
 There was also a real generosity in the thing, both to her 
 and Saul ; in that he received her after she had been 
 another man's; remembering probably how once he owed 
 his life to her affection, and knowing that she was partly sep- 
 arated from him by her father's authority : whereas many 
 princes, for much less provocations of a wife's father, 
 would have turned off their consorts in revenge of them, 
 and even put them to death for having b€en married to 
 another. In consequence of this demand made to Abner 
 and Ishbosheth, she was immediately put into Abner's 
 hands : who, to prepare things for an accommodation with 
 David, went and assembled all the elders of Israel, and 
 said to them : "You have formerly oftentimes expressed 
 your desire, that David might be king over you. You 
 have now an opportunity to gratify your own inclinations 
 in this respect; and what should engage you to advance 
 him to the throne is, that God himself hath pointed out to 
 you the man, a he hath declared: By the hand of my ser- 
 var! Davir* T will save my people Israel out of the hand Oi 
 
 ,i::<-^^- 
 
186 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 the Philistines, and out o'f me hand of all their enemies;" 
 intimating hereby the incapacity of Ishbosheth, and that it 
 was both their interest and duty to transfer the kingdom 
 and government to David ; would be happy for themselves, 
 and an instance of obedience to their God. He went also 
 and applied himself particularly to the tribe of Benjamin, 
 to which Saul's family belonged, and persuaded them, by 
 the same kind of arguments, to fall In with the general 
 sense of all the other tribes, and concur with them in ad- 
 vancing David to the throne. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 21. And Abner said unto David, I will arise 
 and g"o, and Avill gather all Israel unto my lord 
 
 J. the king, that they may make a league with 
 thee, and that thou mayest reign over all that 
 thy heart desireth. And David sent Abner 
 away ; and he went in peace. 
 
 Having settled this important point to his mind, he took 
 Michal, and waited with her on David at Hebron, attended 
 with twenty persons of rank in his retinue, whom David 
 favourably received, and for whom he made a royal enter- 
 tainment; and having fixed the terms of accommodation 
 between them, Abner took his leave, and at parting told 
 the king, " I will go and assemble all Israel together to my 
 lord, whom, I now acknowledge for my sovereign and 
 king, that they may all of them submit to thine authority 
 and government, upon such terms as .shall be judged hon- 
 ourable on both sides, and that, according to the utmost 
 wishes of thy heart, thou mayest reign over us all, and the 
 kingdom may be established in thy house and family." 
 Abner then took his leave, and went away pleased and 
 happy, to bring about the revolution he had projected and 
 
 Eromised. Here Mr. Bayle is out of all patience, and after 
 aving told us that Abner, being discontented with the 
 king his master, resolved to dispossess him of his dominions, 
 and deliver them up to David, adds : " David gives ear to 
 the traitor, and is willing to gain a kingdom by intrigues 
 of this nature. Can it be said that Aese are the actions of 
 a saint 1 I own there is nothing in all this, but what is 
 agreeable to the precepts of policy, and the methods of hu- 
 man prudence; but I shall never be persuaded, that the 
 strict laws of equity, and the severe morals of a good 
 servant of God, can approve such conduct." There are 
 .some persons whom it is extremely difficult to please. In 
 a former note Mr. Bayle heavily censures David, that he 
 had maae incessant war on Ishbosheth, like a very am- 
 bitious and even infidel prince ; and now, he ceases even 
 to be a saint, and shows he is destitute of the severe morals 
 of a good servant of God, because he took the first oppor- 
 tunity, and the only means that were in his power, to put a 
 stop to the war, and prevent the further effusion of blood, 
 by a general and solid peace. What, I wonder, would Mr. 
 Bayle have had David to have done, when Abner sent his 
 first proposals for an accommodation 1 Ought he to have 
 immediately rejected them, reproached Abner as a traitor 
 to his prince, told him he would enter into no terms of 
 peace with him, nor his master, but reduce them both, with 
 all the eleven tribes that adhered to them, by force of 
 arms'? Had David done this, would not all the world have 
 reproached him for folly, thus to hazard, by continuing the 
 war, what he could so certainly and easily obtain by the 
 voluntary offer of Abner 1 Would he not have been justly 
 censured for delighting in blood, for pursuing by the sword, 
 what he could secure by treaty and accommodation 1 Or, 
 would Mr. Bayle have" had David sent to Ishbosheth, and 
 informed him of Abner's treachery, and advised him to the 
 proper methods of preventing it 1 This, perhaps, Mr. 
 Bayle might have commended as an act of exceeding great 
 geiierositv, and Ishbosheth might have thought himself 
 greatly obliged to David for such an instance of friendship. 
 But how would the tribe of Judah have stood affected to 
 him 1 Would they not have concluded him unworthy to 
 be their prince, who no better understood his own interest 
 or theirs, by his rejecting a measure, which every pruden- 
 tial consideration, which humanity, and the love that he 
 owed to his people, obliged him immediately and thank- 
 fully to embrace 1 David had no other choice left him, but 
 either to fall in with Abner's offer, or prolong the calam- 
 'ties of the civil war; except Mr. Bavie thought he was 
 obliged, upon discovering Abner's treachery, to have in- 
 
 formed Ishbosheth of it, and sent him at the same time an 
 offer of resigning the crown of Judah to him, and all his 
 pretensions to be king over all Israel. It ]s plain David 
 was not of this sentiment, but thought his own right was 
 better than Ishbosheth's, and therefore made use of that 
 method to secure it, which he was persuaded that the strict 
 laws Oi equity, and the severe morals of a good servant ot 
 God, did not in the least prohibit and condemn. And I 
 confess, I do not see any just reason for this censure of Mr. 
 Bayle's, or in what David acted, by accepting Abner's 
 proposals, contrary to the strictest laws of equity, or the 
 severe morals of a good servant of God. To David be- 
 longed the throne by the appointment of God ; and Abner, 
 by advancing Ishbosheth, and beginning a civil war in the 
 kingdom, acted contrary to his duty to God, the allegiance 
 he owed David, the laws of hereditary succession, and the 
 peace and happiness of his country. Here Abner was ex- 
 tremely criminal, and every moment he continued to sup- 
 port Ishbosheth, he supported an unnatural rebellion, and 
 acted contrary to his own conviction, by keeping David 
 out of the possession of the kingdom, which he knew and 
 confessed God had sworn to give him. Through a regard 
 to Saul's family, and more to his own ambition, he deter- 
 mined to defer David's possession as long as he could ; till 
 at length, finding that Ishbosheth was unworthy of the 
 throne, and incapable of government ; that David would 
 finally prevail, probably tired out with the calamities of the 
 civil war, and, I doubt not, willing to make some good 
 terms for himself, he took hold of the first opportunity to 
 break with Ishbosheth, and reconcile himself, and the whole 
 nation, to David. In this Abner certainly acted as right a 
 part, as he^ who having supported a usurpation and real 
 rebellion, at length returns to his duty, deserts the pre- 
 tender, and submits himself to his lawful prince. Though 
 the motives to such an alteration of conduct may not be 
 altogether quite honourable, the conduct itself is certainly 
 right ; and the only possible means, by which such a per- 
 son can atone for his past guilt, is to lay down his arms, 
 and put an end to the usurpation, and thereby restore the 
 public peace. Mr. Bayle, with great indignation, calls 
 Abner the traitor But did ever any one imagine, that the 
 deserting a usurper, and submitting to a man's lawful 
 prince, really constituted him a traitor to his lawful prince? 
 Rather, doth he not cease to be a traitor to him, when he 
 declares for his rightful sovereign 'I Ishbosheth was Ab- 
 ner's king, as Mr. Bayle tells us; but it was a king he had 
 treasonably made, and whom he had supported by violence, 
 in opposition to the order of God, and without any pretence 
 of right and justice. If therefore the making him king was 
 wrong, the deserting him, and bringing over the tribes to 
 David, was right. And the easy method by which Abner 
 effected this revolution, and the cordial manner in which 
 the whole nation submitted to David, is a demonstration 
 that they approved Abner's change, and were glad to 
 accept David for their king. For ,no sooner had Abner a 
 conference with the elders of Israel, and put them in mind 
 that they had formerly desired David for their king, and 
 that the Lord had resolved to deliver them from the Phi- 
 listines, and the hand of their enemies, by the hand of 
 David ; but instantly all the tribes came to Hebron, all the 
 men of war, with a perfect heart, and all Israel with one 
 heart, to make him King, and accordingly anointed him 
 king over Israel. In this whole affair, David's conduct, to 
 me, seems perfectly honourable. He received a rebel 
 general to his favour upon his submission, agrees with 
 him that he should bring in all the tribes to do what they 
 desired to do, and were bound by the order of God to do, 
 even to make him' king over them, that hereby he might 
 have the peaceable possession of the whole kingdom. 
 Abner had openly told Ishbosheth of his design. Abner 
 sent messengers to David, and not David to Abner, on the 
 affair. It was Abner who conferred with the princes of 
 Israel, and came openly to David at Hebron to agree upon 
 proper measures. David carried on no secret intrigues 
 to bring over Abner and the eleven tribes to his party. 
 He only consented to a just proposal that was made him of 
 recovering his own right, without invading the real right 
 of a single person; and indeed it was the only method he 
 could tpke, and he would not have acted like a saint, or a 
 wise riid just prince, had he not hereby put an end to the 
 civil war, secured his own rights, and restored and estab 
 li bed the peace and prosp rity of his people. — Chandle«» 
 
CHAP. 4. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 187 
 
 Ver. 31. And David said to Joab, and to all the 
 people that were with him, Rend your clothes, 
 and gird you with sackcloth, and mourn before 
 Abner. And King David himself followed the 
 bier. 
 
 The word here translated the bier is in the original the bed : 
 {)\\ these, persons of quality used to be carried forth to their 
 graves, as common people were upon a bier. Kings were 
 sometimes carried out upon beds very richly adorned ; as 
 Josephus tells us that Herod was ; he says the bed was all 
 gilded, set with precious stones, and that it had a purple 
 'jover curiously wrought, — Patrick. 
 
 Ver. 33. And the king lamented over Abner, and 
 said, Died Abne* as a fool dieth ? 34. Thy 
 hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fet- 
 ters : as a man falleth before wicked men, so 
 fellest thou. And all the people wept again 
 over him. 
 
 See on Rev. 2. 17. 
 
 The feet as well as the hands of criminals are wont to 
 be secured, some how or other, by the people of the East, 
 when they are brought out to be punished, to which there 
 seems to be a plain allusion in the Old Testament. Thus 
 when Irwin was among the Arabs of Upper Egypt, where 
 he was very ill used, but his wrongs afterward redressed 
 by the great sheik there, who had been absent, and who, 
 it seems, was a man of exemplary probity and virtue ; he 
 tells us, that upon that sheik's holding a great court of 
 justice, about Irwin's affairs and those of his companions, 
 the bastinado was given to one of those who had injured 
 them, which he thus describes in a note, page 271 : " The 
 prisoner is placed upright on the ground, with his hands 
 and feet bound together, while the executioner stands be- 
 fore him, and, with a short stick, strikes him with a smart 
 motion on the outside of his knees. The pain which arises 
 from these strokes is exquisitely severe, and which no con- 
 stitution can support for any continuance." As the Arabs 
 are extremely remarkable for their retaining old customs, 
 we have just grounds of believing, that when malefactors 
 in the East were punished, by beating, and perhaps with 
 death by the sword, their hands were bound together, and 
 also their feet. How impertinent, according to this, is the 
 interpretation that Victorinus Strigelius gives of 2 Sam. iii. 
 84 ! as he is cited by Bishop Patrick in his Commentary on 
 those words: " The king lamented over Abner, and said, 
 Died Abner as a fool dieth 1 Thy hands were not bound, 
 nor thy feet put into fetters; as a man falleth before wicked 
 men, so fellest thou. And all the people wept again over 
 him." " Strigelius," says the Bishop, " thinks that David, 
 in these words, distinguishes him from those criminals, 
 Avhose hands being tied behind them, are carried to execu- 
 tion ; and from those idle soldiers, who being taken captive 
 in war, have fetters clapped upon their legs, to keep them 
 from running away. He was none of these ; neither a 
 notorious offender, nor a coward." Patrick adds, " The 
 plain meaning seems to be, that if his enemy had set upon 
 him openly, he had been able to make his part good with 
 him." How impertinent the latter part of what Strigelius 
 says ! how foreign from the thought of David, not to say 
 inconsistent with itself, the explanation of the English 
 prelate ! What is meant appears to be simply this : Died 
 Abner as a fool, that is, as a bad man, as that word fre- 
 quently signifies in the scriptures 1 Died he as one found 
 on judgment to be criminal, dieti: ? No ! Thy hands, O 
 Abner ! were not bound as being found such, nor thy feet 
 confined ; on the contrary, thou wert treated with honour 
 bv him whose business it was to judge thee, and thy attach- 
 ment to the honse of Saul esteemed rather generous than 
 culpable : as the best of men may fall, so fellest thou, by 
 he sword of treachery, not of justice! — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 2. And Saul's son had two men that were 
 captains of bands ; the name of the one was 
 Baanah, and the name of the other Rechab, 
 
 the sons of Rimmon a Beerothite, of the children 
 of IBenjamin. 
 
 This is added to show us that these two regicides were 
 not only officers in the king's army, but of the same tribe 
 with Saul, and therefore had more ties than one upon them, 
 to be honest and faithful to his family. For there is rea- 
 son to believe that Saul, who lived in the borders of Benja- 
 min, conferred more favours upon that tribe than any other, 
 and might therefore justly expect, both to him and his, a 
 greater esteem and fidelity from those of his own tribe than 
 from others. This patronymic is therefore very properly 
 prefixed to the names of Rechab and Baanah, to show what 
 vile ungrateful villains they were, and how justly they de- 
 served the severe and exemplary punishment which Davi4 
 inflicted on them. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 5. And the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, 
 Rechab and Baanah, went, and came about the 
 heat of the day to the house of Ish-bosheth, 
 who lay on a bed at noon. 6. And they came 
 thither into the • midst of the house, as though 
 they would have fetched wheat ; and they smote 
 him under the fifth rib : and Rechab and Baa- 
 nah his brother escaped. 
 
 The females engaged in this operation, endeavoured to 
 beguile the lingering hours of toilsome exertion with a 
 song. We learn from an expression of Aristophanes, pre- 
 served by Athenseus, that the Grecian maidens accom- 
 panied the sound of the millstones with their voices. This 
 circumstance imparts an additional beauty and force to 
 the description of^the prophet : (Isa. xlvii. 1.) The light of 
 a candle was no more to be seen in the evening ; the sound 
 of the millstones, the indication of plenty ; and the song of 
 the grinders, the natural expression of joy and happiness, 
 were no more to be heard at the dawn. The grinding of 
 corn at so early an hour, throws light on a passage of con- 
 siderable obscurity : " And the sons of Rimmon the Beero- 
 thite, Rechab and Baanah, went and came about the heat 
 of the day to the house of Ishbosheth, who lay on a bed at 
 noon ; and they came thither into the midst of the house, 
 as though they would have fetched wheat, and they smote 
 him under the fifth rib ; and Rechab and Baanah his bro- 
 ther escaped." It is still a custom in the East, according 
 to Dr. Perry, to allow their soldiers a certain quantity of corn, 
 with other articles of provisions, together with some pay: 
 and as it was the custom also to carry their corn to the mill at 
 break of day, these two captains very naturally went to the 
 palace the day before, to fetch wheat, in order to distribute 
 it to the soldiers, that it might be sent to the mill at the ac- 
 customed hour in the morning. The princes of the East, 
 in those days, as the history of David shows, lounged in 
 their divan, or reposed on their conch, till the cool of the 
 evening began to advance. Rechab and Baanah, therefore, 
 came in the heat of the day, when they knew that Ishbo- 
 sheth their master would be resting on his bed ; and as it 
 was necessary, for the reason just given, to have the corn the 
 day before it was needed, their coming at that time, though 
 it might be a little earlier than usual, created no suspicion, 
 and attracted no notice. — Paxton. 
 
 It is exceedingly common for people to recline on their 
 couches in the heat of the day. Hence, often, when you 
 call on a person at that time, the answer is, " The master 
 is asleep.'' Captain Basil Hall speaks of the inhabitants 
 of South America having the same custom. The old Ro- 
 mish missionaries in China used to take their siesta with a 
 metal ball in the hand, which was allowed to project over 
 the couch; beneath was a brass dish, so that as soon as the 
 individual was asleep the fingers naturally relaxed their 
 grasp, and let the ball fall, and the noise made awoke him 
 from his slumbers. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. And David cornmanded his young men, 
 and they slew them, and cut off their hands and 
 their feet, and hanged them up over the pool in 
 Hebron. But they took the head of Ish- 
 bosheth, and buried it in the sepulchre of Abner 
 in Hebron. 
 
us 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 5 
 
 In times of tumult and disorder, they frequently cut off 
 the hands and feet of people, and afterward exposed them, 
 as well as the head. Lady M. W. Montague speaking of 
 the Turkish ministers of state says, " if a minister dis- 
 please the people, in three hours' time he is dragged even 
 from his master's arms ; they cut off his hands, head, and 
 feet, and throw them before the palace gate, with all the 
 respect in the world, while the sultan (to whom they all 
 profess an unlimited adoration") sits trembling in his apart-, 
 ment.^' Thus were the sons oi Rimmon served for slaying 
 ishbosheth. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 3. So all the elders of Israel came to the 
 
 ■ king to Hebron ; and King David made a 
 
 ^ league with them in Hebron before the Lord : 
 
 and they anointed David king over Israel. 
 
 4. David was thirty years old when he began 
 
 to reign, and he reigned forty years. 
 
 In the foregoing history we have seen the various steps, 
 by which providence brought David to the quiet possession 
 of the throne of Israel ; an event that, to all human proba- 
 bility, seemed the most unlikely, as the family of Saul, his 
 predecessor, was very numerous, all the forces of the king- 
 dom under his command, and large bodies of them fre- 
 quently employed by him to accomplish David's destruc- 
 tion. But God's purposes must stand, and he will do all 
 his pleasure. He had assured Saul, by the mouth of 
 Samuel his prophet, that he had sought him, a man after 
 HIS ow^f heart, and commanded him to be captain over his 
 people. This character has been thought, by some wri- 
 ters, to denote the highest degree of moral purity, and that 
 therefore it could not, with truth or justice, be ascribed to 
 David, who was certainly guilty of some very great of- 
 fences, and hath been plentifully loaded with others, which 
 he was entirely free from the guilt of. Every one knows, 
 that in a literal translation of words from one language to 
 another, the original and the literal version may convey 
 very different ideas ; and should any one assert, that what 
 the version properly imports is the genuine meaning of the 
 original, he would betray his ignorance and want of learn- 
 ing, and all his reasonings from such an assertion would 
 be inconclusive and false. A good man, upon the exchange 
 of London, means, a responsible and wealthy man, who is 
 able to answer his pecuniary obligations, and whose credit 
 is every way unexceptionable, though his character for 
 morals may be extremely bad. But this is not the mean- 
 ing of the Greek word ayaQo^, and but seldom, or ever, of 
 the Latin word bomts ; and should any one argue, that such 
 a man was ayados or bonus, according to the common ac- 
 ceptation of those words in Greek and Latin, because in 
 the English phrase he is called a good man, he would ex- 
 pose hiinself for his ignorance and simplicity. A man af- 
 ter God's own heart, in English, if we interpret the expres- 
 v'^ion in the strictest and highest sense, undoubtedly denotes 
 a character irreproachable and pure, without spot or blem- 
 ish. But doth it follow that this is the meaning of the 
 Hebrew expression, and that David, because he is so called, 
 was intended to be represented as a man of the highest 
 purity % This is presuming on a meaning, that the expres- 
 sion by no means necessarily conveys, and taking for grant- 
 ed what ought to be proved, and what every man, who un- 
 derstands the original language, knows to be mistaken. 
 The immediate occasion of these words of Samuel to Saul 
 was, Saul's disobedience in sacrificing, contrary to the ex- 
 press orders he had received from God by this great prophet, 
 not to offer sacrifices till he should come, and give him the 
 proper directions for his behaviour. The pretence was 
 piety, but the real cause was impatience, pride, and con- 
 tempt of the prophet ; who not coming just at the time Saul 
 expected, he thought it beneath him to wait any longer for 
 him ; and imagined, that a^ king, all the rites of religion, 
 and the ministers of it, were to be subjected to his direction 
 and pleasure. But when Samuel came, notwithstanding 
 his plea of devotion, and the force he put upon himself, 
 Samuel plainly tells him: Thou hast done foolishly, thou 
 hast no! kept the commandment of the Lord thy God,' which 
 he commanded thee; for now would the Lord have estab- 
 lished thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy 
 
 kingdom shall not continue. The Lord hath sought him, 
 •<:3:i'70 «yN, a man after his own heart ; he shall be captain over 
 his people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord 
 hath commanded thee. It is evident here, that the man 
 after God's own heart stands in opposition to the character 
 of Saul, who is described as acting foolishly, by breaking 
 the commandment of God by his prophet, and rejected by 
 him, i. e. deprived of the succession to the crown in his 
 family, on account of his folly, presumption, and disobe- 
 dience. And it therefore means one who should act pru- 
 dently, and obey the commandments of God delivered him 
 by his prophets, and whom therefore God would thus far 
 approve and continue to favour. Thus the expression is 
 actually interpreted by the Chaldee paraphrase : The m.an 
 who doth my will; and by St. Paul to the Jews at Antioch, 
 who says, that when God hath removed Saul, he raised 
 them up David to be their king ; to whom he gave testimo- 
 ny, and said : I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man 
 after my own heart, who shall execute my will. There 
 are therefore two senses, which are evidently implied in 
 this character of the man after God's own heart ; a man, 
 who should faithfully execute the will of God according 
 as he was commanded, and who on that account, and so 
 far, should be the object of his approbation. And in one 
 or other, or both these senses, we find the expression al- 
 ways used. Thus David, recounting the singular favours 
 of God towards himself, says ; For thy word's sake, i^Vn', 
 according to thy heart, i. e. thy will and pleasure, hast thou 
 done all these great things. In another place God saith to 
 the Jews : I will give you pastors, inSo, according to my heart : 
 pastors who shall answer the purposes for which I sent 
 them, and act agreeable to their office, as the words imme- 
 diately following explain it : Who shall feed you with 
 knowledge and understanding. Thus also the Psalmist : 
 The Lord grant thee according to thy heart, i. e. as the next 
 words explain it: Fulfil all thy counsel; give thee thy 
 Avishes, and by his favour prosper all thy designs. In like 
 manner, when Jonathan said to his armour-bearer : " Come, 
 let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised," his 
 armour-bearer said to him : Do all that is in thy heart. Do 
 whatever thou desirest and approves!. Turn thee. Be- 
 hold, I am with thee according to thy heart ; in every thing 
 in which thou canst desire, or command my concurrence. 
 These remarks may be confirmed by some other forms of 
 expression of the like nature. Thus God tells Eli : " I will 
 raise me up a faithful priest, that shall do according to what 
 is in my heart and my soul," i. e. what I command, and what 
 I approve. When Jehu, king of Israel, had cut off the 
 whole house and family of Ahab, whom God for his nu- 
 merous crimes had doomed to destruction, God said to him : 
 " Thou hast done well, in executing that which is right in 
 my eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab, according 
 to all that was in my heart," i. e. every thing I proposed, and 
 commanded thee to do. And yet in the very next verse, 
 Jehu is described as a very bad prince ; for he took no heed 
 to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his 
 heart, nor departed from the sins of Jeroboam, who made 
 Israel to sin. So Moses tells the people : " By this ye shall 
 know, that the Lord hath said to me to do all these things,* 
 and that they are not from my own heart ;" i. e. that I havej 
 not acted by my own suggestions, and according to my ownl 
 pleasure; and he commands them : " Ye shall remember 
 all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and not 
 seek after your own heart, and your own eyes," what is 
 agreeable to your passions, and pleasing to your vanity. 
 Many more places might be mentioned to the same purpose ; 
 but from those already alleged, the reader will see, that 
 David is characterized as a, man after God^s own heart, not 
 to denote the utmost height of purity in his moral charac- J 
 ler, as a private man, which by no means enters into th(rB 
 meaning of the expression, and which in no one single in-B 
 stance is intended by it; but to represent him as one, \rho 
 in his public character, as king of Israel, was fit for the jnir* 
 poses to which God advanced him, and who knew he would 
 faithfully execute the commands he should give him by his 
 prophets; and who on this account should be favoured and 
 approved of God, and established, himself and family, on the 
 throne of Israel. He was, I doubt not, upon the whole, a 
 really virtuous and religious man, according to the dispen- 
 sation he was under; and he certainly was a wise, a just, 
 a munificent and prosperous prince ; bnt yet he had his 
 faults, and those great ones, in his private character; and 
 
 
Chap, 5. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 189 
 
 these faults were not inconsistent with his character of be- 
 ing a man according to God's heart ; for if he was such a 
 prince as God intended him to be, faithfully executing 
 his orders, and bringing to pass those great events, which 
 lie was raised up by God to be the instrument of accom- 
 plishing; he thus far acted according to the hearty i. e. the 
 purpose and will of God, and thereby, in this respect, ren- 
 dered himself well pleasing and acceptable to him. The 
 particular purposes for which God advanced him to the throne 
 were, that by his steady adherence to the one true God, and 
 the religion which he was pleased to establish by Moses, 
 he might be an illustrious example to all his posterity that 
 should reign after him : and here he was absolutely with- 
 out blemish, and a man, in the strictest sense of the expres- 
 sion, after God's own heart ; as he never departed from his 
 Gcxl, by introducing the deities of other nations, or permit- 
 ling and encouraging the impious rites which they per- 
 formed in honour of them. On this account his heart is 
 said to be perfect with the Lord his God, because his heart 
 was never turned away after other gods ; and it is spoken 
 to the honour of the good princes of his house, who reigned 
 after him, that they did that which was right in the eyes 
 of the Lord, as did David their father ; and of the idola- 
 trous princes, it is mentioned as the greatest reproach to 
 them, that their hearts were not perfect with the Lord their 
 God, as the heart of David their father. During the reign 
 of Saul, little regard was shown by him to the institutions 
 of religion, and he acted as though he was independent of 
 the God of Israel, and therefore seldom or never inquired 
 of him, how he was to act in the affairs of government, at 
 the ark, from whence God, as peculiarly present in it, had 
 promised to give the proper answers to those who rightly 
 consulted him. As the ark itself had no fixed residence, 
 and some of the principal services of religion could not, for 
 that reason, be regularly and statedly performed, David 
 was raised up to be king over God's people, that he might 
 provide a rest for his ark, where it should perpetually con- 
 tinue, to which all the people might resort, where all the 
 solemn festivals might be celebrated, and the whole wor- 
 ship of God might be constantly performed, according to 
 the prescriptions of the law of Moses. David fully answer- 
 ed this purpose by fixing the ark at Jerusalem, settling all 
 the necessary ceremonies and forms of worship for perpet- 
 ual observance, and composing sacred hymns and psalms, 
 that should be sung in honour of the true God, providing 
 the expenses, and many of the costly materials, that were 
 necessary to build and adorn the house of God, which he 
 himself had proposed to erect, but which God reserved for 
 his son and successor to raise up ; and regulating the order, 
 that was to be observed among all the various persons, that 
 were to be employed in the daily services of the ark and 
 temple ; a full and ample account of which is transmitted 
 to us in the first book of Chronicles. It must not be omit- 
 ted also, that there was yet another end of providence, in 
 David's appointment, to be king over Israel ; that, accord- 
 ing to God's promise concerning him, he might save his 
 people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and out of 
 the hand of all their enemies ; and further, that by him he 
 might accomplish the more ancient promises which God 
 had made to Abraham, in their full extent, of giving to his 
 seed the whole country, from the river of Egypt, unto the great 
 river, the river Euphrates. Here also David answered the 
 intentions of providence in his advancement, as he subdued 
 the Philistines, and made them tributary to his crown ; as 
 he cleared his kingdom of all the remains of the nations 
 that had formerly possessed it, or reduced them mto entire 
 : subjection, or made them proselytes to his religion ; and as 
 the consequence of just and necessary wars, conquered all 
 the neighboiiring nations, garrisoned them by his victori- 
 ous troops, and put it out of their power to disturb his peo- 
 ple for many years, and left to his son and successor a forty 
 years' peace, "and dominion over all the kingdoms, from 
 the river Euphrates, unto the land of the Philistines, and 
 j unto the border of Egypt, who brought presents and served 
 1 Solomon all the days of his life. And finally, God raised 
 \ him up to exalt the glory of his people Israel, and render 
 i them a flourishing and happv people, by the Avisdom and 
 i justice of his government. He chose David his S(;rvant, 
 to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he 
 (fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and sfuided 
 i them by the skilfulness of his hands, i. e. he governed them 
 ' With integrity, prudence and courage ; for he reigned over 
 
 all Israel, and executed judgment and justice among ali- 
 bis people. See here, reader, the true portrait ot the man, 
 after God's own heart, who fulfilled all his pleasure, who 
 amid all the idolatries of the nations around him, never 
 wickedly apostatized from the worship of his God, and was 
 an amiable example of a steady adherence to those forms 
 of religion, which God had prescribed to all the princes 
 his successors ; who, though king, subjected himself to God 
 the supreme king of Israel, and faiihiully executed the 
 commands he received from him ; who made his people 
 triumph in the numerous victories he obtained, by the di- 
 rections, and under the conduct of God himself; who en- 
 larged their dominions, and put them into possession of all 
 the territories God had promised to their forefathers ; and 
 who amid all the successes that were granted him. the 
 immense riches he had gathered from the spoils of his 
 conquered enemies, and the sovereign power with which 
 he was invested, never degenerated into despotism and 
 tyranny, never oppressed his people; but governed them 
 with integrity, ruled over them with moderation and pru- 
 dence, impartially distributed justice, left an established 
 durable peace, and fixed the whole administration, both 
 civil and religious, upon the most substantial and durable 
 foundation. In these instances he was the true vicegerent 
 of God, 'on whose throne he sat, and all whose pleasure, in 
 these great instances, he faithfully performed. If therefore 
 David's private moral character was worse than it will be 
 ever proved to be, he might be still a man after God's own 
 heart, in the proper original sense of the expression ; and 
 the attempt to prove that he was not possessed of the height 
 of moral purity, is an impertinent attempt to prove David 
 not to be, what the sacred history never asserted him to 
 be. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the king and his men went to Jeru- 
 salem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the 
 land : which spake unto David; saying, Except 
 thou take away the blind and the lame, thou 
 shalt not come in hither : thinking, David can- 
 not come in hither. 7. Nevertheless David 
 took the strong hold of Zion ; the same is the 
 city of David. 8. And David said on that 
 day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and 
 smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the 
 blind, that are hated of David's soul, he shall 
 be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, 
 The blind and the lame shall not come into 
 the house. 
 
 1 CHRONICLES, CHAPTER XI. 
 Ver. 5. And the inhabitants of Jebus said to Da- 
 vid, Thou shalt not come hither. Neverthe- 
 less David took the castle of Zion, which is the 
 city of David. 6. And David said, Whosoever 
 smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and 
 captain. So Joab the son of Zeruiah went first 
 up, and was chief. 
 
 The words inhabitants of Jebus, which are not in the 
 original of Samuel, are not in the Vat. copy of the lxx. in 
 Chronicles; but the Alexandrian translates regularly ac- 
 cording to the present Hebrew text. In Samuel there is a 
 clause or two in the speech of the Jebusites, which is omit- 
 ted in Chronicles for brevity; as the history in Chronicles 
 is regular, and the sense complete without it. But though 
 the history be regular and very intelligible in Chronicles, 
 yet the additional clauses in Samuel make the history there 
 remarkably perplexed; and (as Dr. Delany observes) en- 
 cumber it with more difficulties than are ordinarily to be 
 met with. In full proportion to the difliculties has been the 
 number of different interpretations; and yet there seems to 
 be very suflicient room for offering another interpretation, 
 in some material points differing from them all. The words 
 in Samuel, so far as the text in Chronicles coincides, are 
 clear and determinate in their meaning, " And the inhab- 
 itants of Jebus said to David, Thou shalt not come hither." 
 But the succeeding words in Samuel are very difficult ; or, 
 
190 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 at least, have been variously interpreted. The present Eng- 
 lish translation is, " Except thou take away the blind and 
 the lame, thinking, David cannot come in hither." The 
 chief difiiculty here lies in determining who are these blind 
 and lame; whether Jebusites, or the Jebusite deities, called 
 Uiitd and lame by way of derision. The latter opinion has 
 been maintained by some considerable writers ; but seems 
 indefensible. For however David and the Israelites might 
 be disposed to treat such idols with scorn and contempt, it 
 is not at all likely the Jebusites should revile their own dei- 
 ties; and we must remember, that these deities are sup- 
 posed to be here called blind and lame by the Jebusites 
 themselves. But, admitting them to be idol deities, what 
 meaning can there be in the Jebusites telling David, " he 
 should not come into the citadel, unless he' took away the 
 deities upon the Avails'?" If he could scale the walls, so as 
 to reach these guardian deities, he need not ask leave of 
 the Jebusites to enter the citadel. But, (which is much 
 more difficult to be answered,) what can possibly be the 
 meaning of the last line, " Wherefore they said, the blind 
 and the lame shall not come into the house ?" For, who 
 said 1 Did the Jebusites say, their own deities (before ex- 
 pressed by the blind and the lame) should not come into 
 the house, should not (according to some) come where 
 they were, or, should not (according to others) come 
 into the house of the Lord 1 — Or, could these deities say, 
 David and his men should not come into the house 1 The 
 absurdity of attributing such a speech, or any speech, to 
 these idols, is too clear to need illustration; and it is a 
 known part of their real character, that they have mouths, 
 but speak not. But, though these deities could not de- 
 nounce these words, yet the Jebusites might ; and it is pos- 
 sible (it has been said) that the blind and the lame, in this 
 latter part of the sentence, may signify the Jebusites; not 
 any particular Jebusites, so maimed ; but the Jebusites in 
 general, called blind and lame, for putting their trust in 
 blind and lame idols. This seems loo refined an interpre- 
 tation ; and we may safely conclude — that the same expres- 
 sion of the blind and lame means the same beings in the 
 two different parts of the same sentence. It has been fur- 
 ther observed, that these blind and lame are here spoken 
 of as different from the Jebusites," Whosoever smiteth the 
 Jebusites, and the lame and the blind ;" and if they were 
 different, it requires no great skill at deduction to deter- 
 mine they were not the same. Perhaps then these blind 
 and lame were, in fact, a few particular wretches, who 
 laboured under these infirmities of blindness and lameness ; 
 and therefore v^ere different from the general body of the 
 Jebusites. But here will it not be .demanded at once — how 
 can we then account rationally for that bitterness with 
 which David expresses himself here against these bli7id 
 and lame; and how it was possible, for a man of David's 
 humanity, to detest men for mere unblameable, and indeed 
 pitiable, "infirmities 1 And lastly, the authors of the Uni- 
 versal History, in their note on this transaction, mention 
 the following, as the first plausible argument against the 
 literal acceptation — " How could David distinguish the halt, 
 or the lame, or the blind, from able men, when posted 
 upon lofty walls ; since those infirmities are not discernible 
 but near at hand T' This, it must be allowed, would be a 
 difficulty indeed, if David's information here had been 
 only from his eyesight. But this objection immediately 
 vanishes, when we reflect, that the Jebusites are said in the 
 text to have told David — the blind and the lame should keep 
 them off: for certainly David could easily conceive the 
 men, who were placed upon the walls to insult him, were 
 blind and lame; when he was told so by the Jebusites 
 themselves ; and told so, to render this insult of theirs the 
 greater. 
 
 Having thus mentioned some of the present interpreta- 
 tions, it may be now proper to submit another to the judg- 
 ment of the reader. I shall first give what seems to be the 
 true interpretation of this passage ; and then siibjoin the 
 several arguments in defence of it. " And the inhabitants 
 of Jebus said to David, Thou shalt not come hither ; for 
 the blind and the lame shall keep thee off, by saying, David 
 shall not come hither. But David took the strong hold of 
 Sion, which is the city of David. And David said on that 
 day. Whosoever (first) smiteth the Jebusites, and through 
 the subterraneous passage reacheth the lame and the blind, 
 that are hated of David's soul, because the blind and the 
 lame continued to say, he shall not come into this house" — 
 
 shall be chief captain. That the connected particles (on »3 
 ki ivi) rendered except, in Samuel, signify for in this 
 place, is evident, because the words following are rather 
 causal than objective ; and we have several instances of 
 this sense of the two particles given usby Noldius: thus 
 Prov. xxiii. 18, they are rendered /or in the English trans- 
 lation; and so in the English, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic 
 versions of Lam. v. 22. That the verb {ys^vr\ esirek) 
 rendered to take away, is not here the infinitive, but the 
 preler of Hiphil, is apparent from the sense ; that it has 
 been so considered, is certain from the Masoretic point- 
 ing, as De Dieu and other critics have observed : and we 
 see it is translated as such by the LXX. in the plural num- 
 ber, avrerriaav. From this version, then, and from the plu- 
 rality of the two nouns, which are necessarily the nomi- 
 natives to this verb, we may infer, that it was originally 
 "liniDn {esiruk) to keep off, the vau having been dropped here 
 as in many other places. Enough having been said of 
 the number, let us now consider the tense of this verb ; 
 which being preter, some have translated it by a word ex- 
 pressive of time past. But the sense necessarily requires 
 it to be translated as future in other languages, though it 
 be more expressive in the original in the preter tense, it 
 being agreeable to the genius of the Hebrew language fre- 
 quently to speak of events yet future, as having actually 
 happened, when the speaker would strongly express the 
 certainty of such event. This observation is peculiarly ap- 
 plicable to the case here. For this castle of mount Sion 
 had never yet been taken by the Israelites, though they had 
 dwelt in Canaan about four hundred years ; as we learn 
 from the sacred history. Josh. xv. 63 ; Judg. i. 21 ; xix. 10 ; 
 and from Josephus, lib. vii. cap. 3. The Jebusites, then, 
 absolutely depending on the advantage of their high situa- 
 tion and "the strength of their fortification, (which had se- 
 cured them against the Israelites so many hundred years.) 
 looked upon this of David's as a vain attempt, which there- 
 fore they might safely treat with insolence and raillery. 
 Full of this fond notion, they placed upon the walls of tlie 
 citadel the few blind and lame that could be found among 
 them, and told David, " He should not come thither; for 
 the blind and lame" were sufficient to keep him off: which 
 they (these weak defenders^ should effectnally do, only 
 "by their shouting, David shall not come hither." That 
 the blind and tiie lame were contemptuously placed upon 
 the walls by the Jebusites, as before described, we are as- 
 sured not only by the words of the sacred history before us, 
 but also by the concurrent testimony of Josephus. Now 
 that these blind and lame, who appear to have been placed 
 upon the walls, were to insult and did insult David in the 
 manner before mentioned, seems very evident from the 
 words — The blind and the lame shall keep thee off BY SAY- 
 ING, etc. and also from the impossibility of otherwise ac- 
 counting for David's indignation against these (naturally 
 pitiable) wretches. And the not attending to this remark- 
 able circumstance seems one principal reason of the per- 
 plexity so visible among the various interpreters of this pas- 
 sage. It is very remarkable, that the sense before given to 
 TY'Dn DN 13 (ki im esirek,) " For the blind and the lame shall 
 keep thee off," is confirmed by Josephus in the place just 
 cited. And it is further remarkable that the same sense is 
 given to these words in the English Bible of Coverdale, 
 printed in 1535, in which they are rendered, ^Tf'ou sftalt 
 not come ftitftcr, but tf)c bUnti nntr lame s\)n\ tirnbe tl;e 
 aiuaie. This is one great instance to prove the credit due 
 to some parts of this very old English version ; as the sense 
 of this passage seems to have been greatly mistaken both 
 before and since. That it has been changed for the worse 
 since that edition, is very evident; and that it was improp- 
 erly rendered before appears from Wickliff's MS. version 
 of 1383, where we read — STftou sljalt not entre !)fliui*: no 
 but tljou Iro n\uei? bli)ntr men anti lame, etc. . After this addi- 
 tional clause of Samuel, in the speech of the Jebusites, iIk* 
 two histories agree in saying. " David took the stronghold 
 of Sion, which was afterward called the city of David." 
 By this strong hold of Sion, or city of David, we are led 
 by the words of the text to understand— not the fortress or 
 citadel (which was not yet taken, as appears from the 
 order of the history in both chapters)— but the town of the 
 Jebusites, or city of David, which was spread over the 
 wide hill of Sion : and is what Josephus means when he 
 tells us— David first took the lower town, the town which 
 lay beneath the citadel ; after which he tells us, thai the 
 
Chap. 5. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 191 
 
 citadel remained yet to be taken, lib. vii. cap. 3. The two 
 chapters having agreed in this circumstance of David's 
 making himselt master of the town or city, they now vary 
 as before; and here also the history in Chronicles is regu- 
 lar, though it takes no notice of some further circumstan- 
 ces relating to the blind and the lame : and indeed the latter 
 circumstances were to be omitted of course, as the historian 
 chose, for brevity, to omit the former. But as to Samuel, 
 there is in that book a deficiency of several words, which 
 are necessary to complete the sense; which words are pre- 
 served in the text of Chronicles, And as the difficulty 
 here olso lies entirely in the text of Samuel, let us see 
 whether it may not be cleared up to satisfaction. David 
 having now possessed himself of the strong town of the 
 Jebusites, situate upon the hill of Sion, proceeds, the same 
 day, to attack the citadel or fortress; which was considered 
 by"the Jebusites as impregnable. And probably the Israelites 
 v/ould have thought so too, and David had retired from 
 before it, like his forefathers, if he had not possessed himself 
 by stratagem, when he found he could not storm or take it 
 by open force. For this seems in fact to have been the 
 case; and the history of this success may be properly intro- 
 duced by a similar case or two. And first. Dr. Prideaux 
 (in his Connexion, part i. book 2) tells us of the city of 
 Babylon, — that when it was besieged by Cyrus, the inhabit- 
 ants, thinking themselves secure in their walls and their 
 stores, looked on the taking of the city by a siege as an im- 
 practicable thing ; and therefore from iJie top of their walls 
 scoffed at Cyrus, and derided him or every thing he did 
 towards it. (A circumstance most exactly parallel to that 
 of the history before us.) But yet, that Cyrus broke down 
 the great bank or dam of the river, both where it ran into 
 the city, and where it came out ; and as soon as the channel 
 of the river was drained, in the middle of the night, while 
 Belshazzar was carousing at the conclusion of an annual 
 festival, " the troops of Cyrus entered through these pas- 
 sages in two parties, and took the city by surprise." And 
 there is a second remarkable case related by Polybius, 
 which will further illustrate the present history; and was 
 commiiiiicited to me by a learned friend. " Rabatamana," 
 says Polybius, " a city of Arabia, could not be taken, till 
 one of the prisoners showed the besiegers a subterraneous 
 passage, through which the besieged came down for water." 
 Now this fortress of the Jebusites seems to have been cir- . 
 cumstanced like Rabatamana; in having also a subterra- 
 neous passage which is called in the original -i"':s (tzenur,) 
 a word which occurs but once more in the Bible, and does 
 not seem commonly understood in this place. The English 
 version calls it the gutter— the Vulgate, fistulas— Yatahlus, 
 cariales — Jun. and Ti;em. emissarium — Poole, t^ihis aquce — 
 and Bochart, alveus, &c. But not to multiply quotations, 
 most interpreters agree in making the word signily some- 
 thing hollow, and applying it to water : just the case of the 
 subterraneous passage, or great hollow, of Rabatamana, 
 thrbngh which men could pass and repass for water. That 
 this "^iis (tzenur) in the text was such an underground pas- 
 sage might be strongly presumed from the text itself; but 
 it is proved to have been so by Josephus. For, speaking of 
 this very transaction, he calls them subterraneous cavities, 
 putting this interpretation upon a very solid footing. That 
 the preposition 3, rendered in, prefixed to -ii;:5 (tzenur,) 
 sometimes signifies by, is evident from Noldius; and that it 
 signifies so in this place is certain from the nature of the 
 context, and the testimony of Josephus, who expresses it 
 thus : the verb T^nN> (iamru,) rendered, they said, in this 
 sentence is very properly future ; as Hebrew verbs in that 
 tense are known to be frequentative, or to express the con- 
 tinuance of doin^ anything; and therefore that tense is 
 with great propriety used here to express the frequent 
 repetition of the insolent speech used by the blind and the 
 lame upon the walls j^f the fortress. It only remains here 
 to make an observation or two on the reward proposed by 
 David, and the person who obtained it. The text of Chron- 
 icles tells us, " David said. Whosoever smiteth the Jebu- 
 sites first, shall be chief and captain, or head and prince." 
 We are to recollect, that Joab the son of Zeruiah (David's 
 sister) had been general of his army, during the civil war, 
 I between the men of Judah under David, and the Israelites 
 commanded by Abner, in favour of Ishbosheth the son of 
 Saul: but that the Israelites, having now submitted to 
 'David, he was king over the whole twelve tribes. David, 
 we know, frequently endeavoured to remove Joab from 
 
 his command of the army, on account of his haughtiness, 
 and for several murders ; but complained, that this son of 
 Zeruiah was too hard for him. One of these attempts of 
 David seems to have been made at the time Israel came iii 
 to David, by the persuasion of Abner ; when it is probable 
 the condition on Abner's side was to have been made 
 David's captain-general: and perhaps Joab suspected so 
 much, and therefore murdered him. The next attempt 
 seems to have been made at the taking this strong citadel 
 of the Jebusites. For David proposes the reward absolute- 
 ly to every officer of his army, "Whosoever smiteth the 
 Jfbusiies first ;" i. e. whosoever will ascend first, put him- 
 self at the head of a detachment, and march up through the 
 subterraneous passage into the citadel, shall be head and 
 captain. This proposal, we may observe, was general; 
 and yet, how much soever David might wish Joab safely 
 removed, it is reasonable to think that he made Joab the 
 first offer. And, we find, that however dangerous and 
 dreadful this enterprise appeared, yet Joab hsd prudence 
 enough to undertake it, and courage enough to execute it : 
 and Joab went up first, or at the head of a party, and was 
 accordingly declared head, or chief captain, or (in the 
 modern style) captain-general of the united armies of Israel 
 and Judah. It is not unlikely that the men of Israel ex- 
 pected, that though Abrfer their general had been basely 
 murdered by Joab, yei David's chief captain should be 
 chosen from among them; or at least that they should have 
 a chance for that iirst post of honour, as well as the men of 
 Judah. And if they had declared any expectation of this 
 kind, David seems to have taken the wisest step for de- 
 termining so important a point — by declaring, that neither 
 relation, nor fortune, nor friendship should recommend 
 upon the occasion ; but, as the bratest man and the best 
 soldier ought to be commander-in-chief, so this honour 
 should be the reward of the greatest merit; that there was 
 nowa fair opportimity pfsignalizingthemselves inthe taking 
 this important fortress; and therefore his resolution was— 
 that Whosoever v-ould head a detachment up this subterra- 
 neous passage, and should first make himself master of the 
 citadel, by that passage, or by scaling the walls, or by any 
 other method, should be head and captain, i. e. captain- 
 general. It is remarkable, that the text in Samuel is very 
 incomplete in this place: David's proposal to the army is 
 just begun, and a circumstance or two mentioned ; but "the 
 reward proposed, and the person rewarded, are totaJv 
 omitted. We may presume the text coiild not have been 
 thus imperfect originally, since no ellipsis can supply Avhat 
 is here wanting; and therefore the words in the coinciding 
 chapter in Chronicles, which regularly fill up this omis- 
 sion, were doubtless at first also in Samuel, and are there- 
 fore to be restored : the necessity of thus restoring the 
 words not found in the present copies of Samuel is ap- 
 parent. 
 
 And the English version of these texts in Samuel is — 
 " And they spoke unto David, saying. Thou shalt liot come 
 hither ; for the blind and the lame shall keep thee ofl^, by 
 saying, David shall not come hither. But David took the 
 strong hold of Sion, which is the city of David. And Da- 
 vid said on that day. Whosoever (first) smileth the Jebusites,^ 
 and by the subterraneous passage reacheth the blind and tho" 
 lame, which are hated of David's soul, (because the blind 
 and the lame continued to say. He shall not come into this 
 house) — shall be head and captain. So Joab the son of 
 Zeruiah went up first, and was head — or captain-general."' 
 The English version, then, of these texts in Chronicles is — 
 " And the inhabitants of Jebus said to David, Thou shalt 
 not come hither. But David took the strong hold of Sion, 
 which is the city of David. And David said, Whosoever 
 first smiteth the Jebusites, shall be head and captain. So 
 Joab the son of Zeruiah went up first, and was chief cap- 
 tain." (Kennicott.) — Critica Biblica. 
 
 Ver. 9. So David dwelt in the fort, and called it, 
 The city of David : and David built round 
 about, from Milo and inward. 
 
 The old city founded by the Jebusites before Abraham 
 arrived in Canaan, is styled by some writers the city ot 
 Melchizedek, not because he was the founder, but because it 
 was the seat of his government. This ancient city was so 
 strongly fortified both by nature and art, that the people of 
 Israel could not drive oiit the Jebusites, its original inhabit- 
 
192 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap, 5. 
 
 ants, but were reduced to live with them at Jerusalem, 
 The armies of Israel indeed seized the city ; but the Jebu- 
 sites kept possession of the strong fort which defended the 
 town, till the reign of David, who took it by storm, and 
 changed its name to the city of David, to signify the im- 
 portance of the conquest, and to perpetuate the memory of 
 the event. Having chosen Jerusalem for the place of his 
 residence and the capital of his kingdom, he adorned the 
 fortress with a royal pahice for his own accommodation, 
 and a variety of other buildings; which, from the continual 
 additions made to them in succeeding reigns, increased to 
 the size of a considerable city, and covered nearly the 
 whole of mount Sion. The largeness of the city of David 
 may be inferred from the expression of the sacred histo- 
 rian ; "David built round about from Millo and inward." 
 This passage, and particularly the word Millo, has greatly 
 exercised the genius and divided the sentiments of com- 
 mentators; and is therefore entitled to more particular 
 notice. Thai Millo was situated in the city of David, the 
 inspired historian expressly asserts : and by consequence, it 
 must either have been upon mount Sion or in its immedi- 
 ate vicinity. It is worthy of notice, that the inspired writer 
 of David's history could not allude to Millo itself, which 
 was not then in existence, but to the place where it after- 
 ward stood ; for Millo was not built till the succeeding 
 reign. It seems to have been a public building, where the 
 king and his princes met in council about affairs of state ; 
 for in the passage already quoted from the first book of 
 Kings, it is connected with the house of the Lord and the 
 royal palace. The words of the historian are ; " And this 
 is the reason of the levy (or tax) which king Solomon 
 raised ; for to build the house of the Lord and his own 
 house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, 
 and Megiddo, and Gezer." But every ground of hesitation 
 is removed by the sacred writer of the second book of Kings, 
 who calls it expressly " the house of Millo." That it was 
 a public building, in one of whose apartments the council 
 of state met to deliberate upon public affairs, is rendered 
 extremely probable by one of the kings of Judah losing his 
 life there by the hands of his princes ; for we are told, that 
 " the servants of king Joash arose and made a conspiracy, 
 and slew him in the house of Millo," whither he had prob- 
 ably come to consult with his princes and other principal 
 persons upon some affairs of state. This interpretation is 
 greatly strengthened by a passage in the book of Judges, 
 which informs us, that " all the men of Shechem gathered 
 together, and all the house of Millo, and went and made 
 Abimelech king." The city of Shechem then had also its 
 house of Millo, and a great number of persons connected 
 with it, whom the sacred writer distinguishes from the men 
 of the city. Now since both were concerned in making 
 Abimelech king, it is natural to conclude, that the men of 
 the city were the inferior inhabitants, and the house of 
 Millo tlie governors of the place : both of whom on this 
 occasion met in the senate-house, to set the crown upon the 
 head of their favourite. 
 
 The house of Millo upon mount Sion, appears to have 
 been a place of great strength, and essentially connected 
 ;vith the defence of Jerusalem ; fof when Hezekiah dis- 
 covered that Sennacherib meditated the reduction of his 
 capital, " he strengthened himself, and built up all the Avail 
 that was broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another 
 wall without, and repaired Millo in the city of David, and 
 made darts and shields in abundance." From the intimate 
 connexion between the repairing of Millo and the making 
 of darts and other implements of war, it has been conjec- 
 tured by some writers, that one part of that public building 
 was occupied as an armory; in which there is nothing 
 improbable. It is necessary, however, before leaving this 
 part of the subject, to state another opinion that has been 
 advanced concerning Millo, by several men of genius and 
 learning. They suppose that Solomon filled up a deep val- 
 ley or hollow, that separated the hill of Sion and the site 
 of the ancient city from mount Moriah, upon whose sum- 
 mit he built the temple of Jehovah, and made a plain level 
 road from the one to the other. The execution of this stu- 
 pendous work, they contend, may be inferred from the 
 root of the word Millo, which signifies "to fill up;" and 
 from a passage in 2d Chronicles, where it is said, the king 
 made terraces to the hou'^e of the Lord, and to the king's 
 palace. The word which is here rendered terraces, may 
 be translated as in the margin, stays or supports. But nei- 
 
 ther of these senses amounts to a sufficient proof, that the 
 teri'aces were made by filling up the hollow between mount 
 Sion and mount Moriah. That Solomon planned and ex- 
 ecuted a noble and magnificent way from the royal palace 
 on mount Sion, to the temple on mount Moriah, which 
 excited the admiration of all that saw it, is attested in plain 
 terms by the sacred writer; "And when the queen ot 
 Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house which 
 he had built, . . , and his ascent by which he went up unto 
 the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her." 
 This passage also proves, that although the declivity on each 
 side was easy, the road was not perfectly level, for Solomon 
 went up an ascent to the house of the Lord. The same 
 circumstance is mentioned in another book, where the sa- 
 cred writer speaks of " the causey of the going up." And 
 we read, that Joash was slain in the house of Millo, which 
 goes down to Silla. The term Silla, is thought by some 
 learned commentators, to have the same meaning as Mes- 
 silah, which signifies a causey or cast up way ; and conse- 
 quently, that between the two mounts Sion and Moriah, were 
 two declivities, one towards the temple or moxmt Moriah, 
 the other towards the palace or mount Sion. The last is 
 supposed to be the descent of Silla, near which stood the 
 house of Millo. From this statement it is clear, that the 
 house of Millo stood on the east side of mount Sion, at the 
 upper end of the causey which goes down to Silla, and the 
 royal palace on the opposite side. When, therefore, the sa- 
 cred historian says, David built round about from Millo 
 and inward, or as the original word may be rendered, " to 
 the house," he seems to intimate, that I)avid built round 
 about from the place where Millo was afterward erected 
 by Solomon, or where more probably the senate-house, or 
 Millo of the Jebusites, had stood, which was pulled down to 
 make room for the more sumptuous edifice of Solomon, to 
 his own house ; so that David built from one part of mount 
 Sion, quite round to the opposite point. Hence, the resi- 
 dence of David, even in the reign of that renowned mon- 
 arch, began to assume the size and splendour of a city, and 
 to be justly entitled to the appellation which it receives 
 from the sacred historian. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 19. And David inquired of the Lord, say- 
 ing-, Shall I go up to the Philistines ? wilt thou 
 deliver them into my hand? And the Lord 
 said unto David, Go up ; for I will doubtless 
 deliver the Philistines into thy hand. 
 
 I cannot here help observing, in honour of the Hebrew 
 oracle, that its answers were such, as became the character 
 of the true God, who hath all events at his disposal, and 
 cannot be mistaken as to those which he expressly fore- 
 tels. Let any one compare it with the heathen oracles, 
 and he will be forced to acknowledge, that they were 
 shuffling, ambiguous, and vague ; and the answers they gave 
 of so uncertain a nature, so equivocal and deceitful, as that 
 they might be interpreted in two direct contrary senses, 
 might be equally true of two contrary events, and evidently 
 demonstrated, that they who gave them out kncAv no more 
 of those events on which they were consulted, than they 
 who inquired about them, who were often deceived in the 
 application of them to their own destruction. Thus Croe- 
 sus was foretold by Apollo, that if he made war with the 
 Persians, he should overturn a great empire ; which Croesus 
 interpreting in his own favour, made war upon Cyrus, 
 and thereby put an end to his own empire ; after which, 
 he severely reproached Apollo for deceiving him. And j 
 thus Pyrrh'us, king of Epirus, who is said, upon the credit \ 
 of an ambiguous oracle of the same Apollo, to have en- 
 gaged in war with the Romans, was entirely defeated by 
 them, and forced at last to retire with great disgrace and 
 loss into his OAvn dominions. Whereas, the answers of the 
 Hebrew oracle had one plain obvious certain meaning, 
 that needed no interpretation, that no one could possibly 
 mistake the meaning of, and that was never found, in one 
 single instance, to deceive or disappoint those who de- 
 pended on, and directed themselves by the order of it. Do 
 this, or, Do not this, was the peremptory form, in which they, 
 who consulted it, were answered ; which, in the judgment 
 of Cicero, was the manner in which the rrscles of Gcv'> 
 ought to be delivered.— Chandler. 
 
Ghap. 6. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 193 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 2. And David arose, and went with all the 
 people that were with him from Baale of Ju- 
 dah, to bring up from thence the ark of God, 
 whose name is called by the name of The 
 Lord of Hosts, that dwelleth between the 
 cherubims. 
 
 David being now at rest, in peace at home, and free from 
 rfll foreign wars, applied himself to make some necessary 
 regulations in religion, and a proper provision for the more 
 stated performance of the solemnities of divine worship. 
 The ark, which was the emblem of the divine presence, 
 where God dwelt between the cherubim, v/as now at Kir- 
 jath-jearim, in the house of Abinidab on the hill ; where it 
 was placed, when the Philistines had sent it back, after 
 they had taken it in the battle, in which Hophni and Phin- 
 eas, the sons of Eli, perished, and great part of the Hebrew 
 army were cut off. The time of its continuance here was 
 about forty-six years, except when, on some particular oc- 
 casions, it was removed, as once in Saul's time, when he 
 fought his first battle against the Philistines. As David 
 had now fixed his own residence at Jerusalem, and intend- 
 ed it for the capital of his whole kingdom, he was resolved 
 to do every thing in his power, that could contribute to the 
 splendour, dignity, and safety of it. His first care was to 
 secure it the presence and protection of the God of Is- 
 rael ; and accordingly, he provided a proper habitation and 
 residence for his ark, and pitched for it a tent, where it 
 might continually remain throughout all future ages. The 
 ark was a small chest, made of shittim-wood, two cubits 
 and a half, or a yard and a half and one inch long, a cubit 
 and a half, or two feet nine inches broad, and overlaid 
 within and without, with pure gold. On the top of the ark 
 was placed a seat, or cover, called mDn, O^acrrr^piov, the mer- 
 cy-seat, as we render the word, or, the propitiatory cover, be- 
 cause the blood of the propitiatory sacrifice was sprinkled 
 on, and before it. In this ark were placed the two tables 
 of stone, on which the ten commandments were engraven, 
 called the testimony ; because God testified and declared, 
 these ten commandments were essential and unalterable 
 laws of his kingdom. On this account* the ark is called, 
 The ark of the testimony. In the order to make it, God 
 . says : " Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell 
 among them." Here, God tells Moses : " I will meet with 
 thee, and I will commune, with thee, from above the mercy- 
 seat, from between the two cherubims, of all things, which 
 I will give thee in commandment, unto the children of Is- 
 rael; and I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat." 
 Hence the ark was considered as the house, the sanctuary, 
 and temple of God, where he resided; and God is described 
 as dwelling between, or rather above the cherubim ; not 
 because the Hebrews were so stupid as to imagine any per- 
 sonal residence of God in the ark, or that he could be con- 
 fined to any particular place, whom they well knew the 
 heaven, even the heaven of heavens, could not contain ; 
 much less any house that could be erected for him by hu- 
 man hands; but because the cloud and glory, which ap- 
 peared there, were the visible emblems of his gracious 
 presence with them, and of his peculiar inspection and 
 care ov«r them ; or, as Joshua tells them, whereby they 
 should know, that the living God was among them, even the 
 Lord of the whole earth ; viz. to protect and prosper them. 
 That the majesty of this ark or portable temple of God, 
 might be preserved inviolable, God ordered a tabernacle to 
 be prepared for its reception, and a veil to be placed before 
 the ark, to separate the holy place, where the ark was fix- 
 ed, from the other part of the tabernacle, where Aaron and 
 his sons were to minister continually before God. Besides 
 this, there was a spacious court prepared round about the 
 tabernacle and the altar, where the congregation were al- 
 lowed to enter, and present their offerings at the door of the 
 tabernacle, before the Lord. At the door of the tabernacle 
 of the congregation the daily burnt-offering was to be of- 
 ■ fared, where God promised to meet with the children of Is- 
 S rael, to sanctify it by his glor}"-, and to dwell among the 
 fl children of Israel, and be their God, i. e. their almighty 
 guardian, and protector. Here also were to be brought all 
 their various kinds of sacrifices, in reference to which the 
 charge was so strict, as that God commanded, that whoever 
 
 didnot bring hissacrifice to the door of the tabernacle, there 
 to offer it to the Lord, should be cut off from his people : the 
 most effectual provision this, that could possibly be made 
 against idolatry, as it struck at the root of all idol worship ; 
 and which, had they observed the command, must have 
 prevented the introduction of any other god, in opposition 
 to Jehovah, the true God, who dwelt in the ark, and on 
 whose altar their sacrifices must have been offered by his 
 priests, who resided in the tabernacle. Hither also, as lo 
 the temple of God, the religious Hebrews loved to resort, 
 not only to present their sacrifices, but to join in the cele- 
 bration of the divine praises, and the singing those sacred 
 songs, that were composed in honour of the true God, to 
 offer up their supplications to him, and to make and pay 
 their vows before him ; and their appearance at the taber- 
 nacle for these purposes, where the ark of tTie presence re- 
 sided, was styled, appearing before God, coming before his 
 presence, frequenting his courts, abiding in his house, and 
 the like ; because they saw there his power and glory, or 
 the glorious manifestartion of his power and majesty, which 
 were frequently given, as the immediate token of God's ac- 
 cepting their sacrifices, thanksgivings, and prayers. From 
 these observations it appears, that this ark of God was of 
 the highest importance in the Hebrew republic, as it was a 
 standing memorial for Jehovah, the one true God, the God 
 of Israel, the centre of all the public solemnities of religion, 
 the place where the whole nation was to pay their homage 
 and adoration to him, where he appeared propitious and 
 favourable to his people, where they were to inquire of 
 him, and wait for his direction ; and that the presence of it 
 was essentially necessary, wherever the public solemni- 
 ties of worship were to be performed ; and that Jerusalem 
 could never have been fixed on for these sacred services, 
 nor the visible emblems of the divine Majesty and pres- 
 ence, in the cloud and glory, have ever been expected in it, 
 unlessthis ark had been translated to, and settled there, as 
 the place of its future and fixed residence. These were 
 some of the considerations that induced David to remove 
 it into the new city that he had built, but there were others 
 also that the very law of Moses suggested to him. God 
 had by him commanded the Hebrews, that " unto the place 
 which the Lord their God had chosen out of all the tribes, to 
 put his name there, even unto his habitation should they 
 seek, and thither they should come, and thither should they 
 bring their burnt ofierings, their sacrifices, their tithes and 
 heave offerings, their vows, their free-will offerings, and 
 the firstlings of their herds and flocks, and that there they 
 should eat before the Lord their God, and rejoice in all that 
 they put their hand to, they and their household, wherein 
 the Lord their God had blessed them." He further prom- 
 ised them, that after they had passed over Jordan, and 
 dwelt in the land, which" he had given them to inherit ; 
 then, " there should be a place, which the Lord their God 
 would choose, to dwell tkere, and that there they should 
 bring their burnt-offerings, and all their choice vows, and 
 that there they should rejoice before the Lord their God, 
 they, and their sons, and their daughters, and their men- 
 servants, and their maid-servants, and the Levite that was 
 with them in their gates, and do all that he commanded 
 them;" and that here, and nowhere else, they should eat the 
 passover, and appear three times in it every year, before 
 the Lord their God ; at the feast of unleavened bread, the 
 feasts of weeks, and the feast of tabernacles ; and that here 
 they were to apply for determining their principal causes 
 and. controversies": in a word, that this very place, which 
 the Lord should ehoose, should be the capital of the whole 
 kingdom, the principal seat of all their public solemnities, 
 and the perpetual residence of the supreme courts of justice 
 and equity. 
 
 During all the preceding periods of the Hebrew republic, 
 no such place had been chosen and appointed by God ; the 
 ark itself had no settled and fixed habitation, but removed 
 from place to place, as convenience or necessity required ; 
 and the several judges and supreme officers, that presided 
 over and judged the people, had their particular cities, 
 where they resided, and administered justice to those who 
 applied to them. In this unsettled state of the republic, 
 many and great inconveniences must have necessarily 
 arisen, and the most significant and important solemnities 
 of the national religion were absolutely incapable of being 
 performed, according to the prescription of the law of God 
 by Moses. 
 
194 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 6. 
 
 The honour of making the necessary settlement in these 
 things, and perfecting the civil polity, and the ceremonial 
 of the Hebrew worship, was reserved for David; who 
 when he had retaken Jerusalem from the Jebusites, had 
 considered the strength and convenience of its situation, 
 had enlarged it with new buildings, adorned it with pal- 
 aces, erected a magnificent one for himself, had well forti- 
 fied it wath walls and bulwarks, and chosen it for his own 
 residence; was in hope that this was the place God had 
 now chosen to dwell in, and immediately formed the great 
 design of translating the ark of God into it, and providing a 
 suitable habitation for its future rest; that this emblem of 
 God's immediate presence might be perpetually near him, 
 where he himseli might constantly worship in the courts 
 of his tabernacle, where all the solemn sacrifices might be 
 statedly oifered, and the aflfairs in general of the whole 
 kingdom, relating to religion and justice, for the future, be 
 transacted with regularity, order, and dignity. In pursu- 
 ance of this great design, he first gathered together all the 
 chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand men, consisting of the 
 captains of thousands, and hundreds, and all the princes ; 
 and said to them, thus assembled at Jerusalem : " II it seem 
 good unto you, and it be approved of by the Lord our God, 
 let us send abroad unto our brethren everywhere, that are 
 left in all the land of Israel, and with them to the priests 
 and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they 
 may gather themselves together unto us, and let us bring 
 up to us the ark of God ; at which we but seldom inquired 
 in the days of Saul." To this proposal the congregation 
 unanimously agreed. David accordingly sent messengers 
 to Israel, throughout all his dominions, from Sichor, or 
 the Egyptian Nile, the most southern boundary of his king- 
 dom, to the entrance of Hemath. northward, near the rise 
 of Jordan. When the assembly were met, David led them 
 to Baalah, which is Kirjath-jearim, and which belonged to 
 t.he tribe of Judah ; and from thence they conveyed the ark 
 of God, " where his name was invocated, even the name 
 Jehovah Zebaoth, or Lord of hosts, who sits upon the cher- 
 ubim, that were over the ark." They had prepared a new 
 ferriage, drawn by oxen, for the conveyance of it, which 
 Jzzah and Ahio the sons of Abinidab drove to Abinidab's 
 hoitse ; and then placing the ark upon it, they attended on 
 it ; Ahio marching before the ark, and Uzzah on one side 
 of it. When the procession began, David, with all the 
 house 6f Israel, gave the highest demonstrations of satisfac- 
 tion and pleasure, playing before the Lord on all manner 
 of instruments, made of fir-wood, even on harps, and on 
 psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. 
 But the joy of David and his people on this solemn occa- 
 sion was soon interrupted. For when the procession was 
 advanced as far as Nachon's thrashing-floor, the oxen 
 stumbled, and thereby shook the ark ; on which Uzzah, 
 fearing probably it might be thrown off the carriage, very 
 rashly laid hold of the ark of God with his hand, in order 
 to support it ; not considering, that as he was but a Levite, 
 he was forbidden to touch it under penalty of death, and 
 that, as it was the dwelling of God, and immediately under 
 his protection, he could and would have preserved it from 
 falling, without Uzzah's officious care to prevent it. For 
 this violation of the law, Uzzah was immediately struck by 
 the hand of God, and fell down dead by the ark. 
 
 God smote him, as the text says, for his error, or as we 
 have it in the margin, for his rashness ; and as this is the 
 first instance that we have of the violation of this prohibi- 
 tion of' the Levites, from touching any thing sacred under 
 the penalty of death, the punishment of it shows that the 
 prohibition was really divine, and th^t as the penalty of 
 death was incurred, it was justly inflicted, as an example 
 to others, and to preserve a due reverence for the divine 
 institutions. Besides, God had particularly appointed the 
 manner in which the ark should be removed from place to 
 place; not upon a carriage drawn by oxen, but by order- 
 ing that the sons of Kohath should carry it on their shoul- 
 ders, by the staves, that were put into the rings, on the 
 vides of the ark; and their neglecting to do it on this sol- 
 emn occasiot and consulting their ease more than their 
 duty, by placing it -^n a carriage drawn by oxen, was an 
 offence of no small aggravation, as it was on innovation con- 
 trary to the express order of the law. This David himself 
 afterward acknowledges, and assigns it as the reason of 
 the punishment inflicted upon Uzzah, and as he himself 
 and the whole house of Israel were present at this solem- 
 
 nity, and it was impossible that the nature and cause of 
 Uzzah's death could have been concealed. The history 
 expressly says, that God smote him for his rashness, in lay- 
 ing hold of what he ought not to have touched; or for his 
 error in thinking God was not able to protect and secure 
 it ; and David affirms, that the Lord had made a breach 
 upon Uzzah, and in commemoration of it calk-cI the name 
 of the place, Perez-uzzah, i. e. the breach of Uzzan ; a plain 
 evidence, that he knew his death to be extraordinary, and 
 inflicted by the immediate hand of God ; this is further evi- 
 dent from the terror David was in upon account of this ex- 
 traordinary accident, and his desisting for this reason from 
 the resolution he had formed of introducing the ark into 
 Jerusalem. David " was afraid of the Lord that day, and 
 said : How shall the ark of the Lord come to me '?" I am 
 at a loss what method to take to bring the ark, with safety 
 to myself and people, into Jerti-salem. Every circumstance 
 in this transaction shows that Uzzah's death was a divine 
 punishment, and had he died by any other hand, it must 
 have been known to many that were present, as he died in 
 open day light, and in the view of thousands who attended 
 in this solemn procession. 
 
 Should it be said, that if the Lord would have saved the 
 ark, because he could ; it may be also urged, that he would 
 have brought it to any place where he intended it to be, be- 
 cause he could have done it, and that therefore David was 
 impertinently officious in removing it himself: the answer 
 is; that as God had forbidden the ark to be touched, on 
 any occasion, by the Levites, under penaky of death, it was 
 an assurance, that in all its movements he would take it 
 under his especial protection, and that as he was able to 
 secure it against every hazard, without human assistance, 
 so he certainly would do it. But God never promised to 
 remove it himself from place to place, but expressly gave 
 that service in charge to the Levites; and therefore it doth 
 not follow, that because he himself could, therefore he 
 would remove it, because he expressly ordered it to be 
 done by others. But Uzzah's intention was certainly good, 
 and therefore the alleged crime certainly pardonable ; the 
 seeming exigency precluding all reflection. But this seem- 
 ing exigency was no real one, and his acting without 
 reflection, an aggravation of his fault; especially as he 
 committed this offence, in consequence of a former. Uz- 
 zah knew, or might have known, that the ark was never to 
 be moved in any carriage, btit on the shoulders of the 
 Levites; and had it been thus removed, the accident would 
 not have happened to the ark, and his rashness in touching, 
 and the punishment he suffered for it, would have been 
 both prevented. His good intention therefore here coirid 
 be of no avail. It was no excuse for his ignorance, if he 
 was really ignorant, because he might, and ought to have 
 known better ; nor for his presumption, and such it must 
 have been, if he could not plead ignorance for his error, 
 because this was in its nature a high aggravation of his 
 fault. And light as l^is offence may seem, yet when it is 
 considered in all its consequences, and what an encourage- 
 ment it might have given for the introduction of other 
 innovations, contrary to the institutions of the law of 
 Moses, had this offence been passed by with impunity : it 
 was no wonder that God should manifest his displeasure 
 against it, by punishing with death, what he bad forbidden 
 under the penalty of it ; thereby to prevent aLL future 
 attempts to make anv changes in that constitution which 
 he had established. But "supposing that the ark had been 
 overturned for want of this careful prevention, might not 
 Uzzah, with greater plausibility, have been smote for his 
 omission, than he was for his commission 1" That is, might 
 not God have more plausibly punished Uzzah for omitting 
 what he had strictly forbidden him to do under pain of 
 death, and what therefore it could never be his duty to do; 
 than for committing what it was unlawful by God's own 
 command for him to commit, and which he had made the 
 commission of a capital crime 1 What some critics may 
 think of this, I know not; I cannot for my life conceive, 
 how Uzzah could have been more plausibly, or reasonably 
 punished for omitting what it was his duty to omit, than for 
 committing what he was obliged never to commit. The 
 very contrary seems to me to be true, because he who doth 
 not commit an illegal action can never deserve punishment 
 on that account; whereas he, who actually doth such an 
 illegal action, becomes thereby guilty, and liable to th« 
 punishment denounced against it. 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 195 
 
 During the march, David, in order to render it more 
 solemnly religious, sacrificed, at proper intervals, oxen 
 and fallings; and though the ark, with its proper furniture, 
 must have been of a considerable weight, and the service 
 of the Levites, in carrying it such a length of way on their 
 shoulders, as from Obed-Edom's house to mount Sion, 
 could not but be very difficult; yet the history observes, 
 that God helped the Levites, by enabling them to bring it 
 *o its appointed place, and preserving them from every 
 unhappy accident, till they had safely deposited it; in 
 grateful acknowledgment of which they presented an of- 
 fering unto God of seven bullocks and seven rams. As 
 the procession was accompanied with vocal as well as im- 
 strumental music, David had prepared a proper psalm or ode 
 (Ps. 68) to be sung by the chanters, the several parts of which 
 M^ere suited to the several divisions of the march, and the 
 whole of it adapted to so sacred and joyful a solemnity ; as 
 will appear by a careful perusal and examination of it. I 
 hope my reader will not be displeased, if I give him a short 
 and easy paraphrase of this excellent composure. 
 
 Mlien the Ark was taken up on the shoulders of the Levites. 
 Ver. 1. Arise, O God of Israel, and in thy just displeasure 
 execute thy vengeance upon the enemies of thy people, and 
 let all who hate them be put to flight, and never prevail 
 against them. 
 
 2. Drive them before thee, and scatter them, as smoke 
 is dispersed by the violence of the wind, and let all their 
 power and strength die away and dissolve, as wax melts 
 away before the fire. 
 
 3. But let thy righteous people be glad, exult in the pres- 
 ence and under the protection of thee their God, and in the 
 triumph of their joy cry out : 
 
 4. " Sing psalms of thanksgiyings to God. Celebrate his 
 name and glory with songs of Praise. Prepare ye his way, 
 and let all opposition cease before him, who rode through 
 the deserts, and guided his people with the cloud by day, 
 and the flame of fire by night. His name is Jah, the tre- 
 mendous being. And O exult with joy before him. 
 
 5. " He is the orphan's father, who will protect and pro- 
 vide for him. He is the judge and avenger of the widow, 
 will vindicate her cause, and redress her injuries, even that 
 God, who is present with us in his holy sanctuary. 
 
 G. " He it IS who increases the solitary and desolate into 
 numerous families, and restores to liberty, and blesses with 
 an abundance, those who are bound in chains, but makes 
 those who are his refractory implacable enemies, dwell as 
 in a dry and desert land, by destroying their families and 
 fortunes, and utterly blasting their prosperity." 
 When the Procession began. 
 
 7. How favourably didst thou appear, O God, for thy 
 f)eople in ancient times ! How powerful was that protec- 
 tion, which thou didst graciously afford them ! when thou 
 didst march before them at their coming out of Egypt, and 
 guidedst them through the wilderness ! 
 
 8. The earth shook, the very heavens dissolved at thy 
 presence, even Sinai itself seemed to melt, the smoke of it 
 ascending as the smoke of a furnace, when thou the God of 
 Israel didst in thine awful majesty descend upon it, 
 
 9. Thou, O God, didst rain down, in the most liberal 
 manner, during their passage through the desert, bread 
 and flesh as from heaven, and didst thereby refresh, satisfy, 
 and confirm thine inheritance, fatigued with their marches, 
 £«nd in the utmost distress tor want of food. 
 
 10. Such was the abundance provided for them, that they 
 dwelt in the midst of the manna and quails, in heaps sur- 
 rounding them on everv side. Thy poor and distressed 
 people were thus liberally supplied by thy wonderful and 
 never-failing goodness. 
 
 11. And not only were they thus miraculously fed by thy 
 benevolent hand, but made to triumph over all their ene- 
 mies, who molested and opposed them. For thou gavest 
 forth the order to attack. Thou didst assure them of 
 success, leddest them forth against their adversaries, 
 and their victories were celebrated by large numbers of 
 matrons and virgins, who shouted aloud, and sang these 
 joyful tidings : 
 
 19. " The kings of armies fled away. They fled away 
 utterly discomfited, and they who abode with their families 
 in their tents, received their shares in the spoils of their 
 conquered enemies. 
 
 13. " Though when you were slaves to the Egyptians, 
 
 employed in the servile drudger}-- of attending their pots 
 ana bricks, you appeared in the most sordid and reproach- 
 ful habits, and took up your dwellings in the most Avretched 
 and miserable huts; yet now you are enriched with the 
 gold and silver. of your conquered enemies, possessed of 
 their tents, and arraved with garments shining and beauti- 
 ful, you resemble the dove's feathers, in which the gold 
 and silver colours mixed with each other, give a very 
 pleasing and lovely appearance." 
 
 14. When the Lord thus scattered and overcame kings 
 for the sake of his inheritance, how were thy people re- 
 freshed ! How great was the joy thou gavest them in 
 Salmon, where they obtained, beheld, and celebrated the 
 victory ! 
 
 When the Procession came in view of Mount Sion. 
 
 15. Is Bashan, that high hill Bashan, with its rough and 
 craggy eminences, is this the hill of God, which he hath 
 chosen for his residence, and where his sanctuary shall 
 abide hereafter for ever 1 
 
 16. Why look ye, O ye craggy hills, with an envious 
 impatience 1 See, there is the hill, which God hath cho- 
 sen and desired to dwell in. Assuredly the Lord will 
 inherit it for ever. 
 
 17. The angels and chariots of God, who attend this 
 solemnity, and encompass the ark of his presence, are not 
 only, as at the giving of his law, ten thousand, but twice 
 ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. God is in the 
 midst of them, as formerly on thee, O Sinai, and will 
 constantly reside in his sanctuary on mount Sion, and 
 as the guardian of it, by his almighty power continue to 
 defend it. 
 
 When the Ark ascended Sion, and was deposited in David^s 
 Taberna,cle. 
 
 18. Thus hast thou now, O God, ascended the heights of 
 Sion's hill, and taken possession of it, as thy future favour- 
 ite dwelling, after having subdued our adversaries, and 
 delivered our captive brethren from the power of their 
 enslavers. Thou hast received gifts from men, even from 
 our inveterate enemies, by enriching us with their spoil, 
 subjecting them as tributaries to my crown, and enabling 
 me by them to provide a habitation for our God, and in 
 this joyful manner to attend thine entrance into it. 
 
 19. O blessed be Jehovah. From day to day he supports 
 his people, and like a father bears them up, and protects 
 them from all destructive evils. 
 
 20. He is that God to whom we owe all our past salva- 
 tions, and from whom alone we can expect all we may 
 hereafter need. For under his direction are all the outgo- 
 ings of death, so that he is able to preserve his people from 
 the approaches of it, when their inveterate enemies medi- 
 tate and resolve their destruction. 
 
 21. But vain and impotent shall be their power and 
 malice. God will avenge himself on their devoted heads, 
 and their strength and craft shall not be able to protect 
 them from his indignation, if they continue wickedly to 
 disturb me in the possession of that kingdom, to which l;e 
 hath advanced me. 
 
 22. 23. For this end, he raised me to the throne, and 
 assured me that I should deliver his people from the Phi- 
 listines, and from the hand of all their enemies. Let them 
 therefore begin their hostilities when they please, God will 
 appear for me, as he did in former times for our fore- 
 fathers, and my victories over them shall be as signal anr! 
 complete, as that over Pharaoh and his army, who were 
 destroyed in the sea, through which he safely led his peo- 
 ple; or as over Og the king of Bashan, the slaughter of 
 whose army was so great, as that our victorious troops 
 were forced to trample over their slaughtered and bloodv 
 bodies, and even our very dogs licked up their blood, and 
 feasted on the carnage. 
 
 While tie sacrifices were offering, which concluded the whole 
 solemnity, they closed the anthem with the following xerses. 
 
 24. Thy people have now, O God, seen thy marches, the 
 triumphant marches of my God and king, present in his 
 holy sanctuary, into the tabernacle prepared for it, amid 
 the" loudest acclamations of the whole assembly. 
 
 25. The procession was led by a chosen band of singers, 
 the players on instruments came behind them, and in the 
 midst of them a virgin train, who accompanied their tim- 
 brels with the harmony of their voices, and sung : 
 
196 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 6. 
 
 26. " O celebrate the praises of God in this united con- 
 gregation of our tribes. Celebrate the praises of Jehovah, 
 all you who are descended from Israel, your great and 
 fruitful progenitor." 
 
 27. Even Benjamin himself was present, who, though 
 the smallest of our tribes, had so far tne pre-eminence over 
 the rest, as to give the first king and ruler to the people ; 
 even he was present, and rejoiced to see the honour done 
 to Jerusalem, and the crown established on my head. 
 Here the princes of Judah attended, with the supreme 
 council of that powerful tribe ; with the princes of Zebu- 
 Ion, and those of Naphtali; who from their distant borders 
 joined the procession; all unanimously consenting that 
 Jerusalem should become the seat of worship, and capital 
 of my Icingdom. 
 
 28. It is thy God, O Israel, who hath thus advanced 
 thee, as a nation, to thy present state of dignity and power. 
 Strengthen, O God, the foundation of our happiness, and 
 by thy favour render it perpetual. 
 
 29. As the ark of thy presence is now fixed in Jerusalem, 
 protect it by thy power, and let the kings of the earth bring 
 their gifts, present their offerings, and pay their adoration 
 at thy altar. 
 
 30. O rebuke and break the power of the Egyptian croc- 
 odile, his princes and nobles, who pay homage to their 
 bulls, and all his people, who stupidly worship their calves, 
 and dance in honour of them to the tinkling sounds of 
 instruments and bells. Trample under foot their silver- 
 plated idols, and utterly disperse the people who delight in 
 war, 
 
 31. Let the princes of Egypt come and worship at thy 
 sanctuary, and the far-distant Ethiopia accustom herself to 
 lift up her hands in adoration of thy majesty. 
 
 32. O may all the kingdoms of the earth celebrate, in 
 sacred songs, the majesty of our God. Let all sing the 
 praises of our Jehovah. 
 
 33. He is the omnipresent God, the proprietor and Lord 
 of the heaven of heavens, which he spread ottt of old. He 
 makes the clouds his chariot when he rides through the 
 heavens, and storms and tempests, thunders and lightnings, 
 the instruments of his vengeance against his enemies. 
 When he sends forth his voice in the mighty thunder, how 
 awful and astonishing that voice ! 
 
 34. Ascribe to him that almighty strength which belongs 
 to him. Though his empire is universal, his kingdom is 
 peculiarly exaked over Israel, by whom alone he is ac- 
 knowledged as the true God, and who manifests the great- 
 ness of his power in the clouds of heaven, 
 
 35. O God, the God of Israel, how terrible is thy majesty, 
 when thou comest forth from thy heavenly and earthly 
 sanctuaries, for the destruction of thine enemies, and the 
 defence of thy people. It is he who inspires them with 
 strength and courage, and renders them a mighty and 
 powerful nation. Eternal blessing and praise be ascribed 
 unto our God, 
 
 I think the division I have made of this psalm, into its 
 several parts, is natural and easy, which the subject mat- 
 ter of it points out, and which renders the whole of it a 
 regular, well-connected, and elegant composure. With- 
 out this, or some such method, it appears to me broken, 
 and its parts independent on each other ; the expressions 
 will be many of them unintelligible, and the occasion and 
 propriety of them scarcely discernible. The very learned 
 Michaelis acknowledges the difficulties attending this psalm, 
 and I suspect my own strength, when I attempt to do what 
 lie thought above his much greater abilities, I have how- 
 ever done my best, and submit the whole to the candour of 
 niy readers. 
 
 I shall now conclude by making a few observations on 
 the whole anthem. And I would first lake notice of the 
 great and glorious subject of this hymn. It is the God of 
 the Hebrews, and designed to celebrate his praises, on ac- 
 count of the perfections of his nature, and the operations of 
 his providence. And with what dignity is he described! 
 How high and worthy the character given him, in every 
 respect suitable to his infinite majesty, and the moral 
 rectitude and purity of his nature ! How grand are the 
 descriptions of him as the omnipresent God, inhabiting his 
 smictuariesbolh in heaven and earth ! as the orisrinal self-ex- 
 isting being, which his name Jehovah signifies; the tre- 
 jwendous being, worthy of all adoration and reverence, in- 
 •isded in the name of Jah! as the almighty God, encom- 
 
 passed with thousands and ten thousands of angels, and 
 innumerable chariots, that stand ready prepared in the 
 armory of heaven ! that rides through the heavens in his 
 majesty, whose voice is in the thunder, Avho makes the 
 clouds and vapours of heaven subservient to his pleasure, 
 and at whose presence the earth, the heavens dissolve, and 
 the highest hills seem to melt away like wax ! Descriptions 
 the most sublime in their nature, and that tend to strike the 
 mind with a holy reverence and awe. And as to his 
 moral character, and providential government of the world, 
 he is represented as the righteous God, the hater and punish- 
 er of incorrigible wickedness, the father of the fatherless, 
 the judge of the widow, that blesses men with numerous 
 families, that breaks the prisoner's chains, and restores him 
 to his liberty; the God and guardian of his people, the 
 great disposer of victory, and giver of national prosperity ; 
 the supreme author of every kind of salvation, and ay 
 having death under his absolute command, and directing 
 the outgoings of it by his sovereign will. This was the 
 God of the ancient Hebrews. This is the God whom Da- 
 vid worshipped, and whom all wise and good men must 
 acknowledge and adore. Nor is there one circumstance or 
 expression in this noble composure, derogatory to the 
 majesty and honour of the supreme being, or that can con- 
 vey a single sentiment to lessen our esteem and venera- 
 tion for him. Let any one compare, with this psalm of Da- 
 vid, the ancient hymns of the most celebrated poets on their 
 deities, how infinitely short will they fall of the grandeur 
 and sublimity which appear in every part of it. Strip the 
 hymn of Callimachus on Jove of the poetry and language, 
 and the sentiments of it will appear generally puerile and 
 absurd, and it could not be read without the utmost con- 
 tempt. Jove with him, that aicv ava^, asi ueyni, (^iraffrroAoj 
 
 ovpaviSrjai, that perpetual king, ever great, and lawgiver 
 to the celestial deities, as he calls him, was born, he can't 
 tell where, whether in Mount Ida, or Arcadia, washed on 
 his birth in a river of water, to cleanse him from the de- 
 filements he brought into the world with him, had his navel 
 string fall from him, sucked the dugs of a goaf, and ate 
 sweet honey, and so at last he grew up to be the supreme 
 God. No despicable ballad can contain more execrable 
 stuff than this, and some other like circumstarces that he 
 relates of him ; circumstances that render utterly incredible 
 what he says of him, as never dying, giving laws to the 
 gods, obtaining heaven by his power and strength, gov- 
 erning kings and princes, and the inspector of their 
 actions, the giver of riches and prosperity, wisdom and 
 virtue, strength and power. That a mortal-born baby 
 should grow up to become the one supreme and immortal 
 God, or an infant nursed in Crete should rise to be the 
 king of heaven, or one who gloried in his adulteries, 
 should be constituted lawgiver to the celestial deities, oi 
 he whose character was stained with the vilest impurities, 
 should be the giver of virtue; are absurdities, that one 
 would think it was impossible for any one to digest. How 
 free are the hymns of David from all such absurd, dishon- 
 ourable, and impious descriptions of God ! Every senti- 
 ment he conveys of him is excellent and grand, worthy s 
 being of infinite perfection, and the supreme Lord anc 
 governor of the universe. It would be easy to enlarge or 
 this subject. We may further take notice of the propriet) 
 of these historical incidents, that the Psalmist takes notice 
 of in this sacred composure, and how the whole of it ij 
 calculated to promote the true spirit of piety and rationa 
 devotion. The ark, that was now translating to its fixec 
 seat in Jerusalem, was the same ark that accompanied th( 
 Hebrews in the wilderness, where God was in a peculiai 
 manner present, where Moses consulted God, where h*; 
 received answers from him, and whence he received hi. 
 directions; and who gave him manifest tokens of his spe- 
 cial protection and favour, in the miraculous works he 
 performed for them. Hence David puts them in mind oi 
 God's going before them in the wilderness, of the terroi 
 of his majesty on monnt Sinai, of the manna and quail? 
 he rained down on them as from heaven, of the viciorief 
 he gave them over their enemies, and his enriching them 
 with the spoils of their conquered forces and countries ; tc 
 excite in them a relierious hope and trust, that God would 
 protect Jerusalem, which was to be the future residence oj 
 the ark of his presence, and bless the whole nation with 
 prosperity, if they continued firm in their allegiance to and 
 worship "of him. On this account the hymn is calculated 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 197 
 
 to celebrate his praises for these ancient wonders of his 
 power and goodness wrought in their favour, as well as for 
 that present state of national grandeur and prosperity to 
 which he had advanced them under David's government; 
 and, on the other hand, to excite their fear of his dis- 
 pleasure, if they went on in their trespasses, and proved a 
 corrupt and wicked people. Well might this grand assem- 
 bly be glad and rejoice before their God, sing praises to his 
 name, ascribe all power and dominion to him, whose excel- 
 lency, whose majesty and government, were peculiarly over 
 Israel on earth, and who rules in heaven, and manifests 
 his power in the clouds thereof. I would just add, that the 
 several ascriptions of glory to God, and the frequent ex- 
 hortations to bless him, with which the psalm abounds, 
 give an agreeable relief to the mind, are added with great 
 propriety, and render the whole composure more pleasing 
 and solemn. It was customary, as has been observed, 
 among the gentiles, to celebrate the supposed advent of 
 their gods, at particular times, and to particular places, 
 •with the greatest demonstrations of joy ; but David had 
 much nobler reasons for introducing the' ark into the tab- 
 ernacle he had prepared for it at Jerusalem, with all the 
 pomp and splendour, and public festivity and joy, that could 
 possibly be shown on the occasion. The whole procession 
 was in'honour of, and a national instance of homage paid 
 to the true God. By the ark's being fixed at Jerusalem, 
 that God, who honoured the ark with the tokens of his pres- 
 ence, made Jerusalem his perpetual habitation, became 
 the immediate guardian and protector of the new-built city, 
 and thereby peculiarly concerned for its prosperity and 
 peace. This is represented as the language of God himself 
 " The Lord hath chosen Sion. He hath desired it for his 
 habitation. This is my rest for ever. Here will I dwell, 
 for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provis- 
 ions. Her saints shall shout aloud for joy." — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 3. And they set the ark of God upon a new 
 cart, and brought it out of the house of Abina- 
 dab that was in Gibeah : and Uzzah and Ahio, 
 the sons of Abinadab, drave the new cart. 
 
 ! 
 
 The history of conveyance by means of vehicles, carried 
 or drawn, is a subject too extensive to be treated of fully 
 here. There can be no doubt, that after man had accus- 
 tomed cattle to submit to the control of a rider, and to sup- 
 port the incumbent weight of a person, or persons, whether 
 the animal were ox, camel, or horse, that the next step 
 was to load such a creature, properly trained, with a litter, 
 or portable conveyance ; balanced, perhaps, on each side. 
 This might be long before the mechanism of the wheel was 
 employed, as it is still practised among pastoral people. 
 Nevertheless, we find that wheel-carriages are of great an- 
 tiquity ; for we read of wagons so early as Gen. xlv. 19, 
 . and military carriages, perhaps, for chiefs and officers, first 
 of all, in Exodus xiv. 25: " The Lord took off" the chariot 
 wheels of the Egyptians :" and as these were the fighting 
 strength of Egypt, this agrees with those ancient writers, 
 who report that Egypt was not, in its early state, intersect- 
 ed by canals, as in later ages; after the formation of 
 which, wheel-carriages were laid aside, and little used, 
 if at all. The first mention of chariots, we believe, occurs 
 Genesis xli. 43 : " Pharaoh caused Joseph to ride {recab) in 
 the second chariot {marecabetK) that belonged to him." 
 This, most likely, was a chariot of state, not an ordinary 
 or travelling, but a handsome equipage, iDecoming the rep- 
 resentative of the monarch's person and power. We find, 
 as already hinted. Gen. xlv. 19, that Egypt had another 
 kind of wheel-carriage, better adapted to the conveyance 
 of burdens ; " Take out of the land of Egypt (ni^jp ogeluth) 
 wagons, wheel-carriages, for conveyance of your little ones 
 and your women :" these were family vehicles, for the use 
 of ihe feeble; including, if need be, Jacob himself : accord- 
 ingly, we read (verse 27) of the wagons which Joseph had 
 : sent to carr , him, (Jacob,) and which perhaps the aged pa- 
 triarch knew by their construction to be Egypt-built; for, 
 so soon as he sees them, he believes the reports from that 
 country, though he had doubted of them before when de- 
 ' livered to him by his sons. This kind of chariot deserves 
 attention, as we find it afterward employed on various oc- 
 casions in scripture, among which are the following: first, 
 it was intended by the princes of Israel for carrying parts 
 of the sacred utensils; Numb. vii. 3: " They brought their 
 
 offering — six covered wagons {ogeluth) and twelve oxen ;" 
 — (two oxen to each wagon.) Here these wagons are ex- 
 pressly said to be covered ; and it should appear that they 
 were so generally; beyond question those sent by Joseph 
 for the women of Jacob's family were so ; among other pur- 
 poses, for that of seclusion. Perhaps this is a radical idea 
 in their name; as gal signifies circle^ these wagons might 
 be covered by circular headings, spread on hoops, like 
 those of our own wagons ; what we call a tilt. Consider- 
 able importance attaches to this heading, or tilt, in the his- 
 tory of the curiosity of the men of Belhshemesh, 1 Sam. vi. 
 7, where we read that the Philistines advised to make a 
 new covered wagon, or cart (ogeleh;) — and the ark of the 
 Lord was put into it — and, no doubt, was carefully cover- 
 ed over — concealed — secluded by those who sent it; — it 
 came to Bethshemesh ; and the men of that town who were 
 reaping in the fields, perceiving the cart coming, went and 
 examined what it contained : " and they saw the very (hn) 
 ark, and were joyful in seeing it." Those who first exam- 
 ined it, instead of carefully covering it up again, as a sa- 
 cred utensil, suffered it to lie open to common inspection, 
 which they encouraged, in order to triumph in the votive 
 offerings ft had acquired, and to gratify profane curiosity; 
 the Lord, therefore, punished the people, (verse 19,) "be- 
 cause they had inspected— ;/ne^Z iido (2) the ark." This 
 affords a clear view of the transgression of these Israelites, 
 who had treated the ark with less reverence than the Phi- 
 listines themselves ; for those heathen conquerors had at 
 least behaved to Jehovah with no less respect than they did 
 to their own deities; and being accustomed to carry them 
 in covered wagons, for privacy, they maintained the same 
 privacy as a mark of honour to the Gfod of Israel. The Le- 
 vites seemed to have been equally culpable with the com- 
 mon people ; they ought to have conformed to the law, 
 and not to have suffered their triumph on this victorious 
 occasion to beguile them into a transgression so contrary 
 to the very first principles of the theocracy. That this 
 word ogcleh describes a covered wagon, we learn from 
 a third instance, that of Uzzah, 2 Sam. vi. 3, for we can- 
 not suppose, that David could so far forget the dignity of 
 the ark of the covenant, as to suffer it to be exposed, in a 
 public procession, to the eyes of all Israel; especially after 
 the punishment of the people of Belhshemesh. " They 
 carried the ark of God, on a new ogelch — covered cart" 
 — and Uzzah put forth [his hand, or some catching in- 
 strument] to the ark of God, and laid hold of it, to stop 
 its advancing any farther, but the oxen harnessed to the 
 car*, going on, they drcAV the cart away from the ark, and 
 the whole weight of the ark falling out of the cart unex- 
 pectedly, on Uzzah, crushed him to death — "and he died 
 on the spot, with the ark of God" upon him. And David 
 called the place "the breach of Uzzah" — that is, where 
 Uzzah was broken — crushed to death. See now the pro- 
 portionate severity of the punishments attending profs- 
 nation of the ark. 1. The Philistines suffered by diseases, 
 from which they were relieved after their oblations. 
 2. The Bethshemites also sufl^ered, but not fatally, by dis- 
 eases of a different nature, which, after a time, passed off. 
 These were inadvertences. But, 3. Uzzah, who ought to 
 have been fully instructed and correctly obedient, who con- 
 ducted the procession, who was himself a Levite — this man 
 was punished fatally for his remissness — his inattention lo 
 the law; which expressly directed that the ark should be 
 carried on the shoulders of the priests, the Kohathites, 
 Numb. iv. 4, 19,20, distinct from those things carried in 
 ogeluth — covered wagons, chap. vii. 9. That this kind of 
 wagon was used for carrving considerable weights and 
 even cumbersome goods, (and therefore was fairly analo- 
 gous to our Own wagons — tilted wagons,) we gather from 
 the expression of the Psalmist, xlvi. 9 : — 
 
 He maketh wars to cease to the end of the earth , 
 The bow he breaketh ; and cutteth asunder the spear ; 
 The chariots (ogeluth) he burneth in the fire. 
 
 The writer is mentioning the instruments of war — the 
 bow — the spear; then, he says, the wagons (plural) which 
 used to return home loaded with plunder, these share the 
 fate of th"ir companions, the bow and the spear; and are 
 burned h- .he fire, the very idea of the classical allegory, 
 peace burning the implements of war, introduced here with 
 the happiest effect: not the general's marecabelh ; but the 
 plundering wagons. This is still more expressive, if these 
 wagons carried captives ; which we know they did in other 
 
198 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 6. 
 
 tastances, women and children. "The captive-carrying 
 wagon is burnt." There can be no stronger description of 
 the effect of peace ; and it closes the period with peculiar 
 emphasis. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 6. And when they came to Nachon's thrash- 
 ing-floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark 
 of God, and took hold of it ; for the oxen shook 
 it. 7. And the anger of the Lord was kindled 
 against Uzzah, and God smote him there for 
 his error ; and there he died by the ark of God. 
 
 Happy were it for us, if we could account for the opera- 
 tions of God, with the same facility that we can for the 
 aciions of his saints ; but his counsels are a great deep, and 
 hi.- judgments (just though they be) are sometimes obscure, 
 and past finding out. For what shall we say to the fate of 
 Uzzah 1 or what tolerable cause can we assign for his sud- 
 den and untimely end'? It was now near seventy years since 
 „.i . Israelites had carried the ark from place toplace, and 
 i>^ long a disuse had made them forget the manner of doing 
 ir. In conformity to what they had heard of the Philis- 
 tines, they put it into a new cart, or wagon, but this was 
 against the express direction of the law, which ordered it 
 to be borne upon men's shoulders. It is commonly sup- 
 posed that Uzzah was a Levite, though there is no proof of 
 It from scripture ; but supposing he was, he had no right to 
 attend upon the ark ; that province, by the same law, was 
 restramed to those Levites only who were of the house of 
 Kohath : nay, put the case he had been a Kohathite by 
 birth, yet he had violated another command, which prohib- 
 ited even these Levites, (though they carried it by staves 
 upon their shoulders,) upon pain of death, to touch it with 
 .heir hands : so that here was a threefold transgression 
 .of the divine will in this method of proceeding. The ark, 
 fas some say,) by Uzzah's direction, was placed in a cart ; 
 Uzzah, without any proper designation, adventures to at- 
 tend it ; when he thought it in danger of falling, offi- 
 ciously he put forth his hand, and laid hold on it, (all vio- 
 lating of th ' divine commands !) and this (as is supposed) 
 not so much oui of reverence to the sacred symbol of God's 
 presence, as out of diffidence of his providence, as unable 
 to preserve it from overturning. The truth is, this ark 
 had so long continued in obscurity, that the people, in a 
 manner, had almost lost all sense of a divine power residing 
 m it, and therefore approached it with irreverence. This 
 is implied in David's exhortation to Zadock and Abiathar, 
 after this misfortune upon Uzzah. " Ye are the chief of 
 tlie fathers of the Levites, sanctify yourselves therefore, 
 both ye and your brethren, that you may bring up the ark 
 of the Lord God of Israel, unto the place that I have pre- 
 ] "ed for it ; for, because ye did it not at the firsts the Lord 
 our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not 
 after the due order." What wonder then, if God, being 
 minded to testify his immediate presence with the ark, to 
 retrieve the ancient honour of that sacred vessel, and to 
 curb all licentious profanations of it for the future, should 
 single out one that was the most culpable of many, one 
 who, in three instances, was then violating his commands, 
 to be a monument of his displeasure against either a wilful 
 ignorance or a rude contempt of his precepts, be they ever 
 so seemingly small ; that by such an example of terr' ^ he 
 might inspire both priests and people with a sacred dread 
 of his majesty, and a profound veneration for his mysteries. 
 — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 13. And it was so, that when they that bare 
 the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he 
 sacrificed oxen and fatlings. 
 
 From these words, some would infer, that David, having 
 measured the ground between Obed-edom's house, and the 
 place he had built for the reception of the ark, had altars 
 raised, at the distance of every six paces, whereon he caused 
 sacriQces to be offered as the ark passed by. But it is easy 
 to imagine what a world of confusion this would create in 
 the procession, and therefore the more rational construction 
 i<, that after those who carried the ark had advanced six 
 paces, without any such token of divine wrath as Uzzah 
 had undergone, then did they offer a sacrifice to God, which 
 might consist of several living creatures, all sacrificed and 
 
 offered up at once. But even supposing that, at set distan- 
 ces, there were sacrifices all along the way that they went ; 
 yet we are to know that it was no unusual thing for hea- 
 thens to confer on their gods, nay, even upon their empe- 
 rors, the same honours that we find David here bestowing 
 upon the ark of the God of Israel. For in this manner 
 (as Suetonius tells us) was Otho received— Cum per omne 
 iter, dextra finistraque, oppidatim victimse csderentur : and 
 the like he relates of Caligula — Ut a miseno movit, inter 
 altaria, et victimas, ardentesque ta^das, dencissimo ac 
 laetissimo obviorum agmine incessit.-^STACKHousE. 
 
 Ver. 14. And David danced before the Lord 
 with all his might ; and David ivas girded with 
 a linen ephod. 
 
 In the oriental dances, in which the women engage by 
 themselves, the lady of highest rank in the company takes 
 the lead; and is followed by her companions, who imitate 
 her steps, and if she sings, make up the chorus. The tunes 
 are extremely gay and lively, yet with something in them 
 wonderfully soft. The steps are varied according to the 
 pleasure of her who leads the dance, but always in exact 
 time. This statement may enable us to form a correct idea 
 of the dance, which the women of Israel performed under 
 the direction of Miriam, on the banks of the Red Sea. The 
 prophetess, we are told, " took a timbrel in her hand, and 
 all the women went out after her, with timbrels and dan- 
 ces." She led the dance, while they imitated her steps, 
 which were not conducted according to a set, well-known 
 form, as in this country, but extemporaneous. The conjec- 
 ture of Mr. Harmer is extremely probable, that David did 
 not dance alone before the Lord, when he brought up the 
 ark, but as being the highest in rank, and more skilful than 
 any of the people, he led the religious dance of the males. 
 — JPaxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And as the ark of the Lord came into 
 the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter, look- 
 ed through a window, and saw King David 
 leaping and dancing before the Lord ; and she 
 despised him in her heart. 17. And they 
 brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in 
 his place, in the midst of the tabernacle that 
 David had pitched for it : and David offered 
 burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before the 
 Lord. 18. And as soon as David had made 
 an end of offering burnt-offerings and peace- 
 offerings, he blessed the people in the name of 
 the Lord of hosts. 19. And he dealt among 
 all the people, eve7i among the whole multitude* 
 of Israel, as well to the women as men, to every 
 one a cake of bread, and a good piece of flesh, 
 and a flagon of wine. So all the people de- 
 parted every one to his house. 20. Then Da- 
 vid returned to bless his household. And Mi- 
 chal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet 
 David, and said, How glorious was the king of 
 Israel to-day, who uncovered himself to-day in 
 the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as 
 one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth 
 himself! 
 
 When this public transaction of removing the ark was 
 happily concluded, the pious prince retired to his palace, 
 to bless his own family and household, and share with them 
 the public joy. But an unexpected accident interrupted the 
 plea.sure he promised himself, and could not but greatly 
 affect him, as it arose from one, from whom he had no 
 reason to expect the contemptuous treatment that she gave 
 him. As the ark of the Lord was just entered into the city 
 of David, or mount Sion, Michal, Saul's daughter, looked 
 through a window of the palace to behold the procession, 
 saw David dancing with great spirit and earnestness, and 
 viewed him with contempt; or, as the text says, she de- 
 spised him in her heart ; and when, after the solemnity. 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 199 
 
 David was returned to his habitation, she came out to meet 
 him, and, with indignation and a sneer, said to him, " How 
 glorious was the king of Israel to-day, who openly showed 
 himself to-day to the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, 
 as one of the vain persons openly shows himself I" David's 
 answer to her was severe, but just. " Have I descended be- 
 neath the dignity of my character, as king of Israel, by 
 diviesting myself of my royal robes, appearing publicly 
 among my people, and, like them, dancing and playing be- 
 fore the ark 1 It was before the Lord, who chose me be- 
 lore thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me 
 ruler over the people of the Lord. Therefore will I play 
 on my iiarp before the Lord; and if this be to make myself 
 cheap and contemptible, I will be more so than this ; and 
 how high soever be my condition as king, 1 will always 
 be humble in the judgment I form of myself; and as for 
 those maid-servants of whom thou speakest, I shall be 
 honoured among them ; the very meanest of the people 
 wiil respect me the more for my popularity, when they see 
 me condescend to share in their sacred mirth, and express 
 it in the same manner, by which they testify their own joy 
 in the public solemnities." In this he acted as a wise and 
 politic, as well as a religious prince; for in ancient times 
 dancing itself was in use, as a religious ceremony, and in 
 testimony of gratitude and joy, in public solemnities. Thus 
 Miriam, the prophetess, took a timbrel in her hand, and all 
 the womf-n vi^ent out after her with timbrels and with 
 dances, to celebrate their deliverance from Pharaoh, his de- 
 struction in the Red Sea, and their own safe passage through 
 the waters of it. So also Jephthah's daughter met her father 
 with timbrels and dances, to congratulate his victory over 
 the Ammonites, and God's having taken vengeance for 
 him of those enemies. Thus at the yearly feast of the 
 Lord at Shiloh, the virgins of the place came out to dance 
 in dances. It was used also frequently among the gentiles, 
 by the greatest personages in honour of the gods, and re- 
 commended by the greatest philosophers, as a thing highly 
 decent and becoming in itself. 
 
 But though David acted from a truly religious zeal, yet 
 De had been very severely censured for his habit and be- 
 haviour on this occasion ; being dressed, as it hath been 
 represented, in a linen ephod, and " dancing before the 
 Lord, in such a frantic indecent manner, that he exposed 
 his nakedness to the bystanders." Mr. Bayle in the first 
 part of his remarks, expresses himself in a more cautious 
 and temperate manner, and (|pth not pass his judgment, 
 whether David discovered his nakedness or not ; but says, 
 that "if he did discover it, his action might.be deemed 
 ill, morally speaking ; but if he did no more than make 
 himself contemptible by his postures, and by not keeping 
 up the majesty of his character, it was but ari imprudence 
 at most, and not a crime." He adds, that " it ought to be 
 considered, on what occasion it was that he danced. It 
 was when the ark was carried to Jerusalem, and conse- 
 quently the excess of his joy and of his leaping, testified his 
 attachment and sensibility for sacred things." I shall just 
 remark here, that if David did really discover his naked- 
 ness on this occasion, yet if it was merely accidental, and 
 without any design, it could not be deemed ill, morally 
 speaking, by any good judge of morality. I apprehend 
 also that Mr. Bayle doth not know enough of David's man- 
 ner of dancing, and the postures he made use of, to be sure 
 that he rendered himself deservedly ridiculous by the use 
 of them ; because persons may dance in a very brisk and 
 lively manner, without any postures that shall deserve 
 contempt, and because there is no word in the original, that 
 is made use of to express David's behaviour in this pro- 
 cession, that either implies, or will justify such a supposi- 
 tion. 
 
 The case which Mr. Bayle mentions from Ferrand of 
 St. Francis of Assisi, is so perfectly different from that of 
 David, as that it should not have been related by him in 
 the article of David, at least without some mark of disap- 
 probation. St. Francis voluntarily stripped himself stark 
 naked, in the presence of many persons, met together to be 
 witness to his absolute renunciation of his paternal inher- 
 i'ance. This was the downright madness of enthusiasm. 
 David, on the contrary, divested himself only of his royal 
 dress, and put on such a habit, as effectually preserved 
 him from everv thing of indecency and absurdity in his 
 appearance. For he was clothed in a double garment; a 
 lobe of fine linen, with a linen ephod. These two gar- 
 
 ments are expressly distinguished in the account of the vest- 
 ments tf the high-priesis : "Thou shaU take garments and 
 put upon Aaron, (and as we well render it,) ihe ephod, and 
 the robe of the ephod." And again : " Thet-e are the gar- 
 ments, which they shall make, the breastplate, and the 
 ephod, and the robe." The fabric of them was different ; 
 the ephod being made of gold, blue, purpk, and scarlet; 
 but the robe formed all of blue. The shape of them was 
 also different ; the ephod teaching only to the knees, but 
 the robe flowing down so as to cover the feet; called there- 
 fore by the LXX. vo^r)(m^ and the Vulgate version, stola. 
 The robe also had no division in it throughout, but was 
 made whole and round, with an opening in the middle of 
 it, on the top, so that it was impossible that any part of the 
 body could be seen through it ; or that David, in dancing, 
 could expose to view, what decency required him to con- 
 ceal ; especially as the ephod was, on this occasion, thrown 
 over it, and certainly tied with a girdle, as the priest's 
 ephod always was. With these linen garments David 
 clothed himself on this solemnity, both out of reverence 
 for God, and for conveniency ; because they were cooler, 
 and less cumbersome than his royal habit, and would not 
 occasion that large perspiration, which the exercise of 
 dancing would otherwise have produced. And however 
 improper such a long flowing robe, girt round with a girdle, 
 may be thought for a man dancing with all his might, yet 
 it is certain that David did dance in such a one, and there 
 is no reason to think it could be anywise inconvenient to 
 him. For, though the robe was close, i. e. had no opening 
 from the breast to the feet, and was girt round with the 
 ephod, yet it was large and wide, and flowing at the lower 
 end ; and hanging down in various folds, gave room suffi- 
 cient for the full exercise of the feet in dancing. And of 
 this every one will have full conviction, who frequents 
 any of our polite assemblies, in which he will see many fair 
 ones dance, like the king of Israel, with all their might, 
 without any great inconvenience from the flowing habits, 
 which so greatly adorn them. 
 
 It may be further observed, that this robe was worn by 
 kings, their children, priests, Levites, and prophets, when 
 they appeared on very solemn occasions, which also cov- 
 ered over their other garments. Thus Samuel is repre- 
 sented as covered with a robe or mantle, as we render it. 
 All the Leviies, that bare the ark, and the singers, aid 
 Chenaniah, the master of the carriage, or of those wno 
 carried the ark, appeared in it on this very occasion. Kings' 
 daughters were clothed in the same habit. The princes 
 of the sea wore them. And even God himself is repre- 
 sented, clad with zeal, as with a robe. As David therefore 
 dressed himself on this occasion, with a long flowing linen 
 robe, instead of the robe of stale, proper to him as king of 
 Israel, which was made of different, and much richer ma- 
 terials ; he was scornfully insulted by Saul's daughter, not 
 for exposing his nakedness to the spectators, which he no 
 more did, nor could do, than all the rest of the attendants, 
 who wore the same habit, but for uncovering himself in 
 the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, i. e. appearing 
 openly before the meanest of the people, in a dress, wholly 
 unworthy, as she thought, the character and majesty of the 
 king of Israel. Nor was this all ; for it appears, by part of 
 David's answer to Michal, that she was particularly offend- 
 ed with his playing publicly on the harp; and, probably, 
 she mimicked and ridiculed him, by the attitude in v/hich 
 she put herself on this occasion. For, in answer to her 
 reproach, David says to her, " It was before the. Lord that I 
 uncovered myself .... therefore I will play before the 
 Lord," i. e. look on it with what contempt you please, yet as 
 I openly played on my harp in the presence, and in honour 
 of God, I glory in it, and will continue to do it, when any 
 fair opportunity presents itself. His particularly mention- 
 ing joto?/mif 6e/(9r^ the Lord, plainly shows, that there was 
 somewhat, in the nature and "manner of her reproach, that 
 gave occasion to it. 
 
 Besides, it should be remarked, that the eastern princes, 
 out of affectation, and to strike the people with greater rev- 
 erence, seldom appeared in public, and whenever they 
 did, not without great pomp and solemnity ; as is the cus- 
 tom among them to this day. Michal therefore unquestion- 
 ably thought, that David made himself too cheap, by thus 
 discovering himself to public view, without anv royal pomp, 
 or marks of distinction, and familiarly mixing himself 
 with the attendants on this solemnity, as though he had 
 
200 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 7. 
 
 been one of them, and not the king of Israel. And the 
 meaning of Michal's words in this view will be : JJow glo- 
 rious was the king of Israel to-day, who uncovered, i. e. 
 stripped himself of his majesty, and all the ensigns of his royal 
 dignity, and openly exposed himself to the most public view 
 of the meanest of the people, as a vain thoughtless person, 
 who, without a proper habit, or regard to character, expo- 
 ses himself to public ridicule and scorn ! 
 
 Mr. Bayle seems to be pretty much of Michal's opinion, 
 when he says, " It would be thought very strange, in any 
 part of Europe, if, on a day of procession of the holy sac- 
 rament, the kings should dance in the streets with nothing 
 but a small girdle on their bodies." It may be so, but the 
 observation is nothing to the purpose, because David did 
 not dance in the streets in this manner, as he insinuates. 
 Besides, Mr. Bayle could not but know, that customs vary, 
 and that the same customs may be thought very venerable 
 and ridiculous, in different nations, and at different times. 
 However solemn and sacred the procession of the sacra- 
 ment might have seemed here, two or three centuries ago, 
 and may at this day appear in popish countries, it would 
 now seem a most contemptible and absurd farce in this na- 
 tion. We should look with indignation and scorn, to see 
 a crowned head holding the stirrup or bridle of a triple- 
 mitred monk's horse, or humbly bending to kiss his toe ; or 
 emperors and princes carrying wax candles in their hands, 
 in company of a set of shorn baldpated priests, or devoutly 
 praying befoi;e a dead log of wood, or going in pilgrimage 
 to consecrated statues, and kiss thresholds, and venerate 
 the relics of dead bodies; and yet, despicable as these 
 practices are in themselves, they have been used, and some 
 of them continue in other nations to be used to this day ; 
 and have been, and are now, so far from being thought 
 strange or ridiculous, as that they were, and are still es- 
 teemed very high and laudable instances of piety and de- 
 votion. 
 
 If we examine the words themselves, by which Michal 
 reproached David, they can never be fairly so interpreted, 
 as to mean that indecency, which some writers would be 
 glad to find in them ; and as to David's answer, it is utterly 
 inconsistent with such a meaning. David said to Michal, 
 " It was before the Lord." What was before the Lord 1 
 What, his discovering his nakedness 1 The very consid- 
 eration of his being before the Lord would have prevented 
 it, as he knew that such an indecency, in the solemnities of 
 divine worship, was highly offensive to God, and prohibit- 
 ed under penalty of death. Again he says, " Therefore 
 will I play before the Lord," i. e. play upon my harp; 
 which must refer to her reproaching him, as appearing like 
 a common harper ; for it would be no answer to her, had 
 she reproached him for that scandalous appearance, which 
 some would make him guilty of. Further he adds : "And 
 I will be more vile than this, and will be base in my own 
 sight." I will not scruple to submit to lower services than 
 this, in honour of God ; and notwithstanding my regal dig- 
 nity, will not think myself above any humiliations, how 
 great soever they may be, that may testify my gratitude and 
 submission to him ; — expressions these which evidently 
 show, that what she called David's uncovering himself, 
 was what he had designedly done, and not an accidental 
 involuntary thing, without design, and contrary to his in- 
 tention. And had he designedly exposed his nakedness, 
 or even without design, how could he have made himself 
 more vile, or rendered himself more worthy of censure and 
 reproach 1 Upon the whole, that David danced so, as to 
 discover What he ought to have concealed, is an invidious 
 surmise, that no man of learning or candour will affirm, 
 and which has nothing in the grammatical sense of the ex- 
 pressions made use of to support it, and is in its nature im- 
 possible, from the make and form of the garments he was 
 clothed with, 
 
 I shall only add, that when the scripture says, " There- 
 fore INIichal, Saul's daughter, had no child to the day of her 
 death," it doth not seem to be remarked, as though it was 
 a punishment on her for this contempt of David, unless he 
 voluntarily lefc her bed, for so heinous and undeserved an 
 insult; but as a reproach on herself for her barrenness, she 
 having never had any children by David ; barrenness being 
 accounted as reproachful and dishonourable a circum- 
 stance, as could befall a married woman. So that she had 
 little reason to reproach her husband, when she was liable 
 lo a much greater reproach herself.— Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 19. And he dealt among all the people, even 
 among the whole multitude of Israel, as well 
 to the women as men, to every one a cake of 
 bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon 
 of wine. So all the people departed every one 
 to his house. 
 
 The entertainer at a feast, occasionally dismissed his 
 guests with costly presents. Lysimachus of Babylon hav- 
 ing entertained Hemerus the tyrant of the Babylonians and 
 Seleucians, with three hundred other guests, gave every man 
 a silver cup, of four pounds weight. When Alexander 
 made his marriage feast at Susa in Persia, he paid the 
 debts of all his soldiers out of his own exchequer, and pre- - 
 sented every one of his guests, who were not fewer than 
 nine thousand, with golden cups. The master of the house 
 among the Romans, used also to give the guests certain 
 presents at their departure, or to send them after they were 
 gone, to their respective habitations. It is probable that 
 this custom, like many others which prevailed in Greece 
 and Rome, was derived from the nations of Asia ; for the 
 sacred writers allide repeatedly to a similar custom, which 
 closed the religious festivals or public entertainments 
 among the chosen people of God, When David brought 
 up the ark from the house of Obed-edom, into the place 
 which he had prepared for it, he offered burnt-offerings 
 and peace-offerings before the Lord. And as soon as the 
 solemnity was finished, " he dealt among all the people, 
 even among the whole multitude of Israel, as well to the 
 women as men, to every one a cake of bread, and a flag- 
 on of wine." — Paxton. 
 
 Dr. Chandler and his associates, received presents from 
 the Greeks of Athens, consisting of perfumed flowers, 
 pomegranates, oranges, and lemons, pastry, and other arti- 
 cles. The presents made by David were no doubt very 
 different. Leavened and unleavened bread, the flesh whicifi 
 remained from the peace-offerings, and some of the wine 
 then presented. (Josephus.) The rabbins suppose that 
 the word we translate, a good piece of flesh, signifies th-j 
 sixth part of an animal. Without, hoM'ever, admitting the 
 propriety of this assertion, it may lead to the true explana- 
 tion of 'the word. Maillet affirms, that a sheep, with a 
 proper quantity of rice, which answers the purpose of bread 
 very frequently in the East, will furnish a good repast for 
 sixty people. If now the ^leople of the JeAvish army were 
 divided into tens, as it seems they were, who might mess 
 together, and lodge under one and the same teni, as it is 
 highly probable, from every tenth man's being appointed to 
 fetch or prepare provision for their fellow-soldiers, accord- 
 ing to what we read, Judges xx. 10, then the sixth part of 
 a sheep would be sufficient for the men at one repast, and 
 be sufficient for one mess or tent of soldiers ; and from this 
 particular case it may come to signify, in general, a suffi- 
 cient portion for each person, which, indeed, seems to be 
 the meaning of our translators, when they render the word 
 a good piece of flesh — enough for an ample repast. The 
 other part of this royal and sacred donation was a flagon 
 of wine, perhaps a gourd full of wine is meant. The shells 
 of gourds are used to this day in the eastern parts of the 
 world for holding quantities of wine for present spending, 
 and particularly in sacred festivals. So when Dr. Richard 
 Chandler was about leaving Athens, he tells us, he supped 
 at the customhouse, where "the archon provided a gourd 
 of choice wine, and one of the crew excelled en the lyre." 
 And describing a panegyris, or general sacred assembly of 
 the Greeks in the Lesser Asia, he informs us, " that the 
 church was only stones piled up for walls, without a roo'", 
 and stuck on this solemnity with wax-candles lighted, acil 
 small tapers, and that after fulfilling their religious duties, 
 it is the custom of the Greeks lo indulge in festivity; at 
 which time he found the multitude sitting under half-tents, 
 with a store of melons and grapes, besides lambs and sheep 
 to be killed, wine in gourds and skins, and other necessary 
 provision." What the size of the gourds that ancientl> 
 grew in that country was, or what that of those that are 
 now found there, may not be quite certain. But a gourd 
 full of wine, for each person, was abundantly sufficient for 
 a joy that required attention to temperance.-^HAHMER. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 18. Then went King David in, and sat bo- 
 
Chap. 8. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 201 
 
 fore the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O Lord 
 God 1 and what is my house, that thou hast 
 brought me hitherto? 
 
 Pococke has given the figure of a person half sitting and 
 half kneeling, that is, kneeling so as to rest the most mus- 
 cular part of his body on his heels. This, he observes, is 
 the manner in which inferior persons sit at this day before 
 great men, and is considered as a very humble posture. 
 In this manner, probably, David sat before the Lord, when 
 he went into the sanctuary, to bless him lor his promise 
 respecting his family. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 2 And he smote Moab, and measured them 
 with a line, casting them down to the ground ; 
 even with two lines measured he to put to 
 death, and Avith one full line to keep alive: and 
 so the Moabites became David's servants, and 
 brought gifts. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 12.31. 
 
 David had scarce ended his wars with the Philistines, 
 but he was engaged in another with the Moabites, of which 
 the scripture history gives, as I understand it, the following 
 account. " He also smote Moab, and he measured them by 
 a line," i. e. in one tract of the coiintry,to throw them down 
 level with the ground. Then he measured out two tracts, 
 one to put to death, and one full tract to preserve alive; and 
 Moab became David's servants, bringing him gifts. When 
 he had beat the Moabites, he ordered a general survey to 
 be made of the whole country ; in one part or tract of 
 which he levelled Moab with the ground, i. e. razed so 
 many of their towns and fortresses, as he thought neces- 
 sary to secure his conquest. He then proceeded to ani- 
 madvert on the inhabitants, measuring out two tracts, or 
 parts of the country, one line or tract for death, and the 
 lUiness 01 a ane, a very large tract of the courtry, to keep 
 alive, i. e. to cut off the inhabitants of the one, those who 
 had been most active in the war against him, and to pre- 
 serve the far larger part of them alive ; and thus made the 
 whole nation tributary to his crown. Who was the ag- 
 gressor in these two last actions, the scripture history doth 
 not determine. Some authors s^em inclined to give David 
 the credit of it, though without any shadow of proof I 
 apprehend the contrary may be collected from what the 
 Psalmist says: "That Edom, Moab, Ammon, Amalek, the 
 Syrians under Hadadezer, and other nations, had consult- 
 ed together with one consent to cut off Israel from being a 
 nation; and that the name of Israel might be no more in 
 remembrance. This seems plainly to refer to the history 
 of the wars with these very nations, related in Samuel. 
 Against such a cruel confederac/ as this, David had a right 
 to defend himself, and to take such a vengeance on his 
 enemies, as was necessary to his own and his people's fu- 
 ture safety. If this powerful league, to extirpate the Is- 
 raelites, was a justifiable compact, because Israel was a 
 common enemy, who ravaged ad libitum, not from the 
 common misunderstanding of states, but from an insatiable 
 appetite for blood and murder, as some writers choose to 
 represent them ; it will certainly follow, that there may be 
 occasions that will justify this severe execution, in the 
 utter excision of nations ; and that if the Moabites, Amal- 
 ekites, Philistines, and other nations, were common ene- 
 mies to the Hebrews, and ravaged them, ad libitum, from 
 an insatiable appetite for blood and murder, David had a 
 right to extirpate them, whenever he could, without de- 
 serving the charge of barbarity, and a blood-thirsty spirit. 
 This was certainly the character of many of the enemies 
 of the Hebrew nation, but can never be applicable to the 
 Hebrews themselves. It is allowed, that they were to 
 maintain a perpetual hostility with, and extirpate, if they 
 could, the seven nations, because God had proscribed 
 them, and their own prosperity, and almost being, d*epend- 
 ed on it. But as to the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammon- 
 ites, they were expressly forbid to meddle with them, and 
 invade any of their territories, by beginning hostilities 
 against them. And from the whole history of the Hebrew 
 nation, from their first settJement in Canaan, to .heir de- 
 striiction bv Nebuchadnezzar, there is scarce one instance 
 
 to be produced, of their invading the neighbouring nations, 
 without being first attacked by them, or of their plundering 
 them any further than as their victories over them, gained 
 in their own defence, gave them a right to it, by the com- 
 mon usages and laws of war. During the period preceding 
 the regal government, we read of nothing almost but their 
 grievous oppressions by the Moabites, Ammonites, Amal- 
 ekites, Midianites, Philistines, and other neighbouring 
 nations, who forced them into dens, mountains, and strong- 
 holds, deprived them of all manner of arms for their 
 defence, and destroyed the increase of their lands, so that 
 there was no sustenance for Israel, neither sh^ep, nor ox, 
 nor ass. But we have not a single intimation of the 
 Hebrews invading, plundering, and destroying them. And 
 indeed it was not possible that as a nation they could, 
 during this long period, make any considerable invasions 
 upon the neighbouring states. For they had no kings, no 
 settled government, no generals and captains to lead them, 
 nor standing armies to protect ihem ; God, in a very ex- 
 traordinary manner, and at particular seasons, being 
 pleased to raise them up proper persons, to give them some 
 temporary relief from those who enslaved and despoiled 
 them; which made them at last resolve to have a king, 
 who might be always ready to protect and defend them. 
 They were in themselves an easy quiet people, never 
 inured to war, employed in husbandry, and raising of 
 cattle; and so far from being a common enemy to all the 
 nations round them, as that they took every method to cul- 
 tivate their friendship, taking their daughters to be their 
 wives, and giving their daughters to their sons, forsaking 
 their own God, and following after the gods of eA^ery 
 neighbouring nation. And yet they were almost perpetu- 
 ally under oppression, and their too great fondness to be 
 on good terms with their oppressors, was the very reason 
 why God sold them into their enemies' hands, and suffered 
 them so often to groan, by turns, under the yoke of every 
 petty state, that had a mind to enslave them. And as for 
 David, he had hitherto been engaged in no wars against 
 any of his neighbours, except two defensive ones against 
 the Philistines; who, upon his first accession to the throne 
 of Israel, invaded his dominions, with an intention to de-^ 
 prive him of his kingdom, or render him and his people 
 wholly dependant on their power. If therefore the Moab- 
 ites joined in the confederacy with the Ammonites, Edom- 
 ites, Philistines, and others, to extirpate the Hebrew nation, 
 David treated themwith comparative lenity and moderation, 
 if he cut off even two thirds of them, whom he found inarms 
 against him ; and especially, if he put to the sword but one 
 half of them, who intended his utter destruction, and the 
 entire extirpation of his people. And as this is certain, that 
 the Amalekites, Philistines, Moabites, and other nations, 
 were perpetual and inveterate enemies to the Hebrews, 
 and invaded them whenever they were able, the Hebrews 
 had a right to make reprisals, to attack them on every 
 occasion that offered, and to treat them with that severity, 
 that was necessary to their own peace and safety for the 
 future. I may add, what Bishop Patrick and others ob- 
 serve, that the Jewish writers affirm, that David exercised 
 this severity on the Moabites, because they had slain his 
 parents and brethren, whom he committed to the custody 
 of the king of Moab, during his exile. But I lay no great 
 stress on this tradition, as it is wholly unsupported by the 
 scripture history ; and because David's treatment of them 
 is sufl5ciently justified by the ancient law of nations ; as to 
 which my reader will be abundantly satisfied by consulting 
 Grotius. — Chandler. 
 
 The war laws of the Israelites are detailed by Moses in 
 the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy. I shaU at present 
 only take notice of those particulars that relate to the 
 course they were to pursue towards foreign nations, and 
 postpone those that regard levies, the division of phmder, 
 &c. until I come to treat of private law. Of a declaration 
 of war, before proceeding to hostilities, Moses says nothing; 
 and, therefore, seems not to have deemed it so indispensably 
 necessary as the Romans did. The disputes concerning 
 its necessity are so well known, that I shall not trouble 
 my readers w^ith anv remarks upon them. At present, we 
 do not consider this solemnity as at all essential to the 
 lawfulness of a w^ar, but commence hostilities without any 
 previous announcerhent of our intention, whenever we 
 conceive that the injuries offered us require them. Moses 
 appears (Numb, xxxi.) to have done the same; and to have 
 
202 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 8. 
 
 auacked the iVidianites, without giving them tine to arm ; 
 and hence ( v^er. 49) he did not lose a single man, which 
 would otherwise have been incomprehensible. The word 
 K2:«, so o 'ten repeated in that chapter, and probably wrong 
 pointed by the Jews, signifies in Arabic, an inroad, or 
 attack by surprise. On the other hand, it was the injunc- 
 tion of Moses, that a hostile city should be summoned 
 before an attack, and if it surrendered without fighting, 
 that its inhabitants should have their lives granted, upon 
 the condition of becoming tributaries. If, however, a city 
 should make resistance, then all the men m it were to be 
 put to the*sword ; and the women and children to become 
 captives to the Israelites. The former of these particulars, 
 viz. massacring all the men, stamps their war law wiih a 
 much greater degree of severity than is manifested in ours; 
 for although we must take into the account, that among 
 ancient nations all the males who could bear aims actually 
 did so when it was necessary, and that there was no such 
 distinccion between soldier and citizen as among us ; yet 
 even in the case of a city being taken by storm, we are 
 wont to give quarter ; and no Frenchmaia will have any 
 anxiety to be rernmded that bois-le-d'uc forms a solitary ex- 
 neption to this practice. Still, however, it is not conirary 
 to the law of nature, if we get the upper hand, to kill our 
 enemy, who either himself bears arms m order to kill us, 
 or hires others in his room for that purpose. The Israel- 
 ites could not regulate their conduct by our more merciful 
 law of nationfi, which is, by several thousand years, of 
 later date ; but they acted precisely as their vanquished 
 foes would have done, had they been lucky enough to 
 have been the conquerors; and they therefore merit the 
 praise of magnanimity, if, to lessen the evils of war, we 
 see them refraining in the smallest degree from insisting 
 on requital of like for like to the utmost. The enemies 
 with whom the Israelites had to do, were wont not mere'y 
 to put the vanquished to death, but at the same time to 
 exercise great cruelties upon them. The Bible is full of 
 relations to this purport. Sometimes infants and sucklings 
 were massacred, and their bodies collected into heaps; for 
 which we find in Hebrew a particular term, v^t; some- 
 times pregnant women were ripped up, 2 Kings viii. 12. 
 Amos i. 13 ; sometimes people were laid upon thorns, and 
 put to death with thrashing wains, Judg. viii. 7 — 16. Amos 
 ]. 3. Sometimes even royal princes were burnt alive, 
 2 Kings iii. 27. I will not relate all the cruelties of those 
 nations with whom the Israelites had to carry on war, 
 and might, according to the law of nature, have repaid 
 like for like. The law of nations, according to which the 
 Israelites had to act, was made by those nations themselves ; 
 for this law is founded on the manners of nations, and on 
 the permission which we have to treat others as they treat 
 us. If we do not choose to confine our attention to the de- 
 tails given in scripture, we may resort to profane history, 
 ■where w^e shall find the Romans (who behaved to their 
 enemies much more harshly than we do) complaining of 
 the barbarous conduct of the Carthaginians towards their 
 prisoners ; and these Carthaginians^ were the direct de- 
 scendants of those Canaanites, and had an Asiatic law of 
 nations. We need not, therefore, now wonder that David 
 (2 Sam. viii. 2) should have made the vanquished Moab- 
 iies lie down together on the ground, and with a measuring- 
 line have; marked off two thirds of them for death, and 
 spared the remaining third, after being thus subjected to the 
 fear of sharing the fate of their brethren. He acted here 
 with more clemency than the Moj^ic law prescribed, by 
 which he would have been justified in putting them all to 
 death. For as to the assertion of some writers, that the 
 severe law of Moses on this point did not extend beyond 
 the Canaanites, it is contrary to the clearest evidence ; for 
 Moses expressly says, (Deut. xx. 15, 16, compared with 13,) 
 " Thus shalt thou do unto those cities which are far from 
 thee, and not of the cities of these nations; but of those na- 
 tions whose land Jehovah giveth thee, thou shalt let nothing 
 that breatheth live." David acted with much greater se- 
 verity (2 Sam. xii. 31) to the inhabitants of Rabbah, the 
 Aramonitish capital. He put them all to death together, 
 and that with most painful and exquisite tortures ; which, 
 however, were not unusual in other countries of the East'. 
 But we must consider how very different this war was 
 from other wars. The Ammonites had not only resisted to 
 the last extremity, (which alone by the Mosaic law was 
 sufficient to justify the victors in putting them to death,) 
 
 but they had, moreover, by their gross contempt of the am- 
 bassadors whom David had sent with the best intentions, 
 been guilty of a most outrageous breach of the law of 
 nations, and manifested their implacable haired against 
 the Israelites. They shaved half their beards, (an insult 
 which, according lo the account of D Arvieux, the Arabs of 
 the present day reckon as great an evil as death itself,) and 
 then they cut off the lower half of their garments, and in 
 this ignominious plight sent them back into their own- 
 country. Nor was this so much the particular act of the 
 Ammcnilish king, as of his principal subjects, who had 
 incited him to it, (2 Sam. x. 3,) which so much the more 
 clearly demonstrated their universal enmity against the 
 Israelites ; and a violation of the law of nations so very 
 unusual justly provoked them to take severer revenge, than 
 they were wont to exercise in common wars. 
 
 If we admit the maxim, that the law both of nature and 
 nations allows me to treat my enemies as they, if victorious, 
 would have treated me, the story in 1 Sam. xi. 2 furnishes 
 a strong vindication o: David's conduct. These same Am- 
 monites had, in the beginning of his predecessor's reign, 
 been so extremely cruel as to grant to the Israelitish city, 
 Jabesh, which they had invested, and which was inclined 
 to surrender without resistance, no other terms of capilu- 
 lation than that, by way of insult to the Israeliies in general, 
 all its inhabitants should submit to have their right eyes 
 put out. Now to an enemy of this description, and who at 
 last seized their ambafeadors, whose persons the laws both 
 of nations and nature hold sacred, could any punishment in 
 use in the East, have been too crueU — We find, hov.evcr, 
 that the character of the Ammonites was the same in every 
 age. The prophet Amos (i. 13) speaks of them as ripping 
 up the bellies of women with child, not in the fury of a 
 storm, but deliberately, in order to lessen the number of the 
 Israelites, and thus to enlarge th^ir -wn borders. If these 
 acts of David, then, appear to js, I will not say severe, 
 (for who will deny thatl or who that lives in our days 
 would not wish to have acted diflferently in his place ?) but 
 unjust, it is owing, either to our confounding the modern 
 with the ancient law of nations, or with the law of nature 
 itself; and thus judging of them by quite a diflTerent rule 
 from that Avhich we are wont to apply to similar actions, 
 which we know from our youth. I may at any rate put 
 this question, " Has a magistrate a right to proceed more 
 severely against a band of robbers than one nation against 
 another, that has behaved with as much hostility and cru- 
 elty as robbers can do ?" — If it is answered, " Yes, for the 
 robbers are subjects ;" — then would robbers, particularly if 
 natives of foreign lands, in order to escape painful deaths, 
 have only to declare, that they wish to be considered not 
 as subjects, but as enemies; since they do not generally 
 desire the protection of the magistrate, but have their 
 abode in the forests. But on such banditti we inflict, not 
 merely capital punishment, but that punishment aggra- 
 vated by torture; as, for instance, breaking on the wheel. 
 Now, if this is not unjust, and if a robber, even though a 
 foreigner, cannot with effect urge against it the plea of 
 wishing to be treated as an enemy; certainly David's pro- 
 cedure towards the Ammonites, who had in fact been 
 more cruel to the Israelites than most modern banditti are 
 wont to be, should not be condemned as absolutely unjust; 
 although, no doubt, it would have been much more laud- 
 able if he had displayed greater clemency and magnanimity. 
 Further; as we in our childish years read the Roman au- 
 thors, Avho think and write with great partiality for their 
 countrymen, we are commonly impressed with very fa- 
 vourable ideas of the moderation and equity of the Roman 
 people in war. But these ideas are by no means just ; for 
 the Romans, except when their own interest required the 
 contrary, were a severe people ; and with so much the 
 worse reason, that their wars, in which they manifested 
 such inexorable severity, were for the most part unjust. 
 This people, of whose war laws we are apt to think so 
 highly, for a long time, even to the days of Caesar, ma.ssa- 
 cred their prisoners in cold blood, whenever they survived 
 the disgrace of the triumph ; and they very frequently put 
 to death the magistrates and citizens of conquered cities, 
 after making them undergo a flagellation, which, perhaps, 
 in point of physical pain, was not different from the pun- 
 ishments inflicted by David on the Ammonites, haccra.re 
 corporavirgis is the phrase in which it is described by Livy, 
 who remarks, that by reason of these inexorable ie reriliixs, 
 
Chap. 8 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 mz 
 
 fot which VI e know nothing in oar wars,) some cities de- j 
 fended themselves to the last extremity, rather than submit. 
 Thus acted the Romans towards those nations that certainly • 
 were not Ammonites in cruelty, or in the malice of their I 
 injuries. And if, nevertheless, not contented with keeping 
 silence on the subject, we re-echo the Latin writers in iheir 
 phrases of Roman justice and mercy, why should David be 
 called an oppressor and a barbarian, because to the very 
 ,scum of cruel and inhuman enemies, who from universal 
 national haired had so grossly and unjustly violated the 
 .sacred rights of ambassadors, he acted with rigour, and 
 put them to painful deaths'? There seems here to be an 
 unfairness in our way of judging, which David does not 
 deserve, merely because he is an Oriental, and because on 
 other occasions the Bible speaks so much in his praise. 
 This severity has, nevertheless, always been a stigma on 
 the character of David, with those who do not attend to 
 the arbitrary and variable nature of the law of nations, 
 and judge of it according to the very humane war laws of 
 modern times. Hence some friends of religion have been 
 at pains to represent his conduct in a more humane point 
 of view than it is described in the Bible itself. The late 
 Professor Dantz of Jena, published a Dissertation, De 
 mitigata Davidis in Ammonitax Crudelitate, which expe- 
 rienced the highest approbation both in and out of Germany, 
 because people could not imagine a war law so extremely 
 different from modern manners, as that which the common 
 interpretation of 2 Sam. xii. 31 implies. Of that passage 
 he gives this explanation ; that David merely condemned 
 his Ammonitish captives to severe bodily labours; to hew- 
 ing and sawing of wood ; to burning of bricks, and work- 
 ing in iron mines. But how much soever this exposition 
 may be approved, it has but little foundation: it does great 
 violence to the Hebrew words, of which, as this is not the 
 place to complain philologicajly, I must be satisfied with 
 observing, that it takes them in a very unusual, and till 
 then unknown, acceptation ; and for this no other reason 
 is assigned, than that David had previously repented of his 
 sins of adultery and murder; and being in a state of grace, 
 could not be supposed capable of .such cruelties. But a 
 proof like this, taken from the king's being in a state of 
 regeneration, is quite indecisive. We must previously 
 solve the question, whether, considering the times in Avhich 
 he lived, and the character of the enemy, who had given 
 such proofs, to what atrocities their malignant dispositions 
 towards the Israelites would have carried them, had they 
 been the victors, the punishment he inflicted on them was 
 too severe ? or else from the piety of a king, I might in 
 like manner demonstrate, in opposition to facts, that such 
 and such malefactors were not broken on the wheel, but 
 that they must only have gone to the wheel, in order to 
 draw water. But allowing even that David carried sev^er- 
 ity of punishment too far, it is entirely to be ascribed to 
 the rude manners of his age : as in the case of still more 
 blameless characters, even of Abraham himself, we find 
 that the customs of their times betrayed them into sins of 
 ignorance, although some of their contemporaries ques- 
 tioned the lawfulness of the acts which involved those sins. 
 It is further to be remarked, that towards the most crue' 
 foes of the Israelites, and who had besides done himself 
 an injury altogether unparalleled, David would have been 
 acting with more mildness than the Mosaic law authorized, 
 even towards any common enemy, if he had only condemn- 
 ed the Ammonites to servile labours. And besides this, those 
 labours which Dantz alleges, are, some of them at least, 
 not at all suited to the circumstances of either the country 
 or the people. Firewood, for instance, is so scarce in 
 Palestine, that a whole people certainly could not have 
 been converted into hewers and sawyers of wood. For 
 the sanctuary and the altar, the Gibeonites had it already 
 in charge to provide wood; while the common people 
 throughout the country principally made use of straw, or 
 dried dung, for fuel. When Solomon, many years after, 
 made the timber required for the temple to be felled, it was 
 bvthe heads of the remnant of the Canaanites ; and there- 
 fore the Ammonites were not employed in it. — In Pales- 
 tine, again, mines of different sorts were wrought. Now, 
 of all mines, none are more wholesome to work in than 
 those of iron ; because that metal is very friendly to 
 the human constitution, is actuallv mixed wuth our blood, 
 (as experiments made with blood clearly show.) is often 
 .used in medicine, and is almost never hurtful to us, ex- 
 
 cept when forged into edgetools and weapons. Hence it 
 has been observed, that in iron-works and lorges, we gen- 
 erally find the healthiest and longest-lived penple. Othef 
 sorts of mines, on the contrary, by reason of the lead and 
 arsenic which they contain, are very often unwholesome, 
 and even fatal to life. Can it then be believed that David 
 would have condemned a people that he wanted lo punish, 
 to labour in iron-works, wherein they were sure to enjoy a 
 long life of health and activity, while, perhaps, his own 
 native subjects had to labour in unw^holesome mines Ibr the » 
 more precious metals'? A king who had ixjines in his 
 dominions, and wished to use them for the purjoses of 
 punishment, would probably have heard what sorts of ihem 
 were favourable, and what hostile to health, and not have 
 gone so preposterously to work. The applause bestowed 
 on this dissertation of Dantz, from the humanity it dis- 
 played, was probably what moved the late Wahner to write 
 a dissertation of a similar tendency, which was published 
 at Gottingen in the year 1738, under the following title, 
 David Moabitarum Victor crudeliuvmumero eximikir . But 
 it could not obtain equal approbation, because in the con- 
 duct of David towards the Moabites, 2 Sam. viii.2, there is 
 less appearance of cruelty; inasmuch as he merely enfor- 
 ced the war law as prescribed by Moses, and indeed far 
 less rigorously. Wahner gives three different and new 
 explanations of the passage, according to which none of 
 the vanquished Moabites were put to death; but they are 
 all somewhat forced : and there was no necessity, by a dif- 
 ferent translation of the text, to free David from the charge 
 of cruelty; for in putting bul two thirds of them to death, 
 he acted unquestionably with one third more clemency 
 than the Mosaic law required. — The war which Saul car- 
 ried on against the Amalekites, and in which to the utmost 
 of his power he extirpated the whole people, sparing only 
 their king, is yet blamed, not on account of its rigour, 
 but for the conqueror's clemency to the king, 1 Sam. xv. 
 But I wall not by any. means adduce this for an example; 
 but merely appeal to the precepts of Moses, the rigour of 
 which David so much relaxed, in the cases of the Moabites. 
 
 — MiCHAELlS. 
 
 Ver. 13. And David gat him a name when he 
 returned from smiting of the Syrians in the 
 Valley of Salt, being eighteen thousand men. 
 
 These great successes over the Syrians and Edomites 
 greatly heightened the reputation and character of David; 
 or, as the historian observes, he got himself a name when 
 he returned from smiting the Syrians, and Edomites, in the 
 Valley of Salt. He was regarded and celebrated by all 
 the neighbouring princes and states, as a brave command- 
 er, and glorious prince and conqueror. To get a name, 
 in the eastern style, doth not mean to be called by this or 
 the other particular name, which is a ridiculous interpre- 
 tation of the words, but to be spoken of with admiration 
 and praise, as an excellent prince, and a fortunate victo- 
 rious soldier. Thus it is joined with praise, •' I will make 
 you a name, and & praise among all people." It is said 
 of God himself, upon account of the signs and wonders 
 he wrought in Egypt. " Thou hast made thee a name at 
 this day;" which our version in another place renders: 
 " Thou hast gotten thee renown at this day." Thus David 
 got himself a name, i. e. ^s God tells him by Nathan the 
 prophet: " I was with thee wheresoever thou wentest, and 
 [J have cut off all thine enemies out of thy sighi, and have 
 made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great 
 men that are in the earth," i. e. made thee to be esCeemed 
 and reverenced in all countries round about, as a mighty 
 prince and successful warrior ; a name that he must have 
 had even from the. Syrians, and all -his enemies whom he 
 subdued by his conduct and valour. 
 
 There is som« difficulty in this short history of the con- 
 quest nf the Edomites. In rhe book of Chronicles, it is 
 said, that Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, smote Edom in the 
 Valley of Salt, eighteen thousand men. 1 Chron. xviii. 12 
 In the 60th Psalm, Title, that when Joab returned, he 
 smote of Edom, in the Valley of Salt, twelve thousand 
 men. In the book of Samuel, 2 Sam. viii. 13, that David 
 got himself a name, when he returned from smiring the 
 Syrians, in the Valley of Salt. Pan of this difficulty is 
 easily obviated, as the" rout and slaughter of the Edomitish 
 army, in which they lost six thousand of their men, was 
 
mi 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 8—10. 
 
 begun by David and Abishai. And as, after Joab's joining 
 the army, twelve thousand more of tiic Edomites were 
 cut off, the slaughter of those twelve thousand is ascribed 
 to Joab, which, with six thousand cut off under David and 
 Abishai, before Joab came up with his reinforcement, make 
 up the number eighteen thousand; the whole eighteen 
 thousand bein^ ascribed to David, as they were cut off by 
 his army, that fought under him; and to Abishai, who was 
 chief commander under him in this action ; so that what 
 -was done by the one, was done by the other also. But there 
 is also another difficulty, how to reconcile the two different 
 accounts ; the one, that David smote the Syrians, the other, 
 that he smote the Edomites, in the Valley of Salt. The 
 altering the pointing of the words, as we have them in 
 Samuel, and the repeating a single word, airo koivov, from the 
 first part of the account, will entirely remove this difficulty ; 
 and I render the passage thus: David, got himself a nanie, 
 when he returned from smiting the Syrians, in the Valley 
 of Salt, bv smiting eighteen thousand men. Or, he got 
 himself a name in the Valley of Salt, by smiting eighteen 
 thousand men, after he returned from srniting the Syrians. 
 And without this repetition of the word hod smiting, or nan^ 
 by smiting, the construction and sense is quite imperfect. Le 
 Clerc, F. Houbigant, and others, add this supplement, and 
 this alone renders all the other emendations of the learned 
 Father quite unnecessary. The version of the Vulg. Latin 
 conftrms the interpretation, which thus renders the place : 
 I^ecit sibi quoque David nomen cum, reverteretur capta Syria, 
 in valle Salinarum, ccejis decern et octo millibus. " David 
 also got him a name when he returned from the capture of 
 Syria, having slain eighteen thousand men." — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 16. And Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilud, 
 was recorder. 
 
 That is, as is generally believed,- remembrancer or 
 writer of chronicles, an employment of no mean estima- 
 tion in the eastern world, where it was customary with 
 kings to keep daily registers of all the transactions of their 
 reign : and a trust, which, whoever discharged to purpose, 
 must be let into the true springi and secrets of action, and 
 consequently must be received into the utmost confidence. 
 — Border. 
 
 Ver. 18. And Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, was 
 over both the Cherethites and the Pelethites : 
 and David's sons were chief rulers. 
 
 These guards are called in the text, the Cherethites and 
 the Pelethites, but what they were is variously conjectured. 
 That they were soldiers is evident from their being men- 
 tioned as present at the proclamation of King Solomon 
 against Adonijah, which could not evidently have been 
 done without some armed force to protect the persons 
 that proclaimed him: and that they were not common 
 soldiers, but the constant guards of David's person, is 
 manifest from the title of EM/zaro^tJAax-Ej, keepers of the body, 
 which Josephus gives them. Some are of opinion that 
 they were men of gigantic stature; but we find no ground 
 for that, though they were doubtless proper and robust men, 
 (as we speak,) and of known fidelity to their prince, 2 Sam. 
 XV. 18, and xx. 7. Others again think that they were 
 Philistines ; but it is hardly supposable, that David would 
 have any of these hated, uncircumcised people to be his 
 bodyguard ; neither can we believe that Israelitish soldiers 
 would have took it patiently to see foreigners of that nation 
 
 fiut in such places of honour and trust. It is much more 
 ikely, then, tbat they were some select men of the tribe of 
 Judah, which had their names from the families they 
 sprung from, one of which is mentioned, 1 Sam. xxx. 14, 
 and the other, 1 Chron. ii. 33, unless we will come into the 
 notion of others, who, as they find that there were men of 
 this denomination among the Philistines, think that these 
 guards of David's, which were originally of his own tribe, 
 had these exotic names given them from some notable 
 exploit or signal victory gained over the Philistines of this 
 name, as (in 1 Sam. xxx. 14) we have express mention 
 of one action against them. — Stackhouse. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 11. Then said Ziba unto the king, Accord- 
 ing to all that my lord the king hath command- 
 
 ed his servant, so shall thy servant do. As for 
 Mephibosheth, said the king, he shall eat at 
 my table, as one of the king's sons. 
 See on 2 Kings 9. 11. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 4. Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, 
 and shaved off the one half of their beards, and 
 cut off their garments in the middle, even to 
 their buttocks, and sent them away. 
 
 This was one of the greatest indignities that the malice 
 of man could invent in those countries, where all people 
 thought their hair so great an ornament, that some would 
 have rather submitted to die, than part with it. What a 
 foul disgrace and heavy punishment this was accounted in 
 ancient times, we may learn from Nicholaus Damascenus, 
 as mentioned by Stobaeus, (Tit. 42.) who says, that among 
 the Indians the king commanded the greatest offenders to 
 be shaven, as the heaviest punishment that he could inflict 
 upon them ; and, to the like purpose, Plutarch (in Egesil) 
 tells us, that, whenever a soldier, among the Lacedemo- 
 nians, was convicted of cowardice, he was obliged to go with 
 one part of his upper lip shaved, and the other not. Nay, 
 even at this day, no greater indignity can be offered to a 
 man of Persia, than to cause his beard to be shaved ; and 
 therefore, Tavernier, in his travels, relates the story, that 
 when the Sophi caused an ambassador of Aurengzeb's 
 to be used in this manner, telling him that he was not wor- 
 thy to wear a beard, the emperor (even in the manner as 
 David here did) most highly resented the affront that was 
 done to him in the person of his ambassador. And, as 
 shaving David's ambassadors was deservedly accounted a 
 grievous affront, so the cutting off half the beard (which 
 made them look still more ridiculous) was a great addition 
 to it, where beards were held in great veneration; and 
 where long habits down to the heels were worn, especially 
 by persons of distinction, without any breeches or drawers, 
 the cutting their garments, even to the middle, thereby to 
 expose their nakedness, was such a brutal and shameless 
 insult, as would badly become a man of David's martial 
 spirit, and just sentiments of honour, to have tamely passed 
 by. — Stackhouse. 
 
 The customs of nations in respect to this part of the hu- 
 man countenance, have differed, and still do differ, so wide- 
 ly, that it is not easy, among us, who treat the beard as an 
 encumbrance, to coiiceive properly of the importance which 
 is attached to it in the East. The Levitical laws have 
 noticed the beard, but the terms in which most of them are 
 expressed, are somewhat obscure; i. e. they are obscure to 
 us, by the very reason of their being familiar to the persons 
 to whom they were addressed. Perhaps the following quota- 
 tions may contribute to throw a light, at least upon some of ^ 
 them : " The first care of an Ottoman prince, when he comes 
 to the throne, is, to let his beard gro^o, to which Sultan Mus- 
 tapha added, the dying of it black, in order that it might 
 be more apparent on the day of his first appearance, when 
 he was to gird on the sabre ; a ceremony by which he 
 takes possession of the throne, and answering the corona- 
 tion among us." (Baron du Tott.) So, De la Motraye 
 tells us, " that the new Sultan's beard had not been per- 
 mitted to grow, but only since he had been proclaimed 
 emperor : and was very short, it being customary to shave 
 the Ottoman princes, as a mark of their subjection to the 
 reigning emperor," " In the year 1764, Kerim Khan sent 
 to demand payment of the tribute due for his possessions in 
 Kermesir : but, Mir Mahenna maltreated the officer who 
 was sent on the errand, and caused his beard to be cut of. 
 Kerim Khan then sent a strong army against him, which 
 conquered Bender Risk, and all the territories of Mir Ma- 
 henna." (Niebuhr.) This will remind the reader of the in- 
 sult offered to the ambassadors of David, by Hanun, (2 Sam. 
 X.) which insult, however, seems to have had a peculiarity 
 m it— of shaving one half of the beard ; i. e. the beard on 
 one side of the face. On this subject, we iran'^late from 
 Niebuhr (French edit.) the following remarks: "The 
 Orientals have divers manners of letting the beard grow; 
 the .Tews, in Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, preserve iheir 
 beard from their youth; and it differs from that of the 
 Christians and Mohammedans, in that they do not shave it 
 
Chap. 10. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 205 
 
 either at the aers, or the temples. The Arabs keep their 
 whiskers very short ; some cut them off entirely; but they 
 never shave off the beard. In the mountains of Yemen, 
 where strangers are seldom seen, it is a disgrace to appear 
 shaven ; they supposed our European servant, who had 
 only whiskers, had committed some crime, for which we had 
 punished him, by cutting off his beard. On the contrary, the 
 Turks have commonly long whiskers ; the beard among 
 them is a mark of honour. The slaves and certain domes- 
 tics of the great lords, are forced to cut it off, and dare not 
 keep any part of it, but whiskers ; the Persians have long 
 whiskers, and clip their beard short with scissors, which 
 has an unpleasant appearance to strangers. The Kurdes 
 shave the beard, but leave the whiskers, and a band of 
 hair on the cheeks." " The true Arabs have black beards, 
 yet some old men die their white beards red ; but this is 
 thought to be to hide their age ; and is rather blamed than 
 praised. The Persians blacken their beards much more ; 
 and, probably, do so to extreme old age, in order to pass 
 for younger than they really are. The Tuiks do the same 
 in some cases. [How differently Solomon thought ! Prov. 
 XX. 29, ' The glory of young men is their strength, and the 
 beauty of old men is the gray head.'] — When the younger 
 Turks, after having been shaven, let their beards grow, 
 they recite afatha, [or kind of prayer,] which is considered 
 as a vow never to cut it off; and when any one cuts off his 
 beard, he maybe very severely punished, (at Basra, at least, to 
 300 blows with a stick.) He would also be the laughing-stock 
 of those of his faith. A Mohammedan, at Basra, having 
 shaved his beard when drunk, fled secretly to India, not daring 
 to return, for fear of public scorn, and judicial punishment." 
 
 " Although the Hebrews took great care of their beards, 
 to fashion them when they were not in mourning, and on 
 the contrary, did not trim them when they were in mourn- 
 ing, yet I do not observe that their regard for them amount- 
 ed to any veneration for their beard. On the contrary, the 
 Arabians have so much respect for their beards, that they 
 look on them as sacred ornaments given by God, to distin- 
 guish them from women. They never shave them : no- 
 thing can be more infamous thaii for a man to be shaved ; 
 they make the preservation of their beards a capital point 
 of religion, Tsecause Mohammed never cut off his : it is 
 likewise a mark of authority and liberty among them, as 
 well as among the Turks; "the Persians, who clip them, 
 and shave above the jaw, are reputed heretics. The razor 
 is never drawn over the grand seignior's face : they who 
 serve in the seraglio, have their beard shaved, as a sign of 
 servitude : they do not suffer it to grow till the sultan has 
 set them at liberty, which is bestowed as a reward upon 
 them, and is always accompanied with some emploA'menl. 
 Unmarried young men may cut their beards ; but" when 
 married, especially if parents, they forbear doing so, to 
 yhow that they are become wiser, have renounced the van- 
 ides of youth," and think now of superior things. When 
 they comb their beards, they hold a handkerchief on their 
 knees, and gather carefully the hairs that fall : and when 
 they have got together a proper quantity, they fold them 
 up in paper, and carry them to the place" where they bury 
 the dead. Among them it is more infamous for any one 
 to have his beard cut off, than among us to be publicly 
 whipped, or branded with a hot iron. Many men in that 
 country would prefer death to such a punishment. The 
 wives kiss their husbands' beards, and children their fa- 
 thers', when they come to salute them : the men kiss one 
 another's beards reciprocally, when they salute in the 
 streets, or come from a journey. — They say, that the beard 
 is the perfection of the human face, which would be more 
 disfis-nred by having this cut off, than by losing the nose. 
 
 ".They admire and envy those, who have fine beards : 
 ' Pray do but see,' they cry, ' that beard ; the very sight of 
 it would persuade any one, that he, to whom it belongs, is 
 an honest man-.' If anybody with a fine beard is guilty of 
 an unbecoming action, 'What a disadvantage is this,' they 
 say, ' to such a beard ! How much such a beard is to be 
 pitied!' If thev would correct anv one's mistakes, they 
 will tell him, ' For shame of your beard ! Does not the 
 confusion that follows light on your beard 1' If they en- 
 treat any one, or use oaths in affirming or denying any 
 thing, they say, ' I conjure you by your heard, — by the life 
 of your beard, — to grant me this,' — or, 'by your beard, 
 -his is, or is not, so.' They say further, in the way of ac- 
 knowledgment, ' May God preserve your blessed beard ! 
 
 May God pour out his blessings on your bea^d'' And, 
 in comparisons, ' This is more valuable than one's beard.' " 
 MoBurs des Arabes, par M. D'Arvieux, chap. vii. These 
 accounts may contribute to illustrate several passages oi 
 scripture. 
 
 The dishonour done by David to his beard, of letting his 
 spittle fall on it, (1 Sam. xxi, 13,) seems at once to have 
 convinced Achish of his being distempered : q. d. " No man 
 in good health, of body and mind, would thus defile what 
 we esteem so honourable as his beard." If the beard be 
 thus venerated, we perceive the import of Mephibosheth's 
 neglect, in his not trimming it, 2 Sam. xix. 24. We con- 
 ceive, also, that after the information given us, as above, 
 that men kiss one another's beards, when they salute in the 
 streets, or when one of them is lately covie from a jovrney ; 
 we may discover traces of deeper dissimulation in the be- 
 haviour of Joab to Amasa (2 Sam. xx. 9) than we have 
 heretofore noticed : " And Joab held in his right hand the 
 beard of Amasa, that he might give it a Jdss." — No wonder 
 then, that while this act of friendship, of gratulation after 
 long absence, occupied Amasa's attention, he did not per- 
 ceive the sword that was in Jonb's left hand. The action 
 of Joab was, indeed, a high compliment, but neither sus- 
 picious nor unusual; and to this compliment Amasa pay- 
 mg attention, and, no doubt, returning it with answerable 
 politeness, he could little expect the fatal event that Joab's 
 perfidy produced. Was the behaviour of Judas to Jesus 
 something like this behaviour of Joab to Amasa'? — a wor- 
 thy example worthily imitated ! — With this idea in our 
 minds, let us hear the Evangelists relate the story ; Matt, 
 xxvi. 49, " And coming directly to Jesus, he said. Hail 
 [joy to thee] Rabbi ! and kissed him :" so says Mark xiv. 
 45. But Luke seems to imply, that Judas observed a more 
 respectful manner, in his salutation. Jesus, according to 
 Matthew, before he received the kiss from Judas, had time 
 to say, " Friend [in what manner] unto what purpose art 
 thou come 1" And while Judas was kissing him — suppose 
 his beard — Jesus might easily, and very aptly express him- 
 self, as Luke relates, " Ah ! Judas, betrayest thou the Son 
 of Man by a kiss 7" The cutting off the beard is mention- 
 ed (Isaiah xv. 2) as a token- of mourning; and as such it 
 appears to be very expressive, Jer. xli. 5 : " Fourscore men 
 came from Samaria, having their beards shaven, and their 
 clothes rent." — See, also, chap, xlviii. 37. Is not this cus- 
 tom somewhat illustrated by the idea which the Arabs at- 
 tached to the shaven servant of Niebuhr, i. e. as a kind ot 
 pimishment suffered for guilt, expressed or implied?.— 
 Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 While the Orientals had their emblems of honour, and 
 tokens of regard, they had also peculiar customs expressive 
 of contempt or dislike ; of which the first I shall mention 
 is cutting off the beard. Even to talk disrespectfully of a 
 Persian's beard, is the greatest insult that can be offered to 
 him, and an attempt to touch it would probably be followed 
 by the instant death of the offender. Cutting" off the beard 
 is reckoned so great a mark of infamy among the Arabs, 
 that many of them would prefer death to such a dishonour. ' 
 They set the highest value upon this appurtenance of the 
 male ; for when they would express their value for a thing, 
 they say it is worth rnore than his beard ; they even beg for 
 the sake of it, " By your beard, by the life of your beard, 
 do." — Paxton. 
 
 When Peter the Great attempted to civilize the Russians, 
 and introduced the manners and fashions of the more re- 
 fined parts of Europe, nothing met with more opposition 
 than the cutting off their beards, and many of those who 
 were obliged to comply with this command, testified such 
 great veneration for their beards, as to order them to be 
 buried with them. Irwin also, in his voyage up the Red 
 Sea, says, that at signing a treaty of peace with the vizier of 
 Yambo, they swore by their beards, the most solemn oath 
 they can take. D'Arvieux gives a remarkable instance of 
 an Arab, who, having received a wound in his jaw, chose 
 to hazard his life rather than to suffer his surgeon to take 
 off his beard. — Burder. 
 
 This shows, according to the oriental mode of thinking, 
 the magnitude of the affront which Hanan offered to the 
 ambassadors of David, when he took them and shaved ofl 
 the one half of their beards. It was still, in times compar- 
 atively modern, the greatest indignity that can be offered 
 in Persia. Shah Abbas, king of that country, enraged that 
 the emperor of Hindostan had inadvertently addressed nimby 
 
206 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. U. 
 
 a title far inferior to that of the great Shah-in-Shah, or king 
 of kings, ordered the beards of the ambassadors to be shaved 
 off, and sent them home to their master. This ignominious 
 treatment discovers also the propriety and force of the type 
 of hair in the prophecies of Ezekiel ; where the inhabitants 
 af Jerusalem are compared to the hair of his head and 
 beard, to intimate that they had been as dear to God as the 
 beard was to the Jews ; yet for their wickedness they should 
 be cut off and destroyed. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. When they told it unto David, he sent to 
 meet them, because the men were greatly- 
 ashamed : and the king said, Tarry at Jericho 
 until your beards be grown, and then return. 
 
 It is customary to shave the Ottoman princes, as a mark 
 of their subjection to the reigning emperor. In the moun- 
 tains of Yemen, where strangers are seldom seen, it is a 
 disgrace to appear shaven. The beard is a mark of au- 
 thority and liberty among the Mohammedans, as well as 
 among the Turks: the Persians, who clip the beard, and 
 shave above the jaw, are reputed heretics. They who 
 serve in the seraglio, have thej^r beards shaven as a sign 
 of servitude : they do not suffer it to grow till the sultan has 
 set them at liberty. Among the Arabians it is more infa- 
 mous for any one to have his beard cut off, than among 
 us to be publicly whipped, or branded with a hot iron. 
 Many in that country would prefer death to such a punish- 
 nient.— (Niebuhr.) At length Ibrahim Bey suffered Ali, 
 his page, to let his beard grow, that is to say, gave him his 
 freedom ; for, among the Turks, to want mustaches and a 
 beard is thought only fit for slaves and women ; and hence 
 arises the unfavourable impression they receive on the first 
 sig:ht of a European. (Volney.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 9. When Joab saw that the front of the battle 
 was against him before and behind, he chose 
 of all the choice men of Israel, and put them in 
 array against the Syrians: 10. And the rest 
 of the people he delivered into the hand of 
 Abishai his brother, that he might put them in 
 array against the children of Ammon. 
 
 Immediately before the signal was given, and sometimes 
 in the heat of battle, the general of a Grecian army made 
 an oration to his troops, in which he briefly slated the 
 motives that ought to animate their bosoms; and exhorted 
 them to exert their utmost force and vigour against the 
 enemy. The success which sometimes attended these 
 harangues was wonderful; the soldiers, animated with 
 fresh life and courage, returned to the charge, retrieved 
 in an instant their affairs, which were in a declining and 
 almost desperate condition, and repulsed those very ene- 
 mies by whom they had been often defeated. Several in- 
 stances of this might be quoted from Roman and Grecian 
 history, but few are more remarkable than that of Tyrtceus, 
 the lame Athenian poet, to whom the command of the 
 Spal"tan army was given in one of the Messenian wars. 
 The Spartans had at that time suffered great losses in many 
 encounters ; and all their stratagems proved ineffectual, so 
 that they began to despair almost of success, when the poet, 
 by his lectures on honour and courage, delivered in moving 
 verse to the army, ravished them to such a degree with the 
 thoughts of dying for their country, that, rushing on with 
 a furious transport to meet their enemies, they gave them 
 an entire overthrow, and by one decisive battle brought 
 the war to a happy conclusion. Such military harangue.s, 
 especiallv in very trying circumstances, are perfectly nat- 
 ural, and may be found perhaps in the records of "every 
 nation. The history of Joab, the commander-in-chief of 
 David's armies, furnishes a striking instance: "When 
 Joab saw that the front of the battle was against him, before 
 and behind, he chose of all the choice men of Israel, and 
 put them in array against the Syrians; and the rest of the 
 peopl" he delivered into the hand of Abishai his brother, 
 that he mia;ht put them marrav against the children of Am- 
 mon. And he said. If the Svriansbe too strong for me, 
 then thou sha.lt help me; but if the children of Ammon be 
 too s'ron? for thee, then I will come and help thee. Be of 
 jTood cour^sc, and let us play the men for our people, and 
 for the cities of our God; and the Lord do that which 
 
 seemeth good in his sight." In a succeedmg age, the king 
 of Judah addressed his troops, before they marched against 
 the confederate armies of Moab and Ammon, in terms be- 
 coming the chief magistrate of a holy nation, and calcula- 
 ted to make a deep impression on their minds : " And as 
 they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said. Hear me, O 
 Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: Believe in the 
 Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his 
 prophets, so shall ye prosper." To express his own con- 
 fidence in the protection of Jehovah, and to inspire his 
 army with the same sentiments, after consulting with the 
 people, he "appointed singers unto the Lord, and that 
 should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out be- 
 fore the army, and to say. Praise the Lord, for his mercy 
 endureth for ever." This pious conduct obtained the ap- 
 probation of the living and true God, who rewarded the 
 cheerful reliance of his people with a complete victory 
 over their enemies, unattended by loss or danger to them ; 
 for " when they began to praise, the Lord turned every 
 man's sword against his fellow," in the camp of the confed- 
 erates, till not one escaped. Animated with joy and grati- 
 tude for so great a deliverance, the pious king returned to 
 Jerusalem at the head of his troops, preceded by a numer- 
 ous band of music, celebrating the praises of the God of 
 battles. A custom not unlike this, and perhaps derived 
 from some imperfect tradition of it, long prevailed in the 
 states of Greece. Before they joined battle, they sung a 
 hymn to the god of war, called naiav en^arripiog -, and when 
 victory declared in their favour, they sung another to Apollo, 
 termed iraiav eiriviKios. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 1. And it came to pass, after the year was 
 expired, at the time when kings go forth td 
 battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants 
 with him, and all Israel. 
 
 The most usual time of commencing military operations 
 was at the return of spring ; the hardships of a wintei 
 campaign were then unknown. In the beginning of spring, 
 says Josephus, David sent forth his commander-in-chief 
 Joab, to make war with the Ammonites. In another part 
 of his works, he says, that as soon as spring was begun, 
 Adad levied and led forth his army agamst the Hebre\\s. 
 Antiochus also prepared to invade Judea at the first ap- 
 pearance of spring; and Vespasian, earnest to put an end 
 to the war in Judea, marched with his whole army to Anti- 
 palris, at the commencement of the same season. The 
 sacred historian seems to suppose, that there was one par- 
 ticular time of the year to which the operations of war 
 were commonly limited : " And it came to pass, after the 
 year was expired, at the time kings go forth to battle, that 
 David sent Joab and his servants and all' Israel, and they 
 destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Kabbah." 
 The kings and armies of the East, says Chardin, do not 
 march but when there is grass, and when they can en- 
 camp, which time is April. But in modern times, this 
 rule is disregarded, and the history of the crusades records 
 expeditions and battles in every month of the year. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 2. And it came to pass in an evening-tide, 
 that David arose from off his bed, and walked 
 upon the roof of the king's house : and from the 
 roof he saw a woman washing herself: and the 
 woman was very beautiful to look upon. 
 
 The place of greatest attraction to an oriental taste cer- 
 tainly was the summer bath. It seemed to comprise every 
 thing of seclusion, elegance, and that luxurious enjoyment 
 which has too often been the chief occupation of some 
 Asiatic princes. This bath, saloon, or court, is circular, 
 with avast basin in its centre, of pure white marble, of the 
 same shape, and about sixty or seventy feet in diameter. 
 This is filled with the clearest water, sparkling in the sun, 
 for its only canopy is the vault of heaven ; but rose-trees, 
 with other pendent shrubs, bearing flowers, cluster near it: 
 and at limes their waving branches throw a beautifully 
 quivering shade over the excessive brightness of the water. 
 Round the sides of the court are two ranges, one above the 
 other, of little chambers, looking towards the bath, and fur- 
 
Chap. 11. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 207 
 
 nished with every refinement of the harem. These are for 
 the accommociation of the ladies who accompany the shah 
 during his occasional sojourns at the Negauristan. They 
 undress or repose in these before or after the delight of 
 bathing: for so fond are they of this luxury, they remain 
 in the water for hours; and sometimes, when the heat is 
 very relaxing, come out more dead than alive. But in this 
 deliglitful recess, the waters flow through the basin by a 
 constant spring; thus renewing the body's vigour by their 
 bracing coolness: and enchantingly refreshing the air, 
 which the stin's influence, and the thousand flowers breath- 
 ing around, might otherwise render oppressive with their 
 incense. The royal master of this Hortus Adonidis, fre- 
 quently takes his noonday repose in one of the upper 
 chambers which encircle the saloons of the bath: and, if he 
 be inclined, he has only to turn his eyes to the scene below, 
 to see the loveliest objects of his tenderness, sporting like 
 Naiads amidst the crystal streams, and glowing with all 
 the bloom and brilliancy which belongs to Asiatic youth. 
 In such a bath court it is probable that Bathshebawas seen 
 by the enamoured king of Israel. As he was walking at 
 evening-tide on the roof of his palace, he might undesign- 
 edly have strolled far enough to overlook the androon of 
 his women, where the beautiful wife of Uriah, visiting the 
 royal wives, might have joined them, as was often the cus- 
 tom in those countries, in the delights of the bath. — Sir R. 
 K. Porter. 
 
 The following history is, in some points, an accurate 
 counterpart to that of David. " Nour Jehan signifies the 
 light of the world; she was also called Nour Mahl, or the 
 light of the seraglio : she was wife to one Sher Afkan 
 Khan, of a Turcoman family, who came from Persia to 
 Hindostan in very indifferent" circumstances. As she was 
 exquisitely beautiful, of great wit, and an elegant poetess, 
 Jehangnire, the sultan, was resolved to take her to himself 
 He sent her husband, who was esteemed the bravest man 
 in his service, with some troops, to command in Bengal, 
 and afterward sent another with a greater force to cut 
 him off". When he was killed, Nour Jehan was soon pre- 
 vailed upon to become an empress. The coin struck in 
 Jehanguire's reign, with the signs of the zodiac, were not, 
 as is usually thought in Europe, done by his empress's or- 
 der ; nor did she reign one day, as the common opinion is, 
 but she ruled the person who reigned for above twelve 
 years." (Fraser.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 4. And David sent messengers and took 
 her : and she came in unto him, and he lay 
 with her ; (for she was purified from her Uri- 
 el eanness ;) and she returned unto her house. 
 
 The kings of Israel appear to have taken their wives 
 with very great ease. This is quite con,sistent with the ac- 
 count given in general of the manner in which eastern 
 princes form matrimonial alliances. "The king, in his 
 marriage, uses no other ceremony than this : he sends an 
 azagi to the house where the lady lives, where the officer 
 announces to her, it is the king's pleasure that she should 
 remove instantly to the palace. She then dresses herself 
 in the best manner, and immediately obeys. Thencefor- 
 ward he assigns her an apartment in the palace, and gives 
 her a house elsewhere in any part she chooses. Then 
 when he makes her Ueghe, it seems to be the nearest re- 
 semblance to marriage; for whether in the court or the 
 camp, he orders one of the judges to pronounce in his pres- 
 eiKte, that he, the king, has chosen his handmaid, naming 
 her, for his queen : upon which the crown is put on her 
 head, but she is not anointed."— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 25. Then David said unto the messenger, 
 Thus shalt thou say unto Joab, Let not this 
 thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth 
 one as well as another: make thy battle more 
 strong against the city, and overthrow it ; and 
 encourage thou him. 
 
 It has been asserted, of the portion of scripture before us, 
 4iat it tells a tale of little else besides cruelties and crimes, 
 ' many of them perpetrated by David himself; and it has 
 been triumphantly demanded how a man stained with so 
 
 I 
 
 many vices, can, without impiety, be styled a " man after 
 God's own heart." We will endeavour to meet the objec- 
 tion, because under it is comprehended all that the infidel 
 is justified in urging against the credibility of the narrative. 
 The peculiar term, of which a use so unworthy is made, 
 was applied, it will be recollected, to David, while that per- 
 sonage yet lived the life of a private man, and kept his fa- 
 ther's sheep. It was employed, moreover, by God himself, 
 as distinguishing the future from the present king of Israel, 
 not in their individual characters, as members of the great 
 family of mankind, but as the chief rulers of God's chosen 
 people. To understand its real import, therefore, all that 
 seems necessary is, to ascertain the particular duties of the 
 kings of Israel ; and no man who is aware that these mon- 
 archs filled, in the strictest sense of the phrase, the station 
 of Jehovah's vicegerents, can for a moment be at a loss in 
 effecting that discovery. The kings of Israel were placed 
 upon the throne, for the purpose of administering the Di- 
 vme law, as that had been given through Moses. In an es- 
 pecial degree, it was their duty to preserve the people pure 
 from the guilt of idolatry ; idolatry being, among the He- 
 brews, a crime equivalent to high-treason among us;^ 
 while, on all occasions, whether of foreign war or domes- 
 tic arrangements, they were bound to act in strict obedi- 
 ence to the will of God, as that might be from time to time 
 revealed to them. Whether this should be done by Urim, 
 by the voice of a prophet, or some palpable and immediate 
 vision, the king of Israel was equally bound to obey ; and 
 as long as he did obey, literally, fully, and cheerfully, he 
 was, in his public capacity, a man after God's own heart. 
 
 An ordinary attentive perusal of the preceding pages 
 will show, that David, as compared with Saul, (and it is only % 
 with reference to such comparison, that the phrase under 
 review ought to be regarded,) was strictly worthy of the 
 honourable title bestowed upon him. Whatever his private 
 vices might be, in all public matters his obedience to God's 
 laws was complete ; indeed, he never speaks of himself in 
 any other language than as the servant or minister of Je- 
 hovah. No individual among all that reigned in Jerusalem 
 ever exhibited greater zeal against idolatry ; of the Mosaic 
 code he was, in his official capacity, uniformly observant ; 
 and to every command of God, bywhomsoever conveyed, 
 he paid strict attention. Such was by no means the case 
 with Saul, as his assumption of the priestly office, and his, 
 conduct towards the Amalekites, demonstrate ; and it was 
 simply to distinguish him from his predecessor, as one on 
 whose steady devotion to Divine wishes reliance could be 
 placed, that God spoke of him to Samuel, in the terms so 
 frequently misinterpreted. If it be further urged that Da- 
 vid's moral conduct was far from being perfect ; that his 
 treatment of Joab, after the mUrder of Abner, w^as weak ; 
 his behaviour to the captive Ammonites barbarous; Im 
 conduct in the case of Uriah, the Hittite, infamous ; and 
 his general treatment of his children without excuse; wc 
 have no wish, as we profess not to have the power, absolute- 
 ly to deny the assertions. His receiving: Joab into favour, 
 while his hands were red with the blood of Abner, m.ay be 
 pronounced as an act of weakness; yet it was such ari act 
 as any other person, in his circumstances, would h»vebeen 
 apt to perform. Joab was a distinguished soldier, highly 
 esteemed by the troops, and possessed of great influence in 
 the nation; it would have been the height of imprudence, 
 had David, situated as he was, made such a man his ene- 
 my; but that he wholly disapproved of the treacherous deed 
 which Joab had done, he took every conceivable means to 
 demonstrate. He conferred a species of public funeral 
 upon the murdered man, and attended it in person, as chief 
 mourner. The treatment of the captive Ammonites w^as 
 doubtless exceedingly cruel ; yet its cruelty may admit of 
 some extenuation, provided we take one or tM'o matters, 
 as they deserve to be taken, into consideration. In the 
 first place, the age was a barbarous one, and from the in- 
 fluence of the times in which he lived, it would be folly to 
 expect that David could be free. In the next place,' the 
 tortures inflicted upon the Ammonites are not to oe under- 
 stood as heaped indiscriminately upon the whole body of 
 the people. The magistrates and principal men were alone 
 ".put under saws and harrows of iron, and made to pass 
 through the brick-kiln." And these suffered a fate so hor- 
 rible, only in retaliation for similar excesses committed by 
 their order upon certain Hebrew prisoners. Besides, the 
 gross and unprovoked indignities heaped upon David's am- 
 
208 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 11. 
 
 bassadors might well inflame his fury to the highest pitch ; 
 since then, even more conspicuously than now, the per- 
 sons of envoys were considered sacred, especially in the 
 East. Without, therefore, attempting to excuse such ac- 
 tions, as no enlightened person would now. under any prov- 
 ocation, perpetrate, we must nevertheless repeat, that Da- 
 vid's treatment of the Ammonites was not absolutely devoid 
 of extenuating circumstances ; an assertion which cannot, 
 we feel, be hazarded in reference to that monarch's beha- 
 viour towards Uriah the Hittite. Perhaps there is not 
 recorded in any volume & series of crimes more gross or 
 inexcusable than those of which we are now bound to take 
 notice. Adultery and murder are terms too mild for them, 
 inasmuch as the particular acts of adultery and murder 
 implied other otfences scarcely less heinous than them- 
 selves. The woman abused by David was the wife of a 
 proselyte from a heathen nation, whom it was to the inter- 
 est arid honour of the true religion for the chosen head of 
 God's nation to treat with marked delicacy. He was, more- 
 over, a brave and faithful soldier; so brave and zealous 
 in his master's service, that even when summoned by the 
 king himself to the capital, he refused to indulge in its lux- 
 uries, while his comrades were exposed to the hardships 
 of war. This man David would have vitally wronged, by 
 introducing into his family a child of which the king him- 
 self Avas the father ; and failing in the accomplishment of 
 a design so iniquitous, he coolly devised his death. Again, 
 that the deed might be done without bringing disgrace upon 
 himself, he ordered his general to place this gallant soldier 
 in a post of danger, and, deserting him there, to leave him 
 to his fate ; and when all had befallen as he wished, his 
 observation was, that " the sword devoured one as well as 
 another." These several occurrences, summed up, as they 
 were, by the abrupt and shameless marriage of Bathsheba, 
 combine to complete a concatenation of crimes, of which 
 it is impossible to speak or think without horror ; yet is 
 there nothing connected with them, in the slightest degree, 
 mischievous to the credibility or consistency of scripture. 
 It cannot, with any truth, be asserted, that God either was, 
 or is represented to have been, a party to these black deeds. 
 So far is this .from being the case, that we find a prophet 
 sent expressly to the sinful monarch, to point out to nim the 
 enormity of his offences, and to assure him of a punish- 
 ment, ">grievous in proportion to the degree of defilement 
 which he had contracted. But as David's crimes had been 
 committed in his private capacity, so his punishment was 
 made to affect his private fortunes. His own children be- 
 came the instruments of God's anger, and heavier domestic 
 calamities than fell upon him, no man, perhaps has ever 
 endured. His only daughter (and, as such, doubtless his 
 favourite child) is ravished by her brother Amnon ; the 
 ravisher is murdered by his brother Absalom ; Absalom 
 revolts against his father, drives him from his capital, and 
 is finally slain in battle fighting against him. If there be 
 not in this enough to vindicate the honour of God, we know 
 not where marks of Divine displeasure are to be looked 
 for ; and as to the credibility of the scriptural narrative, 
 that appears to be strengthened, rather than weakened, by 
 the detail of David's fall. No fictitious writer would have 
 represented one whom he had already designated as *' a 
 man after God's own heart," and whom he evidently de- 
 sires his readers to regard with peculiar reverence, as a 
 murderer and adulterer. It is the province of a narrator 
 of facts alone to speak of men as they were, by exposing 
 the vices and follies even of his principal heroes ; nor is 
 the history without its effect as a great moral warning. It 
 teaches the important lesson, that the commission of one 
 crime seldom, if ever, fails to lead to the commission of 
 others; while it furnishes a memorable example of the 
 clemency which forbids any sinner to despair, or regard 
 himself as beyond the pale of mercy. Of David's conduct 
 towards his children, it seems to us little better than a waste 
 of time to set up either an explanation or a defence. Ex- 
 travagantly partial to them he doubtless was; so partial as 
 to pass over in their behaviour crimes which, we can hard- 
 ly believe, would have been passed by, had others besides the 
 members of his own family committed them. It is indeed 
 true, that the law of Moses, by which alone David pro- 
 fessed to be guided, is not very explicit as to the punish- 
 ment which ougfht to have been awarded to Amnon ; but 
 the truth we suspect to be, as Josephus has given it, that 
 David abstained from bringing him to a public trial after 
 
 his outrage to Tamar, because the feelings of the father 
 prevailed over those of the magistrate. In like manner, 
 his pardoning Absalom's crime, in defiance of the law, 
 which expressly enjoins blood to be shed for blood, without 
 redemption, is open to a similar charge; yet even here, 
 there is more to be urged in the king's defence, than the 
 mere operation of natural affection. Absalom took shelter 
 at a foreign court immediately on the perpetration of the 
 murder ; it might not be in David's power to force his sur- 
 render, and hence the only alternative was, to leave him in 
 exile, among heathen, at the rfiranifest hazard of the cor- 
 ruption of his religious principles, or to permit his return 
 to Jerusalem, and ultimately to receive him into favour. 
 With respect, again, to his subsequent indulgence of that 
 prince — an indulgence to which, in some degree, his insur- 
 rection deserves to be traced back — we see in it only one 
 more proof of that amiable weakness which characterized 
 all the monarch's dealings towards his family, his fondness 
 for every member of which unquestionably led him into 
 errors, if not of the heart, at all events of the head. Such 
 errors, however, leave but trivial blots upon the general 
 reputation of any man. They proceed from a good princi- 
 ple, even when carried to weakness, and will be sought for 
 in vain among the utterly heartless, profligate, or selfish ; 
 and as David is not represented in scripture as either a 
 perfect saint or a perfect hero, we see no reason why his 
 strength of mind, more than his moral character, should be 
 vindicated from all the charges which may be brought 
 against it. — Gleig. 
 
 Ver. 25. Then David said unto the messenger, 
 Thus shalt thou say unto Joab, Let not this 
 thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth 
 one as well as another : make thy battle more 
 strong against the city, and overthrow it ; and 
 encourage thou him. 26. And w^hen the wife 
 of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was 
 dead, she mourned for her husband. 27. And 
 when the mourning was passed, David sent 
 and fetched her to his house, and she became 
 his Avife, and bare him a son. But the thing 
 that David had done displeased the Lord. 
 
 This is the account of David's fall, as related in scrip- 
 ture; a fall attended with numerpus circumstances of 
 heinous aggravation, an^ the attempt to vindicate his con- 
 duct, in any of the principal parts of this transaction, 
 would be injurious to the laws of truth and virtue. But if 
 there are any circumstances of alleviation, that can be 
 fairly alleged, justice and candour require that they should 
 be mentioned ; as well as to own and admit others, that 
 heighten his fault, and render him inexcusable. And I 
 think there cannot be a greater pleasure, than what arises 
 to a good mind, from being able, in some measure, to 
 apologize for actions, in some particulars of them, which 
 upon the whole are bad, and extenuate that guilt, where it 
 can be fairly done, which, as far as real, ought neither to 
 be concealed nor defended. There are some crimes pecu- 
 liarly aggravated by previous deliberate steps that men 
 take to commit them; when they lay schemes'to gratify 
 bad passions, and accomplish purposes they know to be 
 injurious and dishonourable. David, in the beginning of 
 this transaction, seems to be entirely free from every charge 
 of this kind. He did not so much as know who she was, 
 much less that she was a married woman, when he first 
 casually saw her; and the passion he conceived for her, 
 might, for any thing he then knew, be lawful, and such as 
 he might, without any oflfence, allow himself in the gratifi- 
 cation of And this would have been the case, under the 
 dispensation in which he lived, had she been a single 
 person. David therefore, though very imprudently, and I 
 think in some degree criminally, did not deliberate upon 
 an affair, which he saw no immediate reason to prohibit 
 him from pursuing; and thereby heightened that inclina- 
 tion, which he ought to have checked, as a good man, till . 
 he was sure he had a right to indulge it. By not doing 
 this, it became too strong for his management; and Avhen 
 he had been informed who she was, yet fired with tho 
 imagination, that the beautiful object he beheld had raised 
 
Chaa 11. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 209 
 
 in his mind, all other considerations at last gave way, and 
 he immediately resolved to gratify his desires, at the ex- 
 pense of his conscience, honour, and duty. He instantly 
 sends for Bathsheba, she immediately complied with him, 
 and the whole affair seems to have been completed the 
 very evening it was begun. Every one must see, that as 
 David had but little time for deliberation, it was not very 
 likely, that in the small interval, between the rise of his 
 passion, and the gratifying it, one in his circumstances 
 should be cool enough to use that deliberation, which was 
 necessary to bring him to himself, and restrain him from 
 the crime he was hurried on to commit ; and that therefore 
 his sin, thus far, had not that aggravation which it would 
 have had, if there had been more time and leisure for him 
 to reflect, and had he pursued his criminal inclinations, 
 after having seriously and calmly weighed the nature and 
 consequences of what he was about to do, and used, as too 
 many others in like cases have done, fraud, perfidy, and 
 force, to gratify them. To say there was no time for any 
 deliberation, may be saying too much ; for there is scarce 
 any sin so suddenly committed, but there are some mo- 
 ments for reflection ; but, in some circumstances, men may 
 be so hurried away by a sudden gust of passion, as that 
 they may be wholly incapacitated by it, rightly to improve 
 those moments. David had no time to prevent the first 
 rise of his passion. It was as instantaneous as the sight, 
 and he might not think himself obliged to suppress it, till 
 after he knew Bathsheba was Uriah's wife ; so that all the 
 interval he could have for reflection was only that between 
 his knowing who she was, and his actually possessing her; 
 an interval too entirely engrossed by imagination and de- 
 sire, to leave room suflicient for the exercise of reason, or 
 the influence of any good principles to restrain him. If 
 David and Bathsheba had been casually together, a more 
 sudden and violent gust of passion could not have hurried 
 him away, without allowing him some time for delibera- 
 tion, than what the altitude, in which he first saw her, 
 would have naturally excited, and did actually excite ; 
 which swept away all consideration and reflection before 
 it, and drove him down a precipice, that wellnigh proved 
 his absolute destruction. I cannot help adding, that Bath- 
 sheba herself seems to have too easily yielded to the king's 
 inclination, and thereby rendered it almost impossible for 
 him to suppress it. For the history informs us, that David 
 " sent messengers, and he received her, and she came in 
 unto him, and he lay with her." Her compliance seems 
 voluntary, unforced, immediate. But she went, met his 
 passion, indulged it, without, as appears, any reluctance, 
 without remonstrating against David's attempt upon her 
 honour ; and thereby prevented those reflections, that her 
 denial and resistance might have occasioned in him, and 
 that might have made him sensibleof the enormity of the 
 crime, and preserved him from the commission of it. 
 And how great soever this sin was, David is not the only 
 instance of men's being unhappily betrayed in an evil hour, 
 by the power of a sudden and unexpected temptation. Too 
 many instances may be produced, even of habitually good 
 and virtuous persons being drawn aside, in some unguard- 
 ed moment, and by the force of an unthought-of strong 
 temptation, into the commission of those sins, which, in 
 other circumstances, they would have trembled at, and ab- 
 horred the very mention and thought of. 
 
 The first crime thus committed, and the dreaded conse- 
 quences of it appearing, the unhappy prince found himself 
 involved in difficulties, out of which he knew not how to 
 extricate himself. Conscious guilt, concern for his own 
 character, regard for the honoiir of the fair partner of his 
 crime, and even fear of his own, and her life ; the punishment 
 of their adultery being death ; all united, to put him on form- 
 ing some contrivances how to conceal and prevent the scan- 
 dal of it from becoming public. Hence, all the little tricks 
 and shifts he made use of to entice the injured husband to his 
 wife's bed, and father the fruit of their adultery upon him. 
 Who can help pitying a great, and I will venture to affirm, 
 a hitherto virtuous prince, reduced to these wretched 
 expedients, to prevent that public infamy, which he now 
 ipprehended to be near him, and dreaded the falling under 1 
 But even these failed him. What must he do 1 Where can 
 a man stop, when once he is entangled in the toils of vice, 
 and hath presumptuously ventured into the paths of guilt 1 
 Bathsheba must be pres^ved at any rate. His own honour 
 was at stake to prevent her destruction, and he saw but one 
 27 
 
 way to secure that end, wMch he thought himself obliged, 
 at any hazard, to obtain. If Uriah lived, she must inevita- 
 bly die. Uriah could have demanded the punishment, and 
 seems to have been a soldier of that roughness of temper, 
 and firmness of resolution, as that he would have prose- 
 cuted his vengeance against her to the utmost. The law 
 was express and peremptory. Which of the two must be 
 the victim 1 Cruel dilemma ! It is at last determined thai 
 the husband should be sacrificed, to save the wife, whom 
 David's passion had made a criminal; and had he forsaken 
 her in this dreadful situation, and left her to her punish- 
 ment, he would not only have pronounced sentence of death 
 against himself, but been censured, I am persuaded, by al- 
 most every man, as a monster of perfidy, baseness, and 
 ingratitude. But how was Uriah to be got rid of 1 Poison, 
 assassination, or a false charge of treason, or seme secret 
 way of destruction, were methods which the eastern princes 
 were well acquainted with. David was above them all, 
 and had a kind of generosity in his very crimes. The 
 man he was to destroy was a brave soldier, and he causes 
 him to fall in the bed of honour, gloriously fighting against 
 the enemies of his king and country ; and if dying in the 
 field of battle, by the sword of an enemy, and in a glorious 
 action, be a more eligible and honourable death, than the 
 being despatched by the stab of a stiletto, the tortures of 
 poison, or as a criminal on a false accusation of treason ; 
 the causing an innocent person to die in the former manner, 
 though this hath its great aggravation, yet is not so base 
 and villanous an action, as destroying him by any one of 
 the latter methods; and had David had recourse to any of 
 them to get rid of a worthy man, whom he had criminally 
 reduced himself to an almost absolute necessity of de- 
 spatching, the crime would have been of a more horrid die, 
 and justly excited a higher indignation and abhorrence. 
 And though I am far from mentioning these particulars 
 to excuse David's conduct, or palliate his aggravated 
 offences; yet the circumstances I have mentioned excite 
 my compassion, carry in the nature of the thing some 
 alleviation of his crimes, and should ever be remembered 
 10 soften the pen that is employed in describing them. 
 Having thus, by accumulated guilt, taken off the man 
 that he dreaded should live, David, after Bathsheba had 
 gone through the usual time of mourning, took her to his 
 palace, and made her his wife, to screen her from a prose- 
 cution of adultery, to secure her against the penalty of 
 death, and in some measure to repair the injury he had 
 done her, by his criminal commerce with her, during her 
 former husband's life ; which, as a plurality of wives was 
 not forbidden by that constitution and polity he lived under, 
 was the least compensation that he could make, and which 
 he was obliged in honour and justice to make her. One 
 would have thought, that after such a complication of ag- 
 gravated crimes, David, upon a review of his conduct, 
 should have been struck with remorse, voluntarily con- 
 fessed his sins to God, and humbly entreated from him the 
 mercy and forgiveness he so much needed. But nothing 
 of this appears from the history. He rather seems, on the 
 contrary, to have been insensible and callous, and to have 
 enjoyed his new-acquired pleasures, without any uneasi- 
 ness at the dreadful expense by which he purchased them. 
 The siege of Rabbah went on successfully, he saw no 
 appearing proofs of the divine displeasure that threatened 
 him, the affairs of government employed much of his time 
 and thoughts, he esteemed himself happy in the preserva- 
 tion of Bathsheba, and at full liberty to gratify the ardent 
 passion he had conceived for her; and probably might 
 persuade himself, that as Uriah was a Hittite, the taking 
 away his wife and life greatly lessened the elggravation of 
 his sin ; or, that as king of Israel, he was above the laws, 
 and that however criminal such actions might have been 
 in others, yet that the royal prerogative and power mighf 
 render them lawful in him, or at least so extenuate the evil 
 of them, as that they would pass unobserved by God, who 
 had solemnly promised him the establishment of the throne 
 and kingdom m his person and family. 
 
 But by whatever means he made himself easy, the his- 
 tory informs us, that " the thing which David had done 
 displeased the Lord," who resolved to show his abhor- 
 rence of the crime, to execute on him a vengeance pro- 
 portionable to the heinousness and guilt of it, and hereby 
 to rouse his conscience, and bring him to those acknowl- 
 edgments of his sin, as might prepare him for, and render 
 
210 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap 11. 
 
 him capable of that forgiveness, which, how much soever 
 he needed it, he was greatly unworthy of. He was pleased 
 to employ Nathan th^ prophet on this solemn occasion ; 
 who, by an artfully composed fable, brought the king to 
 pronounce his own condemnation, even without suspecting 
 or intending it. Bathsheba had just been delivered of a 
 son, the fruit of her adulterous commerce with David, and 
 who was, in the strictness of the letter, conceived by his 
 mother in sin, and shapen in iniquity, David appears to 
 have been fond of the child, and, in the midst of his joy 
 on this account, Nathan demands an audience, and ad- 
 dresses him with the following complaint. There were 
 two men, who lived in the same city, one of whom was 
 rich, and the other poqr. The rich man had flocks and 
 herds in great abundance ; but the poor man had not any 
 thing, save only one little ewe-lamb, which he had brought, 
 and nourished, so that it grew up together with him, and 
 with his children. It did eat of his morsel, and drank of 
 his cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him as a daugh- 
 ter. And there came a certain traveller to the rich man, 
 and he begrudged to take of his own flock and his own herd, 
 to entertain his guest, but took the poor man's lamb, and 
 provided for the traveller that came to him. David was 
 extremely incensed against the man, and said to Nathan : 
 "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this is worthy 
 of death, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, inasmuch 
 as he hath done this thing, and because he had no com- 
 passion." " Then Nathan said to David : Thou art the man. 
 Thus saith the Lord God of Israel : I have anointed thee 
 to be king over Israel, and delivered thee from the hand of 
 Saul. I gave thee also thy master's house, and the wives 
 of thy master into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Is- 
 rael and of Judah ; and if this be but a small matter, I have 
 also added to thee this and the other thing, which thou well 
 knowest. Why then hast thou despised the commandment 
 of the Lord, to do this wickedness in his sight 1 Thou 
 hast smote Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken 
 his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him by the sword of 
 the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall 
 never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised 
 me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy 
 wife. Thus saith the Lord : Behold, I will raise up evil 
 against thee out of thine own house, and will take thy 
 Avives before thine eyes, and will give them to thy neigh- 
 bour, and he shall lie with thy wives before the sun. 
 Though thou hast done this secretly, yet I will do what I 
 have now said, before all Israel, and before the sun." This 
 dreadful sentence roused the conscience of David, and 
 from the fullest conviction of the heinousness of his of- 
 fence, he immediately made this acknowledgment to Na- 
 than: "I have sinned against the Lord." Upon this in- 
 genuous confession, Nathan immediately replies: " The 
 Lord also hath put away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. 
 However, since by this deed thou hast caused the enemies 
 ■A' the Lord contemptuously to reject him, the son also 
 that is born unto thee shall surely die." 
 
 When Nathan had thus boldly and faithfully executed his 
 commission, he left the king, and the lecture which he read 
 him was worthy the dignity of a prophet's character and 
 station, and such as became the majesty of him to whom it 
 was given. It was grave, strong, affecting, insinuating, 
 nnd polite. The parable, in which he conveyed to him his 
 message from God, is dressed up with all the circum- 
 stances of art, tenderness, and delicacy, to move compas- 
 sion, and, at the same time, to force from him that dread- 
 ful sentence : " As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done 
 this thing shall surely die, because he did this thing, and 
 because he had no compassion ;" thus drawing from him the 
 sentence of his own condemnation, even before he perceived 
 it. But how home, howbold was the application, when Na- 
 than said to the king : " Thou art the man .... Where- 
 fore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to 
 ('o evil in his sight'? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite 
 with the sword, and hast taken his wife." How dreadful 
 also was the sentence pronounced against him by the order 
 (if God ! Such as showed the height of his abhorrence 
 ff the crime, and his displeasure and indignation against 
 him that committed it. But how did the unhappy offender 
 receive this bold and severe remonstrance 1 Why, no 
 r.ooner was the application made, but he falls under con- 
 vi-'ior., acknowledges his offence against God, and owns 
 himself worthy of death ; and the psalms he penned on this 
 
 occasion show the deep sense he had of the guilt hp had 
 contracted, and will be a memorial of the sincerity of his 
 repentance throughout all generations. But was not Da- 
 vid's repentance all affectation and hypocrisy, and did he 
 not bear the reproof, and humble himself, because he took 
 care not to disagree with his best friends; or, in other 
 words, to keep fair with the priests and Levitesl But it 
 the priests and Levites were such kind of men, as some 
 have represented them ; ready to support David in all his 
 measures of iniquity, and when he projected any scheme, 
 were never wanting in their assistance to him ; why should 
 any one of them give him any trouble in this affair '? In 
 what had he disobliged them, by killing a Hittite, and 
 debauching his wife 1 Or why should they disagree with" 
 him about a transaction that no way related to them 1 I 
 should rather think, they should have eudeavoured to have 
 made him compound with them for a round sum of money, 
 or a good number of sheep and oxen for sacrifices, that 
 they might have feasted themselves on the price of his for- 
 giveness; especially, as we have been told, that this same 
 prophet, " Nathan, was a great lover of this sort of food, 
 and very angry when he was excluded from good cheer." 
 But indeed the insinuation itself is wholly groundless ; and 
 let any man read through the reproof that Nathan gave 
 him, and the direct charge of murder and adultery that he 
 urged to his face, and, I think, he cannot but be convinced, 
 that David's acknowledgment, " I have sinned against the 
 Lord," could proceed from nothingbut a real and deep sense 
 of the greatness of his crime, and that he deserved to be cut of! 
 by the hand of God for that aggravated transgression. What 
 further effectually refutes this suggestion is, that his bear- 
 ing with the reproof, and humbling himself under it, did not 
 at all reconcile Nathan to him, who left him with a threat- 
 ening dreadful in its nature, enough to make his ears tingle, 
 and his heart tremble within him The only favourable 
 thing Nathan said to him was : " Thou shalt not die ;" but, at 
 the same time, tells him, that the murder he had been guilty 
 of should be revenged by the sword's never departing from 
 his house, and his adultery retaliated in the most exemplary 
 and public manner, upon his own wives ; threatenings that 
 were made him, before he owned his fault, and submitted 
 himself; and therefore his submission could be with no 
 view of reconciling himself to Nathan, because that prophet 
 had already peremptorily pronounced his punishment, 
 which David's after confession did not in the least mitigate 
 or alter ; for the punishment threatened was inflicted to the 
 full ; and the particular nature and circumstances of it 
 were such, and the events on which it depended were so 
 distant and various, as that no human wisdom and sagacity 
 could foresee them, or secure their futurity ; and there- 
 fore Nathan, who pronounced his doom, must have been im- 
 mediately inspired by God, who foresaw and permitted the 
 means, by which his threatenings should be punctually 
 executed, and thus brought upon David all the evils that 
 his prophet had foretold should certainly befall him. The 
 nature of his repentance my reader will be the better 
 enabled to judge of, if he carefully reads over the 51st 
 psalm, which he certainly penned on this occasion.— 
 Chandler. 
 
 No one can read this psalm, but must see all the charac- 
 ters of true repentance in the person who wrote it, and 
 the marks of the deepest sorrow and humiliation for the 
 sins of which he had been gaiilty. The heart appears in 
 every line, and the bitter anguish of a wounded conscience 
 discovers itself by the most natural and affecting symp- 
 toms. How earnestly does he plead for mercy, and there- 
 by acknowledge his own unworthiness ! How ingenuous 
 are the confessions he makes of his offences, and ho^"' 
 heavy was the load of that guilt that oppressed him ! Tne 
 smart of it pierced through his very bones and marrow, 
 and the torture he felt was as though they had been broken, 
 and utterly crushed to pieces. He owns his sins were of 
 too deep a die for sacrifices to expiate the guilt of, and thai 
 he had nothing but a broken heart and contrite spirit to of- 
 fer to that God, whom he had so grievously offended. How 
 earnest are his prayers, that God would create in him a 
 clean heart, and renew a right spirit within him ! How 
 doth he dread the being deserted of God ! How earnestly 
 deprecate the being deprived of his favour, the joy of his 
 salvation, and the aids and comforts of his holy spirit ! L«t 
 but this psalm be read without pifcjudice, an^ with a view 
 only to collect the real sentiments expressed in it, and the 
 
Chap. 12. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 211 
 
 dispusitioa of heart that appears throughout the whole of 
 It ; and no man of candour, I am confident, will ever 
 suspect that it was the dictate of hypocrisy, or could 
 be ptjnned from any other motive, but a strong conviction 
 of the heinousness of his offence, and the earnest desire of 
 God's forgiveness, and being restrained from the commis- 
 sion of the like transgressions for the future. And those 
 who run not upon David's character, on account of his con- 
 duct in the matter of Uriah, though they cannot too hearti- 
 ly detest the sin, and must severely censure the offender ; 
 yet surely may find some room in their hearts for compas- 
 sion towards him, when they consider how he was surpri- 
 sed into the first crime, and how the fear and dread of a 
 discovery, and his concern for the life of the woman he 
 had seduced, led him on, step by step, to further degrees of 
 deceit and wickedness, till he completed his guilt by the 
 destruction of a great and worthy man; especially when 
 they see him prostrate before God, confessing his sin, and 
 supplicating forgiveness; and even exempted by God 
 himself from the punishment of death he had incurred, 
 upon his ingenuously confessing, " I have sinned against the 
 Lord ;" an evident proof that his repentance was sincere, as 
 it secured him immediately forgiveness from God, whom 
 he had offended. 
 
 I shall conclude this article by the remarks which Mr. 
 Bavle makes on it. " His amour with the wife of Uriah, 
 and the orders he gave to destroy her husband, are two 
 most enormous crimes. But he was so grieved for them, 
 and expiated them by so admirable a repentance, that this 
 is not the passage in his life, wherein he contributes the 
 least to the mstruction and edification of the faithful. We 
 therein learn the frailty of the saints, and it is a precept of 
 vigilance. We therein learn in what manner we ought to 
 lament lor our sins, and it is an excellent model." Let me 
 add, that the wisdom and equity of the law of Moses evi- 
 dently appears, in that it appointed no sacrifices to atone 
 for such crimes, the pardoning of which would have been 
 inconsistent with the peace and safety of civil society; 
 such as those which David laments in this psalm, murder 
 and adultery. Here the punishment prescribed by the law 
 was death, and David had no other way of escaping it, but 
 by the undeserved mercy of God. This God was pleased 
 to extend to him, to show how acceptable the sinner's un- 
 feigned repentance will be, whatever be the nature and ag- 
 gravations of his offences; and if we learn from hence, what 
 the scripture calls "the deceitfulness of sin," to be cautious 
 of the first beginnings of it, and not to indulge those sensual 
 appetites, which, when given way to, draw men insensibly 
 into crimes, they would have once trembled at the thoughts 
 of committing; we shall make the best and wisest improve- 
 ment of this melancholy part of David's history, and be real 
 gainers by his sins and sorrows. — Chandler, 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 11. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will 
 raise up evil against thee out of thine own 
 house, and I will take thy wives before thine 
 eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and 
 he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this 
 sun. 12. For thou didst i^ secretly ; but I will 
 do this thing before all Israel, and before the 
 sun. 
 
 The words, I will raise up, I will take, I will do, do not 
 I denote any positive actions of God, as if he prompted wick- 
 ed men to do the same things wherewith he threatens Da- 
 vid, insomuch that, without such prompting, they would not 
 have done them, but by it were necessitated to do them ; 
 such a construction as this is injurious to the divine attri- 
 butes, and makes God the author of evil: but the true 
 meaning is, that God, at that time, saw the perverse dispo- 
 I sition of one of his sons, and the crafty wiliness of one of 
 1 his counsellors, which, without his restraining them, would 
 ! not fail to create David no small uneasiness ; and therefore, 
 1 because David had violated his law, and, to gratify his lust, 
 had committed both adultery and murder, God would not 
 : interpose, but suffered the tempers of these two wicked per- 
 ' sons to follow their own course, and have their natural 
 swing; whereupon the one, being ambitious of a crown, en- 
 deavours to depose .his father, and the other, willing to 
 
 make the breach irreparable, advised the most detested 
 thing he could think of. This indeed was the very thing 
 that God had foretold, but, without any imputation upon 
 his attributes, we may say, that God can so dispose and 
 guide a train of circumstances, that the wickedness of any 
 action shall happen in this manner, rather than another, 
 though he do not infuse into any man the will to do wick- 
 edly. So that from such scripture phrases as these, we 
 may not infer, that God either does, or can do evil, but only 
 that he permits that evil to be done, which he foreknew 
 would be done, but might have prevented, had he pleased ; 
 or, in other terms, that he suffers men, naturally wicked, 
 to follow the bent of their tempers, without any interposi- 
 tion of his providence to restrain them, — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 16. David therefore besought God for the 
 child ; and David fasted, and went in and lay 
 all night upon the earth. 17. And the elders 
 of his house arose, and went to him, to raise 
 him up from the earth: but he would not, 
 neither did he eat bread with them: 1 8. And 
 it came to pass on the seventh day, that the 
 child died. And the servants of David feared 
 to tell him that the child was dead ; for they 
 said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we 
 spake unto him, and he would not hearken 
 unto our voice ; how will he then vex himself, 
 if we tell him that the child is dead? 19. But 
 when David saw that his servants whispered, 
 David perceived that the child was dead : there- 
 fore David said unto his servants, Is the child 
 dead 1 And they said. He is dead. 20. Then 
 David arose from the earth, and washed, and 
 anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and 
 came into the house of the Lord, and worship- 
 ped : then he came to his own house ; and, when 
 he required, they set bread before him, and he 
 did eat. 
 
 The account Sir John Chardin gives us of eastern 
 mourning, in order to illustrate Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 17, 
 is as follows. " The practice of the East is to leave a rela- 
 tion of the deceased person to weep and mourn, till, on the 
 third or fourth day at farthest, the relations and friends go 
 to see him, cause him to eat, lead him to a bath, and cause 
 him to put on new vestments, he having before thrown him- 
 self on the ground," &c. The surprise of David's servants 
 then, who had seen his bitter anguish while the child was 
 sick, arose apparently from this, that, when he found it was 
 dead, he that so deeply lamented, arose of himself from the 
 earth, without staying for his friends coming about him, 
 and that presently; immediately bathed and anointed him- 
 self, instead of appearing as a mourner; and, afler worship- 
 ping God with solemnity, returned to his wonted repasts 
 without any interposition of others ; which as now, so per- 
 haps anciently, was made use of in the East. The extrem- 
 ity of his sorrows for the child's illness, and his not observ- 
 ing the common forms of grief afterward, was what sur- 
 prised his servants. Every eye must see the genera 
 ground of astonishment ; but this passage of Chardin gives 
 great distinctness to our apprehensions of it.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 20. Then David arose from the earth, and 
 washed, and anointed himself, and changed his 
 apparel, and came into the house of the Lord 
 and worshipped: then he came to his own 
 house ; and, when he required, they set bread 
 before him, and he did eat. 21. Then said his 
 servants unto him, What thing is this that thou 
 hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the 
 child while it was alive ; but when the child 
 was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread. 
 
 The oriental mourner was distinguished bjrthe slovenli- 
 ness of his dress. He suffered the hair of his head, if not 
 
212 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 12. 
 
 cut or plucked off in the excess of his grief, to hang dishev- 
 elled upon the shoulders; he neither trimmed his beard, 
 nor washed his feet, even in the hottest weather ; he did 
 not wash his shirt, nor any of the linen he wore. During 
 the whole time of mourning, he refused to change his 
 clothes. In this state of total negligence, it appears that 
 David mourned for his infant son ; for after he learned 
 from his attendants that the child was dead, the inspired 
 historian observes, " Then David arose from the earth, and 
 washed and anointed himself, and changed his apparel." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 29. And David gathered all the people 
 together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against 
 it, and took it. 30. And he took their king's 
 crown from off his head, (the weight whereof 
 was a talent of gold with the precious stones,) 
 and it was set on David's head : and he brought 
 forth the spoil of the city in great abundance. 
 31. Ajid he brought forth the people that were 
 therein, and put them under saws, and under 
 harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and 
 made them pass through the brick-kiln : and 
 thus did he unto all the cities of the children of 
 Ammon. So David and all the people return- 
 ed unto Jerusalem. 
 
 Josephus tells us, that the men were put to death by ex- 
 quisite torments. And this hath been the sentiment of 
 many learned commentators. Supposing this interpreta- 
 tion of the passage to be true, I cannot help observing, with 
 Mr. Le Clerc, on the place, that if the punishments inflicted 
 on this people were as severe as they are represented to be, 
 they might be inflicted by way of reprisal. That learned 
 commentator thinks that they were such as the Ammonites 
 themselves used, and that when they were conquered by 
 David, he used them in the same manner as they had treat- 
 ed their Hebrew prisoners. It is very certain that the 
 Ammonites used them with great severity. Nahash, the 
 father probably of this Hanun, in the wantonness of his 
 cruelty, would not admit the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead, 
 under Saul's reign, to surrender themselves prisoners to 
 him, but upon condition of their every one's consenting to 
 have their right eye thrust out, that he might lay it as a 
 reproach upon all Israel ; to which, consistently enough, 
 Josephus adds, that he treated his Hebrew captives with 
 great barbarity, by putting out their right eye, to prevent 
 their being further serviceable in defence of their country ; 
 because as the left eye was hid by the shield, they were 
 rendered by the loss of the other incapable of all military 
 duty. Besides, the Ammonites frequently used the He- 
 brews with excessive cruelty, and are represented by the 
 prophet, as ripping up their women with child, that they 
 might enlarge their border, i. e. prevent the Hebrews from 
 having any posterity ever after, to inhabit the cities that 
 had been taken from them. Casaubon also, in his notes upon 
 Suetonius's life of Caligula, who cruelly used to saw men 
 asunder, produces other examples of the same atrocious 
 punishment, and thinks it was common among the eastern 
 people. And if these severities were now exercised upon 
 the Ammonites in retaliation for former cruelties of the 
 like nature, they certainly had no right to complain ; and 
 it will greatly lessen the horror that may be conceived 
 upon account of them, and, in some measure, justify David 
 in using them. Retaliations of this kind have been prac- 
 tised by the most civilized nations. Thus the Romans re- 
 venged the death of the brave Regulus, by giving up the 
 Carthaginian captives at Rome into the power of Marcia, 
 the wife of Regulus, who caused them to be shut up, two 
 and two, in great chests stuck with nails, there to suffer the 
 same torments which her husband had endured at Carthage. 
 If to this we add, that this execution, if made at all, which 
 however is not so very certain as some are willing to be- 
 lieve, it was made in revenge for an infamous outrage on 
 majesty, the violation of the law of nations, the bringing 
 two powerful armies to invade his dominions, the great 
 number of his subjects that must have been lost in these 
 two battles, while the injuries were fresh in his mind, the 
 
 persons who offered them present to his view, the whole 
 nation engaged in an unrighteous war in vindication of the 
 insult, and some severe animadversion was in justice due 
 to the authors and abetters of such repeated acts of violence 
 a^d injustice. The character of an ambassador was held 
 sacred and inviolable among all nations, and any injuries 
 offered to them were thought deserving the most exempla- 
 ry punishments. The Roman history affords us many re- 
 markable instances of this nature. When the Tarentines 
 had affironted the Roman ambassador, Posthumius, one ot 
 them, whose robe a drunken Tarentine, in the wantonness 
 of insolence, had defiled by urinating against it, said to the 
 citizens, " It is not a little blood that must wash and purify 
 this garment." And when the Romans were informed ot 
 this outrage, they immediately declared war against ihem, 
 took their ships from them, dismantled the city, first made 
 them tributaries, and at last massacred great numbers ot 
 the inhabitants, and sold thirty thousand, who escaped the 
 carnage, for slaves to the best bidder. In like manner, 
 when the Roman deputies were treated with insolent lan- 
 guage only by the Achaians, though they offered no in- 
 jury to their persons, yet the Romans revenged it by the 
 total destruction of Corinth, putting all the men to the 
 sword, selling the women and children for slaves, and 
 burning the whole city to the ground. 
 
 Let me add here also, that the greatest generals, who 
 have been remarkable for their humanity and mildness of 
 disposition^- have sometimes thought themselves obliged to 
 use, in terrorem, great severity towards their prisoners. Fa- 
 bius Maximus, desirous of softening and tamirg the fierce 
 and turbulent dispositions of the people of Celtiberia, now 
 Arragon, ■wfas forced to do violence to his nature, and act 
 with an apparent cruelty, by cutting off the hands of all 
 those M'ho had fled from the Roman garrisons to the 
 enemy ; that, by being thus maimed, they might terrify 
 others from revolting. So also Lucullus used the Thra- 
 cians, destroying many of his prisoners, some by the sword, 
 others by fire, and as to others, cutting off their hands, 
 which the barbarians themselves looked on as an instance 
 of great inhumanity, as hereby they were forced to outlive 
 their very punishnients. Many more instances of the like 
 nature maybe easily produced ; and let David's conduct, as 
 a general, be considered with the same candour and equity, 
 as we would consider that of a Roman or Grecian com- 
 mander, and those executions, which he may have been 
 supposed to have ordered on particular occasions and of- 
 fenders, and that appear to have the character of great se- 
 verity and cruelty, will be found capable of such an apolo- 
 gy, as will greatly lessen the blame that hath been so liber- 
 ally thrown on them, and no more be considered as indi- 
 cations of a disposition naturally inhuman and barbarous. 
 
 I think the punishment of crucifixion is one of the most 
 horrid and shocking that can be inflicted, in which the 
 hands and feet are pierced through, and the whole body is 
 upon the stretch and rack, and the person crucified dies a 
 lingering and exquisitely painful death ; a punishment this, 
 equally cruel and inhuman, with David's supposed saws, 
 and harrows, and brick-kilns. Now supposing that David, 
 instead of those instruments of death, had crucified the Am- 
 monites by thousands before the gates of Rabbah ; or sup- 
 posing, that when he took the city, he had condemned all 
 above seventeen years old to mines, or distributed them by 
 thousands and ten thousands, into the provinces of his king- 
 dom, to be leisurely, and in cool blood, thrown to the beasts, 
 or forced to murder each other on theatres, for the enter- 
 tainment of his blood-thirsty people ; would not Mr. Bayle 
 and his followers have cried out : Bella, horrida bella ! and 
 censured David's conduct herein as unworthy a saint, and 
 a man after God's own heart. And yet this was what the 
 gentle, the benevolent Titus, did to "the Jews, whom the 
 Romans, by their cruelty and oppressions, forced to take up 
 arms against them ; and who may be truly said to have 
 fought for their liberties, of which they had been unjustly 
 deprived. Yet, during the siege, he ordered them to be 
 scourged and crucified before the walls of Jerusalem, by 
 hundreds at a time, and in such large numbers, as that they 
 wanted room to place the crosses, and crosses for the bodies 
 of those they condemned to crucifixion. And not only this, 
 which perhaps may be thought to admit of some apology, 
 as done in the heat and fury of the siege, but when the 
 siege was over, and all instances of cruelly should have 
 ceased, he murdered them wantonly, and in "cool blood, for 
 
Chap. 12. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 213 
 
 the diversion of the provinces. "When he was at Cesarea, 
 he threw great numbers of them to the beasts, and made 
 others of them cut each other's throats. He celebrated his 
 brother's birthday by destroying above two thousand five 
 hundred of them by the same methods, and with the ad- 
 ditional cruelty of burning many of ihem alive ; and on 
 his father's birthday he acted with the same barbarity to- 
 wards a large number of his captives at Berytus. The 
 whole of them amounted to 97,000 ; and yet, would one 
 think it, Titus thought he was a man after God's own heart, 
 or that he executed the divine pleasure and vengeance on 
 the Jews; for when he viewed the city after his conquest, 
 he publicly said : " We have carried on the war agreeable 
 to God's will, or under his favour. It is God who pulled 
 down the Jews from their fortresses, which were uncon- 
 querable by human arms and engines." 
 
 But we need' not these examples to justify David's con- 
 duct; for the more carefully I consider the scripture ac- 
 count of his treatment of the Ammonites, I am the more 
 fully convinced that he did not execute these severities 
 upon them, and that the sacred history, fairly interpreted, 
 will warrant no such charge ; and I will now venture thus 
 to render the original words, " He brought forth the inhab- 
 itants of it, and put them to the saw, to iron-mines, and to 
 iron-axes, and transported them to the brick-kilns," or ra- 
 ther, to the brick frame and bed, to make and carry bricks. 
 He reduced them to slavery, and put them to the most ser- 
 vile employments of sawing, making iron harrows, or 
 rather working in the mines, to the hewing of stones, 
 and making and carrying of bricks. To these drudgeries, 
 some to one, and some to another, he condemned them, or 
 by these means brought them into entire subjection, and put 
 it out of their power to give him any further disturbance. 
 This interpretation is so far from being forced, as that it is 
 entirely agreeable to the proper sense and meaning of the 
 original words, and fully vindicates David from that inhu- 
 manity, by which some have characterized the man after 
 God's own heart. The bella, horrida bella, all here vanish 
 in an instant. This account may also be confirmed by the 
 parallel place in Chronicles, where the historian tells us, 
 that David brought them forth, and, as I would render the 
 words, divided or separated them to the saw, to the mines 
 and axes; agreeable to what is said in Samuel, that he re- 
 moved them from their former habitations to work in these 
 servile employments. Or they may be rendered : " He made 
 them to cut with the saw, the harr-ow, and the axe," i. c. 
 condemned them to these slavish employments. Or final- 
 ly, some interpreters give this version : " He ruled over them 
 by the saw, the mine," &c. kept them in a state of subjec- 
 tion, by putting them to these hard labours. 
 
 It is'a further confirmation of the foregoing representa- 
 tion, what the historian adds : " Thus did David unto all the 
 cities of the children of Ammon." What did he do 1 What ! 
 put them to death throughout all their cities, by those ex- 
 quisite methods of cruelty? The thing is impossible, 
 for then he would have totally extirpated them, and we 
 should never have heard of them again, as a nation, in his- 
 tory. And yet it is certain, that within a very few years 
 after the taking of Raboah, this very city existed, and was 
 inhabited, and had a tributary king or viceroy ; even Shobi, 
 the son of Nahash, and therefore probably the brother of 
 Hanun, who offered this violence to David's ambassadors. 
 For while David was at Mahanaim,on the other side Jordan, 
 waiting the event of Absalom's rebellion, this Shobi, among 
 other of David's friends, brought him very large supplies 
 of all sorts of necessaries, beds, basins, earthen vessels, 
 wheat, barley, flower, parched corn, beans, lentile, parched 
 pulse, honey, butter, sheep, and cheese, for himself and peo- 
 ple; for they said, the people are hungry and weary, and 
 thirsty in the wilderness. So that the city and country 
 were both inhabited, and the lands cultivated, abounding 
 with plenty of all necessaries ; and therefore there could 
 be no general massacre, or very large destruction of the 
 inhabitants, bv David. Nor is it at all probable, that had 
 David made those cruel executions among the. Ammonites, 
 which some ascribe to him, he would have found so much 
 friendship from them in his distresses, while the barbar- 
 ' ities he exercised on them were fresh in their memories; 
 but rather, that they would have wished his destruction, 
 and at least have waited the fortune of the war, that threat- 
 ' encd David with entire ruin, and not have supplied him, 
 , for fear of their incurring the displeasure of Absalom, 
 
 who aimed at his life, that he might usurp his throne, and 
 would not have failed, had he been victorious, to have exe- 
 cuted a severe revenge on them, for the assistance they gave 
 him ; especially as they might have urged a very plausible 
 plea for their not assisting him ; the scarcity of the inhab- 
 itants by the late executions, had that been really the case, 
 and the impoverishment of their lands, for want of hands 
 to cultivate them, and by the ravages committed on them, 
 by David's army. 
 
 Besides, we read of these Ammonites, and the inhab- 
 itants of Seir, and the Moabites, all united, and bringing a 
 very formidable army to invade the dominions of Jehosha- 
 phat. And though this was many years after their being 
 subdued by David, yet it is not to be wondered at, that we 
 hear little of them during this interval, as they were kept 
 in strict subjection, and curbed with garrisons by the succes- 
 sors of David ; just as the Edomites, during the same pe- 
 riod, who, together with the Moabites, endeavoured to shake 
 off the yoke of the Hebrew kings, but were reduced by 
 them to their former subjection. Now it is altogether in- 
 credible, that if David had thus utterly extirpated the in- 
 habitants of these countries, as some represent his conduct, 
 they could, in one hundred and forty years afterward, 
 under Jehoshaphat, have brought such a multitude of men 
 against him, as forced him to acknowledge, in his prayer 
 to God, that " he had no might against that great company 
 that came against him, and that he knew not what to do ;" 
 ev^en when he had above a million of men, mighty men of 
 valour, ready prepared for the war. When therefore the 
 history says," thus did David to all the cities of the chil- 
 dren of Ammon," the meaning can only be, that he con- 
 demned to slavery, not the v/hole nation, but such of the 
 people, in their several towns and cities, as he had done to 
 the inhabitants of Rabbah, who had been the advisers of 
 the outrage, or principally concerned in that unrighteous- 
 war, which they carried on against him in vindication of 
 it. The rest lie permitted to dwell in their towns, and 
 cultivate their possessions, and appointed over them Shobi, 
 the brother of Hanun, king, as a tributary to his crown ; 
 and I doubt not in graceful remembrance of the kindness 
 he formerly received from Nahash, Shobi's father, which 
 was also the real reason of the congratulatory message he sent 
 to Hanun his eldest son, upon his accession to the throne. 
 
 I would further observe, that as David certainly had a 
 great deal of generosity and goodness in his natural temper, 
 the sacred writers, who have, with great freedom and im- 
 partiality, mentioned his faults, and who have transmitted 
 to us this account of his treatment of the Ammonites, have 
 passed no censure on him for having exceeded the bounds 
 of humanity and justice, in the punishment he inflicted 
 on them : and from hence we may, I apprehend, justly con- 
 clude, either that it was not so severe, as it hath been gen- 
 erally thought, or that there were some peculiar reasons 
 wlfich demanded it, and which, if we were particularly 
 acquainted with them, would, in a great measure, alleviate 
 the appearing rigour of it; or that the law of nations, and 
 the jus belli, then subsisting, admitted such kinds of execu- 
 tions upon very extraordinary occasions; though I think 
 there are scarce any that can fully justify them. But if 
 the account which I have given of this affair be, as I think 
 it is, the true one, the Ammonites were treated just as they 
 deserved, and according to what was practised by the most 
 civilized nations, and all exclamations against the man 
 after God's own heart, will be unreasonable and unjust. 
 
 Mr. Bayle, among others, grievously complains on this 
 article, " Can this method," says he, " of making war be 
 denied to be blameworthy 1 tiave not the Turks and 
 Tartars a little more humanity'? If a vast number of 
 pamphlets daily complain of the military executions of our 
 own time, which are really cruel, and highly to be blamed, 
 though m.ild in comparison of David's ; what would not the 
 authors of those pamphlets say at this day, had they such 
 usage to censure, as the saws, "the harrows, and brick-kilns, 
 of David'?" It is a pity this learned and candid criti* 
 should form his notion of the cruelly of some military ex- 
 ecutions by a set of pamphleteers, a' sort of authors not al- 
 ways of the best information and credit. But what if these 
 same pamphlet writers, should complain of the cruelty of 
 certain military executions, that had no foundation in fact, 
 but only in their misinterpretation of some accounts of 
 them, which they did not understand, or could not translate 
 rightly from the language in w^hich they were written 1 
 
8U 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 13. 
 
 Jr «'hat if some person, assuming the character of a critic, 
 should take upon trust his account, from these very respecta- 
 ble pamphlet writers, of the cruelty of some military execu- 
 tions, and censure the authors of them, as worse than Turks 
 and Tartars, without ever searching himself the original re- 
 laters of them, to know whether the account of the pamphlet- 
 eers were genuine or not ; what censure would he not de- 
 serve from the impartial woild, for propagating such false 
 and groundless stories 1 I am confident Mr. Bayle never 
 critically examined, in the original language, the account 
 of these military executions by David, for if he had, he 
 would certainly have found reason, at least to have sus- 
 pended his judgment, if not entirely to have altered it. I 
 should be in no pain for David's character, if I could as 
 well defend him, in what the truth of history obliges me 
 now to relate, as I think he may be justified in the treat- 
 ment of the Ammonites. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 31. And he brought forth the people that 
 u-ere therein, and put them under saws, and 
 under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, 
 and made them pass through the brick-kiln : 
 and thus did he unto all the cities of the chil- 
 dren of Ammon. 
 
 It seems to have been the practice of eastern kmgs, to 
 command their captives, taken in war, especially those that 
 had, by the atrociousness of their crimes, or the stoutness 
 of their resistance, greatly provoked Iheir indignation, to 
 lie down on the ground, and then put to death a certain 
 part of them, which they measured with a line, or deter- 
 mined by lot. This custom was not perhaps commonly 
 practised by the people of God, in their wars with the 
 nations around them; one instance, however, is recorded 
 in the life of David, who inflicted this punishment on the 
 Moabites: " And he smote Moab, and measured them with 
 a Ime, casting them down to the ground ; even with two 
 lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to 
 keep alive ; and so the Moabites became David's servants, 
 and brought gifts." The same warlike prince inflicted a 
 still more terrible punishment on the inhabitants of Rabbah, 
 the capital city of Ammon, whose ill-advised king had 
 violated the law of nations, in oflfering one of the greatest 
 possible indignities to his ambassadors : '* He brought out 
 the people that were therein, and put them under ftaws, and 
 under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made 
 them pass through the brick-kiln ; and thus did he unto all 
 the cities of the children of Ammon." Some of them he 
 sawed asunder; others he tore in pieces with harrows 
 armed with great iron teeth ; or lacerated their bodies with 
 sharp sickles or sharp stones ; or rather, he dragged them 
 through the place where bricks were made, and grated 
 their flesh upon the ragged sherds. This dreadful punish- 
 ment was meant to operate upon the fears of other princes, 
 and prevent them from violating the right of nations in the 
 persons of their ambassadors. These were usually persons 
 of great worth or eminent station, who, by their quality and 
 deportment, i^iight command respect and attention from 
 their very enemies. Ambassadors were accordingly held 
 sacred among all people, even when at war; and what in- 
 juries and affronts soever had been committed, heaven 
 and earth were thought to be concerned to prosecute the 
 injuries done to them, with the utmost vengeance. So deep 
 is this impression engraved on the human n'i.nd, that the 
 Lacedemonians, who had inhumanly murdered the Persian 
 ambassadors, firmly believed their gods would accept none 
 of their oblations and sacrifices, which were all found pol- 
 luted with direful omens, till two noblemen of Sparta were 
 sent as an expiatory sacrifice to Xerxes, to atone for the 
 death of his ambassadors by their own. That emperor, 
 indeed, gave them leave to return in safety, without any 
 other ignominy than what they suffered by a severe reflec- 
 tion on the Spartan nation, whose barbarous cruelty he pro- 
 fessed he would not imitate, though he had been so greatly 
 provoked. The divine vengeance, however, suffered them 
 not to go unpunished, but inflicted what those men had as- 
 sumed to themselves, on their sons, who being sent on an 
 embassy into Asia, were betrayed into the hands of the 
 Athenians, who put them to death: which Herodotus, 
 who relates the story, considered as a just revenge from 
 heaven, for the cruelty of the Lacedemonians. The char- 
 
 acter of ambassadors has been invested with such inviolable 
 sanctity, by the mutual hopes and fears of nations; for if 
 persons of that character might be treated injuriously, the 
 friendly relations between different states could not be 
 maintained ; and all hopes of peace and reconciliation 
 among enemies, must be banished for ever out of the 
 world. But these considerations, although they might jus- 
 tify David in demanding satisfaction, and inflicting condign 
 punishment on the king of Rabbah, cannot be reckoned a 
 sufficient excuse for such severities. They may therefore 
 be considered as a proof, that he was then in the state of 
 his impenitence, in consequence of his illicit connexion 
 with Bathsheba, when the mild, and gentle, and humane 
 spirit of the gospel in his bosom, had suffered a mournful 
 decline, and he was become cruel and furious, as well as 
 lustful and incontinent. The captives taken by Amaziah, 
 in his war with Edom, were also treated with uncommon 
 severity, for " he took ten thousand of thera alive, and 
 brought them to the top of a rock, and cast them down, so 
 that they were all broken in pieces." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 6. So Amnon lay down, and made himself 
 sick. 
 
 The Asiatics are certainly the most expert creatures I 
 have seen in feigning themselves sick. Thus, those who 
 wish to get off work, or any duty, complain they have a 
 pain here, and another there : they affect to pant for breath, 
 roll their eyes, as if in agony; and, should you touch them, 
 they shriek out, as if you were killing them. The sepoys, 
 and those who are servants in the government offices, give 
 great trouble to their superiors by ever and anon complain- 
 ing they are sick; and it requires great discernment to find 
 out whether they are so, or are merely affecting it. Their 
 general object is either to attend a marriage, or some 
 religious festival. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's 
 house, and he was laid down. And she took 
 flour, and kneaded it, and made cakes in his 
 sight, and did bake the cakes. 
 
 In the most considerable houses of Persia, they kin^c 
 their fires, not under a chimney, as is usual with us in fire- 
 places, but in a kind of oven, called tinnor, about two 
 palms from the ground, formed of a vase of burnt clay, in 
 which they place burning coals, charcoal, or other com- 
 bustible matter. The -smoke from the coals is conveyed 
 by means of a pipe from the oven under ground ; and by 
 means of another, communicating with the grated bottom 
 of the fire, it is supplied with air. Here they cook their 
 meat, and can bake their cakes on a flat sheet of iron laid 
 over the tinnor, in little more than an instant of time. 
 When the oven is not thus used, they place a plank over it 
 in the shape of a small table, which they cover entirely, 
 spreading over it a large cloth which extends on all sides 
 to the ground, over a part of the floor of the chamber. By 
 this contrivance, the heat being prevented from diffusing 
 itself all at once, it is communicated insensibly, and so 
 pleasantly throughout the whole apartment, that it cannot 
 be better compared than to the effect of a stove. Persons 
 at their meals, or in conversation, and some even sleeping, 
 lie on the carpets round this table, supporting themselves 
 against the walls of the apartment on cushions kept for the 
 purpose, which likewise serve for seats in this country, the 
 tinnor being so placed as to be equally distant from the 
 sides of the room. Thus circumstanced, those to whom 
 the cold is not unpleasant, put their legs tinder the cloth : 
 others, who feel it more sensibly, their hands and the rest 
 of their body. By bringing their extremities thus towards 
 the central fire, they receive thence a mild and renetraing 
 warmth, which diffuses itself agreeably over their whole 
 body, without any injury to the head. — Burder. 
 
 Let it not appear strange that a king's daughter in the 
 reign of David, was employed in this menial service ; for 
 Dr. Russel says, the eastern ladies ot^en prepare cakes and 
 other things in their own apartments ; and some few par- 
 ticular dishes are cooked by themselves, but not in theif 
 apartments ; on such occasions they go to some room near 
 the kitchen. The eastern bread ii made in small, thin, 
 
Chap. 14. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 215 
 
 moist cakes : it must be eaten new, and is unfit for use 
 when kept longer than a day. Both Russel and Rauwolf, 
 however, mention several kinds of bread and cakes ; some 
 which aie done with yolks of eggs ; some which are mixed 
 Aviih coriander and other seeds; and some which are 
 strewed with them ; and Pitts describes a kind of biscuits, 
 which the Mohammedan pilgrims carrj' from Egypt to 
 Mecca, and back again, perfectly fresh and good. The 
 holy scriptures accord with the narratives of modern trav- 
 ellers, in representing the oriental loaves as very small, 
 three of them being required for the repast of a single 
 person : " Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go 
 unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me 
 ihreti loaves : for a friend of mine in his journey is come 
 to me, and I have nothing to set before him V It appears 
 also from the history of Abraham, and particularly from 
 his entertaining the three angels, that they were generally 
 eaten new, and baked as they were needed. Sometimes, 
 however, they were made to keep several days ; for the 
 shew-bread might be eaten after it had stood a week before 
 the Lord. The pretence of the Gibeonites, that their bread 
 had become mouldy from the length of the road, although 
 it was taken fresh from the oven when they left home, 
 proves, that bread for a journey was made to keep a con- 
 siderable time. In every one of those minute circumstances, 
 the sacred volume perfectly corresponds with the statements 
 of modern travellers. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 17. Then he called his servant that minister- 
 ed unto him. 
 
 Eastern masters do not keep their Servants at the distance 
 usual in England. The affairs of the family, the news of 
 the day, and the little incidents of life, are mutually dis- 
 cussed", as by equals. The difference between them, in 
 reference to property, is sometimes not great ; the master 
 has, perhaps, his small family estate, or some business 
 which produces a little profit, and the servant is content 
 with his rice, and a scanty cloth for his loins. No native 
 who can afford it is without his servant, and many who 
 can scarcely procure food for themselves, talk very largely 
 about their domestics. See my lord seated in his verandah, 
 chewing his beetel, and cogitating his plans: hear him at 
 every interval say to his attendant, " What think you of 
 thati" " Shall I succeed 1" " You must assist me ; I know 
 you have great sense : let this prosper, and you shall have 
 rings for your ears, and a turban for your head. Good : 
 
 Eour water on me." They go to the well, and the servant 
 ales about a hogshead of water on his master's head. 
 They go to the house, and then the command is, " Rub my 
 joints and limbs." " Ah! bring my rice and curry." That 
 finished, " Bring water to wash my mouth ; pour it on my 
 hands: a shroot and fire bring; fetch my sandals, my 
 turban, umbrella, and beetel-box. Let us depart." Then 
 may be seen the master stepping out with a lordly air, and 
 the domestic at his heels, giving advice, or listening to his 
 master's tales. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. And Tamar put ashes on her head, and 
 rent her garment of divers colours that was on 
 her, and laid her hand on her head, and went 
 on crying". 
 
 See on Mat. 11. 21. 
 
 Ver. 21. And when King- David heard of all 
 these things, he was very wroth. 
 
 Mr. Bayle, who takes every occasion to depreciate the 
 character of David, says that " his indulgence to his children 
 exceeded all reasonable bounds, and that had he punished, 
 
 I as the crime deserved, the infamous action of his son 
 Amnon, he would not have had the shame and uneasiness, 
 to see another person revenge the injury done to Tamar." 
 I suppose he means, that he should have punished Amnon 
 with death. But Amnon was David's eldest son, and heir 
 
 : apparent to his throne and kingdom, and he might not think 
 
 : it prudent, or that it would have been well taken by the na- 
 tion, if he had put him to death without consulting them. 
 And this would have been exposing, in the most public 
 
 ' manner, the disgrace of his own family, which he thought 
 it was best to conceal, as far as he was able. That David 
 
 did not punish Amnon in some very exemplary manner, is 
 more than Mr. Bayle could be sure of. There are some 
 circumstances that make it very probable he did. The 
 history assures us, that when David heard of the affair, he 
 was very wroth. And it is very natural to suppose he made 
 Amnon feel the effects of it. He seems to have put him 
 under arrest and confinement, and allovved him to go no- 
 where without his express leave. For when Absalom in- 
 vited the king and all his servants to go to his sheepshear- 
 ing feast, and the king denied him, he particularly pressed 
 him to let Amnon go with him ; which shows, that, though 
 all the other sons of David easily obtained leave to attend 
 Absalom, yet that Amnon was under greater restraint than 
 all the rest, otherwise there would have been no need for 
 him particularly to have pressed David to grant Amnon 
 leave to accompany him, or reason why David should wiih 
 difficulty and reluctance grant it. This was two full years 
 after Amnon 's affair with Tamar. So long a confinement 
 as this to a king's eldest son, was itself a very severe pun- 
 ishment, and probably attended with several circumstances, 
 that rendered it peculiarly grievous. It is not however 
 consistent with candour to accuse men of faults, which 
 there is no real proof of, and especially when there are 
 some intimations, that they never committed them ; or to 
 aggravate them beyond the real demerit. One cannot help 
 observing here, how David's adultery with Bathsheba was 
 punished by his son's incest with his sister Tamar ; and as 
 he now saw the threatenings of God by Nathan beginning 
 to take place, he had too much reason to fear they should 
 be all 01 them executed to the full. It was a circumstance 
 also that must greatly affect him, that he had been, though 
 unwillingly, a sort of accessary to Amnon 's crime, by yield- 
 ing so readily to Amnon's desire, of having his sister sent 
 to him ; the very proposal he made of her dressing and re- 
 ceiving his food from her, seeming enough to create some 
 suspicion in David, that he had some design upon Tamar, 
 which he ought to have been peculiarly carenil to guard 
 against. But probably Amnon had never offended him, 
 nor given any occasion to suspect him capable of so heinous 
 a crime, as he was now meditating, and therefore David 
 more easily consented, that his sister should have the liberty 
 of attending him, — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 39. And the soul of King- David long-ed to 
 go forth unto Absalom : for he was comforted 
 concerning Amnon, seeing he was dead. 
 
 The Hebrew has, for Imiged, "was consumed." A person 
 labouring under an intense desire for the possession of an 
 object, says, " My soul is consumed for it," meaning that 
 his spirit is wasting away by the intensity of his wishes. 
 " My life is burning away through fear." *' My spirit is 
 consuming for his safety."— Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 2. And Joab sent to Tekoah, and fel\.hed 
 thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray 
 thee, feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on 
 now mourning app^irel, and anoint not thyself 
 with oil, but be as a woman that had a long 
 time mourned for the dead. 
 
 It is a curious fact, that the Hindoos do not put on what 
 is called mourning at the death of their friends. The 
 relations take off their ear-rings and other ornaments, and 
 neglect the dressing of their hair. A woman, on the death 
 of her husband, takes off the thali (equivalent to the mar- 
 riage ring) fiom her neck ; and formerly she used to shave 
 her head; but in all other respects she dresses as before. 
 Those who are sick, as they suppose, under the influence 
 of Saturn, generally wear something black, or have marks 
 of that colour on their clothes, as they believe the indispo- 
 sition is in this way removed. — Roberts. 
 
 Ointments were in great esteem and constant use among 
 the ancients, as the means of cleanliness, and to give a 
 grateful odour to their bodies, as these ointments were 
 mixed up with the richest perfumes. At their festivals, 
 especially among the rich and prosperous, they used them 
 for the refreshment of their guests, and to render the enter- 
 tainment more acceptable and delightful. But as great 
 affliction and distress naturally create negligence of person 
 
216 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 14. 
 
 and dress, they forbore anointing themselves at such sea- 
 sons, as inconsistent with the condition of mourners. — 
 Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 7. And so they shall quench my coal which 
 is left, and shall not leave to my husband neither 
 name nor remainder upon the earth. 
 
 So said the woman of Tekoah, who went with a fictitious 
 story to David, in order to induce him to recall Absalom. 
 She affected to be a widow, and said that one of her sons 
 had killed the other, and that now the family demanded his 
 life as an atonement for that of his brother ; and she said, 
 that if they succeeded they would auENCH her coal. But 
 the life is sometimes called the light, as in chap. xxi. 17, 
 which in the margin is translated " candle, or lamp." Both 
 the comparisons include the idea of fire. Formerly, and 
 even now, it is not uncommon for travellers to have to 
 purchase their fire before they can cook their victuals. 
 Hence it is common, when neighbours ask for a light in 
 the morning, to be answered, by way of pleasantry, " You 
 want fire — well, where is your money ?' Children in 
 Ceylon are not called coals, but sparks. It is said of a 
 man who has a large family, " He has plenty of porrekal, 
 i. e. sparks." Those who are favoured with fme children, 
 are said to have large sparks. Of those whose children 
 are all dead, " Alas ! their sparks are all quenched." To 
 a person who is injuring an only child, it is said, " Ah ! 
 leave him alone, he is the only spark." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. Then thy handmaid said, The word of 
 my lord the king shall now be comfortable : for 
 as an angel of God, so is my lord the king, to 
 discern good and bad ; therefore the Lord thy 
 God will be with thee. 
 
 Thus did the woman of Tekoah compliment David, and 
 thus did Mephibosheth address him, when he had been 
 slandered by Ziba. Great men are often compared to the 
 messengers (the true meaning of angel) of the gods. Thus 
 men of great wisdom or eloquence are said to be like the 
 angels of the gods. " Ah ! my lord, you know all things : 
 you are one of the angels of the gods." Sometimes the 
 person will not address you in a direct way, but speak as ' 
 to a third person, loud enough for you to hear. "Ah! 
 what wisdom he has ; there is nothing concealed from him. 
 Whence has he had his wisdom % from the gods — Yes, yes, 
 all things are known to him." Then turning to you, they 
 look humbly in your face, and say, " My lord, there are 
 only two for me : God is the first ; but you are the second." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 The compliments which they addressed to their princes, 
 and the manner in which they spoke of them, were not 
 less hyperbolical. The address of the wise woman of Te- 
 koah to David, furnishes a memorable example of the ex- 
 travagant adulation in which they indulged, and which 
 seems to have been received with entire satisfaction by one 
 of the wisest and holiest of men: "As an angel of God, 
 so is my lord the king, to discern good and bad;" and 
 again, " My lord is wise according to the wisdom of an 
 angel of God, to know all things that are in the earth." 
 Equally hyperbolical was the reply of a Persian grandee 
 to Chardin, who objected to the price which the king had 
 set upon a pretty rich trinket : " Knew that the kings of 
 Persia have a general and full knowledge of matters, as 
 sure as it is extensive ; and that equally in the greatest and 
 in the smallest things, there is nothing more just and sure 
 than what they pronounce." This incident admirably 
 shows the strong prepossession of these Asiatics in favour 
 of their kings, or rather of their own slavery; and gives 
 some plausibility to the remark of Mr. Harmer, that theje 
 may be more of real persuasion in such addresses than we 
 are ready to apprehend. In the estimation of the Persian 
 L-ourlier, the knowledge of his prince was like that of an 
 angel of God. If the ancient Egyptians supposed their 
 princes were possessed of equal knowledge and sagacity, 
 which is not improbable, the compliment of Judah to his 
 brother Joseph was a very high one, and, at the same 
 time, couched in the most artful terms: "Thou art even 
 as Pharaoh;" knowing, and wise, and equitable as he. 
 But it cannot be inferred, with any degree of certainty, 
 
 from these customs, that either the Persian grandee, or 
 the brother of Joseph, really believed such compliments 
 were due. The former, most probably, thought it incum- 
 bent upon him to support the dignity of his master, espe- 
 cially in the presence of many of his nobles, or expressed 
 himself in such extravagant terms, merely in compliance 
 with the etiquette of the court ; and as for Judah, it was 
 his desire to sooth with good words and fair speeches the 
 second ruler in Egypt, whose resentment he knew it was 
 death to incur; and no compliment could be supposed 
 more acceptable to an Egyptian grandee, than the one 
 which he paid to his unknown brother. The same remark • 
 applies, with little variation, to the woman of Tekoah; 
 her design was to sooth the mind of her sovereign, to 
 mitigate, and, if possibly, td extinguish his just resentuTent 
 of the atrocious murder which Absalom had committed, 
 and procure the restoration of the fratricide to his country, 
 and the presence of his father. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. And the king said. Let him turn to his 
 own house, and let him not see my face. So 
 Absalom returned to his own house, and saw 
 not the king's face. 
 
 Few things are more oflfensive in the East than to re- 
 fuse to show yourself to those who come to see you. Send 
 your servant to say you are engaged, or that the individual 
 may go, and he will be distressed, or enraged, and not 
 hesitate to express his feelings. Should there, however, 
 be any reason to hope, he will wait for hours at your door, 
 nay, he will come day after day, till he shall have seen 
 your face. They have an opinion, that if they once gain 
 admission into your presence, a great point is attained, and 
 so it is ; for, what with their eloquence, and teats, and 
 abject submissions, they seldom fail to make an impres- 
 sion. Even low people, who have no particular business, 
 often call upon you that they may be able to say that they 
 have seen vour face. When a person says he has not seen 
 the face of the great man, it means, Ihathe has not gained 
 his suit. See the high caste native passing along the road ;< 
 an humble suppliant is there to attract his attention : and let 
 him turn his face another way, and it is a dagger through 
 the poor man's soul. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. And when he polled his head, (for it wns 
 at every year's end that he polled it ; because 
 the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled 
 it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two 
 hundred shekels after the king's weight. 
 
 See on 1 Pet. 3. 3. 
 
 The eastern ladies are remarkable for the length, and 
 the great number of the tresses of their hair : the men 
 there, on the contrary, wear very little hair on their heads 
 now, but they do not seem always to have done so. That 
 the eastern women now are remarkable fbr the quantity of 
 the hair of their heads, and their pride in adorning it, ap- 
 pears from the quotation from Dr. Shaw under a preceding 
 observation. Lady Mary Wortley Montague abundantly 
 confirms it : their " hair hangs at fulllength behind," she 
 tells us, " divided into tresses, braided with pearl or riband, 
 which is also in great quantity. I never saw in my life so 
 many fine heads of hair. In one lady^ I have counted a 
 hundred and ten of these tresses, all natural ; but it must 
 be owned that every kind of beauty is more common here 
 than with us." The men there, on the contrary, shave all 
 the hair off" their heads, excepting one lock ; and those 
 that wear their hair are thought eifeminate. I have met 
 with both these particulars in Sir J. Chardin. As to the 
 last, he says in his note on 1 Cor. xi. 14, that what the 
 Apostle mentions there is the custom of the East : the raep 
 are shaved, the women nourish their hair with great fond- 
 ness, which they lengthen by tresses and tufts of silk, 
 down to the heels. The young men who wear their hair, 
 in the East, are looked upon as effeminate and infamous. 
 It appears from this passage of the Corinthians, that in 
 the days of St. Paul, the women wore their hair long, the 
 men short, and that the Apostle thought this a natural dis- 
 tinction. It does not however appear it was always thought 
 so, or, at least, that the wearing longhair by the men was 
 thought infamous, since it was esteemed a beauty in Absa- 
 
Chap. 15. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 217 
 
 lom, 2 Sam. xiv. 26. That passage is curiouS; and requires 
 some consideration, as being attended with some diliicul- 
 ties; and, lam afraid, somewhat improperly explained. 
 
 The weight of the hair, which seems to be enormously- 
 great, is the first thing that occurs to the mind. Two hun- 
 dred shekels, at two hundred and ninety grains each, make 
 forty-three thousand and eight hundred grains. This is 
 rather more than one hundred ounces avoirdupois, for four 
 himdred and thirty-seven grains and a half are equal to 
 yuch an ounce. It is a very good English head of hair, 
 I am told, that weighs five ounces; if Absalom's then 
 weighed one hundred ounces, it was very extraordinary. 
 Some veryjearned men, I think, have believed a royal 
 shekel was but half the w^eight of the sacred shekel ; be 
 it so ; yet fifty ounces, ten times the weight of a good 
 British head of hair, seems to be too great an allowance. 
 To suppose, as some have done, that adventitious matters, 
 united with the hair, are to be taken in to make up the 
 weight, seems to me not a little idle : what proof would 
 this have been of his possessing an extraordinary fine head 
 of hair, since it would be possible to attach to the hair of 
 a man half bald, substances that should weigh one hundred 
 ounces '? Commentators then should by no means talk of 
 the oil, the fragrant substances, the gold dust, with which 
 they suppose the hair might be powdered, as making up 
 this weight ; they might as well have added ornaments of 
 gold, ribands, or what answered them, artificial tresses of 
 hair, and all the matters that are now in different methods 
 fastened to the hair : but would not this have been ridicu- 
 lous '? It is more reasonable to say, the present reading 
 may be faulty, as in other cases there have frequently been 
 mistakes in numbers; or that we were not sure what num- 
 ber of grains two hundred shekels, after the king's weight, 
 was equal to ; than to attempt to remove the difficulty by 
 such an incompetent method, it was an uncommonly fine 
 head of hair, of very unusual weight, which is all that we 
 know with certainty about it. 
 
 The shaving off all this hair, for so the original word 
 signifies, is a second thing that seems very strange. It was 
 this thought, I should imagine, that led our translators to" 
 render the word by the English term polled, or cut short : 
 for it seems very unaccountable, that a prince who prided 
 himself so much in the quantity of his hair, should annually 
 shave it off" quite close ; and for what purpose 1 would not 
 the shortening of it have relieved him from its excessive 
 weight 1 not to say, that the hair of one year's growth can, 
 in the common course of things, be of no great length, or 
 weigh very much. The word elsewhere signifies to shave 
 off all the hair ; is opposed to polling, or trimming the hair 
 a little by shortening it; and was necessary in order to gain 
 the knowledge of the true weight of the hair. Mourners 
 shaved themselves. Job i. 20 ; and those that had been in a 
 state of bitterness when they presented themselves before 
 kings, as appears from what is related of Joseph, Gen. 
 xli. 14; if then "from the end of days," which is the origi- 
 nal expression, may be understood to mean at the end of 
 the time of his returning to his own house, and not seeing 
 i the king's face, instead of at the end of the year, then the 
 , shaving himself may be thought to express one single 
 i action, and to describe, in part, the manner in which he 
 presented himself before the king. This would make the 
 prophetic account very natural. Butthenthe word 133 kaied, 
 translated heavy, must be understood in another sense, a 
 sense in which it is»ometimes used, if we have no regard 
 to the Masoretic points, namely, as signifying in glory, or 
 honour, or something of that sort. And so the general 
 meaning of the passage will be^ "And when he shaved his 
 head, and it was in the end of the days, of the days of his 
 disgrace, that is, at the time in which he was to shave, 
 . because it was a glory upon him, and he shaved himself 
 and weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels 
 iafter the king's weight." But does not St. Paul suppose, 
 that nature teaches us, that if a man have long hair, it is 
 shame unto him, 1 Cor. xi. 14 1 He certainly does ; Ab- 
 salom's hair however is evidently spoken of in the book of 
 •Samuel, as what was thought to be part of his beauty, 2 
 Sam. xiv. 25 : whether it was that they had different notions 
 3n this point in the age of David ; or that they thought it 
 "ather effeminate, but however a beauty. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 13. And there came a messenger to David, 
 
 saying, The hearts of the men of Israel are after 
 Absalom. 14. And David said unto all his ser 
 vants that werewith him at Jerusalem, Arise, and 
 let us flee ; for we shall not else escape from 
 Absalom : make speed to depart, lest he over- 
 take us suddenly, and bring evil upon us, and 
 smite the city with the edge of the sword. 
 
 One cannot help being surprised, at first view, how so 
 excellent a prince as David was, who had exalted the king- 
 dom of Israel to so high a degree of glory and power, who 
 had subdued and rendered tributary all the neighbouring 
 nations, which had so often oppressed them, who had made 
 the best and wisest regulations for the honourable perform- 
 ance of the solemnities of their public worship, who, in 
 the whole course of his reign, had administered justice and 
 judgment to all his people, and who certainly deserved to 
 be loved and esteemed by all ranks and degrees of them, 
 for the happiness they enjoyed under his government ; I 
 say, one cannot help wondering at the sudden revolution 
 that was brought about in favour of an ungrateful and per- 
 fidious son, who was well known to have stained his hands 
 with the blood of his elder brother. But there were many 
 things that concurred to bring it about. By the death of 
 Amnon he became heir-apparent to the crown, and being 
 suspicious that the king his father might exclude him from 
 the succession, upon the account of his character and crimes, 
 he resolved to stick at no measures to obtain his ambitious 
 views, and put it out of his father's power to set him aside. 
 To accomplish thiSj being the handsomest man in Israel, 
 he showed himself everywhere in public, to captivate with 
 his person all that beheld him. He then set up a princely 
 equipage to attract their admiration of his splendour and 
 magnificence. He treated all that approached him with 
 great condescension and affability ; and as any were ap- 
 proaching the city from the other tribes of Israel, to have 
 their causes heard before the king, he, in the most friendly 
 manner, inquired of them, of what tribe they were, and 
 hoped their cause was good ; but reproached his father 
 with remissness of government, and neglect of his people ; 
 telling them, that how just soever their cause was, they 
 could have no audience, and that there was no man depu- 
 ted of the king to hear them ; wishing, for their sakes, that 
 he was con.stituted a judge in the land, that every man, who 
 had any suit or cause, might come to him, and have imme- 
 diate justice done him; and thus persuaded them to return 
 home, without making any application for a hearing, dis- 
 contented with the king's government, and highly pleased 
 with Absalom's condescension and goodness; greatly dis- 
 posed to spread disaffection and sedition in the places to 
 which they respectively belonged. And in order to secure 
 the popularity he courted, whoever approached him to pay 
 their respects to him, as the king's son, he familiarly took by 
 the hand and embraced him. By these means he w^on the af- 
 fections of great numbers among all the tribes ; who, though 
 probably at first they had no design of deposing the king, and 
 advancing Absalom in his room, wished to see hijin intrust- 
 ed with the principal administration of affairs under his 
 father, and were willing to enter into any measures wdth 
 him to obtain it, and to prevent his exclusion from the 
 throne after his father. Besides this, he sent emissaries 
 throughout all the tribes to strengthen his interest, and to 
 secure a good body of men to join him, whenever his affairs 
 required their assistance. 
 
 Absalom did not at first open his intentions of dethroning 
 his father, but wished onl5ito be a judge in the land ; fol- 
 low :ing herein the crafty counsel of Ahithophel, who was 
 David's chief counsellor, and treated by him as his intimate 
 friend, and who having been admitted to his secrets, proba- 
 bly informed Absalom of his father's design to exclude him 
 from the succession, in favour of one of his younger breth- 
 ren ; advising him, what steps he should take in order to 
 prevent it. His appearance to countenance the rebellion 
 allured many to become partners in it, as he was esteemed 
 the ablest politician in the kingdom. What added further 
 strength to it was, Amasa, David's own nephew, joined the 
 conspiracy, and putting himself at the head of the rebel 
 army, who, by his relation to the king, was a man of great 
 consequence, and an able soldier, and who therefore would 
 be thought by many incapable of entering into a conspiracy 
 against his uncle to dethrone him, without some very great 
 
218 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 15. 
 
 and justifiable causes. It may be added, that Absalom's 
 carrymg otf with him two hundred of the principal citizens 
 of Jerusalem, and retaining them with his followers at 
 lEebron, where the standard of the rebellion was first set 
 up, added to the credit of the cause, and drew in many to 
 abet and support it, who could not know but they engaged 
 voluntarily in Absalom's party, and were not drawn in to 
 espouse his interest by subtlety and force. Nor must it be 
 forgot here, that the providence of God permitted the con- 
 spiracy to go on without discovery, and to arise to that 
 height, as to drive David from his throne, and thus bring 
 on him the punishments he had threatened him with by 
 Nathan the prophet, for his sin in the matter of Bathsheba 
 and Uriah. All these circumstances together considered, 
 It is no wonder that Absalom should draw together a num- 
 ber of men sufficient to oppose and oppress his father, who 
 suspected nothing of the conspiracy formed against him, 
 and who appears to have had no part of his army with him, 
 but some of his officers and ordinary guards, and which 
 therefore made him take the resolution of retiring from 
 Jerusalem, to prevent his being surprised by a superior force, 
 that he knew himself unable to lesist. But then it should 
 be considered, that this sudden insurrection was not the 
 effect of a genera! or national disaffection to his person and 
 government. This is evident from many hints in the sa- 
 cred history. The best part of the inhabitants of Jerusalem 
 were firmly attached to him, and followed him in his retreat 
 from the capital, and all the country through which he went, 
 showed their affection to him by loud acclamations. The 
 Cherethites and Pelethites, the Gittites, and the ablest of his 
 officers, continued steadfast in their attachment to him, and 
 followed his fortune. The tribes on the other side Jordan 
 gladly received him, and the richest persons of that coun- 
 try supplied him and his forces with all necessary provi- 
 sions, and he soon collected among them an army suffi- 
 cient to check the rebels, and at one blow to crush the 
 lebellion. And this was no sooner known, than the tribes 
 in general were all in motion to show their loyalty to the 
 king, and restore him to his throne and government. The 
 truth is, that David was surprised unawares and unprovi- 
 ded, by a wicked and impious faction, who had, by their 
 emissaries, drawn together a large body of men, wherever 
 they could pick them up, among all the tribes ; gaining 
 over, probably, some well-minded persons, by lies, and slan- 
 derous reports of the king's government, and such others, 
 as, in all nations, are always ready to enter into any 
 measures of wickedness and violence, in hopes of making 
 their advantage by the public confusion and calamity, by 
 those methods which are constantly practised by profligate 
 conspirators, in order to gratify their pride, ambition, and 
 revenge, though at the expense of the religion, liberties, 
 and prosperity of their country. And it is therefore no won- 
 der, that this rebellion, which was evidently contrary to the 
 general sense and inclination of the people, was so suddenly 
 suppressed, and David's restoration to his throne and gov- 
 ernment was immediately resolved on by the unanimous 
 consent of all the tribes of Israel ; whereby God was gra- 
 ciously pleased to put an end to his troubles, bringing him 
 in safety ifo his capital and palace, and preserving his life, 
 till he happily settled the succession on Solomon his son, 
 the wisest of princes, and the most prosperous raona,rch in 
 the world.— Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 30. And David went up by the ascent of 
 mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had 
 his head covered, and he went barefoot. 
 
 Thus did David conduct himself in his sorrow, when 
 Absalom had rebelled against him. But the Hindoos do 
 not cover the head ; they take a part of their robe and 
 cover the face. In going to a funeral, the turban is gener- 
 ally taken off, and a part of the garment is held over the 
 face. Nor is this merely common at funerals, for on all 
 occasions of deep sorrow they observe the same thing. At 
 such times, also, they always go " barefoot." — Roberts. 
 
 This was an indication of great distress : for in ancient 
 times the shoes of great and wealthy persons were made of 
 very rich materials, and ornamented with jewels, gold, and 
 pilver. When any great cniamity befell them, either pub- 
 lic or private, they not only stripped thenaselves of tnese 
 ornaments, but of their very shoes, and walked barefoot. 
 
 In this manner, prisoners taken in war w-ere forced to walk, 
 both for punishment and disgrace. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 32. And it came to pass, that when David 
 was come to the top of the mount, where he 
 worshipped God, behold, Hushai the Archite 
 came to meet him with his coat rent, and earth 
 upon his head: 33. Unto whom David said. 
 If thou passest on with me, then thou shalt be 
 a burden unto me : 34. But if thou return to 
 the city, and say unto Absalom, I will be thy 
 servant, O king; as I have been thy father's 
 servant hitherto, so toill 1 now also he thy ser- 
 vant : then mayest thou for me defeat the coun- 
 sel of Ahithophel. 
 
 Mr. Bayle calls this " the most treacherous piece of villa- 
 ny that can be imagined." But he might have spared the 
 reflection, for he could easily have produced instances of 
 much greater villany than this, practised for the most crim- 
 inal and execrable purposes. Hushai's treachery w^as to 
 prevent the effects of the most detestable treachery, and an 
 instance of loyalty and fidelity to his king and country. 
 His villany was the dictate of public spirit and patriotism, 
 and to counteract the plots of a most desperate and bloody 
 villain, who advised the murder of a father, and incest 
 with his wdves, in support of an unnatural, ambiiious, and 
 desperate son. How far these policies of princes and great 
 men, are reconcileable with the rules of those rigid casuists 
 of which Mr. Bayle speaks, I pretend not to determine. 
 This I know, that without these and the like stratagems, 
 government cannot be frequently supported, and that the 
 most nefarious attempts te destroy all that is valuable to 
 mankind can never be defeated; and that they have been 
 practised by the best and wisest of princes, who have been 
 so far from being blamed on account of them, as that they 
 have been recorded as the proofs of their wisdom, and re- 
 • gard to the honour and interest of their country. And this 
 Mr. Bayle himself confesses, when he says, that "strata^ 
 gems of this nature are undoubtedly very laudable, if we 
 judge of things according to human prudence, and the pol- 
 itics of sovereigns." If David therefore acted in this af- 
 fair, according to the rules of human prudence, and the 
 constant policy of sovereigns, why should he be censured 
 n;iore than other great and excellent princes, who have act- 
 ed like him 1 Especially as he had none of those rigid 
 casuists about him, who judged this conduct unworthy a 
 saint, and an honest man. Supposing this conduct not quite 
 reconcileable with the rules of rigid casuistry, yet, if David 
 was not acquainted with them, he might possibly be a saint 
 and an honest man, if he did not regard them. If Hushai 
 had stabbed Absalom to the heart, under pretence of friend- 
 ship, as Brutus did Caesar, must not those who defend Bru- 
 tus, defend Hushai tool But is it a more base and crimi- 
 nal part, by pretences of friendship, to betray a tyrant's, a 
 usurper's, a parricide's counsels, than, in like circumstances, 
 to assassinate himl I leave David's censurers fairly to 
 state this important point of casuistiy : Whether it be in it- 
 self absolutely unlawful to make use of stratagems, i. e. 
 arts of deception, in the management of wars between 
 princes and states: If not, in what instances they are law- 
 ful, and reconcileable with the rigid yles of morality and 
 virtue. "When these points are settled, we shall be the bel- 
 ter able to determine concerning the morality and honesty 
 of David and his friend Hushai in the instance before us; 
 and, till this is done, Mr. Basic's charges will appear to be 
 uncandid and groundless. I have only to add, that David's 
 character, as a man after God's own heart, in the scripture 
 sense of it, by no means implies, that, as a prince, he should 
 always act according to the rules of morality laid down by 
 rigid casuists; or, that he should not, in the management 
 of his wars, and defeating unnatural rebellions, act with the 
 U5ual policy of wise and good princes, and make use of 
 proper stratagems, when necessary to the defence of his 
 countrv, and the safety of his person. 
 
 In Cicero's consulate, the conspiracy of Catiline broke 
 rut, and it was fully discovered by that great consul's vigi- 
 lance, prudence, and policy. Ambassadors from the AUo- 
 broges, the ancient lahabitants of Savoy and Piedmont^ 
 were then at Ronx » solicit the senate for the removal ot 
 
, Chap. 16, 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 aio 
 
 their grievances. Umbrenius, one of he conspirators, at- 
 tempted to bring ov^er these ambaisado s, to engage in the 
 scheme that had been concerted for the destruction of 
 Rome. In order to this he opened to them the nature of 
 the conspiracy, named the principal persons concerned in 
 it, and promised them every thing they desired, if they 
 would engage their nation to join with them in support of 
 it. The ambassadors, upon considering the affair, discov- 
 ered the whole conspiracy to Fabius Sanga, as they had 
 bjiin informed of it by Umbrenius. Sanga immediately 
 acquaints the consul with it, and introduced the ambassa- 
 dors themselves to him. What doth he do 1 Why, like a 
 very wicked and ungodly man, as the s-crupulous and 
 righteous Mr. Bayle to be sure thought him, bid them car- 
 ry on the pretence, warmly favouring the conspiracy, go to 
 as many of the conspirators as they could, make them fair 
 promises, and use all their endeavours fully to discover 
 them. The ambassadors, as Cicero ordered, met them, 
 and demanded from the chief of them an oath, to be signed 
 wiih their own hand, that their countrymen might be more 
 easily induced, to give them that assistance which they de- 
 sired of them. They all but one, without suspicion of any 
 design, signed the oath. The ambass9,dors discovered all 
 to Cicero, who immediately seized the principal conspira- 
 tors, and greatly rejoiced, that as the conspiracy was dis- 
 covered, the city was delivered from the danger that im- 
 mediately threatened it. The senate thought that Cicero 
 had acted a noble patriotic part, for they immediately de- 
 creed, that public thanks should be given to him in the 
 most solemn manner, by whose virtue, counsel, and provi- 
 dence, the republic was delivered from the extremest dan- 
 gers; and that a public thanksgiving should be rendered to 
 the gods, in Cicero's name, for. his having delivered the 
 city from being laid in ashes, the citizens from a massacre, 
 and Italy from a war. Now did Cicero act in this affair as 
 a patriot and an honest man 1 Or did he, by this policy, 
 damn himself, and damn the ambassadors'? by causing 
 ihem to feign, that they embraced the party of those men, 
 they designed effectually to destroy 1 What censure would 
 he not have undergone, had he suffered the conspiracy to 
 lake place, and his country to be ruined, by refusing to 
 make use of that policy which was necessary to discover 
 and defeat the conspiracy 1 Cf two evils, it is an old max- 
 im, a man must choose the least, when he is under the ne- 
 cessity of submitting to one. Thus were David and Cicero 
 circumstanced. They both chose the patriotic part; and, 
 as Cicero is justly celebrated as the Father and Saviour of 
 his country, from the ruin that was intended, David w^ill 
 deserve the like commendation, for defeating, by like meas- 
 ures, the projects of impious conspirators, and delivering 
 the nation from the destruction that threatened them, — 
 Chandler. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Ver. 1 . And when David was a little past the top 
 of the hill, behold, Ziba the servant of Mephi- 
 ■: bosheth met him, with a couple of asses sad- 
 
 • died, and upon them two hundred loaves of 
 bread, and a hundred bunches of raisins, and a 
 hundred of summer fruits, and a bottle of wine. 
 
 • See on 2 Kings 4. 8. 
 
 Ziba met David, according to the sacred historian, 2 Sam. 
 ' xvi. 1, with a couple of asses, and upon them two hundred 
 ; loaves of bread, a hundred bunches of raisins, a hundred 
 ; of summer fruits, and a bottle of wine. These summer 
 \ fruits the Septuagint supposes were dates, but the more 
 common opinion is that they were figs, which it seems was 
 
 ■ that also of the Chaldee paraphrast. Grotius, however, 
 ; supposes the original word signifies the fruits of trees in 
 ; general. I cannot adopt any of these opinions. If the 
 ; notes of distinction are not numerous enough, or sufficiently 
 ; clear, to determine with precision what the fruit was, I 
 ' believe thev are sufficient to satisfv us that these authors 
 ; were mistaken. We may gather three things relating to 
 
 them: that ihty were of some considerable size, since their 
 
 • quantity was estimated by tale; that they came before the 
 
 ■ bean season was ended, for after this we find that the inhab- 
 
 ■ vtants of the country beyond Jordan sent to David, along 
 I with other provisions, quantities of beans, 2 Sam. xviii. 28, 
 I they being things, according to Dr. Shaw, that, after they 
 
 are boiled and stewed with oil and garlic, constitute the 
 principal food, in the spring, of persons of all distinctions; 
 and they were thought by Ziba a suitable refreshment to 
 those that were travelling in a wilderness, where it was 
 to be supposed they would be thirsty as well as hungry. 
 Nothing then could be more unhappy, or more strongly 
 mark out the inattention of the translators of the Septuagint 
 for it cannot be imagined they were ignorant of these maC 
 ters, than the rendering this word, in this place, dates, 
 which are neither produced in summer, nor suited to allay 
 the heat of that season : Dr. Pococke observing that they 
 are not ripe till November ; and that they are esteemed of 
 a hot nature. Providence seeming to have designed them, 
 as they are warm food, to comfort the stomach, he thinks, 
 during the cold season, in a country where it has not given 
 wine, for he is there speaking concerning Egypt. Wher 
 then I find that watermelons grow spontaneously in thes<, 
 hot countries, are made use of by the Arabs of the Holy 
 Land in summer instead of water, to quench their thirst, 
 and are purchased as of the greatest use to travellers in 
 thirsty deserts ; and that cucumbers are very much used 
 still in that country to mitigate the heat : I am very much 
 inclined to believe these summer fruits were not the pro- 
 duce of trees, but of this class of herbs, which creep along 
 the ground, and produce fruits of a coolmg moisture, and 
 very large in proportion to the size of the plant. They 
 could scarcely however be watermelons, I imagine, because 
 they do not begin to gather them before June ; but cucum- 
 bers, which come in May, and were actually eaten in Gali- 
 lee the latter end of that month by Dr. Pococke, he having 
 stopped at an Arab tent, where they prepared him eggs 
 and sour milk, he tells us, cutting into it raw cucumbers 
 as a cooling diet in that season, which he found very hot ■. 
 cucumbers continued at Aleppo to the end of July, and are 
 brought again to market in September and October, and 
 consequently are contemporaries with grapes and olives, 
 according to Jer. xl. 10—12, as well as with beans and 
 lentils. Dr. Russel also tells us fhat the squash comes in 
 towards the end of September, and continues all the year; 
 but that the orange-shaped pumpion is more common in the 
 summer months. Of one or other of these kinds of fruit, I 
 should think the writer of 2 Sam. designed to be under- 
 stood : they are all more or less of considerable size ; they 
 are contemporary with beans; and fit for them that have 
 to travel through a dry wilderness, in the latter part of the 
 spring, when the weather grows hot, as Pococke found it, 
 about which time, from the circumstance of the beans and 
 the lentils, it is plain that David fled from Absalom. If this 
 be allowed, it will appear that they were called summer 
 fruits, from their being eaten to allay the summer heals ; 
 not frona their being dried in the summer, as Vatablus 
 strangely imagines; nor from their being produced only 
 that time of the year; for this passage shows that they 
 were come to maturity before beans went out, and conse- 
 quently before summer. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 3. And the kinof said. And where is thj 
 master's son ? And Ziba said unto the king 
 behold he abideth at Jerusalem: for he said, 
 to-day shall the house of Israel restore me the 
 kingdom of my father. 4. Then said the king 
 to Ziba, Behold, thine are all that pertained 
 unto Mephibosheth. And Ziba said, I humbly 
 beseech thee that I may find grace in thy sight, 
 my lord, O king. 
 
 Not the least material exception that objectors make 
 to David's conduct, in this period of time, is his making i 
 grant of Mephibosheth's estate to a perfidious servant 
 without ever giving the master a fair hearing. But, how 
 could David have leisure to send for Mephibosheth from 
 mount Olivet to Jerusalem, and inquire into the merits of 
 the cause depending between him and his servant, when he 
 was in so great a hurry, and under flight from the arms of 
 his rebel son'? Or how could he suppose that Ziba could 
 have dared to have told him so notorious a lie, when it 
 might in a short time be disproved 1 Every circumstance, 
 in short, on Ziba's side, looked well, but none on his mas- 
 ter's. To his master, David had been extremely kind, m 
 restoring him to the forfeited estate of his grandfather Saul,. 
 
220 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 16 
 
 and in allowing him to eat at his own table, as one of the 
 .king's sons; and now, at the general rendezvous of his 
 friends, David might well have expected that the person to 
 whom he had extended so many favours, should not have 
 been so negligent of his duty, as to absent himself, unless it 
 had been upon some extraordinary business ; and therefore, 
 when Ziba acquaints him with the occasion of his absence, 
 though it was a mere fiction, yet with David it might find 
 a readier credence, because, at this time, he had reason to 
 mistrust everybody ; and seeing his own family discon- 
 certed and broken, might think the crown liable to fall to 
 any new claimant that could pretend to the same right of 
 succession that Mephibosheth might. On the contrary, 
 every thing appeared bright and plausible on Ziba's side. 
 He, though but a servant, came to join the king, and in- 
 stead of adhering to his master's pretended schemes of 
 advancement, had expressed his duty to his rightful sov- 
 ereign, in bringing him a considerable present, enough to 
 engage his good opinion. The story that he told of his 
 master likewise, though utterly false, was cunningly con- 
 trived, and fitly accommodated to the nature of the times ; 
 so that, in this situation of affairs, as wise a man as David 
 might have been induced to believe the whole to be true, 
 and upon the presumption of its being so, might have pro- 
 ceeded to pass a judgment of forfeiture (as in most eastern 
 countries every crime against the state was always attend- 
 ed with such a forfeiture) upon Mephibosheth 's estate, and 
 to consign the possession of it to another. All that David 
 can therefore be blamed for, in this whole transaction, is 
 an error in judgment, even when he was imposed upon by 
 the plausible tale of a sycophant, and had no opportunity of 
 coming at the truth ; but upon his return to Jerusalem, 
 when Mephibosheth appears before him, and pleads his 
 own cause, we find this the decision of it, — " Why speakest 
 thou any more of thy matters 1 I have said, thou and Ziba 
 divide the land :" which words must not be understood as 
 if he appointed at the time an equal division of the estate 
 between Mephibosheth and his servant, (for where would 
 the justice of such a sentence be 1) but rather, that he re- 
 voked the order he had given to Ziba, upon the supposed 
 forfeiture of his master, and put things now upon the same 
 establishment they were at first. " I have said," i.e. " My 
 first grant shall stand, when I decreed that Mephibosheth 
 should be lord of the whole estate, and Ziba his steward to 
 manage it for him." Thus, though we are not obliged to 
 vindicate David in every passage of his life, and think 
 some of the crying sins he was guilty of utterly inexcusa- 
 ble, yet (if we except these) we cannot but think that, 
 although he was a very tender and indulgent parent, yet he 
 was no encourager of vice in his own family, or tame con- 
 niver at it in others, had he not been restrained, by reasons 
 of state, sometimes from punishing it ; that he was true to 
 his promises, just in his distributions, and prudent, though 
 not crafty, in his military transactions ; *' of a singular 
 presence of mind, (as Josephus speaks of him,) to make the 
 best of what was before him, and of as sharp a foresight 
 for improving of all advantages, and obviating all difficul- 
 ties, that were like to happen ;" tender to all persons in 
 distress, kind to his friends, forgiving to his enemies, and, 
 when at any time he was forced to use severity, was only 
 in retaliation of what other people had done to him. — 
 Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 13. And as David and his men went by the 
 way, Shimei went along- on the hill's side over 
 ag-ainst him, and cursed as he went, and threw 
 stones at him, and cast dust. 
 
 Who, in the East, has not oflen witnessed a similar scene 1 
 Listen to the maledictions : they are of such a nature that 
 evil spirits only could have suggested them. Look at the 
 enraged miscreant : he dares not come near for fear of 
 punishment, but he stands at a distance, vociferates his 
 imprecaiions, violently throws about his hands ; then stoops 
 to the ground, and takes up handfuls of dust, throws it in 
 the air* and exclaims, " Soon shalt thou be as that — thy 
 mouth shall soon be full of it — look, look, thou cursed one, 
 as this dust, so shalt thou be." — Roberts. 
 
 In the East, the ris^ht of calling an offender to account is 
 claimed either by the person who receives the injury, or 
 bis nearest relation; and the same person, with the per- 
 
 mission or connivance of his people, sustains at once the 
 character of party, judge, and executioner. In such a 
 state of things, we are not to be surprised if the exercise of 
 justice be often precipitate and tumuhuary. The act of 
 the Philistines, inhuming the spouse of Samson and her 
 father with fire, was entirely of this character ; not the 
 result of a regular sentence, but the summary vengeance 
 of an incensed multitude. In the law of Moses, the right 
 of the private avenger was distinctly recognised ; but to 
 prevent the dreadful effects of sudden and personal ven- 
 geance, cities of refuge were appointed at convenient dis- 
 tances through the land of promise, to which the manslayer 
 might flee for safety, till he coul,d be brought to a regular 
 trial, before a court of justice. In almost every part of 
 Asia, those who demand justice against a criminal throw 
 dust upon him, signifying that he deserves to lose his life, 
 and be cast into the grave ; and that this is the true inter- 
 pretation of the action, is evident from an imprecation in 
 common use among the Turks and Persians, Be covered 
 with earth; Earth be upon thy head. We have two re- 
 markable instances of casting dust recorded in scripture ; 
 the first is that of Shimei, who gave vent to his secret hos- 
 tility to David, when he fled before his rebellious son, by 
 throwing stones at him, and casting dust. It was an an- 
 cient custom, in those warm and arid countries, to lay 
 the dust before a person of distinction, and particularly 
 before kings and princes, by sprinkling the ground with 
 water. To throw dust into the air while a person was 
 passing, was therefore an act of great disrespect ; to do so 
 before a sovereign prince, an indecent outrage. But it is 
 clear from the explanation of the custom, that Shimei 
 meant more than disrespect and outrage to an afliicted king, 
 whose subject he was ; he intended to signify by that action, 
 that David was unfit to live, and that the time was at last 
 arrived to offer him a sacrifice to the ambition and ven- 
 geance of the house of Saul.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 20. Then said Absalom to Ahithophel, Give 
 counsel among you what we shall do. 21. And 
 Ahithophel said unto Absalom, Go in unto thy 
 father's concubines, which he hath left to keep 
 the house ; and all Israel shall hear that thou 
 art abhorred of thy father. 
 
 The wives of the conquered king were always the prop- 
 erty of the conqueror : and, in possessing these, he ap- 
 peared to possess the right to the kingdom. Herodolus^ b. , 
 iii, cap. 68. informs us, that Smerdis having seized on the- 
 Persian throne, after the death of Cambyses, espoused all 
 the wives of his predecessor. 
 
 The choosing or confirming of a new king in Guinea, 
 seldom continues long in dispute ; for the eldest son no 
 sooner hears of the king's death, than he immediately 
 makes his interest among his friends, to take possession of 
 the late king's court and wives : and succeeding happily ir 
 these particulars, he need not doubt the remainder, for th( 
 commonalty will not easily consent that af;er that he shslj 
 be driven from the throne : this seems somewhat like Atw 
 salom's design on his father David. To accomplish this 
 design, the younger brother's party are always carefu' 
 enough that he is near at hand, in order to take possessioi| 
 of the court. (Bosman's Guinea.) The name of Quiteva 
 is common to the sovereign lord of the country bordering 
 on the river Sofala in Ethiopia. He maintains a numbei 
 of wives, the chief of whom are his near relations, ant 
 are denominated his queens ; the residue are regardec 
 merely as concubines. As soon as the Q,uiteva ceases U 
 live, a successor is chosen, capable of governing with wis 
 dom and prudence ; and, indeed, should he be deficient h 
 this respect, it would be enough that a majority of tb| 
 king's concubines should join in his favour, as on thes< 
 the possession of the throne depends. He therefore re 
 pairs to the royal palace, where he meets Avith some of th( 
 concubines of the late king, and with their consent b€ 
 seats himself on the throne prepared for him in the mid.st 
 of a large hall ; when seated here, a curtain is drawn he- 
 fore him and his wives: hence he issues orders for hi? 
 proclamation through the streets ; this is the signal for the 
 people to flock to render him homage and swear obedience, 
 a ceremony which is performed amid great rejoicings.— 
 
 BURDER. 
 
Chap. 17. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 221 
 
 From the polygamy of the Israelitish monarcns, there 
 •\Tose a singular law, which I can only illustrate by exam- 
 plea from the Bible, without finding any thing similar in 
 profane history; which, however, only makes these exam- 
 ples the clearer. It consisted in this, that the successor 
 to the crown inherited the seraglio of his predecessor ; 
 and it was considered as a step to the throne, even to 
 marry the mistresses of the deceased monarch. In this 
 way, David succeeded to the concubines of Saul, although 
 he was his father-in-law, 2 Sam. xii. 8. And after he had 
 fled from Absalom, Ahithophel, who is described as a man 
 of the greatest abilities, as well as the greatest wicked- 
 ness, counselled this rebellious son to lie publicly with his 
 father's ten concubines, to annihilate, in hesitating minds, 
 all hope of a reconciliation between them ; 2 Sam. xvi. 
 21 — 23. Now incest is such an abominable crime, and so 
 expressly contrary to the Mosaic law, that such proceedings 
 must have been followed by the most direful consequences, 
 if these concubines had not" been considered, not as David's, 
 but as the king's ; and as belonging to the state, not to the 
 individual ; so that sleeping with them formed part of the 
 ceremony of taking possession of the throne. — After David's 
 death, Bathsheba, the mother of his successor, Solomon, 
 was entreated by his brother Adonijah, to obtain the royal 
 permission to marry Abishag, the Shunamite. But Solo- 
 mon so fully saw through his brother's designs, and what 
 effect the acceding to his request would have among the 
 people, that he answered his mother, " Rather ask the 
 kingdom for him too," and immediately caused him to be 
 put to death, 1 Kings ii. 13 — 25. Of the origin of this 
 strange law I can find no traces in the great kingdoms of 
 the East ; and yet most certainly these kings of Israel, as yet 
 but novices in royalty, must have derived it, not from Is- 
 raelitish, but foreign usage. It could scarcely have arisen 
 in an hereditary kingdom, in which such incestuous proce- 
 dure would have become too notorious and disgusting. 
 Most probably it first arose among the beggarly elective 
 monarchies in the neighbourhood, where it was found too 
 expensive to provide every new king with a new seraglio; 
 perhaps in the kingdom of Edom, whose needy practices 
 ihe Israelites were wont at first to adopt. After Solomon's 
 time, I find no further traces of it. — Michaelis. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 8. For, said Hushai, thou knowest thy fa- 
 ther and his men, that they be mighty men, and 
 they be chafed in their minds, as a bear robbed 
 of her whelps in the field : and thy father is a 
 man of war, and will not lodge with the people. 
 
 The Hindoos are as much afraid of bears as any other 
 animal in the forest ; hence, when the letter-carriers and 
 j others have to travel through districts infested by them, they 
 i are always armed with a crooked knife, in the shape of a 
 I sickle: thus, when the bear is preparing to give them a hug, 
 i one cut from the instrument will send it off. When the fe- 
 i male is robbed of her whelps, she is said to be more fierce 
 I than any other animal : hence, many sayings refer to her 
 : rage, and are applied to the fury of violent men. " I will 
 ; tear thee to pieces as a bear which has cubbed." " Begone, 
 ! or I will jump upon thee as a bear." When a termagant 
 : goes with her children to scold, it is said, "There goes the 
 ' she-bear and her whelps." — Roberts. 
 1 The furious passions of the female bear never mount so 
 ; high, nor burn so fiercely, as when she is deprived of her 
 i youn;?. When she returns to her den, and misses the ob- 
 * ject of her love and care, she becomes almost frantic with 
 ' rac:e. Disregarding every consideration of danger to her- 
 self, she attacks with great ferocity every animal that comes 
 in her way; and in the bitterness of her heart will dare to 
 : attack eveji a band of armed men. The Russians of Kamt- 
 ; schatka never venture to fire on a young bear when the 
 ; mother is near : for if the cub drop, she becomes enraged 
 1 to a degree little short of madness, and if she gets sight of 
 ' the enemy, will only quit her revenge with her life. (Cook's 
 Vdyages.) A more desperate attempt can scarcely be per- 
 ! formed than to carry off her young in her absence. Her 
 ' scent enables her to track the plunderer; and unless he 
 '. has reached some place of safety before the infuriated ani- 
 mal overtake him, his only safety is in dropping one of the 
 cubs, and continuing to flee ; for the mother, attentive to 
 
 its safety, carries it home to her den before she renews the 
 
 pursuit. — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 12. So shall we come upon him in some 
 place where he shall be found, and we will light 
 upon him as the dew falleth on the ground. 
 
 This is very beautiful and expressive. The dew in 
 Palestine, as in, several other climates, falls fast and sudden, 
 and is therefore no unapt emblem of an active, expeditious 
 soldiery. It was, perhaps, for this reason that the Romans 
 called their light-armed forces Rorarii. The dew falls 
 upon every spot of the earth ; not a blade of grass escapes 
 it. A numerous army resembles it in this respect. It is 
 able to search everywhere. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 13. Moreover, if he be gotten into a city, 
 then shall all Israel bring ropes to that city, 
 and we will draw it into the river, until there 
 be not one small stone found there. 
 
 On advancing, the chopdars or heralds proclaimed the 
 titles of this princely cow-keeper, Futty Sihng, in the usual 
 hyperbolical style. One of the most insignificant looking 
 men I ever saw, then became the destroyer of nations, the 
 leveller of mountains, the exhauster of the ocearw After 
 commanding every inferior mortal to make way for this 
 exalted prince, the heralds called aloud to the animal cre- 
 ation, Retire, ye serpents; fly, ye locusts; approach not, 
 guanas, lizards, and reptiles, while your lord and master 
 condescends to set his foot on the earth ! Arrogant as this 
 language may appear, it is less so than the oriental pageant- 
 ry in general. The sacred writings afford many instances 
 of such hyperbole. None more so than Hushai's speech to 
 Absalom. — Forbes. 
 
 Ver. 17. Now Jonathan and Ahimaaz stayed by 
 En-rogel : (for they might not be seen to come 
 into the city :) and a wench went and told them : 
 and they went and told King David. 
 
 ■ In the East, the washing of foul linen is performed by 
 women by the sides of rivers and fountains. Dr. Chandler 
 {Travels in Asia Minor, p. 21) says, that "the women re- 
 sort to the fountains by the houses, each with a two-han- 
 dled earthen jar on her back, or thrown over her shoulder, 
 for water. They assemble at one without the village or 
 town, if no river be near, to wash their linen, which is af- 
 terward spread on the ground or bushes to dry." May not 
 this circumstance, says Mr. Harmer, serve to confirm the 
 conjecture, that the young woman that was sent to En-rogel, 
 went out of the city with a bundle of linen, as if she were 
 going to wash if? Nothing was more natural, or better 
 calculated to elude jealousy. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. And the woman took and spread a 
 covering over the well's mouth, and spread 
 ground corn thereon ; and the thing was not 
 known. 
 
 This was done to conceal Jonathan and Ahimaaz, who 
 had gone down the well to escape from the servants of Ab- 
 salom. Wells in the East have their mouths level with the 
 ground, hence, nothing is more easy than to put a mat or 
 covering over the opening to conceal them from the sight. 
 Who has not seen corn or flour spread on mats in the sun 
 to dry 1 The woman affected to have this object in view 
 when she spread a covering over the well: her " ground 
 corn" was spread thereon to dry in the sun. The men 
 were in the well, and when Absalom's servants came, and 
 inquired, " Where is Ahimaaz and Jonathan ;" she said, 
 " They be gone over the brook of water." In the Kandian 
 war great numbers were required to follow the army as 
 bearers, cooks, and messengers, and such was the aversion 
 of the people to the duty, that government was obliged to 
 use force to compel them to go. And it was no uncommon 
 thing, when the officers were seen to approach a cottage, for 
 the husband or sons to be concealed as were Ahimaaz and 
 Jon athan . — R oberts. 
 
2fe2 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap, la 
 
 Ver. 28. Brought beds, and basins, and earthen 
 vessels, and wheat, and barley, and flour, and 
 parched corn, and beans, and lentiles, and parch- 
 ed 'pulse. 
 
 Parched corn is a kind of food still retained in the East, 
 as Hasselquist informs us : " On the road from Acre to 
 Seide, we saw a herdsman eating his dinner, consisting of 
 half-ripe ears of wheat, which he roasted and ate with as 
 good an appetite as a Turk does his pillau. In Egypt such 
 food is much eaten by the poor, being the ears of maize or 
 Turkish wheat, and of their durra, which is a kind of millet. 
 When this food was first invented, art was in a simple state ; 
 yet the custom is still continued in some nations, where the 
 inhabitants have not even at this time learned to pamper 
 nature." The flour of parched barley is the chief provision 
 which the Moors of West Barbary make for travelling. 
 It is indeed much used as a part of their diet at home. 
 " What is most used by travellers is zumeet, tumeet, or 
 flour of parched barley for limereece. They are ail three 
 made of parched barley-flour, which they carry in a leath- 
 ern satchel. Zumeet is the flower mixed with honey, but- 
 ter, and spice ; tumeet is the same flour done up with origan 
 oil ; and limereece is only mixed with water, and so drank. 
 This quenches thirst much better than water alone, satiates 
 a hungry appetite, cools and refreshes tired and weary 
 spirits, overcoming those ill effects- which a hot sun ancl 
 fatiguing journey might occasion." (Jones.) Mr. Harmer 
 proposes this extract as an illustration of the passage now 
 cited. — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 29. And honey, and butter, and sheep, and 
 cheese of kine, for David, and for the people. 
 
 This, perhaps, was flesh of kine, or beef, prepared in 
 such a manner as we call potted, by beating and bruising. 
 The eastern people in modern times prepare potted flesh 
 for food on a march or journey. Thus Busbequius, speak- 
 ing of the Turkish soldiers going on an expedition into 
 Persia, says, " Some of them filled a leathern bag with beef 
 dried, and reduced to a kind of meal, which they use with 
 great advantage, as afibrding a strong nourishment." And 
 Dr. Shaw mentions potted flesh as part of the provisions 
 carried with him in his journey through the Arabian des- 
 erts. — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 8. For the battle was there scattered over 
 the face of all the country : and the wood de- 
 voured more people that day than the sword 
 devoured. 
 
 The land of promise cannot boast, like many other coun- 
 tries, of extensive woods ; but considerable thickets of trees 
 and of reeds sometimes arise to diversify and adorn the 
 scene. Between the Lake Samochonites and the sea of 
 Tiberias, the river Jordan is almost concealed by shady 
 trees from the view of the traveller. When the waters of 
 the Jordan are low, the Lake Samochonites is only a marsh, 
 for the most part dry and overgrown with shrubs and reeds. 
 The lake of Tiberias is bordered with reeds; while the 
 banks of the river on both sides, are shaded with planes, 
 alders, poplars, tamarisks, and reeds of different kinds. In 
 these thickets, among other ferocious animals, the wild 
 boar seeks a covert from the burning rays of the sim. 
 Large herds of them are sometimes to be seen on the banks 
 of the river, near the sea of Tiberias, lying among the reeds, 
 or feeding under the trees. Such moist and shady places are 
 in all countries the favourite haunts of these fierce and dan- 
 gerous animals. Those marshy coverts are styled woods 
 in the sacred scriptures ; for the "wild boar of the wood is the 
 name which that creature receives from the royal Psalmist : 
 " The boar out of the wood doth waste it; "and the wild 
 oeast of the field doth devour it." The wood of Ephraim, 
 where the battle was fought between the forces of Ab- 
 salom and the servants of David, was probably a place 
 of the same kind ; for the sacred historian observes, that 
 the wood devoured more people that day, than the sword 
 devoured. Some have supposed the meaning of this pas- 
 sfige to be, that the soldiers of Absalom were destroyed by 
 the wild beasts of the wood ; but it can scarcely be supposed, 
 
 thai in the reign of David, when the land of promise was 
 crowded with inhabitants, the wild beasts could be so nu- 
 merous in one of the woods as to cause such a destruction. 
 But if their numbers had been so great, we know that, un- 
 less they had been detained contrary to their natural dis- 
 positions by the miraculous interposition of Heaven, for 
 the purpose of executing his righteous vengeance on the 
 followers of Absalom, tetimidated by the approach of two 
 hostile armies, and still more by the tumult of the battle, 
 they must have sought their safety in flight, rather than 
 have stayed to devour the discomfited party. Besides, we 
 do not hear that one of David's men perished by the wood : 
 were they miraculously preserved ; or, were the wild beasts 
 able to distinguish between the routed army and the victors, 
 and politic enough to side with the strongest % We are not 
 without an express revelation, or at least without necessity, 
 to suppose a miraculous interposition. The scene of the 
 expeditions which the Turks undertook against Faccar- 
 dine, the famous emir, in the fifteenth century, was chiefly 
 in the woods of mount Lebanon, which all travellers agree 
 furnish a retreat to numerous wild beasts, yet the historian 
 says not one word of either Turk or Maronite being injured 
 by them, in his whole narrative. Absalom himself was 
 the only person who properly perished by the wood; being 
 caught by the hair of his head, of which he had been so 
 vain, in the branches of a large oak, where Joab found him, 
 and thrust him through with a dart. But, supposing the 
 wood of Ephraim to have been a morass covered with trees 
 and bushes, like the haunts of the wild boar near the banks 
 of Jordan, the difficulty is easily removed. It is certain 
 that such a place has more than once proved fatal to con- 
 tending armies, partly by suffocating those who in the hurry 
 of flight inadvertently venture over places incapable of 
 supporting them, and partly by retarding them till their 
 pursuers come up and cut them to pieces. In this manner 
 a greater number of men than fell in the heat of battle may 
 be destroyed. The archbishop of Tyre informs us, that 
 one of the Christian kings of Jerusalem lost some of his 
 troops in a marshy vale of this country, from their igno- 
 rance of the paths which lead through it, although he had 
 no enemy to molest his march. The number of those who 
 died was small ; but in what numbers would they have 
 perished, may we suppose, had they been forced to flee, 
 like the men of Absalom, before a victorious and exasper- 
 ated enemy % Lewis II., king of Hungary, lost his life in 
 a bog in his own kingdom, in the sixteenth century: and 
 according to Zozimus, Decius the Roman emperor perish- 
 ed in a fen, with his whole army. It may, therefore, be 
 justly concluded, that Absalom's army perished neither by 
 the trees of the wood, like their guilty leader, nor by the 
 wild beasts which occupied its recesses ; but by the deceit- 
 ful quagmires with which it abounded. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. And Joab said unto the man that told 
 him, And, behold, thou sawest him ; and why 
 didst thou not smite him there to the ground ? 
 and I would have given thee ten shekels of sil- 
 ver, and a girdlfe. 
 
 Among us, here in Europe, the distinction between hon- 
 orary and pecuniary rewards is so great, that we often- 
 times can hardly think of jumbling them together as an ac- 
 knowledgment of public services; and the same person 
 that would receive the first with emotions of great pleasure, 
 would think himself affronted by one of a pecuniary kind ; 
 but it is otherwise in the East, and it was so anciently. De 
 Tott did many great services to the Turkish empire, in the 
 time of their late war with Russia, and the Turks were 
 disposed to acknowledge them by marks of honour. " His 
 highness," said the first minister, speaking of the grand 
 seignior, " has ordered me to bestow on you this ;5ublic 
 ma^rk of his esteem," and, at the same time, made a sign io 
 the master of the ceremonies to invest me with the pelisse; 
 while the hasnadar presented me with a purse of 200 se- 
 quins. The lively French officer was hurt by the. offer of 
 the sequins. " I directly turned towards those who had ac 
 companied me, and showing them my pelisse, I have re , 
 ceived, said I, with gratitude, this proof of the grand seii:-' 
 nior's favour; do you return thanks to the vizier for this 
 purse, it is his gifl. This expedient, which I preferred 
 to a discussion of our different customs, was a sufficient 
 
Chap. 18. 
 
 *i SAMUEL. 
 
 223 
 
 lesson to the vizier, at the same time that it disengaged me 
 from the embarrassment of oriental politeness." He then 
 in a note adds, " This Turkish custom of giving money oc- 
 casioned the greatest mortification to M. De Bonneval, that 
 a man, like him, could receive. The ambassador extraor- 
 dinary, from the emperor, who in the Austrian army had 
 been in an inferior station to the refugee, dined, as is cus- 
 tomary, with the vizier. The Porte had chosen Kiathana, 
 for the place of this entertainment. M. De Bonneval had 
 orders to repair thither with the corps of bombardiers, of 
 which he was commander. When the exercise was over, 
 he was sent for by the vizier, who gave him a handful of 
 .sequins, which his situation obliged him to accept, with 
 submission." Just thus we find Joab would have rewarded 
 an Israelitish soldier of his army, in the days of King Da- 
 vid, who saw Absalom hanging in a tree : " Why didst thou 
 not smite him there to the ground, and I would have given 
 the«! ten shekels of silver, and a girdle V 2 Sam. xviii. 11. 
 The girdle would have been an honorary reward, like De 
 Tott's ermined vest; the ten shekels, or half crowns, would 
 have been a pecuniary recompense, like the 200 sequins De 
 Tott disdained to receive. I may add, that a furred robe, 
 in general, is no distinguishing badge of dignity, for it may 
 be worn by wealthy people in private life, who can bear 
 the ex[)ense ; so that there is no ground to suppose Joab's 
 giving a girdle to the soldier would have been conferring 
 some military honour, somewhat like knighting him, as, if 
 I remember right, some have imagined : it would have 
 been simply a valuable present, and enabling him in after- 
 time to appear with such a girdle as the rich wore, instead 
 of the girdle of a peasant, but united with the consciousness 
 and the reputation of its being acquired by doing some 
 public service, and not the mere effect of being descended 
 from a wealthy family. The apparatus which some of the 
 eastern people make use of to gird themselves with is very 
 mean. The common Arabs, according to De la Roque, 
 use a girt adorned with leather ; and their women make 
 use of a cord, or strip of cloth : but some of the A^ab 
 girdles are very rich, according to this writer. The girdle 
 Joab proposed t^ give was doubtless designed by him to be 
 understood to be one of such value, as to be answerable to 
 the supposed importance of the service he wished the man 
 had performed, as well as his own dignity. So Symon 
 Simeonis, an Irish traveller to the Holy Land, in the year 
 13'2-2, tells us, " That the Saracens of Egypt rarely, if ever, 
 girded themselves with any thing but a towel, on which 
 they kneeled to say their prayers, except their people of 
 figure, who wore girdles like those of ladies, very broad, 
 all of silk, and. superbly adorned with gold and silver, in 
 which they extremely pride themselves." I cannot well 
 finish this article without remarking, from what the French 
 baron says concerning himself, what strong disagreeable 
 impressions of an erroneous kind may be made upon the 
 mind of a European at the offering some of the Asiatic 
 presents, which are not only not affronting in their views, 
 but designed to do those honour to whom they are pre- 
 sented, since De Tott could not get the better of it, though 
 he perfectly knew the innocency of the intention, and had 
 resided long enough, one would have thought, in the 
 country, to have destroyed the impression. — Harmer. 
 
 To loose the girdle and give it to another, was among 
 the Orientals, a token of great confidence and affection. 
 Thus to ratify the covenant which Jonathan made with 
 David, and to express his cordial regard for his friend, 
 among other things he gave him his girdle. A girdle curi- 
 ously and richly wrought was, among the ancient Hebrews, 
 a mark of honour, and sometimes bestowed as a reward of 
 merit ; for this was the recompense which Joab declared 
 he meant to bestow on the man who put Absalom to death : 
 " Whv didst thou not smite him there to the ground, and I 
 would have given thee ten shekels of silver, and a girdle." 
 The reward was certainly meant to correspond with the 
 importance of the service which he expected him to per- 
 form, and the dignity of his own station as commander-in- 
 chief: we may therefore suppose it was not a common 
 one of leather, or plain worsted, but of costly materials and 
 richly adorned ; for people of rank and fashion in the East 
 wear very broad girdles, all of silk, and superbly orna- 
 mented with gold and silver, and precious stones, of which 
 they are extremely proud, regarding them as the tokens 
 of their superior station, and the proof of their riches. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. And they took Absalom, and cast him 
 into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very 
 great heap of stones upon him : and all Israel 
 fled every one to his tent. 
 
 To mark the spot where the chiefs were buried, and to 
 remain at the same time as a memorial of the battle in 
 which they fell, their surviving friends raised over them a 
 heap of stones. This practice may be traced to the primi- 
 tive ages of the world ; for when Absalom was defeated 
 and slain, " they cast him into a great pit in the wood, and 
 laid a very great heap of stones upon him." This monu- 
 mental heap was not intended to indicate that Absalom 
 deserved to be stoned as a rebellious son, but merely to 
 mark, according to a very common and a very ancient 
 custom, the grave of that ambitious and unnatural prince. 
 It was usual in the East, indeed, to distinguish any remark- 
 able place or event by a heap of stones. All the Moham- 
 medans that go in pilgrimage to mount Sinai, visit a rock, 
 on which the form of a camel's foot is imprinted, which they 
 foolishly suppose to be the animal that Mohammed rode ; 
 and, therefore, in honour of their prophet, they bring ev^ery 
 one a stone, till, by continual accumulation, a large heap 
 has risen near the place, Jacob, and his family too, raised 
 a heap of stones in commemoration of the covenant so hap- 
 pily concluded between him and Laban, on mount Gilead. 
 That " heap of witness" informed every passenger that it 
 was raised in memory of some interesting event; and every 
 relation that brought a stone to the heap, made himself a 
 witness to the agreement, as well as recommended it to the 
 attention of others. The surviving warriors, too, might 
 bring every man his stone, in token of their respect for the 
 deceased, to raise a monumental heap over the body of the 
 hero who had led them to battle and to victory, which 
 should arrest the notice of the passing traveller, and bear 
 witness to future times of their attachment and regret. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken 
 and reared up for himself a pillar, which is in 
 the king's dale : for he said, I have no son to 
 keep my name in remembrance : and he called 
 the pillar after his own name : and it is called 
 Unto this day Absalom's Place. 
 
 On the east, we came to the reputed tomb of Absalom, 
 resembling nearly, in the size, form, and the decoration of 
 its square base, that of Zacharias, before described ; except 
 that it is sculptured with the metopes and triglyphs of the 
 Doric order. This is surmounted by a sharp conical dome, 
 of the form used in our modern parasols, having large 
 mouldings, resembling ropes running round its base, and 
 on the summit something like an imitation of flame. The 
 dome is of masonry, and on the eastern side there is a 
 square aperture in it. It is probable that this monument 
 really occupies the place of that mentioned to have been 
 set up by him whose name it bears. 2 Sam. xviii. 18. Jo- 
 sephus, in relating the same circumstance, calls the pillar 
 a marble one ; he fixes its distance at two furlongs from 
 Jerusalem, and says it was named Absalom's Hand.— 
 Buckingham. 
 
 Ver. 24. And David sat between the two gates : 
 and the watchman went up to the roof over the 
 gate unto the wall, and lifted up his eyes, and 
 looked, and behold a man running alone. 
 
 The watchman, in a time of danger, seems to have take^ 
 his station in a tower, which was built over the gate of the 
 city. We may form a tolerably distinct idea of the ancient 
 towers in Palestine, from the description which the sacred 
 historian gives us of one, in the entrance of Mahanaim : 
 " And David sat between the two gates, and the watchman 
 went up to the roof over the gate unto the wall, and lifted 
 up his eyes and looked, and behold a man running alone. 
 The watchman cried and told the king; and the king said. 
 If he is alone, there is tidings in his mouth. And the 
 watchman saw another man running ; and the watchman 
 called unto the porter, and said, Behold, another man run- 
 
224 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 19. 
 
 ning alone ; and the kine: said, He also bringeth tidings." 
 When the tidings were announced, the historian observes, 
 " the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber 
 over the gate and wept." It is afterward added, " Then 
 the king arose and sat in the gate ; and they told unto all 
 the people saying, Behold th ? king doth sit in the gate ; and 
 all the people came before the king, for Israel had fled 
 every man to his tent." From this description it appears, 
 that the tower in the entrance of Mahanaim, had two pair 
 of gates, at some distance from each other; in a small 
 room, which was often found bv the side of these fortified 
 gates, the door of which opened into the passage between 
 them, sat the king, waiting, in fearful suspense, the issue 
 of the contest, for it cannot be supposed he sat in the pas- 
 sage itself, which had been at once unbecoming his dignity, 
 and incommodious to the passengers entering or leaving 
 the city. "We find a watchman stationed on the top of this 
 tower, to which he Avent up by a staircase from the passage, 
 which, like the roof of their dwellinghouses, was flat, for 
 the purpose of descrying at a distance those that were ap- 
 proaching the place, or repelling the attacks of an enemy. 
 The observations made by the watchman were not com- 
 municated by him immediately to the king, but by the 
 intervention of a warder at the outer gate of the tower ; 
 and it appears, that a private staircase led from the lower 
 room in which the king was sitting, to the upper room 
 over the gateway; for by that communication he retired to 
 give full vent to his sorrow. The only circumstance 
 involved in any doubt, is in what part of this building he 
 sat, (for it is evident he continued in some part of the gate,) 
 when he returned his thanks to the array for their exer- 
 tions in his favo-ur ; or in the language of the historian, 
 " spake to the hearts of his servants," and received their 
 congratulations. It is somewhat uncertain whether he 
 gave audience to his people in the upper room, where he 
 lamented in strains so afiecting, the death of Absalom, or 
 in the little chamber between the two gates, where he 
 waited the arrival of the messengers, or in some other part 
 of the building. The ancient custom of sitting in the gate 
 on solemn occasions, rather favours the opinion, that Da- 
 vid went down from the apartment above the gate, to the 
 chamber in the side of the passage. This custom, which 
 may be traced to the remotest antiquity, is still observed in 
 the East; for when Pococke returned from viewing the 
 town of ancient Byblus, the sheik and the elders were 
 sitting in the gate of the city, after the manner of their 
 ancestors. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. And the watchman cried, and told the 
 king. And the king said, If he be alone, there 
 is tidings in his mouth. And he came apace, 
 and drew near. 
 
 This was said by David when the watchman told him 
 that there was a man running alone. He proved to be 
 Ahimaaz, who had escaped from the well, and had run to 
 tell David, " All is well." Is a man se^ to run fast, it is 
 said, "Ah! there is news in his mouth." "Why have 
 you come so fast T'— " In my mouth there is news." To 
 a man in trouble it is often said, " Fear not, a man will 
 soon come with tidings in his mouth." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 32. And the king said unto Cushi, Is the 
 young man Absalom safe? And Cushi an- 
 swered, The enemies of my lord the king, and 
 all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as 
 that young man is. 
 
 This was a delicate way of telling David that the rebel 
 Absalom was dead, A person, in communicating, by 
 letter, intelligence of the death of a friend, does not always 
 say, in so many plain terms, " He is dead ;" but, " Would 
 that all our enemies were now as our friend Muttoo." 
 " Ah ! were they all as he, we should have peace in our 
 village." A son, in writing to an uncle concerning the 
 death of his ftuher, says, "Ah! the children of "your 
 brother are now given unto the Lord." " Would that our 
 enemies were now as our father ; they will now rejoice 
 over us." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 13. And say ye to Amasa, Art thou not of 
 my bone, and of my flesh 1 God do so to me, 
 and more also, if thou be not captain of the host 
 before me continually in the room of Joab. 
 14. And he bowed the heart of all the men of 
 Judah, even as the heart of one man ; so that 
 they sent this word unto the king. Return thou, 
 and all thy servants. 
 
 Mr. Le Clerc and others object, that David's resolution 
 to remove Joab from the chief command of the army, 
 was but an unthankful return for the victory which that 
 officer had just gained him, and for his attachment to his 
 interest all along, and therefore David's conduct in tl.is 
 instance was imprudent and unaccountable. What Joab's 
 share in obtaining this victory was, the history doth not 
 say, Abishai and Ittai, who each commanded a third part 
 of the forces, might, as for anything that appears, as much 
 contribute to the victory over the rebels, as Joab. But be 
 that as it will, the imprudence of David's conduct is effect- 
 ually disproved by the event ; and that it was not unac- 
 countable is certain, because of the evident prudence of it; 
 especially if it be true, and I think it certainly is true, that 
 Joab had now lost the favour of his master, of which the 
 murder of Abner, the killing cf Absalom, in direct con- 
 tradiction to David's order, and lastly, his want of sympa- 
 thy, and his indelicacy in the present instance, were the 
 undoubted causes. And surely it could be nothing unac- 
 countable, nor argue any great ingratitude, to turn out an 
 imperious general, even after he had helped to gain a vic- 
 tory, who had stained his laurels by the treasonable murder 
 of the king's own son, in defiance of his most express com- 
 mand, and then instantly threatened him with a fresh rebel- 
 lion, if he did not openly appear to justify and approve his 
 crimes : crimes, that a successful battle few will think to 
 be a sufficient atonement for, or a just reason to exempt 
 him from disgrace, and the punishment he deserved. The 
 ancient Roman discipline was much more severe and rig- 
 orous than this, and a victory obtained, if contrary to the 
 general's orders, was punished with death. When T. 
 Manlius, the son of Manlius the consul, upon a challenge 
 of Metius, one of the generals of the Latins, with whom 
 the Romans were then at war, had engaged him in single 
 combat, slain him, taken his spoils, and presented them 
 in triumph to his father, the consul immediately ordered 
 him to be beheaded in sight of the whole army, because it 
 was an express breach of his orders; telling his son, " If 
 thou hast any thing of my blood in thee, thou thyself wilt 
 not, I think, refuse to restore, by thy punishment, that mili- 
 tary discipline, which hath been impaired by thy offence." 
 In like manner, when Papirius, the Roman dictator, had 
 commanded Fabius, the master of his horse, not to engage 
 the enemy during his absence, Fabius being informed that 
 the army'of the Samnites were in a state of great disorder, 
 attacked them with his forces, entirely routed them. ?nd 
 slew twenty thousand of them on the field of battle. The 
 dictator, upon his return to the army, in a council of officers, 
 ordered him to be beheaded, because in breach of the rules 
 of war, and the ancient discipline, he had dared, contrary 
 to his orders, to engage with the enemy. He was however 
 at last saved by the intercession of the Roman people. 
 David's removirig Joab from his command was a much 
 less punishment for much more aggravated crimes. 
 
 As to the promise to Amasa, of constituting him general 
 in Joab's room, the prudence of this may be also easily 
 vindicated. For Amasa stood in the same degree of con- 
 sanguinity to David as Joab did, and the offer to him ot 
 making him captain-general must, as it has been well ob- 
 served, have been influenced by the personal qualities of 
 the man, the importance of gaining him over, he being a 
 person of great power and authority, and a resentment 
 against Joab for the murder of Abner and Absalom. Be- 
 sides, I doubt not but that David thought he should now 
 he able to break Joab's power, and bring him to an ac- 
 count for his repeated assassinations and treasons, as well 
 as fix Amasa for ever in his interest, by placing so high 
 a degree of confidence in him, as to give him the com- 
 mand of all the forces in bis kingdom. This hath been 
 frequently the method by which great men have endeav- 
 
Chap. 19. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 225 
 
 o'lred to gain over their enemies, .and it argues a real gen- 
 erosity of soul, of which little minds are utterly incapable, 
 to u'in an adversary to his duty, by such unexpected instan- 
 ces of confidence and friendship. When Cinna, the grand- 
 son of Pompey, and other great men, conspired against 
 Augustus, he not only pardoned them, but nominated Cinna 
 consul for the ensuing year ; and Caesar not only spared 
 Brutus, after he had appeared in arms against him, but 
 took him into favour as his intimate friend, and intrusted 
 him with the government of Gaul, — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 24. And Mephibosheth the son of Saul came 
 down to meet the king, and had neither dressed 
 his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his 
 clothes, from the day the king departed until 
 the day he came again in peace. 
 
 They almost universally die them black, by an operation 
 not very pleasant, and necessary to be repeated generally 
 once a fortnight. It is always performed in the hot bath, 
 where the hair being well saturated, takes the colour better. 
 A thick paste of khenna is first made, which is largely 
 plastered over the beard, and which, after remaining an 
 hour, is all completely washed off, and leaves the hair of a 
 very strong orange colour, bordering upon thatof brickdust. 
 After this, as thick a paste is made of the leaf of the indigo, 
 which previously has been pounded to a fine powder, and 
 of this also a deep layer is put upon the beard ; but this 
 second process, to be taken well, requires full two hours. 
 During all this operation the patient lies quietly flat upon 
 his back; while the die (more particularly the indigo, 
 which is a great astringent) contracts the features of his 
 face in a very mournful manner, and causes all the lower 
 parts of the visage to smart and burn. When the indigo 
 IS at last washed off, the beard is of a very dark bottle-green_, 
 and becomes a jet black only when it has met the air for 
 twenty-four hours. Some, indeed, are content with the 
 khenna or orange colour ; others, more fastidious, prefer 
 a beard quite blue. The people of Bokhara are famous for 
 their blue beards. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 24. And Mephibosheth the son of Saul 
 came down to meet the king, and had neither 
 dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor 
 washed his clothes, from the day the king de- 
 parted until the day he came again in peace. 
 25. And it came to pass, when he was come 
 to Jerusalem to meet the king, that the king 
 said unto him, Wherefore wentest not thou 
 with me, Mephibosheth? 26. And he an- 
 swered, My lord, O king, my servant deceived 
 me: for thyservant said, I will saddle me an 
 ass, that I may ride thereon, and go to the king ; 
 because thy servant is lame. 27. And he hath 
 slandered thy servant unto my lord the king ; 
 but my lord the king is as an angel of God : 
 do therefore what is good in thine eyes. 
 28. For all of my father's house were but 
 dead men before my lord the king : yet didst 
 thou set thy servant among them that did eat 
 at thine own table. What right therefore have 
 I yet to cry any more unto the king? 29. And 
 the king said unto him. Why speakest thou any 
 more of thy matters ? I have said, Thou and 
 Ziba divide the land. 30. And- Mephibosheth 
 said unto the king, Yea, let him take all, foras- 
 much as my lord the king is come again in 
 peace unto his own house. 
 
 This conduct of David to Mephibosheth is objected 
 against, as. a very ungenerous and unjust action ; in that, 
 when Ziba's accusation against Mephibosheth was found 
 to be false, instead of equitably punishing the asperser of 
 innocence, and reinstating Mephibosheth in his former 
 favour, he restored him but half the forfeiture for his sup- 
 29 
 
 posed guilt, leaving the villain Ziba in the quiet possession' 
 of the other half, as the reward of his treachery. Suppo- 
 sing this account true, that Mephibosheth had but half his 
 patrimony restored to him, there might be reasons of state, 
 reasons of great prudence and equity, that might induce 
 David, at that time, to give this check "to the house of Saul ; 
 especially if David had any suspicion that Mephibosheth 
 had really behaved ill, and as Shimei, one of Saul's family, 
 had used him with peculiar marks of indignity, and dis- 
 covered that they wanted only the opportunity to revenge 
 themselves on him, and place one of Saul's house upon the 
 throne of Israel. But I think there is great reason to ques- 
 tion, whether the behaviour of Mephibosheth was so inno- 
 cent as hath been asserted, during the progress of the re- 
 bellion. The late ingenious and learned Mr. Hallet and 
 others, think he was guilty -and deserved punishment ; and 
 after having reviewed his apology to David for not accom- 
 panying him in his flight from Jerusalem, with the utmost 
 impartiality and care, that apology doth not seem to me 
 sufficient wholly to exculpate him. " For what is the apolo- 
 gy he makes 1 Why, only this ; that he said, " he would 
 saddle him an ass, and go on it to the king, because he was 
 lame, and could not go on foot." Why then, what hinder- 
 ed him from saddling his ass, and riding afler his royal 
 patron and benefactor 1 Surely there were more asses than 
 one to be had at Jerusalem, and he had servants enough 
 of his own to have saddled one, had he been disposed to go 
 after David. For when that prince was restored, he found 
 means to wait on him, without Ziba's assistance; and I 
 suppose, the same means might have been found, if he had 
 pleased, to have attended David when he fled, as well as 
 to go to meet him when he returned. He pretends indeed 
 that Ziba deceived him; but he doth not say how, nor offer 
 any proof of it ; nor could he deceive him about the get- 
 ting him an ass, because he could have got one, whether 
 Ziba would procure him one or not. So that his justifica- 
 tion was as lame as his feet, and, as far as I can judge, is but 
 a poor shuffling vindication of his innocence. He seems to 
 me to have been very well pleased to stay at Jerusalem, and 
 wait the issue of the rebellion, as not knowing, but that du- 
 ring theconftision of affairs, some fortunate circumstances 
 might arise, by which, as heir to Saul's house, he might be 
 advanced tothe throneinthe roomboth of David and his re- 
 bellious son; The only circumstance that can be alleged in 
 his favour is, that he did not take the usual care of himself, 
 as to his cleanliness and dress, but appeared in the squalid 
 habit of a mourner. But this might be merely political, 
 and would equally serve to excite compassion to himselt 
 among the peoplej.lo see Saul's heir reduced to this forlorn 
 condition ; ana to provide some excuse for himself to Da- 
 vid, should his affairs at last take a favourable turn, and to 
 urge as an argument and proof of his affection and concern 
 for him, during the continuance of his troubles. This was 
 a well-known custom among the Romans, and other na- 
 tions, for those who were accused of any crimes, to clothe 
 themselves with a black garment, to let their beards and 
 hair grow, and to appear in a negligent, dirty manner, in 
 order to raise the public pity in their behalf. And not only 
 thus, but the friends and pa'trons of such unhappy persons, 
 appeared publicly in the same manner, as those whose 
 cause they espoused. Thus Cicero tells us, that the whole 
 senate, and all good men, did it to express their grief on 
 his account, and the better to obtain his recall from banish- 
 ment. Yea, this very art hath been made use of by a de- 
 throned prince to obtain the recovery of his crown and 
 kingdom. Thus Ptolemy Philometor, king of Egypt, being 
 driven out of his kingdom by his brother Physcon, came 
 attended only by a few servants to Rome, squalore obsihis, 
 covered over with filth, to implore the assistance of the 
 senate. And in this wretched condition he presented him- 
 self before them. They advised him, that deporitis fordi- 
 bus, laying aside his wretched habit, lie should petition for 
 an audience. So that this affectation of Mephibosheth, oi 
 appearing at Jerusalem with these external marks of grief, 
 was really no proof of his affection to David, but might be 
 with an artful intention to serve himself. Ziba's charge 
 against him was direct and positive, and the only answer 
 is, that Ziba had slandered him. So that here are two 
 positive assertions contrary to one another. Ziba's charge 
 had probability to support it; because it is natural to sup- 
 pose, that Mephibosheth might think that he had, as heir 
 to Saul, some claim to the crown, and would be glad of 
 
226 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 20 
 
 any occasion to recover it, that he might not be beholden to 
 David's generosity, and live by courtesy at his table ; and 
 that he might mention it to Ziba, as he also was one of 
 Saul's house and family. Mephibosheth's answer to the 
 charge had nothing satisfactory in it, because he could 
 never want an ass, or a servant to have conveyed him, had 
 he desired or resolved to make use of them. Besides, as 
 Ziba's carrying provisions to David plainly showed Ziba's 
 belief and nope of David's restoration, he must know that 
 if he had charged Mephibosheth falsely, the falsehood must 
 have been discovered when David was resettled on the 
 throne ; and that being convicted of calumniating his mas- 
 ter, he would, in all probability, have been so far from hav- 
 ing Mephibosheth's whole estate confirmed to him, as that 
 he would have lost his maintenance out of it for himself 
 and family. And indeed David himself seems to me not 
 to have been thoroughly satisfied with Mephibosheth's apol- 
 ogy, by the answer he makes him : " "Why speakest thou 
 any more about thy matters ?" Let me hear no more of thy 
 affairs. I will neither regard Ziba's charge, nor your vin- 
 dication ; an answer that evidently carries an air of cold- 
 ness, indifference, and displeasure, and of one who did not 
 choose to make any strict inquiry into Mephibosheth's con- 
 duct, but to admit his excuse, though in itself insuflicient 
 and unsatisfactory; and he therefore only adds : Thoiiand 
 Zibadivide the land. If this be the true state ofthecase, asit 
 appears to me to be, David's annulling the grant to Ziba, so 
 far as to reinstate Mephibosheth in the possession of even 
 half the land, was a noble instance of David's generosity, and 
 of the grateful remembrance he retained of Jonathan's af- 
 fection and friendship for him. But I must question the 
 truth of the account, tl^jit David restored to Mephibosheth 
 but half of the estate. Ziba had been an old servant in 
 Saul's family, who had fifteen sons, and twenty servants. 
 To him David had said : " I have given thy master's son 
 all that pertaineth to Saul, and to all his house. Thou 
 therefore and thy sons and thy servants shall till the land 
 for him, and bring in the fruits, that thy master's son may 
 have food to eat, viz. for his household and family. As foV 
 Mephibosheth himself, he shall always eat at my table, as 
 one of the king's sons." Ziba therefore was to take care of 
 the estate, to account for the profits of it to Mephibosheth, 
 and to be himself and his whole family maintamed out of 
 the annual produce, for his care in cultivating it. This 
 was a proper division of it between Mephibosheth, as lord 
 of the estate, and Ziba as the farmer and manager of it. 
 What now is the determination of David, upon his restora- 
 tion to the throne 1 Mephibosheth had been entirely ousted 
 upon Ziba's complaint ; but after he had made his apology, 
 David said to him : " I have said. Thou and Ziba divide 
 the land." But where and when did David ever say, " I 
 give each of you a moiety of the estate V He first gave 
 the whole in property to Mephibosheth, and afterward to 
 Ziba ; but never divided it, share and share alike, between 
 them. And yet, " I have said. Thou and Ziba divide the 
 land," must refer to some former division of the estate by 
 David's order. But no such determination or order is to 
 be found, but in that original one, in which the estate was 
 divided between Mephibosheth in property, and Ziba as 
 husbandman, for his own and family's maintenance. So 
 that this last determination of David was so far from taking 
 away one half of the estate from Mephibosheth, that it was 
 in reality confirming the original grant, and restoring him 
 to the possession of the whole, upon the same terms on 
 which that possession was originally granted him. So that 
 if David was too hasty in giving away Mephibosheth's 
 estate to Ziba, he was, upon better recollection, as hasty in 
 restoring it to him ; and it ought to be acknowledged as a 
 proof of his inviolable regard to his oath to Jonathan, since 
 he had reason for just suspicion, that his son had been 
 wauling in that affection and fidelity which he owed him, 
 as his generous protector and benefactor. And though by 
 his confirming the original grant, he left Ziba and his fam- 
 ily a maintenance out of the estate, it was not as the reward 
 of his treachery, of which there is no proof, but out of re- 
 spect even to Saul, of whose house Ziba was, and as a recom- 
 pense for his faithful adherence to him in his distresses, and 
 that seasonable and noble supply with which he furnished 
 him and his followers, when he was forced to abandon his 
 rapital, bv the unnatural rebellion of his son Absalom. 
 Hereby David did more than full justice to Mephibosheth, 
 and ^t the samt time rewarded Ziba by continuing him on 
 
 the estate, upon the former conditions of possessing it. Mr 
 Bayle has a long article on this affair, m which he takes 
 it for granted, that David restored Mephibosheth but one 
 half of the estate, and says, " that some interpreters main- 
 tain, that Ziba's accusation was not unjust ; or, at least, that 
 it was founded on so many probabilities, that it might be 
 credited without passing a wrong judgment ;" but there 
 are but few, says he, of that opinion ; and he affirms, "that 
 David found him a false accuser." But Mr. Bayle offers 
 not a single proof for these assertions, and he who relates 
 the different opinions of others concerning any fact, and de- 
 clares on the unfavourable side of it, without giving his rea- 
 sons for it, doth not act like a candid critic, but with the 
 spirit of partiality and party. I must therefore leave these 
 particulars to the judgment of the more candid and impartial 
 reader, when he hath duly considered what hath been said 
 above in order to obviate them ; agreeing at the same time 
 with him, that if Mephibosheth was unjustly treated, Da- 
 vid's holiness could never make that sentence just, though 
 Pope Gregory hath insisted upon it ; and that to conclude 
 the sentence was just, merely because David passed it, 
 though it was unjust in itself, is to establish a very dangei- 
 ous principle. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 29. And the king said unto him, Why 
 speakest thou any more of thy matters? I 
 have said, Thou and Ziba divide the land. 
 
 This form of speech is exceedingly common when a 
 man wishes to confirm any thing, or when he wants to give 
 weight to a promise. To show that all will be fulfilled, he 
 says, Ndn-chanrnain-nea, " Oh ! I have said it." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 1. And there happened to be there a man of 
 Belial, whose name was Sheba, the son of 
 Bichri, a Benjamite ; and he blew a trumpet, 
 and said. We have no part in David, neither 
 have we inheritance in the son of Jesse : every 
 man to his tents, O Israel. 
 
 When slaves are liberated from their owners, they say, 
 " We have no pangu, i. e. part, in them, nor they in us," 
 It is also very common to mention the name of the person, 
 and that of his father ; and this sometimes implies disgrace, 
 especially when the family has arisen from obscurity, and 
 therefore to allude to its origin is to insult the descendant>-. 1 
 — Roberts. | 
 
 Ver. 1. And there happened to be there a man of 
 Belial, whose name was Sheba, the son of 
 Bichri, a Benjamite ; and he blew a trumpet, 
 and said, We have no part in David, neither 
 have we inheritance in the son of Jesse : every 
 man to his tents, O Israel. 2. So every man of 
 Israel went up from after David, and followed 
 Sheba the son of Bichri: but the men of Judah 
 clave unto their king, from Jordan e\'en to Je- 
 rusalem. 
 
 The blame of this new rebellion hath been charged on 
 David, and he censured for thus inadvertently plunging 
 himself into fresh troubles, by suffering himself to be con- 
 ducted home by a deputation from the tribe of Judah. The 
 learned authors of the Universal History, have made a 
 like observation on this part of David's conduct, and say, 
 that " the partiality, which he showed to his own tribe, in 
 inviting it to come foremost to receive him, raised such a 
 jealousy in the other ten, as ended at length in a new 
 revolt." But where doth the history justify this reflection, 
 that he was partial to his own tribe, in inviting it to come 
 foremost to receive him 1 The truth is, that he did not invite 
 them at all to come and receive him, fill he had been in- 
 formed by expresses from all the other tribes, that the> 
 were universally in motion to restore him, and his message 
 to them only was: " Why are ye the last to bring back the 
 king 1" Not, why are ye not the foremost 1 And though 
 the other tribes complained to that of Judah, " Why did 
 
Chap. 20. 
 
 2 SAMUEL 
 
 227 
 
 ye despise us, that our advice should be first had in bring- 
 ing back our king V Yet the tribe of Judah was so far 
 from coming to meet the king, out of any regard to, or 
 contempt of, their brethren, that the very zeal and move- 
 ments of those tribes, in David's favour, was the principal 
 motives urged by him, to bring back the tribe of Judah to 
 their duly, and their great inducement to return to iheir 
 allegiance to him. This was paying a real deference to 
 their judgment, and what they ought to have been pleased 
 with, and highly applauded. It is true, that the tribes all 
 concurred in their resolutions to restore him, and were taking 
 the proper methods to effect it, yet that David continued 
 at Mahanaim, till the deputies from Judah came to him 
 there, with an invitation irom the whole tribe to repair to 
 Jerusalem, and to assure him, that they would receive him 
 in a body at Gilgai, and prepare every thing necessary for 
 his passage over Jordan. Nor could he indeed set out for 
 Jerusalem, till he had received certain information, that 
 the men of Judah, and Amasa, who was in possession of 
 it, would quietly permit him to return to it, without endan- 
 gering his own person, or hazarding the peace of the nation, 
 should he attempt to reduce the city by force. But when 
 he knew the city would open her gates to him, it is no 
 wonder he should resolve immediately to begin his march 
 to it, as he had now nothing to fear from that quarter, and 
 imagined, that as all the tribes had declared for him, the 
 sooner he acted agreeably to their desires, they would be 
 the better pleased, and without the formality of any particu- 
 lar invitations, receive him with open arms, wherever he 
 should meet them. 
 
 The pretence, that the men of Judah had stolen him 
 away, was unreasonable and unjust. For while he was at 
 Mahanaim, the tribes on that side Jordan all declared for 
 him, and accompanied him to the passage of that river, 
 ana went over with him to join the rest of their brethren, 
 who were come down to meet him ; so that when they were 
 all united at the passage of the river, there were actually 
 present, by large deputations, the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, 
 and five others, who waited on him in his march to Gilgai. 
 The truth of the case seems to be, that the deputations 
 from the more distant tribes, not being able to get farther 
 than Gilgai, before the king's arrival there, envied the 
 other tribes, and particularly that of Judah, which had the 
 principal share in providing every thing necessary for the 
 King's passage over Jordan, and laid hold of the first op- 
 portunity to express their resentment against them. This 
 was heightened by the imprudent haughty answer, which 
 the men of Judah made to their expostulation, that they 
 had a peculiar right in the king, as he was near akin to 
 them, because he was of their own tribe ; and seeming to 
 insinuate, that they came voluntarily, but that the other 
 tribes came with an expectation of being provided for at 
 the king's expense, and hoping some donative from him, as 
 the reward of their submission to him. This, I think, is 
 plainly implied, when they told them : " Have we eaten at 
 all at the king's cost 7 Or hath he given us any gift*?" 
 Words which seem to carry a tacit insinuation, that other 
 tribes expected both. This reflection, and the claim of a 
 particular interest in the king, disgusted all the other tribes 
 in general, and disposed them to enter into violent meas- 
 ures to revenge themselves. David, upon the whole, seems 
 to me to be nowise blameable on account of Sheba's revolt, 
 but that it was occasioned by misunderstandings between 
 the tribes themselves, which it was not at that time in his 
 power to prevent. — Chandler. ^ 
 
 Ver. 3. And David came to his house at Jerusa- 
 iem; and the king- took the ten women his 
 concubines, whom he had left to keep the 
 house, and put them in ward, and fed them, but 
 went not in unto them : so they were shut up 
 ^ unto the day of their death, living in widow- 
 ' hood. 
 
 In China, when an emperor dies, all his women are 
 removed to an edifice called the Palace of Chastity, situa- 
 ted within the walls of the palace, in which they are shut 
 up for the remainder of their lives. — Burder, 
 
 Ver 9. And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in 
 
 health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by 
 the beard with the right hand to kiss him. 
 
 D'Arvieux was present at an Arabian entertainment, to 
 which came all the emirs, a little while after his arrival, 
 accompanied by their friends and attendants : and after the 
 usual civilities, caresses, kissings of the beard, and of th-e 
 hand, which every one gave and received according to his 
 rank and dignity, sat down upon mats. It was in this way, 
 perhaps, that Joab pretended to testify his respect for Amasa, 
 his rival in the favour of the king; he took him by the 
 beard to kiss him, or agreeably to the custom of these 
 emirs, or Arabian chieftains, to kiss the beard itself; and 
 in this stooping posture he could much better see to direct 
 the blow, than if he had only held his beard, and raised him- 
 self to kiss his face; while Amasa, charmed by this high 
 compliment, which was neither suspicious nor unusual, 
 and undoubtedly returning it with corresponding politeness, 
 paid no attention to the sword in the hand of his murderer. 
 it is extremely probable that Judas betrayed his Lord in the 
 same way, by kissing his beard. The evangelists Matthew 
 and Mark say, that he came directly to Jesus, and said, 
 Hail, Master, and kissed him ; but Luke seems to hint, that 
 Judas saluted him with more respect. Jesus, according to 
 Matthew, had time to say, before he received the kiss from 
 Judas, " Friend, wherefore art thou come 1" and while 
 Judas was kissing his beard, Jesus might express himself 
 with great ease and propriety, as Luke relates, "Judas, be- 
 trayest thou the Son of man with a kiss V — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. Then she spake, saying, They were 
 wont to speak in old time, saying, They shall 
 surely ask counsel at Abel : and so they ended 
 the matter. 
 
 Intimating, that the city of Abel was very famous, in 
 ancient times, for giving advice, and determining contro- 
 versies. But of this there is no intimation except in this 
 place, and the sense seems very forced and unnatural. I 
 think R. S. Jarchi's exposition leads to the true interpre- 
 tation, which our learned Bishop Patrick seems also to ap- 
 prove ; who observes, that the word nsts^n^ refers, not to old 
 time, but the beginning of the siege. As if she had said, 
 When the people saw thee lay siege to the city, they said, 
 surely they will ask us, if we will have peace, and then we 
 shall soon come to an agreement, and make an end ; put- 
 ting Joab in mind of the rule in the law, Deut. xx. 10, 
 which commands them to ofl!er peace to the cities of other 
 nations, when they came to besiege them, and therefore 
 much more to a city of their own, as Abel was. This 
 agrees well with what follows, that they were a peaceable 
 people, and faithful to their prince, and therefore would 
 not have refused to yield to him upon summons. — Chand- 
 ler. 
 
 Ver. 23. Now Joab was over all the host of Is- 
 rael : and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was 
 over the Cherethites and over the Pelethites. 
 
 This hath occasioned a very severe reflection on David's 
 honour and justice, and he is reproached because Joab 
 was continued in the command, and not a single syllable 
 of any notice taken by David of the murder of Amasa, 
 whom he himself had appointed general ; as though Da- 
 vid had acquiesced in the murder, and confirmed Joab in 
 the command of the army, as the reward of it. But that 
 David greatly resented this murder of Amasa, is evident 
 from his last advice to Solomon, in which he nobly recom- 
 mends, and gives it in charge to him, to do justice on that 
 bloody assassin for the murders of Abner and Amasa. 
 David was not now able himself to do it, and Joab was too 
 powerful a subject to be brought to any account. We have 
 seen that he had insolence enough, after Absalom's death, 
 to threaten the king with a new revolt, if he did not do what 
 he ordered him; and after the assassination of Amasa, he 
 usurped, in defiance of his master's appointment, the com- 
 mand of all the forces. They seem to have had an affec- 
 tion for him as a brave and successful general ; he had just 
 now restored the quiet of the land, by entirely queMing the 
 insurrection under Sheba,and returned to Jerusalem, with- 
 out fear of the king, and in defiance of justice, as general- 
 
228 
 
 2 SAMUEL 
 
 Chap. 2t. 
 
 issimo of the army ; and continued to assume this rank, 
 not by David's order and inclination, but by his mere 
 - acquiescence in a measure that was contrary to his will, 
 but which he was not able to set aside. It should be ob- 
 served to David's honour, that when the rebellion under 
 Absalom, and the insurrection by Sheba, were entirely sup- 
 pressed, we read of no bloody executions for treason and 
 rebellion. David resolved that no one should be put to 
 death on that account. He was all mercy and forgive- 
 ness. The cursing Shimei was reprieved. The suspected 
 Mephibosheth was restored, and the rebel general constitu- 
 ted captain of the forces of the kingdom. Had he been 
 the Nero or the Turk he hath been figured out by Mr. 
 Bayle and others, this occasion would have abundantly 
 enabled him to gratify his revenge, and satiate himself 
 with blood. Should it be said, that David's clemency was 
 owing to his thinking it hazardous to make examples of 
 any of them ; and his not being able to do it, because the 
 revolt was general; or, to his policy, considering the pre- 
 cariousness of his situation ; the answer is obvious, that 
 neither of these suppositions hath any probability to sup- 
 port it. TliCre could be no possible hazard in executing 
 Shimei, and such others as had been the principal incen- 
 diaries and promoters of the rebellion. This was now 
 totally suppressed, his victorious army at his devotion, and 
 his general ready to support him, and obey him even in 
 the most sanguinary measures, as appears from his conduct 
 in the affair of Uriah ; so that there could be no hazard in 
 his making proper examples of just indignation and ven- 
 geance. David knew this, and said to Abishai : " Do I not 
 know that I am this day king over Israel 1 restored to my 
 power and authority as king 1 and I will execute it at my 
 pleasure." And in truth he could have none to control him 
 m his present situation. The assertion that the revolt was 
 general, is not true in fact, as hath been elsewhere proved. 
 As to David's policy, that it induced him to resolve that no 
 one should be put to death on account of the rebellion, I 
 acknowledge that there might be somewhat in this; but 
 then it could not arise from the precariousness of his situa- 
 tion, of which there is no appearance or proof; for he was 
 restored by the almost unanimous consent of his people; 
 but from the noble policy, which never influences tyrants, 
 but is inspired by benevolence and humanity, that sup- 
 presses the vindictive spirit, and chooses the obedience 
 which arises from affection and esteem, rather than that 
 which flows from fear, and is enforced by severity. Charges 
 of acting from criminal and unworthy motives, without 
 facts to support them, deserve no regaVd from persons of 
 integrity and honour. I shall only further observe, that 
 from Nathan's threatening David, to the suppression of the 
 rebellion under Sheba, by which the punishment, as far as 
 it related personally to David, was accomplished, were, by 
 the marginal chronology of our Bible, thirteen years ; which 
 shows how groundless the observation is that hath been 
 made, as to this melancholy part of David's history, viz. 
 that it would not be easy to select any period of any history 
 more bloody, or abounding in wickedness of more various 
 dies, than that which has been now mentioned. Instances 
 succeed so quick, that the relation of one is scarce conclu- 
 ded, but fresh ones obtrude upon 'our notice. Supposing 
 this observation true, how do the vices of other men, or the 
 misfortunes of his own family, affect David, as a man after 
 God's own heart 1 Or is he the first good man who hath 
 been unhappy in some of his children 1 Or whose affection 
 towards them hath been much more tender and passionate 
 than they deserved '{ Insulting great and good men, and 
 holding them up to public view, as objects of horror and 
 detestation, from those crimes of their family which gave 
 them the greatest anxiety, is what virtue abhors, and is 
 shocking even to humanity. David had in all seventeen 
 sons. Two of them were profligates, and perished by their 
 crimes. As to the rest , they appear to be worthy men, and 
 were employed by David in the principal departments of 
 the administration ; a circumstance that shows he took 
 ^reat care of their education, and that, upon the whole, 
 he was very far from being unhappy in his family. The 
 crimes committed by the two eldest, were Amnon's affair 
 with his half-sister Tamar; Absalom's murder of Amnon 
 for the injury done his sister; hi] impious rebellion against 
 nis lather; and his public incest with his wives, to which 
 Ahifhophel advised and promoted him. These were the 
 wickednesses of various dies complained of, to which may be 
 
 added, the murder of Absalom by Joab, contrary to the 
 king's express order. These instances, as related in the 
 history, succeed so quick, as that the account of one is 
 scarce concluded, but fresh ones obtrude upon our notice. 
 But then the relation of these things is much quicker than 
 the succession of years in which they happened, and many 
 events intervened between the commission of the one and 
 the other. Between Amnon's rape, and his murder by 
 Absalom, were more than two years. From Absalom s 
 banishment, to his being restored to the king's presence, 
 were more than five years, and from this to his rebellion 
 and death, three or four ; in all eleven or tM-elve years. 
 But are there no instances in history to be found of more 
 numerous crimes, and as various dies, committed within a 
 much shorter period of time 1 Will not our own history 
 furnish us with such an instance 1 — From the year 1483 to 
 1485, i. e. in less than three years, one man, Richard duke 
 of Gloucester, usurped the crown, actually murdered the 
 king and his brother, both of them his nephews; poisoned 
 his own queen, to make way for an incestuous marriage 
 with his niece, imbrued his hands in the blood of many of 
 the English nobility, was the author of a civil war in the 
 kingdom, and was himself slain in an engagement with the 
 duke of Richmond, afterward Henry VII. I refer the 
 reader for another instance of implicated wickedness, still 
 of a more terrible nature, in Xerxes the Persian emperor, 
 related at large by Dr. Prideaux in his Connexion, v. i. p. 
 348, &c. and it would be easy to mention several others, 
 both in the Roman and eastern histories, to show the rash- 
 ness of this observation on which I have been remarking^. 
 —Chandler. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 1. Then there was a famine in the days of 
 David three years, year after year ; and David 
 inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answer- 
 ed, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, be- 
 cause he slew the Gibeonites. 2. And the king 
 called the Gibeonites, and said unto them ; (now 
 the Gibeonites were not of the children of Is- 
 rael, but of the remnant of the Amorites : and 
 the children of Israel had sworn unto theri ; 
 and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to tUt 
 children of Israel and Judah ;) 3. Wherefors 
 David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I 
 do for you ; and wherewith shall I make the 
 atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of 
 the Lord? 4. And the Gibeonites said unto 
 him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, 
 nor of his house ; neither for us shalt thou kill 
 any man in Israel. And he said, What you 
 shall say, that will I do for you. 
 
 We now enter upon a part of David's history and conduct, 
 that hath been thought exceptionable by many persons of 
 good sense and sober minds; and which others have repre- 
 sented as a masterpiece of wickedness, and for which they 
 ,have censured him as the most accomplished hypocrite, 
 and a perjured and profligate villain. It will therefore be 
 necessary more particularly to consider it, I confess, for 
 my own "part, that I think it one of the most unexception- 
 able parts of his behaviour as a king, and an illustrious 
 proof of the generosity of his temper, the regard he paid to 
 his oath to Saul, and the friendship he owed to the memory 
 and family of Jonathan. That the reader may the better 
 |udge of this, I shall give the history just as it i§ recorded 
 in the Old Testament writings. The inhabitants of Gibeon, 
 a large royal city, which, after the division of the country, 
 was yielded to the tribe of Benjamin, were Amorites by 
 birth and nation; and when the Hebrews, under Joshua, 
 invaded the land of Canaan, the Gibeonites hearing what 
 Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, and fearing for their 
 own safety, fraudulently persuaded the Hebrews to enter 
 into a league with them ; which was solemnly ratified by 
 a public oath, so that they had the national faith for the 
 security of their lives and properties ; for which reason the 
 
Chap. 21. 
 
 SAMUEL. 
 
 229 
 
 children of Israel, ".nen they came to tnej! cijes, and un- 
 derstood the fraud, aiurmured against the princes, because 
 they had. made a league with them. The princes, to 
 appease them, said to them : " We have sworn unto them 
 by the Lord God of Israel, therefore we may not touch 
 them. We will even let them live, lest wrath be upon us, 
 because of the oath which we sware to them;" and they 
 were accordingly spared, but condemned to servitude, and 
 made hewers of wood, and drawers of water, for the con- 
 gregation, and for the altar of the Lord perpetually, in 
 the place which he should choose ; i. e. wherever the tab- 
 ernacle or ark should reside. But Saul, in his zeal to the 
 children of Israel and Judah, to ingratiate himself with 
 them, under the specious pretence of public spirit, to enrich 
 his servants and soldiers, and to appear warm and active 
 for the public interest, "sought to slay them, and to destroy 
 them from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel," and 
 actually put many of them to death, employing those of his 
 own house or family in the execution. This was a noto- 
 rious violation of the public faith, laid the nation under the 
 guilt of perjury and murder, and subjected them to the dis- 
 pleasure of God, who is the righteous avenger of these 
 national crimes, but seems to have been regarded as an 
 affair of no consequence, or rather acquiesced in as a use- 
 ful and public-spirited measure. God, however, was pleased 
 to make inquisition for the blood which had been thus un- 
 righteously shed, and sent a famine upon the land, which 
 lasted three years, in the third of which, David, moved by 
 50 extraordinary a calamity, inquired of the Lord the 
 cause of it, and was answered by the oracle, that it was for 
 Saul, and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. 
 In consequence of this, David sent for son>e of the principal 
 persons who had escaped the massacre, and said to them : 
 ' What shall I do for you, and wherewithal shall I make 
 the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the 
 Lord "?" What satismction do you require for the injuries 
 that have been done you, that you may be induced to pray 
 for the prosperity of my people 1 The Gibeonites answered 
 him : " We will have no silver or gold of Saul, nor of his 
 house ; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel." 
 The king then bid them ask what they would have, and 
 promised that he would do it for them. They replied : 
 ' The man that consumed us, and that devised against us, 
 that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the 
 soasts of Israel ; let seven of his sons be delivered unto us, 
 and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, 
 who was chosen of the Lord." The king immediately 
 replied : " I will give them ;" and in consequence of it, 
 sparing Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, and all the male 
 line of Saul, who had any claim to, or were capable of 
 contending with him for the crown, and disturbing him in 
 the possession of it ; he delivered to them the two bastard 
 sons of Rizpah, Saul's concubine, and the five sons of 
 Micah, his youngest daughter, by Adriel, the son of Bar- 
 zillai, the Meholathite, not one of whom was capable of 
 succeeding Saul, especially while any of the male line, and 
 particularly those by the eldest son, were alive. Now, at 
 this very time, Mephibosheth, Jonathan's eldest son, dwelt 
 m David's family at Jerusalem ; and though lame in his 
 feet, yet he was sound enough to be the father of a son, 
 named Micah, who had a numerous posterity, the descend- 
 ants of whom continued down through many generations. 
 In this account the reader will observe, that what gave rise 
 to this execution in the family of Saul, was a three years' 
 famine. The famine is not denied, . The cause of it, some 
 think, was the preceding intestine commotions. But this 
 is highly improbable ; for there is no intimation or proba- 
 bility, that the civil war continued so long as twelve 
 months, as it was determined by a single battle, and as 
 that battle was certainly fought not long after the rebellion 
 broke out. For David continued in the plain of the wil- 
 derness, where he first retreated, and which was not far 
 distant from Jerusalem, till he was informed what meas- 
 ures Absalom was determined to follow. These were fixed 
 on soon after that rebel's entrance into Jerusalem, and as 
 soon as the affair would admit, put in execution. Nay, so 
 soon was the plan of operations fixed, that Hushai, David's 
 friend, who continued with Absalom at Jerusalem, sent an 
 express to David to acquaint him, that he had defeated the 
 counsel of Ahithophel, but withal to advise him, not to 
 lodge a single night more in the plains, but instantly to 
 pass ovei Jordan, lest he and all his people should be swal- 
 
 lowed up by a stictig detachment from the rebel army. 
 David immediately hastened to and passed the river, and 
 could have but a few weeks or months to draw together his 
 troops ; for Absalom was soon after him, attacked his 
 father, and his death put an end to the unnatural rebellion. 
 Besides, the country in general must have been free from 
 any great commotions; for, as David retreated beyond 
 Jordan, collected his forces, and fought the rebels in the 
 territories of the tribes on that side the river, the principal 
 commotions must have happened there, and could not much . 
 affect the ten tribes, and occasion a three years' famine 
 throughout that whole country. 
 
 The natural cause of that famine was the want of the 
 usual rains, and the violent heat and drought of the seasons 
 during that period ; for it is observed ot Rizpah, that as 
 soon as her tw^o sons were put to death, she spread herself 
 a tent upon the rock where they were hung up from the 
 beginning of harvest until water dropped on them out of 
 heaven, i. e. till the rain came, which had been so long 
 withheld, and it thereby appeared that the displeasure of 
 God towards the nation was fully appeased. But though 
 David could account for the natural cause of the famine, 
 yet its long continuance was so unusual and extraordinary 
 an event, as that he thought himself obliged to inquire of 
 the Lord for the reasons of it, that he might prevent, if he 
 could, the further continuance of it, by averting the dis- 
 pleasure of God, of which the famine seemed to be the im- 
 mediate eflfect. Upon his inquiring, he was answered, that 
 it was upon the account of " Saul, and his bloody house, 
 because he slew the Gibeoniles;" after which the historian 
 immediately informs us, that " Saul sought to slay them in 
 his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah ;" and the 
 Gibeonites themselves complained to David, that Saul was 
 the ma4i that " consumed them, and devised against them, 
 that they should be destroyed from remaining in any of the 
 coasts of Israel." And indeed the murder of these poor 
 people was an action suitable to Saul's sanguinary temper ; 
 and if he was bloody enough to put to the sword, without 
 any provocation, a whole city of his own subjects, what 
 should hinder him from endeavouring to exterminate these 
 Amorites out of the land, if he could hereby oblige his own 
 people, by enriching them with their fields and vineyard^', 
 and thereby better establish himself and his family in the 
 kingdom. Samuel indeed is not anywhere said to have 
 charged Saul with any such slaughter. Probably that 
 prophet was dead before this carnage of the Gibgonites hap- 
 pened, and therefore it was no wonder he never charged 
 Saul with it. He lived long enough after Samuel's death 
 to perpetrate this crime, when it would not be in Samuel's 
 power to reproach him with it. If Samuel was alive, it is 
 absolutely certain that he never visited Saul, and so could 
 not reproach him for his barbarity. But to question the 
 fact is to denv the history, which as peremptorily fastens it 
 on Saul, as it does any other fact whatsoever. The deed 
 itself was a perfidious and bloody one ; the destruction of 
 many of the Gibeonites, and a determined purpose wholly 
 to extirpate the remainder of them out of the country, in 
 violation of the public oath and faith that had been given 
 them for their security, without any provocation or for- 
 feiture of life on their part. He cut them off" in cold blood, 
 defenceless and unarmed, though they were serviceable to 
 the nation, and many of them appropriated to the service of 
 God and of his tabernacle, merely for secular and political 
 views, and that he might serve himself, by gratifying some of 
 the tribes among whom they lived, and who wanted to pos- 
 sess themselves of their cities and lands. It is probable his 
 death prevented the full execution of this barbarous pur- 
 pose, which therefore seems to have been begun but a very 
 little while before it, in order to support his declining inte- 
 rest, and ingratiate himself with the children of Israel and 
 Judah ; with Judah particularly, of which tribe David was, 
 and in whose territories some of the Gibeonitish towns 
 were, to whom he thought the expulsion of that people 
 might be agreeable, and so might be a means of retaining 
 that powerful tribe in his interest. The crime therefore 
 Vas enormous in itself, and aggravated with the most 
 heinous circumstances ; and which all civilized nations, 
 almost in all ages, have looked upon with horror, and as 
 highly deserving the divine displeasure and vengeance. 
 Antiphon, one of the principal orators of Greece, pleading 
 for the bringing a murderer to justice, against whom the 
 evidence was not so full as was desired, but the circum- 
 
^32 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 21. 
 
 bloody house 1 In the beginning of David's reign, his own 
 unsettled condition for seven years and more, when Saul's 
 family disputed the crown with him, and could none of 
 them have been brought to justice by him ; the many neces- 
 sary wars he was afterward engaged in, and perhaps not 
 thinking himself obliged to take notice of Saul's conduct 
 during his reign, or his very tenderness for the family of 
 his predecessor and father-in-law, might all concur to pre- 
 vent any public inquisition into this cruel transaction, or 
 calling any of the offenders to an account for it in the com- 
 mon course of justice. And God permitted things to take 
 their natural course, and not to manifest his displeasure on 
 this account, till it could be done in such a manner, as should 
 make his justice, as the God and king of Israel, more con- 
 spicuous, and the execution of his vengeance more obser- 
 vable and awful, and as should, at the same time, most 
 effectually prevent all future attempts to injure or extirpate 
 that unhappy people. 
 
 Particular events may for a long while be delayed, and 
 the very delay of them may, in concurrence with the opera- 
 tions of providence, be one means at last of bringing them 
 to pass with greater observation, and more convincing 
 evidence of the interposition of God in bringing them about, 
 as is frequently the case in long-concealed murders. God 
 therefore, in a time of profound peace, when David's gov- 
 ernment was settled, and there was nothing to interrupt the 
 course of justice, punishes the people with a three years' 
 famine, to let them feel his displeasure, to render them 
 solicitous to know the cause of it, and take the proper 
 methods to appease it. So that though no train of inter- 
 vening and unavoidable circumstances can impede the 
 operations of providence, or prevent what God is deter- 
 mined to bring to pass, yet such circumstances may, for a 
 very considerable while, impede the operations of human 
 justice ; nevertheless, how long soever that justice may be 
 delayed, it will certainly at last take place, when God 
 judges it the proper season to execute it, and when such 
 execution shall most effectually demonstrate his inspection, 
 and tend to secure the purposes of his moral providence and 
 government over mankind. 
 
 It is, I think, more than obscurely intimated, in those 
 words of David to the Gibeonites, " What shall I do for 
 ycu, and wherewithal shall I make the atonement, that ye 
 may bless the inheritance of the Lord V that they had 
 loudly exclaimed against the violation of the public faith, 
 and the perfidy and cruelty of Saul and his family, who 
 had destroyed them ; and demanded that some satisfaction 
 should be made them, and had invocated the vengeance of 
 God against their murderers. To demand satisfaction they 
 had a right, as the vindices sanguinis, the avengers of blood, 
 or the near relations of those whom Saul had cut off; and 
 it is probable that they took occasion, from the continuance 
 of the famine for three years, to renew their complaints for 
 the injuries they had suffered, and to desire that justice 
 might be done them. This must greatly embarrass David, 
 as Saul and his sons were killed in battle, and no satisfac- 
 tion possibly could be obtained from them ; and therefore, 
 in order to "know the real cause of the famine, and whe- 
 ther any, or what satisfaction was to be made to the Gibeon- 
 ites, he determined to inquire of the oracle, and govern 
 himself by the directions of it. The answer he received 
 was, that the famine was sent for Saul, for his bloody house, 
 because he slew the Gibeonites. 
 
 It is true, that the oracular response did not in words dic- 
 tate any act of expiation that was to be made to the Gibeon- 
 ites, but only mentioned the cause of the famine. And 
 the reason is plain, because when it was known that the 
 famine was sent for the slaughter of these poor people by 
 Saul and his bloody house, it was as well known they were 
 to have some justice done them on that bloody family, for 
 the outrages that had been committed on them ; for David 
 knew that, in the ordinary course of justice, the shedding 
 of blood was only to be atoned for by the shedding of his 
 or their blood on whom the murder was chargeable. So 
 that the oracle did really dictate, though not in words, the 
 necessity of an expiation, by pointing out the crime for 
 which the famine was sent. And thus David understood 
 it. when sending for the Gibeonites, he said to them : " What 
 shall I do for you 1 Wherewith shall I make the atone- 
 ment 1" i. e. the atonement for the blood of your people, that 
 hath been unrighteously shed. The Gibeonites replied: 
 " We will have no silver or gold of Saul, neither for us shalt 
 
 thou kill any man in Israel." No compensation could be 
 made under the law, for wilful murder, by silver and gold: 
 and indeed nothing could have argued a meaner and more 
 sordid disposition in these people, than a demand of money, 
 in satisfaction for the massacre committed on them ; and 
 though the nation might have been, and certainly was. in 
 some respect criminal, for permitting Saul to cut them off, 
 yet, as Saul was the contriver of the mischief, and his fam- 
 ily the immediate agents who destroyed them, they did not 
 desire that any one person in Israel should be put to death 
 on their account, which was an argument of their great 
 moderation and regard to justice. David then bid them 
 name the satisfaction they demanded, and promised that he 
 would give it them, acting herein in obedience to the pro- 
 phet's direction, who, as Josephus rightly observes, ordered 
 him to grant the Gibeonites whatsoever satisfaction they 
 should demand of him. We have something of a like his- 
 tory in Herodotus, who tells us, that after the Pelasgi had 
 murdered their Athenian wives, and the children had by 
 them, they found that their lands became barren, their 
 wives unfruitful, and their flocks failed of their usual in- 
 crease. On this account they sent to the oracle at Delphos, 
 to know by what means they might obtain deliverance from 
 these calamities. The oracle ordered them to give the 
 Athenians whatsoever satisfaction they should demand of 
 them. The Athenians demanded, that they should deliver 
 up their country to them, in the best condition they could. 
 This the Pelasgi promised upon a certain condition, which 
 they thought impossible. However, they were forced in 
 virtue of this promise, many years after, to surrender it to 
 Miltiades, some of them making no resistance to his forces, 
 and those who did, were besieged and taken prisoners. — 
 Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 5. And they answered the king, The man 
 that consumed us, and that devised against us 
 that we should be destroyed from remaining 
 in any of the coasts of Israel, 6. Let seven men 
 of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will 
 hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of 
 Saul, whom the Lord did choose. And the 
 king said, I will give them. 
 
 It appears by this, that the demand of these seven per- 
 sons, to be put to death, was by order of God, and the sac- 
 rifice that he appointed to be made to the public justice, tc 
 expiate the murders committed by Saul, for they were to 
 be hung up to the Lord ; i. e. in obedience to his will, and 
 to appease his displeasure, because wilful murders are 
 highly offensive to God, and are properly to be expiated by 
 the death of those who have committed them ; in which 
 sense every offender who is guilty of capital offences, ex- 
 piates his guilt by suffering the penalty of death, and there- 
 by becomes a sacrifice to justice, human and divine. It de- 
 serves also to be remarked, that the Gibeonites did not in- 
 tend to exterminate the family of Saul, in revenge for his 
 intention to destroy them out of the coasts of Israel, but only 
 demanded seven of his sons, and left the choice of these 
 seven to David himself, hereby putting it out of their power 
 to sacrifice the male line of Saul to their revenge, and giv- 
 ing David a glorious opportunity to show how religiously he 
 remembered his covenant with his friend Jonathan, and 
 that no policy of state should ever induce him to the viola- 
 tion of it. It appears from hence, that David could not in- 
 stigate the Gibeonites to make this request, that seven of 
 Saul's sons might be delivered to them, that they might kill 
 them, to prevent its being said that he killed them for their 
 sakes, and that the Gibeonites might hereby take the bl^me 
 of their destruction upon themselves, and screen David 
 from being charged with that murder which he himsel/ 
 had contrived, and by them perpetrated. For if the Gibeon- 
 ites had acted with a determined purpose to cut off Saul's 
 family, they would have named their men, and made sure 
 work by a demand of Mephibosheth and his family. Or 
 if David had the same view, he would have prompted the 
 Gibeonites to have asked the delivery of the same persons ; 
 or, when the choice was left to himself, would readily have 
 seized the opportunity of giving up those that he appre- 
 hended it was most for his interest to get rid of Indeed 
 nothing can be a more improbable absurd supposition than 
 
Chap. 21. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 233 
 
 this of David's instigating the Gibeonites to demand seven 
 of Saul's family to be delivered up to death, as an expia- 
 tion for his having destroyed many of them. Whether 
 there was, or was not, such a massacre of them by Saul, 
 must be universally known to the people of Israel. For 
 :5uch an execution could not have been committed in a 
 corner. If there was not, how could the Gibeonites de- 
 mand satisfaction ] For what could they demand it 1 Or 
 how demand it from the house of Saul, if they, and all the 
 Deople of Israel knew, that Saul and his house had never 
 aujured them^ Or, how could David instigate them to ask 
 satisfaction for a massacre, that he and all his people knew 
 had never been committed on them 1 No man of common 
 sense would openly pretend a reason for an act of cruelty 
 and injustice, which had not the shadow of a reason in it, 
 and which every one must know the absolute falsehood of; 
 and it must have been much less exceptionable to all Da- 
 vid's subjects, had he put Saul's family to death by an act 
 of power, and openly avowed, that he did it to secure him- 
 self and his own family on the throne, than to cut them off 
 by such a barefaced paltry contrivance, which every one 
 must see through, ana which could not diminish the guilt 
 and horror of the fact, but only serve to heighten his own 
 impudence and wickedness, and expose him for his perfi- 
 dy, subornation, and cruelty, to the greater abhorrence of 
 all his people. And indeed it is acknowledged that a more 
 barefaced deceit was never exhibited ; such indeed as could 
 only have been attempted among the poor bigoted Jews. 
 But I would observe, that as this transaction was carried 
 on in an open public manner ; as it was occasioned by a 
 three years' famine ; as the oracular response declared the 
 famine was sent because that Saul and his bloody house 
 had consumed the Gibeonites ; as they demanded Saul's 
 sons for an expiation ; and David delivered them up for 
 an atonement ; stupid as the Jews were, it was too barefaced 
 a deceit to pass even on them ; for if there had been no 
 massacre of the Gibeonites at all, nor a famine of three 
 years' continuance, the oracle would have been convicted 
 of an immediate lie, and could never have persuaded the 
 people into the belief of facts, which they themselves were 
 absolutely certain never existed. If David was so vile as to 
 attempt this deceit, and the Jews so stupid as to be deluded 
 by it, what must the Gibeonites be, who acted in this 
 tragedy by David's instigation, charged Saul with consu- 
 ming and destroying them, and demanded seven of hLs sons 
 as victims'? For what '? Why, for nothing; for destroy- 
 ing and consuming them, when, in reality, they knew that 
 he did not destroy and consume them, and all the nation 
 knew that this charge against Saul was an imposture and 
 a lie, and the demand of his sons for an expiation was the 
 highest villany and impiety. There is, I believe, no man 
 living who can really believe, that either David or the Gib- 
 eonites could be thus designedly, shamelessly, and without 
 inducement wicked, since the Gibeonites were to have 
 neither gold nor silver for the part they acted, and since 
 David might have cut off Saul's family, had it been in his 
 heart to have done it, and assigned reasons for it, that 
 would have carried some appearance of necessity and just- 
 ice. If Saul was in reality guilty of the murder of these 
 Gibeonites, it became the providence of God, who was su- 
 preme king and judge in Israel, to make inquisition for the 
 blood that was shed, and manifest his displeasure against 
 ><;uch a notorious violation of the public faith and honour. 
 Thu,s also will David be fully vindicated from the charge 
 .of instigating the request of the Gibeonites, and they 
 from the iniquitous imputation of concerting with him so 
 extremely childish, but -yvicked a scheme, of cutting off 
 Saul's posterity. 
 
 It hath been suggested to the dishonour of David, that 
 m consequence of this request of the Gibeonites, which he 
 himself m.ust have instigated, David, not withheld by any 
 motives of gratitude towards the posterity of his unhappy- 
 father-in-law, in direct violation of his oath to Saul at the 
 cave of Engedi, granted it ; sparing only Mephibosheth, 
 who luckily was so unfortunate as to be a cripple, and so 
 much dependant on David, that he had no room for appre- 
 hension from him. He therefore reserved Mephibosneth, 
 in memory of another oath between him and his father, 
 Jonathan ; for he was under obligations by two oaths, and 
 forgot one, and remembered the other. But this charge is 
 contrary to the most express account of the history, and 
 David's conduct in this affair was worthy a man of probity 
 30 
 
 and honour, and consistent with the strictest regard to his 
 oaths both to Saul and Jonathan. That in granting the re- 
 quest to the Gibeonites, he directly violated his oath to Saul 
 at the cave of Engedi ; or cut oflTthe remainder of Saul's 
 family, in defiance of the solemn oath by which he engaged 
 to spare that 'mhappy race, needs no other refutation than 
 the oath itself. Saul asked David to swear by the Lord, 
 " that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, that thou Avilt 
 not destroy my name out of my father's house." David gave 
 him his oath accordingly. I will not urge here, that had 
 Saul's family committed crimes worthy of death, David's 
 oath would have been no reason against punishing them 
 according to their deserts ; and such punishment, if de- 
 served, had been no breach of his oath. But I shall only 
 observe, that if David did not cut off his seed after him, so 
 as to destroy his name out of his father's house, he did not 
 violate his oath to Saul. Now David did not cut off one 
 single person of Saul's family, whose death had the least 
 tendency to destroy his name out of his father's house. The 
 seed is always reckoned by the males, and not the females 
 of a family, and the name in a father's house could only be 
 preserved by the male descendants. But David gave up 
 only the son's of Saul's concubine, who were not the legal 
 seed of Saul, and those of his eldest daughter, Avho could 
 only keep up Adriel's name, and not Saul's ; and hereby 
 conscientiously observed, without the least violation, his oath 
 to Saul, or need of any mental reservation to help him out. 
 To this it is objected, that if the seed is always reckoned 
 by the males, and not the females, then Jesus Christ could 
 not be the son of David, because he did not descend from 
 David, by the male line, but from the female. But it should 
 be observed, that the son by a daughter is as really the son 
 of the grandfather, as a son in the male succession, and 
 that the only difference is, that the succession in a family 
 is kept by the sons, and not by the females, who by marriage 
 enter into other families, and therefore cannot keep up the 
 names of the families from whence they sprang. Jesus 
 Christ therefore was the son of David, though only so by 
 the mother's side ; and as he was not to keep up David's 
 line according to the flesh, it was expressly predicted of him, 
 by a double prophecy, that he should be of the female line. 
 The one, that he should be the seed of the woman ; the 
 other, that his mother should be a virgin ; so that he could 
 not have been that son of David who was to be the Messiah, 
 and to sit on his throne for ever and ever, had he been Da- 
 vid's son by an earthly father. The same spirit of prophe- 
 cy that declared he should be David's son, as expressly de- 
 clared that he should be so by the mother ; an exception 
 that makes no alteration in the general rule of family 
 successions, which were constantly among the Jews, and 
 almost every nation in the world, in the male line, and not 
 in the female. Nor is it true that he spared only Mephi- 
 bosheth, and that he reserved only one cripple, from whom 
 he could have no apprehensions, and who being the son of 
 Jonathan, gave him the opportunity of making a merit of 
 his gratitude. The history expressly contradicts this as- 
 sertion, for Mephibosheth had a son, whom he called Mi- 
 cah, who was now old enough to have children, and had 
 four sons, from whom descended a numerous posterity. 
 See his line in the following table : — 
 
 Saul, Jonalh&n, Mephibosheth, or Merib-baaJ, 
 
 Micah, 
 
 pitho^, MeJech,Tare», Ab^z, 
 
 Jehoadah, 
 
 Alemeth, Zimri, Apmaveth, 
 
 Moza, 
 
 Binea, 
 
 Kapha, 
 
 Eleasah, 
 
 Azel, 
 t 
 
 Azrikam Bocheru, Ishmael, Sheariah, Obadiah, Ilanau. 
 
 Eshck, 
 Ulam, Jeush, Eliphelet, 
 150 sons and grandsons. 
 
234 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 21. 
 
 faithless David, thus to leave Saul only one poor crip- 
 ple ! and who, not withheld by any moti ves of gratitude, and 
 m direct violation of his oath to Saul, did thus wickedly 
 cut off all his seed after him, and wholly destroy his name, 
 out of his father's house ! It appears from what hath been 
 said also, that when it is insinuated that David spared Me- 
 phibosheth, oaly because as a cripple, and dependant on 
 David, he had no room for apprehension from him, it is 
 mere suggestion, and inconsistent with the plainest appear- 
 ance to the contrary. For as this could not be the reason 
 for his saving Mephibosheth's son Micah, and his family, 
 it is not likely he acted from it in sparing Mephibosheth 
 himself, but from a more worthy motive towards both, out 
 
 )f regard to his oath, and the grateful remembrance he 
 .-ilill preserved of his former obligations to, and friendship 
 Avilh Jonathan, Mephibosheth's father. This the scripture 
 asserts; that the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul, 
 because of the Lord's oath that was between them, between 
 David and Jonathan the son of Saul. 
 
 1 have one remark more to make on this part of the his- 
 tory, which turns out to David's immortal honour. It is 
 observed, that some certain contemplations, which are put 
 into David's head, calling to his remembrance, that some 
 of Saul's family were yet living, be cdljcluded it expedient 
 to cut them off, lest they should hereafter prove thorns in 
 his side ; and then whenever David projected any scheme, 
 a religious pretence, and the assistance of the priests, were 
 never wanting. But for this charge there is not any found- 
 ation. For Saul's bastard children, and the children by 
 his daughter, could never be thorns in David's side, any 
 more than other people, or the other branches of Saul's 
 family, because incapable of the crown ; especially, while 
 there continued a lineal descent in the male line from Saul 
 himself David therefore could not be guilty of all this 
 villany and folly with which he hath been charged, for 
 the sake of cutting off Saul's family, lest they should 
 be thorns in his side, because he cut off none but those who 
 could be no thorns in his side, and suffered all those to live, 
 who alone were capable of proving thorns in his side ; and 
 therefore David projected no such scheme as this of cutting 
 off Saul's family ; yea, his conduct in this affair was di- 
 rectly the reverse of what he must have done had he pro- 
 jected any such scheme ; and therefore I must conclude, 
 tliat as no such scheme was ever projected, there was, and 
 could be, no occasion for a religious pretence, or tlie assist- 
 ance of the priests, to sanctify and accomplish it. There 
 have been, I acknowledge, commotions excited in states by 
 illegitimate children, and by descendants in the female line. 
 But I know of no instance, in ancient or modern history, 
 of any prince, who remembering that some of his predie- 
 cessor's family, who might dispute with him his crouTi by 
 their descent, were living, and concluding it expedient to 
 cut them'off, lest they should hereafter prove thorns in his 
 side, should, to answer this end, cut off only the bastard 
 children, and those of the daughters, and leave the son and 
 grandson of his predecessor alive to propagate their de- 
 scendants, and in them claimants to his crown, and thorns 
 in his side, to all generations. Suspicious and jealous ty- 
 rants love to make surer work ; but David, under a neces- 
 sity of delivering up some of his predecessor's family to 
 justice, generously preserved the claimants to his crown 
 alive, and delivered up those only from whom he could 
 have nothing to fear, as having no kind of legal right to 
 the government and kingdom. 
 
 Illustrious prince ! Be thy name and memory ever re- 
 vered, thy generosity ever spoken of with praise ; who, 
 when forced by providence to give up to justice some of 
 the guilty family of thy persecutor and sworn enemy, didst 
 from the greatness of thy mind, thy prevailing humanity, 
 thy regard to thy oath to one who sought thy life, and thy 
 pleasing remembrance of thy once loved friend; refuse to ciit 
 off the seed of him that persecuted thee, and to destroy his 
 name out of his father's house, but didst nourish his seed 
 in thy bosom, maintain it in thy family, suffer it to increase 
 and prosper, and spread itself out into numerous branches, 
 even when policy might have dictated other measures, and 
 a wicked craft would certainly have pursued them. Fresh 
 be thy ^aurels to the latest posterity, and thine unexampled 
 generosity ever be remembered with the veneration aud es- 
 1 teem, which it claims from all the benevolent and virtuous 
 part of mankind. It should be further mentioned, on this 
 ocp-asion, to David's honour, that though he was necessitated 
 
 to deliver up some of Saul's family to justice, to give satis- 
 faction to the injured Gibeonites, yet that he took the first 
 opportunity to pay the last tokens of respect that could be 
 to Saul and his imhappy family. For as soon as ever it- 
 appeared, that the natural cause of the famine was over, by 
 the return of the rains, David ordered the bones of Saul 
 and Jonathan to be fetched from the men of Jabesh-gilead, 
 who had recovered them from the Philistines, and took 
 them, together with the bones of those that had been hanged 
 up, and buried them honourably in the sepulchre of Kish, 
 Saul's father ; whereby he showed, that he had no inveter- 
 ate enmity to Saul's family, but was pleased with the op- 
 portunity of showing respect to his name and memory. 
 This whole account concludes with this observation of the , 
 historian : " They performed all that the king commanded, 
 and after that God was entreated for the land." God ap- 
 proved his generosity to the family and remains of his 
 enemy, and as the reward of it, sent prosperity to him and 
 his people. — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took 
 sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, 
 from the beginning of harvest until water drop- 
 ped upon them out of heaven, and sufiered 
 neither the birds of the air to rest on them by- 
 day, nor the beasts of the field by night. 
 
 Speaking of a great precipice near Bylan, Mr. Parsons 
 says*" three loaded camels fell down the precipice, and 
 were killed on the spot, in my remembrance ; and what is 
 very remarkable, in less than thirty hours after their loads 
 were taken off, there was not left a piece of flesh, but all 
 was devoured by the vultures in the dav, and the beasts oi 
 prey, mostly jackals, in the night."— Burder. 
 
 By a passage of La Roque, it appears, that if the usual 
 rains have failed in the spring, it is of great benefit to have 
 a copious shower, though very late: for he tells us, that 
 when he arrived at Sidon, in the end of June, it had not 
 rained there for many months, and that the earth was so 
 extremely dry, that the cotton plants,' and the mulberry- 
 trees, which make the principal riches of that country, 
 were in a sad condition, and all other thjngs suffered in 
 proportion, so that a famine was feared, which is generally 
 followed with a pestilence. He then tells us, that all the 
 sects of religion which lived there had, in their various 
 ways, put up public prayers for rain, and that at length on 
 the very day that the Mohammedans made a solemn pro- 
 cession out of the city, in the way of supplicating for mer- 
 cy, all on a sudden the air thickened, and all the marks ol 
 an approaching storm appeared, and the rain descended in 
 such abundance, that all those that attended the procession 
 got back to the city with considerable difiiculty, and in dis- 
 order. He adds, "that the rain continued all that day, and 
 part of the night, which perfected the revival of the plants, 
 and the saving of the productions of the earth. 
 
 La Roque is evidently embarrassed with this fall of the 
 rain just at the time the Mohammedans were presenting ~ 
 their supplications, when neither the solemn prayers of 
 the Greek bishop, nor those of the Latin monks, nor even 
 the exposing of the Host for many days, had been thus hon- 
 oured : " At last," said he, " Heaven," which bestows its fa- 
 vours, when and how it pleases, and who causes it to rain 
 on the unjust and the infidel, permitted so great an abun- 
 dance of rain to fall," (fee. But there certainly was no ocr 
 casion for any such disquietude ; there was no dispute which 
 religion was most excellent involved in this transaction, 
 nor does any thing more appear in it than this, that God, 
 the universal parent, having at length been sought to by all, 
 showered down his mercies upon all. But the intention of 
 these papers leads me to remarks of a different kind. This 
 author does not tell us when this rain fell, which is to be 
 regretted, and the more so, as he is often exact in less im- 
 portant matters. However, it could not be before the end 
 of June, N. S. for he did not arrive at Sidon imtil then; and 
 it could not be so late as the usual time of the descent of 
 the autumnal rains, for the cotton is ripe in September, un- 
 til the middle of which month those rains seldom fall, often 
 later, and this rain is supposed to have been of great service 
 to the growing cotton ; consequently, these general prayers 
 for rain could not refertoautumnal showers, but a late spring 
 rain, which probably happened soon after his arrival, or 
 
Chap. 22. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 23# 
 
 about the time that Dr. Russel tells us those severe Ihun- 
 dershowers fell at Aleppo, which I have before taken no- 
 tice of, that is, about the beginning of July, O. S. And 
 though the harvest must have been over at Sidon by the 
 time this gentleman arrived there, and they had, therefore, 
 nothing then to hope or to fear for as to that, yet as the 
 people of those countries depend so much on garden stuff, 
 the in,spissated juice of grapes, figs, olives, &c. they might 
 be apprehensive of a scarcity as to these too, which they 
 might hope to prevent by this late rain. For the like rea- 
 son, such a rain must have been extremely acceptable in 
 the days of David. And it must have been more so, if it 
 <*ame a good deal earlier, though we must believe it to have 
 jeen after all expectations of it in the common way were 
 over ; and such a one, I suppose, was granted. Dr. Dela- 
 ny indeed, in his life of David, tells us, that the Rabbins 
 suppose the descendants of Saul hanged from March, from 
 the first days of the barley-harvest, to the following Octo- 
 ber, and he seems to approve their sentiments. Dr. Shaw 
 mentions this affair only cursorily ; however, he appears to 
 have imagined that they hanged until the rainy season 
 came in course. But surely we may much better suppose 
 it was such a rain as La Roque speaks of, or one rather 
 earlier. The ground Delany goes upon is a supposition, 
 that the bodies that were hanged up before the Lord, hung 
 until the flesh was wasted from the bones, which he thinks 
 is affirmed in the 13th verse of that chapter; but, I must 
 confess, no such thing appears to be affirmed there; the 
 bodies of Saul and his sons, it is certain, hanged but a very 
 little while on the wall of Beihshan before the men of Ja- 
 besh-gilead removed them, which yet are called bones ;— 
 " They took their bones and buried them," 1 Sam. xxxi. 13 ; 
 the seven sons of Saul then might hang a very little time 
 in the days of King David. And if it should be imagined 
 that the flesh of Saul was consumed by fire, verse 12, and 
 so the word bones came to be used in the account of their 
 interment, can any reason be assigned why we should not 
 suppose these bodies were treated afler the same manner 1 
 But it appears that the word bo7ies frequently means the 
 same thing with corpse, which circumstance also totally in- 
 validates this way of reasoning : so the embalmed body of 
 Joseph is called his bones, Gen. 1. 25, 26, and Exod. xiii."l9 ; 
 so the lying prophet terms his body, just become breathless, 
 his bones: " when I am dead, then bury me in the sepul- 
 chre wherein the man of God is buried, lay my bones be- 
 side his bones," 1 Kings xiii. 31. So Josephus tells us that 
 Simon removed the bones of his brother Jonathan the high- 
 priest, who was slain by Tryphon when he was departing 
 out of that country, though Simon seems to have removed 
 the body as soon as might be afler Tryphon's retirement. 
 
 Such a late spring rain would have been attended, as the 
 rain at Sidon was, with many advantages ; and coming af- 
 ter all hope of common rain was over, and presently fol- 
 lowing the death of these persons on the other hand, would 
 be a much more merciful management of Providence, and 
 a much nobler proof that the execution was the appoint- 
 ment of God, and not a political stratagem of David, than 
 the passing of six months over without any rain at all, and 
 then its falling only in the common track of things. This 
 explanation also throws light on the closing part of this 
 story, " And after that God was entreated for the land." Dr. 
 Delany seems to suppose that the performing these funeral 
 rites was requisite to the appeasing God: but could that be 
 the meaning of the clause 1 Were the ignominy of a death 
 the law of Moses pronounced accursed, and the honour of 
 a royal funeral, both necessary mediums of appeasing the 
 Almighty 1 Is it not a much easier interpretation of this 
 clause, The rain that dropped on these bodies was a great 
 mercy to the country, and the return of the rains in due 
 quantities afterward, in their season, proved that God had 
 been entreated for the land '?— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 12. And David went and took the bones of 
 Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son, from 
 the men of Jabesh-g-ilead, which had stolen 
 them from the streets of Beth-shan, where the 
 Ptiilistines had hano-ed them, when the Phi- 
 listines had slain Saul in Gilboa. 
 
 ^"Beth-shan." Calmet says on this, "House, or temple 
 w the tooth, or of ivory ; from (no) beth, a Muse, and (jv) 
 
 shen, a tooth. This title means, no doubt, simply the tem- 
 ple of the tooth, but we have no reason to conclude that a 
 TOOTH only was worshipped in any temple in Canaan ; it 
 must have been the symbol of some deity." Calmet then 
 proceeds to show that this may have been the god Gjniesa 
 of the East, who is represented w^h an elephant's head, 
 and supposes the tusks are alluded to by the tooth. I am 
 not aware, however, of any such distinction being maae in 
 that deity, and think it unlikely that his tusk would give 
 the name to a temple. Is it not a curious fact, that the 
 tooth of Buddha is the most sacred and precious relic, in 
 the opinion of the inhabitants of Siam, of the Burm?n em- 
 pire, and of Ceylon? That tooth is kept in the temple of 
 Kandy, the capital of Ceylon. Buddhism is the religion of 
 China, and of those countries alluded to, and it was for- 
 merly the religion of multitudes in India. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Ver. 6. The sorrows of hell compassed me about; 
 the snares of death prevented me. 
 
 This is an allusion to the ancient manner of hunting, 
 which is still practised in some countries, and was perform- 
 ed by surrounding a considerable tract of ground by a 
 circle of nets, and afterward contracting the circle by de- 
 grees, till they had forced all the beasts of that quarter to- 
 gether into a narrow compass, and then it v/as that the 
 slaughter began. This manner of hunting was n.scd in Ita- 
 ly of old, as well as all over the eastern parts of the -world, 
 and it was from this custom that the poets som.etimes repre- 
 sented death as surrounding persons with her necs, ana as 
 encompassing them on every side.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 35. He teacheth my hands to war ; so that 
 a bow of steel is broken by mine arms. 
 
 The bow is the first weapon mentioned in the holy scrip- 
 tures, and seems to have been quite familiar to the imme- 
 diate descendants of Abraham. " Take," said Isaac, "thy 
 quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me 
 some venison. Here indeed the reference is to hunting; 
 but we learn from the remark of Jacob to his favourite son, 
 that the weapon which was found so useful in his art, was 
 soon turned against our species ; and it still continues to 
 maintain its place in some countries, among the instruments 
 of human destruction. 
 
 We learn from Homer, that the Grecian bow was at first 
 made of horn, and tipped with gold. But th^ material oi 
 which it was fabricated, seems for the most part to have 
 been wood, which the workman frequently adorned with 
 gold and silver. One of these ornamented weapons pro- 
 cured for Apollo, a celebrated Cretan, the significant name 
 of ApyvpoTo^og, the bearer of the silver-studded bow. But 
 the Asiatic warrior often used a bow of steel or brass, which, 
 on account of its great stiffness, he bent with his foot. 
 Those that were made of horn or wood probably required 
 to be bent in the same way ; for the Hebrew always speaks 
 of treading his bow, when he makes ready for the battle : 
 and to tread and bend the bow are in all the writings of the 
 Old Testament convertible phrases. The bow of steel is 
 distinctly mentioned by the Hebrew bard : " He teaches my 
 hand to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine 
 arms." This was a proof of great strength, and of uncom- 
 mon success in "war, which he ascribes with equal piety and 
 gratitude to the infinite power and goodness of Jehovah. 
 To bend the bow, was frequently proposed as a trial of 
 strength. Afler Ulysses had bent his bow, which all the 
 suiters of Penelope had tried in vain, he boasted to his 
 son Telemachus of the deed, because it was an undenia- 
 ble proof that he had not lost his ancient vigour, in which 
 he was accustomed to glory. Herodotus relates, that when 
 Cambyses sent his spies into the territories of Ethiopia, 
 the king of that country, -well understanding the design of 
 their visit, thus addressed them ; When the Persians can 
 easily draw bows of this largeness, then let them invade the 
 Ethiopians. He then unstrung the bow, and gave it to 
 them to carry to their master. The Persians themselves, 
 according to Xenophon, carried bows three cubits m length. 
 If these were made of steel or brass, which are both men- 
 tioned* in the sacred volume, and of a thickness propor- 
 tioned to their length, they must have been very dangerous 
 weapons even in close fight; and as such they are repre- 
 sented by the prophet Isaiah; " Their bows also shall aasU 
 
236 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chaf. 22-^U, 
 
 the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on 
 ihe fruit of the womb ; their eyes shall not spare children." 
 In time of peace, or when not engaged with the enemy, the 
 oriental warriors carried their bow in a case, sometimes of 
 cloth, but more commonly of leather, hung to their girdles. 
 When It was taken from the case, it was said, in the lan- 
 guage of Habakkuk, to'be " made quite naked." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 41. Thou hast also given me the necks of 
 mine enemies, that I might destroy them that 
 hate me. 
 
 The neck is often used for the whole body, and in threat- 
 enings, it is the part mentioned. A proprietor of slaves is 
 said to have their necks. To a person going among 
 wicked or cruel people it is said, " Go not there, your 
 puddara, i. e. neck, or nape, will be given to them," " De- 
 pend upon it, government will have it out of the necks of 
 those smugglers." " Have you paid Chinnan the money V 
 " No, nor will I pay him." "Whyl" "Because he has 
 had it out of my neck." When two men have been fight- 
 ing, the conqueror may be seen to seize the vanquished by 
 the neck, and thrust him to the ground. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Ver. 16. And the three mighty men brake through 
 the host of .the Philistines, and drew water out 
 of the well of Beth-lehem, that was by the gate, 
 and took it, and brought it to David : never- 
 theless he would not drink thereof, but poured 
 it out unto the Lord. 
 
 There is an account very similiar to this in Arrian's 
 Life of Alexander. Tunc poculo pleno, sicut oblatum est 
 Feddito : non solus, inquit bibere sustineo, nee tam exi- 
 guum devidere omnibus possum. " When his army was 
 greatly oppressed with heat and thirst, a soldier brought 
 him a cup of water ; he ordered it to be carried back, say- 
 ing, I cannot bear to drink alone, while so many are in 
 want: and this cup is too small to be divided among the 
 whole. Give it to the children for whom you brought it," 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Ver. 1. And again the anger of the Lord was 
 kindled against Israel, and he moved David 
 against them to say, Go, number Israel and 
 Judah. 
 
 Here arises the question, If Moses presupposed the law- 
 fulness of this measure, and did actually twice number the 
 people, wherein consisted David's sin when he did the 
 same 1 Yet the Bible says that he actually did sin in this 
 matter, and was punished for it by God, with a pestilence, 
 which lessened the sum of the people numbered, by 70,000. 
 The history of this event is given in 2 Sam. xxiv. and 
 1 Chron. xxi. ; and these passages I must beg the reader to 
 peruse, if he wishes to understand what follows. The 
 common opinion is, that David offended God by his pride, 
 and his desire to gratify it, by knowing over how many 
 subjects he was king. This is, perhaps, the worst expla- 
 nation that can be given of the unlawfulness of his order. 
 Were God to punish by pestilence every ambitious motion 
 in the hearts of kings, and every sin they commit in thought, 
 pestilences would never cease. It must, besides, appear 
 yery strange indeed, how such a man as Joab should have 
 expressed so great an abhorrence at a sin that consisted 
 merely in pride of heart, and have so earnestly dissuaded 
 David from it. Yet he thus remonstrates with him, say- 
 ing, " May God multiply the people a hundred-fold, that 
 the king may see it ; but wherefore will the king urge this 
 measure'?" Or, as we read in Chronicles, "May God 
 piultiply the people a hundred-fold! They are entirely 
 devoted to the king's service. But whyseeketh the king to 
 do this 1 and why should guilt be brought upon Israel ?" 
 Notwithstanding this remonstrance, however, the king, 
 we are told by both historians, repeated his commai^d with 
 fo much rigour, that Joab found it necessary to carry it into 
 execution. Now Joab was not, on other occasions, a man 
 pf narrow conscience. He had already deliberately plan- 
 
 ned, and, in cold blood, perpetrated, two murders, merely 
 to rid himself of rivals. And when David gave him 
 the hint to place Uriah in the post of danger, he was by 
 no means squeamish, but immediately planned and com- 
 menced an attack, in which, besides Uriah, a great num- 
 ber of his bravest soldiers were slain. His conscience, 
 therefore, could not be incommoded by a mandate relative 
 to a matter in itself lawful, and where the sin, in whatever 
 it consisted, lay altogether hid in the king's ambitious 
 heart. If we think so, we must look upon him m the light 
 of a court-chaplain, and a semi-pietist ; and he certainly 
 was neither. What he hesitated, therefore, about doing, 
 must have appeared in his own eyes, something more 
 serious than bare murder. Josephus, however, has hit upon 
 an idea, which may, by some, be thought to account some- 
 what more probably, than the opinion now mentioned, for 
 the guilt which David is said to have incurred on this oc- 
 casion. " David," says he, " made the people be numbered, 
 without exacting for the sanctuary, the half-shekel of poll- 
 tax enjoined by the Mosaic law." But this idea loses all its 
 weight, if I am right in my opinion, that Moses enjoined 
 the exaction of the half-shekel, not upon every occasion of 
 a census, but merely on the first; and even allowing me to 
 be wrong in this, and the common exposition of the statute, 
 in the time of Josephus, to be the more correct one, still 
 the notion of Josephus is certainly inadmissible here. For 
 neither in Samuel nor Chronicles do we find the least men- 
 tion of the half-shekel ; nor does David forbid the payment 
 of it, but only orders the people to be numbered ; so that 
 every conscientious person had it in his power to pay it of 
 himself, and the hign-priest to demand it in virtue of his 
 office. At any rate, David's census appears, in this re- 
 spect, altogether as blameless as Moses^ second one, in the 
 account of which (Numb, xxvi.) not a word is said con- 
 cerning the poll-tax. Nor do Joab and the other generals 
 here represent to the king, that he ought to order the pay- 
 ment of the half-shekel, but only intreat him to desist from 
 the census itself. And finally, David, who had amassed so 
 many millions of shekels, (1 Chron. xxix.) and, to the man- 
 ifest prejudice of his own family, destined so much for 
 building a temple, must actually have been in the delirium 
 of a hot fever, if, contrary to all his other views, he had 
 not had a desire to grant for the future erection of that 
 edifice, projected by himself, the half-shekel payable on 
 the census, which was a mere trifle compared to his own 
 donations, and came not out of his own purse. 
 
 But as far as I can understand the story, David caused 
 the people to be numbered, neither out of that prudent 
 solicitude which wiM always actuate a good king, nor yet 
 out of mere curiosity, but that by means of such a census 
 they might be enrolled for permajient military service, and 
 to form a standing army ; the many successful wars he had 
 already carried on, having filled his mind with the spirit 
 of conquest. We find at least, that the enumeration was 
 ordered to be carried on, not as had before been usual, by 
 the priests, but by Joab and the other generals ; and the 
 very term here used, Safar, (■\£r) nuraeravii, scripsit, in- 
 cludes also in itself the idea of numbering for military 
 service, and is, without any addition, equivalent to our 
 German military term, enrolliren, to enrol, or muster. 
 This, indeed, is so much the case, that Hassofer, (iccn) 
 the scribe, is that general who keeps the muster-rolls, and 
 marks those called on to serve. In like manner, the of- 
 ficers are termed (cniso) scribes. David's sin, therefore, 
 or rather (not to speak so theologically, but more in the 
 language of politics) his injustice and tyranny towards 
 a people who had subjected themselves to him on very dif- 
 ferent terms, and with the reservation of many liberties 
 consisted in this. Hitherto, the ancient and natural rule 
 of nations, Quot cives, tot milites, had certainly been so far 
 valid, as that, in cases of necessity, every citizen was 
 obliged to bear arms in defence of the state. Such emer- 
 gences, however, occurred but very rarely; and at other 
 times every Israelite was not obliged to become a soldier, 
 and in peace, for instance, or even during a war not very 
 urgent, subject himself to military discipline. David had 
 made a regulation, that, exclusive of his lifeguards, calleii 
 in the Bible, Creti and Pleti, 24,000 men should be»on duty 
 every month by turns ; so that there were always 288.000 
 trained to arms" within the year; which was certainly suf- 
 ficient for the defence of the coimtry, and for commanding 
 respect fronv the neijjhbouring nations, especially consid- 
 
Chap. 24. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 2374 
 
 ering the state of the times, and the advantages in point of 
 situation, which David's dominions enjoyed. It would ap- 
 pear, however, that he did not think this enough. Agitated, 
 m all probability, by the desire of conquest, he aspired at 
 the establishment of a military government, such as was 
 that of Rome in after-times, and at subjecting, with that 
 
 view, the whole people to martial regulations; that so 
 every man might be duly enrolled to serve under such 
 and such generals and officers, and be obliged to perform 
 military duty at stated periods, in order to acquire the use 
 of arms. 
 
 Whether such a measure, if not absolutely necessary to 
 the preservation of the state, be a hardship on the people, 
 every man may judge from his own feelings, or even from 
 the most recent history of certain nations. For even in a 
 country where the government is purely monarchical, and 
 the people extremely martial, and the frontiers of which, 
 from the uncompactness of its territories, are not, like those 
 of the Israelitish empire, surrounded and secured by moun- 
 . tains or deserts, the enrolment of every individual for mil- 
 itary service, introduced 40 years ago, has been of late 
 spontaneously abolished by a very warlike sovereign, be- 
 cause he found that it was too oppressive, and furnished a 
 pretext for a multitude of extortions. Now if this was Da- 
 vid's object, it is easy to conceive, that Joab, although in 
 Srivate life a very bad character, and twice guilty of mur- 
 er, might yet have as much patriotism, or rather political 
 sagacity, as to deprecate, in the most energetic terms, the 
 execution of a royal mandate, the effect of which would 
 have been to bring a free people under the worst military 
 despotism. Very bad consequences were to be apprehend- 
 ed, if the subjects should not prove sufficiently patient to 
 submit to such an innovation. The army, however, devo- 
 ted as it was to David, and approved as was its valour in 
 mnny campaigns, may, perhaps, have effected their patient 
 submission ; and, in fact, the expression, (2 Sam. xxiv. 5,) 
 And they, viz. Joab, and the other generals to whom the 
 task was committed, encamped rear Aroer, appears to insin- 
 uate, that this enumeration, or rather this enrolment of the 
 people, required the support of a military force. 
 
 What David intended, Uzziah, his successor, in the 
 eighth generation, may perhaps have accomplished. The 
 martial measures of that prince ( 2 Chron. xxvi. 11 — 14^ 
 are not commended; the prophet Isaiah (chap. ii. 5 — 8) 
 seems rather to describe them in the language of censure; 
 It is to be observed, however, that the enrolment of the 
 whole people by David, and by Uzziah, is by no means one 
 and the same thing. The former ruled over a powerful 
 nation, wherein there were nearly a million and a half of 
 people able to bear. arms, and which had a compact and 
 secure frontier, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean : 
 so that, for the safety of the state, no such oppressive meas- 
 ure was requisite. But Uzziah had under him only two 
 tribes, consisting proKnbly of about 300,000 men, and his 
 territories were not rounded, nor the frontiers distinct and 
 strong. Here, therefore, that measure might be necessary 
 for self-defence, or, at any rate, admit of a sufficient apolo- 
 gy, which, in David's time, was quite needless, and if 
 strictly enforced, must have proved absolutely tyrannical. 
 
 MiCHAELIS. 
 
 From several passages in the Old Testament, compared 
 with each other, it appears that this census, or numbering 
 of the people, was a sacred action ; as the money was to be 
 applied to the service of the temple. It was not like that in 
 other nations, to know the strength of the government ; for 
 God was their king in a peculiar manner, and promised to 
 protect them from all their enemies, and to multiply them 
 as the stars of the sky, while they obeyed his laws. — Da- 
 vid's crime, therefore, seems to have lain in converting a 
 sacred action to a civil purpose. He was culpable both in 
 the thing itself, and in the manner of doing it. For where- 
 as by the rule given to Moses, in the passages referred to 
 above, they were to number the males from twenty years 
 old and upward; David gave orders, that all should be 
 numbered, who were fit for war, though under that age. 
 This must haA^e been highly criminal in David, now in his 
 old age, after so many instances of the Divine favour ex- 
 pressed towards him. And as to the people, their offence 
 seems to have consisted in their compliance with that order. 
 He was culpable in giving the order, and they in obeying it. 
 And therefore Joab, who was sensible of this, and unwil- 
 ling to execute the command, asks David, " Why he would 
 
 be the cause of trespass in Israel ?" For by that means, he 
 reduced them to the difficulty of disobeying God, or him- 
 self, as their prince. It was" doubtless "their duty to have 
 obeyed God; but we find, as it generally happens in such 
 cases, that the majority, at least, chose to obey the king. 
 However, it appears that Joab was weary of the office, and 
 did not go through it. Probably he might find many of the 
 people uneasy, and averse to submit to the order. Besides, 
 it was expressly enjoined, that when the people were to be 
 numbered from twenty years old and upward, the Levites 
 should be excepted, as being appointed for the service of 
 the tabernacle. And as they were not called out to war, 
 so they had no share in the land of Canaan allotted to them, 
 when it was conquered by the other tribes; who were 
 therefore ordered to give them a number of cities, each 
 tribe out of their portion, which was accordingly done. 
 And Josephus assigns that reason for it, when he says : — 
 " Moses, because the tribe of Levi were exempted from 
 war and expeditions, being devoted to the service of God, 
 lest being needy and destitute of the necessaries of life, they 
 should neglect the care of their sacred function ; ordered 
 the Hebrews, that when by the will of God they possessed 
 the land of Canaan, they'sho\ild give to the Levites forty- 
 eight large and handsome cities, with two thousand cubits 
 of land round the walls." But David seems to have order- 
 ed them likewise to be mustered, with a military view; 
 which, perhaps, was an aggravation. For, it is said, that 
 when Joab, by his command, numbered the people, " they 
 were eleven himdred thousand men that drew sword." And 
 it is added: **But Levi and Benjamin counted he not 
 among them, for the king's word was abominable to Joab." 
 So that it looks as if his orders were to count them with the 
 rest. Indeed, we find them once armed upon an extraordi- 
 nary occasion, which was to guard the temple at the coro- 
 nation of Joash, king of Judah. For, at that time, they 
 were ordered " to encompass the king round about, every 
 man with his weapons in his hand." But that was in the 
 temple, where the rest of the people were not permitted to 
 enter. And besides their religious function, they were 
 sometimes employed in other civil otfices. So David, when 
 he was making preparations for building the temple, ap- 
 pointed six thousand of them for officers and judges. Gro- 
 tius, indeed, observes, with regard to this fact of David, 
 that he declared the people innocent : which he seems to 
 have concluded from what David says, 1 Chron. xxi. 17. 
 But it does not appear, from what has been said above, that 
 they were altogether blameless, though not equally crimi- 
 nal with himself. And in such a case, the equity of a na- 
 tional punishment is acknowledged both by Philo and 
 Josephus, in the passages cited from them by Grotius.— 
 
 ChITICA BiBLlCA. i| 
 
 These wars being thtts happily ended, David enjoyed for 
 some time a settled- peace and prosperity, without any 
 foreign invasions to call him into the field, or domestic 
 troubles to interrupt him in the affairs of government ; but 
 being at length persuaded and prevailed on to number the 
 people, he became the cause of trespass to Israel, and 
 brought on them the severe punishment of a pestilence. 
 The author of the books of Samuel, in relating this affair, 
 says : " That the anger of the Lord was kindled against 
 Israel," and he moved David against them to say, "Go, 
 number Israel and Judah." The author of the Chronicles 
 differently expresses it. '* And Satan stood up against Is- 
 rael, and provoked David to number Israel ;" and this is 
 objected against as an absurd thing, that David should be 
 said to be moved both by God and Satan to number the 
 people. But I apprehend this difficulty may be easily re- 
 moved, by observing, that these two places are capable of a 
 more favourable turn, so as to render them perfectly recon- 
 cileable with each other, according to the genius of the 
 language, and the common forms of expression in it. The 
 text in Samuel may be thus rendered: "And again the 
 anger of the Lord was' kindled against Israel ; for he moved 
 David," or " David was moved against them to say. Go, 
 number Israel and Judah ;" active verbs in the third person, 
 being frequently to be rendered as impersonals, and not to 
 be referred to the nouns immediately foregoing; and thus 
 the text will be fully reconcileable with that in Chronicles, 
 which says, that " Satan moved him to number the people." 
 Or, it may reasonably be supposed, as the original words 
 we render, " He moved David against them," are the same 
 in Samuel and the Chronicles, that the wo"d Satan hath 
 
2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chaf. 22— £4. 
 
 the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on 
 ihe fruit of the womb ; their eyes shall not spare children." 
 In time of peace, or when not engaged with the enemy, the 
 oriental warriors carried their bow in a case, sometimes of 
 cloth, but more commonly of leather, hung to their girdles. 
 When It was taken from the case, it was said, in the lan- 
 guage of Habakkuk, to'^be " made quite naked." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 41. Thou hast also given me the necks of 
 mine enemies, that I might destroy them that 
 hate me. 
 
 The neck is often used for the whole body, and in threat- 
 enings, it is the part mentioned. A proprietor of slaves is 
 said to have their necks. To a person going among 
 wicked or cruel people it is said, " Go not there, your 
 friiddara, i. e. neck, or nape, will be given to them." " De- 
 pend upon it, government will have it out of the necks of 
 those smugglers." " Have you paid Chinnan the money V 
 " No, nor will I pay him." " Why V " Because he has 
 had it out of my neck." When two men have been fight- 
 ing, the conqueror may be seen to seize the vanquished by 
 the neck, and thrust him to the ground. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 1 6. And the three mighty men brake through 
 the host of .the Philistines, and drew water out 
 of the well of Beth-lehem, that was by the gate, 
 and took it, and brought it to David : never- 
 theless he would not drink thereof, but poured 
 it out unto the Lord. 
 
 There is an account very similiar to this in Arrian's 
 Life of Alexander. Tunc poculo pleno, sicut oblatum est 
 wadito : non solus, inquit bibere sustineo, nee tam exi- 
 guum devidere omnibus possum. " When his army was 
 
 freatly oppressed with heat and thirst, a soldier brought 
 im a cup of water ; he ordered it to be carried back, say- 
 ing, I cannot bear to drink alone, while so many are in 
 want: and this cup is too small to be divided among the 
 whole. Give it to the children for whom you brought it," 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Ver. 1. And again the anger of the Lord was 
 kindle'd against Israel, and he moved Uavid 
 against them to say, Go, number Israel and 
 Judah, 
 
 Here arises the question. If Moses presupposed the law- 
 fulness of this measure, and did actually twice number the 
 people, wherein consisted David's sin when he did the 
 same ^ Yet the Bible says that he actually did sin in this 
 matter, and was punished for it by God, with a pestilence, 
 which lessened the sum of the people numbered, by 70,000. 
 The history of this event is given in 2 Sam. xxiv. and 
 I Chron. xxi. ; and these passages I must beg the reader to 
 peruse, if he wishes to understand what follows. The 
 <?ommon opinion is, that David offended God by his pride, 
 and his desire to gratify it, by knowing over how many 
 subjects he was king. This is, perhaps, the worst expla- 
 nation that can be given of the unlawfulness of his order. 
 Were God to punish by pestilence every ambitious motion 
 iri the hearts of kings, and every sin they commit in thought, 
 pestilences would never cease. It mast, besides, appear 
 yery strange indeed, how such a man as Joab should have 
 expressed so great an abhorrence at a sin that consisted 
 merely in pride of heart, and have so earnestly dissuaded 
 David from it. Yet he thus remonstrates with him, say- 
 ing, " May God multiply the people a hundred-fold, that 
 the king niay see it ; but wherefore will the king urge this 
 measure 1" Or, as we read in Chronicles, "May God 
 inultiply the people a hundred-fold! They are entirely 
 devoted to the king's service. But whyseeketh the king to 
 clo thisl and why should guilt be brought upon Israeli" 
 Notwithstanding this remonstrance, however, the king, 
 we are to id by both historians, repeated his commai»d with 
 po much rigour, that Joab found it necessary to carry it into 
 ejtecution. Now Joab was not, on other occasions, a man 
 pf narrow conscience. He had already deliberately plan- 
 
 ned, and, in cold blood, perpetrated, two murders, merely 
 to rid himself of rivals. And when David gave him 
 the hint to place Uriah in the post of danger, he was by 
 no means squeamish, but immediately planned and com- 
 menced an attack, in which, besides Uriah, a great num- 
 ber of his bravest soldiers were slain. His conscience, 
 therefore, could not be incommoded by a mandate relative 
 to a matter in itself lawful, and where the sin, in whatever 
 it consisted, lay altogether hid in the king's ambitious 
 heart. If we think so, we must look upon him in the light 
 of a court-chaplain, and a semi-pietist ; and he certainly 
 was neither. What he hesitated, therefore, about doing, 
 must have appeared in his own eyes, something more 
 serious than bare murder, Josephus, however, has hit upon 
 an idea, which may, by some, be thought to account some- 
 what more probably, than the opinion now mentioned, for 
 the guilt which David is said to have incurred on this oc- 
 casion. " David," says he, " made the people be numbered, 
 without exacting for the sanctuary, the half-shekel of poll- 
 tax enjoined by the Mosaic law." But this idea loses all its 
 weight, if I am right in my opinion, that Moses enjoined 
 the exaction of the half-shekel, not upon every occasion of 
 a census, but merely on the first; and even allowing me to 
 be wrong in this, and the common exposition of the statute, 
 in the time of Josephus, to be the more correct one, still 
 the notion of Josephus is certainly inadmissible here. For 
 neither in Samuel nor Chronicles do we find the least men- 
 tion of the half-shekel ; nor does David forbid the payment 
 of it, but only orders the people to be numbered ; so that 
 every conscientious person had it in his power to pay it of 
 himself, and the hign-priest to demand it in virtue of his 
 office. At any rate, David's census appears, in this re- 
 spect, altogether as blameless as Moses^ second one, in the 
 account of which (Numb, xxvi.) not a word is said con- 
 cerning the poll-tax. Nor do Joab and the other generals 
 here represent to the king, that he ought to order the pay- 
 ment of the half-shekel, but only intreat him to desist from 
 the census itself. And finally, David, who had amassed so 
 many millions of shekels, (1 Chron. xxix.) and, to the man- 
 ifest prejudice of his own family, destined so much for 
 building a temple, must actually have been in the delirium 
 of a hot fever, if, contrary to all his other views, he had 
 not had a desire to grant for the future erection of that 
 edifice, projected by himself, the half-shekel payable on 
 the census, which was a mere trifle compared to his own 
 donations, and came not out of his own purse. 
 
 But as far as I can understand the story, David caused 
 the people to be numbered, neither out of that prudent 
 solicitude which wiM always actuate a good king, nor yet 
 out of mere curiosity, but that by means of such a census 
 they might be enrolled for permanent military service, and 
 to form a standing army ; the many successful wars he had 
 already carried on, having filled his mind with the spirit 
 of conquest. We find at least, that the enumeration was 
 ordered to be carried on, not as had before been usual, by 
 the priests, but by Joab and the other generals ; and the 
 very term here used, Safar, (-xfir) numeravii, scripsit, in- 
 cludes also in itself the idea of numbering for military 
 service, and is, without any addition, equivalent to our 
 German military term, enroUiren, to enrol, or muster. 
 This, indeed, is so much the case, that Hassofer, (iccn) 
 tlie scribe, is that general who keeps the muster-rolls, and 
 marks those called on to serve. In like manner, the of- 
 ficers are termed (d'^bo) scribes. David's sin, therefore, 
 or rather (not to speak so theologically, but more in the 
 language of politics) his injustice and tyranny towards 
 a people who had subjected themselves to him on very dif- 
 ferent terms, and with the reservation of many liberties 
 consisted in this. Hitherto, the ancient and natural rule 
 of nations, Quot cives, tot milites, had certainly been so far 
 valid, as that, in cases of necessity, every citizen w^s 
 obliged to bear arms in defence of the state. Such emer- 
 gences, however, occurred but very rarely ; and at other 
 times every Israelite was not obliged to become a soldier, 
 and in peace, for instance, or even during a war not very 
 urgent, subject himself to military discipline. David had 
 made a regulation, that, exclusive of his lifeguards, calleu 
 in the Bible, Creti and Pleti, 24,000 men should benon duty 
 every month by turns ; so that there were always 288,000 
 trained to arms" within the year; which was certainly suf- 
 ficient for the defence of the country, and for commanding 
 respect frorw the nei^^hbouring nations, especially consid- 
 
Chap. 24. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 237* 
 
 ering the state of the times, and the advantages in point of 
 situation, which David's dominions enjoyed. It would ap- 
 pear, however, that he did not think this enough. Agitated, 
 m all probability, by the desire of conq^uest, he aspired at 
 the establishment of a military government, such as was 
 that of Rome in after-times, and at subjecting, with that 
 view, the whole people to martial regulations; that so 
 every man might be duly enrolled to serve under such 
 and such generals and officers, and be obliged to perform 
 military duty at stated periods, in order to acquire the use 
 of arms. 
 
 Whether such a measure, if not absolutely necessary to 
 the preservation of the state, be a hardship on the people, 
 every man may judge from his own feelings, or even from 
 the most recent history of certain nations. For even in a 
 country where the government is purely monarchical, and 
 the people extremely martial, and the frontiers of which, 
 from the uncompactness of its ferritories, are not, like those 
 of the Israelitish empire, surrounded and secured by moun- 
 . tains or deserts, the enrolment of every individual for mil- 
 itary service, introduced 40 years ago, has been of late 
 spontaneously abolished by a very warlike sovereign, be- 
 cause he found that it was too oppressive, and furnished a 
 pretext for a multitude of extortions. Now if this was Da- 
 vid's object, it is easy to conceive, that Joab, although in 
 private life a very baa character, and twice guilty of mur- 
 der, might yet have as much patriotism, or rather political 
 sagacity, as to deprecate, in the most energetic terms, the 
 execution of a royal mandate, the effect of which would 
 have been to bring a free people under the worst military 
 despotism. Very bad consequences were to be apprehend- 
 ed, if the subjects should not prove sufficiently patient to 
 snibmit to such an innovation. The army, however, devo- 
 ted as it was to David, and approved as was its valour in 
 many campaigns, may, perhaps, have effected their patient 
 submission; and, in fact, the expression, (2 Sam. xxiv. 5,) 
 And they, viz. Joab, and the other generals to whom the 
 task was committed, encamped rear Aroer, appears to insin- 
 uate, that this enumeration, or rather this enrolment of the 
 people, required the support of a military force. 
 
 What David intended, Uzziah, his successor, in the 
 eighth generation, may perhaps have accomplished. The 
 martial measures of that prince ( 2 Chron. xxvi. 11 — 14) 
 are not commended; the prophet Isaiah (chap. ii. 5 — 8) 
 seems rather to describe them in the language of censure; 
 It is to be observed, however, that the enrolment of the 
 whole people by David, and by Uzziah, is by no means one 
 and the same thing. The former ruled over a powerful 
 nation, wherein there were nearly a million and a half of 
 people able to bear arms, and which had a compact and 
 secure frontier, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean : 
 so that, for the safety of the state, no such oppressive meas- 
 ure was requisite. But Uzziah had under him only two 
 tribes, consisting probably of about 300,000 men, and his 
 territories were not rounded, nor the frontiers distinct and 
 strong. Here, therefore, that measure might be necessary 
 for self-defence, or, at any rate, admit of a sufficient apolo- 
 gy, which, in David's time, was quite needless, and if 
 strictly enforced, must have proved absolutely tyrannical. 
 
 MiCHAEUS. 
 
 From several passages in the Old Testament, compared 
 with each other, it appears that this census, or numbering 
 of the people, was a sacred action ; as the money was to be 
 applied to the service of the temple. It was not like that in 
 other nations, to know the strength of the government; for 
 God was their king in a peciiliar manner, and promised to 
 protect them from all their enemies, and to multiply them 
 as the stars of the sky, while they obeyed his laws. — Da- 
 vid's crime, therefore, seems to have lain in converting a 
 sacred action to a civil purpose. He was culpable both in 
 the thing itself, and in the manner of doing it. For where- 
 as by the rule given to Moses, in the passages referred to 
 above, they were to number the males from twenty years 
 old and upward; David gave orders, that all should be 
 numbered, -who were fit for war, though under that age. 
 This must haA'-e been highly criminal in David, now in his 
 old age, after so many instances of the Divine favour ex- 
 pressed towards him.' And as to the people, their offence 
 seems to have consisted in their compliance with that order. 
 He was culpable in giving the order, and they in o'oeying it. 
 And therefore Joab, who was sensible of this, and unwil- 
 lin-gto execute the command, asks David, " Why he would 
 
 be the cause of trespass in Israel ?" For by that means, he 
 reduced them to the difficulty of disobeying God, or him- 
 self, as their prince. It was" doubtless their duty to have 
 obeyed God; but we find, as it generally happens in such 
 cases, that the majority, at least, chose to obey the king. 
 However, it appears that Joab was weary of the office, and 
 did not go throiigh it. Probably he might find many of the 
 people uneasy, and averse to submit to the order. Besides, 
 it was expressly enjoined, that when the people were to be 
 numbered from twenty years old and upward, the Levites 
 should be excepted, as being appointed for the service of 
 the tabernacle. And as they were not called out to war, 
 so they had no share in the land of Canaan allotted to them, 
 when it was conquered by the other tribes; who were 
 therefore ordered to give them a number of cities, each 
 tribe out of their portion, which was accordingly done. 
 And Josephus assigns that reason for it, when he says: — 
 " Moses, because the tribe of Levi were exempted from 
 war and expeditions, being devoted to the service of God, 
 lest being needy and destitute of the necessaries of life, they 
 should neglect the care of their sacred function ; ordered 
 the Hebrews, that when by the will of God they possessed 
 the land of Canaan, they sho\Tld give to the Levites forty- 
 eight large and handsome cities, with two thousand cubits 
 of land round the walls." But David seems to have order- 
 ed them likewise to be mustered, with a military view; 
 which, perhaps, was an aggravation. For, it is said, that 
 when Joab, by his command, numbered the people, " they 
 were eleven hundred thousand men that drew sword." And 
 it is added: ♦'But Levi and Benjamin counted he not 
 among them, for the king's word was abominable to Joab." 
 So that it looks as if his orders were to count them with the 
 rest. Indeed, we find them once armed upon an extraordi- 
 nary occasion, which was to guard the temple at the coro- 
 nation of Joash, king of Judah. For, at that time, they 
 were ordered " to encompass the king round about, every 
 man with his weapons in his hand." But that was in the 
 temple, where the rest of the people were not permitted to 
 enter. And besides their religious function, they were 
 sometimes employed in other civil offices. So David, when 
 he was making preparations for building the temple, ap- 
 pointed six thousand of them for ofl^cers and judges. Gro- 
 tius, indeed, observes, with regard to this fact of David, 
 that he declared the people innocent: which he seems to 
 have concluded from what David says, 1 Chron. xxi. 17. 
 But it does not appear, from what has been said above, that 
 they were altogether blameless, though not equally crimi- 
 nal with himself And in such a case, the equity of a na- 
 tional punishment is acknowledged both by iPhilo and 
 Josephus, in the passages cited from them by Grotius. — 
 Critica Biblica. «^ 
 
 These wars being thtts happily ended, David enjoyed for 
 some time a settled"" peace and prosperity, without any 
 foreign invasions to call him into the field, or domestic 
 troubles to interrupt him in the affairs of government; but 
 being at length persuaded and prevailed on to number the 
 people, he became the cause of trespass to Israel, and 
 brought on them the severe punishment of a pestilence. 
 The author of the books of Samuel, in relating this afllair, 
 says : " That the anger of the Lord was kindled against 
 Israel," and he moved David against them to say, " Go, 
 number Israel and Judah." The author of the Chronicles 
 differently expresses it. " And Satan stood up against Is- 
 rael, and provoked David to number Israel;" and this is 
 objected against as an absurd thing, that David should be 
 said to be moved both by God and Satan to number the 
 people. But I apprehend this diflSculty may be easily re- 
 moved, by observing, that these two places are capable of a 
 more favourable turn, so as to render them perfectly recon- 
 cileable with each other, according to the genius of the 
 language, and the common forms of expression in it. The 
 text in Samuel may be thus rendered: "And again the 
 anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel ; for he moved 
 David," or " David was moved against them to say. Go, 
 number Israel and Judah ;" active verbs in the third person, 
 being frequently to be rendered as impersonals, and not to 
 be referred to the nouns immediately foregoing; and thus 
 the text will be fully reconcileable with that in Chronicles, 
 which says, that " Satan moved him to number the people." 
 Or, it may reasonably be supposed, as the original words 
 we render, " He moved David against them," are the same 
 in Samuel and the Chronicles, that the wo"d Satan hath 
 
S38 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 Chap. 24. 
 
 been omitted by some careless transcriber in the text in 
 Samuel, which is expressly mentioned in, and to be sup- 
 plied from that of Chronicles; and then the version will be, 
 that " The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, 
 for Satan moved David to number the people :" and very 
 probably, had we more ancient MSS., this omission in 
 Samuel, if such, would be rectified by them, A candid 
 critic will make some allowances, both for defects and 
 redundancies in books of that great antiquity, which the 
 Old Testament books confessedly are ; and where several 
 of those books treat of the same affairs, will have the good 
 sense, as far as he can, to supply what is defective in one, 
 by what appears complete in the other. If there needs a 
 supplement in Kings it is actually found in Chronicles, and 
 therefore should be inserted from thence. This would cer- 
 tainly be, in like instances, the case in other books, and it 
 is injustice not to apply the same fair rules of criticism, to 
 remove the difficulties that may occur in the writings of 
 the Old Testament. But there is another way of rendering 
 and understanding this passage, viz. " For he moved Da- 
 vid," or, " David was moved against them," not, as in our 
 version, To say, but icn^, dicendo, by saying, " Go number 
 Israel and Judah ;" which last words will then be, not 
 David's to his officers, which follow in the next verse, but 
 his, who counselled David to this action. And thus David's 
 numbering the people will be, neither by the instigation of 
 God, or Satan, as that word means the Devil. It is certain, 
 that God never instigated and said to David, " Go, numbe*- 
 the people," For if God had commanded this, David's 
 heart would never have smote him for it.'Hor would he 
 have acknowledged to God, " I have sinned greatly in that 
 I have done." Nor would Joab have remonstrated against 
 it, nor have represented it to the king, as what would be a 
 cause of trespass to Israel, if he had known that David had 
 received such an order from God. Every circumstance in 
 this account proves, that there was no hand or direction of 
 God in this affair. And if the Devil had bid him do it, I 
 suppose he might have seen the cloven foot, and would 
 scarce have followed the measure for the sake of the ad- 
 viser. And yet somebody actually said to him : " Go, 
 number the people ;" and this person seems to have been 
 one of his courtiers, or attendants ; who, to give David a 
 higher notion of his grandeur, and of the number and 
 strength of his forces, put it into his head, and persuaded 
 him to take the account of them ; who, in Chronicles, is 
 therefore called Satan, or an adversary, either designedly 
 or consequentially, both to David and his people. And this 
 will exactly agree with what the author of the book of 
 Chronicles says: "An adversary stood up against Israel, 
 and provoked,", or, as the wotd is rendered in Samuel, 
 •' mqfed him against them." Thus Mr. Le Clerc under- 
 stands this passage, and I think the expressions made use 
 of seem to countenance and warrant ihe explication. But 
 it is said, that David's numbering the people is oddly 
 enough imputed to him as a great sin in him to require ; 
 for he was but a passive instrument in the affair. But who 
 do'h not know, that a man may be hanged for a crime, to 
 which his indictment says, " He was moved by the Devil;" 
 and because the Devil moved him, is he thereifore a passive 
 InstiHiment, and free from guilt 1 Or doth the being per- 
 suaded or moved by another to do a bad action, render the 
 person so moved a passive instrument, or would it excuse 
 him, in a court of justice, from the punishment due to his 
 crimes 1 
 
 It is further objected, that David was but the instrument 
 of a purpose, confessedly overruled to the execution of that 
 purpose by supernatural influence, and that to punish one 
 in such circumstances, would be just as if we should con- 
 vict a knife or pistol, and discharge the criminal. If 
 David was the mere instrument of a purpose, and overruled 
 by supernatural influence to execute it, the similitude may 
 be allowed. But who ever confessed that David was over- 
 ruled to do it by supernatural power 1 David himself did 
 not, but confesses directly the contrary. David's heart 
 smote him, and he said unto God, " Is it not I that com- 
 manded the people to be numbered 1 Am not I the person 
 who alone is accountable for it '? Even I it is that have 
 t-inned greatly, and done evil indeed, and very foolishly." 
 David knew it was his own act, and that, whoever advised 
 or instigated him to it, the blame was his own, and his pun- 
 ishment deserved. A confession that would have been 
 absurd and false, if he knew that the influence he acted 
 
 under, was really supernatural, or such as he could not 
 resist, or overrule. But as David did not know this, it is 
 impossible any one else should know it. There is nothing 
 in the history to support the assertion. If it was really 
 Satan that moved him, he moved him no otherwise than 
 as he doth all other men to that which is wrong; not by 
 influences which he could not resist, but by those undue 
 passions and affections which he might and ought to have 
 resisted. But if the measure was suggested by one of his 
 own counsellors, as really seems to be the case, it was his 
 duty to have overruled it, and hearkened to the better ad- 
 vice of Joab, who told him of the danger of it, and would 
 fain have dissuaded him from executing it. The truth 
 is, as I apprehend, that David's prosperity had too much 
 elated him, and that being advised by some rash imprudent 
 courtiers to take the number of his people, that he might 
 better know his strength, and be fully acquainted with the 
 power and grandeur of his kingdom, his vanity, in this 
 respect, got the better of his duty ; on which, God was 
 pleased to check the rising presumption of his heart, by , 
 letting him see how vain his dependance on his forces 
 was, and to punish him and them for their violation of a 
 law, which he had ordered to be observed under the se- 
 verest penalty. For, among other commands that were 
 given by God to Moses, this was one : " When thou takest 
 the sum of the children of Israel, after their number, then 
 shall they give every man a ransom for his life, unto the 
 Lord, when thou numberest them, that there be no plague, 
 among them, when thou numberest them. This shall they 
 give ; every one that passeth among them that are num- 
 bered, half a shekel shall be the offering of the Lord ; every 
 one that passeth among" them that are numbered, from 
 twenty years old, and above, shall give this offering to the 
 Lord." David, either not thinking of this command, or 
 thinking himself, as king of Israel, exempt from it, ordered 
 the people to be numbered, without exacting the ransom 
 from each of them. This was one of the highest stretches 
 of authority, and claiming a despotic arbitrary power over 
 the people, as seems plain from Joab's words to him : 
 " Are they not all my lord's servants V Why then this 
 badge of slavery, to subject them to a census contrary to 
 the law of Moses 7 It was indeed assuming a prerogative 
 that God reserved to himself, and a violation of one of the 
 standing laws of the kingdom, for the capitation tax that 
 God had appointed to be taken, whenever they were num- 
 bered, was ordered to be paid for the service of the taber- 
 nacle, as a memorial, that God was their supreme governor 
 and king. But God, to support the dignity of his own con- 
 stitution, and to put David in mind, that though king, he 
 was still to limit the exercise of his power by the precepts 
 of the law, gives him by the prophet the option of three 
 punishments, of which David chose the plague ; recollect- 
 ing probably, at last, that this was the very punishment 
 threatened by God to the violation of this statute, concern- 
 ing the numbering the people ; as well as for the reason he 
 himself alleges ; " Let us fall now into the hands of the 
 Lord, for his mercies are great." ^ 
 
 It is evident from the history, that this action of David 
 was looked upon as a very wrong step, even by Joab, who 
 remonstrated against it, as apprehensive of the bad conse- 
 quences that might attend it ; for he says, " The Lord make 
 his people a hundred times so many more as they be. B\it, 
 my lord the king, are they not all my lord's servants ? 
 Why then doth my lord require this thing 1 Why will he 
 be a cause of trespass to Israeli" And therefore Joab counted 
 not Levi and Benjamin, because the king's word was abom- 
 inable to him. Probably we do not understand all the 
 circumstances of this aflfair ; but Joab's censure of it, who 
 was no scrupulous man, shows that David's conduct in it 
 was extremely imprudent, and might subject his people to 
 very great inconveniences. But is it not strange, that 
 because David sinned in numbering the people, therefore 
 the people should be punished ; since of the three punish- 
 ments propounded to David for his choice, one of them 
 must necessarily fall upon his subjects 1 Possibly this dif- 
 ficulty may be eased, when I put my reader in mind, that 
 kings are no otherwise to be punished in their regal capa- 
 cities, nor oftentimes to be brought to correct the errors of 
 their administration, but by public calamities; by famine, 
 pestilence, foreign wars, domestic convulsions, or some 
 other like distresses that affect their people. This David 
 thought a punishment ; and if it be right at all for God to 
 
Chap. 25. 
 
 2 SAMUEL. 
 
 239 
 
 animadvert on the conduct of princes, or to show his dis- 
 pleasure against them for the public errors of their admin- 
 istration, it must be right and fit for him to afflict their peo- 
 ple ; and indeed this is what continually happens in the 
 common course of providence, and the observation that, 
 Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi, 
 
 is an old and a true one. And if this be a difficulty, it af- 
 fects natural religion as well as revealed, and the same 
 considerations that will obviate the difficulty in one case, 
 will solve it also in the other. As to the thing itself, that 
 kings are no otherwise to be punished in their regal capaci- 
 ties, but by public calamities which affect their people, it 
 is, I apprehend, so self-evident and certain, as that it can 
 need no proof Whether princes profit more or less, or 
 nothing, by the misfortunes of their subjects, is nothing to 
 this argument. Some bad kings may not profit by it. All 
 good kings will. The people's welfare, however, is neces- 
 sary to the prince's prosperity, and secures the principal 
 blessings of his reign, which can never be enjoyed without 
 it. On the other hand, kin^s must be affected with, and 
 deeply share in the misfortunes of their people ; because a 
 plague or a famine, or a hostile invasion, or any national 
 calamity, tends to destroy the peace of government, or to 
 subvert^he foundations of it, lessens the revenues of princes, 
 the number of their subjects, the profits of labour and in- 
 dustry, and interrupts the enjoyment of those advantages 
 and pleasures, which regal power and plenty can other- 
 wise secure to the possessors of them. David was most 
 sensibly affected with his people's sufferings under that pes- 
 tilence which his imprudence and their neglect had brought 
 upon them. How tenderly, how affectionately doth he 
 plead with God in their behalf ! "Even I it is that have 
 sinned. But as for these sheep, what have they done !" 
 What a noble instance of public spirit, and generous con- 
 cern for the safety of his people, doth that moving and pa- 
 thetic expostulation manifest, which he made when he saw 
 the angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth, 
 with a drawn sword in his hand, stretched out over Jerusa- 
 lem, and fell down with his elders, all clothed in sackcloth, 
 upon their faces, and thus affectionately interceded for 
 them : " Let thy hand, I pray thee, O Lord my God, be 
 on me and on my father's house, but not on thy people, that 
 they should be plagued." Here is the real language and 
 spirit of a genuine zntjiriv \ao>v, a true shepherd of the peo- 
 ple, devoting himself and family as a sacrifice to God for 
 the salvation of his subjects. 
 
 Besides, in this case, the people were themselves very 
 culpable ; for the command was absolute : " When thou 
 takest the sum of the children of Israel, then shall they give 
 every man a ransom for his soul." And therefore, as they 
 knew or might have known, that, upon being numbered, 
 they were to pay the prescribed ransom, which yet they 
 neglected or refused to do ; as partners in the offence, they 
 justly shared in the penalty inflicted. It is allowed, that 
 the tax was not at this time demanded by David ; and this 
 was his sin, in setting aside a positive command of God, 
 to gratify his own vanity and pride. The demanding this 
 tax by his own authority might have created a national dis- 
 turbance, and therefore should have prevented him from 
 numbering his people. But they submitted to be numbered, 
 and they were therefore bound to pay the tax, whether Da- 
 I vid demanded it of them or not, for the law did not exempt 
 j them from the payment, if he who numbered them did 
 I not demand it. They were to pay it as a ransom for their 
 j lives, and to exempt themselves from the plague ; and were 
 therefore punished with a plague for their neglect and dis- 
 obedience. David indeed takes the guilt upon himself, and 
 declares his people innocent of it : " As for these sheep, 
 what have they done 1" And it is true, that the order to 
 number the people was David's, of which his people were 
 wholly innocent. But they should have remonstrated 
 against the thing, or voluntarily paid the capitation tax 
 required of them ; and as they did neither, David was, as 
 Joab foretold him, a cause of "trespass to Israel, and they 
 could not plead innocence, as a reason for their exemption 
 from punishment. And even supposing they were entirely 
 free from all blame in this affair, were they so far entirely 
 free from all other transgressions, as that it was injustice 
 in God to visit them by a pestilence 1 If not, God did them 
 ( no injustice by sending that pestilence ; and therefore not 
 j by sending it at that time, and as an immediate punishment 
 
 of David's sin. God, by virtue of his supreme authority 
 over mankind, may resume life whenever he pleases. If 
 there be no sin, the resumption of life will be no punish- 
 ment; if there be, the resumption of it Avill not be unjust, 
 though the immediate reason of that resumption may be 
 for the punishment of another ; especially, as all such in- 
 stances have a real tendency to promote the public good, 
 and to preserve alive, in the minds both of princes and 
 people, that reverence for Deity, without which neither 
 public nor private virtue can subsist, nor the prosperity of 
 kingdoms ever be secured and established upon solid and 
 lasting foundations. 
 
 Upon this solemn humiliation of David, and intercession 
 with God for his people, the prophet Gad was sent to him 
 the same day, with an order that he should rear up an altar 
 unto the Lord, in the thrashing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, 
 the hill where Solomon's temple was afterward built. Da- 
 vid accordingly purchased the ground, built an altar unto 
 the Lord, offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, where- 
 by the Lord was entreated for the land, and the plague, 
 which had raged from Dan to Beersheba, was staye(tfrom 
 Israel, the city of Jerusalem being mercifully spared, and 
 exempted from this dreadful calamily. After this, David, 
 encouraged by the gracious token God had given him of 
 his acceptance at this thrashing-floor of Araunah, by the fire 
 from heaven that consumed his burnt-offering, continued 
 to offer upon the altar he had erected in this place ; and 
 publicly declared, " This is the house of the Lord God, this 
 is the altar of the burnt-offering for Israel ;" hereby conse- 
 crating this place for the erection of the temple, and to be 
 the seat and centre of the public worship for all the tribes 
 of Israel. On the whole, if they who object, credit the 
 history of the Old Testament in this part of it, and think it 
 true, that one of these three plagues was offered to David, 
 as the punishment of his offence; that he chose the pesti- 
 lence, that it came accordingly, and was removed upon 
 David's intercession ; they are as much concerned to ac- 
 count for the difficulties of the affair, as I or any other 
 person can be. If they do not believe this part of the histo- 
 ry, as the sacred writings represent it, let them give us the 
 account of it as it stands in their own imagination; and tell 
 us, whether there was any plague at all, how, and why it 
 came, and how it went and disappeared so all of a sudden. 
 In their account, whatever it be, David will stand certainly 
 clear of every imputation ; and, according to the scripture 
 narration, he will be an offender, but only against the stat- 
 ute law of the kingdom, as usurping an "authority and dis- 
 pensing power that did not belong to him, but not against 
 any law of God, of original, intrinsic, and immutable obli- 
 gation, as far as we can judge by the short and imperfect 
 account that is left us of this transaction ; and so may still 
 be the *' man after God's own heart," — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 1 8. And Gad came that day to David, and 
 said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the 
 Lord in the thrashing-floor of Araunah the 
 Jebusite. 
 
 Thrashing-floors, among the ancient Jews, were only, a?! 
 they are to this day in the East, round level plots of ground 
 in the open air, where the corn was trodden out by oxen, 
 the Libyc(B arece of Horace, ode i. 1. 10. Thus Gideon's 
 floor {Judges vi. 37) appears to have been in the open air ; 
 as was likewise that of Araunah the Jebusite ; else it would 
 not have been a proper place for erecting an altar and of- 
 fering sacrifice. In Hosea xiii. 3, we read oithe chajfaohich 
 is driven by the whirhcind Irom the floor. This circum- 
 stance of the thrashing-floor's being exposed to the agita- 
 tion of the wind, seems to be the principa,l reason of its 
 Hebrew name; which maybe further illustrated by the 
 direction which Hesiod gives his husbandman, to thraah 
 his corn in a place well exposed to the wind. From the 
 above account it appears that a thranhivg-floor (rendered in 
 our textual translation a void place) might well be near the 
 entrance of the gate of Samaria, and that it might afford no 
 improper place for the kings of Israel and Judah to hear the 
 prophets in. — Burder, 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Ver. 23. And when David inquired of the Lord 
 he said, Thou shalt not go up ; hut fetch a com- 
 
240 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 1. 
 
 pass behind them, and come upon them over 
 ag-ainst the mulberry-trees. 24. And let it be, 
 when thou.hearest the sound of a going in the 
 tops of the mulberry-trees, that then thou shalt 
 bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out 
 before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines. 
 
 It is doubtful whether the mulberry-tree is once men- 
 tioned in the scriptures. If Hasselquist may be credited, 
 it scarcely ever grows in Judea, very little in Galilee, bat 
 abounds "in Syria and mount Lebanon. Our translators 
 have rendered the original term Baca, by mulberry, in two 
 difierent passages : " And when David inquired of the Lord, 
 he said, Thou shalt not go up, but fetch a compass behind 
 them, and come upon them over against the mulberry-trees 
 (Becaim ;) and let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a 
 going in the tops of the mulberry-trees, that then thou shalt 
 bestir thyself." And the words. Who passing through the 
 valley of Baca, make it a pool ; the rain also filleth the 
 pools", — are in the margin, Who passing through the valley 
 of mulberry-trees. The Seventy, in Chronicles, render it 
 pear-trees ; in which they are followed by Aquila and 
 the Vulgate. Some think Baca, in the eighty-fourth Psalm, 
 is the name of a rivulet, which burst out of the earth, at the 
 foot of a mountain, with a plaintive murmur, from which 
 it derived its name. But it is more probable, that Baca is 
 
 the name of some shrub or tree. Those who translate it 
 •the mulberry-tree, to illustrate the passage in the psalm, 
 pretend it grows best in the dry ground ; but this seems to 
 be unfounded. • Marinus imagines, that Baca signifies the 
 mulberry-tree, because the fruit of the mulberry exudes a 
 juice resembling tears. Parkhurst rather thinks that Baca 
 means a kind of large shrub, which the Arabs likewise 
 call Baca, and which probably was so named from its dis- 
 tilling an odoriferous gum. For Baca with an aleph, seems 
 to be related to Baca with a Kay, which signifies to ooze, to 
 distil in small quantities, to weep or shed tears. This idea 
 perfectly corresponds with the description which Celsius 
 has given of this valley. It is not, according to him, a 
 place abounding with fountains and pools of water, but 
 rugged and embarrassed with bushes and stones, which 
 could not be passed through without labour and suffering ; 
 a striking emblem of that vale of thorns and tears, through 
 which all believers must pass to the heavenly Jerusalem. 
 The great uncertainty among interpreters concerning the 
 real meaning of the term Becaim, has induced Mr. Har- 
 mer to hazard a conjecture, that the tree meant in this pas- 
 sage is the weeping-willow. But this plant is not found 
 in a dry sandy vale, where the thirsty traveller is compelled 
 to dig for water, and to form cisterns in the earth, to re- 
 ceive the rain of heaven. In such a situation, we expect to 
 find the pungent aromatic shrub distilling its fragrant gum ; 
 not the weeping-willow, the favourite situation of which 
 is the watery plain, or the margin of the brook. — Paxton. 
 
 THE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 2. Wherefore his servants said unto him, 
 Let there be sought for my lord the king a 
 young virgin ; and let her stand before the king, 
 and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy 
 bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. 
 
 This is by no means so uncommon a thing as people in 
 England suppose. Men of seventy years of age and up- 
 wards often take a young virgin for the same purpose as 
 David did, and no other. It is believed to be exceedingly 
 healUiful for an aged person thus to sleep. " In the hot 
 seas'n, he is kept cool, and in the cold season, warm, by 
 sleeping with a young person ; his withered body derives 
 nourishment from the other." Thus, decrepit men may be 
 seen having a young female in the house, (to whom, gener- 
 ally, they are hot married,) and to whom they bequeath a 
 considerable portion of their property. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. And Adonijah slew sheep, and oxen, and 
 fat cattle, by the stone of Zoheleth, which is 
 by En-rogel, and called all his brethren the 
 king's sons, and all the men of Judah the king's 
 servants. 
 
 The oriental banquet, in consequence of the intense heat, 
 is often spread upon the verdant turf, beneath the shade of 
 a tree, where the streaming rivulet supplies the company 
 with wholesome water, and excites a gentle breeze to cool 
 their burning temples. The vine and the fig, it appears 
 from the faithful page of inspiration, are preferred on such 
 joyous occasions: "In that dav, saith the Lord of Hosts, 
 shall ye call every man his neighbour under the vine and 
 under the fig-tree." To fotmtains, or rivers, says Dr. 
 Chandler, the Turks and the Greeks frequently repair for 
 
 refreshment, especially the latter on their festivals, when 
 whole families are seen sitting on the grass, and enjoying 
 their early or evening repast, beneath the trees by the side 
 of a rill. And we are assured by the same author, that in 
 such grateful retreats they often give public entertain- 
 ments. He visited an assembly of Greeks, who, after cele- 
 brating a religious festival, were sitting under half tents, 
 with store of melons and grapes, besides lambs and sheep 
 to be killed, wine in gourds and skins, and other necessary 
 provisions. Such appears to have been the feast which 
 Adonijah gave his friends at En-rogel. It was held near a 
 well or fountain of water, and there " he slew sheep, and 
 oxen, and fat cattle, and invited his brethren" and the prin- 
 cipal people of the kingdom. En-rogel was not chosen for 
 secrecy, for it was in the vicinity of the royal city, but for 
 the beauty of the surrounding scenery. It was not a mag- 
 nificent cold collation ; the animals on which they feasted 
 were, on the contrary, killed and dressed on the spot for 
 this princely repast, "in Hindostan feasts are " given in the 
 open halls and gardens, where a variety of strangers are 
 admitted, and much familiarity is allowed. This easily 
 accounts for a circumstance in the history of Christ, which 
 is attended with considerable difficulty; the penitent Mary 
 coming into the apartment and anointing his feet with the 
 ointment, and wiping them with the hair of her head. 
 This familiarity is not only common, but far from being 
 deemed either disrespectful or displeasing." More effect- 
 ually to screen the company from the burning sunbeams, a 
 large canopy was spread upon lofty pillars, and attached by 
 cords of various colours : " Some of these awnings," says 
 Forbes, " belonging to the Indian emperors, were very 
 costlv, and distinguished bv various names. That which 
 belonged to the emperor Akber was of such magnitude as 
 to contain ten thousand persons; and the erecting of it em- 
 ployed one thousand men for a week, with the help of ma- 
 chines; one of these awnings, without any ornaments, cost 
 ten thousand rupees." Similar to these were the splendid 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 1 KINGS 
 
 241 
 
 hangings under which Ahasuerus the king of Persia enter- 
 tained his court. They "were -^hiie, green, and Ijlue, 
 fastened with cords of fine linen and purple, to silver rings 
 and pillars of marble." — Paxton. 
 
 Siloam was a fountain under the walls of Jerusalem, 
 east, between the city and the brook Kedron; it is sup- 
 posed to be the same as the fountain En-rogel, or the 
 Fuller's fountain. " The spring issues from a rock, and 
 runs in a silent stream, according to the testimony of Jere- 
 miah. It has a kind of ebb and flood, sometimes discharg- 
 ing its current like the fountain of Vaucluse; at others, 
 retaining and scarcely suiFering it to run at all. The pool, 
 or rather the two pools of the same name, are quite close 
 to the spring. They are still used for washing linen as 
 formerly. The water of the spring is brackish, and has a 
 very disagreeable taste ; people still bathe their eyes with 
 it, in memory of the miracle performed on the man born 
 blind." (Chateaubriand.)— BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 14. Behold, while thou yet talkest there 
 with the king, I also will come in after thee, 
 and confirm thy words. 
 
 The Hebrew has for confirm, " fill up." " I wish you to 
 go and inform Tamban, that I will gladly go into court 
 and ^ZZ up all his words." " My friend, do not believe that 
 man's words." — " Not believe them ! why, his words have 
 been filled up by many people." " Well, you say you saw 
 Muttoo turn his cattle last night into vour rice-fields, what 
 proof have you 1" — " None, my lord, I was alone, and, 
 therefore, have no one to fill up my words." " As Venase 
 was coming through the cinnamon gardens, that notorious 
 robber Kalloway met him, took from him his ear-rings, 
 finger-rings, and five gold mohurs ; but, before he got oflT, 
 several people came upj who knew him well, so that there 
 "ill be plenty of witnesses to fill up his words," — Roberts. 
 
 Vex. 16. And Bath-sheba bowed, and did obei- 
 sance unto the king. And the king said, AVhat 
 wouldest thou 1 
 
 "When a husband goes on a journey, or when he returns, 
 his wife, on seeing him, puts her hands together, and pre- 
 sents them to him as an act of obeisance. When she has 
 an important request to make, she does the same thing ; and 
 it is surprising to see the weakness of him who pretends to 
 be the stronger vessel, for, under such circumstances, she 
 will gain almost any thing she wants. Hence, the force of 
 their popular proverb, " The woman who regularly makes 
 obeisance to her husband, can make it rain whenever she 
 
 g leases." When Bathsheba made her obeisance to the 
 ing, he asked, " What wouldest thou ?' but, the Hebrew 
 has this, " What to thee V This accords with the idiom 
 of the Tamul language. Thus it will be asked of a person 
 who stands with his hands presented to a great man, 
 uvimak-enna, " To thee what 1" If speaking of a third 
 person, avanuk-enna, " To him whatl" or, literally, " Him 
 to what V — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 5. Moreover, thou "knowest also what Joab 
 the son of Zeruiah did to me, and what he did 
 to the two captains of the hosts of Israel, unto 
 Abner the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the son 
 of Jether, whom he slew, and shed the blood of 
 war in peace, and put the blood of war upon 
 his girdle that was about his loins, arid in his 
 shoes that were on his feet. 6. Do therefore 
 according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar 
 head go down to the grave in peace. 
 
 David having settled this great affair of Solomon's suc- 
 cession to his throne, but a little before his death sends for 
 him, and gave him a particular charge, in reference to two 
 state criminals, Joab and Shimei. That to Joab in these 
 words : " Thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah 
 did to me, and what he did to the two captains of the host 
 of Israel, unto Abner the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the 
 son of Jether, whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in 
 peace, and put the blood of war upon his girdle that was 
 31 
 
 upon his loins, and in his shoes that were upon his feet ;" 
 i. e. treacherously, and under pretence of peace and friend- 
 ship, besprinkled his girdle and wet his shoes with the blood 
 of these two generals, as though he had slain them in baule. 
 "But do thou according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar 
 head go down to the grave in peace." Here are three 
 murders David mentions to Solomon as the ground of this 
 charge, not to let him die a natural death. The one inti- 
 mated, " thou knowest what he did to me," viz. when he 
 cruelly stabbed Absalom, contrary to my immediate orders ; 
 the two others expressly mentioned, those of Abner and 
 Amasa ; on these accounts he advises him to put him to 
 death ; and I allow David's dying advice, or rather order, 
 in this instance, to be peremptory and absolute ; and, if I 
 understand any thing of justice and equity, it was an order 
 worthy of a good king, and fit to be given in the last 
 moments of his life. The reader will remember, that the 
 facts are these. Upon Abner's reconciliation with David, 
 and bringing over the people to his interest, Joab out of 
 revenge for his brother Asahel's death, whom Abner, 
 forced to it by Asahel's rashness, had unwillingly slain, 
 and probably envying him the glory of settling David on 
 the throne of Israel, and afraid of his being placed at the 
 head of the Hebrew army, as the reward of so signal a 
 service, under the pretence of a friendly salutation, m the 
 most base and cowardly manner, stabbed him unexpectedly 
 to the heart. David highly resented this murder, followed 
 Abner's corpse to the grave", and to show what part he would 
 have acted immediately, had it been in his power, says : 
 "I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these 
 men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too hard for me. The Lord 
 .shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness." 
 AfieT the rebellion under Absalom was ended, David 
 thought this a proper opportunity to show his displeasure 
 to Joab ; and as he imagined it would be an acceptable 
 thing to the people of Israel, who were now zealous to 
 restore the king to his throne, he ordered it to be signified 
 to Amasa, who had been their general in the rebellion, tliat 
 he would constitute him captain-general of his armies in 
 the room of Joab, and actually appointed him, as such, to 
 assemble the forces of Judah, and suppress the new insur- 
 rection under Sheba. As Amasa was returning with his 
 troops, Joab meets him, and with a compliment and a kiss, 
 thrust his sword through his body, and laid him at a single 
 blow dead at his feet; and immediately usurped the com- 
 mand of the army, quelled the insurrection, and returned 
 to Jerusalem. 
 
 And now, reader, let me appeal to thy conscience. Were 
 not these two execrable murders deserving of punishment 1 
 Was the cowardly base assassin worthy to live '? If he was 
 too powerful a subject for David to bring to justice, did not 
 David do well, and act like a righteous prince, to give it in 
 charge to his successor, to punish, as soon as ever he had 
 power, such a villain, according to his desert '? Mr. Bayle's 
 judgment is, that David well knew that Joab deserved death, 
 and that the suffering the assassinations, with which that 
 man's hands were polluted, to go unpunished, was a flagrant 
 injury done to the laws and to justice. With what truth 
 then can it be said, that David delivered two murders in 
 charge to his son Solomon ; one of them to be executed on 
 his old faithful general, Joab 1 Was it charging Solomon 
 to murder a man, to order him to put to death a criminal, 
 for having basely committed two most execrable murders 1 
 Or is the doing justice on murderers and assassins commit- 
 ting murder'? Or is the representation just, that this order, 
 viz. to murder Joab, was afterward fulfilled in the basest 
 manner, by the administrator to this pious testament 1 
 Judge, reader, and be thyself a witness to the manner of 
 Joab's execution, which is thus stigmatized with the epithet 
 of basest. Solomon, in obedience to his father's directions, 
 gives orders to Benaiah to put Joab to death in these words : 
 " Fall on him, that thou mayest take away the innocent 
 blood which Joab shed, from me, and from the house of 
 my father ; and the Lord shall return his blood upon his 
 own head, who fell upon two men, more righteous and 
 better than himself, and slew them with the sword, my 
 father David knowing nothing thereof." Solomon "vas now 
 king, firmly fixed on the throne, and had it in hi? power to 
 execute justice on the greatest offenders ; and rem ^nbering, 
 I doubt not, how Saul's house was punished f r the in- 
 nocent blood of the Gibeonites which he spilt, hcT iswilling 
 to secure himself and family from a like vengf nee. He 
 
242 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Crap. 2 
 
 would have been in some measure chargeable with Joab's 
 guilt, had he refused to punish it when it was in his power; 
 and especially, as he had it in charge from his father to 
 execute the vengeance on him that his crime deserved. 
 But where shall we here fix the character of basest 1 What, 
 on Solomon's command to take away the guilt of innocent 
 blood from himself and his father's house; or on his 
 ordering the execution of the man that shed it, the man 
 that slew two men, more righteous and better than himself; 
 or on God's returning his own blood upon his head ; or, on 
 his ordering Joab to be slain at the horns of the altar, and 
 not permitting even the altar of God himself to be an asy- 
 lum for murderers ; or, on his appointing Benaiah, the 
 captain of his host, to execute justice on this treacherous 
 assassin 1 This was the manner in which Solomon per- 
 formed his father's orders, in an open public manner, 
 appealing to God for the reasons of his conduct, and by a 
 hand too honourable for the wretch that fell by it. And is 
 this, what it hath been termed, putting a man to death in the 
 basest manner 1 Is not this condemning, as a piece of vil- 
 lany, a most exemplary instance of royal justice, and 
 exhibited in such a manner as showed a regard to religion, 
 conscience, honour, and the prosperity of his government 
 and people 1 
 
 But in order to show David's ingratitude to Joab in 
 ordering Solomon fo punish him for the murder of Abner, 
 it hath been urged that it appears, that Joab, uniting his 
 revenge with the dead, acted basely for David's service. 
 Supposing it. Doth it follow, that David's ordering the 
 execution of a base and treacherous assassin was baseness 
 and ingratitude, because the assassination was intended for 
 his service 7 I do not understand this morality, I should 
 rather raise a panegyric upon a prince, who should order a 
 treacherous assassin to execution, notwithstanding the pre- 
 tence of the assassin's intending to serve him by the 
 villany ; than on one, who should protect a villain from 
 the punishment of treachery and murder, because he in- 
 tended to serve, or actually served him by these notorious 
 crimes. But the supposition itself, that Joab murdered 
 Abner for David's service is without any foundation, and 
 contradicted by the whole history of that affair. For this 
 asserts once and again, that .Toab murdered Abner in re- 
 venge for his brother Asahel's death. And as to his ex- 
 postulating with David on the imprudence of trusting 
 Abner, saying. He came to deceive thee, and to know thy 
 going out, and thy coming in. and all that thou dost; David 
 had all the reason in the world to look on this change against 
 Abner as a mere calumny. For Abner, before ever he had 
 waited on David, had brought the elders of Israel to a 
 resolution to accept of David for their king, and he came 
 to inform him of this transaction. Abner went also to 
 speak in the ears of David all that seemed good to Israel, 
 and that seemed good to the whole house of Benjamin ; 
 i. e. all that had been agreed on between Abner and the 
 tribes in reference to David. So that Joab's charge of 
 treachery against Abner was contrary to the strongest evi- 
 dence of his integrity, and only a pretence to colour over 
 that murder of him which he intended. Joab knew very 
 well the intention of Abner's interview with David ; for he 
 was informed that he had been with the king, and that he 
 had sent him away in peace ; and he expostulated with the 
 king for thus dismissing him, that he came only to deceive 
 him. And therefore his murdering Abner could be with 
 no mtention to serve David, but to execute his own re- 
 vel ge and serve himself; for no transaction could have 
 been at that time more directly contrary to David's interest, 
 rs the tribes would naturally resent so cruel a breach of 
 faith, as the treacherous assassination of their own general 
 and ambassador to David, sent by them to fix the terms on 
 which they would receive him for their king; and it was a 
 thousand to one, that, in their fury, they had not broke off 
 all treaty with him, and with their united forces opposed 
 his accession to the throne of Israel. What prevented this 
 was, David's so solemnly and publicly clearing himself of 
 having any hand in the murder, and showing, to the fullest 
 satisfaction of the people, that it was wholly the contrivance 
 of Joab, and perpetrated by him without his privity and 
 consent. 
 
 Had Abner lived to have fini?hed this great revolution 
 in favour of David, and actually settled him on the throne 
 of Israel, Abner onsrht in iustice to have continued in the 
 command of the army. This Joab cotild not be ignorant 
 
 of, and therefore, uniting his revenge with his ambition, he 
 assassinated Abner, to -free himself from a rival in power 
 and his prince's favour, and secure himself in the chief 
 command. He acted just the same infamous part after- 
 ward, when he assassinated Amasa, because David had 
 promised him to make him general of the army in Joab's 
 room; and this strengthens the probability, or rather renders 
 it certain, that he murdered Abner, not only out of revenge 
 for his brother's death, but also from the same cause of 
 jealousy, envy, and ambition. And indeed Josephus will 
 not so much as allow, that even the revenging Asahel's 
 death was any thing more than a pretence for Joab's mur- 
 dering Abner, but says, that the true cause was, his being 
 afraid of losing the generalship, the favour of his master, 
 and being succeeded by Abner in both. 
 
 It is further objected, that Joab was really ill used in the 
 affair of Amasa. But to me it appears, that he was used 
 no otherwise than he deserved. It is true he gained the 
 victory over the rebels ; but the merit of this victory he 
 destroyed by a base and infamous murder, contrary to the 
 express command of his sovereign. For David charged 
 Joab and Abishai, and all his officers, before the engage- 
 ment : Deal gently, for my sake, with the young man, even 
 with Absalom. Had Joab cut him off in the heat of the 
 battle, he would have had somewhat to have alleged in 
 his defence. But nothing could argue greater insolence 
 and contempt of the king's order than Joab's conduct on 
 this occasion. For when one of the army informed him 
 he saw Absalom hanging by the hair in a tree, Joab re- 
 plies : " Why didst thou not smite him there to the ground, 
 and I would have given thee ten shekels of silver and a 
 girdle V The soldier answered him with a noble spirit of 
 loyalty: " Though I should receive a thousand shekels of 
 silver, I would not put forth my hand against the king's 
 son : for, in our hearing, the king charged thee, and Abi- 
 shai, and Ittai, saying. Beware, that none touch the young 
 man Absalom ; otherwise I should have wrought falsehood 
 against my own life, and thou thyself would have set thyself 
 against me." But what doth the loyal Joab do after this 
 warning 1 He said : I may not tarry thus with thee. Tell 
 me no more of the king's orders. I have something else 
 to do; and immediately he took three darts in his hand, 
 and thrust them through the body of Absalom, while he 
 was hanging alive in the midst of the oak. Could there 
 be a greater insult offered to the king than this"? Or^ 
 a more treasonable violation of his orders'? Or, a more 
 deliberate and aggravated murder committed? Would 
 any prince have endured this 1 Or, ought he to have par- 
 doned even a victorious general, after such an audacious 
 cruel instance of disobedience 1 But not content with this, 
 he carries his insolence to the king further, and keeps no 
 measures of decency with him. For, upon David's mourn 
 ing over his rebel son, Joab imperiously reproaches him 
 " Thou hast showed this day the faces of all thy servants 
 which this day have saved thy life, and the lives ofth} 
 sons, and daughters, and wives ; in that thou lovest thinf 
 enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared 
 this day, that thou regardest neither princes nor servants ; 
 for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all 
 we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well ;" and 
 then, to complete his audacious insolence, threatens with 
 an oath to dethrone him, if he did not do as he ordered 
 him, "Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfort- 
 ably to thy servants ; for I swear by the Lord, if thou go 
 not forth, there shall not tarry one with thee this night ; I will 
 cause the whole army to revolt from thee before morning; 
 and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that befell 
 thee from thy youth until now," I will appeal to all men, 
 that know what duty or decency means, whether Joab, after 
 such a behaviour to his sovereign, was fit to be continued 
 general of the forces: and, whatever might be his merits 
 in other respects, whether any prince, who consulted his 
 own honour and safety, would not take the first opportu- 
 nity to humble and break him? The opportunity came. 
 Amasa, the general of the rebel army, brought Jerusalem 
 and Judah back to their allegiance, and, according to Da- 
 vid's promise, was constituted captain-general in the room 
 of Joab. In defiance of this appointment, Joab, to get rid of 
 hisrival,likeacowardand poltron, under pretence of peace, 
 and a friendly salutation, ripped open Amasa's belly, and 
 shed out his bowels upon the ground. But it is said, to exten- 
 uate Joab's guilt, that he confined his resentment to his rival. 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 243 
 
 What then'? Is a cowardly murder to be pardoned, be- 
 cause committed on a rival 1 Do not the laws of God and 
 man call for an exemplary punishment of such an atro-. 
 cious ofi'ender ? Are not such treacherous cruelties, though 
 practised towards a rival, offences of a public nature, a 
 Dreach of that allegiance which men owe to their princes, 
 and a capital violation of the sacred laws of government 1 
 David, it is plain, thought so ; and though Joab was too 
 powerful a subject for him to call to an immediate account, 
 yet to show that he had never forgiven it, he orders Solo- 
 mon, agreeable to all the rules of honour and justice, to 
 punish him' as he deserved for his numerous treasons and 
 murders. But we are told that " it will avail nothing to 
 plead the private faults of the man. We are now to con- 
 sider him as relative to David in his public capacity, as 
 his old faithful general, who powerfully assisted him on 
 all occasions, and who adhered to him in all his extremi- 
 ties; in which light ^we must loathe the master, who died 
 meditating black ingratitude against so faithful, so useful 
 a servant." I would ask : If David had had power, and 
 had ordered the execution of Joab, immediately upon the 
 assassination of Abner, or of Amasa, whether his master 
 David ought to have been loathed on that account, because 
 Joab had been an old faithful servant 1 If it should be 
 said, that he ought to have been loathed for it, the doctrine 
 advanced is this : that whatever person hath been an old 
 faithful servant, or general, to any prince, and powerfully 
 assisted him upon all occasions ; aftd murders, presuming 
 on his own power, and past services, through malice, re- 
 venge, or ambition, by a secret stab, and under the pre- 
 tence of friendship, one or two of the principal officers of 
 the kingdom; the prince, whom he serves, becomes an 
 object of loathing and abhorrence, and is guilty of black 
 ingratitude, if he resolves on his death, and actually exe- 
 cutes him, as such a base and treacherous assassination 
 deserves. No man, I believe, will coolly assert this. If it 
 is said, that David ought not to have been loathed, but 
 commended, if he had then ordered his execution; I think 
 it cannot be true, that because Joab had been an old faith- 
 ful general, &c., we ought to loathe David for ingratitude, 
 for meditating Joab's punishment while he lived, and ex- 
 pressly ordering it just before his death; for whatever it 
 was just for him to do, it was just for him to order to be 
 done; inasmuch as he really did himself what Solomon did 
 by his order ; and because an act, that is just to-day, can- 
 not become unjust merely by being deferred till to-morrow, 
 or the most convenient opportunity of performing it. But 
 it is said, that it will avail nothing to plead the private 
 faults of Joab. What, were the murder of Abner, who 
 had just brought over the eleven tribes to submit to David, 
 and the assassination of Amasa, appointed general of the 
 national forces, at the head of his troops, private faults'? 
 High treason, murder, and felony, private faults! What 
 then can be public ones, and what faults can be aggravated 
 with any more heinous circumstances than these 1 
 
 But it avails nothing, it seems, to plead these private 
 faults, in vindication of David's ordering him to be put to 
 death by his successor ; because we are to consider him as 
 relative to David in his public capacity. Very right: 
 David in his public capacity was king of Israel, and Joab 
 in his public capacity stood related to him as his general, 
 and assisted him, and adhered to him in all extremities. 
 David therefore, in his public capacity, was obliged, by 
 the laws of God and man, to punish "assassinations and 
 murders; and Joab, in his public capacity, as general, 
 was an assassin and murderer; and therefore David, in 
 his public capacity, as king, was obliged to punish Joab 
 with death, in his public capacity, as general, assassin, 
 and murderer. If Joab had been his faithful general, and 
 frequently assisted David in his extremities, private obli- 
 gations are in their nature inferior, and ought to give v/ay 
 to public ones; and the yielding up such an offender to 
 public justice, when personal obfigations might have been 
 pleaded by the prince in his favour, was a nobler sacrifice 
 in its nature, and renders David's merits, as a prince, the 
 more illustrious, and himself more worthy the character 
 of the man after God's own heart. And this Mr. Bayle 
 thinks David ought to have done sooner, and says, that 
 notwithstanding Joab deserved death, yet that he kept his 
 place; he was brave, he served the king his master faith- 
 fully, and to good purpose, and dangerous discontents might 
 be apprehended if he attempted to punish him. These were 
 
 the political reasons which made the law give place to utility. 
 But when David had no further use for that general, he 
 gave orders that he should be put to death. So that Mr. 
 Bayle blames David, not for ordering Joab to be put to 
 death at last, but for deferring to do it so long, through 
 reasons of policy, and ordering it only when those rea.sons 
 of policy subsisted no longer. I would here just observe, 
 that what Mr. Bayle calls political reasons were really 
 reasons of necessity. For Joab was too powerful a sub- 
 ject to bring to justice. He attempted it twice, by turning 
 him out from being general. But he restored himself to 
 his command by murder and treason, in spite of David, 
 who seized the very first opportunity, after Joab's power 
 was broken, of ordering his execution. 
 
 It should be added also on this head, that whatever 
 Joab's past services were to David, and however faithful . 
 he had formerly been to him, yet he had now been engaged 
 in a treasonable conspiracy against him, to set aside the 
 intended succession to the crown, and had actually pro- 
 claimed Adonijah king of Israel during his father's life ; 
 altogether without, and even contrary to his consent. And 
 it is allowed, that David had on this account justifiable 
 cause for chagrin. And it is certain, that Joab's treason, 
 in endeavouring to depose the good old king, and advance 
 an ambitious youth into his throne, was just reason for 
 chagrin. And. therefore as Joab added rebellion to mur- 
 der, David did justly, in his last moments, to order his 
 execution by his son and successor, and he would neither 
 have been a wise or a righteous prince, had he forgotten 
 or refused to do it. When it is said, that Joab had not 
 appeardS against him in actual hostility, and that his defec- 
 tion may admit of being interpreted into a patronisation of 
 that particular plan for the succession, rather than into a re- 
 bellion against David, it is in part not true in fact. To pro- 
 claim any person king, in opposition to the reigning king, is 
 an overt act of rebellion, ana therefore of real hostility. This 
 Joab did, and had not the design been seasonably prevented, 
 by the loyalty and prudence of Nathan, further hostilities 
 must have been immediately committed; David , himself 
 at least confined, and Solomon, his intended successor, 
 actually put to death. The plan of the succession, con- 
 certed by Joab, in favour of Adonijah, was, in every view 
 of it, a treasonable one. It was a plan formed without the 
 consent of the nation, M'ithout the knowledge of David, 
 and the appointment of God. David had, a considerable 
 while before this, solemnly sworn to Bathsheba, that Solo- 
 mon her son should reign after him, and sit upon his throne 
 in his stead; and tells all the nobles and oflicers of his 
 kingdom, that as the Lord God of Israel had chosen him, 
 among the sons of his father, to be king over all Israel, 
 so, of all his sons, God had chosen Solomon to sit upon the 
 throne of the kingdom of the Lord over all Israel. To 
 patronise therefore any other plan of succession, and ac- 
 tually to take measures to execute that plan, was breaking 
 oilt into open rebellion ; and the favourers, abetters, pa- 
 trons, and aiders, in such a plan, were traitors to their king 
 and country, and in all nations would have been punished 
 as such ; and should it be pleaded in excuse of such per- 
 sons, that their defection to patronise such a plan of suc- 
 cession, was not a rebellion, it would be treated with the 
 contempt it deserved ; and as a defection from a prince is 
 a revolt from him, and a revolt a rebellion, they would 
 probably be told, that they should have the choice of t)eing 
 hanged for a defection, or rebellion, just as they pleased. 
 
 I shall only take notice further, on this head, that David, 
 in his lamentation for Abner, had declared the Lord to be* 
 the rewarder of evil-doers; by this expression referring 
 the punishment of Joab to the Lord. And the inference 
 that hath been made from hence is, that David having en- 
 joyed the benefit of Joab's services through his life, Jie 
 having been his right hand all along, gratitude, after sxich 
 an attachment, ought to have influenced David to have left 
 him to the justice cf God, and not have bequeathed him 
 death, as a legacy for his long friendship. But David did 
 not bequeath him death for his friendship, but for his re- 
 peated treasons and murders; which no just principle of 
 gratitude will ever shelter; since no services, public or 
 private, can be a compensation for these impious violations 
 of the laws of God and man, and ought not to hinder the 
 progress of justice in the execution of such notorious of- 
 fenders; and were kings and princes to act according ti 
 this notion of gratitude, the peace, order, and safety of 
 
244 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 society, could not possibly be maintained. Besides, as Da- 
 vid declared the Lord to be the reAvarder of evil-doers, so 
 he really left it to the providence of God to reward Joab, 
 by not punishing him himself, but by waiting for the prop- 
 er opportunity to give him his reward, when it could be 
 done consistently with his OM^n safety, and the peace of his 
 kingdom. Joab's defection or rebellion in favour of Adoni- 
 jah, and Solomon's establishment on the throne, furnished 
 this opportunity, and the providence of God, by these 
 means, brought on the punishment he had long deserved. 
 Let Solomon explain his father's meaning in the very or- 
 der he gives for Joab's execution. The king said to Be- 
 naiah : " Fall upon him .... that thou mayest take away 
 the innocent blood which Joab shed, from me and the house 
 of my father, and the Lord shall return his blood upon his 
 own head, who fell upon two men more righteous and bet- 
 ter than himself, and slew them with the sword.' David 
 therefore left Joab to the justice of God, and God execu- 
 ted justice on him by Solomon's order; and the hand of 
 providence was very remarkable in this transaction; in 
 that, had Joab's treason, in patronising Adonijah's usurpa- 
 tion, succeeded, Joab would have escaped with impunity ; 
 for Adonijah, no doubt, out of gratitude to Joab, would 
 have forgiven him his murders, for the sake of his servi- 
 ces. David's meaning, therefore, in declaring that the 
 Lord would reward the evil-doers, could be no other than 
 that in which Solomon understood it : That though Joab was 
 too powerful for him, at that time, to punish, yet that God 
 would not suffer him finally to escape ; but that, sooner or 
 later, in the course of his providence, he would bring the 
 punishment on him which he so richly deserved. And 
 this Joab experienced, since the very measures he took in 
 the close of David's reign, to secure himself from it, fixed 
 his doom, and proved his destruction. David's conduct 
 therefore, in this instance, is no proof that his repentance 
 for his sins was not sincere, nor any argument that he had 
 not forgiven his enemies, as far as he ought to do it, and 
 did not die in charity with all mankind, as far as that 
 charity; ought to be extended. If a prince's charity influ- 
 ences him, living or dying, to pardon repeated offences, in- 
 consistent with the public safety and peace, such as assas- 
 ^^inations and treasons, it is folly and weakness, and not 
 virtuous charity ; it is cruelty to his people, instead of real 
 generosity and goodness. David had not this charity, and 
 it heightens his character that he had not. His last charge 
 to Solomon shows his inviolable regard to justice, by posi- 
 tively ordering the execution of a murderer, who was too 
 powerful for himself to punish ; and the order was execu- 
 ted by Solomon, in a manner worthy a wise, a just, and a 
 great prince; or, worthy the son of such a father. — Chand- 
 
 Ver. 7. But show kindness unto the sons of Bar- 
 zillai the Gileadite, and let them be of those that 
 eat at thy table : for so they came to me when 
 I fled because of Absalom thy brother. 
 
 At public entertainments in the courts of eastern kings, 
 many of tlieir nobles have a right to a seat, others are ad- 
 mitted occasionally by special favour. In this sense Chardin 
 understands the dying charge of David to his successor, to 
 show kindness to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and to 
 let them be of those that should eat at his table. He means 
 not that they should eat at his tableat every meal, or on 
 every day, but only on days of public festivity. In the 
 same light, he views the conduct of the king of Babylon to 
 the captive monarch of Judah : " Evil-Merodach spake 
 kindly to Jehoiakim, and set his throne above the throne 
 of the kings that were with him in Babylon ; and changed 
 liis prison-garments, and he did eat bread continually be- 
 fore him all the days of his life." He received a daily 
 allowance from the king suitable to his high station, and 
 the value which Evil-Merodach had for him; besides this, 
 he had a seat at all the public entertainments of the court. 
 The eastern custom explains the reason that David was 
 not expected at Saul's table, till the day of tbe new moon; 
 he did not sit at the king's table every day, but according 
 to established usage, he had a right, and was expected to be 
 present in his allotted seat on the day of a public and 
 solemn festival. In the same manner, though Mephibo- 
 sheth was to sit at David's table on all public occasions, 
 
 yet he wanted the produce of his lands for food at other 
 times. It was therefore very proper to mention ihe cir- 
 cumstances to Ziba, that he might understand it would be 
 necessary for him to bring the produce of the lands to 
 Jerusalem, and in sufficient quaniiiy to support Mephibo- 
 sheth in a style suitable to the dignity of one who had a 
 right, by the royal' grant, to appear at court, and sit at the 
 king's table on public occasions: "Thou, therefore, and 
 thy sons, and thy servants, shall till the land for him; and 
 thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy master's son may 
 have food to eat; but Mephibosheth thy master's son shall 
 eat bread always at my table." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei 
 the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which 
 cursed me with a grievous curse in the day 
 when I went to Mahanaim : but he came down 
 to meet me at Jordan, ancf I sware to him by 
 the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death 
 with the sword. 9. Now therefore hold him 
 not guiltless; for thou art a wise man, and 
 knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him ; 
 but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave 
 with blood. 
 
 After the charge to Solomon, to execute the due punish- 
 ment on Joab, for his numerous and aggravated crimes, 
 David gives him another, relative to Shimei the Ben- * 
 jamite, who, as hath been already observed, when the king 
 was in his flight from Jerusalem, to prevent his falling into 
 Absalom's hands, met him, railed at, and cursed David in 
 his journey; and as he went on, had the further insolence 
 to pelt him with stones, and dust him with dust, crying 
 out to the king, " Come out, come out, thou bloody man, 
 and thou man of Belial. The Lord hath returned upon 
 thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou 
 hast reigned ; and the Lord hath delivered the kingdom 
 into the hand of Absalom thy son ; and behold thou art 
 taken in thy mischief, because thou art a bloody man." 
 This, as Mr. Bayle say^s, is a small specimen of the abuses 
 to which David was exposed among the friends of Saul ; 
 they accused him of being a man of blood, and looked on 
 the rebellion of Absalom as a just punishment for the mis- 
 chiefs which they said David had done to Saul and his 
 whole family. But surely an abuse and insult of a more 
 atrocious and insolent nature was never offered to a prince; 
 an insult the viler, as it had no foundation in reality or 
 truth to support it. He twice styles him a bloody man; 
 and tells him, that because he had reigned in the stead of 
 Saul, the Lord had returned on him all the blood of the 
 house of Saul. The reader will observe, that this transac- 
 tion was before the affair of the Gibeonites; and therefore 
 this circumstance could not enter into Shimei's thoughts, 
 nor be any reason for his charging David with being a 
 bloody man, and having the blood of Saul's house re- 
 turned on him. Now, in what other respects could David 
 be guilty of the blood of Saul's house 1 Saul's three eldest 
 sons were slain with him in a battle with the Philistines, in 
 which David was not present. The only remaining son 
 that Saul had was Ishbosheth, whom Abner made king in 
 Saul's room, in opposition to David, who was raised to the 
 throne by the house of Judah. Ishbosheth w^as' killed by 
 two of his captains, whom David put to death for that trea- 
 son and murder ; and Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, 
 the only remaining one, was restored to his patrimony, 
 and, in all things, treated as one of David's own sons; and 
 Saul's line by him, the eldest branch, continued down 
 through many generations. The charge therefore that 
 David was a bloody man, because the blood of the house of 
 Saul was upon him, was a scandal and a lie, and uttered in 
 the madness of the passion and malice of a man, who, 
 being of Saul's house and family, was enraged to see that 
 family rejected from the throne, "and David advanced to i{ 
 in their stead. 
 
 Mr. Bayle himself acknowledges, that the friends of Saul 
 carried things too far in these reproaches against David. 
 And vet, as though he had made too large a concession in 
 his favour, he doth, in a manner, retract it, by adding: "It 
 is true, that, by the testimony of God him<=elf, David was a 
 man of blood, for which reason God would not peimit hun 
 
Ckap. 2. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 245 
 
 to build the temple." But, by Mr. Bayle's good leave, David 
 was not a man of blood, by any testimooy of God himself; 
 nor doth either of the places he cites in proof of it, prove 
 any such thing. The expression which Shimei made use 
 of to revile David was, hdn o>m »-n. Thou art a via/ii of 
 blood; an expression always used, I think, in a bad sense, 
 to denote a cruel bloody man. But God never gave this 
 character to David. What God said of him was that he 
 had been a man of wars, n^iw n-'mi and hast shed blood ; 
 or, as it is elsewhere expressed : Thou hast shed much blood, 
 and hast made great wars. Now the shedding of blood im- 
 plies nothing criminal, except it be shed o;n sine causa, 
 without reason or cause ; innocent blood, as our version ren- 
 ders ; and this very expression is used, in the same verse, 
 in the criminal and in the good sense, to denote murder, 
 and the justly putting the murderer to death. "Whoso 
 sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." If 
 then David's wars were just and necessary, the blood he 
 shed in them was n<5t his crime; and it is evident, that 
 when David told his son, and afterward all the princes 
 and officers of his kicgdom, that the reason why God 
 would not permit him to build his house, was because he 
 had shed much blood in his wars ; he did not mention it to 
 them as a reproach, or any crime imputed to him by God. 
 Indeed this could not be the case, because, immediately 
 after God had assigned this reason why he would not per- 
 mit him to do it, yet, without in the least blaming him, he 
 graciously gave him a proof of his peculiar favour, by 
 assuring him, that his son should build his house, should 
 long enjoy prosperity and peace, and that the throne of his 
 kingdom over Israel should be established for ever. Mr. 
 Bayle urges it as a further reason of David's being a bloody 
 man, or else he introduces it for no purpose at all, that, 
 to appease the Gibeonites, he delivered up to them two 
 sons, and five grandsons of Saul, who were all seven hanged. 
 Had Mr. Bayle told, as he ought to have d(me, the reason 
 of David's delivering them up, it would have been no proof 
 of hisdelia:htinginblood. He did it not by choice, but by ne- 
 ces'^ity, and a divine order. As therefore God never charged 
 David with being a man of blood, this charge, as thrown on 
 him by Shimei, was false and injurious; and the observa- 
 tion, that " here an opportunity may be taken to introduce 
 a circumstance, which is so far material, as it serves to 
 show, that the sanctity of David was not quite so univer- 
 sally assented to, as may be imagined, while he was living, 
 and his actions not only fresh in memory, but more per- 
 fectly known, than was prudent to transmit to these dis- 
 tant ages," is quite groundless and injudicious. For how 
 doth the being reviled and cursed by one interested and 
 disappointed person, and charged with crimes for which 
 there is no foundation, but manv strong concurring circum- 
 stances to show the falsehood of the charge; how doth this, 
 I say, serve to prove, that David's sanctity was not so uni- 
 versally assented to, as may be imagined 1 It is no proof 
 that Shimei himself believed the truth of his own reproaches; 
 nothing being more common than for men, in the extrava- 
 gance and fury of passion, to vent many things, which they 
 well know they have not any foundation for affirming: 
 much less doth it serve to show that David deserved these 
 reproaches ; and, least of all, that others believed them 
 just, and had as bad an opinion of him, as Shimei who 
 reviled him. If this be argument, then I will, to the fullest 
 conviction, demonstrate, that David's sanctity was, while 
 he lived, thought as great as any body imagines. For, in 
 the first place, Jonathan tells Saul : " He hath not sinned 
 against thee, his works have been to thee ward very good." 
 In the next place, Saul, his professed enemy, acknowl- 
 edges David's innocence, and that he was a more righteous 
 man than himself, and that in persecuting him, "he had 
 played the fool, and erred exceedinglv." Nay, Shimei 
 nimself, upon whose railing against David this notable 
 observation I am remarking upon is grounded, retracts all 
 he had said, owns himself a slanderer and a liar, and begs 
 pardon for his abusive impudence. " Let not my lord im- 
 pute iniquity unto me, nor remember what his servant did 
 perversely;' for thy servant doth know that I have sinned." 
 From hence I argue: If Shimei's reproaching David shows 
 his sanctity was not quite so universally assented to, as may 
 be imagined, while he was living, therefore, a fortiori, 
 Jonathan's, and Saul's, and Shimei's testimonv, to David's 
 innocence and righteousness, serves to show, that the sanc- 
 tity of David was really as universally assented to, as hath 
 
 been imagined, while he was living, and all his actions 
 fresh in memory. I must beg leave also to add, that as 
 Shimei owned himself to be a lying, slanderous, miquitous 
 varlet, and that the charge of David's being "a man of 
 blood, and guilty of the blood of Saul's house," was an in- 
 iquitous, perverse calumny ; that charge destroys its own 
 credit and truth ; and instead of serving to show that Da- 
 vid's sanctity was not quite so universally assented to, as 
 may be imagined, while he was yet living, rather serves to 
 show that it was. For, as there are several unquestionable 
 evidences to his integrity and virtue, of persons that knew 
 him well, and were his contemporaries ; as friends and 
 enemies have given their united testimony in his favour, 
 and there is but one evidence to the contrary, and that a 
 lying one, upon record, who retracted his own charge pub- 
 licly, and begged pardon for the falsehood of it; the sanctity 
 of David's character in the opinion of the public, while he 
 lived, stands unimpeached ; and Shimei's infamous cal- 
 umny against him, refuted and falsified by himself, can 
 never, with justice, be pressed into the service against 
 David to defame his reputation. As to the suspicion here 
 thrown in, that David's " actions, when fresh in memory, 
 and perfectly known, were worse than have been repre- 
 sented, or was prudent to transmit to these distant ages ;" 
 surely this must have been a very unreasonable one, if the 
 actions that have been transmitted to these ages are such, 
 as justify the charges brought against David, and the splen- 
 did character given him, of usurper, ungrateful, perfidious, 
 perjured, whose conscience was his slave and his drudge, 
 a tyrant, a Nero ; in a word, a monster and a devil. Can 
 he be painted in worse colours than these 1 Or do the 
 enemies of David suspect the representations they have 
 made of the actions recorded, as injurious and false, and 
 want further materials to bespatter one of the greatest and 
 best of princes 1 But they needed no further memoirs to 
 assist them. For, in spite of Shimei, and though he had 
 retracted all his curses and calumnies, yet the world is 
 told, after reciting Shimei's blasphemies: " This is pathetic, 
 and truly characteristic of the tyrant," to whom the speech 
 was addressed. But David's real character was quite the 
 reverse of a tyrant. He never oppressed his subjects; but 
 when he reigned over Israel, executed justice arid judg- 
 ment among all his people; and, perhaps, there never was 
 a prince of greater humanity and clemency, or that gave 
 more shining and disinterested proofs of it, than Davtd, 
 though he hath been characterized as the vilest of men, and 
 the worst of tyrants. 
 
 Shimei himself was one illustrious proof of this. For 
 when David's officers would have effectually silenced his 
 reproaches, by puUing the brawler to death, as he reolly 
 deserved, what saith this Nero of the Hebrews 1 See, 
 reader, the lineaments of his blood-thirsty disposition, in 
 his reply to Abishai : " Let him curse, f^or if the Lord 
 hath said unto him, curse David, who shall then say, 
 wherefore hast thou done so ? Behold, my son, which 
 came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life. How much 
 more now may this Benjamite do it % Let him alone, and 
 let him curse, if the Lord hath bidden him. It may be that 
 the Lord will look on my affliction, and that the Lord will 
 requite me good for his cursing this day." In this grievous 
 calamity, David could not but see the hand of God, it was 
 now falling heavy on him for his great sin in the affair of 
 Uriah, and therefore ascribes the curses of Shimei to his 
 immediate permission, and, in some measure, even to his 
 appointment; as he was now reduced to that low condition, 
 through the effect of his displeasure, as that this wretch 
 dared to pour out these undeserved calumnies against him. 
 This shows the moderation and great command of his tem- 
 per, who w^ould deny himself the vengeance due to such an 
 outrageous insult on his pei-son and character. Oh ! how 
 perfect a picture doth this exhibit to us of a Nero, and who 
 can help discerning and admiring the happy resemblance ! 
 
 But it was not, it seems, piety, or humanity and goodn'^ss 
 of heart in David, but policy and prudence, that prompted 
 him to preserve Shimei's life. For so we are told : " Some 
 of his retinue were at the point of silencing this brawler 
 with the ultima ratio regum; but David prevented it ; wise- 
 ly considering mis was not a season for proceeding to ex- 
 tremities." "Why, what was there in the season to prevent 
 David from punishing a treasonable reviler and brawler as 
 he deserved *? What would David's cause and interest 
 have suffered by permitting a single person to be put to 
 
246 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 2, 
 
 death, for a crime that made him worthy of it 1 There is 
 but one possible inconveniency that would have attended it, 
 and that is, there would have been wanting one noble in- 
 st.mce of his generous disposition, and the government of 
 his passions ; which is now recorded, to do honour to his 
 memory, and heighten the glory of his truly illustrious 
 character. But supposing that this was not a season for 
 proceeding to extremities, yet when David recovered his 
 throne, and had Shimei fully in his power, this surely was 
 a season %r David's coming to any just extremities that he 
 pleased, and he did not want very powerful advisers to 
 make use of them ; for Abishai said to him : " Shall not 
 Shimei be put to death for this, because he hath cursed the 
 Lord's anointed V And is there any one man in the World, 
 that would not have applauded David's justice, in ordering 
 to execution a wretch that had cursed and pelted him with 
 stones in his adversity "? It is true, Shimei owned his fault, 
 and, as it is expressed, reflecting on David's vindictive tem- 
 per, came to make his submission, and petition forgiveness. 
 This persuasion, one would think, would certainly have 
 kept Shimei from ever coming near him, and forced him 
 to seek safety by flight. I should rather have imagined, 
 that, reflecting on David's merciful and forgiving temper, 
 and the experience he had lately of it, in David's not per- 
 mitting his officers to cut him off, when he was actually 
 cursing and stoning him, he made his submission, and pe- 
 titioned for mercy. If David had been the vindictive Nero, 
 which he hath been represented to be, Shimei's owning his 
 fault would not have been his security, and he would have 
 paid dearly for the scurrility of his abusive tongue ; espe- 
 cially as he was one of Saul's family, whom, it is said, lest 
 they should hereafter prove thorns in his side, he conclu- 
 ded' it expedient to cut off". But notwithstanding this expe- 
 diency, David accepted his acknowledgments, and told him 
 with an oath : Thou shalt not die. 
 
 But what shall we think, it is said, when we see this 
 Nero of the Hebrews die in a manner uniform and consist- 
 ent with the whole course of his life 1 What will be our 
 reflections, when we find him, with his last accents, deliv- 
 ering two murders in charge to his son Solomon? One 
 against Jpab, the other against Shimei, which we are now 
 t^ consider. The charge that David gave to Solomon con- 
 cerning him runs thus : " And behold thou hast with thee 
 Shimei, the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which 
 cursed me with a grievous curse, in the day when I went 
 to Mahanaim ; but I swore to him by the Lord, saying, I 
 will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore 
 hold him not guiltless, for thou art a wise man, and know- 
 est what thou oughtest to do unto him ; but his hoar head 
 bring thou down to the grave with blood." This is the 
 ground of the accusation brought against David ; that when 
 he lay on his death-bed, where all mankind resign their re- 
 sentments and animosities, his latest breath was employed 
 in dictating this posthumous murder to his son Solomon. 
 My reader will not forget who Shimei was; of the house 
 and family of Saul ; that he was a person of great power 
 and influence in the tribe of Benjamin, of whom he had a 
 thousand in his train, when he made his submission to Da- 
 vid upon his restoration ; and that the manner in which he 
 accosted David, when fleeing from Jerusalem, discovered 
 the inward rancour of his heart, and his readiness to join 
 in any measures to distress and disturb his government, 
 and cause the crown to revert to the house of Saul. There- 
 fore David puts Solomon in mind, that Shimei cursed him 
 vnth a grievous curse, in the day that he went down to Ma- 
 hanaim; that he was an implacable enemy to his person 
 and family, one who was not to be trusted, and would not 
 fail to show his hatred upon any proper occasion. It ap- 
 pears further by the expression: "Behold thou hast with 
 thee Shimei;" that he was now in Jerusalem; and that 
 therefore David thought this a proper opportunity of confi- 
 ning him, that he might not spread disaffection to Solo- 
 mon's government, among those of his own tribe, or of any 
 of the other tribes of Israel ; a precaution the more neces- 
 sary in the infancy of Solomon's reign, and as some of his 
 brethren were inclined to dispute with him the succession 
 to the crown ; and therefore David said : " ^ut now do not 
 thou hold him guiltless;" i. e. though I forgave him, and 
 swore to him that he should not die, do not thou let him go 
 off, do not leave him at ^liberty, nor treat him as an inno- 
 cent man, that is reconciled to my family, and thy succes- 
 sion in the throne of Israel. He is Shimei still, and wants 
 
 nothing but a fair opportunity to declare it. He is now with 
 thee. Hold him fast, keep him continually under thine eye 
 to prevent his doing any mischief; and if thou findest him 
 guilty of any malpractices, his hoar head bring thou down 
 to the grave with blood ; cut him off as an old offender, and 
 dangerous enemy, to secure thy own peace, and the safety 
 of thy government. 
 
 Further, David's telling Solomon that he sware to Shi- 
 mei by the Lord, that he would not put him to death for 
 his outrage and treason, is a demonstrative proof, that he 
 did not advise Solomon to put him to death for the crime 
 that he himself had solemnly forgiven him. For can any 
 one imagine, that David should tell Solomon, that he had 
 sworn by the Lord not to put Shimei to death, and, in the 
 same breath, order him, in defiance of the oath, to be put to 
 death by Solomon % Common decency and prudence would 
 have made him conceal the circumstance of the oath, un- 
 less he intended to brand himself publicly for the grossest 
 perfidy and perjury; or, what is the real truth, to prevent 
 Solomon from putting Shimei to death, in resentment for a 
 crime for which he had solemnly sworn he would never 
 execute him; and therefore it may be allowed Mr. Bayle, 
 that strictly speaking, a man, who promises his enemy his 
 life, doth "not acquit himself of that promise, when he or- 
 ders him to be put to death by his will. But this doth not 
 affect David's integrity, who either never promised him ab- 
 solutely his life, or never gave any positive orders b}^ his 
 will to execute him. I add therefore, that the words them- 
 selves, when rightly rendered, imply no such order. The 
 common rendering of them is: His hoar head bring thou 
 doion to the grave with blood. But it is a better interpreta- 
 tion, and supported by parallel passages, if we render them, 
 Bring down his gray hairs to the grave for blood, or for be- 
 ing guilty of it. Shimei was a man in blood, intentionally 
 of murdering the king, and who actually attempted it by 
 stoning him ; and, on that account, deserved to be put to 
 death. Now, though David could not order Solomon to 
 put him to death for this attempt, because he had forgiven 
 him, yet he might justly urge it, as a reason why Solomon 
 should keep a constant strict guard over him, in order to 
 prevent him from any seditious practices, or put him to 
 death, if he found him guilty of any. The authors of the 
 critical remarks give another turn Xo the words, which may 
 be justified also by many other places of like nature. They 
 would have the middle words put into a parenthesis, and 
 the negative particle A L repeated in the last clause from 
 the first; thus: " Now therefore do not hold him guiltless 
 (for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest 
 to do for him,) biit do not bring down his hoary head with 
 blood." I would propose a liitle alteration in the reading 
 of the prefix tJffw. '" Do not hold him guiltless, (for thou art 
 a wise man,) nor bring down his hoary head Avith blood." 
 According to this translation, David's direction to Solomon 
 will be: That he should not put Shimei to death for having 
 cursed him, because he had forgiven him upon oath ; but, 
 at the same time, should not hold him guiltless; leaving it 
 to Solomon's wisdom to inflict a proper punishment on him, 
 provided it was not a capital one. If David had intended 
 that Solomon should immediately put him to death, there 
 would be no sense nor reason in what David adds: " Thou 
 art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do to 
 him ;" which is evidently the same thing as saying: I give 
 thee no particular directions about him, only observe him. 
 Thou art a wise man, and knowest how to manage him, 
 and to thy prudence and care I entirely leave him. This 
 is the natural proper meaning of the expression, which 
 cannot be construed into any other sense, without doing 
 violence to the words. Now, to what purpose was it to tell 
 Solomon, that he knew how to behave to Shimei, if David's 
 command was immediately to cut him off, and Solomon un- 
 derstood him in this sense T* The thing is absurd in its na- 
 ture, and there can be no meaning in a charge of this kind, 
 viz. giving any man an absolute order to put another to 
 death for a crime, and, in the same breath, leaving him en- 
 tirely to the management of his own wisdom and prudence, 
 to put him to death or not. If he gave a positive order for 
 his death, he did not leave him to Solomon's wisdom ; and 
 if he left him to Solomon's wisdom, as he certainly did, he 
 did not give him any positive order for his death. 
 
 It is certain that Solomon did not understand his father 
 in this sense, of putting Shimei to death for his treason at 
 Mahanaim; but only that he should have a watchful eyei 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 247 
 
 over him, and prevent him from all seditious practices for 
 the future. For what doth Solomon do after his father's 
 deaths What, instantly put Shimei to death'? No, but as 
 a wise man, who knew what he ought to do to him, orders 
 him to build a house for himself at Jerusalem ; where he 
 confines him. that he might be perpetually under his inspec- 
 tion, and bound him by an oath never to go further out of 
 it than to the brook Kidron ; telling him, that whenever he 
 passed it, he should surely die. This is further evident 
 from the different manner in which Solomon treated Joab 
 and Shimei. Joab he immediately, on his accession, put 
 to death, because David could be understood in no other 
 sensj, in the charge he gave concerning him, but absolutely 
 to cut him off; for he gives no intimation that he had par- 
 doned him, or that he left it to his son's prudence to do 
 with him as he should think proper ; but says peremptorily, 
 after recounting the two murders he had committed : Do 
 thou according to thy wisdom. Do justice on him, and 
 thereby show thyself a wise man, and let not his hoar head 
 go down to the' grave in peace. Now if the charge had 
 been the same in reference to Shimei as it was to Joab, 
 what should have prevented Solomon from immediately 
 executing Shimei as well as Joab '? Solomon had much 
 less to apprehend from executing Shimei, than Joab. Joab 
 had an interest in the army, and had David's sons, and the 
 high-priest of his party, which Shimei could not have, as 
 he was a powerful man of the house of Saul : a circum- 
 stance this, however, enough to incline a jealous prince to 
 get rid of him if he fairly could do it. And if Solomon 
 had David's positive order to do it, the regard to his father's 
 command, and the rules of policy, would have engaged him 
 to have immediately executed him. But this Solomon, in 
 his wisdom, knew lie could not do ; for David told him 
 that he had pardoned Shimei to prevent his execution, be- 
 cause his offence was personal, and David had a right to 
 forgive it. But he had never pardoned Joab, nor in justice 
 could do it ; because he was guilty of death, for repeated 
 murders, by the laws of God and man. Solomon therefore 
 acted wisely and justly in putting Joab to death, and show- 
 ed his prudence in reference to Shimei, by sparing him ; 
 but honourably confining him, that he might have the prop- 
 er security for his future good behaviour. But to this it 
 is objected, that the executing Joab, and sparing Shimei, 
 was owing to a different cause from what I have now 
 assigned. For Joab, by joining the party of Adonijah, had 
 furnished the pretence for putting him to death, which 
 Shimei doth not appear to have done. Joab therefore was 
 assa.ssinated, and Shimei watched. But this contradicts 
 the history; for David, in his order to put Joab to death, 
 mentions not one word about his being of Adonijah's party, 
 but orders him to be cut off expressly for the treacherous 
 assassination of Abner and Amasa. And when Solomon 
 ordered his execution, not a word of Adonijah ; but take 
 away the innocent blood which Joab shed from me, and 
 from the house of my father. So that, as the cause of 
 Joab's execution was not his being of Adonijah's party, so 
 the cause of Shimei's being spared, cannot be said to be, 
 because he was not of Adonijah's party. The true reason 
 of their treatment, was the different nature of their crimes, 
 and the difference of the order relating to them. And as 
 Joab was put to death for repeated murders, by the express 
 order of the king, it is with great injustice that his death 
 is censured as an assas,sination ; especially as he was exe- 
 cuted in the same manner as state criminals at that time 
 generally were. 
 
 Besides, if, as hath been asserted, David had, without 
 any condition, and by a positive injunction, ordered Shimei 
 to be put to death, then his joining, or not joining Adonijah, 
 had been a circumstance of no weight; for, whether the one, 
 or the other, Solomon ought not to have ordered him to 
 be watched, but instantly to have put him to death, as he 
 did Joab. And if, because he was not of Adonijah's party, 
 Solomon spared him, and ordered him only to be watched, 
 then Solomon did not think his father's order to be an order 
 to cut him off, but only to have a watchful eye over him. 
 For David knew Shimei's circumstances as well as Solo- 
 mon, and Solomon's condxict to Shimei is an abundant ex- 
 plication of the nature of his father's command, and how he 
 Jiimself understood it. This is the sentiment of F. Houbi- 
 ' pant, who doth not so much as give a single intimation that 
 Shimei was watched, and not put to death, because he wa^ 
 not of Adonijah's party ; but absolutely denies that David 
 
 gave any order at all to Solomon to put him to death for 
 the crimes which he had pardoned him, but only to watch 
 his conduct, till he should render himself guilty by some 
 fresh transgression. And when upon breaking his oath, 
 he was sent for by Solomon, the king reproached him for 
 his perjury, for acting contrary to the condition of life, 
 which he himself acknowledged to be just and equitable, 
 and for the wickedness that his heart was privy to in his 
 conduct to his father David; the mercy that had been 
 shown him, in the pardon of that offence, aggra\%ing his 
 fresh crime in violating his oath, and in transgressing ihe 
 king's command ; a crime that showed he was of a restless 
 spirit, and incapable of being restrained within due bounds 
 by the most solemn oaths, or any sense of interest, gratitude, 
 or duty, whatsoever. Solomon adds : " The Lord shall 
 return thy wickedness on thine own head, and King Solo- 
 mon shall be blessed : and the throne of David shall be 
 established before the Lord for ever ;" plainly intimating, 
 that Solomon now cut him off, as an act of prudence and 
 justice, because he knew him to be a turbulent implacable 
 enemy to his person and government, and saw it necessary 
 for establishing the throne of David before the Lord. 
 
 I would further add, that Shimei himself, sensible of 
 Solomon's great kindness to him, approves the sentence 
 pronounced on him, and therefore the charge that David 
 gave him, promising him upon oath obedience to the con- 
 dition, on which his life was afterward to depend. " The 
 sentence is good. As my Lord the king hath said, so will 
 thy servant do." It doth not appear that Solomon mention- 
 ed one word about Shimei's cursing David, when he or- 
 dered him to confine himself to Jerusalem, and that there- 
 fore this was not the immediate reason why he confined 
 him, but as his father had forewarned him, because he 
 thought it would be a dangerous thing to' suffer a person 
 of Shimei's family, tribe, interest, and known rancour to 
 his crown and government, to be entirely at liberty. And, 
 upon this supposition, Shimei could not but own the justice 
 of the sentence, and Solomon's lenity in pronouncing it. 
 But if Shimei had any apprehension that David had vio- 
 lated his oath of safety to nim by the charge he gave Solo- 
 mon concerning him, or that Solomon had broken it, by 
 making his life depend on a new condition, which his fa- 
 ther had never obliged him. to come under; why did he 
 not plead David's oath and promise, and that had no con- 
 dition annexed to it, when he appeared before Solomon ; 
 that the annexing a new condition to it was actually re- 
 versing it, and therefore a breach of oath in David, if he 
 directed it, or in Solomon, if it was his order only, and not 
 David's'? And though David, being dead, Shimei could 
 not reproach him to his face, yet he might have reproached 
 him, and Solomon himself to his own face, for this breach 
 of oath, if there had been any. But Shimei urges nothing 
 of all this in favour of himself, and instead of reproaching 
 David or Solomon, acknowledges the king's moderation, 
 and says: The sentence is good. It is most just and mer- 
 ciful. As my lord the king hath said, so will thy servant 
 do. Shimei therefore knew, either that he had an absolute 
 pardon from David, or that he had forfeited that pardon, 
 or that, whatever was the purport of David's oath to him, 
 no injustice had been done him, cither by David's charge 
 to Solomon, or by Solomon's executing it. The adver- 
 saries of David may choose which they please. David's 
 honour, and Solomon's justice, will be "abundantly vindi- 
 cated. 
 
 Let me beg the candid reader's attention to another re- 
 mark: That though it hath been positively affirmed, that 
 David guarantied Shimei's pardon with a solemn oath, yet 
 this is by no means certain from the history. For let it be 
 observed, that after Shimei's confession of his fault, Abi- 
 shai said to David: " Shall not Shimei be put to death, be- 
 cause he cursed the Lord's anointed '?" Meaning, be put to 
 death instantly, as appears by David's answer: "Shall 
 there be any man put to death this day in I<rael *? Do I not 
 know that I am this day king over Israel '?" Therefore the 
 king said to Shimei: "Thou shalt not die;" and the king 
 swore to him, viz. that he should not then, or that day. or 
 at that time, be put to the sword. And it is observable, 
 that the Arabic version expressly mentions this circum- 
 stance : " Thou shalt not die =i^'-n this day." This wzis 
 certainly all that the king declared to Abishai, that, as he 
 was that dav restored to the exercise of his re^al power, no 
 man should that day be put to death ; and therefore he 
 
248 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 swore to Shimei, that he should not then die. So again, 
 in David's direction to Solomon about Shimei, the same 
 version hath the same word : " I sware to him by God : I 
 will not put thee to the sword !=i'''7N this day.'' Thus also 
 Josenhus understands the words. He assured him, says 
 he, that he should suffer nothing at that time. And indeed 
 nothing further can be certainly collected from the M^ords, 
 as they stand connected, but that David reprieved Shimei 
 from immediate execution, and left him at liberty to call 
 him to aai account, at any other time, for the outrage and 
 treason that he had been guilty of. To this it is objected, 
 that probity is greatly wounded by such excuses. By what 
 excuses % What, by excusing David from breaking a 
 promise that he never made ; or, for putting a criminal to 
 death whom he only reprieved, but never pardoned 1 The 
 question is, whether David guarantied Shimei's pardon 
 with a solemn oath 1 Or, sware that he should never be 
 put to death for cursing and stoning him 7 The history 
 makes it somewhat probable that David never swore this, 
 but only that he should not be put to death at that time, as 
 Joab and Abishai thought reasonable. If this was all that 
 David promised, David broke no oath in afterward order- 
 ing him, for just?easons of state, for execution ; and probi- 
 ty is not at all wounded by thus excusing David, because it 
 is an excuse founded in truth. Instances enough may be 
 produced, even in our own nation, of offenders being 
 brought to justice, after a very considerable reprieve, per- 
 fectly consistent with the probity and equity of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 And how is this inconsistent with piety, or the advice 
 unworthy a just and religious prince on his death-bed 1 It 
 is true, the forgiveness of enemies is a duty, provided they 
 cease to become our enemies ; but no man is obliged, by 
 any law that I kHow of, so to forgive an enemy, continuing 
 such, as not to take the proper methods to guard against the 
 effects of his enmity, and bring him to justice, if no other 
 method will prove effectual. Much less is a prince obliged 
 so to forgive an implacable enemy to his crown and govern- 
 ment, and one who is likely to disturb the settlement of the 
 crown in his successor, as not to order his successor to be 
 upon his guard against him, and punish him, when guilty, 
 according to his demerits. Such a caution and order is 
 what he owes to his people ; and he may die, as a private 
 person, in charity with all mankind, and forgive every pri- 
 vate injury against himself; and yet, as a prince, advise 
 what is necessary to the public good, and even the execu- 
 tion of particular persons, if, by abusing the lenity of gov- 
 ernment, and the respite they once obtained, they should 
 become guilty of new and capital offences. David may 
 therefore still be, the man after God's own heart. I shall 
 only add, that it is a very uncharitable and groundless sup- 
 position of Mr. Bayle, that David only let him live, first to 
 gain the glory of being a merciful prince, and afterward, 
 on his death-bed, charged his son to put him to death, to 
 avoid being reproached to his face of having broken his 
 word. But surely David's resolution, that no man in Israel 
 should be put to death who had been concerned in the re- 
 bellion, and the moderation and lenity of his whole reign 
 over his people, were much nobler evidences of his being 
 a merciful prince, than his sparing Shimei, whose execu- 
 tion, had it been immediately ordered, all the world would 
 have commended as an exemplary act of justit;e, without 
 the least impeachment of his goodness and mercy. Besides, 
 if David was so false and unprincipled a wretch, as this 
 supposes him, I cannot but think he would have little re- 
 garded such reproaches, if he had had an inclination, in 
 his lifetime, out of revenge to have put him to death ; and 
 if he was so cautious of these reproaches while he lived, I 
 can scarce think he would have given an order that should 
 have blasted the glory of that character, and eternally 
 stained his memory with the complicated guilt of hypocrisy, 
 perfidy, and cruelty, and subjected his memory to them 
 after death. Besides, whose reproaches would he have 
 been afraid of 7 What, Shimei's 1 Surely he might have 
 put him to death by the hands of his officers, without ever 
 permitting Shimei to reproach him to his face; and I pre- 
 sume few of his courtiers would have cared, or dared, thus 
 to reproach him. The truth of the case is — the charge 
 concerning Shimei could not be given till David had estab- 
 lished Solomon on his throne. It concerned Solomon only, 
 and he gave him the caution, because necessary to the 
 pRa<';e and security of his future reign ; and it was of such 
 
 a nature, as to deserve no reproach while he lived, and to 
 expose him to no just reproach after his death. And if Mr. 
 Bayle cannot prove, that David died immediately after this 
 charge to Solomon concerning Shimei, he might have lived 
 long enough to be reproached for it lo his face ; and there- 
 fore it could not be to avoid this reproach, that he gf.ve this 
 charge to Solomon towards the conclusion of i.:'?' .1' Je, I 
 cannot help therefore thinking, that the same reasons that 
 led him to spare Shimei, when he cursed and stoned him, 
 in his retreat from Jerusalem, induced him to spar? him 
 upon his return to it; viz. as Mr. Bayle himself expresses 
 it — his acknowledging and adoring "the hand of God, in 
 the reproaches with which that furious Benjamite loaded 
 him ; and that as God had done what he scarce allowed 
 himself to hope for, looked upon his affliction, and requited 
 him with good for Shimei's cursing, he was resolved, in 
 imitation of his God, to requite Shimei with good, and to 
 bless the man who had reviled, cursed, and despitefully 
 used him. — Chandler. 
 
 Another view of this charge to Solomon is given by 
 Kennicott, whose remarks are well deserving attention. 
 " David is here represented in our English version, as 
 finishing his life with giving a command to Solomon to 
 kill Shimei ; and to kill him on account of that very 
 crime, for which he had sworn to him by the Lord, he 
 would not put him to death. The behaviour thus imputed 
 to the king and prophet, should be examined very carefully, 
 as to the ground it stands upon. When the passage is duly 
 considered, it will appear highly probable that an injury 
 has been done to this illustrious character. It is not un- 
 common in the Hebrew language to omit the negative in a 
 second part of a sentence, and to consider it as repeated, 
 when it has been once expressed, and is follow^ed by the 
 connecting particle. The necessity of so very considerable 
 an alteration, as inserting the particle not, may be here 
 confirmed by some other instances. Thus Psalm i. 5, 
 * The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor (Heb. 
 and, signifying and not) sinners in the congregation of the 
 righteous.' (Psalm ix. 18. Psalm xxxviii. 1 . Psalm Ixxv. 5. 
 Prov. xxiv. 12.) If then, there are in fact many such in- 
 stances, ihe question is, whether the negative,' here ex- 
 pressed in the former part of David's command, may not 
 be understood as to be repeated in the latter part ; and iif this 
 may be, a strong reason will be added why it should be so 
 interpreted. The passage will run thus: 'Behold, thou hast 
 with thee Shimei, who cursed me, but I sware to himb}'' the 
 Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death by the sword. 
 Now therefore, hold him not guiltless, (for ibou art a wise 
 man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him) but 
 bring not down his hoary head to the grave with blood.' 
 Now, if the language itself will admit this construction, 
 the sense thus given to the sentence derives a very strong 
 support from the context. For, how did Solomon under- 
 stand this charge 7 did he kill Shimei in consequence of it 1 
 Certainly he did not. For, after he had immediately com- 
 manded Joab to be slain, in obedience to his father, he sends 
 for Shimei, and knowing that Shimei ought to be well 
 watched, confines him to a particular spot in Jerusalem for 
 the remainder of his life." — B. 
 
 Ver. 16. And now I ask one petition of thee, deny 
 me not. And she said unto him, Say on. 
 
 The Hebrew has for " deny me not," "turn not away my 
 face." When a man has gained the attention of the person to 
 whom he wishes to speak, he generally says orn-kcalve-nwte' 
 ram, i. e. one request only, to show he is not going to give him 
 much trouble, and to ask for many things. Adonijah said 
 to Bathsheba, " turn not away my face :" under similar 
 circumstances it would be said here, " Ah ! do not make 
 my face ashamed — Do not put away my face — Reject not 
 my face." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. Bath-sheba therefore went imto king Sol- 
 omon, to speak unto him for Adonijah. And 
 the king- rose up to meet her, and bowed him- 
 self unto her, and sat down on his throne, and 
 caused a seat to be set for the king's mother ; 
 and she sat on his right hand. 
 
 When visited bv a superior, the Persian rises hastily, and 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 1 KINGS 
 
 249 
 
 meets his guest nearly at the door of the apartment. On 
 *he entrance of an equal, he just raises himself from his 
 ?eat, and stands nearly erect : but to an inferior he makes 
 ihe motion only of rising. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 23. Then King Solomon sware by the Lord, 
 saying, God do so to me, and more also, if 
 Adonijah have not spoken this word against his 
 own life. 24. Now therefore, as the Lord liv- 
 eth, which hath established me, and set me on 
 the throne of David my father, and who hath 
 made me a house, as he promised, Adonijah 
 phall be put to death this day. 25. And King 
 Solomon sent by the hand of Benaiah, the son 
 of Jehoiada ; and he fell upon him that he died. 
 
 Far are we from vindicating Solomon in all his actions, 
 any more than David in the matter of Uriah : his severity 
 to his brother, for a seemingly small offence, looked like 
 revenge, and as if he had taken the first opportunity to cut 
 him off for his former attempt upon the kingdom ; and yet 
 we cannot bat imagine, from Solomon's Avords to his mother, 
 that there was some further conspiracy against him, though 
 not mentioned in holy writ, of which he had got intelligence, 
 and in which Joab and Abiathar were engaged ; and that 
 he looked upon this asking Abishag in marriage as the 
 prelude to it, and the first overt act, as it were, of their trea- 
 son. It is certain, that they thought to impose upon the king, 
 as they had done upon his mother, and carry their point, 
 without ever discovering the malevolent intent of it. 
 
 The wives of the late king (according to the customs of 
 the East) belonged to his successor, and were never married 
 to any under a crowned head. Abishag was, doubtless, a 
 beautiful woman, and by her near relation to David might 
 have a powerful interest at court ; Adonijah might therefore 
 hope, by this marriage, to strengthen his pretensions to the 
 crown, or, at least, to lay the foundation for some future 
 attempt, upon a proper opportunity, either if Solomon 
 should die, and leave a young son, not able to contest the 
 point with him, or if, at any time, he should happen to fall 
 under the people's displeasure, as his father had done before 
 him. This might be Adonijah's design, and Solomon, ac- 
 cordingly, might have information of it. But, supposing 
 that his brother's design was entirely innocent, yet since his 
 request, (according to the customs then prevailing,) was con- 
 fessedly bold and presumptuous, and had in it all the ap- 
 pearance of treason, it was none of Solomon's business to 
 make any further inquiry about it, or to interpret the thing 
 in his brother's favour. It was sufficient for him that the 
 action was in itself criminal, and of dangerous consequence 
 to the state, for it is by their actions, and not intentions, that 
 all offenders must be tried. Adonijah indeed, had he lived 
 under our constitution, would have had a fair hearing 
 before conviction. But we ought to remember, that in the 
 kingdoms of the East the government was absolute, and the 
 power of life or death entirely in the prince : so that Solo- 
 mon, without the formality of any process, could pronounce 
 his brother dead ; and because he conceived that in cases 
 of this nature delays were dangerous, might send imme- 
 diately and have him despatched, though we cannot but 
 say, that it had been much more to his commendation had 
 he showed more clemency, and spared his life. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 26. And unto Abiathar the priest said the 
 king. Get thee to Anathoth, unto thine own 
 fields ; for thou art worthy of death ; but I will 
 not at this time put thee to death, because thou 
 barest the ark of the Lord God before David 
 my father, and because thou hast been afflicted 
 in all Avherein my father was afflicted. 27. So 
 Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest 
 unto the Lord ; that he might fulfil the word 
 of the Lord, which he spake concerning the 
 house of Eli in Shiloh. 
 
 . How far the high-priest Abiathar was concerned in the 
 plot against Solomon, the sacred history does not particu- 
 32 
 
 larly inform us; but such was the reverence paid to the 
 sacerdotal character, that Solomon would have hardly dared 
 to have deposed such a one from his office, had not the 
 constitution of the nation authorized him so to do. The 
 kings in the East, indeed, soon found out ways to make 
 themselves absolute; but it looks as if, at the first establish- 
 ment, the king was at the head of the HebreAV republic, and 
 the high-priest his subject, and, in all civil affairs, submitted 
 to his correction : insomuch that, when any one abused 
 the power of his office, to the prejudice of the commonweal, 
 or endangering the king's person, the king might justly 
 deprive him of his honours and titles, of his temporalities 
 and emoluments, and even of life itself. And therefore, 
 when Abiathar by his conspiracy had merited all this, 
 whatever was dependant on tne crown (as all the revenues 
 of this place, as well as the liberty of officiating in it, were 
 dependant) Solomon might lawfully take from him; but 
 the sacerdotal character, which he received from God, and 
 to which he was anointed, this he could not alienate : and 
 therefore we may observe, that, after his deprivation, and 
 even when Zadok was in possession of his place, he is 
 nevertheless still mentioned under the stvle and title of the 
 priest. The truth is, there is a great deal of difference be- 
 tween depriving a man of the dignity, and of the exercise 
 of his function, in such a determinate place: between 
 taking from him an authority that was given him by God, 
 and the profits and emoluments arising from it, which were 
 originally the gift of the crown. The former of these 
 Solomon could not do, and the latter, it is probable, he was 
 the rather incited to do, 'out of regard to the prophecy of 
 Samuel, wherein he foretold Eli (from whom Aoiathar was 
 descended) that he would translate the priesthood from his 
 to another family, as he did in the person of Zadok, who 
 was of the house of Eleazar, even as Eli M^as of that of 
 Ithamar ; so that, by this means, the priesthood reverted to 
 its ancient channel. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 34. So Benaiah the son of Jehoiada went up, 
 and fell upon him, and slew him ; and he was 
 buried in his own house in the wilderness. 
 
 This refers to the interment of Joab, who was slain by 
 the hands of Benaiah. It is probable that Joab had buill 
 this house for the purpose of being buried in it, as it is not 
 reasonable to suppose that he would erect a house in such 
 a place to be the habitation of the living. Children or 
 parents often build a house in a retired place, over, or for 
 the remains of their dead ; and the rest of the family also 
 when they die are buried there. In some of these places 
 may be seen the funeral car, or palanquin, in Avhich the 
 corpse was taken to its long home, suspended from the roof. 
 At the anniversary of the death of a father, mother, or any 
 other near relation, the friends go thither to perform the 
 annual rites for the benefit of their manes. Such a house, 
 so long as the descendants of the dead interred there have 
 the power to prevent it, will never be allowed to go to de- 
 cay. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 38. 
 days. 
 
 And Shimei dwelt in Jerusalem many 
 
 Ask a man how long he has lived in the village, or a 
 priest how long he has officiated in the temple, the answer 
 IS not a long time, or many years, but veagu-ndl, i. e. many 
 days. " How long were they digging that tank 1" — " Ah ! 
 many days." " Who built that temple ?"— " Ah ! my lord, 
 how can I tell 1 it has been built many days." " I hear you 
 were at the taking of Seringapatam, when the great Tippoo 
 Saib was slain." — " Yes, I was." " How long is that 
 since 1" — " I cannot really tell, but many days." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 4. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice 
 there; for that was the great high place: a 
 thousand burnt-oflerings did Solomon offer upon 
 that altar. 
 
 An exception has been taken to the account of the great 
 quantity of^ sacrifices which he is said to have offered on 
 one altar only ; but without recurring to any miracle for 
 this, or without supposing this fire, which originally came 
 
250 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 from heaven, was more strong and intense than any com- 
 mon fire, and therefore, after the return from the captivity, 
 the altar (as some observe) was made larger, because there 
 wanted this celestial flame: without any forced solution 
 like this, we have no reason to think that all these sacrifices 
 were offered in one day. The king, we may imagiue, upon 
 one of the great festivals, went in procession with his no- 
 bles, to pass his devotion at Gibeon, where was the taberna- 
 cle and the brazen altar, MJ-hich Moses had made. Each 
 of the great festivals lasted for seven days; but Solomon 
 might stay much longer at Gibeon, until, by the daily obla- 
 tions, a thousand burnt-offermgs were consumed ; and, at 
 the conclusion of this course of devotion, he might offer up 
 his ardent prayer to God for wisdom, and God, for the con- 
 firmation of his faith, might appear to him in a dream by 
 night, and have that converse with him, that the scripture 
 takes notice of. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ven. 7. And now, O Lord my God, thou hast 
 made thy servant king instead of David my 
 father ; and I am hut a little child : I know not 
 hoio to go tut or come in. 
 
 So said Solomon when he came to the kingdom of his fa- 
 ther ; and so say men here, though they be advanced in 
 years, when they wish to speak of their incapacity for any 
 performance. " What can I do in this affair ; I am but a 
 boy of yesterday's birth 1" When a man pleads for for- 
 giveness, he says, " I am but a little child, it was my igno- 
 rance." Has a man insulted another by not bowing to him, 
 or refusing to take off his sandals in his presence, or by the 
 use of some improper expressions ; those who go to inter- 
 cede for him, say, " Forgive him, sir, he is but an infant of 
 yesterday." A person wishing to compliment a holy or 
 learned person, says, " I am but a little infant when com- 
 pared with you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2.5. And the king said, Divide the living 
 child in two, and give half to the one, and half 
 to the other. 
 
 This was apparently a very strange decision ; but Solo- 
 mon saw that the only way to discover the real mother was 
 by the affection and tenderness she would necessarily show 
 to her offspring. The plan was tried, and succeeded; and 
 it was a proof of his sound judgment, penetration, and ac- 
 quaintance with the human heart, if not of his extraordi- 
 nary and supernatural wisdom. There are several similar 
 decisions recorded by heathen writers. Suetonius, in his 
 Life of the Emperor Claudian, whom he celebrates for his 
 wonderful sagacity and penetration, tells us, that this em- 
 peror discovered a woman to be the real mother of a young 
 man, whom she refused to acknowledge, by commanding 
 her to marry him, the proofs being doubtful on both sides ; 
 for, rather than commit incest, she confessed the truth. 
 Diodorus Siculus also informs us, that Ariopharnes, king 
 of Thrace, being appointed to decide between three young 
 men, each of whom professed to be the son of the deceased 
 king of the Cimmerians, and claimed the succession, dis- 
 covered the real son, by ordering each to shoot an arrow 
 into the dead body of the king : two of them did this with- 
 out hesitation ; but the real son of the deceased monarch 
 refused. — Greenfield. 
 
 The great merit of the king in this matter was finding 
 out the true mother. " A woman who was going to bathe 
 left her child to play on the banks of the tank, when a fe- 
 male demon who was passing that way carried it off. They 
 both appeared before the deity, and each declared the child 
 was her own : the command was therefore given that each 
 claimant was to seize the infant by a leg and an arm, and 
 pull with all their might in opposite directions. No sooner 
 had they commenced than the child began to scream, when 
 the real mother, from pity, left off pulling, and resigned 
 her claim to the other. The judge therefore decided, that 
 as she only had shown affection, the child must be hers." 
 The decision of a Hindoo magistrate in the case of some 
 travellers is also in point. " Two travellers once went 
 into a rest-house to sleep ; the one had on beautiful ear- 
 rings, the other had none. In the night the latter arose, 
 and while the other slept, took off one of his rings and put 
 it in his own ear. In the morning the former finding one 
 
 of his rings missing, looked at his companion and saw it 
 in his ear. He immediately charged him with the theft, 
 but the thief retorted, and charged him with having stolea 
 one of his rings. They disputed for some time, and at last 
 each determined to make his complaint before a magistrate: 
 his worship patiently heard the case, but as each swore that 
 the other was the thief, and as neither of them could pro- 
 duce a witness, he was at a loss how to decide. He then 
 took one of them into a private apartment, and said, I can- 
 not find out who is guilty, but as I perceive the rings are 
 worth one hundred rupees, I will sell them ; you shall each 
 pay a fine of twenty-five rupees, and* the remaining fifty 
 you may divide betwixt yourselves. The man replied, ' I 
 will not have the twenty-five rupees; they are my own 
 rings, you can do as you please.' The magistrate then 
 called the other man into the room, and proposed the same 
 thing; he replied, ' What can I do, my lord, I must sub- 
 mit to your pleasure ; I accept of the twenty-five rupees.' 
 His worship saw that the man was much pleased with the 
 prospect of getting the rupees, and therefore concluded that 
 he was the thief The ring was then given to the other 
 man, who was the rightful owner." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. For her bowels yearned upon her son. 
 
 The Hebrew has for yearned, " were hot." A mother, 
 in lamenting over her suffering child, says, " Ah ! my 
 bowels are hot over the child." " My bowels burn in his 
 misery." " My heart is burnt to ashes." — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 7. And Solomon had twelve officers over all 
 Israel, which provided victuals for the king and 
 his household : each man his month in a year 
 made provision. 
 
 The eastern people to this day, it seems, support the 
 expenses of government, in common, by paying such a pro- 
 portion of the produce of their lands to their princes. These 
 are their taxes. No wonder it was so in remoter ages. Char- 
 din gives us this account : " The revenues of princes in the 
 East are paid in the fruits and productions of the earth. There 
 are no other taxes upon the peasants." The twelve officers of 
 Solomon then, mentioned 1 Kings iv. 7 — 19, are to be con- 
 sidered as his general receivers. They furnished food for 
 all that belonged to the king ; and the having provisions 
 for themselves and attendants, seems to have tieen, in those 
 times of simplicity, all the ordinary gratification his minis- 
 ters of state, as well as his meaner servants, received. Sil- 
 ver, gold, horses, armour, precious vestments, and other 
 things of value, came to him from other quarters : partly a 
 kind of tribute from the surrounding princes, partly from 
 the merchants, whom he suffered to pass through his coun- 
 try to and from Egypt, or elsewhere, partly from his own 
 commerce by the Red Sea. The horses and armour he 
 seems to have distributed among the most populous towns, 
 who were to find horsemen and people to drive chariots to 
 such a number when called for ; and out of the silver, and 
 other precious things that came to him, he made presents 
 upon extraordinary occasions to those that distinguished 
 themselves in his service. And according to this plan of 
 conducting the expenses of civil government, the history of 
 Solomon is to be explained. Comm^ ntators have not al- 
 ways had this present to their minds when illustrating 'this 
 part of scripture. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 23. Ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the 
 pastures, and a hundred sheep, besides harts, 
 and roe-bucks, (antelopes,) and fallow-deer, and 
 fatted fowl. 
 
 •'' Harts." Dr. Shaw (Trav. p. 414) understands the 
 original '7^n ayil as the name of the genus, including all the 
 species of the deer kind, whether they are disiinguished by 
 round horns, as the stag; or by flat ones, as the fallow-deer; 
 or bv the smallness of the braiiches, as the roe. 
 
 " iPallow-deer." The Hebrew ■Mnn'> yachvmr, rendered 
 bubalus by the Vulgate, probably denotes the bufalo ; and 
 though the " flesh of a buffalo does npt seem so well tasted as 
 beef, being harder and more coarse, yet in our times per- 
 
Chap. 4. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 251 
 
 sons of distinction, as well as the common people, and even 
 the European merchants, eat a good deal of ii in countries 
 where that animal abounds." (Niebuhr.) — Greknfield. 
 
 The flesh of the antelope is very grateful to the taste of 
 an Oriental. It is, in the estimation of Arabian writer.'?, 
 the most delicious and wholesome of all venison. They 
 pronounce its juices better than these of any other wild 
 animal, and more adapted to the human constitution. The 
 sentiments of these venerable ancients, are confirmed by 
 the testimony of several intelligent modern authors. Dr. 
 Shaw says, '' it is in great esteem in the East for food, hav- 
 ing a sweet musky taste, which is highly agreeable to their 
 palates ;" and according to Dr. Russel, " the antelope veni- 
 son, during the winter, or sporting season, is well fla- 
 voured, but very lean, and in the spring is fat, and of a 
 flavour which might vie with English venison." These 
 statements account for its being daily served up on the 
 sumptuous table of Solomon and other eastern, princes. 
 Besides, the antelope has all the marks which distinguished 
 clean animals under the law ; it both divides the hoof and 
 chews the cud. An Israelite, therefore, might lawfully eat 
 of its flesh, although he was not permitted to offer it in 
 sacrifice. This creature belonged to the class of clean 
 leasts, which the people of Israel, as well during their 
 wanderings in the desert, as after their settlement in the 
 and of promise, were permitted to kill wherever they could 
 find them, and use for the subsistence of their families, 
 although, at the time, they might be ceremonially unclean. 
 But the ox, the sheep, and the goat, which some writers 
 distinguished by the name of clean cattle, might both be 
 lawfully eaten and offered in sacrifice ; yet while the cho- 
 sen people sojourned in the wilderness, they were forbid- 
 den to kill any of these animals, although intended merely 
 for private use, except at the door of the tabernacle; and if 
 ceremonially unclean, even to eat of their flesh. This 
 regulation occasioned little inconvenience to the tribes in 
 the desert, where they lived in one vast encampment, in 
 the midst of which the sacred tent was pitched ; but after 
 their settlement in Canaan, their circumstances required 
 either an alteration in the law, or that the greater part of the 
 nation should abstain altogether from the use of flesh. The 
 permission was accordingly enlarged; while they were still 
 restricted to shed the blood of cattle intended for sacrifice, 
 only before the national altar, they were permitted, when 
 too far from the tabernacle, to kill those which they de- 
 signed merely for common food, in any of their cities, or in 
 their houses ; even the ceremonial regulation was abol- 
 ished, and in private clean and unclean fared alike. This 
 permission, which is couched in very express terms, is 
 repeated in the course of a few verses, lest the suspicious 
 mind of an Israelite might suppose that Jehovah envied 
 his people the enjoyment of what he had given them ; and 
 " in both instances it is illustrated by an example which 
 must, from the use of it, have been familiar to the Israel- 
 ites:" " The unclean and the clean may eat thereof, as of 
 the (antelope,) and of the hart." — Paxton. 
 
 The great number of beasts required daily in Solomon's 
 kitchen, will by no means be found incredible, when we 
 compare it with the accounts of the daily consumption of 
 oriental courts in modern times, and the prodigious num- 
 ber of servants of an Asiatic prince. Thus Tavernier, in 
 his description of the seraglio, says, that five hundred sheep 
 and lambs were daily required for the persons belonging to 
 the court of the sultan. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 25. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, 
 every man under his vine and under his fig- 
 tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days 
 of Solomon. 
 
 Plantations of trees about houses are found very useful 
 in hot countries, to give them an agreeable coolness. The 
 ancient Israelites seem to have made use of the same 
 means, and probably planted fruit trees rather than other 
 kinds, to produce that effect. " It is their manner in many 
 places," says Sir Thomas Row's chaplain, speaking of the 
 country of " the Great Mogul, "to plant about, and among 
 their buildings, trees which grow high and broad, the 
 shadow whereof keeps their houses by far more cool : this 
 I observed in a special manner when we were ready to en- 
 ter Amadavarj for it appeared to us, as if we had been en- 
 
 tering a wood rather than a city," The expression in the 
 Old Testament, of people dwelling under their vines and 
 their Jig-irees, seems strongly to intimate, that this method 
 anciently obtained much in Judea ; and that vines and fig- 
 trees were what were commonly used in that country. Nor 
 was this management at all to be wondered at ; as the an- 
 cient patriarchs found it very agreeable to pitch their tents 
 under the shade of some thick tree, their children might 
 naturally be disposed to plant them about their houses. And 
 as it was requisite for them to raise as many eatables as they 
 could, in so very populous a country as that was, it is no 
 wonder they planted fig-trees, whose shade was thickened 
 by* vines, about their houses, under which they might sit 
 in the open air, and yet in the cool. This writer mentions 
 another circumstance, in which there is an evident simi- 
 larity between the ancient Jews and these more eastern 
 people : " But for their houses in their aldeas, or villages, 
 which stand very thick in that country, they are generally 
 very poor and base. All those country dwellings are set 
 up close together; for I never observed any house there to 
 stand single, and alone." 
 
 The account the Baron De Tott gives of the Egyptian 
 villages, shows they are shaded in much the same manner. 
 " Wherever the inundation can reach, their habitations are 
 erected on little hills, raised for that purpose, which serve 
 for the common foundation of all the houses which stand 
 together, and which are contrived to take up as little room 
 as possible, that they may save all the ground they can for 
 cultivation. This precaution is necessary, to prevent the 
 water's washing away the walls, which are only of mud. 
 The villages are always surrounded by an infinite num- 
 ber of pointed turrets, meant to invite thither the pigeons, 
 in order to collect the dung. Every village has, likewise, 
 a small wood of palm-trees near it, the property of which 
 is common : these supply the inhabitants with dates for their 
 consumption, and leaves for fabrication of baskets, mats, 
 and other things of that kind. Little causeways, raised, 
 in like manner, above the inundation, preserve a commu- 
 nication during the time it lasts." Palm-trees, according 
 to this, are planted universally about the Egyptian villages; 
 had they been as generally about the Jewish towns, Jeri- 
 cho would hardly have been called the city of palm-trees, 
 by way of distinction from the rest. It appears to have 
 been, in Judea, rather a peculiarity. But the Jewish towns 
 and houses might be wont to be surrounded by other trees, 
 proper for their use, which probably were vines and fig- 
 trees, which furnished two great articles of food for their 
 consumption, and the cuttings of their vines must have 
 been useful to them for fuel. That plantations of some sort 
 of trees were common about the Jewish towns, may be de- 
 duced even from the term -^D^ kopher, used in their lan- 
 guage for a /illage, which is derived from a root that sig- 
 nifies to coit.r or hide. — Harmer. 
 
 Immediately on entering, I was ushered into the court- 
 yard of the Aga, whom I found smoking under a vine, 
 surrounded by horses, servants, and dogs, among which I 
 distinguished an English pointer. — Turner, 
 
 Ver. 28. Barley also and straw for the horses and 
 dromedaries brought they unto the place where 
 the officers were, every man according to his 
 charge. 
 
 Besides provisions for themselves, the Orientals are 
 obliged to carry food for the beasts on which they ride, or 
 carry their goods. That food is of different kinds. They 
 make little or no hay in these countries, and are therefore 
 very careful of their straw, which they cut into small bits, 
 by an instrument which at the same time thrashes out the 
 corn; this chopped straw, with barley, beans, and balls 
 made of bean and barley-meal, or of the pounded kernels 
 of dates, are what they are wont to feed them with. The 
 officers of Solomon are accordingly said to have brought, 
 every man in his month, barley and straw for the horses 
 and dromedaries, I Kings iv. 28. Not straw to litter them 
 with, there is reason to think, for it is not now used in those 
 countries for that purpose ; but chopped straw for them tc 
 eat alone with their barley. The litter they use for them 
 is their own dung, dried in the sun, and bruised between 
 their hands, which they heap up again in the morning, 
 sprinkling it in the summer with fresh water to keep it 
 
252 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 5, 
 
 from corrupting. In sonr.e other places we read of proven- 
 der and straw, not barley and straw : because it may be, 
 other things were used for their food anciently, as well as 
 now, besides barley and chopped straw. V^Sn beleel, one of 
 the words translated provender. Is. xxx. 24, implies some- 
 thing of mixture, and the participle of the verb Irom which 
 it is derived is used for the mingling of flour with oil; so 
 the verb in Judges xix. 21, may be as well translated, " he 
 mingled (food) for the asses," oivan'? s^-^t veyabal lechamo- 
 reem, as, he gave them provender, signifying that he mixed 
 some chopped straw and barley together for the asses. And 
 thus also barley and chopped straw, as it lies just after reap- 
 ing unseparated in the field, might naturally be expressed 
 by the Hebrew word we translate provender, which signi- 
 fies barley and straw that had been mingled together, and 
 accordingly seems to be so, Job xxiv. 6, " They reap every 
 one his corn in the field" — " Hebrew, mingled corn, or 
 dredge," says the margin. What ideas are usually affixed 
 to secondary translation, I do not know ; but Job apparent- 
 ly alludes to the provender, or heap of chopped straw and 
 corn lying mingled together in the field, after having pass- 
 ed under the thrashing instrument, to which he compares 
 the spoils that were taken from ihe passengers, so early as 
 his time, by those that lived somewhat after the present 
 manner of the wild Arabs, Avhich spoils are to them what 
 the harvest and vintage were to others. To this agrees 
 that other passage of Job where this word occurs, ch. vi. 5, 
 " Will the ox low, in complaint, over his provender V or 
 fodder, as it is translated in our version ; when he has not 
 only straw enough, but mixed with barley. 
 
 The accurate Vitringa, in his commentary, has taken no- 
 tice of that word's implying something of mixture which is 
 translated provender in Is. xxx. 24, but for want of more 
 nicely attending to eastern customs, though he has done it 
 more than most commentators, he has been very unhappy 
 in explaining the cause of it; for he supposes it signifies a 
 mixture of siraw, hay, and bran. I have nowhere observ- 
 ed in books of travels, that they give their labouring beasts 
 bran in the East, and hay is not made there ; the mixture 
 that is meant, if we are to explain it by the present eastern 
 usages, is chopped straw and barley. But the additional 
 word there translated clean, and in the margin leavened, 
 which, Vitringa observes, is the proper meaning of the 
 word, may be supposed to make the passage difficult. The 
 Sepiuagint seem to have thought the words signified nothing 
 more than straw mingled with winnowed barley : and if the 
 word translated provender, though originally intended to ex- 
 press mixture, might afterward come to signify uncompound- 
 ed food, as Vitringa supposes, the passage is easily decipher- 
 ed; for though the word translated clean does commonly 
 signify leavened^ or made sour, yet not always; signifying 
 sometimes mere mixing, as in Is. Ixiii. 1, where it is used 
 for staining a garment with blood, and so it may signify 
 here, as the Septuagint seem to have understood the pas- 
 sage, chopped straw, leavened or mixed with barley. But 
 there is no necessity of supposing the word translated prov- 
 ender is used in a sense different from its common and an- 
 cient meaning, and signifying uncompounded meat for cat- 
 tle ; that single word may be understood to mean chopped 
 straw mingled with barley, fiince we find that barley, when 
 given to beasts of labour, is sometimes mingled, or, to ex- 
 press it poetically, leavened, with a few beans, to which 
 therefore the prophet might refer. The wild Arabs, who 
 are extremely nice in managing their horses, give them no 
 food but very clean barley. The Israelites were not so 
 scrupulous, as appears from the passage I cited relating to 
 the provision made for Solomon's horses, but they may 
 nevertheless think the cleanness of the provender a very 
 great recommendation of it, and seem to have done so, 
 since Isaiah, in the above-mentioned passage, speaks of 
 leavened provender winnowed with the shovel and with 
 the fan. It is not the more important to them, as a good 
 deal of earth, sand, and gravel, are wont, notwithstanding 
 all their precautions, to be taken up with the grain, in their 
 way of thrashing. But though the Israelites were not so 
 scrupulous as the Arabs, giving their beasts of burden 
 straw as well as barley, yet it must have been much more 
 commodious for them in their journeying to have carried 
 barley alone, or balls of bean, or barley-meal, rather than 
 a quantity of chopped straw, with a little other provender 
 of a better kind; and accordingly we find no mention made 
 by Dr. Shaw, of any chopped straw being carried with 
 
 them to Mount Sinai, but only barley, with a few beans in- 
 termixed, or the flour of one or other of them, or both, 
 made into balls with a little water. The Levile's mention- 
 ing therefore his having straw, along with other proven- 
 der, rather conveys the idea of his being a person in mean 
 circumstances, who was not able to feed his asses with pure 
 barley, or those other sorts of provender that eastern trav- 
 ellers are wont to carry with them. — Harmer. 
 
 In the East, horses are still fed with barley. Hasselquist 
 observes, that in the plain of Jericho, the Arabians had 
 sown barley for their horses. They are very careful of 
 their straw, which they cut into small bits, by an instru- 
 ment which at the same time thrashes out the corn : this 
 chopped straw, with barley, beans, and balls made of bean 
 and barley-meal, or of the pounded kernels of dates, are 
 what they usually feed their beasts with. — Maillet. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 6. Now therefore command thou that they 
 hew me cedar-trees out of Lebanon ; and my 
 servants shall be with thy servants : and unto 
 thee will I give hire for thy servants according 
 to all that thou shalt appoint : for thou knowest 
 that there is not among us any that can skill to 
 hew timber like unto the Sidonians. 
 
 The Hebrew word tin aroz, whence the Chaldee and 
 Syriac nt-^s arzo, and the Arabic and Ethiopic t-nn arz, and 
 Spanish alerze, unquestionably denotes the cedar; it is thus 
 rendered by the Septuagint and other Greek versions Kdp'i?, 
 and by the Vulgate cedras; and the inhabitants of motmt 
 Lebanon still call it arz. The cedar is a large and noble 
 evergreen tree, and according to Tournefort makes a dis- 
 tinct genus of plants, but it is comprehended by Linnaeus 
 among the junipers. — Greenfield. 
 
 The cedar grows, it is true, on the mountains of Amanus 
 and Taurus, in Asia Minor, but it does not there attain the 
 height and strength it acquires on mount Lebanon, on which 
 account the cedars of Lebanon have been renowned from 
 the most ancient times. But the cedar woods, which for- 
 merly covered a part of this mountain, have long ago 
 vanished. Only on the northeast side is a small wood, 
 consisting of an inconsiderable number of small thick 
 cedars, and eight or nine hundred younger ones. The old- 
 est and largest cedars are distinguished from the younger 
 ones chiefly by this, that the laUer grow up straight, and 
 their boughs branch out horizontally from the stem, but 
 hang down a little ; and in these two particulars, and in 
 general in their whole form, entirely resemble our Euro- 
 pean pines and firs ; whereas the old cedars have a short 
 and very thick trunk, which divides not far from the root, 
 into three, four, or five large arms, which grow straight up, 
 and are very thick ; some of them grow together for about 
 ten feet. " These trees," says Rauwolf, " which remain 
 green during the whole year, have large trunks, which 
 maybe some fathoms thick, and as high as our firs; but 
 as they have larger arms, according to which the stem 
 bends, this takes away so much of their perpendicular 
 height. The branches spread out pretty far in such a 
 beautiful equality, that they look as if they had been clippeo 
 above, and made even with particular care. It may easilj 
 be perceived before you get very near them, that there is f 
 great difference between these and other resinous tree 
 Otherwise they nearly resemble larch-trees, especially in 
 the leaves, which are small, narrow, and shoot out as close 
 together." 
 
 The latest accounts of the cedars of Lebanon are giveh 
 by Mr. John Henry Mayer, who visited this part in the 
 summer of the year 18113. " I counted," says he, " nine 
 principal cedar-trees, which were distinguished from all 
 the others by their thickness and age, but not by their height, 
 for younger ones exceed them in this respect. I measured 
 the circumference of the trunk of one of the largest with a 
 cord, about fouT feet from the ground, and found it ten 
 French ells and a half A single branch was thirty steps 
 in length to the end, when it divided into small twigs. The 
 trunk of five of the largest consists of three or four division^, 
 each of which equals in circumference the stem of our 
 largest oaks. The cedar itself, probably, belongs to the 
 class of trees with acerose leaves, but is neither a pine, nor 
 
CiiAP. 5—7. 
 
 1 KINGS, 
 
 253 
 
 a fir, nor a larch, though the young cedars are like the lat- 
 ter. The broken twigs almost resemble the elder, and the 
 smell puts one in mind of the arbor vitge. The greatest 
 beauty of these trees consists in their stiff, strong, and far- 
 spreading boughs ; and, what no other kind of tree has, the 
 briitjeness of the wood, even of the smallest and tenderest 
 twigs, which broke like glass, particularly the old ones. 
 The whole wood, probably, does not contain above eight or 
 nine hundred trees, large and small included. The young 
 and middle-aged ones bore fruit of the size of an egg, which 
 were bright green, with brown rings and spots, and stood 
 upright on the small twigs. This peculiarity of the fruit 
 of the cedar also distinguishes it from other trees of the 
 same genus: in other respects, it has an affinity and resem- 
 blance to them, as well by its resinous quality as its form." 
 Hardly any kind of wood unites so many good qualities for 
 building as the cedar : its wood not only pleases the eye by 
 its reddish stripes, and exhales an agreeable smell, but it is 
 hard, and without knots, and is never eaten by worms, and 
 lasts so long, that some persons consider it as imperishable. 
 Hence it was used for rafters and boards, either to cover 
 the houses or floors: it was also employed in building the 
 principal wall ; and combined with stones, so that, for in- 
 stance, after three layers of stones, there followed one of 
 cedar-wood. 1 Kings vi. 36. vii. 12. Ezra vi. 3, 4. Some- 
 times, too, each division of the wall was built alternately 
 with cedar-wood and stones, so that first a course of wood, 
 and then a ccurse of stones, extended from one division to 
 the other, and so each division nearly resembled a chess- 
 board. The temple at Jerusalem, as well as the palace of 
 Solomon, was built of cedar; and in the latter there was 
 such a quantity of this wood, that it was called, 1 Kings 
 vii. 3. X. 10, The house of the forest of Lebanon. (Rosen- 
 muUer.)— BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 9. My servants shall bring them down from 
 Lebanon unto the sea ; and I will convey them 
 by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt 
 appoint me, and will cause them to be dis- 
 charg-ed there, and thou shalt receive them: 
 and thou shalt accomplish my desire in giving 
 food for my household. 
 
 Bishop Patrick supposes, " that they conveyed the pieces 
 of timber from the high parts of the mountains to the river 
 Adonis, or to the plain of Biblos." " By floats is probably 
 meant that the pieces of timber were bound together, and 
 so drawn through the rivers and the sea." In exactly the 
 same way, timber is conveyed in all parts of the East. 
 The trees are cut down before the rainy season, all the 
 branches are lopped off, and the trunks are squared on 
 the spot. Notches are then made in the logs, and they are 
 tied together by ropes made of green withes gathered in the 
 forests. If, however, the waters of the rainy season should 
 not reach the spot where they are hewn down, they are 
 dragged singly to the place where it is known that in the 
 wet monsoon they will float. Thus, in passing through re- 
 mote forests in the dry season, the inexperienced traveller, in 
 seeing numerous trees felled in every direction, and then 
 again, in another place, a large collection bound together 
 like a raft, which is also fastened to trees that are still 
 standing, (to prevent it from being lost when the floods 
 come,) is at a loss to know how it can be got to the river, 
 or to the sea ; for he sees no track or path except that which 
 is made by the wild beast: he knows no vehicle can ap- 
 proach the place, and is convinced that men cannot carry 
 It. But let him go thither when the rains have fallen, and 
 he will see in one place men in a little canoe winding 
 through the forest, in another directing a float with some 
 men on it moving gently along ; and in the river he sees 
 large rafts sweeping down the stream, with the dexterous 
 Steersmen making for some neighbouring town,, or the 
 more distant ocean ; and then may be seen in the harbour 
 immense collections of the finest timber, which have been 
 brought thither " by sea in floats." Sometimes the rains 
 come on earlier than expected ; or the logs may not have 
 been fastened to trees still standing ; hence, when the floods 
 come, they naturally move towards the river; and then 
 may be seen noble trees whirling and tumbling along till 
 they reach the sea, and are thus lost to man. — Roberts. 
 Two methods of conveying wood in floats appear to have 
 
 been practised. The first by pushing single trunks of trees 
 into the water, and suffering them to be carried along by 
 the stream. This was commonly adopted as it regarded 
 firewood. The other was ranging a number of planks close 
 to each other in regular order, binding them together, and 
 steering them down the current. This was probably the 
 most ancient practice. The earliest ships or boats were 
 nothing else than rafts, or a collection of deals and planks 
 bound together. By the Greeks they were called Schedai, 
 and by the Latins, Rates. The ancients ventured out to sea 
 with them on piratical expeditions, as well as to carry on 
 commerce : and after the invention of ships, they were still 
 retained for the transportation of soldiers, and of heavy 
 burdens. Pliny, lib. vi. cap. 56. Strabo, lib. xvi. Schefl^er, 
 De Militia Navali Veterum, lib. i. cap. 3. Pitisci, Lexicon 
 Antiquital. Rom. art. Rates. Solomon entered into a con- 
 tract with Hiram, king of Tyre, by which the latter was to 
 cause cedars for the use of the temple to be cut down on the 
 western side of mount Lebanon, above Tripoli, and to be 
 floated to Jaffa. At present no streams run from Lebanon 
 to Jerusalem ; and the Jordan, the only river in Palestine 
 that could bear floats, is at a great distance from the cedar- 
 forest. The wood, therefore, must have been brought along 
 the coast by sea to Jaffa. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 7. And the house, when it was in building, 
 was built of stone made ready before it was 
 brought thither: so that there was neither 
 hammer, nor ax, nor any tool of iron, heard in 
 the house while it was in building. 
 
 This passage is illustrated by what D'Arvieux remarks 
 of Alexandria in Eg>'pt. " The city gates, which ai^ still 
 standing, have a magnificent appeai-ance, and are so high 
 and broad, that we may infer from them the ancient great- 
 ness and splendour of the place. They properly consist 
 only of four square stones ; one of which serves as the 
 threshold, two are raised on the sides, and the fourth laid 
 across and resting upon them. I need not say that they 
 are of great antiquity ; for it is well known, that for many 
 centuries past such immense stones have not been used in 
 building. It is a matter of surprise how the ancients could 
 raise such heavy masses from the stone quarries, remove 
 them, and set them up. Some are of opinion that these 
 stones were cast, and, probably, only consisted of a heap of 
 small stones, which were united by" the fiiiest cement ; that 
 at the place where they were wanted, wooden models or 
 moulds were made, in which the cement and stones were 
 mixed together, and when this mass became dry and suf- 
 ficiently firm, the mould was taken off by degrees, and the 
 stones then polished." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 1 8. And the cedar of the house within was 
 carved with knobs and open flowers. 
 
 The people of the East are exceedingly profuse in their 
 carved work. See a temple ; it is almost from its founda- 
 tion to its summit a complete mass of sculpture and carved 
 work. Look at their sacred car in which their gods are 
 drawn out in procession, and you are astonished at the 
 labour, taste, and execution displayed by the workmen in 
 carved work : nay, the roof and doors of private dwellings 
 are all indebted to the chisel of the " cunning worlnnan." 
 The pillars that support the verandas, their chests, theii 
 couches, (as were those of Solomon,) the handles of differ- 
 ent instruments, their ploughs, their vessels, (however rude 
 in other respects,) must be adorned by the skill of the 
 carver. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. ^ 
 
 Ver. 7. Then he made a porch for the throne 
 where he might judge, even the porch of judg- 
 ment : and it teas covered with cedar from one 
 side of the floor to the other. 
 
 It deserves remark, that the eastern floors and ceilings 
 are JTist the reverse of ours. Their ceilings are of wood ; 
 ours of plaster or stucco-work; their floors are of plaster or 
 of painted tiles, ours of wood. This effectually detects a 
 
254 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 7—10. 
 
 mistake of Kimchi and R. Solomon, who, according to 
 Buxtorf, supposed the floor of the porch of judgment which 
 Solomon built was all of cedar ; whereas the sacred writer, 
 1 Kings vii. 7, undoubtedly meant its covering a-top, its 
 ceiling, was of cedar. Indeed here in the West, where 
 these Jewish Rabbis lived, such places are usually built 
 after the eastern mode, which makes their mistake so much 
 the more strange. Westminster Hall is, I think, paved 
 with stone and ceiled with wood ; and such without doubt 
 was the ceiling and the pavement of the porch for judgment 
 which Solomon built, and which was erected in a much 
 hotter climate. — H.4rmer. 
 
 Ver. 10. And the foundation was o/ costly stones, 
 even great stones, stones of ten cubits, and 
 stones of eight cubits. 
 
 In the ruins of Balbec, stones of great magnitude are 
 found. " But what is still more astonishing, is, the enor- 
 mous stones which compose the sloping wall. To the west 
 the second layer is formed of stones which are from twenty- 
 eight to thirty-five feet long, by about nine in height. Over 
 this layer, at the northwest angle, there are three stones, 
 which alone occupy a space of one hundred and seventy- 
 five feet and one half: viz. the first, fi'ty-eight feet seven 
 inches; the second, fifty-eight feet eleven; and the third, 
 exactly fifty-eight feet ; and each of these are twelve feet 
 thick. These stones are of a white granite, with large 
 i^hining flakes, like gypse. There is a quarry of this kind 
 of stone under the whole city, and in the adjoining mount- 
 ains, which is open in several places : and, among others, 
 on the right, as we approach the city, there is still lying 
 there a stone, hewn on three sides, which is sixty-nine feet 
 two inches long, tAvelve feet ten inches broad, and thirteen 
 feet three in thickness." (Volney.) 
 
 " The city of Jerusalem is utterly unlike any other place 
 I have ever seen. Its situation upon an immense rock, 
 surrounded by valleys that seem cut out by the chisel ; the 
 contrast exhibited between the extremest degree of barren- 
 ness and the extremest degree of fertility, which border 
 upon each other here almost every yard, without one shade 
 of mitigated character on either side; the structure of the 
 walls, many of the stones in which are fifteen or sixteen 
 leet long, by four high and four deep, the very size men- 
 tioned of the hewn stones of Solomon, 1 Kings vii. 10; the 
 houses, where almost every one is a fortress, and the streets, 
 where almost every one is a covered way, altogether 
 formed an appearance totally dissimilar from that of any 
 other town I have met with either in Europe or Asia." 
 (Carlyle.)— BuRDER. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 . Ver. 31. If any man trespass against his neigh- 
 bour, and an oath be laid upon him to cause 
 him to swear, and the oath come before thine 
 altar in this house. 
 
 Bishop Patrick alleges, that it was the custom of all na- 
 tions to touch the altar when they made a solemn oath, 
 calling God to witness the truth of what they said, and to 
 punis>h them if they did not speak the truth : and he sup- 
 poses, that Solomon alludes to this practice, in his prayer 
 at the dedication of the temple : " If any man trespass 
 against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him, to 
 cause him to swear, and the oath come before thine altar in 
 this house." But the royal suppliant says not one word 
 about touching the altar ; but clearly refers to the general 
 practice of standing before it, for his words literally are : 
 And the oath come (in^ro ^jsV) before the face of thiiie al- 
 tar. In imitation of God's ancient people, many of the sur- 
 rounding nations, among whom Livy and other celebrated 
 writers of antiquity mention the Athenians, the Cartha- 
 ginians, and the Romans, were accustomed to stand before 
 the altar when they made oath ; but it does not appear they 
 laid their hand upon it, and by consequence, no argument 
 from the sacred text, nor even from the customs of these 
 nations, can be drawn for the superstitious practice of lay- 
 ing the hand upon the gospels and kissing them, instead of 
 the solemn form authorized by God himself, of lifting up 
 the right hand to heaven.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 44. If thy people go out to battle against 
 their enemy, whithersoever thou shalt send 
 them, and shalt pray unto the Lord towards the 
 city which thou hast chosen, and towards the 
 house that I have built for thy name. 
 
 " By a decree passed in the eighteenth year of the Em- 
 peror Adrian, the Jews were forbidden not only to enter 
 into the city of Jerusalem, (then called CElia,) but even to 
 turn their looks towards it ; which most probably had a ref- 
 erence to this custom of turning their faces towards the Holy 
 City at their prayers. I observed that Mecca, the country 
 of their prophet, and from which, according to their idea, 
 salvation was dispensed to them, is situated towards the 
 south, and for this reason they pray with their faces turned 
 towards that quarter." (Mariti.) " The Mexicans prayed 
 generally upon their knees, with their faces turned toM^ards 
 the east, and, therefore, made their sanctuaries with the 
 door to the west." (Cullen's Mexico.) In a description of 
 the people of the Ganow hills, we find the same custom 
 prevalent. " Their mode of swearing is very solemn : the 
 oath is taken upon a stone, which they first salute, then, 
 with their hands joined and uplifted, their eyes steadfastly 
 fixed to the hills, they call on Mahadeva in the most solemn 
 manner, telling him to witness what they declare, and that 
 he knows whether they speak true or' false. They then 
 again touch the stone, with all the appearance of the utmost 
 fear, and bow their heads to it, calling again upon Maha- 
 deva. They also, during their relation, look steadfastly to 
 the hills, and keep their right hand upon the stone. When 
 the first person swore before me, the awe and reverence 
 with which the man swore forcibly struck me : my Moher- 
 rir could hardly write, so much was he affected by the so- 
 lemnity. I understand their general belief to be, that their 
 god resides in the hills ; and though this belief may seem in- 
 consistent with an awful idea of the divinity, these people 
 appeared to stand in the utmost awe of their deity, from the 
 fear of his punishing them for any misconduct in their fre- 
 quent excursions to the hills." (Asiatic Researches.) " An 
 hour before sunrise, the coffeegee having prepared our 
 coffee, retired into a corner of the room, and having, with- 
 out the least reserve, performed the necessary ablutions, 
 spread his garment on the ground, and began his prayers: 
 he turned himself to the east, and though several persons 
 entered and left the apartment during his devotions, he 
 seemed quite absorbed, and rose, and knelt, and prostrated 
 himself with as much appearance of piety as if he had been 
 praying in the holy temple of Mecca itself." (Macmichel.) 
 
 BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 66. On the eighth day he sent the people 
 away: and they blessed the king, and went 
 unto their tents joyful and glad of heart, for all 
 the goodness that the Lord had done for Da- 
 vid his servant, and for Israel his people. 
 
 The Hebrew has, for blessed, " thanked." The Tamul 
 translation has, for blessed, "praised." So in Joshua 
 xxii. 33, also in 2 Sam.xxii.47, and in all other passages 
 where the word occurs, (when used in reference to God,) 
 it is rendered, " praise," or " praised." The word bless, 
 among the Hindoos, is, I think, not used, as in English, 
 to praise, to glorify, but to confer happiness, to convey a bene- 
 dictio^i, or to shoiv good-will. Si. Paul says, " Without all 
 contradiction, the less is blessed of the greater ;" and this I 
 believe, joined with greatness, is the only idea the Orientals 
 attach to those who bless others. Hence he who blesses 
 another, must be a superior, either in years, rank, or sanctity. 
 The heathen never bless their gods. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 1. And when the queen of Sheba heard of 
 the fame of Solomon concerning the name of 
 the Lord, she came to prove him with hard 
 questions. 
 
 The Septuagint has, for hard questions, annynam, enig- 
 mas, riddles. The Hindoos (especially their females^ take 
 great delight in riddles, apologues, and fables. By this 
 method they convey pleasure, instruction, or reproof. See 
 
Chap. 10. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 255 
 
 them in their marriage feasts, or in their " evenings at 
 home ;" how pleasantly thej^ pass their time, in thus puzzling 
 each other, and calling forth the talents of the young. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. And when the queen of Sheba had seen 
 all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he 
 had built, 5. And the meat of his table, and the 
 sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his 
 ministers, and their apparel, and his cup-bearers, 
 and his ascent by which he went up unto the 
 house of the Lord ; there was no more spirit 
 in her. 
 
 By these words we may understand that this ascent was 
 consecrated to the use of Solomon alone. Thus we are told 
 by Sir George Staunton, in his account of the first presenta- 
 tion of the British embassy, that, " on his entrance into the 
 tent, the emperor of China mounted immediately the throne 
 by the front steps, consecrated to his use alone." He also 
 informs us, that " one highway was reserved for the use of 
 the emperar alone ; this was rendered perfectly level, dry, 
 and smooth : cisterns were contrived on the sides of the 
 imperial road, to hold water for sprinkling it occasionally, 
 in order to keep down the dust : parallel to the emperor s, 
 was another road, not quite so broad, nor swept continually 
 with so much care, but perfectly commodious and safe : 
 this was intended for the attendants of his imperial majesty : 
 and upon this the British embassy was allowed to pass. All 
 other travellers were excluded from these two privileged 
 roads, and obliged to make out a path wherever they were 
 able." — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 8. Happy are thy men, happy are these 
 thy servants, which stand continually before 
 thee, and that hear thy wisdom. 
 
 " When the king" (of Persia) " is seated in public, his sons, 
 ministers, and courtiers, stand erect, with their hands 
 crossed, and in the exact place of their rank. They watch 
 the looks of the sovereign, and a glance is a mandate. If 
 he speak to them, you hear a voice reply, and see their lips 
 move, but not a motion nor gesture betrays that there is an- 
 imation in any other part of their frame." "When he places 
 himself at the windows of his palace, his domestics take 
 their station in the court before it, hard by the fountain 
 which plays in the middle, to watch the looks of their lord. 
 f\. principal part of the regal state in Persia consists in the 
 number of the men who stand before the monarch ; and 
 we learn from the address of the queen of Sheba to Solomon, 
 that he was not indifferent to this part of eastern splendour. 
 It is reckoned an act of great humility in the king of Persia, 
 or even in a person of high rank, to walk on foot, this being 
 a part of the service exacted from servants. When a 
 prince or great man goes abroad, he is mounted on a horse, 
 and always attended by a multitude of servants on foot, one 
 bearing his pipe, another his shoes, another his cloak, a 
 fourth his saddle-cloth, and so on, the number increasing 
 with the dignity of the master. These statements impart 
 great force to the remark of the wise man : " I have seen 
 servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon 
 the earth." — Paxtok. 
 
 Ver, 16. And King Solomon made two hundred 
 targets of beaten gold ; six hundred shekels of 
 gold went to one target. 
 
 The word m-itsinnah, used for those martial ensigns of 
 
 royal dignity, which were carried before King Solomon, 
 
 and which our version renders tars^ets, 1 Kings x. 16, was 
 
 supposed by the Septuagintto signify spears or lances : and 
 
 , as the word is to be understood to signify some sharp- 
 
 -pointed weapon, it may be more natural to understand it of 
 
 , tL lance, than of a defensive piece of armour with a short 
 
 sharp-pointed umbo in the middle, considering that shields 
 
 , of gold were also carried before this prince, at solemn 
 
 seasons. One can hardly find a disposition to admit, that 
 
 two sorts of things so much alike as targets and shields, 
 
 should be meant here; and if such similar defensive 
 
 ■ pieces of armour were hardly meant, the translation of the 
 
 Septuagint is as^atural as any, to say nothing of the au- 
 thority of so and(jpit a version, in which, so far as appears 
 by Lambert Bos, all the copies, which frequently disagree 
 in other matters, concur. But whatever we may think of 
 this way of translating the original word, we can hardly 
 suppose such martial ensigns of honour were unknown in 
 the time when this translation was made. It is certain they 
 now appear in the Levant. Thus Windus, in his descrip- 
 tion of a pompous cavalcade of the emperor of Morocco, 
 tells us, that after several parties of people were passed, 
 " came Muley Mahomet Lariba, one of the emperor's sons ; 
 he is alcaid of the stables, or master of the horse : there 
 attended him a guard of horse and foot, at the head of w^hich 
 he rode with a lance in his hand, the place where the blade 
 joins to the wood covered with gold." Soon after which 
 came the emperor himself. 
 
 The account of this lance seems to give a clear illustra- 
 tion, of what the Septuagint referred to in their translation 
 of this passage ; if not of the original of the Hebrew his- 
 torian. A comparatively modern prince of Persia seems 
 to have emulated this piece of grandeur of Solomon, and 
 to have even surpassed it, though by means of a different 
 kind of weapon from either of those I have been mentioning. 
 According to d'Herbelot, he had two troops of horsemen, 
 consisting of a thousand each ; one troop carrying maces 
 of gold, each of which weighed one thousand drachms, or 
 thousand crowns of gold ; the second, maces of silver of the 
 same weight. These two brigades served him for his ordi- 
 nary guard, and upon extraordinary ceremonies each of these 
 horsemen carried his mace upon his shoulder. One tenth 
 part of the number would have been extremely majes- 
 tic. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 18. Moreover, the king made a great throne 
 of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold. 
 
 The throne of Solomon is described as having been ex- 
 tremely magnificent, (1 Kings x. 18,) having twelve licos; 
 but on what part of it these ornamental animals were placed 
 is not easy to determine, as we have no accurate idea of its 
 form and construction. We shall therefore now merely 
 extract a description of the mogul's throne, which we finH 
 had divers steps also, and, on the top of its ascent, four lions; 
 wherein it seems to bear a partial resemblance to Solomon's 
 stately seat of majesty. " And further, they told me, that 
 he (the mogul) hath at Agra a most glorious throne within 
 his palace, ascended by divers steps, "which are covered 
 with plates of silver; upon the top of which ascent stand 
 four lions, upon pedestals of curious coloured marble; 
 which lions are all made of massy silver, some part of them 
 gilded with gold, and beset with precious stones. Those 
 lions support a canopy of fine gold, under which the mogul 
 sits when he appears in his greatest state and glory." — 
 (Sir Thomas Roe's Voyage.) 
 
 Thrones were of different kinds; sometimes they resem- 
 bled a stool, sometimes a chair, sometimes a sofa, and 
 sometimes they were as large as a bed. One of the thrones 
 of Tippoo Saib was the back of a very large royal tiger, 
 made of gold, studded with precious stones ; and that part 
 of his back which was employed as a seat, was covered with 
 fine chintses, &c. by way of cushions. — Taylor in Calmet, 
 
 Ver. 20. And twelve lions stood there on the one 
 side, and on the other, upon the six steps : there 
 was not the like made in any kingdom. 
 
 In after ages we read of thrones very glorious and ma- 
 jestic. AthanaBUs saj'^s, that the throne of the Parthian 
 kings was of gold, encompassed with four golden pillars, 
 beset with precious stones. The Persian kings sat in judg- 
 ment under a golden vine, (and other trees of gold,) the 
 bunches of whose grapes were made of several sorts of 
 precious stones. To this article mav be very properly an- 
 nexed the following account of the famous peacock thront 
 of the Great Mogul. " The Great Mogul has seven thrones, 
 some set all over with diamonds; others with rubies, eme- 
 ralds, and pearls. But the largest throne is erected in the 
 hall of the first court of the palace; it is, in form, like one 
 of our field-beds, six feet long and four broad. I counted 
 about a hundred and eight pale rubies in collets about that 
 throne, the least whereof weighed a hundred carats ; but 
 there are some that weigh two hruidred. Emeralds I 
 
256 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 10. 
 
 counted about a hundred and forty, that weighed some 
 threescore, some thirty carats. The u^i|yBrpart of the can- 
 opy is entirely embroidered with pearls^d diamonds, with 
 a fringe of pearls round the edge. Upon the top of the 
 canopy, which is made like an arch with four panes, stands 
 a peacock, with his tail spread, consisting entirely of sap- 
 phires, and other proper colaured stones : the body is of 
 beaten gold, enchased with numerous jewels; and a great 
 ruby adorns his breast, to which hangs a pearl that weighs 
 fifcy carats. On each side of the peacock stand two nose- 
 gays, as high as the bird, consisting of various sorts of 
 flowers, all of beaten gold enamelled. When the king 
 seats himself upon the throne, there is a transparent jew^el, - 
 with a diamond appendant, of eighty or ninety carats 
 weight, encompassecf with rubies and emeralds, so sus- 
 pended that it is always in his eye. The twelve pillars also 
 that uphold the canopy are set round with rows of fair 
 pearl, and of an excellent water, that weigh from six to ten 
 carats a piece. At the distance of four feet, upon each side 
 of the throne, are placed two umbrellas, the handles of 
 which are about eight feet high, covered with diamonds ; 
 the umbrellas themselves being of crimson velvet, em- 
 broidered and fringed wdth pearl. This is the famous 
 throne which Timur began, and Shah Johan finished, and 
 is really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty millions 
 and five hundred thousand livres of our money." (Taver- 
 nier.) — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 21. And all King Solomon's drinking ves- 
 sels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house 
 of the forest of Lebanon were o/pure gold ; none 
 were of silver : it Avas nothing accounted of in 
 the days of Solomon. 
 
 The magnificence of Solomon, particularly with respect 
 to his drinking vessels, has not been exceeded by modern 
 eastern princes. They were all of gold, and it should 
 .seem of the purest gold, 1 Kings x. 2L The gold plate of 
 the kings of Persia has been extremely celebrated, and is 
 mentioned in Sir J. Chardin's note on this passage of the 
 sacred historian : he observes, that the plate of the king of 
 Persia is of gold, and that very fine, exceeding the standard 
 of ducats, and equal to those of Venice, which are of the 
 purest gold. The vessels of gold, we are told in Olearius, 
 were made by the order of Shah Abbas, esteemed the most 
 glorious of the princes of the Sefi royal family, who died 
 lG-29. It seems that he caused seven thousand two hundred 
 marks of gold to be melted upon this occasion ; that his 
 successors made use of it whenever they feasted strangers; 
 and that it consisted chiefly of dishes, pots, flagons, and 
 other vessels for drinking. A French mark is eight of 
 their ounces, and is but four grains lighter than an English 
 ounce troy. Abbas then melted on this occasion near thirty- 
 six thousand English troy ounces of the purest gold, or al- 
 most forty-one three-fourths Jewish talents. Astonishing 
 magnificence of Persia ! Nor have we reason to think that 
 of Solomon was inferior. We may believe, sure, his royal 
 drinking vessels were of equal weight, w^hen the two him- 
 dred targets Solomon made, I Kings x. IG, weighed but 
 little less than the drinking vessels of Shah Abbas. Sir 
 J. Chardin's way of comparing the glory of Solomon, with 
 that of a most illustrious monarch of Persia of late ages, 
 is perhaps one of the most eflficacious methods of impres- 
 sing the mind with an apprehension of the magnificence of 
 this ancient Israelitish king, and, at the same time, appears 
 to be perfectly just. — Harmer. 
 
 . Ver. 22. For the king had at sea a navy of 
 Tharshish with the navy of Hiram : once in 
 three years came the navy of Tharshish, bring- 
 ing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and pea- 
 cocks. 
 
 This beautiful bird, which is now familiarly known to 
 perhaps every nation of Europe, does not seem to have 
 found his way into Palestine before the reign of Solomon. 
 That rich and powerful monarch, added to his unexam- 
 pled wisdom, a taste for natural history; and every three 
 years his fleets returned laden with the most curious and 
 valuable products of distant regions. The elegant shape, 
 
 the majestic mien, and the splendid plumageof the peacock, 
 rendered him a present not unbefitting the greatest king 
 the world had ever seen ; and the servants of Solomon, 
 stimulated probably not more by a sense of duty, than by ' 
 the inclination to gratify their amiable sovereign, were for- 
 ward to place it under his eye. " For the king had at sea 
 a navy of Tharshish, with the na\7 of Hiram : once in three 
 years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, 
 ivory, and apes, and peacocks." The Hebrew name oi 
 this bird is (□■'on) thochijivi, which the Greek interpreters, 
 not understanding, left without explanation ; but the Chal- 
 dee, the Syriac, and other translators, render it the peacock. 
 The origin of the Hebrew name is unknown ; and accord- 
 ingly various are the conjectures in which the learned have 
 indulged their imaginations, or critical acumen. Bocbart 
 imagines it is an exotic term ; and changing the Hebrew 
 (niiiin) ihochiji'in hy 'n\Y ersion into (ovmr) cnthijim, he tra- 
 ces it to aCushite root, intended to denote the native coun- 
 try of the peacock. Nor is it uncommon for an animal to de- 
 rive its proper name from the place of its original residence. 
 The pheasant is indebted for her name to the Phasis, a 
 river of Colchus, on the banks of which she first drew the 
 attention of the postdiluvian tribes ; and African and Nu- 
 midian birds are so called from Africa or Numidia, the 
 country where they were hatched, and where they com- 
 monly fixed their abode. On the same principle, the pea- 
 cock himself is everywhere called by the ancients the bird 
 of Media or Persia, in which the land of Gush, or Cuth, 
 was situate, because he came originally from that region. 
 Aristophanes calls the peacock the bird of Persia ; Suidas, 
 the bird of Media ; and Clemens Psedagogus, the bird of 
 India. Diodorus observes, that Babylonia produces a 
 very great number of peacocks marked with colours of 
 every kind. In the opinion of Bochart, India is the true 
 native country of that bird ; but it is frequently mentioned 
 as a native of Persia and Media, because it was first imported 
 from India into these countries, from whence it passed into 
 Judea, Egypt, and Greece, and gradually found its w^ay into 
 the other parts of the globe. Hence the peacocks, which 
 were imported in the 'fleet of Solomon, probably came from 
 Persia; for in that long voyage of three years, in w^hich 
 they visited Taprobane, it is by no means probable they 
 would always pursue a direct couYse ; but along the vari- 
 ous windings of the coast, search for any thing that suited 
 their purpose. It is even probable that they sailed up the 
 Persian gulf, and touched at the renowned isles of the 
 Pha-nicians, Tyrus or Tylus, and Aradiis, at no great dis- 
 tance from Persia. 
 
 The elegance of the peacock's form, and the brilliancy of 
 his plumage, seem to be the principal reasons which indu- 
 ced the mariners of Solomon to bring him into Palestine, 
 and that the sacred historian so distinctly mentions the 
 circumstance. Nature, according to the remark of Var- 
 ro, has certainly assigned the pahn of beauty to the pea- 
 cock ; but since the introduction of the ape into Palestine, 
 an animal neither distinguished by the elegance of his 
 form, nor the brilliancy of his colour, is mentioned at the 
 same time, the historian might intend to direct the reader's 
 attention, as well to the riches and splendour of Solo- 
 mon, as to his taste for rare and curious articles of natural 
 history. In the Lesser Asia, and in Greece, the peacock was 
 long held in high estimation, and frequently purchased by 
 the great and the wealthy, at a very great price. We learn 
 from Plutarch, that in the age of Pericles, a person at 
 Athens made a great fortune by rearing these birds, and 
 showing them to the public, at a certain price, every new 
 moon ; and to this exhibition, the curious Greeks crowded 
 from the remotest parts of the country. The keeper of 
 these birds, the same author informs us, sold a male and 
 female for a thousand drachms, about thirty-six pounds of 
 our money. Peacocks were very rare in Greece, even in 
 the time of Alexander, who, by the testimony of ./Elian, 
 was struck with astonishment at the sight of these birds on 
 the banks of the Indus ; and from admiration of their beauty, 
 commanded every person that killed one of them, to be 
 severely punished. At Rome, as the same historian relates, 
 when Hortensius first killed one for supper, he was 
 brought to trial, and condemned to pay a fine. Their eggs, 
 according to Varro, w ere sold in his time at five denarii, 
 or more than three shillings a piece ; and the birds ihem- 
 selv-es commonly at about two pounds of our money. The 
 same writer aflirms, that M. A ufidius Luzco derived an 
 
Chap. 10—12. 
 
 I KINGS. 
 
 257 
 
 vearly revenue of more than sixty thousand pieces of silver, 
 which amounts to four hundred and sixty-eight pounds 
 fifteen shillings sterling, from the sale of peacocks; for al- 
 though their flesh is not better tasted than that of a domestic 
 fowl, they were sold at a much greater price on account of 
 the richness and brilliancy of their plumes. These state- 
 ments prove, that the peacock was deemed, in remote ages, 
 a present not unworthy of a king. — Paxton. 
 
 The last word D'^on tmkkiyeem, of those paragraphs which 
 ■describe the imports of Solomon's navy from Tharshish, is 
 dubious : some of the learned have thought it means parrots, 
 the greatest number, peacocks. What led some of the curi- 
 ous to imagine parrots were meant, I do not well know ; 
 but there is a passage in Hasselquist, which strongly in- 
 clines me to adopt their sentiment; describing the com- 
 merce of the people of Ethiopia, he says, the Abyssinians 
 make a journey every year to Cairo, to sell the products 
 of their country, slaves, gold, elephants, drugs, monkeys, 
 parrots, &c. As Solomon's navy is said to have brought 
 gold and silver, elephants' teeth, and apes, and peacocks, 
 and this by the way of the Red Sea, 1 Kings ix. 26, which 
 washes the east of Abyssinia, one would imagine, as many 
 of the other particulars tally with each other, that instead of 
 peacocks^ the true translation of the last word is parrots. 
 Religion indeed is not at all concerned in this uncertainty ; 
 but it is a matter of curiosity, and as such may, with great 
 propriety, be taken notice of in these papers. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 28. And Solomon had horses brought out 
 of Egypt, and linen yarn : the king's merchants 
 received the linen yarn at a price. 
 
 Horses were conducted to foreign markets in strings ; a 
 circumstance " favourable to those interpreters, who would 
 refer the whole passage, 1 Kings x. 28, and 2 Chron. i. 16, 
 to /lorses, instead of linen yarn, which seems rather to break 
 the connexion of the verses." Some are therefore inclined 
 to read, " And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, 
 even strings of horses, (literally, draioings out— prolonga- 
 tions:) the king's merchants received the strings, i.e. of 
 horses, in commutation, exchange, or barter. And a chariot, 
 or set of chariot horses, {i. e. four,) came up from Egypt 
 for six hundred shekels of silver, and a single horse for 
 one hundred and fifty." — And these he sold again, at a 
 great profit, to the neighbouring kings. As the whole con- 
 text seems rather applicable to horses than to linen yarn, 
 so this idea, while it strictly maintains the import of the 
 words, preserves the unity of the passage. The Egyptian 
 horses were held in great estimation in Syria .and the 
 neighbouring countries. The breed seems to have been 
 introduced into Egypt at a very remote period ; for the 
 cavalry of Pharaoh was numerous and completely trained 
 to war, when the people of Israel were delivered from his 
 yoke : " But the Egyptians pursued after them, all the 
 horses and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his 
 army, and overtook them encamping by the sea." The 
 dreadful overthrow which Pharaoh received at the Red 
 Sea, did not prevent his successors from again directing 
 their attention to the rearing of horses for the purpose of 
 war : for the numerous and splendid studs of Solomon 
 were chiefly formed of Egyptian horses ; and in the fifth 
 year of his son Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, invaded 
 Canaan "with twelve hundred chariots, and threescore 
 thousand horsemen." In times long posterior, the prophet 
 Jeremiah addressed the forces of Pharaoh Neco, which the 
 king of Babylon routed near the Euphrates, in these words : 
 " Harness the horses ; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand 
 forth with your helmets. — Come up, ye horses ; and rage, ye 
 chariots ; and let the mighty men come forth." From these 
 passages, it may be certainly inferred, that the strength of 
 the Egyptian armies chiefly consisted in cavalry and chari- 
 ots of war. The Egyptian warrior adorned the neck of his 
 charger with small bells, which were of great use when 
 he had to engage with enemies mounted on camels, the 
 noise of which these animals cannot endure. In allusion 
 to this custom, which was probably adopted by Solomon, 
 who delighted so much in pomp and show, it is promised, 
 "upon the bells of the horses shall be written, Holiness to 
 the Lord." The Egyptian horses appear to have been 
 much stronger than the Syrian breed, and by consequence, 
 much more useful in the field. On this account, the prophet 
 Isaiah tells the people of Israel, that " the Egyptians were 
 
 men, and not God, and their horses were flesh, and not 
 spirit." The high estimation in which the Egyptian horses 
 were held, and the eagerness with which the surrounding 
 nations purchased them at exorbitant prices, might be one 
 reason for enacting the law which forbade the chosen 
 people to multiply horses, that they might not idly waste 
 their substance, and especially, that they might not return 
 again into Egypt, the scene of their grievous oppression, 
 even for the purposes of commerce. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 36. And unto his son will I give one tribe, 
 that David my servant may have a light ahvays 
 before me in Jerusalem, the city which I have 
 chosen me to put my name there. 
 
 The houses in the East were, from the remotest antiquity, 
 lighted with lamps ; and hence it is so common in scrip- 
 ture to call everything which enlightens the body or mind, 
 which guides or refreshes, by the name of a lanip. These 
 lamps were sustained by a large candlestick set upon the 
 ground. The houses of Egypt, in modern times, are never 
 without lights ; they burn lamps all the night long, and in 
 every occupied apartment. So requisite to the comfort of 
 a family is this custom reckoned, or so imperious is the 
 power which it exercises, that the poorest people would 
 rather retrench part of their food than neglect it. If this 
 custom prevailed in Eg>'pt and the adjacent regions of 
 Arabia and Palestine in former times, it will impart a 
 beauty and force to some passages of scripture, which have 
 been little observed. Thus, in the language of Jeremiah, 
 to extinguish the light in an apartment is a convertible 
 
 Jhrase for total destruction ; and if it was the practice in 
 udea,asin modem Egypt, which can scarcely be doubted, 
 to keep a lamp continually burning in an occupied apart- 
 ment, nothing can more properly and emphatically repre- 
 sent the total destruction of a city, than the extinction of 
 the lights. " 1 will take from them the light of a candle; 
 and this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonish- 
 ment." Job describes the destruction of a family among 
 the Arabs, and the desolation of their dwellings, in the very 
 language of the prophet : " How oft is the candle of the 
 wicked put out, and how oft cometh their destruction upon 
 them!" Bildad expresses the same idea, in the following 
 beautiful passage : " Yea, the light of the wicked shall be 
 put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine." " The 
 light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be 
 put out with him." A burning lamp is, on the other hand, 
 the chosen symbol of prosperity, a beautiful instance of 
 which occurs in the complaint of Job: "Oh that I were 
 as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, 
 when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his 
 light I walked through darkness." When the ten tribes 
 were taken from Rehoboam, and given to his rival, Jeho- 
 vah promised to reserve one tribe, and assigns this reason , 
 "that David my servant may have a light always before 
 me in Jerusalem."— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 11. And now whereas my father did lade 
 you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your 
 yoke : my father hath chastised you with whips, 
 but I will chastise you with scorpions. 
 
 It is not easy to know which to admire most, the folly or 
 the tyranny of Rehoboam, who in the very commencement 
 of his reign, threatened to lay aside the whips with which 
 his father had chastised the people of Israel, and rule them 
 with scorpions ; it was adding insult to cruelty. Nor is the 
 injurious treatment much alleviated, although the idea of 
 some interpreters were admitted, that the scorpion was the 
 name of a kind of whip in use among the Jews, armed 
 with points like the tail of that animal. The sting of the 
 scorpion occasioned an excruciating pain, although death 
 did not ensue. This is attested by John, in the book of 
 Revelation : "And to them it was given that they should not 
 kill them, but that they should be tormented five months; 
 and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when 
 he striketh a man." And so intolerable is the agony, that 
 it is added, " In those days shall men seek death, and shall 
 
253 
 
 1 KINGS 
 
 Chap. 13. 
 
 not find it j and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from 
 them." If the Jews used a whip which they called a scor- 
 pion, it must have been because it occasioned a similar tor- 
 ment. If these things are properly considered, we shall 
 cease to wonder at the instantaneous revolt of the ten 
 tribes ; for it is not easy to conceive an address more cal- 
 culated to rouse and exasperate the bitter passions of a high- 
 spirited people, than the puerile and wicked speech of 
 Rehoboam.— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he cried against the altar in the 
 word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus 
 saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born 
 unto the house of David, Josiah by name ; and 
 upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high 
 places that burn incense upon thee, and men's 
 bones shall be burnt upon thee. 
 
 These words were uttered in consequence of the profana- 
 tion of the altar, and the wickedness of those concerned. 
 Has a man brought or purchased a kid for sacrifice to his 
 deity, and should it have been stolen, he goes to his god to 
 tell his story, and then says, " O Swamy ! may the bones 
 and the body of him who stole the kid intended for you, be 
 offered up to you as a sacrifice." Whoever walks upon ihe 
 place where men's bones have been burnt, becomes im- 
 pure. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the king answered and said unto the 
 man of God, Entreat now the face of the Lord 
 thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may 
 be restored me again. And the man of God 
 besought the Lord, and the king's hand was 
 restored him again, and became as it was before. 
 
 This is said in reference to the hand of Jeroboam, 
 which had become stiff in consequence of the violence he 
 had offered to the prophet. The face of the Lord was to 
 be entreated. Has a man injured another, he says, " Ah ! 
 my lord, forgive me for the sake of the face of your son." 
 Or, does he wish another to intercede for him, he says, 
 " Ah ! go, and beseech his face for me." A man, whose 
 name was Veatha-Veydthar, was once asked by some 
 prophet, " Who is the greatest god, Siva or Vishnoo '?" 
 The man then stretched forth his hand towards a temple of 
 Vishnoo, and said, " He is the greatest." Immediately his 
 arm became stiff and withered. The prophet, seeing this, 
 then prayed to Siva, and his hand was restored. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 31. And it came to pass, after he had buried 
 him, that he spake to his sons, saying, When I 
 am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein 
 the man of God is buried ; lay my bones beside 
 his bones. 
 
 His object in making this request, was no doubt a selfish 
 one; he believed the deceased was a good man, and felt a 
 hope, that if his body were to rest near him it would be 
 protected from insult, and that with him he would share the 
 blessings of the resurrection. Wherever the body or the 
 bones of Hindoo or Mohammedan saints are buried, there 
 will others also wish to be interred. Often, when men think 
 themselves near death, they say, " Take care that you bury 
 me near ' .e holy man. Ah ! remember you are to put me 
 near to * -e sacred place." The idea seems to be, that the 
 spot beiT < thus sanctified, neither devils nor evil spirits can 
 injure them. Numbers are carried to a great distance to be 
 thus interred. — Roberts, 
 
 Not far from this is another large mausoleum, built by 
 Shah Suleiman, over the remains of a mussulman doctor 
 of the name of Mollah Hossein, who was a native of Con- 
 sori, a large town of Irak Ajem, three days' journey from 
 Ispahan. Around these and such like monuments are, in 
 general, to be seen collections of minor tombs ; for it is a 
 received opinion, that those who are buried in the vicinity 
 of a holy personage will meet with his support at the day 
 of resurrection. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 32. For the saymg which he cried by the 
 word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, 
 and against all the houses of the high places 
 which are in the cities of Samaria, shal surely 
 come to pass. 
 
 Leaving Nablous, the road lies along the narrow vale, 
 and, in about three quarters of an hour, conducts the trav- 
 eller to a copious spring of good water, called Beersheba. 
 This, Dr. Richardson says, is the broadest and best culti- 
 vated part of the valley ; he saw the natives busily engaged 
 (May) in reaping a scanty crop of barley. Maundrell 
 notices a village on the left of the road (going northward) 
 called Barseba, deriving its name, no doubt, from this well ; 
 and, half an hour farther, another village, which he calls 
 Sherack. After leaving Beersheba, Dr. Richardson's ac- 
 count makes the road ascend. " In about a quarter of an 
 hour," he says, " we reached the top of the hill ; and as we 
 wound our way down the other side, had an excellent view 
 of the delightfully situated Sebaste. In a few minutes we 
 passed a ruined aqueduct of Roman architecture, and 
 pitched our tents at the bottom of the hill, nearly opposite 
 to its unworthy successor, a poor village of the same name ; 
 having travelled this day about nine hours." This makes 
 the distance from Khan Leban about twenty-seven miles, 
 but allowing for deviations from the direct track, twenty- 
 four miles, and sixteen hours, or forty-eight miles from 
 Jerusalem. Josephus, however, makes it but one day's 
 journey from the capital. It is six miles beyond Napolose; 
 and if the distance of the latter place is correctly given by 
 our authorities, it cannot exceed forty miles. Sebaste is the 
 name which Herod gave to the ancient Samaria, the impe- 
 rial city of the ten tribes, in honour of Augustus (Sebastos) 
 Cesar, when he rebuilt and fortified it, converting the 
 greater part of it into a citadel, and erecting here a ncble 
 temple. "The situation," says Dr. Richardson, "is ex- 
 tremely beautiful, and strong by nature ; more so. I think, 
 than Jerusalem. It stands on a fine, large, insulated hill, 
 compassed all around by a broad deep valley, and when 
 fortified, as it^ is stated to have been by Herod, one would 
 have imagined that, in the ancient system of warfare, 
 nothing but famine could have reduced such a place. The 
 valley is surrounded by four hills, one on each side, which 
 are cultivated in terraces up to the top, sown with grain, 
 and planted with fig and olive trees, as is also the valley. 
 The hill of Samaria likewise rises in terraces to a height 
 equal to any of the adjoining mountains. The present vil- 
 lage is small and poor, and, after passing the valley, the 
 ascent to it is very steep. Viewed from the station of oui 
 tents, it is extremely interesting, both from its natural situ- 
 ation, and from the picturesque remains of a ruined convent 
 of good Gothic architecture. 
 
 " Having passed the village, towards the middle of the 
 first terrace, there is a number of columns still standing. I 
 counted twelve in one row, besides several that stood apart, 
 the brotherless remains of other rows. The situation. is 
 extremely delightful, and my guide informed me, that they 
 belonged to the serai, or palace. On the next terrace there 
 are no remains of solid building, but heaps of stone, and 
 lime, and rubbish, mixed with soil, in great profusion. 
 Ascending to the third or highest terrace, the traces of 
 former buildings Avere not so numerous, but we enjoyed a 
 delightful view of the surrounding country. The eye passed 
 over the deep valley that encompasses the hill of Sebaste, 
 and rested on the mountains beyond, that retreated as they 
 rose with a gentle slope, and met the view in every direc- 
 tion, like a book laid out for perusal on a reading-desk. 
 This -^'as the seat of the capital of the short-lived and 
 wicked kingdom of Israel ; and on the face of these mount- 
 ains the eye surveys the scene of many bloody conflicts 
 and many memorable events. Here those holy meft oi 
 God, Elijah and Elisha, spoke their tremendous warnirgs 
 in the ears of their incorrigible rulers, and wrought their 
 miracles in the sight of all the people. From this lofiy 
 eminence we descended to the south side of the hill, where 
 we saw the remains of a stately colonnade, that stretches 
 along this beautiful exposure from west to east. Sixty 
 columns are still standing in one row. The shafts are plain, 
 and fragments of Ionic volutes, that lie scattered about, tes- 
 tify the order to which they belonged. These are probably 
 the relics of some of the magnificent structures with whick 
 
Chap. 14. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 259 
 
 Herod the Great adorned Samaria. None of the walls 
 remain." Mr. Buckingham mentions a current tradition, 
 that the avenue of columns formed a part of Herod's palace. 
 According to his account there were eighty-three of these 
 columns erect in 1816, besides others prostrate; all without 
 capitals. Josephus states, that, about the middle of the city, 
 Herod built " a sacred place, of a furlong and a half in 
 circuit, and adorned it with all sorts of decorations ; and 
 therein erected a temple, illustrious for both its largeness 
 and beauty," It is probable that these columns belonged to 
 it. On the eastern side of the same summit are the remains, 
 Mr. Buckmgham states, of another building, " of which 
 eight large and eight small columns are still standing, with 
 many o hers fallen near them. These also are without 
 capitals, and are of a smaller size, and of an inferior stone 
 to the others." " In the walls of the humble dwellings 
 forming the modern village, portions of sculptured blocks 
 of stone are perceived, and even fragments of granite pil- 
 lars have been worked into the masonry." The Gothic 
 convent refi'rred to by Dr. Richardson, is the ruined cathe- 
 dral, attributed, like every thing else of the kind in Pales- 
 tine, to the Empress Helena. It stands east and west, and 
 is about one hundred feet in length, by fifty in breadth. — 
 Modern Traveller. 
 
 > CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 3. And take with thee ten loaves, and crack- 
 nels, and a cruise of honey, and go to him : he 
 shall tell thee what shall become of the child. 
 
 When they consulted a prophet, the eastern modes re- 
 quired a present ; and they might think it was right rather 
 to present him with eatables than other things, because it 
 frequently happened that they were detained some time, 
 waiting the answer of God, dtring which hospitality would 
 require the prophet to ask them to take some repast with 
 him. And as the prophet would naturally treat them with 
 some regard to their quality, they doubtless did then, as the 
 Egyptians do now, proportion their presents to their avowed 
 rank and number of attendants. " This custom," (of making 
 presents,) says Maillet, " is principally observed in the fre- 
 quent visits which they make one another through the course 
 of the year, which are always preceded by presents of fowls, 
 sheep, rice, coffee, and other provisions of different kinds. 
 These visits, which relations and friends make regularly to 
 each other, were in use among the ancient Egyptians ; and 
 though they are often made without going out of the same 
 city, yet they never fail of lasting three or four days, and 
 sometimes eight. They carry all their family with them, 
 if they have any ; and the custom is, as I have just observed, 
 to send presents beforehand, proportionable to their rank, 
 and the number of their attendants." In other cases, the 
 presents that anciently were, and of late have been made to 
 personages eminent for study and piety, were large sums of 
 money or vestments. Sums of money are presented also to 
 others, by princes and great personages. Sir John Chardin 
 observes, in his MS., on occasion of Joseph's being said to 
 have given Benjamin three hundred pieces of silver. Gen. 
 xlv. 22, that the kings of Asia almost always make presents 
 of this kind to ambassadors, and other strangers of consid- 
 eration who have brought them presents. So the Calif 
 Mahadi, according to D'Herbelot, gave an Arab that had 
 entertained him in the desert, a vest and a purse of silver: 
 as to vestments, D'Herbelot tells us, that Bokhteri, an illus- 
 trious poet of Cufah, in the ninth century, had so many 
 presents made him in the course of his life, that at his 
 death he was found possessed of a hundred complete suits 
 of clothes, two hundred shirts, and five hundred turbans. 
 
 D'Arvieux tells us, that when he waited on an Arab 
 emir, his mother and sister, to gratify whose curiosity that 
 visit was made, sent him, early in the morning after his 
 H arrival in their camp, a present of pastry, honey, fresh 
 butter, with a basin of sweetmeats of Damascus. Sir John 
 Chardin tells us, in his Travels, of an officer whose busi- 
 ness it was to register the presents that were made to his 
 master or mistress ; and I have since found the same prac- 
 tice obtains at the Ottoman court: for Egmont and Heyman, 
 speaking of the presents made there on the account of the 
 circumcision of the grand seignior's children, tell us that all 
 these donations with the time when, and on what occasion 
 given, were carefully registered in a book for that purpose. 
 
 When Dr. Perry travelled in Egypt, ahd visited the trmple 
 at Luxor, he says, " We were entertained by the calif 
 here with great marks of civility and favour ; he sent us, 
 in return of our presents, several sheep, a good quantity of 
 eggs, bardacks," &c. These bardacks he had described a 
 little before, in speaking of a town called Keene: " Its chief 
 manufactory," he there tells us, " is in bardacks, to cocl 
 and refresh their water in, by means of which it drinks 
 very cool and pleasant in the hottest seasons of the year. 
 They make an inconceivable quantity of these, which they 
 distribute to Cairo, and all other parts of Egypt. They 
 send them down in great floats, consisting of many thou- 
 sands, lashed together in such a manner as to bear the 
 weight of several people upon them. We purchased a 
 good many of them for the fancy, at so inconsiderable a 
 
 Erice as twenty pence a hundred; and are really surprised 
 ow they could make them for it." — Burder. 
 The presents made to the ancient prophets were not 
 always of the same kind and value; an inhabitant of Baal- 
 shalisha "brought the man of God bread of the first-fruits, 
 twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk." 
 The king of Israel sent a present by his wife to the prophet 
 Ahijah, of ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruise of honey; 
 which, it appears from other statements, was not deemed 
 unworthy of an eastern king. Some commentators are of 
 opinion, that it was a present fit only for a peasant to make, 
 and was designedly of so small value, to conceal the rank 
 of the messenger. But this idea by no means corresponds 
 with the custom of the East ; for D'Arvieux informs us, 
 that when he waited on an Arabian emir, his mother and 
 sister sent him a present of pastry, honey, fresh butter, 
 with a basin of sweetmeats, which differs very little from 
 the present of Jeroboam. It was certainly the wish of the 
 king, that his wife should not be recognised by the aged. 
 pro|)het ; but the present she carried, though not intended 
 to discover her, was, in the estimation of the Orientals, not 
 unbecoming her rank and condition. — Paxton. 
 
 Travellers agree that the eastern bread is made in small, 
 thin moist cakes, must be eaten new, and is good for nothing 
 when kept longer than a day. This, however, admits of 
 exceptions. Dr. Russel of late, and Rauw^olf formerly, 
 assure us, that they have several sorts of bread and cakes. 
 Some, Rauwolf tells us, done with yelk of eggs, some mix- 
 ed with several sorts of seeds, as of sesamum, Romish co- 
 riander, and wild garden saffron, which are also strewed 
 upon it : and he elsewhere supposes that they prepare bis- 
 cuits for travelling. Russel also mentions this strewing 
 of seeds on their cakes, and says they have a variety vf 
 rusks and biscuits. To these authors let me add Pitts, who 
 tells us, the biscuits they carry with them from Egypt will 
 last them to Mecca and back again. So the scripture 
 supposes their loaves of bread were very small, three of 
 them being requisite for the entertainment of a single per- 
 son, Luke xi. 5 ; that they were generally eaten new, and 
 baked as they wanted them, as appears from the case of 
 Abraham ; that sometimes, however, they were made so 
 as to keep several days; so the shew-bread was fit food after 
 having stood before the Lord a week. And that bread for 
 travellers was wont to be made to keep some time, ap- 
 pears from the pretences of the Gibeonites, Josh. ix. 12 ; 
 and the preparations Joseph made for Jacob's journey into 
 Egypt, Gen. xlv. 23. In like manner, too, they seem to have 
 had then a variety of eatables of this kind, as the Alep- 
 pines now have. In particular, some made like those on 
 which seeds are strewed, as we may collect from that part 
 of the present of Jeroboam's wife to the prophet Ahijah, 
 which our translators have rendered cracknels, 1 Kings xiv. 
 iii. Buxtorf indeed supposes the original word onpj nak- 
 kadeem, signifies biscuits, called by this name either because 
 they were formed into little buttons like some of our ginger- 
 bread, or because they were pricked full of holes after a par- 
 ticularmanner. The last of these two conjectures, I imagine, 
 was embraced by our translators of this passage, for cracJ/- 
 neh, as they are all over England of the same form, are 
 full of holes, being formed into a kind of flourish of lattice- 
 work. I have seen some of the unleavened bread of our 
 English Jews, made in like manner, in a net-work form. 
 Nevertheless, I think it more natural to undierstand the 
 word of biscuits spotted with seeds ; for it is used elsewhere 
 to signify works of gold spotted with studs of silver; and, 
 as it should seem, bread spotted with mould. Josh. ix. 5 — 12 ; 
 how much more natural then is it to understand the word 
 
< 260 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 15. 
 
 of cakes spotted with seeds, which are so common, that not 
 only Rauwolf and Russel speak of them at Aleppo, but 
 Han way tells us, too, that the cakes of bread that were pre- 
 sented to him at the house of a Persian of distinction, were 
 in like manner sprinkled with the seeds of poppies and 
 other things, than of cracknels, on account of their being 
 full of holes. It is used for things that are spotted we know, 
 never in any other place for a thing full of holes. Our 
 translators then do not appear to have been very happy in 
 the choice of the word cracknels here. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 6. And it was so, when Ahijah heard the 
 sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, 
 that he said. Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam ; 
 why feignest thou thyself to be another ? for 1 
 a?n §ent to thee with heavy tidings. 
 
 This woman disguised herself in order to deceive the 
 prophet, and therefore he addressed her by name, to show 
 that she was known to him. Married women are general- 
 ly spoken to as the wife of such a person. Supposing a 
 married female to be in a crowd, and a man on the outside 
 wishes to speak to her, he will say, " Come hither, wife 
 of Chinne Tamby ;" literally, Chinne Tamby's wife, hither 
 come. " O ! Muttoo's wife, where are you V Should a 
 
 Eerson have to speak to a female who is walking before 
 im, he will not call her by name, but address her, " Such 
 a one's wife, I wish to speak to you."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon 
 the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from 
 Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, 
 and him that is shut up, and left in Israel, and 
 will take away the remnant of the house of 
 Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it 
 be all gone. 
 
 Sometimes, when a successful prince has endeavoured to 
 extirpate the preceding royal family, some of them have 
 escaped the slaughter, and secured themselves in a fortress 
 or place of secrecy, while others have sought an asylum in 
 foreign countries, from whence they have occasioned great 
 anxiety to the usurper. The word shut up, strictly speak- 
 ing, refers to the first of these cases ; as in the preservation 
 of Joash from Athaliah in a private apartment of the tem- 
 ple. Such appears also to have been the case in more mod- 
 ern times. '• Though more than thirty years had elapsed 
 since the death of the Sultan Achmet, father of the new 
 emperor, he had not, in that interval, acquired any great 
 information or improvement. Shut up during this long in- 
 terval in the apartment assigned him, with some eunuchs 
 to wait on him, the equality of his age with that of the prin- 
 ces who had a right to precede him, allowed him but little 
 hope of reigning in his turn ; and he had, besides, well- 
 grounded reasons for a more serious uneasiness." (Baron 
 De Tott.) But when David was in danger, he kept himself 
 close in Ziklag, but not so as to prevent him from making 
 frequent excursions. In latter times, in the East, persons 
 of royal descent have been left, when the rest of a family 
 have been cut off, if no danger was apprehended from them, 
 on account of some mental or bodily disqualification. Blind- 
 ness saved the life of Mohammed Khodabendeh, a Persian 
 prince of the sixteenth century, when his brother Ismael 
 put all the rest of his brethren to death. —Harmer. 
 
 We find divine anger threatening to " cut off from Jero- 
 boam him who is shut up and left in Israel," 1 Kings xiv. 
 10. In chap. xxi. 21, the same threat is made against Ahab; 
 vide also 2 Kings ix. 8. This shutting up of the royal 
 family appears sufliciently strange to us ; and the rather as 
 we perceive that the sons of David the king enjoyed liberty 
 sufficient, and more than sufficient. The following extracts 
 will throw some light on this subject: " In one of them we 
 find the royal family dwelling together on a 'mountain, 
 which, though a place of confinement, yet had some ex- 
 tent. In the other, we find them in a palace, which only in 
 name differed from a prison. The crown being heredi- 
 tary in one family, but elective in the person, and polyg- 
 amy being permitted, must have multiplied these heirs 
 very much, and produced "onstant disputes; so that it was 
 found necessary to provide a remedy for the anarchy and ef- 
 
 fusion of royal blood, which was otherwise inevitably to 
 follow. The remedy was a humane and gentle one; they 
 were confined in a good climate upon a high mountain, and 
 maintained there at the public expense. They are there 
 taught to read and write, but nothing else; 750 cloths for 
 wrapping round them ; 3000 ounces of gold, which is 30,000 
 dollars, or crowns, are allowed by the state for their main- 
 tenance. These princes are hardly used, and, in troublous 
 times, often put to death upon the smallest misinformation. 
 While I was at Abyssinia, their revenue M^as so grossly 
 misapplied, that some of them were said to have died witK 
 hunger and of cold, by the avarice and hard-heartedness 
 of Michael neglecting to furnish them necessaries. Nor 
 had the king, as far as I could discern, that fellow-feeling 
 one would have expected from a prince rescued from that 
 very situation himself Perhaps this was owing to his fear 
 of Ras Michael. 
 
 " However that be, and however distressing the situation 
 of those princes, we cannot but be satisfied with it, when 
 we look to the neighbouring kingdom of Sennaar or Nubia. 
 There no mountain is trusted with the confinement of their 
 princes, but as soon as the father dies, the throats of all the 
 collaterals, and all their descendants that can be laidhold of, 
 are cut; and this is the case with all the black states in the 
 desert west of Sennaar, Dar Four, Sele, and Bagirma." 
 (Bruce.) We see now how Athaliah might destroy, not 
 merely an individual, but all the seed royal, (2 Kings 'xi. 1,) 
 because, if she found access to the palace to accomplish 
 the slaughter of any one, she might easily cut off the whole. 
 This also renders credible the slaughter of Ahab's sons, 
 seventy young persons at one time. They were kept shut 
 up, it seems, in Samaria, where their keepers became their 
 destro)rers. How far the same confinement might take place 
 in the instance of the sons of Gideon, (Judges ix. 2, 5,) we 
 cannot determine ; but it should appear, that at least they 
 were kept in one place of abode, whether that place were 
 the mansion or the tower of their father. — Taylor in 
 Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 2. Three years reigned he in Jerusalem. 
 And his mother's name was Maachah, the 
 daughter of Abishalom. 
 
 ^ It has been conjectured by Mr. Baruh, that the phrase, 
 *' and his mother's name was," &c. when expressed on a 
 king's accession to the throne, at the beginning of his his- 
 tory, does not always refer to his natural mother, but that 
 it is a title of honour and dignity, enjoyed by one of the 
 royal family, denoting her to be the first in rank. This idea 
 appears we'll founded from the following extracts: "The 
 Oloo Kani is not govei'ness of the Crimea. This title, the 
 literal translation of which is, great queen, simply denotes 
 a dignity in the harem, which the khan usually confers on 
 one of his sisters; or if he has none, on one of his davigh- 
 ters, or relations. To this dignity are attached the revenues 
 arising from several villages, and other rights." (Baron 
 De Tott.) " On this occasion the king crowned his moth- 
 er Malacotawit, conferring upon her the dignity and title 
 of iteghe, i. e. as king's mother, regent and governess of the 
 king when under age." (Bruce's Travels.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 18. And King Asa sent them to Ben-hadad, 
 the son of Tabrimon, the son of Hezion, king 
 of Syria, that dwelt at Damascus, saying, 
 19. There is a league between me and thee, 
 and between my father and thy father : behold, 
 I have sent unto thee a present of silver and 
 gold ; come and break thy league with Baasha, 
 king of Israel, that he may depart from me. 
 
 I will not push my remarks on the presents of the East 
 any further here, excepting the making this single obser- 
 vation more, that the sending presents to princes to induce 
 them to help the distressed, has been practised in these 
 countries in late times, as well as in the days of Asa, of 
 whom we read, that he " took all the silver and the gold 
 that were left in the treasures of the house of the Lord, and 
 the treasures of the king's house, and delivered them into 
 the hand of his servants: and king Asa sent them to Benha- 
 
Chap. 16. 17. 
 
 1 KINGS, 
 
 261' 
 
 dad the son of Tabrimon, the son of Hezion, king of Syria, 
 that dwelt at Damascus, saying, There is a league between 
 me and thee, and between my father and thy father: behold, 
 I have sent unto thee a present of silver and gold; come 
 and break thy league with Baasha, king of Israel, that he 
 may depart from me." To us it appears strange, that a 
 present should be thought capable of inducing one prince 
 to break with another, and engage himself in war ; but as 
 it was anciently thought sufficient, so we find in the Gesta 
 Dei per Francos, that an eastern nobleman, that had the 
 custody of a castle called Hasarth, quarrelling with his 
 master, the prince of Aleppo, and finding himself obliged 
 to seek for foreign aid, sent presents to Godfrey of Bouillon, 
 to induce him to assist him. What they were we are not 
 told: but gold and silver, the things Asa sent Benhadad, 
 were frequently sent in those times to the crusade princes, 
 and might probably be sent on this occasion to'Godfrey. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 34. In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build 
 Jericho : he laid the foundation thereof in Abi- 
 ram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof 
 in his youngest so7i Segub, according to the 
 word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua 
 the son of Nun. 
 
 See on Judges 11. 30, 31. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 1.. And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the 
 inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the 
 Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, 
 there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but 
 according to my word. 
 
 The latter rain falls in the middle or towards the end of 
 April, from which, if there be three months to the harvest, 
 j as the prophet asserts, it ftiust fall in the middle or towards 
 the end of July. But at present in Syria, barley-harvest 
 commences about the beginning of May, and that, as well 
 as the wheat-harvest, is finished by the twentieth of the 
 same month. In Judea the harvest is still more early. The 
 rain, therefore, which God threatens to withhold from his 
 people, must have commonly fallen in the first part of Feb- 
 1 ruary. That a quantity of snow descends at Jerusalem at 
 this time, which is of great importance to the succeeding 
 ,; harvest, by making the fountains to overflow a little afler- 
 |; ward, is confirmed by the authority of Dr. Shaw. It is no 
 ^! real objection to this view, that the prophet threatens to 
 ; withhold the rain; for the great difference of temperature 
 , Id Palestine, may be the cause that it snows in the mount- 
 ainous districts, while it rains in other parts of the sailie 
 country. By the moderate quantity of rain or snow which 
 falls in the month of February, the reservoirs of water on 
 which the cities of Palestine chiefly depend, are filled, and 
 the prospect of a fruitful and plentiful year is opened. Of 
 i so great importance to the subsistence and comfort of that 
 people are these rains, that upon their descent, they make 
 siiiiilar rejoicings with the Egyptians upon the cutting of 
 the Nile. The prophet evidently refers to both these cir- 
 cu instances; to the succeeding harvest, in these words: 
 " the piece or field upon which it rained not, withered ;" to 
 the state of the cisterns in these : " so two or three cities 
 wandered into one city to drink water, but they were not 
 satisfied." Hence, Mr, Harmer, who treats Jerome on this 
 occasion with undue severity, is wrong in supposing that 
 the inspired writer refers to the single circumstance of fill- 
 '. ing their cisterns with water. He refers to both, and this 
 i Jerome distinctly notices : " God suspended the rain," says 
 that father, " not only to punish them with want of bread, 
 but also wiih thirst ; for in those countries in which they then 
 resided, excepting a few fountains, they had only cistern- 
 ' water ; so that if the divine anger suspended the rains, there 
 was more danger of perishing by thirst than by famine." 
 Terome certainly committed a mistake when he referred 
 the words of Amos to the latter rain ; but he understood as 
 certainlv the true extent of the threatening. 
 
 The former and the latter rains were, in the days of Eli- 
 jah, suspended for t.iree years and six months. But when 
 
 the prophet said to 'Ahab, " As the Lord God of Israel liv- 
 eth, betbre whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain 
 these years,, but according to my word ;" he could not mean, 
 there shall be no rain at all for three years ; for long before 
 their termination, the whole population of Israel must have 
 miserably perished. It is not uncommon among the Ori- 
 entals, to express a great deficiency by an absolute nega- 
 tive. Thus Philo affirms, that in Egypt they have no win- 
 ter ; by which, according to his own explanation, he meant 
 no hail, no thunder, no violent storms of wind, which con- 
 stitute an eastern winter. Pliny in like manner affirms 
 there are no rains, no thunders, no earthquakes in that 
 country ; while Maillet, who quotes him, asserts that he had 
 seen it rain there several times, and that there were two 
 earthquakes in Egypt during his residence. His idea 
 therefore, is very plausible, that Pliny meant only to state 
 the rare occurrence of these phenomena ; that it seldom feels 
 the power of the earthquake, and when it does, sutTers but 
 little damage; that it very seldom rains or thtmders, al- 
 though on the seacoast the rains and thunders are often 
 very violent ; but it does not rain there as in other parts ot 
 the world. This account of the rain of Egypt is confirmed 
 by the testimony of two English travellers. When Pitts 
 was at Cairo, the rain descended in torrents, and the streets 
 having no kennels to carry off' the water, it reached above 
 the ankles, and in some places much higher. In Upper 
 Egypt it rained and hailed almost a whole morning, when 
 Dr. Pococke was there in the month of February ; and the 
 following night it also rained very hard. These authentic 
 statements unfold thej.rue meaning of the prophet's asser- 
 tion, " that Egypt has no rain ;" he must be understood in 
 the same qualified sense as Pliny and other writers. In 
 the same manner, the words of Elijah to Ahab must be in- 
 terpreted; they only mean, that the dew and the rain 
 should not fall in the usual and necessary quantities. Such 
 a suspension of rain and dew was sufficient to answer the 
 corrective purposes of God, while an absolute drought of 
 three years' continuance, must have converted the whole 
 country into an uninhabitable Avaste. But such a destruc- 
 tion is not intimated in the scriptures ; and, we may con- 
 clude from the inspired narrative, did not take place. ' That 
 guilty people were certainly reduced in the righteous 
 judgments of God to great straits ; but still they were able 
 to subsist until his fierce anger passed away, and mercy re- 
 turned to bless their afflicted habitations. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 4. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of 
 the brook ; and I have commanded the ravens 
 to feed thee there. 
 
 It is a singular circumstance, that the raven, an unclean 
 bird, and one too of very gross and impure dispositions, 
 was chosen by Jehovah to provide for his servant Elijah, 
 when he concealed himself, by the divine command, from 
 the fury of Ahab. So improbable is the story in the eat 
 of reason, that morose and voracious ravens should be- 
 come caterers for the prophet, that some interpreters have 
 maintained that the origmal word denotes merchants or 
 Arabians, or the inhabitants of the city Arbo : according 
 to this interpretation,,the promise would run, " I have com- 
 manded the Arabs, or Ihe Orebim, to nourish thee." But it 
 is easy to show that these opinions have no foundation in 
 scripttire and reason. The prophet Ezekiel indeed de- 
 scribes the merchants of Tyre by the phrase (l^'^yn oiy) 
 arbi mearobeha, " thy merchants who transact thy busi- 
 ness;" but the word ore^m, (o'^^'^y) by itself, never sig- 
 nifies merchants. Nor had God said in general, I have 
 commanded the merchants, but I have commanded the 
 merchants of this or that place, to nourish thee. The situa- 
 tion of the place in which the miracle happened, refutes the 
 other opinions ; for in the neighbourhood of Jordan, where 
 Elijah concealed himself, were no Arabs, no Orebim, and 
 no city which bore the name of Arbo. Besides, the Arabs 
 are not called in Hebrew (Di3->y) orebim, but (c^ij.) 
 arbim, and the inhabitants of Arbo, if any city of that 
 name existed, according to the genius of the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, must have been called (a-iisiy) arabojim, not orebim. 
 Add to this, Elijah was commanded to hide himself there; 
 but how could he hide himself, if the inhabitants of the 
 city or encampment knew of his retreat, as they must have 
 done, if his daily subsistence depended upon their bounty. 
 The place of his retreat must have been discovered in a 
 
262 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 17. 
 
 very short time to Ahab, who sought him with g eat in- 
 dusti y in every direction. The solemn declaration c f Oba- 
 diah to the prophet, when he went by the divine command 
 to show himself to the king, proves how impossible it was 
 Tor him to remain concealed in the inhabited part of the 
 country : " As the Lord thy God liveth, there is no nation 
 or kingdom whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee ; 
 and when they said. He is not there, he took an oath of the 
 kingdom and' nation, that they found thee not." Hence 
 these /uj^reim were not merchants, nor human beings of 
 any station or employment, but true ravens; and so the 
 term has been rendered by the whole Christian church, and 
 by many Jewish writers, particularly by their celebrated 
 historian, Josephus. 
 
 These voracious and impure animals received a com- 
 mandment from their Maker to provide for his prophet 
 by the brook Cherith, near its confluence with the Jordan. 
 The record is couched in these terms : " Get thee hence 
 and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook 
 Cherith, that is before Jordan: and it shall be that thou 
 shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ra- 
 vens to feed thee there." In the history of providence, 
 such commands are by no means uncommon : the locust, 
 the serpent, and the fishes of the sea, have all in their turn 
 received the charge to do the will of iheir Almighty Crea- 
 tor. Thus he promised to Solomon at the dedication of 
 the temple: " It I command the locusts to devour the land 
 — if my people, which are called by my name, shall hum- 
 ble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from 
 their wickedness ; then will I hear from heaven, and will 
 forgive their sin, and will heal their land." The marine 
 serpent that lurks in the deepest caverns of the ocean, in 
 like manner hears his voice, and submits to his authority ; 
 for Jehovah directed the prophet to address his guilty coun- 
 trymen in these memorable terms : " Though they be hid 
 from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I com- 
 mand the serpent, and he shall bite them." Nor was the 
 great fish which he prepared to swallow up the refractory 
 prophet, less prompt in its obedience : " And the Lord 
 spaiT! unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry 
 lajid '' His providence extends its powerful influence even 
 to Jianimate objects : " I, even my hands, have stretched 
 out the heavens, and all their hosts have I commanded." 
 And David, in the Spirit, complained of his ancestors, that 
 " they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation : 
 though he had commanded the clouds from above, and 
 opened the doors of heaven." Even the furious billows of 
 the sea dare not pass the line which his finger has traced, 
 without his permission : " I made the cloud the garment 
 thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and 
 brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, 
 and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther; and 
 here shall thy proud waves be stayed." The inanimate 
 and irrational parts of creation, properly speaking, cannot 
 receive and execute the commands of the Almighty ; they 
 are only passive instruments employed by him in his provi- 
 dential dispensations, to produce certain efl^ects. To com- 
 mand the ravens then, is to make use of them in providing 
 for the necessities of his servant; to impart for a time an 
 instinctive care to supply him with Ibod, to which they 
 were by nature entire strangers, and which they ceased to 
 feel when the end was accomplished. A command to sus- 
 tain the destitute seer, after the brook of which he drank 
 was dried up, was addressed in a very diflferent manner to 
 the widow of Zarephath. It was couchecj in words ad- 
 dressed to her understanding and heart, while the secret 
 power of Jehovah inclined her to yield a prompt and efli- 
 cacious obedience. On this occasion, a number of ravens 
 were employed, because the service of one was not sufli- 
 cient to supply the prophet with daily food. But the cir- 
 cumstance entirely accords with the native instincts of 
 that bird ; for the ravens go in quest of their prey in troops, 
 and share in common the spoils of the chase. iFollowing, 
 therefore, the instincts of their nature, which received for 
 a time a peculiar direction, by the miraculous interposition 
 of Jehovah,, a number of ravens associated together, in 
 order to supply the wants of Elijah, whom his country had 
 abandoned to the rage of an impious and cruel monarch : 
 " And they brought him bread and flesh in the morning, 
 and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the 
 brook." The Septuagint, in many copies, read the pas- 
 sage, " They brought bread in the morning, and flesh in 
 
 the evening;" but the common reading is entitled to the 
 preference. It gives a striking display of divine goodness, 
 that when the whole resources of Israel were exhausted by 
 a long and severe famine, the prophet of the Lord was 
 miraculously and abundantly supplied with nutritious food 
 twice every day. The ravens brought it in the evening 
 and in the morning, which were the stated hours of repast 
 among the Jews and other oriental nations. 
 
 The Hebrew writers eagerly inquire where the ravens 
 foimd the provisions to supply tlie wants of Elijah; and, 
 as may be supposed, very different are the opinions they 
 advance; but on this question, which is of little impor- 
 tance, no certainty can be obtained. The scriptures are 
 silent on the subject, and we have no other means of inform- 
 ation. It was enough for the prophet, that his winged 
 providers regularly supplied his necessities; and it is suf- 
 ficient to excite our admiration of the power and goodness 
 of God, and our confidence in his providential care, with- 
 out attempting to discover what the divine wisdom has 
 seen meet to conceal. On another occasion, an angel was 
 sent from heaven to supply the exhausted prophet with 
 bread and water in the desert; which, in the eye of rea- 
 son, may seem to be a more becoming messenger|of the 
 King of glory, than a raven. But " the ways of Gcd are 
 not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts ;" he did 
 not think it beneath his dignity at this lime, to employ the 
 ravens in the same office ; and he per)iaps intended lo teach 
 us, that all creatures are equally subject to his authority, 
 and fit for his purpose. When he gives the commandment, 
 a raven is as successful in his service, according to the 
 range of its faculties, as an angel; and we must not pre- 
 sume to refuse or slight his aid, how mean soever the agent 
 he condescends to employ. The Jewish legislator pla 'ed 
 the raven in the list of unclean birds, whicli imparted pol- 
 lution to every thing they touched ; but the same God who 
 gave the law, had a right to repeal or suspend it; and that 
 he did suspend it for atime in favourof his persecuted ser- 
 vant, cannot be reasonably denied. Nor was this a singu- 
 lar instance of divine clemency ; for the observance of 
 ceremonial institutions often yielded to urgent necessity. 
 The Jews were forbidden to touch a dead carcass ; but Sam- 
 sow was allowed, for a special purpose, to eat of the honey 
 which he found in the dead lion. The priests only we/e 
 permitted by the law to eat the shew-bread; yet David and 
 his men were justified by our Lord himself in using the 
 consecrated loaves, when no other could be procured. 
 
 Many are the reasons assigned by different writers, for 
 the employment of ravens on this occasion ; but they are j 
 so trifling, or so fanciful, that it is unnecessary to state j 
 them; the true reason perhaps was to convince the deject- 1 
 ed prophet, that although his nation had forsaken him, the 
 God whom he served continued to watch over him with 
 unceasing care ; and that he would employ the most un- 
 promising means, and counteract the most powerful in- 
 stincts, rather than suffer him to want the necessaries of 
 life. And when he saw those voracious birds, the cra- 
 vings of whose appetite are seldom entirely satisfied, part, 
 of their own accord, with their favourite provision, morn- 
 ing and evening, for many days, and bring it themselves 
 to the place of his retreat ; he could not mistake or disre- 
 gard the secret influence under which, they acted. The 
 brook Cherith, on whose border the miracle was wrought, 
 is supposed to be the same as the river Kana, mentioned 
 in the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Joshua, which 
 watered the confines of Ephraim and Benjamin. This 
 brook derived its name Kana, from the reeds, which, in 
 great abundance, clothed its banks; among which the 
 prophet found a secure retreat from the persecution of his 
 enemies. Its other name, Cherith, may be traced to the 
 verb Charah, which the Greek interpreters render to feed, 
 because on its margin the prophet was fed by the ravenr.. 
 Were this conjecture true, the name must have been given 
 by anticipation ; for which no satisfactory reason can be 
 assigned. It is more natural to suppose, that, as the verb 
 commonly signifies to dig, aix sometimes to rush on with 
 violence, thename Cherith alludes to the violent rapidity 
 of the stream at certain seasons of the year, or to the deep 
 pits which, like many other torrents in those regions, it 
 excavates in its furious course. The particular situation 
 of this brook is more distinctly marked by the sacred his- 
 torian, who says, it " is before Jordan." This phrase 
 seems to mean, that it flowed into the Jordan ; ana from 
 
Chap. 18. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 263 
 
 the second clause of the verse we may infer, that its course 
 lay on the west side of the river, because it is said by God 
 to Elijah, "Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and 
 hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan :" 
 for Elijah must have been on the west side of Jordan, when 
 he va.s commanded to go eastward to a stream that flowed 
 j-c the Jordan on that side. — Paxton. 
 
 Some suppose ravens to be a mistranslation, and that the 
 promise referied to a people who were to feed the prophet. 
 The following quotation from the Scanda Purana does not 
 negative the opinion, but it shows, in a remote period, that 
 birds were supposed on some special occasions to depart 
 from their usual habiis. In the relation of the events of great 
 antiquity among the heathen, much of fable must be ex- 
 pected, but there is often a glimmering ray of light in the 
 obscurity, pointing to circumstances which assist the mind 
 in its attainment of truth. In the town of Kanche (Con- 
 jeveram) it is said, " Of the birds, there is a sathaka bird 
 which lakes food to the gods, a swan which gives precious 
 stones, a parrot which repeats science, and a cock which 
 crows not in lime of trouble." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. And she said, As the Lord thy God 
 liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of 
 meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruise : 
 and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that 1 
 may go in and dress it for me and my son, that 
 we may eat it, and die. 
 
 So said the widow of Zarephath to the prophet Elijah, 
 How often ^o we see females, just before the time of boil- 
 ing their rice, strolling about in search of a few sticks to 
 make it ready. All their fires are made of wood, (or dried 
 cows' dung,) and in a country where there is so much jun- 
 gle, and so little rain, they seldom trouble themselves before 
 the moment they require it. But the widow said that she 
 was gathering two sticks; and it is not a little singular to 
 find that the Hindoos often use the same number when it 
 refers to many things. " Well, Venasi, what are you look- 
 ing for 1"—" I am looking for two sticks to prepare my 
 rice," " Child, go fetch me irendu-taddi, two sticks, to 
 make ready my curry." " Alas! I cannot find two sticks 
 to make the water hot." " My lord, I only ask for two 
 mouthfuls of rice." " Ah! sir, if you will allow me to re- 
 )eat two words in your ear, I shall be satisfied." " Good, 
 lave you any thing more to say V " No, sir," " Then I 
 have not two words for that," (meaning, he does not object.) 
 Any person who has been in the East, will recognise, in 
 these quotations, a figure of speech he has heard a thou- 
 sand times. — Roberts. 
 
 The corn which they reserve for daily use, they keep in 
 long earthen jars ; because, when kept in sacks or barrels, 
 it is liable to be eaten by worms. This is confirmed by 
 Norden, who tells us, that when he was travelling in Upper 
 Egypt, one of the natives opened a great jar, in order to 
 show him how they preserved their corn there. In some 
 regions of the East Indies, the paddy, or rice in the husk, 
 is also preserved in large earthen jars, that are kept in the 
 house; or in small cylindrical stores, which the potters 
 make of clay ; the mouth is covered with an inverted pot ; 
 and the paddy is drawn out of a hole at the bottom, as it is 
 wanted. It seems to have been in one of these earthen jars 
 that the woman of Zarephath kept her corn, of which she 
 had only enough left, when the prophet Elijah applied to 
 her for a morsel of bread, to make a handful of meal. In 
 our translation, the original term (^^) chad is rendered 
 barrel ; but a barrel, properly speaking, it could not be, 
 because a vessel of that sort is never used for holding corn 
 in those regions. Neither could it be a chest, although this 
 is often used in the East for preserving corn ; because the 
 Hebrew term is quite different. In the second book of 
 Kings it is stated, that " Jehoiada the priest took (p-^N aron) 
 a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside 
 the altar." The same word is employed by Moses, to de- 
 note a coffin; but most generally, to "signify the chest, or 
 iirk of the testimony, on which the cherubim stood, in the 
 holy of holies. This term, among the Hebrews, therefore, 
 properly signifieci a chest made of wood ; never a vessel for 
 holding water. But (la) chad they commonly used to sig- 
 •iify a jar or pitcher for holding water; which was made 
 a earth, neve^ 0*" wood. It is the same word in the origi- 
 
 nal, which the sacred historian employs, to denote the 
 vessels in which Gideon's army concealed their torches, 
 and which they broke wiih a clashing terrific noise, when 
 they blew with their trumpets. Both these circumstances 
 suppose ihey were vessels of earth, which are employed in 
 the East for the double purpose of preserving corn and 
 holding water. The {-c) chad was also the vessel with 
 which Rebecca went out to fetch water from the v/ell; 
 which, in our translation, is rendered pitcher. But the 
 Orientals never carried a barrel to the fountain, nor drew 
 M-ater with a wooden vessel. Hence, the barrel in which 
 the woman of Zarephath kept her corn, was in reality an 
 earthen jar. The four barrels of water, then, which Eli- 
 jah commanded his attendants to pour on the sacrifice, 
 should have been translated four jars or pitchers; for the 
 original word is the same in all these instances, — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 5, And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into 
 the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto 
 all brooks : peradventure we may find grass to 
 save the horses and mules alive, that we lose 
 not all the beasts. 6. So they divided the land 
 between them, to pass throughout it : Ahab 
 went one way by himself, and Obadiah went 
 another way by himself 
 
 See on Est. 8, 10. 
 
 Brooks were generally the most likely places to find grass 
 in a time of drought, though far from being places where 
 they might be certain of succeeding ; for in such seasons, 
 herbaceous animals generally stop near fountains of water, 
 and feed m the vicinity, till all the grass be consumed. 
 Thus travellers are often greatly disappointed, who natu- 
 rally expect to find grass where they find water ; but on 
 reaching the spot they find that the game has consumed 
 every blade oi grass. However, as the cattle could not 
 graze long where there was no water, it was the wisest 
 method Ahab could pursue. The circumstance shows 
 the simplicity of ancient manners, that a king and one of 
 his principal governors should go at the head of such ex- 
 peditions. It is the same in Africa at this present time ; 
 for no king there, nor any of his principal chiefs, would 
 think they were at all lessening their dignity by engaging 
 in an expedition either in search of water or grass. Indeed, 
 it would be viewed by the people as one of the most im- 
 portant affairs in which their rulers could be engaged, and, 
 did they succeed, few things would be likely to render them 
 more popular. — African Light. 
 
 It appears there had not been rain for three years and six 
 months, which must have had a fatal efl^ect on vegetation. 
 What would England (situated in a temperate climate) be 
 under such circumsianceg ? In droughts in the East, which 
 have lasted from six to ten months, how often have we seen 
 men, like Obadiah, going along in marshy places, or by the 
 sides of tanks, in search of grass for their cattle 1 See the 
 poor fellow with a basket, made of the leaves of the pal- 
 mirah, on his back, a little instrument (which works like 
 a Dutch hoe) in his hand ; he strolls from fountain to brook, 
 and no sooner does he see a green patch of verdure, than 
 he runs with eagerness to the spot ! Perhaps he meets an- 
 other in search of the same thing, when each declares he 
 had the first view. They set to work, snarling at each 
 other, and dealing out all kinds of abuse, till they have 
 cleared the place of every green blade. Wherever there 
 is a stream or an artificial watercofcrse, there the eye is 
 refreshed with delightful verdure; but look a few yards 
 from the place, and you see the withered herbage, appa- 
 rently gone beyond recovery, but which, in a few hours, 
 would start into fresh life, if visited by showers. The ef- 
 fect of rain is like enchantment on the scene, and the Eng- 
 lish stranger is often reminded of the green fields of his own 
 native land. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 9. And he said, What have I sinned, that 
 thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand 
 of Ahab, to slay me? 
 
 Obadiah asked this question of Elijah, when the prophet 
 wished him to go and tell Ahab, his bitter enemv, " Behold, 
 Elijah is here." Thus, a person requested to do any thing 
 
264 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 18. 
 
 which implies danger or difliculty, asks, Enna-polldppo- 
 sey-thaTie? " What evil or sin have I done 1" The ques- 
 tion is also asked, when a man is visited with afiiiction, 
 " What evil has he done T' — Rf berts. 
 
 Ver. 10. As the Lord thy God liveth, there is 
 no nation or kingdom whither my lord hath not 
 sent to seek thee : and when they said, He is 
 not there, he took an oath of the kingdom and 
 nation, that they found thee not. 
 
 People in England would be astonished and appalled at 
 the frequency and nature of the oaths of the heathen. A 
 man's assertion or affirmation, in common conversation, is 
 seldom believed. Thus, men may be heard in the streets, 
 in the fields, or bazaars, and children in the schools or 
 the play-grounds, say, " Swear you will do this ; now take 
 an oath you have not done it." Then they swear by the 
 temple, or its lamp, by their parents, or children, and ap- 
 peal to their deities for a confirmation of the assertion. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. Now therefore send, and gather to me 
 all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the prophets 
 of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets 
 of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jeze- 
 bel's table. 
 
 We are not, I apprehend, to suppose that these eight 
 htmdred and fifty prophets, or even the four hundred of 
 the groves, ate at the royal table, where Jezebel herself took 
 her refection ; for though 1 am sensible it is not unusual 
 in the East for servants to eat at the same table where their 
 masters have eaten, after their masters have done ; and 
 that several hundreds eat in the palaces of the eastern prin- 
 ces ; yet it could never be thought necessary by Jezebel to 
 have four hundred chaplains in waiting at once at court. 
 I should think the words mean, that these four hundred 
 prophets of the groves fed daily at a common table, in or 
 near the temple of that idol which they served, and which 
 was provided for at the expense of Jezebel, living there in 
 a kind of collegiate way, as the prophets of Jehovah appear 
 to have done. Their business was, I suppose, to sing the 
 praises of the idols they worshipped ; and to watch from 
 time to time in their temples, under the pretence of receiv- 
 ing oracular answers to the inquiries of those that came to 
 consult them ; and, it may be, to teach the worshippers in 
 ■what form of words to address the deity they served. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 27. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah 
 mocked them, and said. Cry aloud ; for he is a 
 god: either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or 
 he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, 
 and must be awaked. 
 
 In the hottest part of the day the Orientals retire to rest 
 on their bed, till the cool of the evening summons them 
 again to active life. " The heathens," says Mr. Blunt, 
 " assigned all the properties and habits of man to their 
 gods, and among the number, that of reposing at midday. 
 Hence was it unlawful to enter the temples at that hour, 
 lest their slumbers should be disturbed. The goatherd 
 ventured not to play upon his pipe at noon, for fear of 
 awakening Pan. Hence, too, the peculiar force of the de- 
 rision with which Elijah addressed the priests of Baal: 
 * And it came to p^s at noon, that Elijah mocked them, 
 
 and said. Cry aloud ; for he is a god peradventure he 
 
 sleepeth, and must be awaked.' Accordingly we read that 
 these priests did not despair of rousing their god, and indu- 
 cing him to declare himself, ' till the time of evening sacri- 
 fice.' At that hour the period allowed for repose had ter- 
 minated: and when he still continued deaf to their cries, 
 then, and not till then, their cause became altogether hope- 
 less." — Paxton. 
 
 The margin has, for " talking," " meditatelh," and for 
 "pursuing," ^^ hath a pursuit.^' This keen and ingenious 
 sarcasm relates, I doubt not, to their god, as having been 
 accustomed sometimes to sleep, to talk, to go on a journey, 
 or to join in the pursuit. That the Baal-peor of Assyria, 
 Bi>d the Siva-lingam of India, are the same, is certain. 
 
 And is it not interesting to know that those things which 
 are attributed to Baal are also attributed to Siva 1 " Either 
 he is talking." The margin has, for " talking," meditatelh. 
 Dr. A. Clarke says, " Perhaps the word should be inter- 
 preted as in the margin, he meditateth, he is in a profound 
 revery, he is making some godlike projects, he is consider- 
 ing how he may keep up his credit in the nation." Siva 
 was once absorbed in a profound meditation : to him the 
 time appeared only as a moment, but to the world as ages, j 
 Universal nature, for want of his attention, was about to 
 expire. Women had ceased to bear, and all things weie 
 out of course. The god-s and men became alarmed, and 
 their enemies began to oppress them. All were afraid to 
 disturb him in his meditations, till Cama, the god of love, I 
 agreed to stand before him: when Siva, being aroused j 
 from his revery, sent fire from his frontal eye, which de- i 
 stroyed the intruder. 
 
 " "Or he is pursuing." The Hebrew has this. " hath a pur- 
 suit :" on which Dr. A. Clarke says, " he may be taking 
 his pleasure in hunting." Siva is described as taking 
 great pleasure in the chase ; and in the month of Septem- 
 ber, his image and that of Parvati, his wife, are taken from ' 
 the temple, put into a kead-agam, or car, and carried on 
 men's shoulders to enjoy the pleasures of the chase! 
 
 " Or he is in a journey." Siva is represented as taking 
 longjourneys, and sometimes for very discreditable purposes, 
 
 " Peradventure he sleepeth." Siva often did this, espe- 
 cially when he took the form of a cooly ; for, after he had 
 performed his task, he fell asleep under the tree called the 
 Konda Maram. Thus the prophet mentioned four things, 
 in some of which their god was engaged, and consequent- 
 ly, could not attend to their requests. But it was manifestly 
 improper, if he were thus occupied, for them to disturb 
 him : yet Elijah said, " Cry aloud," let him hear you j he 
 is no doubt a god. 
 
 When a holy person before the temple, or in any sacred 
 place, is meditating, not one will presume to disturb him : 
 how, then, could they interrupt their deity % When en- 
 gaged in pleasure, whether of the chase or any other 
 amusement, no one dares to interfere with the great man ; 
 and yet Baal was to be called from his pleasures. It is 
 improper to interrupt those that are on a journey. They 
 have an object in view, and that must first be accomplish- 
 ed. No one will disturb a person when he is asleep— to 
 them it seems to be almost a sin to awake a man from his 
 slumbers. Where is your master 1 " Nittari," asleep ; 
 and then you may walk off till another day. Yet, improper 
 as it was to interfere with Baal in his engagements, the 
 sarcastic prophet said, " Cry aloud." " And they cried 
 
 aloud, and cut themselves with knives." Here, also, 
 
 the devotees may be seen cutting themselves with knives 
 till the blood stream from their bodies, or suspended with 
 hooks in their flesh from a pole, or with their tongue cut 
 out, or practising other cruelties on themselves, for the ex- 
 piation of their sins, or the glory of their gods.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 28. And they cried aloud, and cut them- 
 selves, after their manner, with knives and lan- 
 cets, till the blood gushed out upon them. 
 
 If we look into antiquity, we shall find that nothing was 
 more common in the religious rites of several nations, than 
 this barbarous custom. To this purpose we may observe, 
 that (as Plutarch de Superstitione tells us) the priests of Bel- 
 lona, when they sacrificed to that goddess, besmeared the 
 victim with their own blood. The Persian magi used to 
 appease tempests, and allay the winds, by making incisions 
 in their flesh. They who carried about the Syrian god- 
 dess, cut and slashed themselves with knives, till the blood 
 gushed out. This practice remains in many places at the 
 present time, and frequent instances of it may be met with 
 m modern voyages and travels. — Burder. 
 
 There has been no little supposition and conjecture, for 
 what reason the priests of Baal " cut themselves, after their 
 manner, with knives, and with lancets, till the blood gushed 
 out upon them." 1 Kins:s xviii. 28. This seems, by the 
 story, to have been after Elijah had mocked them, (or, at 
 least, while he was "mocking them,) and had worked up 
 their fervour and passions to the utmost height. Mr. 
 Harmer has touched lightly on this, but has not set it in so 
 clear a view as it seems to be capable of, nor has he given 
 very cogent instances. It may be taken as an instance ol 
 
Chap. 18. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 265 
 
 earnest entreaty, of conjuration, by the most powerful marks 
 of affection : q. d. " Dost thou not see, O Baal ! with what 
 passion we adore thee 1 — how we give thee most decisive 
 tokens of our affection 1 We shrink at no pain, we decline 
 no disfigurement, to demonstrate our love for thee ; and yet 
 thou answerest not ! By every token of our regard, answer 
 us ! By the freely flowing blood we shed for thee, answer 
 us !" &c. They certainly demonstrated their attachment to 
 Baal ; but Baal did not testify his reciprocal attachment to 
 them, in proof of his divinity, which was the article in 
 debate between them and Elijah. Observe, how readily 
 these still bleeding cuttings would identify the priests of 
 Baal at the subsequent slaughter; and how they tended to 
 justify that slaughter ; being contrary to the law that ought 
 to have governed the Hebrew nation, as we shall see pres- 
 ently. As the demonstration of love, by cuttings made in 
 the flesh, still maintains itself in the East, a few instances 
 may be at least amusing to European lovers, without fear 
 of its becoming fashioiiable among us. " But the most 
 ridiculous and senseless method of expressing their affec- 
 tion, is their singing certain amorous and whining songs, 
 composed on purpose for such mad occasions ; between 
 every line whereof they cut and slash their naked arms 
 with daggers : each endeavouring, in their emulative mad- 
 ness, to exceed the other by the depth and number of the 
 wounds he gives himself [A lively picture this, of the 
 singing, leaping, and self-slashing priests of Baal !] Some 
 Turks, I have observed, when old, and past the follies 
 which possessed their youth, show their arms, all gashed 
 and scarred from wrist to elbow ; and express a great con- 
 cern, but greater wonder, at their past simplicity." The 
 " oddness of the style invited me to render some of the 
 above named song^into English : 
 
 Could I, dear ray of heavenly light, 
 
 Who now behind a cloud dost shine, 
 Obtain the blessing of thy sight, 
 And taste thy influence all divine; 
 
 . 'Thus would I shed my warm heart's blood, 
 As now I gash my veiny arm : 
 Wouldst thou, but like the sun, think good 
 To draw it upward by some charm.' 
 
 Another runs thus: 
 
 ' O, lovely charmer, pity me ! 
 
 See how my blood does from me fly ! 
 Yet were I sure to conquer thee. 
 
 Witness it, Heaven ! I'd gladly die.' " 
 
 (Aaron Hill's Travels.) 
 
 This account is confirmed by De la Motraye, who gives 
 a print of such a subject. Lest the reader should think that 
 thi* love, and its tokens, are homages to the all-subduing 
 and distracting power of beauty only, we add Pitts' ac- 
 count of the same procedure : " It is common for men there 
 to fall in love with boys, as it is here in England to be in love 
 with women ; and I have seen many, when they have been 
 drunk, give themselves deep gashes on their arms, with a 
 knife, saying, ' It is for the love I bear to such a boy!' and 
 I assure you, I have seen several, who have had their arms 
 full of great cuts, as tokens of their love," &c. (Pitts' Ac- 
 count of Mohammedism.) This custom of cutting them- 
 selves is taken, in other places of scripture, as a mark 
 of affection : so Jer. xlviii. 37, " Every head shall be bald, 
 every beard clipped, and upon all hands, cuttings ; and 
 upon the loins, sackcloth :" as tokens of excessive grief for 
 the absence of those thus regarded. So, chap. xvi. ver. 6, 
 " Both the great and the small shall die in the land : they 
 sh^U not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor 
 cut themselves," in proof of their affection, and expression 
 of their loss ; " nor make themselves bald for them," by 
 tearing their hair, &c. as a token of grief So, chap. xli. 5, 
 " There came from Samaria fourscore men, having their 
 beards shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut 
 themselves, with offerings to the house of the Lord." So, 
 chap, xlvii. 5, " Baldness is come upon Gaza : Ashkelon is 
 cut off, with the residue of her valleys ; how long wilt thou 
 cut thyself 7'^ rather, perhaps, how deep, or to what length 
 wilt thou cut thyself 7 All these places include the idea of 
 painful absence of the party beloved. Cuttings for the 
 dead had the same radical idea of privation. The law 
 says. Lev. xix. 28, and Deut. xiv. 1, "Ye are the children 
 of the Lord your God ; ye shall not cut yourselves, nor 
 make any baldness between your eyes, for the dead;" i. e. 
 
 I restrain such excessive tokens of grief ; sorrow not as those 
 without hope, if for a dead friend ; but if for a dead idol, 
 
 as Calmet always takes it, then it prohibits the idolatrous 
 custom, of which it also manifests the antiquity. Mr. 
 Harmer has anticipated us, in referring " the wounds in 
 the hands" of the examined prophet, Zech. xiii. 6, to this 
 custom ; — the prophet denies that he gave himself these 
 wounds in token of his affection to an idol ; but admits that 
 he had received them in token of affection to a person. It 
 is usual to refer the expression of the apostle. Gal. vi. 17, 
 " I bear in my body the marks {stigmata) of the Lord 
 Jesus," to those imprinted on soldiers by their command- 
 ers; or to those imprinted on slaves by their masters ; but 
 would there be any degradation of the apostle, if we re- 
 ferred them to tokens of affection towards Jesus 1 q. d. " Let 
 no man take upon him to [molest, fatigue,] trouble me by 
 questioning my pretensions to the apostleship, or to the 
 character of a true lover of Jesus Christ, as some among 
 you Galatians have done ; for I think my losses, my suffer- 
 ings, my scars, received in the fulfilment of my duty to him, 
 are tokens sufficiently visible to every man whc considers 
 them of my regard to him, for whose sake I have borne, 
 and still bear them: I shall therefore write no more in vin- 
 dication of my character, in that respect, however it may 
 be impugned,' — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 33. And he put the wood in order, and cut 
 the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, 
 and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour 
 it on the burnt-sacrifice, and on the wood. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 17. 12. 
 
 Ver. 41. And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee 
 up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of 
 abundance of rain. 
 
 It is as common in the East to say there is the sound of 
 rain, as it is in England to say there is an appearance of 
 rain. Sometimes this refers to thunder, as the precursor; 
 and at other times to a blowing noise in the clouds, which 
 indicates rain is at hand. In the vicinity of a hill or tall 
 trees, the sound is the loudest; and it is worthy of notice, 
 that Elijah was in the neighbourhood of Mount Carmel.- 
 
 ROBERTS. 
 
 Ver. 
 
 It up 
 to the 
 
 And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel ; and 
 he cast himself down upon the earth, and put 
 his face between his knees. 
 
 David's posture, mentioned 1 Chron. xvii. 16, in all 
 probability was not unlike that of Elijah, which was one 
 of most earnest supplication. I remember being present 
 in the supreme court at Matura, when the prisoners were 
 brought up to receive their sentences ; and when a Cinga- 
 lese woman, on hearing her son's condemnation to suffer 
 death, rushed through the crowd, and presenting herself 
 before the bench, in the very posture ascribed to Elijah, en- 
 treated, in the most heart-rending raimner, that his life 
 might be spared. — Callaway. 
 
 Who, in the East, has not seen the natives thus sitting on 
 the earth, with their faces between their knees 1 Those 
 engaged in deep meditation, in a long train of reasoning, 
 when revolving the past, or anticipating the future, when in 
 great sorrow or fatigue, as coolies after a journey, may be 
 seen seated on the ground with the face between the knees, 
 " This morning, as I passed the garden of Chinnan, I saw 
 him on the ground with his face between his knees ; I won- 
 der what plans he was forming : it must have been some- 
 thing very important to cause him thus to meditate."" 
 " Kandan is sick or in trouble, for he has got his face be- 
 tween his knees." " The man threatens to trouble you." 
 — " He trouble me ! I shall never put my face between my 
 knees on his account." " Alas ! poor woman, she must 
 have a cruel husband, for she has always her face between 
 her knees." Elijah went " to the top of Carmel," to medi- 
 tate on the past and the future: there he was, after the display 
 of God's majesty in the fire from heaven, in the destruction 
 of the priests, and in the certain anticipation of rain, with 
 " his face between his kneesP — Roberts. 
 
 The devout posture of some people of the Levant greatly 
 resembles that of Elijah. Just before the descent of the 
 rain, " he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face 
 
266 
 
 1 KINGS 
 
 Chap. 19. 
 
 between his knees." Chardin relates that the dervises, es- 
 pecially those of the Indies, put themselves into this posture, 
 in order to meditate, and also to repose themselves. They 
 tie their knees against their belly with their girdle, and lay 
 their heads on the top of them, and this, according to them, 
 is the best posture for recollection. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 44. And it came to pass at the seventh time, 
 that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud 
 out of the sea, like a man's hand, And he said, 
 Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, 
 and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. 
 
 That is, says Bp. Patrick, Elijah saw such abundance of 
 rain coming as would cause floods, and render the way 
 impassable, if Ahab did not make haste home : and accord- 
 ingly, in a very short space of time that little cloud spread 
 itself; and with a great thickness covered the face of the 
 sky. ' 
 
 When Elijah's servant reported to his master, that he 
 saw a little cloud arising out of the sea like a man's hand, 
 he commanded him to go up and say unto Ahab, prepare 
 thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. 
 This circumstance was justly considered as the sure indi- 
 cation of an approaching shower, for it came to pass, in the 
 mean while, tha,t the heaven was black with clouds and wind, 
 and there vms a great rain. Mr. Bruce has an observation, 
 which greatly corroborates this relation. He says, " there 
 are three remarkable appearances attending the inundation 
 of the Nile: every morning, in Abyssinia, is clear, and the 
 sun shines ; about nine, a small cloud, not above four feet 
 broad, appears in the east, whirling violently round as if 
 upon an axis; but arrived near the zenith, it first abates 
 its motion, then loses its form, and extends itself greatly, 
 and seems to call up vapours from all opposite quarters. 
 These clouds having attained nearly the same height, rush 
 against each other with great violence, and put me always 
 in mind of Elijah's foretelling rain on mount Carmel. The 
 air, impelled before the heaviest mass, or swifi^t mover, 
 makes an impression of its own form in the collection of 
 clouds opposite, and the moment it has taken possession of 
 the space made to receive it, the most violent thunder pos- 
 sible instantly follows, with rain ; and after some hours the 
 sky again clears." — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 45. And it came to pass in the mean while, 
 that the heaven was black with clouds and 
 wind, and 'there was a great rain. And Ahab 
 rode out, and went to Jezreel. 
 
 See on 2 Kings 3. 16, 17. 
 
 Ver. 46. And the hand of the Lord was on Eli- 
 jah : and he girded up his loins, and ran before 
 Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel. 
 
 See the man wh« has to run a race, or take a journey; 
 he girds up his loins with a long robe or shawl. Elijah, 
 therefore, thus prepared himself to run before the chariot 
 of the king. Great persons have always men running 
 BEroRE them, with an ensign of office in their hands. 
 Elijah probably did this in consequence of the wonderful 
 events that had taken place : fire having come from heaven, 
 Baal's priests having been destroyed, the rain having de- 
 scended, and the proud kmg his enemy having been recon- 
 ciled, he ran before, as the priest of the Lord, to show from 
 whom the blessings had come. — Roberts. 
 ' Hanway tells us, that Nadir Shah, when he removed his 
 camp, was preceded by his running footmen, and these by 
 his chanters, who were nine hundred in number, and fre- 
 quently chanted moral sentences, and encomiums on the 
 Shah, occasionally proclaiming his victories also. 
 
 The like practice obtained among the inhabitants of 
 Mount Libanus, in the time of Pope Clement VIII. for 
 Dandini, the pope's nuncio to the Maronites, says, " We 
 were always accompanied with the better sort of people, 
 wno walked on foot before our mules, and out of the respect 
 they bore to the pope, and in honour to us, they would sing 
 certain songs, and spiritual airs, which they usually sung 
 as they marched before the patriarch, and other persons of 
 quality." It was not confined, according to this account, to 
 
 mean persons ; but persons of figure went before him in 
 procession Avith songs. 
 
 We are willing to suppose, that Elijah's running before 
 Ahab's chariot to the gates of Jezreel, was not unworthy his 
 prophetic character ; but as the idea of the mob's running 
 before a royal coach will present itself to some minds, when 
 they read this passage, so commentators are not very happy 
 in explaining this piece of the history of Elijah. Bishop 
 Patrick supposes he ran before Ahab like one of his foot- 
 men, in which he showed his readiness to do the king all 
 imaginable honour, and that he was far from being his 
 enemy : would it however have become Beckei, the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, to have run before the horse of Henry 
 II. to show he was not his enemy *? or even Friar Peito 
 before Henry VIII. to do him all imaginable honour"? 
 But if Ahab had chanters running before him, like Nadir 
 Shah, it does not appear at all contrary to the rules of deco- 
 rum, for one brought up to celebrate the divine praises, to 
 put himself at the head of them, to direct them, in singing 
 praise to him that was then giving them rain, and to inter- 
 mingle due encemiums on the prince that had permitted ihe 
 extermination of the priests of Baal ; or if he had none 
 such, yet if it had been practised in those times, and was 
 thought graceful and becoming a prince, nothing forbade 
 Elijah's doing it alone : and perhaps what is said concerning 
 the singers of the contemporary king of Judah, 2 Chron, 
 XX. 21, 23, may enable us to guess, whether or not it was a 
 practice totally unknown at that time. The expression of 
 the divine historian, that the hand of the Lord was upon him, 
 perfectly agrees to this thought, for it appears, from 2 Kings 
 iii. 15, that it signifies enabling a prophet to prophesy: and 
 consequently we are rather to understand these wo'rds, of 
 God's stirring him up to the composing, and singing, of some 
 proper hymns on this occasion, than the mere enabling him 
 to run with greater swiftness than his age would otherwise 
 have permitted him to do, in which sense alone, I think, 
 commenta.tors have understood that clause. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 4. But he himself went a day's journey into 
 the wilderness, and came and sat down under 
 a juniper-tree: and he requested for himself 
 that he might die; and said, It is enough; 
 now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am 
 not better than my fathers. 
 
 The juniper is mentioned more than once in our transla- 
 tion of the scriptures; but the opinions of learned men are 
 much divided, concerning the shrub or tree to which the 
 inspired writers allude. The gadha or gadhat, a species 
 of tree very like the tamarisk, which grows in the sandy 
 deserts, resemblej, in more than one instance, the juniper 
 in our translation. It flourishes in the burning wild; its 
 wood is extremely proper to burn into charcoal, which has 
 the property of long retaining fire; on which account, it is 
 carried into the cities and sold for fuel. The camel is very 
 fond of its leaves, although they frequently affect him with 
 pains in his bowels ; and under its shade, the wolf so com- 
 monly lurks, that it has become a proverb among the 
 Arabs, '* The wolf is near the gadha." But from these cir- 
 cumstances it cannot be determined with certainty, whether 
 the gadha of the roving Arab be the same with the juniper. 
 The Hebrew word for the plant to which we give the name 
 of juniper, is rothem, from the verb ratham, to bind or tie, 
 on account of the toughness or tenacity of its twigs. In 
 Parkhurst, it is the genista, or Spanish broom, which emi- 
 nently possesses the character of tenacity. So great 15 
 their flexibility, that the Italians still weave them into bas- 
 kets. The genista, it must be granted, affords but a poor 
 shelter to the weary traveller from the intense heat of an 
 oriental sky; while the prophet Elijah, exhausted with a 
 long and precipitate flight, found a refreshing shade under 
 the spreading branches of the rothem. But the remark ap- 
 plies with equal, if not greater force, to the juniper, which 
 in this country never rises above the stature of an humble 
 shrub. The words of the inspired writer are by no means 
 inconsistent with this circumstance : " But Elijah went a 
 day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down 
 under a juniper-tree.— And as he lay and slept under the 
 jimiper-tree, behold, then an angel touched him and said 
 unto him. Arise and eat." The passage seems to import 
 
Chap i9. 
 
 1 KINGS, 
 
 267 
 
 that the prophet, unable to proceed, embraced the shelter of 
 a genista, which, according to Bellonius, grows in the des- 
 ert, for want of a better; as the prophet Jonah was glad to 
 screen himself from the oppressive heat of the sun imder 
 the frail covert of a gourd. But in reality, the genista, in 
 the oriental regions, interposed with considerable eflect be- 
 tween the parched wanderer and the scorching sunbeam. 
 The roots of the rothem, or juniper, as we translate the 
 term, were used in the days of Job for food, by the poorest 
 of the people : " For want and famine they were solitary : 
 fleeing into the wilderness, in former time desolate and 
 wasie. Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper- 
 roots, (ve shoresh rethamim,) for their meat." But this 
 circumstance determines nothing ; for neither the roots of 
 juniper, nor of genista, nor of any other tree in those des- 
 erts, can afford a salutary nourishment to the human body : 
 nor can any modern instance be found, of the roots of juni- 
 per or genista being used for food. Job only says that it 
 was done in times of extreme wantj when the famished 
 poor were frequently compelled to prolong their miserable 
 existence by the use of the most improper ^bstances. It is 
 certain that the shoots, the leaves, the bark, and the roots 
 of other shrubs and trees, have been eaten among many na- 
 tions, in times of scarcity and famine. Thus, for instance, 
 Herodotus informs us, that when the routed army of Xerx- 
 es v/as fleeing from Greece, such of them as could not 
 meet with better provision, were compelled by hunger to 
 eat the bark and leaves, which they stripped off*^all kinds of 
 trees. The hungry Laplander devours the tops and bark 
 of the pine ; and even in Sweden, the poor in many places 
 are obliged to grind the bark of birch-trees to mix with 
 their corn, to make bread in unfavourable seasons. The 
 royal Psalmist mentions the coals of the rethamim as af- 
 fording the fiercest fire of any combustible matter that he 
 found in the desert, and therefore the fittest punishment for 
 a deceitful tongue; "What shall be given unto thee, or 
 v/hat shall be done to thee, thou false tongue 1 Sharp ar- 
 rows of the mighty, with coals of juniper :" the wrath of 
 God, like a keen and barbed arrow from the bow of the 
 mighty, shall pierce the strongest armour, and strike deep 
 into the hardest heart, and like the fierce and protracted 
 flame of the juniper, shall torment the liar with unutterable 
 anguish. Now, if it be the property of juniper long to re- 
 tain the fire, or to emit a vehement flame, it is not less the 
 characteristic of genista: for according to Geierus, as quo- 
 ted by Parkhurst, the Spanish genista, or rethama, lignis 
 aliis vehementms scintillet, ardeat, ac strideat, sparkles, 
 burns, and crackles more vehemently than any other wood. 
 The people of Israel in their journeys through the wilder- 
 ness, came to a place called Rithma, probably from the 
 great quantity of rethamim growing there. In'traversing 
 the same inhospitable wilds, Thevenot and his fellow-trav- 
 ellers were compelled to gather broom for warming them- 
 selves and boiling their coffee. This greatly corroborates 
 the opinion of Parkhurst, that the rothem of the Old Tes- 
 tament is not properly the juniper, but Spanish broom ; but 
 although his opinion is extremely probable, our imperfect 
 acquaintance with the natural history of those remote coun- 
 tries, renders it impossible to reach a satisfactory conclu- 
 
 i sion. 
 
 The shade of rothem, (whether it be translated the juni- 
 
 1 per, or the genista,) is supposed by some writers of great 
 
 ■ eminence to be noxious. This circumstance isonentioned 
 
 ; only for the purpose of vindicating the prophet Elijah, from 
 the imputation of wishing to put an end to his existence, 
 when he fled for his life into the wilderness. He went on 
 that occasion a day's journey into the wilderness of Beer- 
 sheba ; and sitting dowm under a juniper-tree, fatigued 
 with his journey, and oppressed with grief, he fell asleep, 
 
 : after having requested God that he might die. 
 
 Grotius imagines, that the prophet rested under the shade 
 of the juniper, because he was now become careless of his 
 
 !, health ; and he cites a passage from Virgil, as a proof that 
 
 i ,'iie shadow of this tree is noxious. 
 
 1 " Solet esse gravis cantantibus umbra ; 
 
 ' Juniperi gravis umbra ; nocent et frugibus umbrae " Eel. x. I. 7.5. 
 But his conclusion will not follow ; because Virgil evident- 
 
 ; ly means, that the shades of evening are hurtful ; not the 
 ^hade of the juniper, except by night, when the shade of 
 
 , every tree is thought by natural historians to be injurious 
 
 ' to health. If the shade of the juniper were noxious, it 
 would be noxious to every one, and not merely to singers: 
 
 And how could it be hurtful to the fruits ? They do not 
 grow under it, and are there ore not exposed to its deleteri- 
 ous influence. It is easy to see how the shades of evening 
 are hurtful to the fruits ; but how the shade of the juniper 
 ^ould be noxious to them, is quite inconceivable. The 
 poet, indeed, expressly mentions the danger of reposing 
 under the shade of that tree ; but the true reason seems to 
 be this: the juniper being an evergreen, and its leaves 
 growing very close, extends in the evening a more damp 
 and chilly shade, than perhaps any other tree in that part 
 of Italy. So little afraid were the Orientals of its noxious 
 qualities, that some of their most magnificent cities were 
 imbosomed in a grove of juniper-trees. This is an incon- 
 testible proof that they did not find their effluvia deadly, nor 
 even injurious to health. 
 
 Another commentator of considerable celebrity, supposes, 
 on the contrary, that Elijah reposed himself under the ju- 
 niper-tree, for the more eflfectual preservation of his health ; 
 the shade of it being, according to him, a protection from 
 serpents ; and alleges, that it was the custom of the people 
 in that part of the world, to guard themselves by such pre- 
 cautions against the bite of these venomous reptiles. But 
 this opinion seems to be no less visionary than the allega- 
 tion of Grotius. Travellers often recline beneath the shade 
 of a spreading tree ; but in all their narratives, the reason 
 assigned by Peter Martyr is never once mentioned. Ac- 
 cording to Dioscorides, the glowing embers of juniper 
 wood, not the'shade of the living tree, possessed the power 
 of driving away those unwelcome visitants. The most ob- 
 vious reason is in this, as in most instances, the best : Elijah 
 flying into the wilderness from the rage of Jezebel, became 
 oppressed with the burning heat of the day, and the length 
 of the road, and cast himself down under the shade of the 
 first shrub that he found. Or, if it was in his power to 
 make a choice, he preferred the juniper for the thickness 
 of its covert, without any apprehension of its possessing 
 either a deleterious quality, or the power of defending him 
 from the bite of the serpent; he chose it merely for its 
 shade, where, under the watchful and efficacious protection 
 of Jehovah, his own God, and the God of his people, he 
 sunk into quiet repose. To suppose that he repaired to the 
 shade of the juniper with the view of ruining his health, 
 and shortening his days, is quite inconsistent with every 
 trait in the character, and every action in the life of that 
 holy man. So far from harbouring the horrible idea of 
 suicide, although certainly tired of life, he prayed to his 
 God to remove him from the disgusting scene of idolatry 
 and oppression, into his immediate presence; a sure proof 
 he neither expected nor desired that favour from the nox- 
 ious exhalations of the juniper. To this may be added, that 
 the question is not yet decided, whether it was a juniper, or 
 what particular species of tree it really was, under whose 
 friendly covert the weary and afflicted prophet sought re- 
 pose. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. Yet I have left me seven thousand in 
 Israel, all the knees which have not bowed 
 unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not 
 kissed him. 
 
 Things which have been sent to the temples to be pre- 
 sented to idols, are, when returned, kissed by the people. 
 Should a priest give areca-nuts, beetel leaves, or cakes, 
 which have been presented to the gods, the person receiving 
 them kisses them. When a devotee has touched the feet 
 of a priest, he kisses his hands. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. So he departed thence, and found Elisha 
 the son of Shaphat, who was ploughing with 
 twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with 
 the twelfth: and Elijah passed by him, and cast 
 his mantle upon him. 
 
 The natives use the ox for the plough and all other agri- 
 cultural purposes. It is no disgrace for a great man to fol- 
 low the plough ; and, generally speaking, the master is the 
 first to commence the operations of the season. The first 
 day is always settled by a soothsayer, or a book of fate. 
 " Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle upon him." 
 By this act Elisha was invested with the sacred office ; but 
 it is probable there would be other ceremonies, and a more 
 
268 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 20. 
 
 pointed address, and extended conversation than that re- 
 corded in the verse. When a Bramin is invested with 
 the sacred office, both in the first, second, and third initia- 
 tions, he is always covered with a yellow mantle, and in 
 stich a way as to prevent him from seeing any object. The 
 sacred string also is put over his right shoulder, (and worn 
 like a soldier's belt,) which indicates his office. Elisha 
 said, " Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, 
 and then I will follow thee." And Elijah " said unto him. 
 Go back again ; for what have I done to thee 1" The an- 
 swer of Elijah is certainly not very easy to be understood. 
 The Hebrew has, instead of '• go back again," " go, return ;" 
 this makes good sense, especially when the conjunction is 
 added, " go, and return." The Tamul version has it also 
 in that way. The same translation has, instead of " for 
 what have I done to thee 7" " what I have done to thee 
 THINK ;" literally, " I to thee what have done, think," I 
 have called thee according to the Divine command; now 
 thou askest to take leave of thy father and mother: take 
 care thou art not led aside from thy calling ; " go, and re- 
 turn," THINK on what I have done to thee. — Roberts. 
 
 Among the Persians, the principal khalifas or teachers 
 consider the sacred mantle as the symbol of their spiritual 
 power. Though the khirka or mantle was in general only 
 transferred to a beloved pupil, at the death of his master, 
 .some superior saints were deemed possessed of a power, 
 even while living, to invest others with the sacred and 
 mysterious garment. *' When the khalifa or teacher of the 
 soofFees dies, he bequeaths his patched garment, which is 
 all his worldly wealth, to the disciple whom he esteems the 
 most worthy to become his successor, and the moment the 
 latter puts on the holy mantle, he is vested with the power 
 of his predecessor." (Malcolm.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 26. Therefore their inhabitants were of small 
 powder, they were dismayed and confounded ; 
 they were as the grass of the field, and as the 
 green herb, as the grass on the house-tops and 
 as corn blasted before it be grown up. 
 
 " The sam wind, as described to me by an old inhabitant 
 of the Dashtistan, commits great ravages in this district, 
 particularly at Dashtiarjan, hurtful to vegetation. Ii blows 
 at night, from about midnight to sunrise, comes in a hot 
 blast, and is afterward succeeded by a cold one. About 
 six years ago there was a sam during the summer months, 
 which so totally burnt up all the corn, then near its maturity, 
 that no animal would eat a blade of it, or touch any of its 
 grain. The image of corn blasted before it be grown up, 
 was most probably taken from the circumstance now men- 
 tioned." (Morier.) Sir R. K. Porter however says, that 
 the samiel, though hostile to human life, is so far from 
 being prejudicial to the vegetable creation, that a contin- 
 uance of it tends to ripen the fruits. These accounts may 
 be reconciled by observing, that the former relates to the 
 corn, and the latter to fruit, and that it may refer to its 
 gradual approach rather than its sudden attack. If any 
 unfortunate traveller, too far from shelter, meets the blast, 
 he falls immediately, and in a few minutes his flesh be- 
 comes almost black, while both it and his bones at once 
 arrive at so extreme a state <of corruption, that the smallest 
 movement of the body would separate the one from the 
 other. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 7. And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs : 
 and they took and laid it on the bile, and he 
 recovered. 
 
 Whatever the disorder was with which Hezekiah was 
 afflicted, the remedy prescribed was a softening plaster, 
 designed to ripen the bile, and to prepare it for receiving 
 such assistance as to discharge it with ease and certainty. 
 We have an instance of a similar proceeding, and with the 
 same design, in regard to the plague, related by Pitts of 
 himself. " The plague reigned among us; — soon after we 
 got ashore at Algiers, I was seized with it, but, through the 
 divine goodness, escaped death. It rose under my arm, 
 and the bile which usually accompanies the plague, rose 
 on my leg. After it was much swollen, I was desirous to 
 have it lanced, but my patroon told me it was not soft 
 
 enough. There was a neighbour, a Spaniard slav^e, who 
 advised me to roast an onion, and apply a piece of it dipped 
 in oil to the swelling, to mollify it ; which accordingly I 
 did. The next day it became soft, and then my patroon 
 had it lanced, and, through the blessing of my good God, I 
 recovered." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. And Ben-hadad sent unto him, and said, 
 The gods do so unto me, and more also, if the 
 dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for 
 all the people that follow me. 
 
 It is an interestkig fact, that this figure of speech, in 
 reference to the dust not being sufficient to fill the hands of 
 the numerous hosts of Benhadad, is in common use at this 
 day. In the story called Asuvdmea-thaiya-kathi, it was 
 said by the inhabitants of certain countries, who were ex- 
 pecting an invasion from a king who had already con- 
 quered the " eight quarters," — " We had belter at once give 
 up our possessions : why attempt to resist such hosts] the 
 dust of the country will not be sufficient to furnish a hand- 
 ful for each of the soldiers. Ovvoru-pud-de-man-kdnu'ino ? 
 i. e, for every one -will there be a handful of dusf?" The 
 people of the village of Sandarippi ask, " Why do the in- 
 habitants of Batticotta hate and despise us 1 If we all go 
 against them, will their country afford a handful of earth 
 for each of us 1" The people of the two large villages of 
 Batticotta and Sandarippi often meet to play at rude games, 
 when the latter are generally the conquerors, which has 
 led to great animosity. Hence the proverb, " Take up the 
 stalk of a cocoa-nut leaf, and the Batticottians run ;" and 
 hence the saying respecting the handfuls of earth. Ben^ 
 hadad said, " The gods do so unto me, and more also." 
 This form of imprecation or prayer is very common. " If 
 I do not ruin that fellow, then the gods do so to me." " If I 
 kill not that wretch, then may the gods kill me." If, there- , 
 fore, the dust of Samaria be sufficient to fill the hands of 
 each of my soldiers, then may my dominions be subject to 
 the same fate.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. And it came to pass, when Ben-hadad 
 heard this message, as he was drinking, he and 
 the kings in the pavilions, that he said unto his 
 servants, Set yourselves in array : and they set 
 themselves in array against the city. 
 
 The word n'^BC' shaphcer, which we trdiXisldiie pavilion, may, 
 it is very likely, excite the notion of something superior to 
 a common tent ; so our translators use that term to express 
 the superb tent of a king of Babylon, Jer. xliii. 10, '* He 
 (Nebuchadnezzar) shall spread his royal pavilion over 
 them." A mere English reader will be surprised, perhaps, 
 when he is told that the word nirjD svccoth, translated pa- 
 vilions, 1 Kings XX. 12, 16, signifies nothing more than 
 booths ; and more still, if he is told that the sacred historian 
 might, possibly, precisely design to be so understood, when 
 describing the places in which kings were drinking. That 
 the word signifies those slight temporary defences from the 
 heat which are formed by the setting up the boughs of 
 trees, is visible by what is said Jonah iv. 5, and Neh. viii. 
 16 ; and we know that the common people of the East fre- 
 quently sit under them ; but it may be thought incredible 
 that princes should make use of such, as the term, precisely 
 taken, seems to imply. " And it came to pass, when Ben- 
 hadad heard this message, as he was drinking, he and the 
 kings in the pavilions," 1 Kings xx. 12. " But Benhadad 
 was drinking himself drunk in the pavilions, he and the 
 kings, the thirty and two kings that helped him," v. 16. 
 In the margin oiir translators have put the word tents ; but 
 that there is nothing incredible in the account, if we should 
 understand the prophetic historian as meaning booths, prop- 
 erly speaking, will appear, if we consider the great sim- 
 plicity of ancient times, and the great delijjht the people of 
 the East take in verdure, and in eating and drinking under 
 the shade of trees; especially after reading the following 
 paragraph of Dr. Chandler's Travels in the Lesser Asia: 
 "While we were employed on the theatre of Miletus, the 
 Aga of Suki, son-in-law, "by marriage, to Elez Oglu, crossed 
 the plain towards us, attended by a considerable train of 
 domestics and officers, their vests and their turbans ol va- 
 rious and lively colours, mounted on long-tailed horses, 
 
Chap 20. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 2G9 
 
 with showy trappings and furniture. He returned after 
 hawking to Miletus ; and we went to visit him, with a 
 present of cotfee and sugar ; but we were told that two fa- 
 vourite birds had flown away, and that he was vexed and 
 tired. A couch was prepared for him beneath a shed, made 
 against a cottage, and covered with green boughs, to keep 
 otF the sun. He entered as we were standing by, and fell 
 down on it to sleep, without taking any notice of us." A 
 very mean place, a European would think, to be prepared 
 for "the reception of an aga that made so respectable a 
 figure, and in a town which, though ruinated, still had 
 several cottages, inhabited by Turkish families. It does 
 not appear incredible then, that Benhadad, and the thirty- 
 two petty kings that attended him, might actually be drink- 
 ing wine beneath such green sheds, as a Turkish aga, of 
 considerable distinction, chose to sleep under, rather than 
 in an adjoining cottage, or rather than under a tent, which 
 he otherwise might have carried with him, to repose under 
 when he chose to rest himself Oriental manners are very 
 different from those in the West. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 27. And the children of Israel were num- 
 bered, and were all present, and went against 
 them : and the children of Israel pitched before 
 them like two Ifttle flocks of kids ; but the Sy- 
 rians filled the country. 
 
 A flock of goats is fewer in number than a flock of sheep, 
 because the former are given to wander and separate, while 
 the latter, more gregarious in their temper, collect into one 
 place. This is the reason, says Bochart, that the sacred 
 writer compares the small army of the Israelites to a flock 
 of goats rather than to a flock of sheep. While seven is 
 always used by the Hebrews to denote a sufficient or com- 
 plete number, two is constantly employed to signify a few, 
 or ver}'' few. Thus the widow woman said to the prophet, 
 " As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but a 
 handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruise : 
 and behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and 
 dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it and die." 
 The phrase is used in the same sense by the prophet con- 
 cerning the reduced state of his people: "Yet gleaning 
 grapes shall be left in it; as the shaking of an olive-tree, 
 two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough." 
 Another prophet uses it in relation to the return of a 
 small number of the captives to their own land : " I will 
 take you ; one of a city and two of a family, and I will bring 
 you to Zion." And Hosea encourages his people to repent- 
 ance with the promise, " After two days will he revive us : 
 in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his 
 sight," or, within a very short time he will deliver them 
 from their enemies. The sacred historian accordingly 
 compares the armies of Israel opposed to the Syrians to 
 *' two little flocks of kids ;" two, because they were few in 
 number ; little flocks, as goats from their roaming dispo- 
 sition always are; flocks of kids, feeble and timid, without 
 resources and without hope. A moi-e complete and glowing 
 I picture of national weakness, even the pen of inspiration 
 never drew. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 28. And there came a man of God, and spake 
 unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith 
 the Lord, Because the Syrians have said, The 
 Lord is God of the hills, but he is not God of 
 the valleys ; therefore will I deliver all this great 
 multitude into thy hand, and ye shall know 
 that I am the Lord. 
 
 That there were many gods who had each their particu- 
 lar charge and jurisdiction, that some presided over whole; 
 countries, while others had but particular places under their 
 tuition and government, and were some of them gods of the 
 woods, others of the rivers, and others of the moimtains, 
 was plainly the doctrme. of all heathen nations. Pan was 
 reckoned the god of the mountains, for which reason he 
 was styled 'Ooct/^arrjg, mountain traverser ; and in like man- 
 ner, the Syrians might have a conceit that the god of Israel 
 was a god of the mountains, because Canaan, they saw, was 
 a mountainous land; the Israelites delighted to sacrifice 
 on high places ; their law, they might have heard, was given 
 
 on the top of a mountain ; their temple stood upon a famous 
 eminence, as did Samaria, where they had so lately received 
 a signal defeat : for their further notion was, that the gods 
 of the mountains had a power to inject a panic fear into 
 any army, whenever they pleased. Nay, that they did not 
 only assist with their influence, but actually engaged them- 
 selves in battle in behalf of their favourites, is a sentiment 
 as old as Homer. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 30. But the rest fled to Aphek, into the 
 city ; and there a wall fell upon twenty and 
 seven thousand of the men that were left. And 
 Ben-hadad fled, and came into the city, into an 
 inner chamber. 
 
 See on ch. 22. 25. 
 
 In regard to this passage, we are not to suppose that this 
 wall, or castle, or fort, (as it may be rendered,) fell upon 
 every individual one, much less that it had killed every 
 man it fell on : it is sufficient to justify the expression, that 
 it fell upon the main body of these seven and twenty thou- 
 sand, and that it killed some and maimed others, (for the 
 scripture does not say that it killed all,) as is usual in such 
 cases. Let us suppose then, that these Syrians, after their 
 defeat on the plains of Aphek, betook themselves to this 
 fenced city, and despairing of any quarter, mounted the 
 walls, or retired into some castle, with a resolution to 
 defend themselves to the last; and that the Israelitish army 
 coming upon them, plied the walls or the castle on everj 
 side so warmly with their batteries, that down they came ai 
 once, and killing some, wounding others, and making the 
 rest disperse for fear, did all the execution that the text 
 intends. 
 
 Thus we may account for this event in a natural way ; 
 but it is more reasonable to think that God, upon this occa- 
 sion, wrought a miracle ; and either by some sudden earth- 
 quake or violent storm of wind, overturned these walls, or 
 this fortress, upon the Syrians. And indeed, if any time 
 was proper for his almighty arm to interpose, it was at 
 such a time as this, when these blasphemous people had 
 denied his sovereign power and authority in the government 
 of the world, and thereby in some measure obliged him, in 
 vindication of his oM-n honour, to give them a full demon- 
 stration of it, and to show that he was the God of the plains 
 as well as of the mountains ; that he could as effectually 
 destroy them in strongholds as in the open field, and make 
 the very walls, wherein they trusted for defence, the in- 
 struments of their ruin. 
 
 This Aphek, or Aphaca, (as it is called by profane au- 
 thors,) was situated in Libanus, upon the river Adonis, be- 
 tween Heliopolis and Biblos, and in all probability is the 
 same that Paul Lucas, in his voyage to the Levant, speaks 
 of, as swallowed up in a lake of "Mount Libanus, about nine 
 miles in circumference, wherein there are several houses, 
 all entire, to be seen under water. The soil about this place 
 (as the ancients tell us) was very bituminous, which seems 
 to confirm their opinion, who think that subterraneous 
 fires consumed the solid suWance of the earth, whereon the 
 city stoodjSO that it was subdued and sunk at once, and a lake 
 was soon formed in its place. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 31. And his servants said unto him. Behold 
 now, we have heard that the kings of the house 
 of Israel are merciful kings: let us, I pray 
 thee, put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes upon 
 our heads, and go out to the king of Israel ; 
 peradventure he will save thy life. 
 
 The vanquished foe, in testimony of his submission, hung 
 his sword from his neck, when he came into the presence 
 of his conqueror. When Bagdat was taken by the Turks, 
 in the year 1638, the governor's lieutenant and principal 
 officer was sent to the grand vizier, with a scarf about his 
 neck, and his sword wreathed in it, which is accounted by 
 them a mark of deep humiliation and perfect submission, 
 to beg for mercy in his own and his master's name. His 
 request being granted, the governor came and was intro- 
 duced to the grand seignior, and obtained, not only a con- 
 firmation of the promise of life that had been made him, 
 but also various presents of considerable value. These 
 
270 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 21. 
 
 circumstances forcibly recall to our minds the message of 
 Benhadad, after his signal defeat, to the king of Israel ; the 
 
 Eassage runs in these terms: " And his servants said unto 
 im, Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the 
 house of Israel are merciful kings ; let us, I pray thee, 
 put sackcloth on our loms, and ropes upon our heads, and 
 go out to the king of Israel ; peradventure he will save thy 
 life. So they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes 
 en their heads, and came to the king of Israel, and said. 
 Thy servant Benhadad sai&h, I pray thee, let me live. And 
 he said. Is he yet alive 1 he is my brother." The servants 
 of Benhadad succeeded in obtaining a verbal assurance 
 that his life should be spared ; but a surer pledge of pro- 
 tection was to deliver a banner into the hand of the sup- 
 pliant. In the year 1099, when Jerusalem was taken by the 
 crusaders, about three hundred Saracens got upon the roof 
 of a very lofty building, and earnestly begged for quarter, 
 but could not be induced by any prornise of safety to come 
 down, till they had received the banner of Tancred, one of 
 the chiefs of the crusaders, as a pledge of life. This they 
 reckoned a more powerful protection than the most solemn 
 promise ; Although in this instance their confidence was en- 
 tirely misplaced ; for the faithless zealots who pretended to 
 fight for the cross, put every man of them to the sword. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 34. And Ben-hadad said unto him, The 
 cities which my father took from thy father I 
 will restore ; and thou shalt make streets for 
 thee in Damascus, as my father made in Sama- 
 ria. Then said Ahab, I will send thee away 
 with this covenant. So he made a covenant 
 with him, and sent him away. 
 
 When the king of Syria had obtained security for his 
 life, and assurance of being restored in peace to his throne, 
 he promised in return for such great and unerpected fa- 
 vours, to restore the cities which his fat4ier had taken from 
 Israel, and to permit Ahab to make streets in Damascus 
 for himself, as his father had made in Samaria. This ex- 
 traordinary privilege of making streets in Damascus, has 
 exceedingly puzzled commentators. Some of them sup- 
 pose the word hout&oth signifies market-places, where com- 
 modities were sold, the duties on which should belong to 
 Ahab ; others imagine he meant courts of justice, where 
 the king of Israel should have the prerogative of sitting in 
 judgment, and exercising a jurisdiction over the Syrians ; 
 others think they were a sort of piazzas, of which he should 
 receive the rents; one class of interpreters understand by 
 the word, fortifications or citadels; another class attempt 
 to prove, that palaces are meant, which Ahab should be 
 permitted to build as a proof of his superiority. The priv- 
 ileges which we know, from the faithful page of history, 
 were actually granted to the Venetians for their aid, by the 
 states of the kingdom of Jerusalem, during the captivity ot 
 Baldwin II., may perhaps explain, in a more satisfactory 
 manner, these words of Benhadad. The instrument by 
 which these privileges were secured, is preserved in the 
 history of William, bishop of Tyre, the historian of the 
 crusades, from which it appears, they were accustomed to 
 assign churches, and to give streets in their towns and 
 cities, with very ample prerogatives in these streets, to the 
 foreign nations who lent them the most effectual assistance. 
 The Venetians had a street in Acre, with full jurisdiction 
 in it ; and in what this consisted, we learn from the deed 
 of settlement just mentioned ; they had aright to have in 
 their streets an oven, a mill, a bath, weights, and measures 
 for wine, oil, and honey; they had also a right to judge 
 causes among themselves, together with as great a juris- 
 diction over all those who dwelt in their street, of what 
 nation soever they might be, as the kings of Jerusalem had 
 over others. The same historian informs us, that the Gen- 
 oese also had a street in that city, wiHi full jurisdiction in 
 it, and a church, as a reward for their services, together 
 with a third part of the dues of the port. In the treaty of 
 peace granted by Bajazet, emperor of the Turks, to Eman- 
 uel, the Greek emperor, it was siipulated that tho latter 
 should grant free liberty to the Turks to dwell together in 
 one street of Constantinople, with the free exercise of their 
 own religion and laws, under a judge of their own nation. 
 This humiliating condition the Greek emperor was obliged 
 
 to accept; and a great number of Turks, with their fami- 
 lies, were sent out of Bithynia to dwell in Constantinople, 
 where a mosq-ue was built for their accommodation. It is 
 not improbable, that the same kind of privileges that were 
 granted to the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Turks, had 
 been granted to the father of Benhadad, by the king of 
 Israel, and were now offered to Ahab in Damascus, in the 
 distressed state of his aifairs. The Syrian monarch prom- 
 ised to give his conqueror a number of streets in his capital 
 city, for the use of his subjects, with peculiar rights and 
 privileges, which enabled him to exercise the same juris- 
 diction there as in his own dominions. — Paxton. 
 
 Mr. Harmer has remarked, that " the proposal of Benha- 
 dad, as to the making and possession of streets in Damascus, 
 was better relished by Ahab, than understood by commen- 
 tators ;" some of whom have guessed that this expression 
 meant the erection of markets, or of courts of judicature, 
 or of piazzas, or of citadels and fortifications, &c. Mr. 
 Harmer then proceeds to narrate the privileges granted to 
 the Venetians, in recompense for their aid, by the states 
 of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and he observes, that it was 
 customary to assign churches, and to give streets, in their 
 towns, to foreign nations, &c. His instances, howev^er, 
 are rather instances of rewards for services performed, 
 than proofs of such terms as conditions of peace : proba- 
 bly, therefore, it will not be disagreeable to the reader to 
 see a passage still more applicable to the history of Benha- 
 dad, than any of those are which Mr. Harmer has pro- 
 duced; it occurs in Knolles's " History of the Turks," p. 
 206. " Baiazet having worthily relieued his besieged citie; 
 returned againe to the siege of Constantinople, laying more 
 hardly vnto it than before, building forts and bulwarks 
 against it on the one side towards the land ; and passing ouer 
 the strait of Bosphorus, built a strong castle vpon that strait 
 ouer against Constantinople, to impeach so much as was 
 possible, all passage thereunto by sea. This streight siege 
 (as most write) continued also two yeres, which I suppose 
 by the circumstance of the historic, to haue been part of 
 the aforesaid eight yeres. Emanuel, the besieged Emperor, 
 wearied with these long wars, sent an embassador to Baiazet, 
 to intreat with him a peace ; which Baiazet was the more 
 willing to hearken vnto, for that he heard newes, that 
 Tamerlane, the great Tartarian Prince, intended shortly 
 to war re upon him. Yet could this peace not be obtained, 
 but upon condition that the Emperor should grant free liber- 
 tie for the Turks to dwell together in one street of Constan- 
 tinople, with free exercise of their own religion and lawes, 
 vnder a judge of their own nation; and further, to pay vnto 
 the Turkish king a yeerely tribute often thousand duckats. 
 Which dishonourable conditions the distressed Emperor was 
 glad to accept of. So was this long siege broken vp, and 
 presently a great sort of Turks with their families were sent 
 out of Bithynia, to dwell in Constuntinople, and a church 
 there built for them: which not long after was by the Eip- 
 peror pulled downe to the ground, and the Turks againe 
 driuen out of the citie, at such time as Baiazet was by the 
 mighty Tamerlane ouerthrowne and taken prisoner." The 
 circumstances of these two stories are so much alike, that 
 it merely now remains to notice the propriety with which 
 our translators have chosen the word streets, rather than 
 any other proposed by commentators. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 2. And Ahab spake unto Nahoth, saying, 
 Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for 
 a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my 
 house : and I will sfive thee for it a better vine- 
 yard than it ; or, if it seem good to thee, I will 
 give thee the worth of it in money. 
 
 Our first parents had for their residence a beautiful gar- 
 den, which may have had some influence upon their imme- 
 diate descendants, in giving them a predilection for such 
 situations. People in England will scarcely be able to ap- 
 preciate the value which the Orientals place on a garden. 
 The food of manv of them consists of vegetables, roots, and 
 fruits ; their medicines, also, being indigenous, are most of 
 them produced in their gardens. Hence they ha /e their 
 fine fruit trees, and the constant shade; and here they have 
 their wells and places for bathing. See the proprietor, m 
 his undress walking around his little douiain ; his fence 
 
Chap. 21. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 271 
 
 or wall is so high no one can overlook him: he strolls 
 about to smoke his shrjot, to pick up the fruit, and cull the 
 flowers ; he cares not for the world ; his soul is satisfied 
 with the scenes around him. Ahab wished to have Na- 
 both's garden; but how could he part with "the inherit- 
 ance" of his " fathers 1" There was scarcely a tree which 
 had not some pleasing associations connected with it : one 
 was planted by the hand of a beloved ancestor, another in 
 memory of some great event; the water he drank, and the 
 fruit he ate, were from the same sources as those which 
 refreshed his fathers. How then could he, in disobedience 
 to God's command, and in violation of all those tender 
 feelings, give up his garden to Ahab 1 To part with such 
 a place is, to the people of the East, like parting with life 
 iiseli'. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 4. And he laid him down upon his bed, and 
 tufned away his face, ^nd would eat no bread. 
 
 Thus acted the puissant monarch, because he cowld not 
 get Naboth's garden. See the creature in the shape of a 
 man pouting his lip, and throwing himself on his bed, and 
 refusing to eat food, because he could not gain his wishes. 
 The domestics brought refreshment, but their lord would 
 not take it; and, therefore, they went to queen Jezebel, to 
 communicate the sorrowful intelligence ; and she imme- 
 diately went to his majesty and inquired, "Why is thy 
 spirit so sad, that thou eatest not bread V and he told his 
 mournful story. How often do we see full-grown men 
 acting in a similar way, when disappointed in their wishes: 
 go near them, and they avert their faces ; offer them food, 
 they will not eat; and, generally speaking, their friends are 
 so weak as, at any expense, to gratify their wishes. — Rob- 
 
 Ver. 7. And Jezebel's vinfe said unto him, Dost 
 thou now govern the kingdom of Israel ? arise, 
 and eat bread, and let thy heart be merry : I 
 will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jez- 
 reelite. 
 
 I do not find any statute that prohibited an Israelite from 
 exchanging his inheritance ; nor was there, indeed, in such 
 exchange, unless when it transferred a person to a diiferent 
 tribe, any thing contrary to the intention of the law, which 
 was to prevent his latest posterity from ever being altoge- 
 ther denuded of their land. Perhaps, therefore, it was a 
 piece of mere crossness in Naboth to refuse, in such un- 
 courtly terms, not only to sell, but even to exchange his 
 vineyard with King 'Ahab, 1 Kings xxi. 7. At the same 
 time, it is impossible to vindicate the despotic measure, to 
 which the barbarous wife of this too obsequious monarch 
 had recourse in order to obtain it ; for certainly Naboth 
 was not obliged to exchange his vineyard, unless he chose. 
 
 — MiCHAELIS. 
 
 Ver. 8. So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and 
 sealed thein with his seal, and sent the letters 
 unto the elders and to the nobles that were in 
 his city dwelling with Naboth. 
 
 At this day, in the East, not a female in ten thousand is 
 acquainted with the art of writing ; and I think it probable 
 that Ahab's affectionate queen did not write the letters with 
 her own hand, but that she caused it to be done by others. 
 It is not unlikely that the state of female education, in 
 modern times, is precisely the same as that of antiquity; 
 for I do not recollect any female in the scriptures, except- 
 ing Jezebel, who is mentioned as being concerned in the 
 writing of letters. The talented Hindoo female, Aviyar, 
 has left wonderful memorials of her cultivated mind; and 
 I doubt not, when female education shall become general 
 in the East, from them will be furnished many an Aviyar, 
 vto bless and adorn the future age. — Roberts. 
 
 The very ancient custom of sealing despatches with a 
 seal or signet, set in a ring, is still retained in the East. 
 Pococke says, "in Egypt they make the impression of their 
 name with their seal, generally of cornelian, which they 
 wear on their finger, and Avhich is blacked when they have 
 occasion to seal with it." Hanway remarks, that " the Per- 
 
 sian ink serves not only for writing, but for subscribing 
 with their seal ; indeed, "many of the Persians in high of- 
 fice could not write. In their rings they wear agates, 
 which serve for a seal, on which is frequently engraved their 
 name, and some verse from the Koran." Shaw also has a 
 remark exactly to the same purpose. — Bcrder. 
 
 Ver. 10. And set two men, sons of Belial, before 
 him, to bear witness against him, saying, Thou 
 didst blaspheme God and the king. 
 
 Princes never want instruments to execute their pleasure ; 
 and yet it is strange, that among all these judges and great 
 men, there should be none that abhorred such a villany. 
 It must be considered, however, that for a long while they 
 had cast off all fear and sense of God, and prostituted their, 
 consciences to please their king : nor dare they disobey* 
 Jezebel's commands, who had the full power and govern- 
 ment of the king, (as they well knew,") and could easily have 
 taken away their lives, had they refused to condemn Na- 
 both, — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ask any judge, any gentleman in the civil service of 
 India, whether men may not be had in any village to swear 
 any thing for the fraction of a shilling 1 Jezebel would 
 not find it difficult to procure agents to swear away the life 
 of Naboth the Jezreelite. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the 
 line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house 
 of Ahab ; and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man 
 wipeth a dish, wiping it, arid turning it upside 
 down. 
 
 The Vulgate renders this clause, Delebo Jerusalem, sicut 
 deleri solent tabulce : I will blot out Jerusalem as tablets are 
 wont to be blotted out. It is a metaphor taken from the an- 
 cient method of writing. They traced their letters with a 
 stile on boards, thinly spread over with wax : for this pur- 
 pose one end of the stile was sharp, the other end blunt and 
 smooth ; with this they could rub out what they had written, 
 and so smooth the place, and spread back the wax, as to 
 render it capable of receiving any other words. Thus the 
 Lord had written down Jerusalem, never intending that 
 its name or memorial should be blotted out ; but now the 
 stile is turned, and the name Jerusalem is no longer to be 
 
 found, — BURDER, 
 
 Ver. 15. And it came to pass, when Jezebel heard 
 that Naboth was stoned, and was dead, that Jez- 
 ebel said to Ahab, Arise, take possession of the 
 vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he re- 
 fused to give thee for money: for Naboth is not 
 alive, but dead. 
 
 As Naboth, according to verse 10, was executed as a 
 blasphemer and a traitor, his property did not go to his re- 
 lations, but to the king. Even now, in the Turkish empire, 
 and in Persia, the property of great men who are executed, 
 falls to the public treasury, or the governors of the province 
 seize upon it. The chans now enrich themselves with the 
 confiscated property of criminals, and other fines, which 
 formerly fell to the royal treasury, says Gmelin, in his 
 Travels through Persia and Northern Persia. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. Thus saith the* Lord, In the place where 
 dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick 
 thy blood, even thine. 
 
 There is a great dispute among the learned, as to the ac- 
 complishment of this prophecy. At the first it was no doubt 
 intended to be literally fulfilled, but upon Ahab's repent- 
 ance, (as we find below,) the punishment was transferred 
 from him to his son Jehoram, in whom it was actually ac- 
 coinplished ; for his dead body was cast into the portion of 
 the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, for the dogs to devour, 
 2 Kings ix. 25. Since Ahab's blood therefore was licked 
 by dogs, not at Jezreel, but at Samaria, it seems necessary 
 that we should understand the Hebrew word, which our 
 translation renders, in the place where, not as denoting the 
 
172 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 22. 
 
 place, but the manner in which the thing was done ; and 
 so the sense of the passage will be, that as dogs licked, or 
 in like manner, as dogs licked Naboth's blood, even so 
 shall they lick thine, observe what I say, even thine. — 
 Sj'ackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 23. And of Jezebel also spake the Lord, 
 saying, Tlie dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall 
 of Jezreel. 
 
 This, to an English ear, sounds very surprising ; that 
 during the time of a single meal, so many dogs should be 
 on the spot, ready to devour, and should so speedily de- 
 spatch this business, in the very midst of a royal city, close 
 under the royal gateway, and where a considerable train 
 ^ of people had so lately passed, and, no doubt, many were 
 'continually passing: this, to an English reader, appears 
 extremely unaccountable ; but we find it well accounted 
 for by Mr. Bruce, whose information the reader will 
 receive with due allowance for the different manners and 
 ideas of countries ; after which, this rapid devouring of 
 Jezebel will not appear so extraordinary as it has hitherto 
 done. " The bodies of those killed by the sword loere hewn 
 to pieces, and scattered about the streets, being denied burial. 
 I was miserable, and almost driven to despair, at seeing my 
 hunting-dogs twice let loose by the carelessness of my 
 servants, bringing into the courtyard the heads and arms of 
 slaughtered men, and which I could no way prevent, but by 
 the destruction of the dogs themselves : the quantity of 
 carrion, and the stench of it, brought down the hyenas in 
 hundreds from the neighbouring mountains ; and as few 
 people in Gondar go out after it is dark, they enjoyed the 
 streets to themselves, and seemed ready to dispute the pos- 
 session of the city with the inhabitants. Often, when I went 
 home late from the palace, and it was this time the king 
 chose chiefly for conversation, though I had but to pass the 
 corner of the market-place before the palace, had lanterns 
 with me, and was surrounded with armed men, I heard 
 them grufiting by twos and threes, so near me as to be 
 afraid they would take some opportunity of seizing me by 
 the leg. A pistol would have frightened them, and made 
 them speedily run, and I constantly carried two loaded at 
 my girdle ; but the discharging a pistol in the night would 
 have alarmed every one that heard it in the town, and it 
 was not now the time to add any thing to people's fears. I 
 at last scarcely ever went out, and nothing occupied my 
 thoughts but how to escape from this blopdy country, by 
 way of Sennaar, and how I could best exert my power and 
 influence over Yasine, at Ras el Feel, to pave my way, by 
 assisting me to pass the desert, into Atbara. The king, 
 missing me. at the palace, and hearing I had not been at 
 Ras Michael's, began to inquire who had been with me? 
 Ayto Confu soon found Yasine, who informed him of the 
 whole matter. Upon this I was sent for to the palace, 
 where I found the king, without anybody but menial ser- 
 vants. He immediately remarked, that I looked very ill, 
 which, indeed, I found to be the case, as I had scarcely ate 
 or slept since I saw him last, or even for some days before. 
 He asked me, in a condoling tone, what ailed me ? That 
 besides looking sick, I seemed as if something had ruffled 
 me, and put me out of humour. I told him, that what he 
 observed was true : that coming across the market-place, I 
 had seen Za Mariam, the Ras's doorkeeper, with three men 
 bound, one of whom he fell a-hacking to pieces in my 
 presence, and upon seeing me running across the place, 
 stopping my nose, he called me to stay till he should come 
 and despatch the other two, for he wanted to speak with 
 me, as if he had been engaged about ordinary business ; 
 that the soldiers, in consideration of his haste, immediately 
 fell upon the other two, whose cries were still remaining in 
 my ears ; that the hyenas, at night, would scarcely let me 
 pass in the streets, when I returned from the palace; and the 
 dogs fled into my house to eat pieces of human carcasses at their 
 leisure." (Travels, vol', iv., page 81, &c.) 
 
 Without supposing that Jezreel was pestered with hye- 
 nas, like Gondar, though that is not incredible, we may 
 now easily admit of a sufficiency of do^s, accustomed to 
 carnage, which had pulled the body of Jezebel to pieces, 
 nnd had devoured it before the palace gate, or had with- 
 drawn with parts of it to their hiding-places. But perhaps 
 the mention of the head, hands, and feet, being left on the 
 spot, indicates that it had not been removed by the dogs, but 
 
 was eaten where it fell, (as those parts adjoined the mem- 
 bers most likely to be removed,) so that the prophecy of 
 Elijah was literally fulfilled: "In the portion of Jezreel, 
 shall dogs eat Jezebel." This account illustrates also the 
 readiness of the dogs to lick the blood of Ahab, 1 Kings 
 xxii. 38, in perfect conformity to which is the expression 
 of the prophet Jeremiah, xv. 3, " I will appoint over them 
 
 the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of 
 
 the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, [the hyenas of Mr. 
 Bruce, perhaps,] to devour and destroy.'^ Mr. Bruce's ac- 
 count also explains the mode of execution adopted by the 
 prophet Samuel, with regard to Agag, king of the Amalek- 
 ites, whom Samuel thus addresses : — " In like manner 
 [literally, in like procedure as — i. e. in the same identical 
 mode of execution] as thy sword has made women barren, 
 so shall thy mother be rendered barren [childless] among 
 women." I Sam. xv. 33. If these words do not imply that 
 Agag had ripped up pregifant women, they at least imply 
 that he had hewed many prisoners to death ! for we find that 
 " Samuel caused Agag to be hewed in pieces before the face 
 of the Lord [probably not before the residence of Saul, but 
 before the tabernacle, &c.] in Gilgal," directing that very 
 same mode of punishment (hitherto, we suppose, unadopted 
 in Israel) to be used towards him, which he had formerly 
 used towards others. The character of the prophet Samuel 
 has been vilified for cruelty on account of this history, with 
 how little reason let the reader now judge ; and compare a 
 similar retributive act of justice on Adonibezek, Judges i. 7. 
 —Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 27. And it came to pass, when Ahab heard 
 those words, that he rent his clothes, and put 
 sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in 
 sackcloth, and went softly. 
 
 See the man who goes into the presence of a superior ; 
 he takes off his sandals, and walks softly — he has a timid 
 air, and you cannot hear his fooi tread on the ground. 
 When a dutiful son goes to his father, or a devotee into 
 the presence of a sacred personage, he walks in the same 
 way. Has a proud, boasting man, been humbled, the people 
 say, " Ah ! aha ! he can now walk mitha-vdka," i. e. softly. 
 "What! the proud Mutto walk softly; whoever expected 
 thaf?" — Roberts. 
 
 Going softly seems to have been one of the many expres- 
 sions of mourning commonly used among the eastern 
 nations. That it was in use among the Jews appears from 
 the case of Ahab; and by mistake it has been confounded 
 with walking barefoot. It seems to have been a very slow, 
 solemn manner of walking, well adapted to the state of 
 mourners labouring under great sorrow and dejection of 
 mind. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 11. And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah 
 made him horns of iron ; and he said. Thus 
 saith the Lord, With these shalt thou push the 
 Syrians, until thou have consumed them. 
 
 The Indian soldier wears a horn of steel on the front of 
 his helmet, directly over the forehead. In Abyssinia the 
 headdress of the provincial governors, according to Mr. 
 Bruce, consists of a large broad fillet bound upon their 
 forehead, and tied behind their head. In the middle of this 
 rises a horn, or conical piece of silver, gilt, about four 
 inches long, much in the shape of our common candle ex- 
 tinguishers. This is called kir^i, a slight corruption of 
 the Hebrew word keren, a horn, and is only worn in re- 
 views, or parades after victory. The crooked manner in 
 which they hold the neck when this ornament is on their 
 forehead, for fear it should fall forward, seems to agree 
 with what the Psalmist calls speaking with a stiff neck : 
 " Lift not your horn on high ; speak not wiih a stiff neck ;"', 
 for it perfectly shows the meaning of speaking in this atti- 
 tude, when the horn is held exact like the horn of a uni- 
 corn. An allusion is made to this custom in another pas- 
 sage : " But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a 
 unicorn." To raise the horn was to clothe one with au- 
 thority, or to do him honour ; to loM'er it, cut it off, or take 
 it away, to deprive one of power, or to treat him with dis- 
 respect. Such were the "horns of iron" which Zedekiah 
 
Chap. 22. 
 
 1 KINGS. 
 
 273 
 
 made for himself, when he presumed, in the name of Jeho- 
 vah, to flatter his prince with the promise of victory over 
 his enemies: "Thus saith the Lord, with these" military 
 insignia " shalt thou push the Syrians until thou hast con- 
 sumed them." They were military ornaments, the symbols 
 of strength, and courage, and power. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 6. And the king said unto him, How many 
 times shall I adjure thee that thou tell me 
 nothing but that which is true in the name of 
 the Lord ? 
 
 In England, this solemn appeal is never made but in 
 cases of extremity ; but in the East, the most trifling cir- 
 cumstance will induce a person to say, Unni-dni-uddukerain, 
 " By thy oath;" or, " I impose it upon thee." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. And Micaiah said, Behold, thou shalt 
 see in that day, when thou shalt go into an inner 
 chamber to hide thyself. 
 
 " In one of the halls of the seraglio at Constantinople," 
 says De la Motraye, " the eunuch made us pass by several 
 little chambers, with doors shut, like the cells of monks or nuns, 
 as far as I could judge by one that another eunuch opened, 
 which was the only one I saw; and by the outside of 
 others. Asan Firally Bashaw, being summoned by his 
 friends, came out of a little house near the towers, where 
 he Ijad been long hidden in his harem, which, had it been 
 suspected by the mufti, he had not denied his fetfa to the 
 emperor, for seizing his person, even there. The harems 
 are sanctuaries, as sacred and inviolable for persons pur- 
 sued by justice for any crime, debt, &c. as the Roman 
 Catholic churches in Italy, Spain, Portugal, &c. Though 
 the grand seignior's power over his creatures is such, that 
 he may send some of his eunuchs even there to apprehend 
 those who resist his will. The harems of the Greeks are 
 almost as sacred as those of the Turks; so that the officers 
 of justice dare not enter without being sure that a man is 
 there, contrary to the law : and if they should go in and 
 not find what they look for, the women may punish, and 
 even kill them, without being molested for any infringe- 
 ment of the law : on the contrary, the relations would have 
 a right to make reprisals, and demand satisfaction for such 
 violence." 
 
 Those who have not seen the cells of monks, or nuns, in 
 foreign countries, may conceive of a long gallery, or other 
 spacious apartment, as a large hall, <Sic. into which the 
 doors of the cells open : these cells consist of one room to 
 each person, but frequently of two rooms, one of which is 
 used for sleeping in ; the other for less retired purposes, 
 conversation, &c. Agreeably to this, it appears, that in the 
 East also, we must first pass through a long hall, or gallery, 
 before we can enter the peculiar abode of any particular 
 woman of the harem. We may first apply this mode of 
 dwelling to a circumstance threatened by the prophet 
 Micaiah, to his opponent Zedekiah, 1 Kings xxii. 25, 
 " Thou shalt go into an inner chamber to hide thyself." 
 Our translators have put in the margm, " from chamber to 
 chamber." The Hebrew is, (mn 2 mn cheder be cheder,) 
 " chamber within chamber," which exactly agrees with the 
 description extracted ; but it is new to consider this threat 
 as predicting that Zedekiah should fly for shelter to a 
 harem, [as we find Assan Firally Bashaw had done ;] that 
 his fear should render him, as it were, effeminate, and that 
 he should seek refuge where it was not usual for a man to 
 seek it ; where the " officers of justice," nor even those of 
 conquerors, usually penetrated. There is an additional 
 disgrace, a sting in these words, if this be the intention of 
 the speaker, stronger than what has hitherto been noticed 
 
 in them. Is not something similar related of Benhadad, 
 1 Kings XX. 30, " He fled," and was so overcome with fear, 
 that he hid himself in " a chamber within chamber 1" As 
 it is very characteristic of braggarts and drunkards (see 
 verses 16, 18, &c.) to be mentally overwhelmed when in 
 adversity, may we not suppose "that Benhadad was now 
 concealed in the harem 1 Following circumstances do not 
 militate against this supposition. That the word cheder 
 means a woman's chamber, appears from Judges xv. 1, 
 where Samson says, " I will go to my wife into her cham- 
 ber" (mnnn.) — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 43. And he walked in all the ways of Asa 
 his father ; he turned not aside from it, doing 
 that which was right in the eyes of the Lord : 
 nevertheless the high places were not taken 
 away ; for the people offered and burnt incense 
 yet in the high places. 
 
 Many of old worshipped upon hills and on the tops of 
 high mountains ; imagining that they thereby obtained a 
 nearer communication with heaven. Strabo says that the 
 Persians always performed their worship upon hills. Some 
 nations, instead of an image, worshipped the hill as the 
 deity. In Japan most of their temples are at this day upon 
 eminences ; and often upon the ascent of high mountains, 
 commanding fine vicAvs, with groves and rivulets of clear 
 water : for they say, that the gods are extremely delighted 
 with such high aiid pleasant spots. (Kaempfer's Japan.) 
 This practice, in early times, was almost universal ; ana 
 every mountain was esteemed holy. The people who prose- 
 cuted this method of worship enjoyed a soothing infatuation, 
 which flattered the gloom of superstition. The eminencas 
 to which they retired were lonely and silent, and seemed 
 to be happily circumstanced for contemplation and prayer. 
 They who frequented them were raised above the lower 
 world, and fancied that they were brought into the vicinity 
 of the powers of the air, and of the deity who resided in the 
 higher regions. But the chief excellence for which they 
 were frequented was, that they were looked upon as the 
 peculiar places where God delivered his oracles. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 48. Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to 
 go to Ophir for gold ; but they went not : for 
 the ships were broken at Ezion-geber. 
 
 " Suez, which was the Arsinoe of the ancients, is situated 
 at the top of the Red Sea : it stands surrounded by the 
 desert, and is a shabby, ill-built place ; the ships anchor a 
 league from the town, to which the channel that leads is 
 very narrow, and has only nine or ten feet depth of water; 
 for which reason, the large ships that are built here must 
 be towed down to the road, without mast, guns, or any 
 thing in them ; there are eight of them lying here, which 
 have not been to Juddah this year ; one of them is at least 
 twelve hundred tons burden, being as lofty as a hundred 
 gun ship, though not longer than a frigate ; so that you 
 may judge of the good proportions they observe in the con- 
 struction of their ships; the timber of which they are all 
 built is brought from Syria by water, to Cairo, and from 
 thence on camels. This fleet sails for Juddah every year, 
 before the Hadge ; stays there two or three months, and 
 returns loaded with coffee : this is so material an article in 
 the diet of a mussulman, that the prayers and wishes 01 
 them all are offered up for its safety : and I believe, next 
 to the loss of their country, the loss of their coffee would be 
 most severely felt by them. The greatest part of it is sent 
 to Constantinople, and other parts of Turkey, but a small 
 quantity going to France and Iialy." (Major Rooke, p. 73.) 
 — Burder. 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 2. And Ahaziah fell down ihrough a lattice 
 in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and 
 was sick : and he sent messengers, and said 
 unto them. Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god 
 of Ekron, whether I shall recover of this 
 
 In the eastern countries the roofs of the houses were flat, 
 and surrounded with a battlement, to prevent falling from 
 them, because it was a customary thing for people to walk 
 upon them, in order to take the air. Now in this battle- 
 ment we may suppose thut there were some wooden latti- 
 ces for people to look through, of equal height with the par- 
 apet wall, and that Ahaziah negligently leaning on it, as it 
 was rotten and infirm it broke down, and let him fall into 
 the court, or garden, belonging to his house. Or there is 
 another way wherein he might fall. In these flat roofs 
 there was generally an opening, which served instead of a 
 sky light to the house below, and this opening might be 
 done over with lattice-work, which the king, as he was 
 carelessly walking, might chance to step upon and slip 
 through. Nor is there any absurdity in supposing such lat- 
 tice-work in a king's palace, when the world was not ar- 
 rived to that height of art and curiosity that we find in it 
 now. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 3. Is it not because there is not a God in Is- 
 rael, that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub, the 
 god of Ekron 1 
 
 We, perhaps, may be a good deal surprised to find, that 
 the driving away of flies should be thought by the inhabit- 
 ants of the country about Ekron so important, that they 
 should give a name to the idol they worshipped, expressive 
 of that property, (Baal-zebub, lord of the fly ;) more especially 
 when this was not the only quality ascribed to him, but it 
 was supposed the power of predicting such momentous 
 matters as the continuance of the life of great princes, or 
 their approaching death, did also belong to him ; but pos- 
 sibly a passage in Vinisauf may lessen this astonishment. 
 Vinisauf, speaking of the army under our Richard the First, 
 a little before he left the Holy Land, and describing them 
 as marching on the plain not far from the seacoast, towards 
 a place called Ybelin, which belonged to the knights hos- 
 pitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, pretty near Hebron, says, 
 " The army stopping a while there, rejoicing in the hope of 
 speedily setting out for Jerusalem, were assailed by a most 
 minute kind of fly, flying about like sparks, which they 
 called cincinnellcB. With these the whole neighbouring 
 region round about was filled. These most wretchedly 
 infested the pilgrims, piercing with great smartness the 
 hands, necks, throats, foreheads, and faces, and every part 
 that was uncovered, a most violent burning tumour follow- 
 ing the punctures made by them, so that all that they stung 
 looked like lepers." He adds, "that they could hardly 
 guard themselves from this most troublesome vexation, by 
 covering their heads and necks with veils." What these 
 fireflies were, and whether they shone in the dark, and for 
 that reason are compared to sparks flying about, or whether 
 they were compared to them on the account of the burning 
 heat they occasioned, as well as a swelling in the flesh of all 
 they wounded, I shall not take upon me to determine. I 
 woiild only observe, Richard and his people met with them 
 in that part of the country, which seemed to be of the 
 country which was not very far from Ekron, and which 
 peemed to be of much the same general nature — a plain not 
 far from the seacoast. 
 
 Can we wonder, after this recital, that those poor hea- 
 
 then who lived in and about Ekron, derived much conso- 
 lation from the supposed power of the idol they worshipped, 
 to drive away the cincinnellae of that country, which were 
 so extremely vexatious to these pilgrims of the 12th century, 
 and occasioned them so much pain. Lord of the fly, lord 
 of these cincinnellae, must have appeared to them a very 
 pleasing, a very important title. ■*'■ 
 
 I will only add, that Sandys, in his travels in the sam- 
 country, but more to the northward, speaks of the air 
 appearing as if full of sparkles of flre, borne to and fro 
 with the wind, after much rain and a thunderstorm, which 
 appearance of sparkles of fire he attributes to infinite 
 swarms of flies that shone like glow-worms ; but he gives 
 not the least intimation of their being incommoded by them. 
 What this difference was owing to, it is quite beside the de- 
 sign of these papers to inquire ; whether its being about 
 two months earlier in the year, more to the northward, or 
 immediately after much rain and a thunderstorm, was a 
 cause of the innoxiousness of these animals when Sandys 
 travelled, and even whether the appearance Sandys speaks 
 of, was really owing to insects, or to any effect of electricity, 
 I leave to others to determine. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 4. Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord, Thou 
 shalt not come down from that bed on which 
 thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. And 
 Elijah departed. 
 
 This expression may be illustrated by what Shaw says 
 of the Moorish houses in Barbary, (Travels, p. 209,) where, 
 after having observed that their chambers are spacious, of 
 the same length with the square court on the sides of which 
 they are built, he adds, " at one end of each chamber there 
 is a little gallery raised three, four, or five feet above the 
 floor, with a balustrade in the front of it, with afeio steps 
 likewise leading up to it. Here they place their beds; a 
 situation frequently alluded to in the holy scriptures, which 
 may likewise illustrate the circumstance of Hezekiah's 
 turning his face, whenhe prayed, towards the wall, (i. e. from 
 his attendants,) 2 Kings xx. 2, that the fervency of his de- 
 votion might be the less taken notice of and observed. The 
 like is related of Ahab, (1 Kings xxi. 4,) though probably 
 he did thus, not upon a religious account, but in order to 
 conceal from his attendants the anguish he was in for hv 
 late disappointment." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 8. And they answered him. He was a hairy 
 man, and girt with a girdle of leather abou. 
 his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tish 
 bite. 
 
 See on Matt. 3. 4 
 
 Ver. 15. And the angel of the Lord said untc 
 Elijah, Go down with him ; be not afraid oi 
 him. And he arose, and went down with him 
 unto the king. 
 
 Sec on I Sam. 17. 51. 
 
 Ver. 16. Therefore thou shalt not come dowTi off 
 that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt 
 surely die. 
 
 At one end of each chamber is a little gallery, raised 
 three or four feet above the floor, with a balustrade in front, 
 to which thev go up by a few steps. Here they place their 
 beds ; a situation frequently alluded to in the holy scrip- 
 tures. Thus Jacob addressed his undutiful son, in his last 
 benediction : " Thou wentest up to thy father's bed,— hr 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 275 
 
 went up to my couch." The allusion is again involved in 
 the declaration of Elijah to the king of Samaria: "Now, 
 therefore, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not come down 
 from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely 
 die." And the Psalmist sware unto the Lord, and vowed 
 unto the mighty God of Jacob, " Surely I will not come 
 into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed, — 
 until I find out a place* for the Lord." This arrangement 
 may likewise illustrate the circumstance of Hezekiah's 
 " turning his face to the wall, when he prayed," that the 
 greatness of his sorrow, and the fervour of his -devotion, 
 might, as much as possible, be concealed from his attendants. 
 The same thing is related of Ahab, although we have no 
 reason to think it was upon a religious account, but in order 
 to conceal from those about him the anguish he felt for his 
 late disappointment ; or, perhaps, by so great a show of 
 sorrow, to provoke them to devise some means to gratify 
 his wishes : " And he laid him down upon his bed, and 
 turned away his face, and would eat no bread." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 3. And the sons of the prophets that were at 
 Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto him, 
 Knowest thou that the Lord will take away 
 thy master from thy head to-day ? And he said, 
 Yea, I know it ; hold ye your peace. 
 
 The expression in the text is, " Knowest thou, that the 
 Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day 1" 
 where the sons of the prophets allude to their manner of 
 sitting in their school : for the scholars used to sit below 
 their masters' feet, and the masters above over their heads, 
 when they taught them : and therefore the sense of the words 
 is, that God would deprive Elisha of his master Elijah's in- 
 structions, viz, by a sudden death. For it does not appear 
 that they had any notion of his translation ; so far from this, 
 that they desired leave to send out some to seek for him, 
 " if peradventure the spirit of the Lord had taken him up, 
 and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley," 
 ver, 16. — Stackhouse. * 
 
 Ver. 11. And it came to pass, as they still went 
 on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a 
 chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted 
 them both asunder ; and Elijah went up by a 
 whirlwind into heaven. 
 
 The Hindoos believe their supreme god Siva sends his 
 angels, with a green chariot, to fetch the souls of those who 
 are devoted to him ; that there are occasionally horses, but 
 at other times none. " The holy king Tirru-Sangu (i. e. 
 divine chank) was taken to heaven, body and soul, without 
 the pain of dying." When a man, as a heathen, is very 
 regular in his devotions ; or when he reproves others for 
 vice, or neglect of duty, it is often scornfully asked, 
 *' What ! are you expecting the green chariot to be sent for 
 youT' meaning, " Do you, by your devotions, expect to go 
 to heaven in the chariot of Siva without the pain of dying 1" 
 Does a man act with great injustice, the person who finds 
 him out asks, " Will you get the green chariot for thisl" 
 Has a heathen embraced Christianity, he is asked the same 
 question. " Charity, charity," says the beggar at your door, 
 " and the green chariot will be sent for you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 2. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My fa- 
 ther, my father ! the chariot of Israel, and the 
 horsemen thereof And he saAV him no more : 
 and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent 
 them in two pieces. 
 
 The words of Elisha upon this occasion are, " My fa- 
 ther, my father !" (so they called their masters and instruc- 
 ters,) "the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." 
 The expression alludes to the form of the chariot and horses 
 that he had just then beheld, and seems to imply, " That 
 Elijah, by his example, and counsel, and prayers, and pow- 
 er with God, did more for the defence and preservation of 
 Israel, than all their chariots and horses, and other warlike 
 provisions :" unless we may suppose, that this was an ab- 
 
 rupt speech, which Elisha, in the consternation he was in, 
 lett unfinished, and so the sacred history has recorded it. — 
 Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 19. And the men of the city said unto Eli- 
 sha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this 
 city is pleasant, as my lord seeth : but the 
 water is naught, and the ground barren. 
 
 Margin, " causing to miscarry." If the latter reading is 
 allowed to be more just than the former, we must entertain 
 a different idea of the situation of Jericho than the textual 
 translation suggests. There are actually at this time cities 
 where animal life of certain kinds pines, and decays, and 
 dies ; and where that posterity which should replace such 
 loss is either not conceived; or, if conceived, is not brought 
 to the birth ; or if brought to the birth, is fatal in delivery 
 to both mother and oflTspring. An instance of this kind oc- 
 curs in Don UUoa's Voyage to South America. He says 
 of the climate of Porto Bello, that "it destroys the vigour "of 
 nature, and often untimely cuts the thread of life." And of 
 Sennaar, Mr. Bruce says, that " no horse, mule, ass, or any 
 beast of burden, will breed or even live at Sennaar, or 
 many miles about it. Poultry does not live there ; neither 
 dog nor cat, sheep nor bullock, can be preserved a season 
 there. They must go all, every half year, to the sands. 
 Though every possible care be taken of them, they die in 
 every place where the fat earth is about the town, during 
 the fir^t season of the rains." He further mentions, that the 
 situation is equally unfavourable to most trees.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 20. And he said, Bring me a new cruise, 
 and put salt therein. And they brought it to 
 him. 
 
 The Hebrew, tjelachU {n-^rh^i) is used to denote a vessel 
 of some capacity ; a vessel to be turned upside down, in 
 order that the inside maybe thoroughly wiped, (2 Kings xxi, 
 13;) "I will wipe Jerusalem, as a man wipeth a dish, 
 turning it upside down." This implies, at least, that the 
 opening of such a dish be not narrow but wide ; that the 
 dish itself be of a certain depth ; yet that the hand may 
 readily reach to the bottom of it, and there may freely 
 move, so as to wipe it thoroughly, &c. This vessel was 
 capable also of bearing the fire, and of standing conve- 
 niently over a fire ; for we read, 2 Chron. xxiv. 13, " The 
 priests, &c. boiled parts of the holy offerings in pans {tjelo^ 
 chit,) and distributed them speedily among the people." 
 Meaning, perhaps, that this was not the very kind of boiler 
 which they would have chosen, had time permitted a choice ; 
 but that haste, and multiplicity of business, made them use 
 whatever first came to hand, that was competent to the ser- 
 vice. This application of these vessels, however, shows 
 that they must have been of considerable capacity and 
 depth ; as a very narrow or a very small dish, would not 
 have answered the purpose required. [Or, was this speedy 
 distribution of these viands, because they were best eaten 
 hot X\ A kind of dish or pan, which appears to answer 
 these descriptions, is represented in the French work, en- 
 titled Estampes du Levant, in the hands of a confectioner 
 of the grand seignior's seraglio, who is carrying a deep 
 dish, full of heated viands, (recently taken otf the fire,) 
 upon which he has put a cover, in order that those viands 
 may retain their heat and flavour. His being described on 
 the plate as a confectioner, leads to the supposition that what 
 he carries are delicacies; to this agrees his desire of pre- 
 serving their heat : and the shape of the vessel is evidently 
 calculated for standing, &c. over a fire. Moreover, from 
 its form it may easily be rested on i(s side, for the purpose 
 of being thoroughly -wiped ; and a dish used to contain 
 delicacies, is most likely to receive such attention; for the 
 comparison in the text referred to, evidently implies some 
 assiduity and exertion to wipe from the dish every particle 
 inconsistent with complete cleanliness. This dish, w'e 
 suppose, is of earth, or china; — that is, of porcelain, rather 
 than of metal. 
 
 We are now prepared to see the import of Elisha's 
 direction to the men of Jericho, (2 Kings ii. 20.) " Bring 
 me a new ijelachU"— one of the vessels used in your 
 cookery— in those parts of your cookery which you es- 
 teem the most delicate: a culinary vessel, but of the sju- 
 
276 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap, 2. 
 
 perior kind : " and put salt therein,'- what yoi, constantly 
 mingle in your food, what readily mixes with water : and 
 this shall be a sign to you, that in your future use of this 
 stream, you shall find it salubrious, and fit for daily service 
 in preparing, or accompanying, your daily sustenance. 
 There is a striking picture of sloth, sketched out very sim- 
 ply, but very strongly, by the sagacious Solomon, (Prov, 
 xix. 24,) repeated almost verbatim, chap. xxvi. 15 : 
 
 A slothful man hideth his hand in the tjelachit: 
 But will not re bring it to his mouth. 
 
 A slothful man hideth his hand in the tjelachit : — but 
 It grieveth him to bring it again to his mouth. 
 
 Meaning, he sees a dish, deep and capacious, filled with 
 confectionary, sweetmeats, &c. whatever his appetite can 
 desire in respect to relish and flavour ; of this he is greedy. 
 Thus excited, he thrusts his hand — his right hand — deep 
 into the dish, loads it with delicacies ; but, alas ! the labour 
 of lifting it up to his mouth is too great, loo excessive, too 
 fati^ing : he therefore does not enjoy or taste what is be- 
 fore him, though his appetite be so far allured as to desire, 
 and his hand be so far exerted as to grasp. [This is the 
 customary mode of conveying food to the mouth in the 
 East, where knives and forks are not in use.] He suffers 
 the viands to become cold, and thereby to lose their flavour ; 
 while he debates the important movement of his hand to his 
 mouth, if he does not rather totally forego the enjoyment, 
 as demanding too vast an action !" Surely this picture of 
 sloth is greatly heightened by this notion of the tjelachit. 
 It seems to be sufficiently striking, that two words, rendered 
 by our translators lap, or bosom, (Prov. xvi, 33, chik, and the 
 word before us,) should both signify vases, or vessels. The 
 first denotes, the lot-vase, used for containing the lot-peb- 
 bles, &c. to be drawn out by the hand : the other a dish for 
 meat ; neither of them referring to any part of the person, 
 as our version seems to imply ; which reads, 
 
 A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, 
 And will not bring it to his mouth again. 
 
 The powerful picture of sloth, painted by Solomon, gives 
 occasion to enlarge somewhat further on the manner of 
 eating among the Arabs ; a manner that seems sufficiently 
 rude to us, but which those who practise it insist is more 
 natural and convenient, and not less cleanly than our own. 
 " Extending their forefinger and thumb, (of the right hand 
 always — the left hand is reserved for less honourable uses,) 
 they say," observes D'Arvieux, "God made this fork before 
 vou made your steel ones." Mr. Jackson says, " The 
 Moors are, for the most part, more cleanly in their persons 
 than in their garments. They wash their hands before 
 every meal, which, as they use no knives or forks, they eat 
 with their fingers: half a" dozen persons sit round a large 
 bowl of cuscasoe, and, after the usual ejaculation (Bismil- 
 lah !) ' In the name of God !' each person puts his hand to 
 the bowl, and taking up the food, throws it, by a dexterous 
 jerk, into his mouth, without suffering his fingers lo touch 
 his lips. However repugnant this may be to our ideas of 
 cleanliness, yet the hand being always washed, and never 
 touching the mouth in the act of eating, these people are by 
 no means so dirty as Europeans have sometimes hastily 
 imagined. They have no chairs or tables in their houses, 
 but sit crosslegged on carpets and cushions ; and at meals, 
 the dish or bowl of provisions is placed on the floor." (Ac- 
 count of Morocco, p. 155.) 
 
 That a thorough sluggard should practise this " dexter- 
 ous jerk of the hand," is not likely to have entered into the 
 contemplation of the royal sage, 'in the passages illustrated 
 above : and to say truth, the latter observation seems to be 
 couched in terms much stronger than the former : " The 
 sluggard musters up just strength enough to plunge his 
 hand into the bowl; but this mighty effort exhausts him, 
 he finds his weariness (hn*?:) too great, too excessive, to 
 bring it up to his mouth, loaded though it be with the deli- 
 cacies of the table." There is a force in the word rendered 
 hide or plunge, which should not be disregarded. — The 
 sluggard buries deeply his hand : — it being customary with 
 such characters to grasp at all, and more than all, which 
 they can hold. Perhaps the action of a less polite class 
 than that principally alluded to by Mr. Jackson, may best 
 illustrate this reflection. We shall therefore add the fol- 
 lowing from Major Rooke's Travels in Arabia : " On my 
 first going on board, I sat down with the Noquedah and his 
 officers to supper, the floor being both our tables and chairs. 
 
 on which we seated ourselves in a circle, with a large bow\ 
 of rice in the middle, and some fish and dates before each per- 
 son : here I likewise found that knives and forks were useless 
 instruments in eating, and that nature had accommodated 
 us with what answered the same purpose : we plunged our 
 hands into the bowl, rolled up a handful of rice into a ball, 
 and conveyed it to our mouths in that form; our repast 
 was short, and to that succeeded coffee and washing ; and 
 on their parts prayer, in which they were very frequent and 
 fervent," — Taylor in Calmet,' 
 
 Ver. 23. And he went up from thence unto Beth- 
 el : and as he was going up by the way, there 
 came forth little children out of the city, and 
 mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou 
 bald-head ; go up, thou bald-head. 
 
 Some suppose this alludes to the head being uncovered. 
 I was not a little astonished in the East, when I first heard 
 a man called a bald-head, who had a large quantity of hair 
 on his head : and I found, upon inquiry, it was an epithet 
 of CONTEMPT ! A man who has killed himself is called " a 
 bald-headed suicide !" A stupid fellow, " a bald-headed 
 dunce." Of those who are powerless, " What can those 
 bald-heads do 7" Hence the epithet has often been applied 
 to the missionaries. Is a man told his wife does not manage 
 domestic matters well, he replies, as if in contempt of him- 
 self, " What can a bald-head do 1 must he not have a 
 wife of the same kindf Let a merchant, or any other 
 person, who is going on business, meet a man who is really 
 bald, and he will assuredly refuse to aUend to the business ; 
 and pronounce, if he dare, some imprecations on the object 
 of his hatred. Sometimes he will repeat the proverb, " Go, 
 thou bald-head, pilferer of a small fish, and sucker of bones 
 cast away by the goldsmith." Call a man a motiiyan, i. e. 
 bald-head, (which you may do, though he have much hair,) 
 and then abuse, or sticks or stones, will be sure to be your 
 portion. Thus the epithet implies great scorn, and is given 
 to those who are weak or mean. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. And he went up from thence unto Bethel, 
 and as he was going up by the way, there came 
 forth little children out of the city, and mocked 
 him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald-head ; 
 go up, thou bald-head. 24. And he turned 
 back, and looked on them, and cursed them in 
 the name of the Lord. And there came forth 
 two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty 
 and two children of them. 
 
 Bethel, it is well known, was one of the cities where 
 Jeroboam had set up a golden calf, a place strangely ad- 
 dicted to idolatry, and whose inhabitants had no small 
 aversion to Elisha, as being the servant and successor of 
 one, who had been a professed enemy to their wicked wor- 
 ship, and himself no less an opposer of it. It is reasonable 
 to suppose, therefore, that the children (if they were child- 
 ren, for the word naarim may signify groicn youths as well) 
 who mocked Elisha, were excited and encouraged there- 
 unto by their parents ; and therefore the judgment was just, 
 in God's punishing the wickedness of these parents by the 
 death of their children, who, though they suffered in this 
 life, had the happiness to be rescued from the danger of an 
 idolatrous education, which might have been of fatal ten- 
 dency* both to their present and future state. In the mean 
 time it must be acknowledged, that the insolence of these 
 mockers (whether we suppose them children or youths) 
 was very provoking, forasmuch as they ridiculed, not only 
 a man whose very age commanded reverence, but a 
 prophet likewise, whose character, in all ages, was ac- 
 counted sacred, nay, and even God himself, whose honour 
 was struck at in the reproaches against his servant, and 
 that too in one of his most glorious and wonderful works, 
 his assumption of Elijah into heaven : For, " Go up, thou 
 bald-head, go up, thou bald-head," (besides the bitterness 
 of the contempt expressed in the repetition of the words,) 
 shows that they made a mere jest of any such translation ; 
 and therefore, "in banter, they bid Elijah go up, whither, as 
 he pretended, his friend and master was gone before. 
 These provocations, one would think, were enough to 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 2 KINGS 
 
 277 
 
 draw an imprecation from the prophet; but this impreca- 
 tion did not proceed from any passion or private resentment 
 of his own, but merely from the command and commission 
 of his God ; who, for the terror and caution of other pro- 
 fane persons and idolaters, as well as for the maintenance 
 of the honour and authority of his prophets, " confirmed 
 the wjrd which had gone out of his servant's mouth." 
 . The Hire is to be said of the destruction which Elijah 
 called down from heaven upon the two captains and their 
 companies, who came to apprehend him — that he did this, 
 not out of any hasty passion or revenge, but purely in obe- 
 dience to the Holy Spirit, wherewith he was animated, and 
 in zeal for the honour and glory of God, which in the per- 
 sson of his prophet, were grossly abused. — S tackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 34. And there came forth two she-bears out 
 of the wood, and tare forty and two children of 
 them. 
 
 These furious animals were she-bears, which, it is prob- 
 able, had been just deprived of their young; and now fol- 
 lowing the uTipulse of their outraged feelings, they rushed 
 from the wood to revenge the loss. But it is evident their 
 native ferocity was overruled and directed by divine prov- 
 idence, to execute the dreadful sentence pronounced by the 
 prophet in his name. They must, therefore, be considered 
 as the ministers of God, the Judge of all the earth, commis- 
 sioned to punish the idolatrous inhabitants of Bethel and 
 their profligate offspring, who probably acted on this occa- 
 sion with their concurrence, if not by their command. He 
 punished in a similar way the heathen colonies planted by 
 the king of Assyria in the cities of Samaria, after the ex- 
 pulsion of the ten tribes: " They feared not the Lord ; there- 
 fore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of 
 them." When he punished the youths of Bethel, (for so 
 the phrase liilLe children signifies in Hebrew,) by directing 
 against them the rage of the she-bears, he only did what 
 Moses had long before predicted, and left on record for 
 their warning: "And if ye walk contrary unto me, and 
 will not hearken unto me, I will bring seven times more 
 plagues upon you, according to your sins. I will also send 
 wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your child- 
 ren." Bethel had been long the principal seat of idolatry, 
 and its attendant vices; and to all their aggravated crimes, 
 its inhabitants now added rude and impious mockery of a 
 
 f)erson whom they knew to be a prophet of the Lord, revi- 
 ing with blasphemous tongues the Lord God of Elijah, 
 and his now glorified servant. Baldness was reckoned a 
 very great deformity in the East; and to be reproached with 
 it, one of the grossest insults an Oriental could receive. 
 Cesar, who was bald, could not bear to hear it mentioned 
 in jest. It is one of the marks of disgrace which Homer 
 fixes upon Thersites, that he had only a few straggling 
 hairs on his pyramidal head. Their crime, therefore, 
 justly merited the severest punishment. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 4. And Mesha king of Moab was a sheep- 
 master, and rendered unto the king of Israel a 
 hundred thousand lambs, and a hundted thou- 
 sand rams, with the wool. 
 
 This was a prodigious number indeed; but then we are 
 to consider that these countries abound with sheep, inso- 
 much that Solomon offered a hundred and twenty thou- 
 sand at the dedication of the temple, 2 Chron. vii. 5, and 
 the Reubenites drove from the Hagarens a hundred and 
 fifty thousand, 1 Chron. v. 7. For, as Bochart observes, 
 their sheep frequently brought forth two at a time, and 
 sometimes twice a year. The same learned man remarks, 
 that in ancient times, when people's riches consisted in 
 cattle, this was the only way of paying tribute. It is ob- 
 served by others likewise, that this great number of cattle 
 was not a tribute, which the Moabites were obliged to pay 
 the Israelites every year, but on some special occasion only, 
 upon the accession of every new king, for instance, when 
 they were obliged to express their homage in this manner, 
 to make satisfaction for some damages that the Israelites 
 should at any time suffer from their invasions or revolts. — 
 Stackhousb. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. And one of the king of Israel's servants 
 answered and said, Here is Elisha the son of 
 Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of 
 Elijah. 
 
 We read, Elisha " went after Elijah, and ministered unto 
 him ;" which simply means he was his servant. The peo- 
 ple of the East use their fingers in eating, instead of a knife 
 and fork, or spoon ; and consequently after, (as well as 
 before,) they are obliged to wash their hands. The master, 
 having finished his meal, calls a servant to pour water on 
 his hands. The domestic then comes with a little brass 
 vessel filled with water, and pours it on the hands and fin- 
 gers till he hears the word poUiam, enough. — Roberts. 
 
 There is a description of Elisha the prophet, by a part 
 of his office when servant to Elijah, which appears rather 
 strange to us. " Is there not here a prophet of the Lord T' 
 says King Jehoshaphat ; he is answered, " Here is Elisha 
 ben Shaphat, wlio poured water on the hands of Elijah,^* 
 (3 Kings iii. 11,) i. e. who was his servant and constant 
 attendant. So Pitts tells us: "The table being removed, 
 before they rise (from the ground whereon they sit,) a slave, 
 or servant, who stands attending on them with a cup of 
 water to give them drink, steps into the middle with a basin, 
 or copper pot of water, something like a coffee-pot, and a 
 little soap, and lets the water run upon their hands one after 
 another, in order as they sit." Such service it appears 
 Elisha performed for Elijah : what shall we say then to the 
 remarkable action of our Lord, " who poured water into a 
 basin, and washed his disciples' feet," after supper ? Was 
 he indeed among them as one who serveth ? On this subject, 
 says D'Ohsson, " Ablution, Abdesth, consists in washing the 
 hands, feet, face, and a part of the head ; the law mentions 
 Jhem by the term — 'the three parts consecrated to ablu- 
 tion.' The mussulman is generally seated on the edge 
 
 of a sofa, with a pewter or copper vessel lined with tin 
 placed before him upon a round piece of red cloth, to pre- 
 vent the carpet or mat from being wet : a servant, kneeling 
 on the ground, pours out water for his master ; another 
 holds a cloth destined for these purifications. The person 
 who purifies himself begins by baring his arms as far as 
 the elbow. As he washes his hands, mouth, nostrils, face, 
 arms, &c., he repeats the proper prayers. ... It is probable 
 that Mohammed followed on this subject the book of Le- 
 viticus." It is well known that we have an officer among 
 ourselves, who, at the coronation, and formerly at all public 
 festivals, held a basin of water for the king to wash his 
 hands in, after dinner ; but it is not equally well known, 
 that Cardinal Wolsey, one time, when the Duke of Buck- 
 ingham held the basin for Henry VIII., after the king had 
 washed, put his own hand into the basin: the duke re- 
 senting this intrusion, let some of the water fall on the 
 habit of the cardinal, who never forgave the action, but 
 brought the duke to the block, in consequence of his re- 
 sentment. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 15. But now bring me a minstrel. And it 
 came to pass, when the minstrel played, that 
 the hand of the Lord came upon him. 
 
 The music of great men in civil life, has been sometimes 
 directed to persons of a sacred character, as an expression 
 of respect, in the East; perhaps the playing of the minstrel 
 before the prophet Elisha is to be understood, in part, at 
 least, in something of the same manner. When Dr. 
 Richard Chandler was at Athens, the archbishop of that 
 city was upon ill terms with its Vaiwode, and the Greeks 
 in general siding with the Vaiwode, the archbishop was 
 obliged to withdraw for a time ; but some time after, when 
 Chandler and his fellow-travellers were at Corinth, they 
 were informed that the archbishop was returned to Athens ; 
 that the Bey or Vaiwode had received him kindly, and 
 ordered his musicians to attend him at his palace ; and 
 that a complete revolution had happened in his favour. 
 Here we see a civil magistrate, who had been displeased 
 with a great ecclesiastic, sent his musicians to play at his 
 archiepiscopal palace, in honour of him to whom this ma- 
 gistrate was now reconciled. Elisha might require that a 
 like honour should be done to him, and through him to the 
 God whom he served, who had been sadly neglected and 
 affronted in former times by the king of Israel. The pro- 
 
278 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 priety of it will appear in a still stronger light, if we should 
 suppose, that Elisha commanded the minstrel to sing, along 
 with his music, a hymn to Jehovah, setting forth his being 
 a God that gave rain, that preserved such as were ready to 
 perish, the giver of victory, and whose power was neither 
 limited to his temple, nor to the Jewish country sacred to 
 him, but equally operative in every place. The coming of 
 the spirit of prophecy upon Elisha, enabling him to declare 
 a speedy copious fall of rain in that neighbourhood, and a 
 com;^lete victory over their enemies, immediately upon the 
 submissive compliance of this idolatrous prince with the 
 requisition of the prophet, and such a hymn in praise of 
 the God of Israel, seems to me full as natural an interpre- 
 tation, as the supposing he desired the minstrel to come in 
 order to play some soft composing tune, to calm his ruffled 
 spirits, and to qualify him for the reception of the influences 
 of the spirit of prophecy. Was a warm and pungent zeal 
 against the idolatries of Jehoram a disqualifying disposi- 
 tion of soul 1 and if it were, was mere music the happiest 
 mode of inviting the divine influences'? Yet after this 
 manner, I think, it has been commonly explained. Sing- 
 ing was, and is, so frequently joined with the sound of musi- 
 cal instruments in the East, that I apprehend no one will 
 think it strange, that I suppose the minstrel sung as well as 
 played in the presence of Elisha: and when it is recollect- 
 ed that their songs are very frequently extemporaneous, it 
 is natural to suppose the prophet required something to be 
 sung, suitable both to his character and to the occasion. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 16. And he said, Thus saith the Lord, 
 Make this valley full of ditches : 17. For thus 
 saith the Lord, Ye shall not see wind, neither 
 shall ye see rain ; yet that valley shall be filled 
 with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and 
 your cattle, and your beasts. 
 
 A shower of rain in the East, is often preceded by a 
 whirlwind, which darkens the sky with immense clouds 
 of sand from the loose surface of the desert. To this com- 
 mon phenomenon, the prophet alludes, in his direction to 
 the king of Israel, who Avas marching with his army 
 against Moab, and was ready to perish in the wilderness 
 for want of water : " Thus saith the Lord, Make this val- 
 ley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not 
 see wind, neither shall ye see ram; yet that valley shall be 
 tilled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and "your cat- 
 tle, and your beasts." ' If a squall had not commonly pre- 
 ceded rain, the prophet would not have said, Ye shall not 
 see wind. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. And ye shall smite every fenced city, 
 and every choice city, and shall fell every good 
 tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every 
 good piece of land with stones. 
 
 Commentators take no pains, that I know of, to account 
 for that part of the punishment of the king of Moab's re- 
 bellion, Ye shall mar every good piece of land with stones ; 
 though it does not appear very easy to conceive how this 
 was to be done to any purpose, and indeed without giving 
 as much trouble, or more, to Israel, to gather these stones, 
 and carry them on their lands, as to the Moabites to gather 
 them up again, and carry them off. I would therefore pro- 
 pose it to the learned to consider, whether we may not 
 understand this of Israel's doing that nationally, and as 
 victors, which was done by private persons very frequently 
 in these countries in ancient times, by way of revenge, 
 and which is mentioned in some of the old Roman laws, I 
 think, cited by Egmont and Heyman, who, speaking of the 
 contentions and vindictive temper of the Arabs, tell us, 
 they were ignorant, however, whether they still retained 
 the method of revenge formerly common among them, and 
 which is called c-/fOT£X((r//os, mentioned in Lib. ff. Digest, de 
 extraord. criminib. which contains the following accoi^it. 
 Jn provhicia Arabia, &c. That is, " in the province of 
 Arabia, there is a crime called o^oTrsXiff/zo?, or fixing of 
 stones; it being a frequent practice among them, to place 
 stones in the grounds of those with whom they are at 
 variance as a warning, that any person who dares to till 
 
 that field, should infallibly be slain, by the contrivance of 
 those who placed the stones there." This malicious prac- 
 tice, they add, is thought to have had its origin in Arabia 
 Petraea. If the Israelites, as victors, who could prescribe 
 what laws they thought proper to the conquered, placed 
 such stones in the best grounds of the Moabites, as inter- 
 dicting them from tillage, on pain of their owners being 
 destroyed, they without much trouble elFectually marred 
 such fields as long as their power over Moab lasted, which 
 had before this continued some time, and by the suppression 
 of this rebellion might be supposed to continue long. As 
 it was an ancient practice in these countries, might it not 
 be supposed to be as ancient as the times of Elisha, and 
 that he referred to it? Perhaps the time to castaway stones, 
 and the time to gather stones together, mentioned by the 
 royal preacher, Eccles. iii. 5, is to be understood in like 
 manner, of giving to nations with which there had been 
 contests, the marks of perfect reconciliation, or continuing 
 upon them some tokens of displeasure and resentment. If 
 we suppose the latter part of the verse is exegetical of the 
 former, which the learned know is very common in the 
 Hebrew poetry, it will better agree with this explanation, 
 than with that which supposes, that the casting away of 
 stones, nieSiXis the demolishing of houses, atid the gathering 
 them together, the collecting them for buildi'ng ; since the 
 casting away of stones answers to embracing, in the latter 
 part of the verse, not to the refraining from embracing. It 
 may be supposed indeed that a transposition might be in- 
 tended, such a one as appears in the eighth verse ; but it is 
 to be observed, that the eighth verse finishes this catalogue 
 of different seasons, and there is no transposition in the 
 other particulars. To which may be added, that this ex- 
 planation makes the casting away of stones, and gathering 
 them together, of the fifth verse, precisely the same thing 
 with the breaking down and building up of the third: the 
 supposing a greater variety of thought here will be no dis- 
 honour to the royal poet. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 27. Then he took his eldest son, that should 
 have reigned in his stead, and offered him for 
 a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there 
 was great indignation against Israel : And they 
 departed from him, and returned to their own 
 land. 
 
 In great distress, several persons, like the king of Moab, 
 have ofl^ered their own children upon their altars. Euse- 
 bius and Lactantius mention several nations who used 
 these sacrifices. Cesar says of the Gauls, that when they 
 were afflicted with grievous diseases, or in time of war, or 
 great danger, they either offered men for sacrifices, or 
 vowed they would offer them. For they imagined God 
 would not be appeased, unless the life of a man were ren- 
 dered for the life of a man. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 1. Now there cried a certain woman of the 
 wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, 
 saying, Thy servant my husband is dead : and 
 thou°knoAvest that thy servant did fear the Lord : 
 and the creditor is come to take unto him my 
 two sons to be bondmen. 
 
 This was a case in which the Hebrews had such power 
 over their children, that they might sell them to pay what 
 they owed ; and the creditor might force them to it. Huet 
 thinks that from the Jews this custom was propagated to 
 the Athenians, and from them to the Romans. — Burder. 
 
 The Jewish law looked upon children as the proper 
 goods of their parents, who had power to sell them for 
 seven years, as their creditors had to compel them :o do 
 it, in order to pay their debts; and from the Jews this cus- 
 tom was propagated to the Athenians, and from them to 
 the Romans. The Romans indeed had the most absolute 
 control over their children. By the decree of Romulus 
 they could imprison, beat, kill, or sell them for slaves; but 
 Numa Pompilius first moderated this, and the emperor 
 Diocletian made a law, that no free persons should be sold 
 upon account of debt. The ancient Athenians had the like 
 jurisdiction over their children, but Solon reformed this 
 
Chap. 4. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 279 
 
 cruel custom ; as indeed it seemed a little hard, that the 
 children of a poor man, who have no manner of inherit- 
 ance left them, should be compelled into slavery, in order 
 lo pay their deceased father's debts ; and yet this was the 
 custom, as appears from this passage, wherein the prophet 
 does not pretend to reprove the creditor, but only puts the 
 woman in a method to pay him.— -Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 1 J. Let us make a little chamber, I pray 
 thee, on the wall ; and let us set for him there 
 a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candle- 
 stick ; and it shall be \vhen he cometh to us, 
 that he shall turn in thither. 
 
 To most of these houses a smaller one is annexed, which 
 sometimes rises one story higher than the house ; and at 
 other times it consists of one or two rooms only, and a 
 terrace ; while others that are built, as they frequently are, 
 over the porch or gateway, have, if we except the ground- 
 floor, which they want, all the conveniences that belong to 
 the house itself. They communicate with the gallery of 
 the house by a door, and by another door, which opens 
 immediately from a privy stair, with the porch or street, 
 without giving the least disturbance to the house. In these 
 back-houses, as they may be called, strangers are usually 
 lodged and entertained ; and to them likewise the men are 
 wont to retire from the hurry and noise of their families, to 
 be more at leisure for meditation and amusement; and at 
 other times, they are converted into wardrobes and maga- 
 zines. This annexed building is in the holy scriptures 
 named (n^sjy) aliah; and we have reason to believe, that the 
 little chamber which the Shunamite built for the prophet 
 Elisha, whither, as the text informs us, he retired at his 
 pleasure, without breaking in upon the private affairs of 
 the family, or being in his turn interrupted by them in his 
 devotions, was a structure of this kind. It is thus described 
 by the Shunamite herself: " Let us make a little chamber, 
 I pray thee, on the wall ; and let us set for him there a bed, 
 and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick ; and it shall be, 
 that when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither. 
 The internal communication of this chamber with the Shu- 
 namite's house, may be inferred, as well from its being 
 built upon the wall which enclosed her dwelling, as from 
 her having so free access to it, and at the second invitation, 
 standing in the door, while the prophet announced to her 
 the birth of a son. — Paxton. 
 
 They did not then among the ancients sit universally as 
 the modern inhabitants of the East now do, on the ground 
 or floor, on some mat or carpet ; they sometimes sat on 
 thrones, or seats more or less like our chairs, often raised 
 so high as to require a footstool. But it was considered as 
 a piece of splendour, and offered as a mark of particular 
 respect. It was doubtless for this reason that a seat of this 
 kind was placed, along with some other furniture, in the 
 chamber which the devout Shimamitess prepared for the 
 prophet Elisha, 2 Kings iv. 10, which our version has very 
 unhappily translated a stool, by which we mean the least 
 honourable kind of seat in an apartment ; whereas the 
 original word meant to express her respect for the prophet 
 by the kind of seat she prepared for him. The word is nd3 
 kissa, the same that is commonly translated throne. The 
 candlestick is, in like manner, to be considered as a piece 
 of furniture, suitable to a room that was magnificently fitted 
 up, according to the mode of those times, a light being kept 
 burning all night long in such apartments. So a lamp was 
 kept burning all night, in the apartment in which Dr. 
 Richard Chandler slept, in the house of a Jew, who was 
 vice-consul for the English nation, at the place whete he 
 first landed, when he proposed to visit the curious ruins of 
 Asia Minor. Further, we are told by De la Roque, in the 
 account given of some French gentlemen's going to Arabia 
 ^elix, page 43, 44, that they found only mats in the house 
 of the captain of the port of Aden, where they were honour- 
 ably received, which were to serve them for beds, chairs, 
 and tables : so in the evening they brought them tapers 
 without candlesticks, the want of which they were to sup- 
 ply as well as they could, which was but indifferently. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 20. And when he had taken him, and brought 
 
 him to his mother, he sat on her Knees till noon, 
 and the7i died. 
 
 The heat, in eastern countries, is often so excessive, as 
 to prove fatal to many people. To this cause is to be 
 attributed the death of the child at Shunem, in the days of 
 Elisha. Egmont and Heyman (vol. i. p. 333) found the 
 air about Jericho extremely hot, and say that it destroyed 
 several persons the year before they were there. The 
 army of King Baldwin IV. suffered considerably from this 
 circumstance near Tiberias. The heat at the time Was so 
 unusually great, that as many died by that as by the sword. 
 After the battle, in their return to their former encamp- 
 ment, a certain ecclesiastic, of some distinction in the 
 church and in the army, not being able to bear the vehe- 
 mence of the heat, was carried in a litter, but expired 
 under mount Tabor.— (Harmer.) The child of the Shu- 
 namite here spoken of, had gone to the reapers in the field, 
 (v. 12,) where he suddenly complained of headache, (v. 19,) 
 and soon after died. Probably he had a sun-stroke, which 
 was very natural in the great heat which prevails in those 
 countries at harvest-time. Monconys, speaking of himself, 
 says, " Towards evening, the sun had struck with such force 
 on my head, that I was seized wif h a violent fever, and obliged 
 to go to bed." Werli Von Zember relates the same of him- 
 self and his companions. " After we had been obliged to 
 remain a long time in this court, exposed to the heat ot the 
 sun, we almost all became ill, with dreadful headache, giddi- 
 ness, and fever, so that some even lost their senses." Von 
 Stammer says, " When we came into the desert, between 
 the mountains, I was seized wtth a very severe inflamma- 
 tory fever : I was unable to remain any longer on the 
 camel, but was forced to lie down on the ground, and 
 became so ill, that they scarcely thought I was alive." — 
 
 ROSBNMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 22. And she called unto her husband, and 
 said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young 
 men, and one of the asses, that I may run to 
 the man of God, and come again. 
 
 The saddle ass retaining the characteristic perverseness 
 of his kind, is apt to become restiff under his rider, which, 
 in cases that require haste, renders it necessary to accele- 
 rate his speed by means of the goad. This, according to 
 Pococke, is commonly done for persons of rank by a ser- 
 vant on foot. This method of travelling seems to have been 
 quite common in Palestine ; for the Shunamite's husband 
 expressed neither surprise nor hesitation, when she asked for 
 "one of the young men, and one of the asses, that she might 
 run to the man of God." The acknowledged inability of the 
 ass to carry both the servant and his mistress, the custom 
 of having an attendant, whose business it was to drive the 
 animal forward, and the eager impatience of the bereaved 
 mother, which required the utmost speed, sufficiently prove 
 that she rode the ass herself, while the servant attended her 
 on foot, or mounted perhaps on a canrel, which persons in 
 his condition often used on a journey. " And she said to 
 her servant. Drive, (or lead,) and go forward ; slack not 
 riding for me, except I bid thee." Put him to the utmast 
 speed, without regarding the inconveniences I may suffer. 
 The pronoun thy, it has been thought, is very improperly 
 supplied in our "translation, as it leads one to suppose that 
 the servant himself was the rider. But although no men- 
 tion is made of the circumstance, it is not perfectly clear 
 that the servant was not mounted on this occasion. Tne 
 phrase, cease not to ride, (23-»S) or cease not riding, natu- 
 rally suggests that he was mounted. The ass which the 
 Shunamite saddled, was a strong animal, as the name given 
 him by the inspired writer imports; and if we may believe 
 Maillet, the asses in Egypt and Syria have nothing of that 
 indolence and heaviness which are natural to ours; there- 
 fore, if the servant was not furnished with a camel, or was 
 not a running footman by profession, of which we have no 
 proof, the ass must have soon left him far behind, and ren- 
 dered his services of no use. When the inspired writer 
 says the Shunamite saddled ker ass, he uses a phrase which 
 often occurs in the sacred writings, and seems to compre- 
 hend any requisite for the convenience of the rider and the 
 proper management of the animal.— Paxton. 
 
280 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 Ver. 23. And he said, Wherefore wilt thou go to 
 him to-day ? it is neither new moon nor sab- 
 bath. And she said, It shall be well. 
 
 Peter Delia Valle assures us, that it is now customary in 
 Arabia to begin their journeys at the new moon. When 
 the Shunamite proposed going to Elisha, her husband dis- 
 suaded her by observing that it was neither new moon nor 
 sabbath, — Burder. 
 
 V"er. 24. Then she saddled an ass, and said to her 
 servant. Drive, and go forward ; slack not thy 
 riding for me, except I bid thee. 
 
 See on Judg. 10. 4. 
 
 Where travellers are not so numerous as in caravans, 
 their appearance differs a good deal from that of those who 
 journey among us. To see a person mounted and attended 
 by a servant on foot, would seem odd to us ; and it would 
 be much more so to see that servant driving the beast before 
 him, or goading it along : yet these are eastern modes. So 
 Dr. Pococke, in his account of Egypt, tells us that the man, 
 the husband, I suppose he means, always leads the lady's 
 ass there ; and if she has a servant, he goes on one sid.e : 
 but the ass-driver follows the man, goads on the beast, and 
 when he is to turn, directs his head with a pole. The 
 Shunamite, when she went to the prophet, did not desire so 
 much attendance, only requesting her husband to send her 
 an ass, and its driver, to whom she said, " Drive, and go 
 forward, slack not thy riding for me, except I bid thee," 
 2 Kings iv. 24. It appears from the eastern manner of the 
 women's riding on asses, that the word is rightly translated 
 drive, rather than lead; and this account of Dr. Pococke 
 VaI also explain why she did not desire two asses, one for 
 herself, and the other for the servant that attended her. 
 Solomon might refer to the same, when he says, " I have 
 seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants 
 upon the earth," Eccl, x. 7, My reader, however, will meet 
 with a more exact illustration of this passage in its proper 
 place. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver, 29. Then he said to Gehazi, Gird up thy 
 loins, and take my staff in thy hand, and go thy 
 way : if thou meet any man, salute him not ; 
 and if any salute thee, answer him not again : 
 and lay my staff upon the face of the child. 
 
 The rod, or staff, in the scriptures, is mentioned as an 
 emblem of authority over inanimate nature, over man, and 
 the diseases to which he was subject, and also as an instru- 
 ment of correction for the wicked. The Lord commanded 
 Moses, " Take thy rod, and stretch out thy hand upon the 
 waters of Egypt, upon their streams, upon their rivers, and 
 upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of water, that 
 they may become blood.'' The magicians of the heathen 
 king had their rods also, by which they performed many 
 wonderful things, I see no reason to doubt that the staff of 
 Elisha was of the same nature, and for the same purposes, 
 as the " rod of God," which did such wonders in tne nands 
 of Moses, Gehazi, though he had the emblem of his mas- 
 ter's office, could not perform the miracle : and no wonder; 
 for the moment before he received the command from 
 Elisha, he showed his evil disposition to the mother of the 
 dead child ; for when she caught the prophet " by the feet," 
 to state her case, he went '* near to thrust her away." 
 
 The orou-mulle-pirambu {i. e. a cane with one knot) is 
 believed to possess miraculous power, whether in the hand 
 of a magician or a private individual. It is about the size 
 of the middle finger, and must have only one knot in its 
 wliole length. " A man bitten by a serpent will be assu- 
 redly cured, if the cane or rod be placed upon him : nay, 
 should he be dead, it will restore him to life !" " Yes, sir, 
 the man who has such a stick need fear neither serpents 
 nor evil spirits." A native gentleman known to me has 
 the staff of his umbrella made of one of these rods, and great 
 satisfaction and comfort has he in this his constant com- 
 panion. " The sun cannot smite him by day, neither the 
 moon by night; the serpents and wild beasts move off 
 ^iriftly ; and the evil spirits dare not come near to him." — 
 
 R«BERTS. 
 
 This command to salute no one, naturally calls to mind 
 that which Jesus gave to the seventy disciples. Luke x. 4, 
 SaMe no oiie by the way. It is explained by the custom of 
 the East. Serious and taciturn as the natives of the East 
 usually are, they grow talkative when they meet an ac- < 
 quaintance and salute him. This custom has come from 
 Asia with the Arabs, and spread over the north coast of 
 Africa. A modern traveller relates the reciprocal saluta- 
 tions with which those are received who return with the 
 caravans. " People go a great way to meet them ; as soon 
 as they are perceived, the questioning and salutation be- 
 gin, and continue with the repetition of the same phrases : 
 ' How do you do 1 God be praised that you are come in 
 peace ! God give you peace ! How fares it with you V 
 The higher the rank of the person returning home, the 
 longer does the salutation last." — Burder. 
 
 Elisha's enjoining Gehazi not to salute any that he met, 
 or to return the salutation of such, evidently expresses the 
 haste he would have him make to recover the child, and 
 bring him back to life. For the salutations of the East 
 often take up a long time. " The manner of salutation, as 
 now practised by the people of Egypt, is not less ancient. 
 The ordinary way of saluting people, when at a distance, 
 is bringing the hand down to the knees, and then carrying 
 it to the stomach. Marking their devotedness to a person 
 by holding down the hand ; as they do their affection by 
 their after raising it up to their heart. When they come 
 close together afterward, they take each other by the hand 
 in token of friendship. What is very pleasant, is to see 
 the countrypeople reciprocally clapping each other's hands 
 very smartly, twenty or thirty times together, in meeting, 
 without saying any thing more than Salamat aiche halcom ; 
 that is to say, How do you do 7 I wish you good health. Il 
 this form of complimenting must be acknowledged to be 
 simple, it must be admitted to be very affectionate. Per- 
 haps it marks out a better disposition of heart than all the 
 studied phrases which are in use among us, and which 
 politeness almost always makes use of at the expense oi 
 sincerity. After this first compliment many other friendly 
 questions are asked, about the health of the family, men- 
 tioning each of the children distinctly, whose names they 
 know," &c. If the forms of salutation among the ancient 
 Jewish peasants took up as much time as those of the 
 modern Egyptians that belong to that rank of life, it is no 
 wonder the prophet commanded his servant to abstain 
 from saluting those he might meet with, when sent to 
 recover the child of the Shunamitess to life : they that have 
 attributed this order to haste have done right'; but they 
 ought to have shown the tediousness of eastern compli- , 
 ments. — Harmer . 
 
 Salutations at meeting, are not less common in the East 
 than in the countries of Europe ; but are generally con- 
 fined to those of their own nation, or religious party. 
 When the Arabs salute each other, it is generally in these 
 terms : Solum aleikum, peace be with you ; laying, as they 
 utter the words, the right hand on the heart. The answer 
 is, Aleikum essalum, with you be peace ; to which aged 
 people are inclined to add, " and the mercy and blessing of 
 GoQ." The Mohammedans of Egypt and Syria never 
 sahite a Christian in these terms ; they content themselves 
 with saying to them, "Good-day to you," or, " Friend, how 
 do you do '?" Niebuhr's statement is confirmed by Mr. 
 Bruce, who says, that some Arabs, to whom he gave the 
 salam, or salutation of peace, either made no reply, or ex- 
 pressed their astonishment at his impudence in using such 
 freedom. Thus it appears, that the Orientals have two 
 kinds of salutations ; one for strangers, and the other for 
 their own countrymen, or persons of their own religious 
 
 Profession. The Jews in the days of our Lord, seem to 
 ave generally observed the same custom; they would not 
 address the usual compliment of " Peace be to you," to 
 either heathens or publicans ; the publicans of the Jewish 
 nations would use it to their countrymen who were pub- 
 licans, but not to heathens ; though the more rigid Jew* 
 refu.sed to do it either to publicans or heathens. Our Lord 
 required his disciples to lay aside the moroseness of Jews, 
 and cherish a benevolent disposition towards all around 
 them : " If ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more 
 than others'? Do not"^even the publicans so ?" They were 
 bound by the same authority, to embrace their brethren in 
 Christ with a special affection, yet they were to look upon 
 every man as a brother, to feel a sincere and cordial inte- 
 
Chap. 5. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 281 
 
 rest in his welfare, and to express, at meeting, their benevo- 
 lence, in language corresponding with the feelings of their 
 hearts. This precept is not inconsistent with the charge 
 which the prophet Elisha gave to his servant Gehazi, not 
 to salute any man he met, nor return his salutation ; for he 
 wished him to make all the haste in his power to restore 
 .he child of the Shunamite, who had laid him under so 
 many obligations. The manners of the country rendered 
 Elisha's precautions particularly proper and necessary, as 
 the salutations of the East often take up a long time. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 39. And one went out into the field to gather 
 herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered 
 thereof wild gourds his lapful, and came and 
 shred them into the pot of pottage: for they 
 knew them not. 
 
 Their common pottage in the East is made by cutting 
 their meat into little pieces, and boiling them with rice, 
 flour, and parsley, all which is afterward poured into a 
 proper vessel. This in their language is called Shoorba. 
 Parsley is used in this Shoorba, and a great many other 
 herbs, in their cookery. These are not always gathered 
 out of gardens, even by those that live in a more settled 
 way than the Arabs : for Russel, after having given a long 
 account of the garden stuff at Aleppo, tells us, that besides 
 those from culture, the fields afford bugloss, mallow, aspar- 
 agus, which they use as potherbs, besides some others which 
 they use in salads. This is the more extraordinary, as they 
 have such a number of gardens about Aleppo, and will 
 take off all wonder from the story of one's going into the 
 fields, to gather herbs, to put into the pottage of the sons of 
 the prophets, 2 Kings iv. 39, in a time when indeed Ahab, 
 and doubtless some others, had gardens of herbs ; but it is 
 not to be supposed things were so brought under culture as 
 in later times. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 39, And one went out into the field to gather 
 herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered 
 thereof wild gourds his lapful, and came and 
 I shred them into the pot of pottage: for they 
 
 f ' knew them not. 40. So they poured out for 
 the men to eat: and it came to pass, as they 
 were eating of the pottage, that they cried out 
 and said, O thou man of God, there is death in 
 the pot : and they could not eat thereof. 
 
 In the vales near Jordan, in the neighbourhood of Jericho, 
 not far from the Dead Sea, is found, growing in great abun- 
 dance, the vine of Sodom, a plant, from the fields around 
 that devoted city, which produces grapes as bitter as gall, 
 and wine as deadly as the poison of a serpent. This dele- 
 terious fruit is mentioned by Moses in terms which fully 
 justify the assertion : " For their vine is of the vine of 
 Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah ; their grapes are 
 grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter, their wine is the 
 poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps." It is 
 probably the wild vine, a species of gourd, which produces 
 the coloquintida, a fruit so excessively bitter that it cannot 
 be eaten ; and when given in medicine, proves a purgative 
 so powerful, as to be frequently followed by excoriation of 
 the vessels, and hemorrhage. It seems therefore to have 
 been early, and not without reason, considered as poisonous. 
 It was of this wild vine the sons of the prophets ate; and 
 its instantaneous effect, together with their knowledge of 
 its violent action, easily accounts for their alarm. Another 
 species of wild vine, but of a milder character, which 
 grows in Palestine, near the highways and hedges, is the 
 ; Labrusca. Its fruit is a very small grape, which becomes 
 ■ black when ripe ; but often it does not ripen at all. These 
 are the wild grapes to which the prophet compares the in- 
 ' nabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah : " And he 
 ^ooked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought 
 forth wild grapes." They are also the sour grapes to which 
 another inspired prophet alludes, when he predicts the de- 
 stroying judgments that were coming upon his rebellious 
 I people : " In those days they shall say no more, The fathers 
 1 nave eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on 
 36 
 
 edge. — Everyman that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall 
 be set on edge." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 42. And there came a man from Baal-shali- 
 sha, and brought the man of God bread of the 
 first-fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears 
 of corn in the husk thereof: and he said, Give 
 unto the people, that they may eat. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 14. 3, 
 
 The margin has, instead of in the husk, " in his scrip or 
 garment." I think the marginal reading is better than the 
 text. In what was the man to carry the ears of corn 1 In 
 what may be seen every day — " in his scrip or garment." 
 In the mantle (like a scarf) the natives carry many things : 
 thus the petty merchant takes some of his ware, and the 
 traveller nis rice. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 6. And he brought the letter to the king of 
 Israel, saying, Now, when this letter is come 
 unto thee, behold, I have thereioith sent Naa- 
 man my servant to thee, that thou may est re- 
 cover him of his leprosy. 
 
 Schultens observes that, " the right understanding of this 
 passage depends on the custom of expelling lepers, and 
 other infectious persons, from camps or cities, and re- 
 proachfully driving them into solitary places; and that 
 when these persons were cleansed and readmitted into cities 
 or camps, they were said to be recollecti, gathered again 
 from their leprosy, and again received into that society from 
 which they had been cut off." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, 
 and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely 
 come out to me, and stand and call on the name 
 of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over 
 the place, and recover the leper. 
 
 Naaman thought that the prophet would effect his cure 
 sooner and more certainly if he touched him with his hand, 
 and, as it were, invigorated him by an effusion of his heal- 
 ing power. Then, as in later times, those who effected 
 such miraculous cures were accustomed to touch the pa- 
 tient. Thus, Jan Mocquet says, "when the sick were 
 brought to the sheik of the Arabian Santons, (religious,) 
 he touched either their right arm or foot, or stroked their 
 breast and forehead, after money had been offered him." 
 Among all nations superstition considers the touch as the 
 
 Principal requisite of a miraculous cure. Hans Egede, in 
 is Greenland Mission, says, '* A Greenland man and 
 woman requested me to blow upon their sick child, or to 
 lay my hands upon it: they hoped that it would recover. 
 Many more sick Greenlanders begged the same favour from 
 me, because they considered me as a prophet, whom they 
 believed able to cure the sick in a supernatural manner." 
 
 — R OSENMULLER. 
 
 When , they consulted a prophet, the eastern modes 
 required a present ; and they might think it was right rather 
 to present him with eatables than other things, because it 
 frequently happened that they were detained there some 
 time, waiting the answer of God, during which time hospi- 
 tality would require the prophet to ask them to take some 
 repast with him. And as the prophet would naturally treat 
 them with some regard to their quality, they doubtless did 
 then, as the Egyptians do now, proportion their presents to 
 their avowed rank and number of attendants. The pres- 
 ent of Jeroboam's wife was that of a woman in affluent 
 circumstances, though it by no means determined her to be a 
 princess. That made to the prophet Samuel, was the pre- 
 sent of a person that expected to be treated like a man in low 
 life ; how great then must be his surprise, first to be treated 
 with distinguished honour in a large company, and then to 
 be anointed king over Israel ! 
 
 But though this seems to have been the original ground 
 of presenting common eatables to persons who M'ere visited 
 at their own houses, I would by no means be understood to 
 aflirm they have always kept to this, and presented eatables 
 
'28^ 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 wheL they expected to stay with them and take some repast, 
 and other things when they did not. Accuracy is not to 
 be expected in such matters : the observation, however, nat- 
 urally accounts for the rise of this sort of presents. In 
 other cases, the presents that anciently were, and of late 
 have wont to be made to personages eminent for study and 
 piety, were large sums of money, or vestments : so the pres- 
 ent that a Syrian nobleman would have made to an Israel- 
 itish prophet, with whom he did not expect to stay any 
 time, or indeed to enter in his house, " Behold, I thought. He 
 will certainly come out to me, and stand, and call on the 
 name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the 
 place, and recover the leper," consisted of ten talents of 
 silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of 
 raiment. It is needless to mention the pecuniary gratifica- 
 tions that have been given to men of learning "in the East 
 in later times ; but as to vestments, D'Herbelot tells ns, 
 that Bokhteri, an illustrious poet of Cufah, in the ninth 
 century, had so many presents made him in the course of 
 his life, that at his death he was found possessed of a hun- 
 dred complete suits of clothes, two hundred shirts, and five 
 hundred turbans. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 9. So Naaman came with his horses and 
 with his chariot, and stood at the door of the 
 house of Elisha. 10. And Elisha sent a mes- 
 senger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jor- 
 dan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again 
 to thee, and thou shalt be clean. 
 
 Elisha's not appearing to receive the Syrian general, is 
 ascribed by some to the retired course of life which the 
 prophets led; but then, why did he see him, and enter 
 into conversation with him, when he returned from his 
 cure 1 I should rather think, that it was not misbecoming 
 the prophet, upon this occasion, to take some state upon 
 him, and to support the character and dignity of a prophet 
 of the most high God ; especially, since this might be a 
 means to raise the honour of his religion and ministry, 
 >and to give Naaman a Tighter idea of his miraculous cure, 
 when he found that it was neither by the prayer nor 
 presence of the prophet, but by the divine power and good- 
 ,ness, that it was eifected. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 18. In this thing the Lord pardon thy ser- 
 vant, that when my master goeth into the house 
 of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on 
 my hand, and I bow myself in the house of 
 Rimmon; when I bow down myself in the 
 house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy ser- 
 vant in this thing. 
 
 It is amusing to see full-grown men. as they walk^along 
 ■ the road, like schoolboys at home, leaning on each other's 
 hands. Those who are weak, or sick, lean on another's 
 shoulder. It is also a mark of friendship to lean on the 
 shoulder of a companion. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. So Gehazi followed after Naaman. And 
 when Naaman saw him running after him, he 
 lighted down from the chariot to meet him, and 
 said. Is all well ? 
 
 The alighting of those that ride is considered in the East 
 AJ an expression of deep respect ; so Dr. Pococke tells us, 
 that they are wont to descend from their asses in Egypt, 
 when they come near some tombs there, and that Christians 
 and Jews are obliged to submit to this. So Hasselquisl 
 tells Linnaeus, in one of his letters to him, that Christians 
 were obliged to alight from their asses in Egypt, when they 
 met with commanders of the soldiers there. This he com- 
 plains of as a bitter indignity ; but they that received the 
 compliment, without doubt, required it as a most pleasing 
 piece of respect. Achsah's and Abigail's alighting, were 
 without doubt then intended as expressions of reverence : 
 but is it to be imagined, that Naaman's alighting from his 
 chariot, when Gehazi ran after him, arose from the same 
 principle 1 If it did, there was a mighty change in this 
 haughty Syrian after his cure. That he should pay such a 
 reverence to a servant of the prophet must appear very 
 
 surprising, yet we can hardly think the historian would 
 have mentioned this circumstance so very distinctly in any 
 other view. Rebecca's alighting from the camel on which 
 she rode, when Isaac came to meet her, is by no means any 
 proof that the considering this as an expression of rev- 
 erence, is a modern thing in the East; it, on the contrary, ' 
 strongly reminds one of D'Arvieux's account of a bride's 
 throwing herself at the feet of the bridegroom when solemnly 
 presented to him, which obtains among the Arabs. 
 
 We met a Turk, says Dr. Richard Chandler, in his 
 Asiatic travels, " a person of distinction, as appeared from 
 his turban. He was on horseback with a single attendant. 
 Our janizary and Armenians respectfully alighted, and 
 made him a profound obeisance, the former kissing the rim 
 of his garment." So Niebuhr tells us, that at Kahira, 
 Grand Cairo, " the Jews and Christians, who, it may be, 
 alighted at first through fear or respect, when a Mohamme- 
 dan with a great train on horseback met them, are now 
 obliged to pay this compliment to above thirty of the prin- 
 cipal people of that city. When these appear in public, they 
 always cause a domestic to go before to give notice to the 
 Jews and Greeks, and even the Europeans that they meet 
 with, to get ofl^ their asses as soon as possible, and they are 
 qualified on occasion to force them with a great club, which 
 they always carry in their hands." — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 21. So Gehazi followed after Naaman: and 
 when Naaman saw him running after him, he 
 lighted down from the chariot to meet him, and 
 said, Is all well ? [Heb. margin, Is there peace ?] 
 22. And he said. All is well. 
 
 I never read this passage without fancying a Malabar 
 man running after the chariot, and on being met by Naa- 
 man, making a most profound bow, and uttering the word 
 selarit, peace — the word used on this occasion, and still in 
 use among millions in the East.— Callaway. 
 
 Ver. 27. The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall 
 cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. 
 And he went out from his presence a leper as 
 white as snoAv. 
 
 This was said by Elisha to Gehazi, because he ran after 
 Naaman, (who had been cured of his leprosy) and said, his 
 master had sent him to take "a talent of silver, and two 
 changes of garments," and because he actually took posses- 
 sion of them. There is an account in the Hindoo book, 
 called Seythv^Purdna, of a leper who went to Ramiserara 
 to bathe, in order to be cured of his complaint. He per- 
 formed the required ceremonies, but the priests refused his 
 offerings. At last a Bramin came: in the moment of 
 temptation he took the money, and immediately the leprosy 
 of the pilgrim took possession of his body ! This complaint 
 is believwl to come in consequence of great sin, and there- 
 fore no one likes to receive any reward or present from a 
 person infected with leprosy. 
 
 There are many children born white, though their 
 parents are quite black. These are not lepers, but albi- 
 nos; and are the same as the white negroes of Africa. 
 To see a man of that kind almost naked, and walking among 
 the natives, has an unpleasant effect on the mind, and leads 
 a person to suspect that all has not been right. Their skiii^ 
 has generally a. slight tinge of red, their hair is light, thei 
 eyes are weak : and when they walk in the sun, they hanj 
 down their heads. The natives do not consider this 
 disease, but a birth, i. e. produced by the sins of a forme] 
 birth. It is believed to be a great misfortune to have { 
 child of that description, and there is reason to believe tha| 
 many of them are destroyed. The parents of such an ini 
 fant believe ruin will come to their family ; and ihe pooi 
 object, if spared, has generally a miserable existence. Hi 
 name, in Tamul, is Pdndan : and this is an epithet assign 
 ed to those, also.'who are not white, for the purpose of ma 
 king them angrv. The general name for Europeans in th| 
 East is Pranky,' (which is a corruption of the word Frank- 
 Hence these white Hindoos are, by way of contempt, calle< 
 Pranky ! Should a man who is going to transact impor 
 ant business, meet one of them on the road, it will be cob 
 sidered a verv bad sign, and he will not enter into tl 
 transaction till" another dav. Should a person who is giving 
 a feast have a relation of that description, he will inviV 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 S83 
 
 him, but the guests will not look upon him with pleasure. 
 Women have a great aversion to them, and yet they some- 
 times marry them; and if they have children, they seldom 
 take after the father. I have only heard of two white 
 Hindoo females; which leads me to suspect that such in- 
 fants are generally destroyed at the birth; as, were they 
 allowed to grow up, no one would marry them. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 12. And one of his servants said, None, my 
 lord, O king : but Elisha, the prophet that is in 
 Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that 
 thou speakest in thy bedchamber. 
 
 It is not to be doubted, but that Naaman, upon his return 
 from Samaria, spread the fame of Elisha so much in the 
 court of Syria, that some of the great men there might 
 have a curiosity to make a further inquiry concerning 
 him; and being informed by several of his miraculous 
 works, they might thence conclude that he could tell the 
 greatest secrets, as well as perform such works as were 
 related of him; and that therefore, in all probability, he 
 was the person who gave the king of Israel intelligence 
 of all the schemes that had been attempted to entrap him. 
 — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 15. And when the servant of the man of God 
 , was risen early, and gone forth, behold, a host 
 
 I compassed the city, both with horses and char- 
 iots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my 
 master! how shall we do? 16. And he an- 
 swered. Fear not; for they that be with us are 
 more than they that Je with them. 17. And 
 Elisha prayed, and said. Lord, I pray thee, 
 open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord 
 opened the eyes of the young man : and he 
 saw, and, behold, the mountain was full of 
 horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. 
 
 This young man, it is supposable, had been but a little 
 while with his master, no longer than since Gehazi's dis- 
 mission, and therefore perhaps had not yet seen any great 
 experiments of his power to work miracles; or if he had, 
 the great and imminent danger he thought his master in, 
 (for in all probability he had learned from the people of the 
 town, that this vast body of men were come to apprehend 
 him only,) might well be allowed to raise his fear, and shake 
 his faith. 
 
 It must be allowed that angels, whether they be purely 
 spiritual, or (as others think) clothed with some material 
 form, cannot be seen by mortal eyes ; and therefore as 
 Elisha himself, without a peculiar vouchsafement of God, 
 could not discern the heavenly host, which, at this time, en- 
 camped about him ; so he requests of God, that, for the re- 
 moval of his fears, and the confirmation of his faith, his 
 servant might be indulged the same privilege : nor does it 
 seem unlikely, that, from such accounts as these, that have 
 descended by tradition, that notion among the Greeks, of a 
 certain mist, which intercepts the sight of their gods from 
 the ke7i of human eyes, might at first borrow its original. — 
 Stackhoose. 
 
 Ver. 25. And there was a great famine in Sama- 
 ria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's 
 head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and 
 the fourth part of a cab of doves' dung for five 
 pieces of silver. • 
 
 The Tamul translation for " doves' dung," is " doves' 
 grain ;" which is known in the East by the name of Kdra- 
 f/ii7ine-pim. Dr. Boothroyd translates it " a cab of vetches," 
 which amounts to about the same thing. Bochart, Dr. 
 Clarke, and many others, believe it to have been pulse. 
 The Orientals are exceeding fond of eating leguminous 
 grains, when parched. I have often eaten the pulse which 
 pigeons are so fond of, and have found it very wholesome, 
 either in puddings or soup; (Lev. xx.ii. 14, Ruth ii. 14, 
 2 Sam. xvii. 28;) and it is surprising to see what a great 
 
 distance they will travel on only that food and water. It 
 was therefore in consequence of the famine, that this, theii • 
 
 favourite, and generally very cheap, sustenance, was so 
 dear. Of what use would " a cab of doves' dung" be unto 
 them '? Some say, in explanation, it was good for manure ! 
 What were they to live upon till the manure had produced 
 the grain 1 — Roberts. 
 
 Among the Jews, the ass was considered as an unclean 
 animal, because it neither divides the hoof nor chews the 
 cud. It c.iuld neither be used as food, nor offered in sa- 
 crifice. I'he firstling of an ass, like those of camels, horses, 
 and other unclean animals, was to be redeemed with the 
 sacrifice of a lamb, or deprived of life. In cases of extreme 
 want, however, this law was disregarded ; for when the 
 Syrian arnfiies besieged Samaria, the inhabitants were so 
 reduced, that " an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces 
 of silver." Some writers, however, contend, that the term 
 linn hamor does not signify an ass, in this passage, but is the 
 same as ->Din homer, a certain measure of grain. But this 
 view of the passage cannot be admitted. We know what 
 is meant by the head of an ass ; but the head of a homer, 
 or measure of wheat or barley, is quite unintelligible. Nor 
 could the sacred writer say with propriety, that the city was 
 suffering by a " great famine," while a homer of grain was 
 sold for eighty pieces of silver ; for in the next chapter he 
 informs us, thai, after the flight of the Syrians, and pro- 
 visions of every kind, by the sudden return of plenty, were 
 reduced to the lowest price, " a measure of fine flour (which 
 is the thirtieth part of a homer) was sold for a shekel, and 
 two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Sama- 
 ria." Besides, had the historian intended a measure of 
 com, he would not have said indefinitely, a homer was sold 
 for eighty pieces of silver; but a homer of wheat, or of 
 barley, or of oats, which are not of the same value. The 
 prophet accordingly says, in the beginning of the next 
 chapter, " a measure of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, 
 and two measures of barley for a shekel :" And John, in 
 the book of Revelation ; " a measure of wheat for a penny, 
 and'three measures of barley for a' penny." Our transla- 
 tors, therefore, have taken a just view of this text, and given 
 a correct version. It is reasonable to suppose, that the ass 
 was not the last to suffer in the siege of Samaria. Hardly 
 treated in times of peace and abundance, he must have 
 been left to shift; for himself in such circumstances, in a 
 place where the hunger of the inhabitants compelled them 
 to devour every green thing; and have rapidly sunk into a 
 poor and wretched condition. How great must that famine 
 have been, and how dreadful the distress to which the peo- 
 ple were reduced, when they gave three times the price of 
 the live animal, for that part of him which could yield 
 ihem at any time only a few pounds of dry and unpalatable 
 food, but v.hcn emaciated by famine, only a few morsels of 
 carrion. Extreme must have been the sufferings which 
 extinguished the powerful influence of religious principle, 
 and natural aversion to a species of food so disagreeable 
 and pernicious; and not only prevailed upon them to use it, 
 but even to devour it with greediness. — Paxton. 
 
 The royal city of Samaria was so severely distressed, 
 when a certain king of Syria besieged it, that we are told 
 a7i ass\- head then sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the 
 fourth fart of a cab of doves' dung for five pieces : this last 
 article has been thought to be so unfit for food, that it has 
 been very commonly imagined, I think, that a species of 
 pulse M^as meant by that term ; nevertheless, I cannot but 
 think it much the most probable, that proper doves' dung 
 was meant by the prophetic historian, since, though it can 
 hardly he imagined, it was bought directly for food, it might 
 be bought for the purpose of more speedily raising a supply 
 of certain esculent vegetables, and in greater quantities 
 which must have been a matter of great consequence t(! 
 the Israelites, shut up so straitly in Samaria. Had the 
 kali of the scriptures been meant, how came it to pass that 
 the common word was not made use of? Josephus and the 
 Septuagint suppose that proper doves' dung was meant, and 
 the following considerations may make their sentiment ap- 
 pear far from improbable. 
 
 All allow that melons are a most refreshing food, in those 
 hot countries. And Chardin says, " melons are served up 
 at the tables of the luxurious almost all the year ; but the 
 proper season lasts four months, at which time they are 
 eaten by the common people. They hardly eat any thing 
 but melons and cucumbers at that time." He adds, " that 
 
2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 7. 
 
 during these four melon months, they are brought in such 
 quantities to Ispahan, that he believed more were eaten in 
 what city in one day, than in all France in a month." On 
 the other hand, he tells us, in another volume, that they 
 have a multitude of dove-houses in Persia, which they keep 
 up more for their dung than any thing else. This being 
 the substance with which they manure their melon-beds, 
 and which makes them so good and so large. Now if 
 melons were half so much in request in those days in Judea, 
 as they are now in Persia, it might be natural enough to 
 express the great scarcity of provisions there, by observing 
 an ass's head, which, according to their law was an unclean 
 animal, sold for fourscore pieces of silver ; and a small 
 •quantity of that dung that was most useful to quicken vege- 
 tation, as well as to increase those productions of the earth 
 which were so desirable in those hot climates, that a small 
 <iuantity, I say, of that substance should, in such circum- 
 stances, be sold for. five such pieces. At least it is probable 
 thus the Septuagint and Josephus understood the passage, 
 if we should think it incredible that melons were in very 
 common use in the days of Joram king of Israel. Josephus, 
 in particular, says this dung was purchased for its salt, 
 which can hardly mean to be used, by means of some prepa- 
 ration, as table salt, but as containing salt proper for ma- 
 nuring the earth. The prophet Elisha, in that very age, 
 put salt into a spring of water, to express the imparting to 
 it the quality of making the land watered by it fruitful, 
 which land had been before barren, (2 Kings ii. 19 — 22,) to 
 ■which event Josephus could be no stranger. It has been 
 objected to this interpretation : that if the doves' dung 
 was for manure^ (for this interpretation is not a new one, 
 but wanted to be better illustrated,) that there could be no 
 room for growing any kind of vegetable food within the 
 walls of a royal city, when besieged ; but has any one a 
 right to take this for granted'? when it is known that there 
 is a good deal of ground unbuilt upon now in the royal 
 cities of the East; that Naboth had a vineyard in Jezreel, 
 a place of royal residence a few years before ; that Samaria 
 was a new-built city; and that in the time of distress, every 
 void place might naturally be made use of to raise a species 
 of food, that with due cultivation, in our climate, is brought 
 to perfection, from the time of its sowing, in four months, 
 and at the same time is highly refreshing. When we reflect 
 on these things, the supposition appears not at all improba- 
 ble. We do not know when the siege commenced, or how 
 long it continued; that of Jerusalem, in the time of Zed- 
 ekiah, lasted a year and a half; but the time that this dung 
 was purchased at so dear a rate, we may believe was early 
 in the spring, for then they begin to raise melons at Aleppo, 
 and as they were then so oppressed with want, it is probable 
 that it was not long after that they were delivered. 
 
 This explanation will appear less improbable, if we rec- 
 ollect the account already given, of the siege of Damietta, 
 where some of the more delicate Egyptians pined to death, 
 according to Vitriaco, though they had a sufficiency of corn^ 
 for the want of the food they were used to, pumpions, fkc. 
 The Israelites might be willing then, had their stores been 
 more abixndant than they were found to have been, to add 
 what they could to them, and especially of such grateful 
 eatables as melons, and such like.— Harmer. 
 
 Formerly great attention v/as paid to the nurturing and 
 rearing of these birds, (pigeons,) their dung bringing in a 
 yearly income, from the produce of one pigeon-house alone, 
 of nearly two hundred tomauns. Among other uses to 
 which the small remains of this manure is applied, it is laid 
 on the melon-beds of Ispahan ; and hence the great reputa- 
 tion of the melon of that district for its unequalled flavour. 
 Another use of the dung in older times was to extract salt- 
 petre, for the purpose of making gunpowder ; which, two 
 centuries ago, had only just been put into the Persian list 
 of warlike ammunition.— Sir R. K. Porter. 
 
 The dung of pigeons is the dearest manure that the 
 Persians use: and as they apply it almost entirely for the 
 rearing of melons, it is probably on that account that the 
 melons of Ispahan are so much finer than those of other 
 cities. The revenue of a pis:eon-honse is about a hundred 
 tomauns per annum ; and the great value of this dung, 
 which rears a fruit that is indispensable to the existence of 
 the natives during the great heats of summer, will probably 
 throw some Hsfht upon that passage in scripture, where, in 
 he famine of Samaria, the fourth part of a cab of doves' 
 dung was sold for five pieces oi' silver.— Morier. 
 
 Ver. 32. But Elisha sat in his house, and the el- 
 ders sat with him : and the k'mg sent a man 
 from before him : but ere the messenger came 
 to him, he said to the elders, See ye how this 
 son of a murderer hath sent to take away my 
 head ? look, when the messenger cometh, shut 
 the door, and hold him fast at the door : is not 
 the sound of his master's feet behind him ? 
 
 See on Prov. 16. 14. 
 
 This form of speech is used to denote the rapid approach 
 of a person. When boys at school are making a great 
 noise, or doing any thing which they ought not, some one 
 will say, " I hear the sound of the master's feet." Are peo- 
 ple preparing triumphal arches, (made of leaves,) or 
 cleaning the rest-house of a great man, some of them keep 
 saying, " Quick, quick, I hear the sound of his feet." " Alas, 
 alas ! how long you have been ! do we not hear even the 
 sound of the judge's feet 7" — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 10. So they came, and called unto the porter 
 of the city ; and they told them, saying, We came 
 to the camp of the Syrians, and, behold, there icas 
 no man there, neither voice of man, but horses 
 tied, and asses tied, and the tents as they were. 
 
 From the circumstances recorded concerning the flight 
 of the Syrians, it appears to have been remarkably precipi- 
 tate. That they were not altogether unprepared for a hasty 
 departure may be inferred from comparing this passage 
 with the following extract (from Memoirs reMive to Egypt, 
 p. 300.) "As soon as the Arabs are apprehensive oTan 
 attack, they separate into several small camps, at a great 
 distance from each other, and tie their camels to the tents, 
 so as to be able to move oflf" at a moment's notice." Such 
 a precaution is not probably peculiar to the modern Arabs, 
 but might be adopted by the Syrian army. If this was the 
 case, it shows with what great fear God filled their minds, 
 that though prepared as usual for a quick march, they were 
 not able to avail themselves of the advantage, but were 
 constrained to leave every thing behind them as a prey to 
 their enemies. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 12. And the king arose in the night, and 
 said unto his servants, I will now show you 
 what the Syrians have done to us : They know 
 that we be hungry, therefore are they gone oat 
 of the camp to hide themselves in the field, say- 
 ing. When they come out of the city, we shall 
 catch them alive, and get into the city. 
 
 In the history of the revolt of Ali Bey, we have an ac- 
 count of a transaction very similar to the stratagem sup- 
 posed to have been practised by the Syrians. The pacha 
 of Damascus having approached the Sea of Tiberias, found 
 Sheik Daher encamped there; but the sheik deferring the 
 engagement till the next morning, during the night divided 
 his army into three parts, and left the camp with great fires 
 blazing, all sorts of provisions, and a large quantity of 
 spirituous liquors, giving strict orders not to hinder the 
 enemy from taking possession of the camp, but to come 
 down and attack just before the dawn of day. In the mid- 
 dle of the night, the pacha thought to surprise Sheik Daher, 
 and marched in silence to the camp, which, to his great 
 astonishment, he found entirely abandoned ; and imagined 
 tlie sheik had fled with so much precipitation, that he could 
 not carry ofl^ the baggage and stores. The pacha thought 
 proper to stop in the camp and refresh his soldiers. They 
 soon fell to plunder, and drank so freely of the liquors, 
 that, overcome with the fatigue of the day's march, and the! 
 fumes of the spirits, they were not long ere they sunk intq 
 a profound sleep. At that time two sheiks, who were watch- 
 ing the enemy, came silentlv to the camp, and Daher hav- 
 ing repassed "the Sea of Tiberias, meeting them, they all 
 rushed into the camp, and fell upon the sleeping foe, eight 
 thousand of whom they butchered on the spot; and ihd 
 pacha, with the: remainder of the troops, escaped witi 
 
Chap. 8. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 285 
 
 much difficulty to Damascus, leaving all their baggage 
 in the hands of the victorious Daher, — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 15. And they went after them unto Jordan; 
 and, lo, all the way was full of garments and 
 vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in 
 their haste : and the messengers returned, and 
 told the king. 
 
 The flight of the Syrians, in the reign of Jehoram, king 
 ot Israel, was produced by a panic, which so completely 
 immanned them, that, says the sacred historian, " all the 
 way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians 
 had cast away in their haste." The flight of Saladin's 
 army, which was defeated by Baldwin IV. near Gaza, in 
 the time of the crusades, was marked with similar circum- 
 stances of consternation and terror. To flee with greater 
 expedition, they threw away their arms and clothes, their 
 coats of mail, their greaves, and other pieces of armour, and 
 abandoned their baggage, and fled from their pursuers, al- 
 most in a state of complete nudity.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. And it came to pass, as the man of God 
 
 had spoken to the king, saying. Two measures 
 
 of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine 
 
 flour for a shekel, shall be to-morrow, about 
 
 this time, in the gate t)f S«maria. 
 
 In ouV rides we usually went out of town at the Der- 
 
 wazeh Shah Abdul Ajzeem, or the gate leading to the village 
 
 i of Shah Abdul Azeem, where a market was held every 
 
 morning, particularly of horses, mules, asses, and camels. 
 
 At about sunrise, the owners of the animals assemble and 
 
 exhibit them for sale. But, besides, here were sellers of 
 
 all sorts of goods, in temporary shops and tents; and this, 
 
 perhaps, will explain the custom alluded to in 2 Kings vii. 
 
 18, of the sale of barley and flour in the gate of Samaria. 
 
 ( Morier. ) — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 9. So Hazael went to meet him, and took a 
 present with him, even of every good thing of 
 Damascus, forty camels' burden, and came and 
 stood before him, and said, Thy son Ben-hadad, 
 king of Syria, hath sent me to thee, saying, 
 Shall I recover of this disease ? 
 
 See on Gen. 43. 25. 
 
 These animals, when not loaded beyond their strength, 
 submit with great patience. " When they are to be loaded, 
 they bend their knees at the voice of their driver : but if 
 they delay doing so, thej are struck with a stick, or their 
 knees forced downward, and then, as if constrained and 
 groaning after their way, thev bend their knees, put their 
 bellies against the ground, and remain in that posture til!, 
 afl;er having been loaded, they are commanded to rise."— 
 Burder. 
 
 The Syrian prince, on this occasion, in which he felt a 
 particular interest, no doubt sent Elisha a present corres- 
 
 fjondingwith his rank and magnificence; but it can scarce- 
 ly be supposed that so many camels were required to carry 
 it, or that the king would send, as a Jewish writer supposes 
 he did, so great a quantity of provisions to one man. The 
 ;meaning of this passage certainly is, that the various arti- 
 cles of which the present consisted, according to the modern 
 custom of oriental courts, were carried on a number of 
 Icamels for the sake of state, and that not fewer than forty 
 were employed in the cavalcade. That these camels were 
 not fully laden, must be evident from this, that the common 
 load of a Turkman's camel is eight hundred pounds weight ; 
 and consequently, thirty-two thousand pounds weight is the 
 .proper loading of forty camels; "if they were only of 
 the Arab breed, twenty thousand pounds weight was their 
 » .proper loading ;" a present, as Mr. Harmer justly remarks, 
 too enormous to be sent bv any one person to another. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 12. And Hazael said, Why weepeth my 
 lord? And he answered, Because I know the 
 evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Is- 
 
 rael : their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, 
 and their young men wilt thou slay with the 
 sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up 
 their women with child. 
 
 This piece of cruelty has in some instances been prac- 
 tised on men. " Soon after Djezzer bought the Pashalik 
 of Damascus, coming to gather che tribute of Jerusalem 
 and the neighbourhood, he pitched his camp at the village 
 of Yenin, overlooking the plain of Esdraelon. An Arab 
 woman came to complain to him that one of his soldiers 
 had drank her milk, and refused to pay her. He went 
 always armed with a sabre, yategan, and pistols, which, 
 when he ate, lay by his side. Taking up his yategan, 
 ' Follow me,' he said, ' and point out the man.' She did so, 
 and he bade her be sure, as a mistake would cost her her 
 life. Having asked the soldier if the accusati(m were true, 
 and he denying it, he ripped him up, and the milk immedi- 
 ately poured out of his bleeding stomach. Seeing thus 
 that the woman was right, he gave her two sequins, and 
 sent her away. The soldier he left dead on the ground." 
 (Turner.) The same piece of cruelty was practised by 
 Timour. It is said that Mohammed the Second ripped up 
 fourteen of his pages to find a melon. — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 15. And it came to pass on the morrow, that 
 he took a thick cloth, and dipped it in water, 
 and spread it on his face, so that he died : and 
 Hazael reigned in his stead. 
 
 An English proverb says, " Give a dog an ill name, and 
 it will hang him :" much in the spirit of this proverb has 
 been the general treatment of the character of Hazael, 
 who, because he calls himself " a dog," has been treated 
 with great indignity. Certainly, Hazael can be no fa- 
 vourite character with any upright mind ; yet perhaps it is 
 but justice to suggest what may render his murder of his 
 master. King Benhadad, by means of a cloth dipped in 
 water, at least dubious, without calling it well-intended on 
 his part. In reading the history, (2 Kings viii. 15,) it is 
 nothing less than natural to suppose, that Hazael must 
 have had, professedly at least, some fair pretence, some ap- 
 pearance of propriety in the action ; or why did not those 
 in attendance on their sovereign prevent his proceedings 1 
 Was Hazael the only person present, or in waiting on the 
 sick king 1 It is by no means likely ; in fact, it is scarcely 
 supposable; but if we conceive that Hazael offered to the 
 king either a kind of remedy usual in the disorder, which 
 nevertheless failed to cure him ; or an assistance, of which 
 he took advantage to murder his master; then we reduce 
 his behaviour to plausibility, and to the custom of the 
 country in such diseases. Olsserve also, the text does not 
 say expressly he did kill him ; but " he took a thick cloth, 
 and dipped it in water, and spread it over the king's face, 
 (or person,) and he died." It is usually said, he was chilled 
 to death ; but on reading the following extracts, we shall 
 probably admit that this is an English notion, resulting 
 from our climate and manners, &c. applied to an eastern 
 disease, and to a country wherein both climate and man- 
 ners are essentially difl^erent. If it be said Hazael stifled 
 the king by means of the cloth spread over his face, it 
 might be so ; but we should do well to remark, that the 
 easterns are accustomed to sleep with their faces covered; 
 Iha* Hazael hardly spread it over the king's face only ; that 
 it does not appear the king was asleep ; he might therefore 
 have removed the cloth, had he thought proper; and that 
 whatever the cloth was, it was certainly employed, and the 
 whole action was managed, in a way to prevent suspicion. 
 Let us now hear Mr. Bruce : 
 
 " This fever prevailed in Abyssinia in all low grounds 
 and plains, in the neighbourhood of all rivers which run in 
 valleys ; it is really a malignant tertian, which, however, 
 has so many forms and modes of intermission, that it is im- 
 possible for one not of the faculty to describe it. It is not in 
 all places equally dangerous ; but on the banks and neigh- 
 bourhood of Tacazze, it is particularly fatal. The valley 
 where the river runs is very low and sultry, being full of 
 large trees. It does not prevail in high grounds or moun- 
 tains, or in places much exposed to the air. This fever is 
 called NEDAD, or burning ; it begins always with a shivering 
 and headache, a heavy tye. and an inclination to vomit • 
 

 2 KINGS, 
 
 Chap. 9. 
 
 a violent heat follows, which leaves little .ntermisSion, and 
 ends generally in death the third or Jifth day. In the last 
 stage of the distemper, the belly swells to an enormous size, 
 or sometimes immediately after death, and the body, within 
 an instant, smells most insupportably ; to prevent which, 
 they bury the corpse immediately after the breath is out, and 
 often within the hour. The face has a remarkable yellow 
 appearance, with a blackish cast, as in the last stage of a 
 dropsy, or the atrophy. This fever begins immediately 
 with the sunshine after the first rains ; that is, while there 
 are intervals of rain and sunshine ; it ceases upon the earth 
 being thoroughly soaked, in July and August, and begins 
 again in September ; but now, at the beginning of Novem- 
 ber, it ceases everywhere. Masuah is very unwholesome, 
 as, indeed, is the whole coast of the Red Sea, from Suez to 
 Babelmandel ; but more especially between the tropics. 
 Violent fevers, called there nedad, make the principal 
 figure in this fatal list, and generally determine the third 
 day in death. If the patient survives till the fifth day, he 
 very often recovers, by drinking water only, and throwing 
 a quantity of cold water upon him, even in his bed, where 
 he is permitted to lie, without attempting to make him dry, 
 or to change his bed, till another deluge adds to the first." 
 (Bruce's Travels,) vol. iii. p. 33. 
 
 Do not these extracts render it, in some degree, probable, 
 that Hazael, besides the thick cloth soaked in water, added 
 other chilling remedies 1 in doing which he did no more 
 than is customary in this disease, the nedad ; and, if this 
 kind of fever, or one allied to it, were Benhadad's disease, 
 Hazael might honestly spread a refreshing covering over 
 him. Not expecting his exaltation to royalty so instanta- 
 neously, he might be loyal as yet, though his ambition soon 
 found opportunity to be otherwise. The circumstances of 
 the rapid approaches of death, and' of immediate burial 
 after death, seem very favourable to Hazael's instantly 
 seating himself on the throne : especially if Benhadad haid 
 no son, &c. of proper age to be his successor. — Tayloh in 
 Calmkt. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Vor. 2. And when thou comest thither, look out 
 there Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of 
 Nimshi, and go in, and make him arise up 
 from among his brethren, and carry him to an 
 inner chamber : 3. Then take the box of oil, 
 and pour it on his head, and say, Thus saith 
 the Lord, I have anointed thee king over Is- 
 rael. Then open the door, and flee, and tarry 
 not. 
 
 The fortified cities in Canaan, as in some other countries, 
 were commonly strengthened with a citadel, to which the 
 inhabitants fled when they found it impossible to defend the 
 place. The whole inhabitants of Thebes, unable to resist 
 the repeated and furious assaults of Abimelech, retired into 
 one of those towers, and bid defiance to his rage : " But 
 there was a strong tower within the city, and thither tied 
 all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut ii 
 to them, and gat them up to the top of the tower." The 
 extraordinary strength of this tower, and the various means 
 of defence which were accumulated within its narrow 
 walls, may be inferred from the violence of Abimelech's 
 attack, and its fatal issue: " And Abimelech came unto the 
 tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door 
 of the tower, to bum it with fire. And a certain woman 
 cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all 
 to break his scull." Thexity of Shechem had a tower of 
 the same kind, into which the people retired, when the 
 same usurper took it, and sowed it with salt. These strong 
 towers which were built within a fortified city, were com- 
 monly placed on an eminence, to which they ascended by 
 a flight of steps. Such was the situation of the city of Da- 
 vid, a strong tower, upon a high eminence at Jerusalem ; 
 and the manner of entrance, as described by the sacred 
 ■writer : " But the gate of the fountain repaired Shallum, 
 tinto the stairs that go down from the city of David." It is 
 extremely probable, that Ramoth Gilead, a frontier town 
 belonging to the ten tribes, and in the time of Jehu in their 
 possession, was strengthened by one of these inner towers, 
 Duilt on an eminence, with en approach of this nature. If 
 
 ?llsl 
 be] 
 
 'GIL 
 
 this conjecture be well founded, it throw^s light upon a very 
 obscure passage, where the manner in which Jehu was 
 proclaimed king of Israel, is described. His associates 
 were no sooner informed that the prophet had anointed him 
 king over the ten tribes, than " they hasted and took every 
 man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the 
 stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king." 
 Hence the stairs were not those within the tower, by which j 
 they ascended to the top; but those by which they ascended I 
 the hill, or rising ground on which the tower stood; the! 
 top of the stair will then mean the landing-place in the area 
 before the door of the tower, and by consequence the most 
 public place in the whole city. As it was the custom of 
 those days to inaugurate and proclaim their kings in thei 
 most public places, no spot can be imagined more proper 
 for such a ceremony, than the top of the steps, that is, the 
 most elevated part of the hill, upon which stood the castla 
 of Ramoth Gilead, in the court of which, numbers of people 
 might be assembled, waiting the result of a council of war 
 which was sitting at the time, deliberating on the best 
 method of defending the city against the Syrians, in the 
 absence of their sovereign. — I'axton, 
 
 Ver. 10. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the 
 portion of Jezreel, and there shall he none to 
 bury her. And. he opened the door and fled. 
 
 The Abbe Poiret, in his travels through Barbary, tells \ 
 us, that the severest punishment among the Arabs is to ' 
 cut to pieces and thrown to the dogs. " After this the queei 
 of Mira, concerning whom so many surprising stories had 
 been told of her poisoning the water by drugs and enchant- 
 ments, was, notwithstanding the knovTi partiality of this 
 king for the fair sex, ordered to be hewn in pieces by the 
 soldiers, and her body given to the dogs." (Bruce.)— 
 Border. 
 
 Ver. 13. Then they hasted, and took every maii 
 his garment, and put it under him on the top 
 of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, 
 Jehu is king. 
 
 They laid down their garments instead of carpets. " The 
 use of carpets was common in the East in the remoter ages 
 The kings of Persia always walked upon carpets in theii 
 
 Ealaces. Xenophon reproaches the degenerate Persians ol 
 is time, that they placed their couches upon carpets, to re- 
 pose more at their ease. The spreading of garments in the 
 street before persons to whom it was intended to show par- 
 ticular honour, was an ancient and very general custom. 
 Thus the people spread their clothes in the way before our 
 Saviour, Matthew xxi. 8, where some also strewed branches. 
 In the Agamemnon of iEschylus, the hypocritical Clytem- 
 nestra commands the maids to spread out carpets before 
 her returning husband, that, on descending from his char- 
 iot, he may place his foot on a " purple-covered path." We 
 also find this custom among the Romans. When Cato of 
 Utica left the Macedonian army, where he had become 
 legionary tribune, tfee soldiers spread their clothes in the 
 way. (Plutarch's Z/7/eo/'C«to.) The hanging out of carpets, 
 and strewing of flowers and branches, in solemn proces- 
 sions, among us, is a remnant of the ancient custom.- 
 
 ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 28. And his servants carried him in a char- 
 iot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his sepul- 
 chre with his fathers in the city of David. 
 
 What does. this funeral chariot, which was carried by 
 men, mean 1 What we may see in the vicinity of a large 
 town every day of our lives. This chariot, or thatidcli, 
 (as it is called in Tamul,) is about six feet long, three feei 
 broad, and in the centre about four feet in height. Thi 
 
 i 
 
 shape is various, and the following is more common tha 
 any other. The draperv is of white, or scarlet cloth ; and^ 
 the whole is covered with garlands of flowers. The ser- 
 vants then carry it on their shoulders to the place of sepul*' 
 ture, or burning.— Roberts. (^See Engraving.) 
 
 Ver. 30. And when Jehu was come to Jezreel 
 Jezebel heard of ii ; and she painted her fac 
 
 
Chap. 10. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 287 
 
 and tired her head, and looked out at a window. 
 
 31. And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she 
 said, Hiid Zimri peace, who slew his master ? 
 
 32. And he lifted up his face to the window, 
 and said, Who is on my side ? who ? And 
 there looked out to him two or three eunuchs. 
 
 33. And he said, Throw her down. 
 
 She stained her eyes with stibium or antimony. This is 
 a custom in Asiatic countries to the present day. " The 
 Persians differ as much from us in their notions of beauty 
 as they do in those of taste. A large, soft, and languish- 
 ing black eye, with them, constitutes the perfection of 
 beauty. It is chiefly on this account that the women use 
 the powder of antimony, which, although it adds to the 
 vivacity of the eye, throws a kind of voluptuous languor 
 over it, which makes it appear, if I may use the expression, 
 dissolving in bliss. The Persian women have a curious 
 custom of making their eyebrows meet ; and if this charm 
 be denied them, they paint the forehead with a kind of 
 preparation made for that purpose." (E. S. Waring's 
 Tour to Sheeraz.)— BuRDER. 
 
 In the evening we accompanied them on shore, and took 
 some coffee in the house of the consul, where we were in- 
 troduced to the ladies of his family. We were amused by 
 feeing his wife, a very beautiful woman, sitting crossleg- 
 ged by us upon the divan of his apartment, and smoking 
 tobacco with a pipe six feet in length ; her eyelashes, as 
 well as those of all the other women, were tinged with a 
 black powder made of the sulphuret of antimony, and 
 having by no means a cleanly appearance, although con- 
 sidered as essential an addition to the decorations of a 
 woman of rank in Syria, as her ear-rings, or the golden 
 cinctures of her ankles. Dark streaks were also pencilled, 
 from the corners of her eyes, along the temples. This 
 curious practice instantly brought to our recollections cer- 
 tain passages of scripture, wherein mention is made of a 
 custom among oriental women of ^^ putting the eyes in paini- 
 ing ;" and which our English translators of the Bible, 
 unable to reconcile with their notions of a female toilet, 
 have'rendered '■' painthig the face." — Clarke. 
 
 The court of eastern houses is for the most part sur- 
 rounded with a cloister, over which, when the house has 
 a number of stories, a gallery is erected of the same di- 
 mensions with the cloister, having a balustrade, or else a 
 piece of carved or latticed work, going round about, to 
 prevent people from falling from it into the court. The 
 doors of the enclosure round the house, as already men- 
 tioned, are made very small, to defend the family from the 
 insolence and rapacity of Arabian plunderers; but the 
 doors of the houses very large, for the purpose of admit- 
 ting a copious stream of fresh air into their apartments. 
 The windows which look in the street, are very high and 
 narrow, and defended by lattice-work; as they are only 
 intended to allow the cloistered inmate a peep of what is 
 passing without, while she remains concealed behind the 
 casement. This kind of window the ancient Hebrews 
 called Arubah, and is the same term which they used to 
 express those small openings, through which pigeons pass- 
 ed into the cavities of the rocks, or into those buildings 
 which were raised for their reception. Thus the piophet 
 demands : " Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the 
 doves (onTii-^N-SN) el arubothehem, to their small or narrow 
 windows." The word is derived from a root which sig- 
 nifies to lie in wait for the prey; and is very expressive of 
 the concealed manner in which a person examines, through 
 that kind of window, an external object. Irwin describes 
 the> windows in upper Egypt, as having the same form and 
 dimensions; and says expressly, that one of the windows 
 of the houses in which they lodged, and through which 
 they looked into the street, more resembled a pigeon-hole, 
 than any thing else. But the sacred writers mention 
 another kind of window, which was large and airy: it 
 was called (p'?n) halon^ and was large enough to admit a 
 person of mature age being cast out of it; a punishment 
 which that profligate woman Jezebel suffered by the com- 
 mand of Jehu, the authorized exterminator of her family. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Dr. Shaw, after having observed that the jealousy of the 
 people there admits only of one small latticed window into 
 
 the street, the rest opening into their own courts, says, " It 
 is during the celebration only of some zeeim, as they call 
 a public festival, that these houses and their latticed win- 
 dows or balconies are letl open. For this being a time or 
 great liberty, revelling, and extravagance, each family is 
 ambitious of adorning both the inside and outside of the 
 houses with their richest furniture, while crowds of both 
 sexes, dressed out in their best apparel, and laying aside 
 all modesty and restraint, go in and out where they please. 
 The account we have, 2 Kings ix. 30, of Jezebel's painting 
 her face, and tiring her head, and looking out at a win- 
 dow, upon Jehu's public entrance into Jezreel, gives us a 
 lively idea of an eastern lady at one of these zeenahs or 
 solemnities." — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 33. And he said, Throw her down. So they 
 threw her down : and some of her blood was 
 sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses : and 
 he trode her under foot. 
 
 While the above particulars were relating, it was a 
 shuddering glance that looked down from the open side of 
 the Ketkhoda's saloon, on almost the very spot where the 
 unhappy victims had breathed their last. It recalled to my 
 remembrance a similar window, for similar purposes, at 
 Erivan, where the governor of that place used to dispose 
 of his malefactors the moment sentence was pronounced. 
 And while listening to the hideous details of a sort of pun- 
 ishment so common in the East, I could not but recall simi- 
 lar descriptions in ancient writers on these countries, which 
 showed how old had been the practice of taking offenders 
 to a height, and casting them headlong, sometimes from a 
 rock, at others, from high battlements, and often from a 
 window which commanded a sufficient steep. We have a 
 dreadful picture of this most tremendous mode of pun- 
 ishment in the second book of Kings.— Sir R. K. Porter. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 1. And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. 
 
 To those who are unaccustomed to the effects of polyga- 
 my and concubinage, this appears a very remarkable cir- 
 cumstance. In Homer, old King Priam is represented as 
 having fifty sons and twelve daughters. Artaxerxes Mne- 
 mon, king of Persia, had, by his concubines, who amount- 
 ed to three hundred and sixty, not less than one hundred 
 and fifteen sons, besides three by his queen. " Muley Ab- 
 dallah, who was emperor of Morocco in 1720, is said, by 
 his four wives, and the many thousand women he had in 
 his seraglio during his long reign, to have had seven hun- 
 dred sons, able to moimt a horse; but the number of his 
 daughters is not known." (Stewart's Journey to Mequi- 
 nez.) — BuRDER, 
 
 Ver. 6. Then he wrote a letter the second time to 
 them, saying-, If ye be mine, and if ye will 
 hearken unto my voice, take ye the heads of 
 the men your master's sons, and come to me to 
 Jezreel by to-morrow this time. (Now the 
 king's sons, being seventy persons, were with 
 the great men of the city, which brought them 
 up.) 
 
 The rich hire a dedeh, or wet-nurse, for their children. If 
 a boy, the father appoints a steady man, from the age of 
 two years, to be his Meh, who, I conjecture, must stand in 
 the same capacity as the bringers-up of children mentioned 
 in the catastrophe of Ahab's sons. But if it be a daughter, 
 she has a gees sefeed, or white head, attached to her for the 
 same purpose as the lakh. (Morier.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 8. And there came a messenger, and told 
 him, saying, They have brought the heads of 
 the king's sons. And he said, Lay ye them in 
 two heaps at the entering in of the gate until 
 the morning. 
 
 During this fight, ten tomauns were given for every head 
 of the enemy that was brought to the prince : and it has 
 
288 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 10. 
 
 been known to occur, after the combat was over, that pris- 
 oners have been put to death in cold blood, in order that 
 the heads, which are immediately despatched to the king, 
 and deposited in heaps at the palace-gate, might make a 
 *>\ore considerable show. — Morier. 
 
 Arrived ai the palace of the pacha, inhabited by the dey, 
 ^he first object that struck our eyes were six bleeding heads, 
 ranged along before the entrance ; and as if this dreadful 
 sight were not sufficient of itseif to harrow up the soul, it 
 was still further aggravated by the necessity of stepping 
 over them,, in order to pass into the court. They were the 
 heads of some turbulent agas, who had dared to murmur 
 against the dey. (Pananti's IS arr alive of a Residence in 
 Algiers.) " The pacha of Diarbech has sent to Constan- 
 tmople a circumstantial report of his expedition against 
 the rebels of Mardin. This report has been accompanied 
 by a thousand heads, severed from the vanquished. These 
 sanguinary trophies have been exposed, as usual, at the 
 gate of the seraglio. The Tartar who brought them has 
 obtained a pelisse of honour ; presents have also been sent 
 to the pacha." {Literary Panorama, vol. ix. p. 289.) A 
 pyramid of heads, of a certafti number of feet diameter, 
 IS sometimes exacted in Persia ; and so indifferent are the 
 executioners to the distresses of others, that they Avill select 
 a head of peculiar appearance, and long beard, to grace the 
 summit of it. Sir J. Malcolm says, that " when Timour 
 .stormed Ispahan, it was impossible to count the slain, but 
 an account was taken of seventy thousand heads, which 
 were heaped in pyramids, as monuments of savage re- 
 venge." " Three weeks before our arrival at Cattaro, they 
 (the Montenegrines) had some skirmishes with the Turks, 
 and had brought home several of their heads, which were 
 added to the heap before the bishop's house." (Dodwell's 
 Tour through Greece.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 12. And he arose and departed, and came to 
 Samaria. And as he was at the shearing-house 
 in the way, 13. Jehu met with the brethren of 
 Ahaziah, king of Judah, and said, Who are ye ? 
 And they answered, We are the brethren of 
 Ahaziah ; arid we go down to salute the child- 
 ren of the king, and the children of the queen. 
 14. And he said, Take them alive. And they 
 took them alive, and slew them at the pit of the 
 shearing-house, even two and forty men : neither 
 left he any of them. 
 
 Our translators suppose, that the edifice at which Jehu 
 slew the brethren of Ahaziah, king of Judah, was destined 
 to the sole purpose of shearing of sheep ; but as I apprehend, 
 the term in the original is ambiguous, which is accordingly 
 literally translated in the margin, the house of shepherd's bind- 
 ing, it might be better to use some less determinate word ; 
 as the word, I am ready to believe, may signify the binding 
 sheep for shearing , the binding up their fleeces, after those 
 tieeces taken from the sheep beforehand were washed ; or 
 the binding the sheep for the purpose of milking. Whether 
 it was erected for all three purposes, or if only for one of 
 them, then for which of the three, it may be very difficult 
 precisely to say. A pit near such a building must be use- 
 ful in any of the three cases, for the affording water for the 
 sheep that were detained there for some time, in the first and 
 third case, to drink; and for the washing the wool in the 
 other. If the intention of the historian had been to de- 
 scribe it as the place appropriated to the shearing of sheep, 
 it would have been natural for him to have used the word 
 that precisely expresses that operation, not such a general 
 term as the house ofbindins. All know that sheep must be 
 bound, or at least forcibly "held, in order to be shorn ; and 
 it appears in the Travels of Dr. Richard Chandler in the 
 Lesser Asia, that " the shepherds there, sitting at the mouth 
 of the pen, were wont to seize on the ewes and she-goats, 
 each by the hind leg, as they pressed forward, to milk 
 them ■, which seizing them, sufficiently shows they must be 
 held, shackled, or somehow bound, when milked. 
 
 In another observation I have taken notice of the readi- 
 ness of great men, in the East, to repose themselves, when 
 fatigued, under the shelter of roofs of a very mean kind ; 
 ttie brethren, it seems, of Ahnziah anciently did the same 
 thing. But they found no more safely in this obscure re- 
 
 treat, than they would have found in the palaces of either 
 Samaria or Jezreel. The slaying them at the pit, near 
 this place, seems to have been owing to a custom at that 
 time, whether arising from superstition, lo preserve the 
 land from being defiled, or any other notion, does not at first 
 sight appear ; but it was, it seems, a customary thing at 
 that time to put people to death near water, at least near 
 where water was soon expected to flow, as appears from 
 1 Kings xviii."40. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 15. And when he was departed thence, he 
 lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab, com- 
 ing to meet him : and he saluted him, and said 
 to him, Is thy heart right, as my heart is with 
 thy heart ? And Jehonadab answered, It is. ; 
 If it be, give me thy hand. And he gave him 
 his hand ; and he took him up to him into the 
 chariot. 
 
 A very solemn method of taking an oath in the East is 
 by joining hands, uttering at the same time a curse upon 
 the false swearer. To this form the wise man probably 
 alludes in that proverb :" Though hand join in hand"— 
 though they ratify their agreement by oath — "the wicked 
 shall not be unpunished, but the seed of the righteous shall 
 be delivered." This form of swearing is still observed in 
 Egypt and the vicinity ; for when Mr. Bruce was at Shekh 
 Ammer, he entreated the protection of the governor in pros- 
 ecuting his journey, when the great people, who were as- 
 sembled, came, and after joining hands, repeated a kind of 
 prayer, of about two minutes long, by which they declared 
 themselves and their children accursed, if ever they lifted 
 up their hands against him in the tell, or field, in the des- 
 ert ; or in the case that he or his should fly to them for 
 refuge, if they did not protect them at the risk of their lives, 
 their families, and their fortunes ; or, as they emphatically 
 expressed it, to the death of the last male child among them. 
 The inspired writer has recorded an instance of this form 
 of swearing in the history of Jehu : " And when he was 
 departed thence, he lighted on Jehonadab, the son of Re- 
 chab, coming to meet him, and he saluted him, and said to 
 him. Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart ; and 
 Jehonadab answered. It is. If it be, give me thy hand. And 
 he gave him his hand, and he took him up unto him into the 
 chariot." Another striking instance is quoted by Calmet 
 from Ockley's history of the Saracens. Telha, just before 
 he died, asked one of Ali's men if he belonged to the emperor 
 of the faithful ; and being informed that he did, " Give me 
 then, said he, your hand, that I may put mine in it, and by 
 this action renew the oath of fidelity which I have already 
 made to Ali." — Paxton. 
 
 Deep as the reverence is with which the Orientals treat 
 their princes, yet in some cases, a mode of treatment oc- 
 curs that we are surprised at, as seeming to us of the West, 
 too near an approach to that familiarity that takes place 
 among equals : the taking a new elected prince by the hand, 
 in token of acknowledging his princely character, may 
 probably appear to us in this light. D'Herbelot, in explain- 
 ing an eastern term, which, he tells us,,signifies the election 
 or auguration of a calif, the supreme head of the Moham- 
 medans, both in civil and ecclesiastical matters, tells us, 
 that " this ceremony consisted in stretching forth a person's 
 hand, and taking that of him that they acknowledged for 
 calif. This was a sort of performing homage, and swear- 
 ing fealty to him." He adds, that " Khondemir, a cele- 
 brated historian, speaking of the election of Othman, the 
 third calif after Mohammed, says, that Ali alone did not 
 present his hand to him, and that upon that occasion Ab- 
 durahman, who had by compromise made the election, said 
 to him, ' Ali ! he who violates his word is the first person 
 that is injured by so doing;' upon hearing of which words, 
 Ali stretched out his hand, and acknowledged Othman as 
 calif" 
 
 How much less solemn and expressive of reverence is 
 this, than the manner of paying homage and swearing feal- 
 ty at the coronation of our princes ; to say nothing of the 
 adoration that is practised in the Romish church, upon the 
 election of their great ecclesiastic ! It may however serve 
 to illustrate what we read concerning Jehonadab, the head 
 of an Arab tribe that lived in, and consequently was in 
 some measure subject to, the kingdom of Israel. " Jeho- 
 
 i 
 
Chap. 11—13. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 289 
 
 nadab came to meet Jehu, and he saluted him ; and Jehu 
 said to Jehonadab, Is thy heart right as my heart is with 
 thy heart 1 and Jehonadab answered, It is. And he said. 
 If it be, give me thy hc7nd : and he gave him his hand, 
 and he took him up to him into the chariot." This giving 
 him the hand appears not to have been the expression of 
 private friendship ; but the solemn acknowledgment of him 
 as king over Israel. Our translators seem to have suppos- 
 ed, by their way of expressing matters, that Jehu saluted, 
 or blessed Jehonadab, and Bishop Patrick thought it was 
 plain that it ought so to be understood ; but I cannot but think 
 It most natural to understand the words as signifying, that 
 Jehonadab came to meet Jehu as then king of Israel ; and 
 to compliment him on being acknowledged king of the 
 country in which he dwelt; not that this newly anointed 
 prince first saluted him. This would not have been in 
 character. So when Jacob was introduced to Pharaoh, he 
 is said to have blessed Pharaoh, not Pharaoh Jacob, Gen. 
 xlvii. 7. ^ The words therefore should have been translated, 
 with a slight variation, after some such manner as this, 
 " He lighted on Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, coming to 
 meet him, and he, Jehonadab, saluted him, and he, Jehu, 
 said unto him, Is thy heart," &c. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Ver. 2. But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Jo- 
 ram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of 
 Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's 
 sons which were slain ; and they hid him, even 
 him and his nurse, in the bedchamber, from 
 Athaliah, so that he was not slain. 
 
 A bedchamber does not, according to the usage of the 
 East, mean a lodging room, but a repository for beds. 
 Chardinsays, " In the East beds are not raised from the 
 ground with posts, a canopy, and curtains ; people lie on 
 the ground. In the evening they spread out a mattress or 
 two of cotton, very light, of which they have several in 
 great houses, against they should have occasion, and a 
 room on purpose for them." From hence it appears that 
 it was in a chamber of beds that Joash was concealed. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 12. And he brought forth the king's son, and 
 put the crown upon him, and gave him the tes- 
 timony : and they made him king, and anoint- 
 ed him ; and they clapped their hands, and said, 
 God save the king. 
 
 The way by which females in the East express their 
 joy, is by gently applying one of their hands to their mouths. 
 This custom appears to be very ancient, and seems to be 
 referred to in several places of scripture. Pitts, describing 
 the joy with which the leaders of tneir sacred caravans are 
 received in -the several towns of Barbary through which 
 they pass, says, " This Emir Hagge, into whatever town 
 he comes, is received with a great deal of joy, because he 
 is going about so religious a work. The women get upon 
 the tops of the houses to view the parade, where they keep 
 striking their forefingers on their lips softly as fast as they 
 can, making a joyful noise all the while." The sacred 
 writers suppose two different methods of expressing joy by 
 a quick motion of the hand: the clapping of the hands, and 
 that of one hand only, though these are confounded in our 
 translation. The former of these methods obtained an- 
 ciently, as an expression of malignant joy ; but other words, 
 which our version translates clapping the hands, signify, 
 the applying of only one hand somewhere with softness, in 
 testimony of a joy of a more agreeable kind. Thus in 
 2 Kings xi. 12, and Psalm xlvii. 1, it should be rendered 
 in the singular. Clap your hand, and as the word implies 
 gentleness, it may allude to such an application of the hand 
 to the mouth as has now been recited,— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. And when she looked, behold, the king 
 stood by a pillar, as the manner was, and the 
 princes and the trumpeters by the king ; and all 
 the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with 
 trumpets : and Athaliah rent her clothes, and 
 cried, Treason, treason ! 
 
 n 
 
 The Orientals looked upon a seat by a pillar or column 
 as a particular mark of respect. In the' Iliad, Homer places 
 Ulysses on a lofty throne, by a pillar: and in the Odyssey, 
 he more than once alludes to the same custom. The kings 
 of Israel were, for ihe same reason, placed at their corona- 
 tion, or on days of public festivity, by a pillar in the house 
 of the Lord. Joash, the king of Judah, stood by a pillar 
 when he was admitted to the throne of his ancestors ; and 
 Josiah, one of his successors, when he made a covenant 
 before the Lord. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 Ver. 9. But Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and 
 bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside 
 the altar, on the right side as one cometh into 
 the house of the Lord : and the priests that 
 kept the door put therein aU the money tho-t 
 was brought into the houee of the Lord. 
 See on 1 Kings 18. 33. 
 
 Ver. 10. And it was so, when they saw that there 
 
 ' was much money in the chest, that the king's 
 
 scribe and the high-priest came up, and they 
 
 put up in bags, and told the money that was 
 
 found in the house of the Lord. 
 
 It appears to have been usual in the East for money to be 
 put into bags, which, being ascertained as to the exact sum 
 deposited in each, were sealed, and probably labelled, and 
 thus passed currently. Instances of this kind may be tra- 
 ced in the scriptures, at least so far as that money was thus 
 conveyed, and also thus delivered, from superior to inferior 
 officers, for distribution : as in the passage referred to in 
 this article. Major Rennel in giving an abstract of the 
 History of Tobit, says, " we find him again at Nineveh, 
 from whence he despatches his son Tobias to Rages byway 
 of Ecbatana, for the money. At the latter place, he mar- 
 ries his kinswoman Sara, and sends a messenger on to 
 Rages, The mode of keeping and delivering the money 
 was exactly as at present in the East. Gabriel, who kept 
 the money in trust, ' brought forth bags, which were sealed 
 up, and gave them to him,' and received in return the 
 handwriting or acknowledgment which Tobias had taken 
 care to require of his father before he left Nineveh. The 
 money, we learn, was left in trust, or as a deposite. and not 
 on usury, and, as it may be concluded, with Tobit's seal on 
 the bags. In the East, in the present times, a bag of monev 
 passes (for some time at least) currently from hand to hand, 
 under the authority of a banker's seal, without any exam- 
 ination of its contents." — Burder, 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 Ver. 7. Neither did he leave of the people to Je- 
 hoahaz but fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and 
 ten thousand footmen ; for the king of Syria 
 had destroyed them, and had made them like 
 the dust by thrashing. 
 
 In modem Turkey, the custom of treading out the corn 
 by oxen is still practised. This is a much quicker way 
 than our method of beating out the corn with the flail, but 
 less cleanly • for, as it is performed in the open air, upon 
 any round level plat of ground, daubed over with cow- 
 dung, to prevent as much as possible the earth, sand, or 
 gravel, from rising, a great quantity of them all, notwith- 
 standing these precautions, must unavoidably be taken up 
 with the grain ; at the same time the straw, which is their 
 only fodder, Ls by this means shattered to pieces. To this 
 circumstance the sacred historian alludes, with great force 
 and propriety, in his brief description of the wretched 
 state to which the kingdom of the ten tribes had been re- 
 duced by the arms of Hazael king of Syria : " Neither did 
 he leave of the people to Jehoahaz but fifty horsemen, and 
 ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen ; for the king of 
 Syria had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust 
 by thrashing." — JPaxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. And he said. Open the window eastward ; 
 
290 
 
 2 KINGS, 
 
 Chap. 13—15. 
 
 and he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot : 
 and he shot. And he said, The arrow of the 
 Lord's deliverance, and the arrow of deliver- 
 ance from Syria ; for thou shalt smite the Syri- 
 ans in Aphek till thou have consumed tkem. 
 
 It was an ancient custom to shoot an arrow, or cast a 
 spear, into the country which an army intended to invade. 
 Justin says, that as soon as Alexander the Great had arrived 
 on the coasts of Ionia, he threw a dart into the country of 
 the Persians. The dart, spear, or arrow, thus thrown, was 
 an emblem of the commencement of hostilities. Virgil 
 represents Turnus as giving the signal of attack by throwing 
 a spear. 
 
 Ecquis erit mecum, O Jiivenes, qui primus in hostem? 
 En, ait, et jaculum intorquens emittil in auras. 
 Principium pugnae ; et campo sese arduus infert. 
 
 Who first, he cried, with me the foe will dare 1 > 
 
 Then hurl'd a dart, tlie signal of the war.— (Pitt.) 
 
 Servius, in his note upon this place, shows that it was a 
 custom to proclaim war in this way. The pater patratus, 
 or chief of the Feciales, a sort of heralds, went to the con- 
 fines of the enemy's country ; and, after some solemnities, 
 said, with a loud voice, " I wage war with you, for such and 
 such reasons ;" and then threw in a spear. It was then the 
 business of the parties *thiis defied, or warned, to take the '. 
 ."ubject into consideration; and if they did not, within ' 
 thirty days, come to some accommodation, the war was 
 begun.*— BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 21. And it came to pass, as they were buT}?^- 
 ing a man, that, behold, they spied a band of 
 men ; and they cast the man into the sepulchre 
 of Elisha : and when the man was let down, 
 and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, 
 and stood up on his feet. 
 
 With us, the poorest people have their coffins ; if the re- 
 lations cannot afford them, the parish is at the expense. In 
 the East, on the contrarv, they are not at all made use of in 
 oui times : Turks and Christians, Thevenot assures us, 
 agree in this. The ancient Jews probably buried their 
 dead in the same manner : neither was the body of our 
 Lord, it seems, put into a coffin : nor that of Elisha, whose 
 bones were touched by the corpse that was let down a little 
 after into his sepulchre, (2 Kings xiii. 21.) It is no objection 
 to this account, that the widow of Nain's son is represented 
 as carried forth to be buried in a Eop^? , or bier, for the pres- 
 ent inhabitants of the Levant, who are well knowm to lay 
 their dead in the earth unenclosed, carry them frequently 
 out to burial in a kind of coffin : so Ru.ssel in particular 
 describes the bier used by the Turks at Aleppo as a kind of 
 coffin, much in the forni of ours, only the lid rises with a 
 ledge in the middle. Christians, indeed, that same author 
 tells us, are carried to the grave in an open bier : but as the 
 most Common kind of bier there very much resembles our 
 coffins, that used by the people of Nain might very possibly 
 be of the same kind, in which case the word Sopos'was very 
 proper. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 9. And Jehoash the king- of Israel sent to 
 Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle 
 that vi)(2s in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was 
 in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my 
 son to wife : and there passed by a wild beast 
 that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle. 
 
 We have here another beautiful instance of the way in 
 which the ancients conveyed instruction or reproof in par- 
 ables, apologues, or riddles. Jehoash, the king of Israel, 
 the author of the parable, compares himself to a cedar : 
 and Amaziah, the king of Judah, to a thistle. It would no 
 doubt be very annoying to Amaziah to be represented by a 
 thistle ! and his opponent by a cedar. Some years ago, two 
 magistrates, who were much superior to their predecessors, 
 in reference to the wav in which they had discharged their 
 duties, were appointed to take charge of separate districts. 
 
 The natives, as usual, did not speak plainly as to their 
 merits, but under " the similitude of a parable." One of 
 the districts was very famous for the banyan tree, the fruit 
 of which is only eaten by the flying fox, birds, and mon- 
 keys. The people, therefore, to show how much better 
 their present magistrate was than the former, said, " Ah ! 
 the banyan of our country is now giving the fruit of the 
 palmirah." Those of the other district {where the palmirah 
 was exceedingly plentiful) said of their magistrate, " Have 
 you not heard that our palmirah is now giving mangoes ?" 
 Some men are always known by the name of certain trees. 
 Thus, a person who is tall, and stoops a little, is called the 
 cocoa-nut tree, and he who has long legs and arms, is called 
 the banyan, which spreads its arms, and lets fall its sup- 
 porters to the ground. It is, therefore, not very improbable 
 that Jehoash was known by the name of the cedar, and 
 Amaziah by that of the ^AisiZ^.— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Ver. 28. And he did that which was evil in the 
 sight of the Lord; he departed not from the 
 sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made 
 Israel to sin. 
 
 See on 2 Kings 2. 7. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 3. But he w^alked in the way of the kings of 
 Israel ; yea, and made his son to pass through 
 the fire, according to the abominations of the 
 heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before 
 the children of Israel. 
 
 Few things are more shocking to humanity than the cus- 
 tom of which such frequent mention is made in scripture, 
 of making children, &c., pass through fire in honour of 
 Moloch : a custom, the antiquity of which appears from 
 its having been repeatedly forbidden by Moses, as Lev, 
 xviii, 21, and at length, in chap. xx. 1—5, where the ex 
 pressions are very strong, of " giving his seed to Moloch.'* 
 This cruelty, one would hope, was confined to the stran- 
 gers in Israel, and not adopted by any native Israelite; yet 
 we afterward find the kings of Israel, themselves, prac- 
 tising this superstition, and making their children pass 
 through the fire. This may be illustrated by an instance : 
 There is a remarkable variation of terms in the history of 
 Ahaz, who (2 Kings xvi. 3) is said to make " his son tc 
 
 gass through the fire, according to the abominations of the 
 eathen," i. e. no doubt, in honour of Moloch — which 
 2 Chron.xxviii. 3, is expressed by "he burned his childrer 
 in the fire." Now, as the book of Chronicles is best un- 
 derstood, by being considered as a supplementary and ex- 
 planatory history to the book of Kings, it is somewhat sin- 
 gular, that it uses by much the strongest word in this 
 passage — for the import rtf ibor ("^ys'^) is, generally, to con- 
 sume, to clear off: so Psal. Ixxxiii. 14, " as the fire hirneth 
 a wood," so Isaiah i. 31 ; and this variation of expression 
 is further heightened, by the word son (who passed through) 
 being singular in Kings, but plural (sons) in Chronicles. 
 It .seems very natural to ask, " If he burned his children in 
 the fire, how could he leave any posterity to succeed him 1" 
 We know, that the Rabbins have histories of the manner 
 of passing through the fires, or into caves of fire ; and 
 there is an account of an image, which received children 
 into its arms, and let them drop into a fire beneath, amid 
 the shouts of the multitude, the noise of drums, and other 
 instruments, to drown the shrieks of the agonizing infant, 
 and the horrors of the parents' mind. Waiving further al- 
 lusion to that account at present, we think the following 
 extract may afford a good idea, in M^hat manner the passing 
 through, or over fire, was anciently perlbrmed : the atten- 
 tive reader will notice the particulars. " A still more as- 
 tonishing instance of the superstition of the ancient Indians, 
 in respect to the venerated fire, remains at this day in the 
 grand annual festival holden in honour of Darma Rajah, 
 and called the feast op fi^e; in which, as in the ancient 
 rites of Moloch, the devotees walk parcfoot over a glowing 
 Jire, extending forty feet. It is called the feast of fire, be- 
 cause thevtheh walk on that element. It lasts eighteen 
 days, during which time, those that make a vow to keep 
 it, "must fastj abstain from women, lie on the bare ground, 
 
Chap. 17, 18. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 291 
 
 and walk on a brisk fire. The eighteenth day, they assem- 
 ble, on the sound of instruments ; their heads crowned with 
 /lowers, the body bedaubed with saffron, amd follow in cadence 
 the figures of Darnia RajaJi^ and Drobede, his wife, who are 
 carried there in processioii : M'hen they come lo the fire, 
 they stir it, to animate its activity, and take a little of the 
 ashes, with which they rub their forehead, and when the 
 gods have been three tim£s rowid it, they walk either fast 
 or slow, according to their zeal, over a very hot fire, ex- 
 lendmg to about forty feet in length. Some carry their chil- 
 dren ill their arms, and others lances, sabres, and stand- 
 ards. " The most fervent devotees walk several times over 
 the fire. After the ceremony, the people press to collect 
 some of the ashes to rub their foreheads with, and obtain 
 from the devotees some of the flowers with which they 
 were adorned, and which they carefully preserve." (Son- 
 nerat's Travels, vol. i. 154.) The flowers, then, were not 
 burned. 
 
 This extract is taken from Mr. Maurice's "history of 
 Hindostan," and it accounts for several expressions used 
 in scripture : such as causing children (very young per- 
 haps) to pass through fire, as we see they are carried over 
 the fire, by which means, though devoted, or consecrated, 
 they were not destroyed ; neither were they injured, except 
 by being profaned. Nevertheless, it might, and probably 
 did happen, that some of those who thus passed, were hurt 
 or maimed in the passing, or if not immediately slain by 
 the fire, might be burnt in this superstitious pilgrimage, in 
 such a manner as to contract fatal diseases. Shall we sup- 
 pose, then, that while some of the children of Ahaz passed 
 safely over the fire, others were injured by it, and injured 
 even to death ] But this could not be the case with all of 
 them; as besides Hezekiah, his successor, we read of 
 " Maaseiah, the king's son," 2 Chron. xxviii. 7. Human- 
 ity would induce us to hope that the expression "burned," 
 should be taken in a milder sense than that of slaying by 
 Are ; and, perhaps, this idea may be ju-stified, by remarking 
 the use of it — Exod. iii. 2, 3, " the bush burned with fixe, 
 yet the bush was not consumed." The word, therefore, 
 being capable of a milder, as well as of a stronger sense, 
 like our English word, to burn, it is desirable, if fact would 
 permit, to take it in the milder sense in this instance of 
 Ahaz, and possibly in others. Nevertheless, as the cus- 
 tom of widows burning themselves to death, with the body 
 of their deceased husbands, not only continues, bat is daily 
 practised in India, it contributes to justify the harsher con- 
 struction of the word to burn; as the superstitious cruelty 
 which can deprive women of life, may easily be thought 
 guilty of equal barbarity in the case of children, [and 
 moreover the drowning of children in the Ganges, as an 
 act of dedication, is common.] — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 10. And they set them up images and groves 
 in every high hill, and under every green tree : 
 11. And there they burnt incense in all the 
 high places, as did the heathen whom the 
 Lord carried away before them; and wrought 
 wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. 
 
 Thus did the wicked Jews imitate the heathen. The 
 whole verse might be a description of the localities, and 
 usages of modern heathenism. See their high hills ; they 
 are all famous for being the habitation of some deity. On 
 the summit there is generally a rude representation, "formed 
 by nature, or the distorted imagination, into the likeness of 
 a god. In going to the spot, images are set up in every di- 
 rection, as so many sentinels and guides to the sacred ar- 
 cana. See the Ficus religiosa, and numerous other trees, 
 under which various symbols of idolatry may be seen. 
 Fastened into the roots of one, we discover the trident of 
 Siva : under another, an emblem of Ganesa: there we see 
 a few faded flowers, a broken cocoa-nut, an altar, or the 
 ashes of a recent tire. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. And they caused their sons and their 
 daughters to pass through the fire. 
 
 The Tamul translation has " to pass or tread onX)\e fire." 
 Deut. xviii. 10. 2 Kings xxiii. lO.xxi. 6. Lev. xviii. 21. Jer. 
 xxxii. 35. are rendered ''step over" the fire. To begin 
 
 with Lev. xviii. 21. " Thou shaltnot let any of thy seed 
 pass through the fire to Moloch ; neither shalt thou profane 
 the name of thy God: 1 am the Lord." The marginal 
 references " to profane the name of thy God," are chap. 
 xix. 12. " And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, 
 neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God." (See 
 also chap. xx. 3. xxi. 6. and xxii. 2. 32. Ezek. xxxvi. 20.) 
 Connected therefore, with passing through the fire, as men- 
 tioned in Lev. xviii. 21, and the marginal references, it is 
 clear that the name of God was profaned by swearing. 
 The Tamul translation of Lev. xviii. 21, for " pass through 
 the fire," has " step over the fire," which alludes to the 
 oath which is taken by stepping over the fire. It is a 
 solemn way of swearing to innocence, by first making a 
 fire, and when stepping over to exclaim, " lam not guilty." 
 Hence the frequency of the question, (when a man denies 
 an accusation,) "Will you step over the firel" But so 
 careful are the heathen in reference to fire, when they are 
 not on their oath, that they will not step over it. See a trav- 
 eller on his journey; does he come to a place where there 
 has been a fire, he will not step over it, but walk round it, 
 lest any evil should come upon him. I think it, therefore, 
 probable, from the words, " profane the name of thy God," 
 as mentioned in connexion with passing through the fire, 
 and from the eastern custom, that the ancient idolaters did 
 take a solemn oath of allegiance to their gods, or of their 
 innocence of crime, by thus stepping over the fire. 
 
 But it is also a custom among these heathen to pass 
 through, or rather to walk on, the fire. This is done some- 
 times in consequence of a vow, or from a wish to gain 
 popularity, or to merit the favour of the gods. A fire is 
 made on the ground, from twenty to thirty paces in length, 
 and the individual walks on it barefoot, backwards and 
 forwards, as many times as he may believe the nature of 
 his circumstances require. Some say that these devotees 
 put a composition on their feet, which prevents them from 
 being much burnt ; but I am of opinion this is not often the 
 case. To walk on the fire is believed to be most acceptable 
 to the cruel goddess Kali, the wife of Vyravar, who was the 
 prince of devils. When a man is sick, he vows, " O Kali, 
 mother, only cure me, and I will walk on fire in your holy 
 presence." A father, for his deeply afflicted child, vows, 
 " O Kali, or, O Vyravar, only deliver him, and when he 
 is fifteen years of age, he shall walk on fire in your divine 
 presence. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 37. And the statutes, and the ordinances, and 
 the law, and the commandment, which he wrote 
 for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore ; 
 and ye shall not fear other gods. 
 
 The most prominent effect of heathenism on the minds 
 of its votaries is fear ; and no wonder; for how can they 
 love deities guilty of such repeated acts of cruelty, injustice, 
 falsehood, dishonesty, and impurity 1 Strange as it may 
 appear, European descendants, as well as native Christians, 
 are in danger of fearing the gods of the heathen. There 
 are so many traditions of their malignity and power, that 
 It requires strength of mind, and, above all, faith in Jesus 
 Christ, the conqueror of devils, to give a perfect victory 
 over it. On this account the missionaries sent out by Den- 
 mark, more than one hundred years ago, (and some of their 
 
 ^° 
 
 successors,) have not approved of the native Christian 
 studying the heathen books and superstitions. This, how- 
 ever, has had an injurious eflfect, because it disqualified the 
 members of the church to expo-^e the errors of heathenism 
 to the people, and also conveyed an idea of something like 
 inadequacy in the Gospel of Christ to meet such a system. 
 In view of this, the missionaries of the present day, and 
 many of their converts, have, like Ezekiel, (chap' viii.) 
 looked into this vile arcana ; have dragged the monstrous 
 transactions to light, exposed them to public gaze, and 
 driven from the field of argument, the proud and. learned 
 Bramin. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 Ver. 8. He smote the Philistines, eve':i unto Gaza, 
 and the borders thereof, from the 'lOwer of tho 
 watchmen to the fenced city. 
 
 See on Is. 14. 29. 
 
292 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 18. 
 
 Ver. 11. And the king of Assyria did carry away 
 Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah 
 and in Habor hy the river of Gozan, and in the 
 cities of the Medes. 
 
 For the following narrative, and the particular applica- 
 tion of it, great commendation is due to the learned and 
 intelligent traveller. After describing some sculptured 
 figures which he had just seen, he says : " At a point some- 
 thing higher up than the rough gigantic forms just described, 
 in a very precipitous cliff, there appeared to me a still more 
 interesting piece of sculpture, though probably not of such 
 deep antiquity. Even at so vast a height, the first glance 
 showed it to have been a work of some age accomplished 
 in the art; for all here was executed with the care and fine 
 expression of the very best at Persepolis. I could not re- 
 sist the impulse to examine it nearer than from the distance 
 of the ground, and would have been glad of GLueen Semi- 
 ramis's^ stage of packs and fardels. To approach it at all 
 was a business of difficulty and danger ; however, after 
 much scrambling and climbing, I at last got pretty far up 
 the rock, and finding a ledge, placed myself on it as firmly 
 as I could; but still I was further from the object of all this 
 peril than I had hoped : yet my eyes being tolerably long- 
 sighted, and my glass more so, I managed to copy the 
 whole sculpture with considerable exactness. It con- 
 tains fourteen figures, one of which is in the air. The 
 first figure (to our left in facing the sculpture) carries a 
 spear, and is in the fall Median habit, like the leaders of 
 the guards at Persepolis: his hair is in a similar fashion, 
 and bound with a fillet. The second fignre holds a bent 
 bow in his left hand; he is in much the same dress, with 
 the addition of a quiver slung at his back by a belt that 
 crosses his right shoulder, and his wrists are adorned with 
 bracelets. The third personage is of a stature much larger 
 than any other in the group, a usual distinction of royalty 
 in oriental description; and, from the air and attitude of 
 the figure, I have no doubt he is meant to designate the 
 king. The costume, excepting the beard not being quite 
 so long, is precisely that of the regal dignity, exhibited in 
 the basreliefs of Nakshi-Roustan, and Persepolis: a mix- 
 ture of the pontiff-king, and the other sovereign personages. 
 The robe being the ample vesture of the one, and the dia- 
 dem the simple band of the other : a style of crown which 
 appears to have been the most ancient badge of supremacy 
 of either king or pontiff. But as persons of inferior rank 
 also wore fillets, it seems the distinction between theirs and 
 their sovereigns, consisted in the material or colour. For 
 instance, the band or cydaris, which formed the essential 
 part in the old Persian diadem, was composed of a twined 
 substance of purple and white: and any person below the 
 royal dignity presuming to wear those colours unsanctioned 
 by the king, was guilty of a transgression of the law, deem- 
 ed equal to high treason. The fillets of the priesthood 
 were probably white or silver ; and the circlets of kings, 
 in general, simple gold. Bracelets are on the wrists of 
 this personage, and he holds up his hand in a commanding 
 or admonitory manner, the two forefingers being extended, 
 and the two others doubled down in the palm : an action 
 also common on the tombs at Persepolis, and other monu- 
 ments just cited; his left hand grasps a bow of a different 
 shape from that held by his oflic^er, but exactly like the one 
 on which the king leans in the basrelief on the tomb at 
 Nakshi-Roustan. This bow, together with the left foot of 
 the personage I am describing, rests on the body of a pros- 
 trate man, who lies on his back with outstretched arms, in 
 the act of supplicating for mercy. This unhappy per- 
 sonage, and also the first in the string of nine which ad- 
 vance towards the king, are verv much injured: however, 
 enough remains of the almost defaced leader, when com- 
 pared with the apparent condition of the succeeding eight, 
 to show that the whole nine are captives. The hands of 
 all are tied behind their backs, and the cord is very dis- 
 tinct which binds the neck of the one to the neck of the 
 other, till the mark of bondage reaches to the last in the 
 line. If it were also originally attached to the leader, the 
 cord is now without trace there ; his hands, however, are 
 evidentlv in the same trammels as his followers. The 
 second figure m the procession has his hair so close to his 
 head, that it appears to have been shaven, and a kind of 
 caul covers it trom the top of the forehead to the middle of 
 
 the head. He is dressed in a short tunic, reaching no fur- 
 ther than the knee; a belt fastens it round the waist ; his 
 legs are bare. Behind this figure is a much older person, 
 with a rather poiilted beard and bushy hair, and a similar 
 caul covers the top of his head. He too is habited in a 
 short tunic, with something like the rrouser, or booted ap- 
 pearance on the limbs which is seen on some of the figures 
 at Persepolis. In addition to the binding of the hands, 
 the preceding figure, and this, are fastened together by a 
 rope round their necks, which runs onward, noosing all 
 the remaining eight in one string. This last-described 
 person has the great peculiarity attached to him, of the 
 skirt of his garment being covered entirely with inscrip- 
 tions in the arrow-headed character. Next follows one m 
 a long vestment, with full hair, without the caul. Then 
 another in a short, plain tunic, with trousers. Then suc- 
 ceeds a second long vestment. After him comes one in a 
 short tunic, with naked legs, and, apparently, a perfectly 
 bald head. He is followed by another in long vestments. 
 But the ninth, and last in the group, who also is in the 
 short tunic and trouser, has the singularity of wearing a 
 prodigious high-pointed cap; his beard and hair are much 
 ampler than any of his companions, and his face looks of 
 a greater age. In the air, over the heads of the centre 
 figures, appears the floating intelligence in his circle and 
 car of sunbeams, so often remarked on the sculptures of 
 Nakshi-Roustan and Persepolis. 
 
 " Above the head of each individual in this basrelief is a 
 compartment with an inscription in the arrow-headed wri- 
 ting, most probably descriptive of the character and situa- 
 tion of each person. And immediately below the sculp- 
 ture, are two lines in the same language, running the 
 whole length of the group. Under these again, the exca- 
 vation is continued to a considerable extent, containing 
 eight deep and closely-written columns in the same char- 
 acter. From so much labour having been exerted on this 
 part of the work, it excites more regret that so little pro- 
 gress has yet been made towards deciphering the character. 
 The design of this sculpture appears to tally so well with 
 the great event of the total conquest over Israel, by Salma- 
 neser, king of Assyria, and the Medes, that I venture to 
 suggest the possibility of this basrelief having been made to 
 commemorate that final achievement. Certain circum- 
 stances attending the entire captivity of the ten tribes, 
 which took place in a second attack on their nation, when 
 considered, seem to confirm the conjecture into a strong 
 probability. In turning from this account in the scriptures, 
 to the sculpture on the rock, the one seemed clearly to ex- 
 plain the other. In the royal figure, I see Salmaneser, the 
 son of the renowned Arbaces, followed by two appropriate 
 leaders of the armies of his two dominions, Assyria and 
 Media, carrying the spear and the bow. Himself rests on 
 the great royal weapon of the East, revered from earliest 
 time as the badge of supreme power — Behold I do set my 
 bow in the cloud. Besides, he tramples on a prostrate foe, 
 not one that is slain, but one who is a captive : this person 
 nothing stretched out and motionless, but extending his. 
 arms in supplication. He must have been a king, for on 
 none below that dignity would the haughty foot of an east- 
 ern monarch condescend to tread. Then we see approach 
 nine captives, bound, as it were, in double bonds, in sign 
 of a double oflfence. We may understand this accumulated 
 transgression, on recollecting that on the first invasion of 
 Israel, by Tiglath-pileser, he carried away only part of 
 three tribes ; and on the second by Salmaneser, he not only 
 confirmed Hoshea on the throne, but spared the remaining 
 people. Therefore, on this determined rebellion of king 
 and people, he punishes the ingratitude of both, by putting 
 both in the most abject bonds, and bringing away the Avhole 
 of the ten tribes into captivity ; or, at least, the principal of 
 the nation ; in the same manner, probably, as was after- 
 ward adopted byNebuchadnez7ar of Babylon, with regard 
 to the inhabitants of Judea, he carried away all from Jeru- 
 salem., and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour^ 
 even ten thousand captives ; and all the craftsmen and smiths ; 
 none remained, save the poorest sort of people of the land. 
 2 Kings xxiv. 14. 
 
 " Besides, it may bear on our argument, to remark, that, 
 including the prostrate monarch, there are precisely ten 
 captives: who might be regarded as the representatives, 
 or heads, of each tribe, beginning with the king, who, as- 
 suredly, would be considered as the chief of his: and end- 
 
Chap. 18. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 293 
 
 ing with the aged figure at the end, whose high cap may 
 hav^e been an exaggerated representation of the mitre worn 
 by the sacerdotal tribe of Levi; a just punishment of the 
 priesthood at that time, which had debased itself by every 
 species of idolatrous compliance with the whims, or rather 
 ^vickedness of the people, in the adoption of pagan wor- 
 ship. Hence, having all walked in the statutes of the 
 heathen, the Lord rejected Israel, and delivered them into 
 the hand of the spoilers. Doubtless, the figure with the 
 inscription on his garments, from the singularity of the 
 appendage, must have been some noted personage in the 
 liistory of the event ; and besides, it seems to designate a 
 striking peculiarity of the Jews, who were accustomed to 
 write memorable sentences of old, in the form of phylacte- 
 ries, on different parts of their raiment. What those may 
 mean, which cover the garment of this figure, we have no 
 means of explaining, till the diligent researches of the 
 learned may be able to decipher the arrow-headed charac- 
 ter, and then a full light would be thrown on the whole 
 history, by expounding the tablets over every head. If the 
 aerial form above were ever intended to represent the 
 heavenly apparition of a departed king, which is the opin- 
 ion of some, that of the great Arbaces might appear here 
 with striking propriety, at the final conquest of rebellious 
 Israel. Should the discoveries of time prove my conjec- 
 ture at all right, this basrelief must be nearly two himdred 
 years older than any which are ascribed to Cyrus, at Perse- 
 polis or Pasargadse." (Sir R. K. Porter.) — Burder. {See 
 engraving, pi. no. at the end of the tolume.) 
 
 Ver. 20. Thou sayest, (but thei/ are but vain 
 words,) I have counsel and streng-th for the war. 
 Now, oil whom dost thou trust, that thou rebel- 
 lest against me? 
 
 The Hindoos say of boasting words, or those which do 
 not proceed from the heart, they are " words of the mouth;" 
 but to speak evil of a person is called a chondu-chadi, a hint 
 of the LIP. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. Now therefore, I pray thee, give pledges 
 to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will de- 
 i liver thee two thousand horses, if thou be able 
 on thy part to set riders upon them. 
 
 In the first periods of the Jewish history, the armies of 
 Israel consisted all of footmen. At length Solomon raised 
 a body of twelve thousand horse, and fourteen hundred 
 chariots, some with two, and others with four horses ; but 
 whether that magnificent prince intended them for pomp or 
 war, is uncertain. Infantry was also the chief strength of 
 the Greek and Roman armies. Cavalry is not so neces- 
 sary in warm climates, where the march of troops is less 
 incommoded with bad roads ; nor can they be of so much 
 use in mountainous countries, where their movements are 
 attended with great difficulty and hazard. The eastern 
 potentates, however, brought immense numbers of horse 
 into the 'field, and chiefly trusted to their exertions for de- 
 fence or conquest. The people of Israel, who were ap- 
 pointed to " dwell alone," and not to mingle with the na- 
 tions around them, nor imitate th&ir policy, were expressly 
 forbidden to maintain large bodies of cavalry; and they 
 accordingly prospered, or were defeated, as they obeyed or 
 transgressed this divine command; which a celebrated au- 
 thor observes, cannot be justified by the measures of human 
 prudence. Even upon political reasons, says Warburton, 
 the Jews might be justified in the disuse of cavalry, in the 
 defence of their country, but not in conquering it from a 
 warlike people, who abounded in horses. Here, at least, 
 the exertion of an extraordinary providence w^as wonder- 
 fully conspicuous. The kings who succeeded Solomon 
 certainly raised a body of horse for the defence of their 
 dominions, which they recruited from the studs of Egypt, 
 in those times equally remarkable for their vigour and 
 beauty. But the Jewish cavalry were seldom very numer- 
 ous; and under the religions kings of David's line, who 
 made the divine law the rule of their policy, they were 
 either disembodied altogether, or reduced to a very small 
 number. In the reign of Hezekiah, when the country was 
 invaded by the king of Assyria, the .Tews seem to have had 
 no force of this kind, for.'said Rabshakeh, "Now, there- 
 
 fore, I pray thee, give pledges to my lord, the king of As- 
 syria, and I will deliver thee two thousand horses, if thou 
 be able on thy part to set riders upon them." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 28. Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with 
 a loud voice in the Jews' language, and spake, 
 saying. Hear the word of the great king, the 
 king of Assyria : 29. Thus saith the king, Let 
 not Hezekiah decei^^e you ; for he shall not be 
 able to deliver you out of his hand : 30. Neither 
 let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, say- 
 ing. The Lord will surely deliver us, and this 
 city shall not be delivered into the hand of the 
 king of Assyria. 31. Hearken not to Heze- 
 kiah : for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make 
 an agreement with me by a present, and come 
 out to me, and then eat ye every man of his 
 own vine, and every one of his fig-tree, and 
 drink ye every one the waters of his cistern ; 
 ' 32. Until I come and take you away to a land 
 like your own land ; a land of corn and winf 
 a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oix 
 olive and of honey, that ye may live and not 
 die : and hearken not unto Hezekiah, when he 
 persuadeth you, saying, The Lord will deliv- 
 er us. 
 
 It must be owned that there is something extremely in- 
 solent in the speeches of Rabshakeh to Hezekiah and his 
 loyal subjects, (2 Kings xviii. ;) his boastings, both as to 
 matter and manner, appear to have been of the most un- 
 limited kind, and to have wanted for no amplification in 
 the capacity of the speaker to bestow on them : he describes 
 his master's power in the highest terms, and even beyond 
 what fidelity, as a servant to the king of Assyria, inight 
 have required from him. Probably his speeches are re- 
 corded as being in a strain somewhat unusual, and it will 
 not be easy to find their equal : nevertheless, the reader 
 may be amused by the following portrait, which forms no 
 bad companion to that of Rabshakeh: if it may not rival 
 that in expression, it falls little short of it, and is, to say the 
 least, an entertaining representation of eastern manners 
 and train of thought. It should be remarked, that Rabsha- 
 keh was speaking openly, in defiance to enemies : Hyat 
 Saib was conversing in his own residence. If, wheji 
 speaking in private, he was thus eloquent, what had been 
 his eloquence, had Ije been employed by his sovereign in a 
 message of defiance '? 
 
 Hyat Saib, the jemadar, or governor of Baidanore, 
 " having exhausted his whole string of questions, he turned 
 the discourse to another subject — no less than his great and 
 puissant lord and master, Hyder, of whom he had endeav- 
 oured to impress me with a great, if not a terrible idea; 
 amplifying his honour, his wealth, and the extent and opu- 
 lence of His dominions ; and describing to me, in the most 
 exaggerated terms, the number of his troops, his military 
 talents, his vast, and, according to his account, unrivalled 
 genius; his amazing abilities in conquering and governing 
 nations ; and, above all, his amiable qualities and splendid 
 endowments of heart, no less than understanding. 
 
 " Having thus, with equal zeal and fidelity, endeavoured 
 to impress me wath veneration for his lord and master, and 
 for that purpose attributed to him every perfection that may 
 be supposed to be divided among all the kings and generals 
 that have lived since the birth of Christ, and given each 
 their due, he turned to the English government, and en- 
 deavoured to demonstrate to me the folly and inutility of 
 our attempting to resist his progress, w^hich he compared to 
 that of the sea, to a tempest, to a torrent, to a lion's pace and 
 fury — to every thing that an eastern imagination could sug- 
 gest as a figure proper to exemplify grandeur and irresist- 
 ible power. He then vaunted of his sovereign's successes 
 over the English, some of which I had not heard of before, 
 and did not believe ; and concluded by assuring me, that it 
 was Hyder's determination to drive all Europeans from 
 Indostan, which he averred he could not fail to do, con- 
 i sidering the weakness of the one, and the boundless power 
 
294 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 19 
 
 of the other. — He expended half an hour in this manner 
 and discourse." (Campbell's Travels to India.) — Taylor in 
 Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ver. 3. And they said unto him, Thus saith Hez- 
 ekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of re- 
 buke, and blasphemy : for the children are come 
 to the birth, and there is not strength to bring 
 forth. 
 
 When a person has all but accomplished his object, when 
 only a very slight obstacle has prevented him, it is then 
 said, " The child came to the birth, but there was not 
 strength to bring it forth." Some time ago, an opulent 
 man accused another, who was also very rich, and in office, 
 of improper conduct to the government: the matter was 
 well investigated by competent authorities; but the accused, 
 by his superior cunning, and by bribes, escaped, as by the 
 "skin of his teeth;" and the people said, " Alas! the child 
 came to the mouth, but the hand could not take it," When 
 a person has succeeded in gaining a blessing which he has 
 long desired, he says, " Good, good ! the child is born at 
 last." Has a person lost his lawsuit in a provincial court, 
 he will go to the capital to make an appeal to a superior 
 court ; and should he there succeed, he will say, in writing 
 to a friend, " Good news, good news ! the child is born." 
 When a man has been trying to gain an office, his friend 
 meeting him on return, does not always ask, " Is the child 
 born'? or did it come to the birth "?" but, " Is it a male or 
 a female V If he say the former, he has gained his object; 
 if the latter, he has failed.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, 
 and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to 
 his own land ; and I will cause him to fall by 
 the sword in his own land. 
 
 See on Is. 37. 36. 
 
 The destruction of Sennacherib and his army appears to 
 have been effiscted by that pestilential wind called the si- 
 moom. 
 
 At Bagdad, October 9, 1818, Sir R. K. Porter informs us, 
 (Travels, vol. ii. p. 229,) the master of the khan "told me, 
 that they consider October the first month of their autumn, 
 and feel it delightfully cool in comparison with July, August, 
 and September; for that during forty days of the two first- 
 named summer months, the hot wind blows from the des- 
 ert, and its effects are often destructive. Its title is very ap- 
 propriate, being called the samiel, or baude semoom, the 
 pestilential wind. It does not come in continued long cur- 
 rents, but in gusts at different intervals, each blast lasting 
 several minutes, and passing along with the rapidity of 
 lightning. No one dare stir from their houses while this 
 invisible flame is sweeping over the face of the country. 
 Previous to its approach, the atmosphere becomes thick 
 and suffocating, and appearing particularly dense near the 
 horizon, gives sufficient warning of the threatened mischief 
 Though hostile to human life, it is so far from being preju- 
 dicial to the vegetable creation, that a continuance of the 
 samiel tends to ripen the fruits. I inquired what became 
 of the cattle during such a plague, and was told they were 
 seldom touched by it. It seems strange that their lungs should 
 be so perfectly insensible to what seems instant destruction 
 to the breath of man ; but so it is, that they are regularly 
 driven down to water at the customary times of day, even 
 when the b'asts are at the severest. The people who at- 
 tend them are obliged to plaster their own faces, and other 
 parts of the body usually exposed to the air, with a sort of 
 muddy clay, which, in general, protects them from its most 
 malignant effects. The periods of the winds' blowing are 
 generally from noon till sunset; they cease almost entirely 
 during the ni?ht; and the direction' of the gusts is always 
 from the northeast. When it has passed over, a sulphuric, 
 and indeed loathsome smell, like putridity, remains for a 
 long time. The poison which occasions this smell must be 
 deadly ; for if any unfortunate traveller, too far from shel- 
 ter, meet the blast, he falls immediately; and in a few 
 minutes his flesh becomes almost black, while both it and 
 his bones at once arrive at so extreme a state of corruption, 
 
 that the smallest movement of the body would separate the 
 one from the other."— Robinson. 
 
 The south wind in those arid regions blowing over an 
 immense surface of burning sand, becomes so charged with 
 electrical matter, as to occasion the greatest danger, and 
 often instant death, to the unwary traveller. A Turk, who 
 had twice performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, told Dr. 
 Clarke that he had witnessed more than once the direful 
 effects of this hot pestilential wind in the desert. He has 
 known all the water dried out of their skin bottles in an in- 
 stant, by its inflnence. The camels alone gave notice of 
 its approach, by making a noise, and burying their mouths 
 and nostrils in the sand. This was considered as an infal- 
 lible token that the desolation was at hand ; and those who 
 imitated the camels escaped suffocation. 
 
 In some districts it commits great ravages, and at times 
 so totally burns up all the corn, that no animal will eat a 
 blade of it, or touch any of its grain. It has been known, 
 even in Persia, to destroy camels and other hardy animals; 
 its effects on the human frame are represented as incon- 
 ceivably dreadful. In sorae instances it kills instantaneous- 
 ly ; but in others the wretched sufferer lingers for hours, or 
 even days, in the most excruciating torture. In those places 
 where it is not liatal to life, it resembles the breath of a 
 glowing furnace, destroys every symptom of vegetation, 
 and will, even during the' night, scorch the skin in the most 
 painful manner. In the sandy desert it is often so heated 
 as to destroy every thing, animal and vegetable, with which 
 it comes in contact. In the inhabited country every article 
 of furniture, of glass, and even of wood, becomes as hot as 
 if it were exposed to a raging fire. In Hindostan, when the 
 hot wind blows, the atmosph"ere for many hours of the day 
 becomes insupportable ; the heavens are like brass, and the 
 earth like heated iron. At such times ihe miserable in- 
 habitants are obliged to confine themselves in dark rooms, 
 cooled by screens of matted grass kept continually watered. 
 To this terrible agent the prophet alludes in his prediction 
 of Sennacherib's overthrow : " Behold, I will send a blast 
 upon him." The return of man to his native dust is as 
 certain and speedy as the blasting of a tender plant by the 
 deadly breath of the simoom : " For the wind passeth'over 
 it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no 
 more." 
 
 Campbell, in his Travels, most significantly calls it a 
 horrid wind, whose consuming blasts extend their ravages 
 all the way from the extreme "end of the Gulf of Cambaya 
 up to Mosul. It carries along with it fleaks of fire, like 
 threads of silk; instantly strikes dead those that breathe it, 
 and consumes them inwardly to ashes; the flesh soon be- 
 coming black as a coal, and dropping off the bones. The 
 numbers that perish by its fatal influence are sometimes 
 very great. Thevenot states, that in the year 1665, in the 
 month of July, four thousand people died at Bassora by that 
 wind, in three weeks' time. 
 
 By this powerful and terrific agent, invigorated by the 
 arm, and guided by the finger of Jehovah, was the numer- 
 ous army of the proud and blaspheming Sennacherib de- 
 stroyed under the walls of Libnan. In the brief statement 
 of Isaiah it is said, " Then the angel (or, as it may be ren- 
 dered, the messenger) of the Lord went forth, and smote 
 in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and 
 five thousand men." 'Now this angel of Jehovah is ex- 
 pressly called, in verse 7th of the same chapter, riiach, a 
 blast or wind; which can hardly leave a doubt of the man- 
 ner in which this passage is to be understood. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. I have diofgedand drunk stranp-e waters, 
 and with the sole 6f my feet have I dried up 
 all the rivers of besieged places. 
 
 The curious Vitringa admires the explanation which 
 Grotius has given, of that watering with the foot by which 
 Egypt was distinguished from Judea, derived from an ob- 
 servation made onPhilo, who lived in Egypt, Philo having 
 described a machine used by the peasants of that country 
 for watering as Avrought by the feet; which sort of water- 
 ing Dr. Shaw has since understood of the gardener's put- 
 ting a stop to the further flowing of the water in the rill, 
 in which those things were planted that wanted watering, 
 by turning the earth against it with his foot. Great re- 
 spect is due to so candid and ingenious a traveller as Dr 
 Shaw; I must however own, that I apprehend that mean- 
 
Chap. 19. 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 295 
 
 ing of Moses is more truly represented by Grotius than the 
 doctor. For Moses seems to intend to represent the great 
 labour of this way of watering by the foot, which the work- 
 ing that instrument really was, on which account it seems 
 to be laid aside in Egypt since the time of Philo, and easier 
 methods of raising the water made use of; whereas the 
 turning the earth with the foot which Dr. Shaw speaks of, 
 is the least part of the labour of watering. If it should be 
 remarked, that this machine was not older than Arcihme- 
 des, which has been supposed, I would by way of reply ob- 
 serve, that the more ancient Egyptian machines might be 
 equally wrought with the foot, and were undoubtedly more 
 laborious still, as otherwise the invention of Archimedes 
 would not have brought them into disuse. But though I 
 think the interpretation of Deut. xi. 10, by Grotius, is pref- 
 erable to that of Dr. Shaw, I readily admit that the doctor's 
 thought may be very naturally applied to these words of 
 Sennacherib, to which however the doctor has not applied 
 It ; for he seems to boast that he could as easily turn the 
 water of great rivers, and cause their old channels to be- 
 come dry, as a gardener stops the water from flowing any 
 longer in a rill by the sole of his foot. 
 
 And as the gardener stops up one rill and opens another 
 with his mattock, to let in the water, so, says Sennacherib, 
 I have digged and drank strange waters, that is, which did 
 not heretofore flow in the places I have made them flow in. 
 This is the easiest interpretation that can, I believe, be 
 given to the word strange, made use of by this Assyrian 
 prince, and makes the whole verse a reference to the east- 
 ern way of watering : I have digged channels, and drank, 
 and caused my army to drink out of new-made rivers, into 
 which I have conducted the waters that used to flow else- 
 where, and have laid those old channels dry with the sole 
 of ray foot, with as much ease as a gardener digs channels 
 in his garden, and directing the waters of a cistern into a 
 new rill, with his foot stops up that in which it before ran. 
 
 In confirmation of all which, let it be remembered, that 
 this way of watering by rills is in use in those countries 
 Irom whence Sennacherib came; continued down from 
 ancient times there, without doubt, as it is in Egypt. 
 
 The understanding those words of the Psalmist, Ps. Ixv. 
 9, Thou visitest the earth and water est it, thou greatly en- 
 richest it with the rivers of God, of the watering it as by a 
 rill of water, makes an easy and beautiful sense ; the rain 
 being to the earth in general, the same thing from God, that 
 a watering rill, or little river, is to a garden from man. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 26. Therefore their inhabitants were of small 
 power, they were dismayed and confounded ; 
 thy were as the grass of the field, and as the 
 green herb, as the grass on the house-tops, and 
 as corn blasted before it be grown up. 
 
 The Hebrew has, instead of small power, " short of hand." 
 This figure is much used here, and is taken from a man 
 trying to reach an object for which his arm is not long 
 enough. When it is wished to ascertain what is a man's 
 capacity or power, it is asked, " Is his arm long or short 1" 
 " Let me tell you, friend, Tamban will never succeed ; his 
 arm is not long enough." Of feeble people it is said, " they 
 have short hands." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 28. Because thy rage against me and thy 
 tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore I 
 will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle 
 in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the 
 way by which thou earnest. 
 
 A person says of his deliverer from prison or danger, 
 " Ah ! tlie good man took me out by his tote," i. e. hook. A 
 culprit says of the officers who cannot catch him, " Their 
 hooks are become straight." The man who cannot drag 
 another from his secrecy, says, " My hook is not sufiicient 
 for that fellow." — Roberts. 
 
 The dromedary differs from the common camel, in being 
 of a finer and rounder shape, and in having upon its back 
 a smaller protuberance. This species (for the former sel- 
 dom deviating from the beaten road, travels with its head 
 at liberty) is governed by a bridle, which being usually 
 fastened to a ring fixed in its nostrils, may very well illus- 
 
 trate the expression which the sacred writer uses concern- 
 ing Sennacherib : " I will put my hook in thy nose, and 
 my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way 
 by which thou earnest." These words refer at once to the 
 absolute control of heaven, under which he acted, and the 
 swiftness of his retreat. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 35. And it came to pass that night, that the 
 angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the 
 camp of the Ati^syrians a hundred fourscore 
 and five thousand : and when they arose early 
 in the morning, behold, they were all dead 
 corpses. 
 
 Mr. Boswell, in his Life of Dr. Johnson,- informs us, that 
 it was a subject of conversation between them, in what 
 manner so great a multitude of Sennacherib's army was 
 destroyed. " We are not to suppose," says the doctor, in 
 reply, "that the angel went abroad with a sword in his 
 hand, stabbing them one by one; but that some powerful 
 natural agent was employed ; most probably ihe samyel." 
 Whether the doctor had noticed some picture in which the 
 angel was thus employed, is uncertain; but it should seem, 
 that this idea is common ; and even Dr. Doddridge appears 
 to have conceived of the angel, as of a person employed in 
 slaughter; for he says, in a note on the passage "(Matt, 
 xxvi. 53) where our Lord mentions that his Father could 
 furnish him twelve legions of angels, " How dreadfully 
 irresistible would such an army of angels have been, when 
 one of these celestial spirits was able to destroy 185,000 
 Assyrians at one stroke !" Without attempting to investi- 
 gate the power of celestial spirits, we may endeavour to pre- 
 sent the history of the destruction of Sennacherib's army, 
 according to what, in all probability, was the real fact ; pre- 
 mising that simyel, sumiel, samyel, sumoom, simoom, &c. are 
 different names for the same meteor. Mr. Bruce's account 
 of this wonderful natural phenomenon, affords some very 
 interesting particulars. The extracts are from the quarto 
 edition of his Travels. 
 
 " On the 16th, at half past ten, we left El Mout, [death.] 
 At eleven o'clock, while we contemplated with great plea- 
 sure the rugged top of Chiggre, to which we were fast ap- 
 proaching, and wnere we were to solace ourselves with 
 plenty of good water, Idris cried out, ' Fall upon your faces, 
 for here is the simoom !' I saw from the southeast a haze 
 come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not 
 so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in 
 breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. 
 It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rap- 
 idly, for I scarce could turn to fall upon the ground, with 
 my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current 
 plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground, as if 
 dead, till Idris told us it was blown over. The meteor, or 
 purple haze, which I saw, was indeed passed, but the light 
 air that still blew was of heat to threaten sufl^ocation. For 
 my part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed 
 a part of it, nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation, till I 
 had been some months in Italy, at the baths of Poretta, near 
 two years afterward. A universal despondency had taken 
 possession of our people. They ceased to speak to one 
 another, and when they did it was in whispers, by which 1 
 easily guessed that they were increasing each other's fears, 
 by vain suggestions, calculated to sink each other's spirits 
 still further. This phenomenon of the simoom, unexpected 
 by us, though foreseen by Idris, caused us all to relapse 
 into our former despondency. It still continued to blow so 
 as to exhaust us entirely, though the blast was so weak as 
 scarcely would have raised a leaf from the ground. At 
 twenty minutes before five, the simoom ceased, and a com- 
 fortable and cooling breeze came by starts from the north. 
 We had no sooner got into the plains than we felt great 
 symptoms of the simoom, and about a quarter before twelve, 
 our prisoner first, and then Idris, cried out, The simoovil the 
 simoom ! My curiosity would not .suffer me to fall down 
 without looking behind me ; about due south, a little to the 
 east, I saw the coloured haze, as before. It seemed now to 
 be rather less compressed, and to have with it a shade of 
 blue. The edges of it were not defined as those of the 
 former; but like a, very thin smoke, with about a yard in 
 the middle, tinged with these colours. We all fell upon 
 our faces, and the simoom passed with a gentle ruffling 
 
296 
 
 2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 20. 
 
 wind. It continued to blow in this manner till near three 
 o'clock, so we were all taken ill at night, and scarcely 
 strength was left us to load the camels. The simoom, with 
 the wind at southeast, immediately followed the wind at 
 north, and the usual despondency that always accompanied 
 it. The bhue meteor, with which it began passing over us 
 about twelve, and the ruffiing wind that followed it, con- 
 tinued till near two. Silence, ahd a desperate kind of 
 indifierence about life, were the immediate effects upon us; 
 and I began, seeing the condition of my camels, to fear we 
 were all doomed to a sandy grave, and to contemplate it 
 with some degree of resignation. I here began to provide 
 for the worst. I saw the fate of our camels fast approach- 
 ing, and that our men grew weak in proportion: our bread, 
 too, began to fail us, although we had plenty of camel's 
 flesh in its stead; our water, though to all appearance we 
 were to find it more frequently than in the beginning of 
 our journey, was nevertheless brackish, and scarce served 
 the purpose to quench our thirst; and above all, the dreadful 
 simoom had perfectly exhausted our strength, and brought 
 upon us a degree of cowardice and languor that we strug- 
 gled with in vain." 
 
 The following extract is from D'Osbornville's " Essays, 
 &c. on the East :" — " Some enlightened travellers have 
 seriously written, that every individual who falls a victim 
 to this infection, is immediately reduced to ashes, though 
 apparently only asleep ; and that when taken hold of to be 
 awakened by passengers, the limbs part from the body and 
 remain in the hand. Such travellers would evidently not 
 have taken these tales on hearsay, if they had paid a proper 
 attention to other facts, which they either did or ougiit to 
 have heard. Experience proves, that animals, by pressing 
 their nostrils to the earth, and men, by covering their heads 
 in their mantles, have nothing to fear from these meteors. 
 This demonstrates the impossibility that a poison which 
 can only penetrate the most delicate parts of the brain or 
 lungs, should calcine the skin, flesh, nerves, and bones. I 
 acknowledge these accounts are had from the Arabs them- 
 selves ; but their picturesque and extravagant expressions 
 are a kind of imaginary coin, to know the true value of 
 which, requires some practice." 
 
 Notwithstanding this remark, if the word immediately 
 were exchanged for quickly, the purport of the account 
 might be almost exactly justified. Our author proceeds — 
 " I have twice had an opportunity of considering the effect 
 of these siphons, with some attention. I shall relate simply 
 what I have seen in the case of a merchant and two travel- 
 lers, who were struck d.uring their sleep, and died on the 
 spot. I ran to see if it was possible to afford them any suc- 
 cour, but they were already dead ; the victims of an interior 
 suffocating fire. There were apparent signs of the dissolu- 
 tion of their fluids ; a kind of serous matter issued from 
 the nostrils, mouth, and ears ; and in something more than 
 an hour, the whole body was in the same state. However, 
 as, according to their custom, they [the Arabs] were 'dili- 
 gent to pay them th* last duties of humanity, I cannot 
 affirm that the putrefaction was more or less rapid than 
 usual in that country. As to the meteor itself, it may be 
 examined with impunity at the distance of three or four 
 fathoms; and the country people are only afraid of being 
 suprised by it when they are asleep ; neither are such acci- 
 dents very common, for" these siphons are only seen during 
 two or three months of the year ; and as their approach is 
 felt, the camp-guards and the people awake are always 
 very careful to rouse those that sleep, who also have a 
 general habit of covering their faces with mantles." 
 
 Any seeming contrariety of representation between Mr. 
 Bruce and this traveller may be accounted for, by suppo- 
 sing that in different deserts, or at different times, (of the 
 year, perhaps,) these meteors are more or less fatal ; but 
 the reader's attention is desired, particularly, to certain 
 ideas implied in these descriptions:—!. The meteor seems 
 like a thin smoke, i. e. seen by daylight, when Mr. Bruce 
 travelled. 2. It passed with a gentle ruffling wind. 3. It 
 was some hours in passing. 4. It affected the mind, by en- 
 feebling the body; producing despondency and cowardice. 
 b. It is dangerous by being breathed. 6. It is peculiarly 
 fatal to persons sleeping. 7. Its effects, even on those to 
 whom it is not fatal, are debilitating and lasting. 8. It is 
 felt ; and is compared to a suffocating fire. 9. Its extent is 
 sometimes considerable; about half a mile; sometimes 
 more, sometimes less. 10. Colonel Campbell says, at the 
 
 close of the extract from him, page 9, that "to prevent 
 drawing it in, it is necessary first to see it, which is not 
 always practicable." No doubt, we may safely add, espe- 
 cially by night. 
 
 These particulars respecting the nature and effects of the 
 simoom, will illustrate, by comparison, occurrences record- 
 ed 2 Kings, chap xix., and Isaiah, chap, xxxvii. 
 
 I. "Behold, I will send a blast upon him," (Sennacherib.) 
 The word rendered blast (m-i ruach) does not impl) a' 
 vehement wind ; but a gentle breathing, a breeze, a vapour, ' 
 a reek, an exhalation ; and thus agrees perfectly v/ith the 
 descriptions extracted above. 
 
 II. It is supposed the prophet alludes to this meteor, Isa. 
 chap. XXX. 27, " The Lord's anger is burning, or devouring, 
 fire ;" (" burning with his anger" — ''his tongue is a devour- 
 ing fire." Eng. Trans.) And ver. 33, " The breath of the 
 Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." 
 
 III. The army of Sennacherib was destroyed by night. 
 No doubt the unwarrantable pride of the king had extended 
 also to his army, (witness the arrogance of Rabshakeh,) so 
 that being in full security the officers and soldiers were 
 negligent; their discipline was relaxed; the " camp-guards" 
 were not alert ; or, perhaps, they themselves were the first 
 taken off; and those who slept not wrapped up, imbibed the 
 poison plentifully. If this had been an evening of dissolute 
 mirth, (no uncommon thing in a camp,) their joy (perhaps 
 for a victory, or "the first night of their attacking the city," 
 says Josephus) became, by its effects, one means of their 
 destruction. 
 
 IV. If the Assyrians were not accustom-ed to the action 
 of this meteor at home, tliey might little expect it ; and bi/ 
 night, might little watch for, or discern it. The total 
 number of Sennacherib's army is not mentioned : perhaps 
 it was three or four times the number slain ; that it w^as 
 very great, appears from his boastings sent to Hezekiah. 
 If the extent of the meteor was half a mile, or a mile, in 
 passing over a camp, it might destroy many thousandi; cf 
 sleepers; while those on each side of its course, escap(!d ; 
 and these, " rising early in the morning," discovered vh i 
 slaughter of their fellows around them. The destruction 
 of Cambyses' army of 50,000 men going for Ethiopia, is, in 
 some respects, not unlike this destruction of the Assyrians. 
 
 V. The subsequent languor, despondence, and cowardice, 
 attending this meteor, contribute to explain the forced re- 
 turn of Sennacherib home ; even though his army might 
 be very numerous, notwithstanding this diminution. 
 
 Observe, it was not before Jerusalem that this event 
 occurred, but to the south. 
 
 VI. The Babylonish Talmud affirms, that this destruc- 
 tion of the Assyrians was executed by lightning; and some 
 of the Targums are quoted for saying the same thing. 
 Josephus says, " Sennacherib, on his return from the' 
 Egyptian war, found his army which he had left under 
 Rabshakeh, almost entirely destroyed by a judicial pesti- 
 lence, which swept away, in officers and common soldiers, 
 the first night they sat down before the city, 185,000 men." 
 
 VII. That this meteor inflicts diseases where it is not 
 immediately fatal, Mr. Bruce himself is an instance ; he 
 also says, " though Syene, by its situation, should be healthy, 
 the general complaint is a weakness and soreness in the 
 eyes; generally ending in blindness of one or both eyes; 
 you scarce ever see a person in the street who sees with 
 both eyes. They say it is owing to the hot wind from the 
 desert ; and this I apprehend to be true, by the violent sore- 
 ness and inflammation we were troubled with in our return 
 home, through the great desert, to Syene." — Taylor in 
 Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Ver. 11. And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the 
 Lord; and he brought the shadow ten degrees 
 backward, by which it had gone down in the 
 dial of Ahaz. 
 
 At the beginning of the world it is certain there was no 
 distinction of time, but bv the light and darkness, and the 
 whole day was included in the general terms of the evening 
 and morning. The Chaldeans, many ages after the flood, 
 were the first who divided the day iiito hours ; they being 
 the first who applied themselves with any success to astrol- 
 ogy. Sun-dials are of ancient use : but as they were of no 
 service in cloudy weather and in the night, there was 
 
Chap. 20—23. 
 
 2 KINOS. 
 
 29r 
 
 another invention of measuring the parts of time by water ; 
 but that not proving sufficiently exact, they laid it aside for 
 another by sand. The use of dials was earlier among the 
 Greeks than the Romans. It was above three hundred 
 years after the building of Rome before they knew any 
 thing of them : but yet they had divided the day and night 
 into twenty-four hours : though they did not count the 
 hours numerically, but from midnight to midnight, distin- 
 guishing them by particular names, as by the cock-crowing, 
 the dawn, the m'idday, &c. The first sun-dial we read of 
 among the Romans, which divided the day into hours, is 
 mentioned by Pliny, as fixed upon the temple of Gluirmus 
 by L. Papyrius, the censor, about the twelfth year of the 
 wars with' Pyrrhus. Scipio Nasica, some years after, 
 measured the day and night into hours from the dropping 
 of water. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 13. And Hezekiah hearkened unto them, 
 and showed them the house of his precious 
 things, the siker, and the gold, and the spices, 
 and the precious ointment, and all the house of 
 his armour, and all that was found in his trea- 
 sures : there was nothing- in his house, nor in 
 all his dominion, that Hezekiah showed them 
 not. 
 
 The display which Hezekiah made of his treasure was 
 to gratify the ambassadors of the king of Babylon. It ap- 
 pears to have been an extraordinary thing, and not done 
 but upon this and occasions of a similar nature \ such 
 probably was the general practice. Lord Macartney in- 
 forms us, that " the splendour of the emperor of China and 
 his court, and the riches of the mandarins, surpass all that 
 can be said of them. Their silks, porcelain, cabinets, and 
 other furniture, make a most glittering appearance. These, 
 however, are only exposed when they make or receive 
 visits: for they commonly neglect themselves at home, the 
 laws against private pomp and luxury being very severe." 
 
 Vertomannus, in his voyage to the East, describing the 
 treasure of the king of Calicut, says, that it is esteemed so 
 immense that it cannot be contained in two remarkably 
 large cellars or warehouses. It consists of precious stones, 
 plates of gold, and as much coined gold as may suffice to 
 lade a hundred mules. They say that it was collected 
 together by twelve kings who were before him, and that in 
 his treasury is a coffer three spans long and two broad, 
 full of precious stones of incalculable value. This custom 
 for the eastern princes to amass enormous loads of treasure, 
 merely for show and ostentation, appears to have been 
 practised by the kings of Judea. One instance of it at least 
 is found in the case of Hezekiah, in the passage now re- 
 ferred to. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 11. Because Manasseh king of Judah hath 
 done these abominations, and hath done wick- 
 edly above all that the Amorites did, which 
 were before him, and hath made Judah also to 
 sin with his idols. 
 
 Bodin informs us from Maimonides, that it was customary 
 among the Amorites to draw their new-born children 
 through a flame; believing that by this means they would 
 escape many calamities ; and that Maimonides himself had 
 been an eyewitness of this superstition in some of the 
 nurses of Egypt. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 17. Because they have forsaken me, and 
 have burnt incense unto other gods, that they 
 might provoke me to anger with all the works 
 of their hands;' therefore my wrath shall be 
 kindled against this place, and shall not be 
 quenched. 
 
 ** Ah ! who can quench the wrath of my enemy *?" 
 
 "Who *? O, I have done it already, for his anger is turned 
 
 to watep." Does a person reply to another in such a way 
 
 as to increase anger, it is asked, " Will ghee (clarified but- 
 
 38 
 
 ter) quench fire 1" " Do not cast ghee on that man's pas- 
 sions." " I beseech you to try to make peace for me." 
 " Peace for you ! can I quench his wrath 1" — Robert!?. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 3. And the king stood by a pillar, and made 
 a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the 
 Lord, and to keep his commandments and his 
 testimonies and his statutes, with all their heart 
 and all their soul, to perform the words of this 
 covenant that were written* in this book : and 
 all the people stood to the covenant 
 
 See on 2 Kings 11. 14. 
 
 Ver. 7. And he brake down the houses of the 
 Sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, 
 where the women wove hangings for the grove. 
 
 Very large hangings are used in the temples, some of 
 which are fastened to the roof, others used as screens, and 
 others to cover the sacred cars. On them are painted the 
 actions of the gods, as described in the books Ramyanum 
 and the Scanda Purana ; and there are portrayed things of 
 the most indecent nature. — Roberts. 
 
 In the history of Schemselouhar and the prince of Per- 
 sia, (Arabian Nights' Entertainment,) when the former was 
 told that the calif was coming to visit her, she ordered the 
 paintings on silk, which were in the garden, to be taken 
 down. In the same manner are paintings or hangings said 
 to be used in the passage referred to. The authority given 
 for this custom must be allowed to be sufficient to vouch for 
 the existence of the practice in question, to whatever ani- 
 madversions the work itself may be liable in any other point 
 of view. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 11. And he took away the horses that the 
 kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the en- 
 tering in of the house of the Lord, by the 
 chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, 
 which was in the suburbs, and burnt the char- 
 iots of the sun with fire. 
 
 The Hindoos believe that the sun is drawn in his course 
 by seven horses, and that the deity sits in his chariot of one 
 wheel, which is driven by Arunan. Thus may be seen the 
 sun and his horses represented in wood, or painted on the 
 hangings which adorn the cars. See, then, the profligacy 
 of the kings of Judah : they gave horses and chariots to 
 the sun as a sign of their attachment to that system of idol- 
 atry, and to procure those blessings which are believed to 
 be dispensed by the gods ; for it must be observed, that such 
 gifts to the deities and their temples are only for the fulfil- 
 ment of some vow for favours received, or for those which 
 are earnestly desired. — Roberts. 
 
 By those horses, cannot well be understood, as the greater 
 part of modern interpreters maintain, a number of sculp- 
 tured figures of gold, silver, or brass, which had been pre- 
 sented as votive offerings to the heathen deity. The words 
 of the sacred historian certainly refer to living horses, for 
 he simply states, that Josiah " took away the horses that the 
 kings of Judah had given, or dedicated to the sun :" but had 
 the figures of horses been intended, the clause, to corres- 
 
 Eond with the common manner of the sacred writers, must 
 ave run in these terms. He took away the horses of gold, 
 of silver, or of brass ; for in this way the m6\ten calf of 
 Aaron, the serpent of Moses, and the lions and oxen of 
 Solomon, are distinguished in scripture from the real ani- 
 mals. Nor had he distinguished in one statue the horses 
 from the chariot; nor assigned to them a particular station 
 between the tefnple and the house of Nathan-melech; 
 because they were parts and appendages of the same gen- 
 eral figure." Besides, the destruction of the horses was 
 effected by one operation, and the chariots by another, 
 which shows that they were not metallic figures: Josiah 
 took away, or (as the verb is rendered in other parts) de- 
 stroyed the horses, but he burned the chariots in the fire. 
 These horses were given or dedicated to the sun, to be 
 offered in sacrifice to that luminary, according to some 
 
2 KINGS. 
 
 Chap. 25. 
 
 writers; or kept in honour of Baal, or Apollo, as others 
 imagine. The Jewish writers allege that the priests of the 
 sun 'led them forth at the dawn, with great pomp, into a 
 large area, between the temple and the house of Nathan- 
 melech, to salute their god, as soon as he appeared above 
 the horizon. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 21. And the king commanded all the peo- 
 ple, saying", Keep the passover unto the Lord 
 your God, as it is written in the book of the 
 covenant. 22. Surely there was not holden 
 such a passover from the days of the judges 
 that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the 
 kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah. 
 
 To those who may wonder how Jerusalem could receive 
 such multitudes, as were obliged by the Jewish law to attend 
 there three times a year, and as we know did sometimes 
 actually appear in it, I would recite the account that Pitts 
 gives of Mecca, the sacred city of the Mohammedans, and 
 the number of people he found collected together there, for 
 the celebration of their religious solemnities, in the close 
 of the seventeenth century. This city, he tells us, he 
 thought he might safely say, had not one thousand families 
 in it of constant inhabitants, and the buildings very mean 
 and ordinary. That four caravans arrive there every year, 
 with great numbers of people in each, and the Mohamme- 
 dans say, there meet not fewer than seventy thousand souls 
 at these solemnities ; and that though he could not think 
 the number quite so large, yet that it is very great. How 
 such numbers of people, with their beasts, could be lodged 
 and entertained in such a little ragged town as Mecca, is a 
 question he thus answers: " As .for houseroom, the inhab- 
 itants do straiten themselves very much, in order at this 
 time to make their market. And as for such as come last, 
 after the town is filled, they pitch their tents without the 
 town, and there abide until they remove towards' home. As 
 for provision, they all bring sufficient with them, except it 
 be of flesh, which they may have at Mecca ; but all other 
 provisions, as butter, honey, oil, olives, rice, biscuit, See. they 
 bring with them as much as will last through the wilder- 
 ness, forward and backward, as well as the time they stay 
 at Mecca; and so for their camels they bring store of prov- 
 ender, &c. with them." The number of Jews that assem- 
 bled at Jerusalem at their passover, was much greater: but 
 had not Jerusalem been a much larger city than Mecca is, 
 as in truth it was, yet the present Mohammedan practice 
 of abiding under tents, and carrying their provisions and 
 bedding with them, will easily explain how ihey might be 
 accommodated. Josephus says, that in one year the num- 
 ber of lambs slain at the passover amounted to five hundred 
 and fifty-six thousand five hundred, and that ten men at 
 least ate of one lamb, and often many more, even to the 
 number of twenty. Taking therefore the number of per- 
 sons at the lowest computation, i. e. ten to one lamb, there 
 must have been present this year at Jerusalem, not less than 
 two million five hundred and sixty-five thousand persons ! — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 30. And his servants carried him in a 
 chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him 
 to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepul- 
 chre. And the people of the land took Jehoa- 
 haz the son of Josiah, and anointed him, and 
 made him king in his father's stead. 
 
 See on ch. 9. 28. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Ver. 7. And they slew the sons of Zedekiah 
 before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zede- 
 kiah, and bound him with fetters of brass, and 
 carried him to Babylon. 
 
 This was probably done with the intention of rendering 
 the king incapable of ever reascending the throne. Thus it 
 was a law in Persia down to the latest time, that no blind 
 person could mount the throne. Hence the barbarous cus- 
 tom, common at the time of Chardin, and even since, of 
 depriving the sons and male relations of a Persian king, 
 who are not to be allowed to attain the government, of their 
 sight. Down to the time of Abbas, who reigned in 1642, 
 this was done, according to Chardin, only by passing a 
 red-hot copper plate before the eyes. " But the power of 
 vision was not so entirely destroyed, but that the person 
 blinded still retained a glimmering; and the operation was 
 frequently performed in so favourable a manner, that still 
 some sight remained. During the reign of Abbas II., one 
 of the brothers of that prince once visited his aunt and his 
 nephew, whose palace joins the residence of the Dutch : 
 as he expressed a wish to visit these strangers, they were 
 informed of this, and they were invited to spend an after- 
 noon, and take supper with them. The brother of the king 
 brought several other blinded princes with him, and when 
 candles were introduced, it was observed that they were 
 aware of it. They were asked if they saw any" thing. 
 The king's brother answeH"ed in the affirmative, an5 added, 
 that he could see enough to walk without a stick. This 
 was unfortunately heard by one of the court spies, who 
 were employed to watch all the motions of the great people. 
 According to the custom of these people, he related it to 
 the king in a malicious manner, and so that he could not 
 avoid being uneasy. 'How!' cried he, ' these blind peo- 
 ple boast they can see 1 I shall prevent that ;' and imme- 
 diately he ordered their eyes to be put out in the manner 
 above described. This "is performed by entirely putting 
 out the eyes with the point of a dagger. The Persians," 
 continues Chardin, " consider their policy towards the 
 children of the royal family, as humane and laudable ; 
 since they only depi^ive them of their sight, and do not put 
 them to death, as the Turks do. They say that it is allow- 
 able to deprive these princes of their sight, to secure the 
 tranquillity of the state ; but they dare not put them to death 
 for two reasons ; the first is, because the law forbids to spill 
 innocent blood ; secondly, because it might be possible that 
 those who remained alive should die without children, and 
 if there were no other relations, the whole legitimate fami- 
 ly would become extinct." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 30. And his alldwance was a continual 
 allowance given him of the king, a daily rate 
 for every day, all the days of his life. 
 
 The other guests were arranged round the room, accord- 
 ing to thqir respective ranks : among whom was an old 
 man, a lineal descendant of the Seffi family, whom they 
 called Nawab, and who took his seat next to the Ameen- 
 ad-Dowlah. Although needy and without power, he is 
 always treated with the greatest respect. 2 Sam. ix. 1. 7. 
 He receives a daily sursat, or allowance, from the king, 
 which makes his case resemble that of Jehoiachin, for his 
 allowance was a continual allowance given him of the 
 king, a daily rate, all the days of his life. 2 Kings xxv. 30. 
 Giving to the Nawab a high rank in society, is illustrative 
 of the precedence given to Jehoiaehin, by setting his throne 
 above the throne of the kings that were with him in Bab- 
 ylon. — MOBIEB. 
 
THE FIRST BOOK OF CHRONICLES 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 34. Now Sheshan had no sons, but daugh- 
 ters: and Sheshan had a servant, an Egyptian, 
 whose name was Jarha. 35. And Sheshan 
 gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife, 
 and she bare him Attai. 
 
 The usages of the East differ very much from those of 
 the West, with relation to the more than kind treatment of 
 their servants ; but they perfectly agree with those that are 
 referred to in the scriptures. How far these have been 
 taken notice of in explaining passages of holy writ, I do 
 not knowj but I believe the gathering up together, and 
 presenting them in one view to my reader, will be a sort of 
 novelty. 
 
 They marry their slaves frequently to their daughters,, 
 and that when they have no male issue, and those daughters 
 are what we call great fortimes. That Hassan of whom 
 Maillet gives a long account in his eleventh letter, and who 
 was kiaia of the Asaphs of Cairo, that is to say, the colonel 
 of four or five thousand men who go under that name, was 
 the slave of a predecessor in that office, the famous Kamel, 
 and married his daughter: " for Kamel," savs he, " accord- 
 ing to the custom of the country, gave him one of his 
 daughters in marriage, and left him, at his death, one part 
 of the great riches he had amassed together in the course of 
 a long and prosperous life." What Sheshan then did, was 
 perhaps not so extraordinary as we may have imagined, 
 but perfectly conformable to old eastern customs, if not to 
 the arrangements of Moses ; at least it is, we see, just the 
 same with what is now practised. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 39. And they went to the entrance of Gedor, 
 even unto the east side of the valley, to seek 
 pasture for their flocks. 40. And they found 
 fat pasture and good, and the land loas wide, 
 and quiet, and peaceable; for Mgy of Ham bad 
 dwelt there of old. 
 
 Our people, who are extremely watchful over their pub- 
 lic pastures', to guard them from intruders, and so ready to 
 go to law with their next neighbours about their right to 
 common, or the number of beasts they shall feed there, 
 may think it very strange that Abraham and Lot, the Ken- 
 iles and Rechabites, should have been permitted to move 
 up and down, and feed their flocks and herds unmolested, 
 in inhabited countries as well as in deserts. 
 
 But this ancient custom still continues in Palestine, which, 
 depopulated as it is, probably has as many inhabitants in its 
 towns, as it had in the days of Abraham. Nor is this pe- 
 culiar to Palestine ; there are many that live in Barbary, 
 and other places, in the same manner. And as the Kenites 
 and Rechabites lived in Palestine in tents, and pastured 
 their cattle there without molestation, when the country was 
 very populous, so Maillet assures us, that great numbers 
 of these people that live in tents, come into Egypt itself to 
 pasture their cattle, a very populous country,"and indeed 
 the Holland of the Levant. As I do not know his account 
 has ever appeared in English, I will here give it to the 
 reader : — 
 
 " Besides these native inhabitants of Egypt, who have 
 fixed habitations, and compose those numerous and popu- 
 ous villages of which I have spoken above, there are also 
 in that part of the country that is next the deserts, and even 
 often in those that border on the Nile, a sort of wandering 
 people, who dwell in tents, and change their habitation, as 
 the want of pasture or the variety of the seasons lead them. 
 These people are called Bedotiin Arabs; and we may 
 
 reckon there are above two millions of them in Egypt. 
 Some keep on the mountains, and at a distance from the 
 cities and villages, but always in places where it is easy for 
 them to have water. Others pitch their tents, which are 
 very low and poor, in the neighbourhood of places that are 
 inhabited, where they permit them for a small recompense 
 to feed their flocks. They even give them up some lands 
 to cultivate for their own use, only to avoid having any mis- 
 understanding with people, who can do a great deal of 
 mischief without any danger of having it returned upon 
 them. For to avoid everything of this kind, they have 
 nothing to do but to penetrate a day's journey into the des- 
 erts, where, by their extreme frugality, and by the knowl- 
 edge they have of places of water, they can subsist several 
 months without great difficulty. There is not a more pleas- 
 ing sight in the world, than the beholding, in the months of 
 November, December, and January, those vast meadows, 
 where the grass, almost as high as a man, is so thick that 
 a bullock laid in it has enough of it without rising, within 
 his reach, to feed on for a whole day, all covered with habi- 
 tations and tents, with people and herds. And indeed it is 
 at this time of the year that the Bedouins flock into Egypt, 
 from three or four hundred leagues distance, in order to 
 feed their camels and horses there. The tribute which 
 they require of them for granting this permission, they pay 
 with the produce of some manufactures of their wool, or 
 with some sheep, which they sell, as well as their lambs, or 
 some young camels, which they dispose of As to what 
 remains, accustomed as they are to extreme frugality, they 
 live on a little, and a very small matter is sufficient for their 
 support. After having spent a certain space of time in the 
 neighbourhood of the Nile, they retire into the deserts, from 
 whence, by routes with which they are acquainted, they 
 pass into other regions, to dwell there in like manner some 
 months of the year, till the return of the usual season calls 
 them back to Egypt." 
 
 We see here that they are at liberty to feed their cattle, 
 not only in the deserts adjoining to cultivated countries, 
 but in those countries themselves, and in those that are full 
 of people too. The commons then of these countries are 
 not, cannot be, appropriated to this or that village, this 
 or that district, but lie open to all, nor have they any notion 
 of our rights of commoning. It was so anciently in Israel, 
 as appears by the case of the Kenites and Rechabites, as 
 well as by that ancient constitution among the Jews, ascri- 
 bed by them to Joshua, and which is the first of ten that are 
 supposed to have been established by him, by which it was 
 lawful to feed a flock in the woods, everywhere, without 
 any regard to the division of the lands between the tribes, 
 so that those of the tribe of Naphtali might feed a flock in 
 the woods of the tribe of Judah. These usages are ex- 
 tremely contrary to ours ; the observing therefore that they 
 continue still in full force in the East, may be requisite to 
 engage us to admit such suppositions, in settling the Old 
 Testament history, as we might otherwise hardly be willing 
 to allow. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 10. And in the days of Saul they made war 
 with the Hagarites, who fell by their hand: 
 and they dwelt in their tents throughout all the 
 east land of Gilead. 
 
 The shepherds are not the only cFass of people that live 
 in tents ; many Orientals forsake their villages at the ap- 
 proach of summer, for the more airy and refreshing shelter 
 which they affbrd. This custom, which may be traced to 
 an antiquity very remote, explains, in the most satisfactory 
 manner, an incident in the history of Jacob. When the 
 patriarch, in consequence of a divine admonition, had 
 formed the resolution to return from Mesopotamia to his 
 
800 
 
 1 CHRONi^CLES. 
 
 Chap. 9—12. 
 
 father's house, he sent for Rachel and Leah to his flocks, 
 and there informed them of his design ; and on their con- 
 senting to go with him, he set out upon his journey so 
 silently, that Laban had no notice of it till the third day 
 after his departure. It appears, however, that he carried 
 all his effecis with him, and tents for the accommodation of 
 his family ; and that Laban, who pursued him, had tents 
 also for the use of his followers. The reason is, it was the 
 time of sheep-shearing, when the masters and all their re- 
 tainers commonly lived under tents in the open fields ; and 
 had the greater part, if not the whole of their furniture with 
 them, on account of the entertainments which were given 
 on these joyful occasions. Thus was Jacob equipped at 
 once for his journey, and Laban for the pursuit. It is not 
 more difficult lo account for the intelligence not reaching 
 Laban till the third day after Jacob's escape. Laban's 
 flocks were in two divisions — one under the care of Jacob, 
 the other committed to the care of Laban's sons, at the 
 distance of three days' journey; and Jacob's own flock, 
 under the management of his family, were, probably for 
 the same reason, at an equal distance. Besides this, there 
 might be other circumstances which retarded the progress 
 of the messenger, which the sacred historian did not think 
 it necessary to state ; the fact is certain, and all the incidents 
 of the story are natural and easy. The custom of living in 
 tents was not confined to people in the country; persons of 
 <listinction ofcen retired from the towns into the fields, and 
 lived under tents during the heats of summer. Tahmasp, 
 a Persian monarch, used to spend the winter at Casbin, 
 and to retire in the summer three or four leagues into the 
 country, where he lived intents at the foot of Mount Alou- 
 vent, a place famed tor its cool and pleasant retreats. His 
 successors acted in the same manner, till the time of Abbas 
 the Great, who removed his court to Ispahan. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 18. (Who hitherto waited in the king's gate 
 eastward:) they were porters in the companies 
 of tlie children of Levi. 
 
 This gate was so called, because Solomon built it and 
 the rest of the wall on that side, at an extraordinary trouble 
 and expense, raising the foundation four hundred cubits, 
 or seven hundred and twenty-nine feet seven inches from 
 the bottom of the deep valley of Kidron, by means of large 
 stones, twenty cubits, or thirty-six feet five inches long, and 
 six cubits, or ten feet ten inches high, so as to be on an 
 equality with the rest of the surface. When Captain Light 
 visited Jerusalem, in 1814, some of these large stones seem 
 to have been remaining, for when describing the Turkish 
 aga's house, which is built on the spot where the house of 
 Pontius Pilate formerly stood, he says, " what attracted my 
 observation most, were three or four layers of immense 
 stones, apparently of the ancient town, forming part of the 
 walls of the palace." The ancients delighted in building 
 with these large kinds of stones, for in the ruins which we 
 have of ancient buildings, Ihey arje often to be found of 
 great magnitude. Mr. Wood, in his Ruins of Palmyra 
 and Balbec, states, "that the stones which compose the 
 sloping wall of the latter are enormous ; some are from 
 twenty-eight to thirty-five feet long, and nine feet high. 
 There are three of the following dimensions : fifty-eight 
 feet high, and twelve thick ; they are of white granite, with 
 large shining flakes like gypsum." 
 
 At Bagdad, the gate Al Talism is " now bricked up, in 
 honour of its having been entered in triumph by the Sultan 
 Murad, after his having recovered Bagdad from the Per- 
 sians, and the weak grasp of the unworthy son of the great 
 Abbas. In consequence of this signal event, the portal was 
 Instantly closed on the victor having marched through, and 
 from that day has never been reopened. This custom of 
 shutting up any passage that has been peculiarly honoured, 
 that it may not be profaned by vulgar footsteps, appears to 
 have prevailed very generally over the East. I found an 
 instance of it at Ispahan, where the Ali Copi gate is, in like 
 manner, held sacred for a similar reason," (Sir R. K, Por- 
 ter.) — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 9. And when they had stripped him, they 
 tcok his head, and his armour, and sent into 
 
 the land of the Philistines round about to carry 
 tidings unto their idols, and to the people. 
 
 After Saul had fallen on Mount Gilboa, his enemies 
 " stripped him, and took off his head, and sent the tidings 
 to their idols." When the heathen of the present day gam 
 a victory over their enemies, they always take the tidings 
 to their idols. There is the king, and there his general, 
 and troops, and priests, and people, marching in triumph to 
 the temple. Then they relate to the gods all their proceed- 
 ings ; how they conquered the foe, and that to them they 
 have come to give the glory. But this practice is had re- 
 course to, also, in the common affairs of life. A man de- 
 livered from prison, or any great emergency, always goes 
 to his gods, to carry the joyful tidings. Hear them relate 
 the story : " Ah ! Swamy, you know Muttoo wanted to ruin 
 me ; he therefore forged a deed in my name, and tried to 
 get my estates ; but I resisted him, and it has just been de- 
 cided before the court, that he is guilty. I am therefore 
 come to praise you, O Swamy !" — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 41. Uriah the Hittite, Zabad the son of Ahlai. 
 
 Foreigners resident in the country were permitted to 
 serve in the Jewish armies, and they sometimes rose to a 
 very high rank; for both Uriah and Ittai, who seemed 
 to have held principal commands in the armies of David, 
 were aboriginal Canaanites. But in succeeding ages, the 
 kings of Judah, affecting to imitate the policy of the sur- 
 rounding potentates, or distrusting the omnipotent protec- 
 tion of Jehovah, occasionally hired large bodies of foreign 
 troops to fight their battles, who, like mercenaries of later 
 times, after expelling the invaders, sometimes turned their 
 arms against their employers, and ravaged the country 
 which they came to protect. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 8. And of the Gadites there separated them- 
 selves unto David, into the hold to the wilder- 
 ness, men of might, and men of war fit for the 
 battle, that could handle shield and buckler, 
 whose faces were like the faces of lions, and 
 were as swift as the roes upon the mountains. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 2. 18. 
 
 Ver. 15. These are they that went over Jordan 
 in the first month, when it had overflown all 
 his banks ; and they put to flight all them of 
 the valleys, both towards the east and towards 
 the west. 
 
 See on Josh. 3. 15. 
 
 Ver. 40. Moreover, they that were nigh them, 
 even unto Issachar and Zebulun and Naphtali, 
 brought bread on asses, and on camels, and on 
 mules, and on oxen ; and meat, meal, cakes of 
 figs, and bunches of raisins, and wine, and oil, 
 ' and oxen, and sheep abundantly: for there was 
 j oy in Israel. 
 
 The strong and docile ox was also taught to submit 
 his shoulder to the heavy burden ; for, at the accession of 
 David to the throne of Israel, the people brought " bread on 
 asses, and on camels, and on mules, and on oxen.'* He is 
 less fitted, indeed, by the rotundity of his form, for this spe- 
 cies of labour, than for those just mentioned. But although 
 the very back of the ox, according to this elegant writer, 
 declares that it has not been formed to receive a load, yet 
 the concurring testimony of past ages assures us that it is 
 not altogether unfit for that purpose. iElian observes, that 
 the bull submits to the bier, and carries a boy or a girl on 
 his neck, and a woman on his back. The Roman authors 
 mounted Bacchus on a bull, and made Europa travel in 
 the same manner. These facts prove, that it was by no 
 means uncommon to use the ox for burdens of every kind, 
 and even for the saddle ; a custom which Mr. Bruce avers, 
 is still practised among some tribes. In Guzerat the oxen 
 
Chap. 17—21. 
 
 1 CHRONICLES. 
 
 301 
 
 are perfectly white, with black horns, a skin delicately soft, 
 and eyes rivalling those of the antelope in brilliant lustre. 
 Those reared in the northern part of the province are no- 
 ble animals, superior in size, strength, and docility ; some 
 of them' travel with a hackery, a vehicle for the convey- 
 ance of women and children, from thirty to forty miles a 
 day ; and are yoked to the carriages of wealthy Hindoos in 
 distant parts of India. In sweetness of temper and gentle- 
 ness of manners they nearly resemble the elephant. Some 
 of these oxen are valued "at nearly two hundred pounds 
 sterling. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 16. And David the king came and sat be- 
 fore the Lord, and said, Who am I, O Lord 
 God, and what is my house, that thou hast 
 brought me hitherto ? 
 
 The ceremonial of the Orientals does not end with the 
 introduction of persons to one another, but continues during 
 the whole visit. The most scrupulous attention is paid by 
 all parties to the established tokens of respect ; the posture 
 of the body, the part of the room, and other circumstances, 
 are all regulated by custom, to whose imperious dictates 
 they have implicitly submitted from the remotest antiquity. 
 One of the postures by which a person testifies his respect 
 for a superior, is by sitting upon his heels, which is consid- 
 ered as a token of great humility. In this manner, says 
 Dr. Pococke, resting on their hams, sat the attendants of 
 the English consul, when he waited on the caia of the 
 pacha of Tripoli. It was in this humble posture, probably, 
 that David, the king of Israel, sat before the Lord in the 
 sanctuary, when he blessed him for his gracious promise 
 concerning his family ; half sitting and half kneeling, so as 
 to rest the body upon the heels. This entirely removes the 
 ground of perplexity, which some expositors have felt, in 
 their attempts to elicit a meaning from the phrase, sitting 
 before the Lord, at once consistent with the majesty of Je- 
 hovah, and the humility of the worshipper ; for this attitude 
 expressed among the Orientals the deepest humility, and 
 by consequence, was every way becoming a worshipper of 
 the true God. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Ver. 9. Now when Tou king of Hamath heard 
 how David had smitten all the host of Hada- 
 rezer king of Zobah, 10. He sent Hadoram his 
 son to King David, to inquire of his welfare, 
 and to congratulate him, because he had fought 
 against Hadarezer, and smitten him ; (for Flada- 
 rezer had war with Tou ;) and ivith him all 
 manner of vessels of gold and silver and brass. 
 
 Here, again, we have a beautiful and simple picture of 
 eastern manners. Tou, the heathen king, sent a messenger 
 to compliment David on his success over his enemies. 
 Who, in the East, has not witnessed similar things 1 Has 
 a man gained a case in a court of law; has he been blessed 
 by the birth of a son; has he given his daughter in mar- 
 riage ; has he gained a situation under government ; has he 
 returned from a voyage or a journey, or finished a success- 
 ful speculation ; — then his friends and neighbours send 
 messengers to congratulate him — to express the joy they 
 feel in his prosperity; "so much so, that, had it come to 
 themselves, their pleasure could not have been greater." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 1. And Satan stood up against Israel, and 
 
 provoked David to number Israel. 
 See on 2 Sam. 24. 1. 
 
 Ver. 5. And Joab gave the sum of the number of 
 the people unto David. And all ^Ae?/ of Israel 
 were a thousand thousand and a hundred thou- 
 sand men that drew sword : and Judah teas four 
 
 hundred threescore and ten thousand men that 
 drew sword. 
 
 Few things in history are more surprising than the great 
 numbers which are recorded as forming eastern armies , 
 even the scripture accounts of the armies that invaded 
 Judea, or were raised in Judea, often excite the wonder of 
 their readers. To parallel these great numbers by those of 
 other armies, is not all that is acceptalJfe to the inquisitive ; 
 it is requisite also to show how so small a province as the 
 Holy Land really was, could furnish such mighty armies 
 of fighting: men ; with the uncertainty of the proportion of 
 these fighting men to the Mhole number of the nation ; in 
 respect to which many unfounded conjectures have escaped 
 the pens of the learned. This includes more importance 
 than may be at first sight attached to it, because it is well 
 known that Josephus, in narrating the same facts, often give§ 
 different numbers. In the story of Abijah, 1 Kings xv. 5, 
 we read in some MSS. 40,000, instead of 400,000. The 
 question is, which is wrong'? since it has been concluded 
 that both could not be right. Besides this, the answers to 
 those who question the possibility of the Holy Land main- 
 taining so great a population as the armies mentioned im- 
 plies, have usually taken the proportion which Europe fur- 
 nishes of fighting men to the mass of its inhabitants ; and 
 very erroneous conclusions (as I conceive) have been 
 drawn from such calculations. It must be admitted, that 
 the passages in which numbers are expressed in all ancient 
 writings, and by parity of reason, in the scriptures, seem, 
 more than many others, to justify suspicion of error in our 
 present copies ; and to understand them correctly requires 
 much attention and information ; especially when such 
 numbers are very great. Having premised this, I proceed 
 to attempt two particulars : first^ by instances of nuitierous 
 armies which have been occasionally raised, to show what 
 may be done by despotic power, or the impulse of military 
 glory ; secondly, to show that the composition of Asiatic 
 armies is such as may render credible those numbers wiiich 
 express their gross amount; while no just inference re- 
 specting the entire population of a country can be drawn 
 from the numbers stated as occasionally composing its ar- 
 mies. As to the first particular, the accounts of the armies 
 of Semiramis, of Darius.andof Xerxes, are in everybody's 
 hands, but as these are not without suspicion of having 
 been enlarged, either purposely by misreport, or acciden- 
 tally by errors in copyists, I decline them ; and rather sub- 
 mit to the reader's attention the account given by Knolles 
 in his " History of the Turks," of the contending armies 
 of Bajazet and Tamerla^ie. It is no bad specimen of the 
 " I will" of military power, of the cares and anxieties at- 
 tending on the station of command, and of the feelings of 
 great minds on great occasions. 
 
 " So, marching on, Tamerlane at length came to Bachi- 
 chich, where he staid to refresh his army eight dales, and 
 there againe took a generall muster thereof, wherein were 
 found (as most write) /owr hundred thousand horse, and six 
 hundred thousand fool ; or, as some others that were there 
 present affirme, three hundred thousand horsemen, and fine 
 himdred thousand foot of al nations. Vnto whom he there 
 gaue a generall pay, and, as his manner was, made vnto 
 them an oration, informing them of such orders as he would 
 haue kept, to the end they might the better obserue the 
 same : with much other militarie discipline, whereof he was 
 very curious with his captains. At which time, also, it was 
 lawfull for euery common soldier to behold him with more 
 boldness than on other daies, forasmuch fts he did for that 
 time, and such like, lay aside his imperial majestic, and 
 shew himselfe more familiar vnto them " Page 215. 
 
 . . ." Malcozzius hauing made true relation vnto Baiazet, 
 was by him demanded ' whether of the two armies he thought 
 bigger or stronger 1' for now Baiazet had assembled a 
 mightie armie of three hundred thousand men, or, as some 
 report, of three hundred thousand horsemen and tn-o hundred 
 thousand foot. "Whereunto Malcozzius, hauing before cra- 
 ued pardon, answered, ' That it could not be, but that 
 Tamerlane might in reason haue the greater number, for 
 that he was a commander of farre greater countries,' 
 Wherewith proud Baiazet oflTended, in great choller replied, 
 ' Out of doubt, the sight of the Tartarian hath made this 
 coward so affraid, that he thinketh euery enemie to be two." 
 
 216 " All which Tamerlane, walking this night vp and 
 
 down in his cainpe, heard, and much rrioiced to see the 
 
302 
 
 1 CHRONICLES. 
 
 Ghap. 22—26. 
 
 hope chat his soldiers had alreadie in general conceiued of 
 the victorie. Who after the second waich returning vnto 
 his pauillion, and there casting himself upon a carpet, had 
 thought to haue slept a while ; but his cares not suffering him 
 so to do, he then, as his man?ierwas, called for a booke, wherein 
 was contained the Hues of his fathers and ancestors, and of 
 other valient worthies, the which he vsed ordinarily to read, 
 as he thert, did : not as therwith vainly to deceiue the time, 
 bat to make vse thefeof, by the imitation of that which was 
 by them worthily done, and declining of such dangers as 
 
 they by their rashness or ouersight fel into," Page 218 
 
 [Vide the same kind of occupation of Ahasuerus, Esther 
 vi. 1.] 
 
 . . ." My will is," said Tamerlane, " that my men come for- 
 w^ard vnto me, as soon as they may, for I will aduance for- 
 ward with an hundred thousand footmen, fiftie thousand vpon 
 each of my two wings, and in the middest of ihem forty 
 thousand of my best horsemen. My pleasure is, that after 
 Ihey haue tried the force of these men, that they come vnto 
 my avauntgard, of whom I wil dispose, and fifty thousand 
 horse more in three bodies, whom thou shalt command: 
 which I wil assist with 80,000 horse, wherein shal be mine 
 own person : hauing 100,000 footmen behind me, who shal 
 march in two squadrons: and for my arereward I appoint 
 40,000 horse, and fiftie thousand footmen, who shal not 
 march, but to my aid. And I wil make choice of 10,000 
 of my best horse, whom I wil send into euery place where 
 I shai thinke needfull within my armie, for to impart my 
 commands." (Knolles's History of the Turks, page 218.) 
 
 [It is impossible, on this occasion, not to recollect the im- 
 mense army led by Napoleon Bonaparte into Russia, ex- 
 ceeding six hundred thousand troops ; also the forces engaged 
 around Leipsic, amounting (including both sides) to half a 
 million of men. Vide Literary Panorama, for Novem- 
 ber, 1813.] 
 
 It may be said, " Such mighty empires may well be 
 supposed to raise forces, to which the small state of Judea 
 was incompetent;" and this may safely be admitted. But 
 what was, in all probability, the nature and composition of 
 the Jewish, as of other eastern armies, we may learn from 
 the following relations, which contribute to strengthen the 
 credibility of the greater numbers recorded as composing 
 them. I shall first pfFer what Baron De Tott reports of 
 the armies raised by the cham of the Crimea; and then, 
 as still more descriptive of Asiatic armies, especially of 
 those raised on the spur of an occasion, the remarks of 
 M. Volney: " It maybe presumed that the rustic, frugal 
 iife, which these pastoral people lead, favours population, 
 while the wants and excesses of luxury, among polished 
 nations, strike at its very root. In fact, it is observed, that 
 the people are less numerous under the roofs of the Crimea, 
 and the province of Boodjack, than in the tents of the No- 
 guais. The best calculation we can make, is from a view 
 of the military forces which the cham is able to assemble. 
 "We shall soon see this prince raising three armies at the 
 same time ; one of a hu7idred thousand men, which he com- 
 manded in person; another of sixty thousand^ commanded 
 liy the calga ; and a third of forty thousand, by the noo- 
 radin. He had the power of raising double the number, 
 without prejudice to the necessary labours of the state. 
 
 " The invasion of New Servia, which had been de- 
 termined on at Constantinople, was consented to in the 
 assembly of the grand vassals of Tartary, and orders 
 were expedited, throughout the provinces, for the necessary 
 military supplies. Three horsevienvfere to be furnished by 
 eight families, which number was estimated to be sufficient 
 for the three armies, which were all to begin their operations 
 at once. That of the nooradin, consisting of forty thov^ 
 sa,nd men, had orders to repair to the Little Don ; that of the 
 calga, of sixty thousand, was to range the left coast of the 
 Boristhenes, till they came beyond the Orela; and that 
 which the cham commanded in person, of a hundred thou- 
 sand, was to penetrate into New Servia." (De Tott.) 
 
 " Sixty thousand men, with them, are very far from being 
 svnonymous with sixty thousand soldiers, as in our armies. 
 That of which we are now speaking affords a proof of 
 this; it might amount, in fact, to forty thousand men, which 
 may be classed as follows: — Five thousand Mamlouk cbly- 
 ^hy, which was the whole effective army ; about fifteen hun- 
 dred Barbary Arnbs, on foot, and no other infantry, for the 
 Turks are acquainted with none ; with them the cavalry is 
 every Ihirg. Besides these, each Mamlouk having in his 
 
 suite tjvo footmen, armed with staves, these would form a 
 body of ten thousand valets, besides a number of servants 
 and serradgis, or attendants on horseback, for the bey and 
 kachefs, which may be estimated at two thousand : all the 
 rest were sutlers, and the usual train of followers. Such 
 was this army, as described to be in Palestine, by persons 
 who had seen and followed it. The Asiatic armies are 
 mobs, their marches ravages, their campaigns mere inroids, 
 and their battles bloody frays. The strongest, or the most 
 adventurous party, goes in search of the other, which not 
 unfrequently flies without offering resistance : if they stind 
 their ground, they engage pellmell, discharge their car- 
 bines, break their spears, and hack each other with their 
 sabres; for they rarely have any cannon, and when tley 
 have, they are but of little service. A panic frequently 
 diffuses itself without cause : one party flies, the other pur- 
 sues, and shouts victory ; the vanquished submits to the will 
 of the conqueror, and the campaign often terminates without 
 a battle." (Volney.) 
 
 It appears, by these extracts, that the numbers which 
 compose the gross of Asiatic armies are very far from de- 
 noting the true number of soldiers, fighting men, of that 
 army ; in fact, when we deduct those whose attendance is 
 of little advantage, it may be not ver^ distant from truth, 
 if we say, nine out of ten are such as, in Europe, would be 
 forbid the army ; nor is the suggestion absolutely despica- 
 ble, that when we read 40, instead of 400, the true fighting 
 corps of soldiers only are reckoned and stated. However 
 that may be, these authorities are sufficient to justify the 
 possibility of such numbers as scripture has recorded, being 
 assembled for purposes of warfare; of which purposes 
 plunder is not one of the least, in the opinion of those who 
 usually auend a camp. It follows, also, that no conclusive 
 estimate of the population of a kingdom can be drawn from 
 such assemblages,under such circumstances; and therefore, 
 that no calculation ought to be hazarded on such imperfect 
 data. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Yer. 19. Now set your heart and your soul to 
 seek the Lord your God : arise, therefore, and 
 build ye the sanctuary of the Lord God, to 
 bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and 
 the holy vessels of God, into the house that is 
 to be built to the name of the Lord. 
 
 In all heathen temples, there are numerous vessels of 
 brass, silver, and gold, which are especially holy. Those, 
 however, of the highest castes, may be allowed to touch, 
 and even borrow them for certain purposes. Thus, a 
 native gentleman, who is going to give a feast, borrows the 
 large caldron for the purpose of boiling the rice ; should 
 his daughter be about to be married, he has the loan of the 
 silver salvers, plates, and even jewels ; which, however, 
 must all be purified by incense and other ceremonies when 
 returned to the temple. " The ark" finds a striking illus- 
 tration in the kcadagam of the Hindoos, — a model of which 
 may be seen in the house of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 
 it are placed the idols, and other sacred symbols, which are 
 carried on men's shoulders. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Ver. 6. Also unto Shemaiah his son were sons 
 born, that ruled throughout the house of their 
 father : for they were mighty men of valour. 
 
 It has been a frequent complaint among learned men, 
 that it is commonly difficult, and oftentimes impossible, to 
 illustrate many passages of the Jewish history, referred to 
 in the annals of their princes, and in the predictions of their 
 prophets, for want of profane historians of the neighbouring 
 nations, of any great anliquitv; upon which I have been 
 ready to think, that it might riot be altogether vain to com- 
 pare with those more ancient transactions, events of a later 
 date that have happened in those countries, in nearly simi- 
 lar circumstances, since human nature is much the same 
 in all ages, allowing for the eccentricity that sometimes 
 arises from some distinguishing prejudices of that particular 
 time. The situation of the Christian kings of Jerusalem, 
 in particular, in the twelfth century, bears, in many respects, 
 
Chap. 27. 
 
 1 CHRONICLES. 
 
 303 
 
 a strong resemblance to that of the kings of Judah ; and the 
 history of the crusades may serve to throw some light on 
 the transactions of the Jewish princes. At least the com- 
 paring them together may be amusing. It is said of King 
 Uzziah, 1 Chron. xxvi. 6, that " he went forth and warred 
 against the Philistines, and broke down the wall of Gath, 
 and the wall of Jabneh, and the wall of Ashdod, and built 
 cities about Ashdod and among the Philistines." Thus we 
 find, in the time of the crusades, when that ancient city of 
 the Philistines, called Ashkelon, had frequently made in- 
 roads into the territories of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the 
 Christians built two strong castles not far from Ashkelon ; 
 and finding the usefulness cf these structures, King Fulk, 
 in the spring of the year of our Lord 1138, attended by the 
 patriarch of Jerusalem and his other prelates, proceeded to 
 build another castle, called Blanche Guarda, which he 
 garrisoned with such soldiers as he could depend upon, 
 furnishing them with arms and provisions. These watch- 
 ing the people of Ashkelon, often defeated their attempts, 
 and sometimes they did not content themselves with being 
 on the defensive, but attacked them, and did them great 
 mischief, gaining the advantage of them. This occa- 
 sioned those who claimed a right to the adjoining country, 
 encouraged by the neighbourhood of such a strong place, 
 to build many villages, in which many families dwelt, 
 concerned in tilling the ground, and raising provisions for 
 other parts of their territories. Upon this the people of 
 Ashkelon, finding themselves encompassed round by a 
 number of inexpugnable fortresses, began to grow very un- 
 easy at their situation, and to apply to Egypt for help by 
 repeated messages ! Exactly in the same manner we may 
 believe Uzziah built cities about Ashdod, that were fortified 
 to repress the excursions of its inhabitants, and to secure to 
 his people the fertile pastures which lay thereabout ; and 
 which pastures, I presume, the Philistines claimed, and 
 indeed all the low land from the foot of the mountains to 
 the sea, but to which Israel claimed a right, and of a part 
 of which this powerful Jewish prince actually took posses- 
 sion, and made settlements for his people there, which he 
 thtis guarded from the Ashdodites: " He built cities about 
 Ashdod, even among the Philistines," for so I would ren- 
 der the words, as the historian appears to be speaking of 
 the same cities in both clauses. Uzziah did more than 
 King Fulk could do, for he beat down the walls not only of 
 Gath and Jabneh, two neighbouring cities, but of Ashdod 
 itself, which must have cut off" all thoughts of their disturb- 
 ing the Jewish settlers, protected by strong fortresses, when 
 they themselves lay open to those garrisons. Ashkelon, on 
 the contrary, remained strongly fortified, by fortresses built 
 by the Christians. — Harmer. 
 
 . Ver. 1 3. And they cast lots, as well the small as 
 the great, according tp the house of their fa- 
 thers, for every gate. 14. And the lot east- 
 ward fell to Shelemiah. Then for Zechariah 
 his son (a wise counsellor) they cast lots, and 
 his lot came out northward. 15. To Obed- 
 edom southward ; and to his sons the house of 
 Asuppim. 16. To Shuppim and Hosah the 
 lot came forth westward, with the gate Shal- 
 lecheth, by the causeway of the going up, ward 
 against ward. 
 
 Thus the gates were assigned to the different oflicers by 
 lot. On the death of a parent, the whole of his fields and 
 gardens are often divided among his children, and great 
 disputes generally arise as to whom shall be given this or 
 that part of the property. One says, " I will have the field 
 to the east." " No," says another, " I will have that :" and it 
 is not till they have quarrelled and exhausted their store of 
 ingenuity and abuse, that they will consent to settle the 
 matter by lot. The plan they take is as follows : they 
 draw on the ground the cardinal points: they then write 
 the names of the parties on separate leaves, and mix them 
 all together: a little child is then called, and told to take one 
 leaf and place it on any point of the compass he pleases ; 
 this being done, the leaf is opened, and to the person whose 
 name is found therein will be given the field or garden which 
 is in that direction. I think it therefore probable, that the 
 lots eastward, westward, northward, and southward, -n hich 
 
 fell to Shelemiah, Zechariah, Obed-edom, and Shuppim, 
 were drawn something in the same way. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 27. Out of the spoils won in battles did they 
 dedicate to maintain the house of the Lord. 
 
 According to the law of Moses, the booty was to be 
 divided equally between those who were in the battle, and 
 those who were in the camp, whatever disparity there 
 might be in the number of each party. The law further 
 requires, that out of that part of the spoils which was 
 assigned to the fighting men, the Lord's share should be 
 separated : and for every five hundred men, oxen, sheep, 
 &c. they were to take one for the high-priest, as being the 
 Lord's first-fruits, and out of the other moiety belonging 
 to the children of Israel, they were to give for every fifty 
 men, oxen, sheep, &c. one to the Levites. Among the 
 Greeks and Romans the plunder was brought together into 
 one common stock, and divided afterward among the ofii- 
 cers and soldiers, paying some respect to their rank in the 
 distribution. Sometimes the soldiers made a reserve of the 
 chief part of the booty, to present, by way of compliment, to 
 their respective generals. The gods were always remem- 
 bered. And the priests had suflicient influence to procure 
 them a handsome lOfi'ering, and other acceptable presents. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Ver. 25. And over the king's treasures was Az- 
 maveth the son of Adiel : and over the store- 
 houses in the fields, in the cities, and in the 
 villages, and in the castles, was Jehonathan the 
 son of Uzziah. 
 
 Subterranean granaries were common in the East, The 
 following is a detailed account of those now used by the 
 Moors : — After the harvest they used to enclose their corn 
 in subterraneous granaries, which are pits dug in the earth, 
 where the corn is preserved for a considerable time. This 
 custom is very ancient, and ought to be general in all warih 
 countries, inhabited by wandering people. To secure the 
 corn from moisture, they line these pits with straw, in pro- 
 portion as they fill them, and cover them with the same ; 
 when the granary is filled, they cover it with a stone, upon 
 which they put some earth in a pyramidal form, to dis- 
 perse the water in case of rain. Among the wealthier part, 
 the fathers commonly fill one granary at the birth of each 
 child, and empty it at their marriage. I have seen coi:n 
 
 E reserved in this manner during five-and-twenty years. It 
 ad lost its whiteness. When by motives of convenience, 
 or by an imperial order, the Moors are obliged to change 
 their habitations, not being able to carry their grain with 
 them, they leave over these granaries a mark of stones 
 heaped together: they have much trouble in finding them 
 again. It is the custom now to observe the earth at the 
 rising of the sun, when a thick vapoiir ascends from them : 
 they then discover the granary, upon which the sun has a 
 marked effect, on account of the fermentation of the corn 
 which is shut up. — Border. 
 
 Ver. 28. And over the olive-trees, and the syca- 
 more-trees that were in the low plains, was 
 Baal-hanan the Gederite : and over the cellars 
 of oil was Joash. 
 
 When our translation represents Joash as over the cellars 
 of oil, in the time of King David, 1 Chron. xxvii. 28, they 
 have certainly without any necessity, and perhaps improp- 
 erly, substituted a particular term for a general expression. 
 Joash was at that time, according to the sacred historian, 
 over the treasures of oil ; but whether it was kept in cellars, 
 or in some other way, does not at all appear in the original 
 history. The modern Greeks, according to Dr. Richard 
 Chandler, do not keep their oil in cellars, but in large 
 earthen jars, sunk in the ground, in areas before their 
 houses. The custom might obtain among the Jews : as then 
 it was needless, it must be improper to use the particular 
 term cellars, when the original uses a word of the most 
 general signification. It is certain they sometimes buried 
 1 their oil in the earth, in order to secrete it in times of dan- 
 
S04 
 
 1 CHRONICLES, 
 
 Chap. 29. 
 
 ger, on which occasion they must be supposed to choose the 
 most unlikely places, where such concealment would be 
 least suspected, in their fields ; whether they were wont to 
 bury it, at other times, in their courtyards, cannot be so 
 easily ascertained. — Harmer. 
 
 The Egyptians are not the only people to whose palate 
 the fruit of the sycamore is agreeable ; Hasselquist, the 
 Swedish traveller, found it very grateful to the taste ; he 
 describes it as soft, watery, and sweetish, with something 
 of an aromatic flavour. The fruit of this tree comes to 
 maturity several times in a season ; according to some wri- 
 ters not fewer than seven times, althouglh prolific figs, or 
 such as are perfectly formed, ripen only once. Thus the 
 sycamore produces a fresh crop of agreeable, and not un- 
 wholesome fruit, seven times a-year, for the use of those 
 that dwell under its shadow ; a boon which perhaps no 
 other tree in the garden of Nature bestows on man. Nor 
 is it a dangerous or a laborious task to gather the figs ; they 
 seem to have so little hold of the parent tree, that " if they 
 be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater." 
 The disposition of the fig-tree to part with her untimely or 
 precocious figs, is noticed by John, in the book of Revela- 
 tion : " And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even 
 as a fig-tree casteth her untimelv figs when she is shaken 
 of a mighty wind." This accounts for the appointment of 
 a particular officer in the reign of David, whose sole duty 
 it was to watch over the plantations of sycamore and olive- 
 trees : " And over the olive-trees and the sycamore-trees 
 that were in the low plains, was Baalhanan the Gederite." 
 So valuable was the sycamore in the land of Canaan, 
 during the reign of David, (from which undoubtedly may 
 be inferred the high estimation in which it was held in 
 every age,) that, in the commission of Baalhanan, the offi- 
 cer charged with its protection, it is joined with the olive, 
 one of the most precious gifts which the God of nature has 
 bestowed on the oriental nations. Hasselquist found the 
 sycamore growing in great numbers in the plains and fields 
 of Lower Egypt, which verifies the accuracy of the inspired 
 writer ; and it appears from the same traveller, that the 
 olive delights in similar situations; for, in his journey from 
 Jaffa to Rama, he passed through fine vales abounding with 
 olive-trees. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 80. Over the camels also tvas Obil the Ish- 
 maelite : and over the asses was Jehdeiah the 
 Moronothite. 
 
 Natural historians mention two varieties of this animal, 
 the domestic and the wild ass ; but it is to the former our 
 attention at present is to be directed. His colour is gener- 
 ally a reddish brown ; a circumstance to which he owes 
 his name in the Hebrew text; for (-\>Dn) Artwior is derived 
 from a verb which signifies to be red or dun. This ap- 
 pears to have been the predominating colour in the orien- 
 tal regions ; but we learn from the song of Deborah, that 
 some asses were white, and on this account reserved for 
 persons of high rank in the state. The term (phn) alhon 
 is another name for that creature, from a root which signi- 
 fies to be firm or strong ; because he is equal to a greater 
 load than any animal of the same size. Tp this quality 
 Jacob alluded m his last benediction : " Issachar is a strong 
 ass, couching down between two burdens." Or, it may re- 
 fer to the stubborn temper for which he is remarkable, and 
 the stupid insensibility which enables him to disregard the 
 severest castigation, till he has accomplished his purpose. 
 These qualities are beautifully described by Homer, in the 
 11th book of the Iliad; but the passage is too long to be 
 quoted. 
 
 In the patriarchal ages, the breed of this animal, which 
 we regard with so much unmerited contempt, was greatly 
 
 encouraged, and constituted no inconsiderable portion of 
 wealth among oriental shepherds. It is on this account the 
 number of asses in the herds of Abram, and other patri- 
 archs, is so frequently stated by Moses, in the book of Gen- 
 esis. So highly were they valued in those times of primi- 
 tive simplicity, that they were formed into separate droves, 
 and committed to the management of princes, and other 
 persons of distinction. The sacred historian informs us, 
 that Anab, a Horite prince, did not think it unbecoming his 
 dignity to feed the asses of Zibeon his father : and that 
 the sons of Jacob seized the asses of Shechem and his peo- 
 ple, and drove them away, with the sheep and the oxen. 
 During the seven years of famine that wasted the land of 
 Egypt, and reduced the people to the greatest distress, Jo- 
 seph purchased their asses, and gave them corn to pre- 
 serve them alive. When the people of Israel subdued the 
 Midianites, they carried away " threescore and one thou- 
 sand asses." In times long posterior, Saul, the son of Kish, 
 was sent in quest of his father's asses, which had strayed 
 from their pasture ; and he was engaged in this service 
 when the prophet Samuel received a command to anoint 
 him king over Israel. After David's accession to the throne, 
 and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies, he 
 appointed Jehdeiah the Meronothite, a prince in Israel, to 
 superintend this part of his property. Nor was this animal 
 unworthy of such attention and care. His humility, pa- 
 tience, and temperance, qualities in which he greatly excels, 
 eminently fitted him for the service of man. His great value 
 was soon discovered, and he was preferred even to the 
 horse, for many domestic purposes. The sons of Jacob 
 employed him to carry burdens of every kind ; and he 
 seems to have been the only quadruped they took with them 
 in their repeated journeys into Egypt, to purchase corn for 
 their households; and their descendants continued for 
 many ages to employ him in the same manner. The fruits 
 of the field, the produce of the vineyard, provisions and 
 merchandise of all kinds, were carried on the backs oi 
 asses. 
 
 He was long used for the saddle in the oriental regions ; 
 and persons of high rank appeared in public, mounted on 
 this animal. Those which the great and wealthy selected 
 for their use, were larger and more elegant animals than 
 the mean and unshapely creature with which we are ac- 
 quainted. Dr. Russel, in his history of Aleppo, mentions 
 a variety of the ass in Syria, much larger than the common 
 breed ; and other travellers .say, that some of them in Per- 
 sia are kept like horses for the saddle, which have smooth 
 hair, carry their heads well, and are quicker in their mo- 
 tions than the ordinary kind, which are dressed like horses 
 and taught to amble like them. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Ver. 24. And all the princes, and the mighty- 
 men, and all the sons likewise of King David, 
 submitted themselves mito Solomon the king. 
 
 The Hebrew has, for submitted, " Gave the hand under." 
 To give " the hand under," is a beautiful orientalism to 
 denote submission. See the man who wishes to submit to a 
 superior; he stands at a short distance, then stooping, he 
 keeps moving his hands to the ground, and says, " I submit, 
 my lord." " You recollect having heard that Kandan and 
 Chinnan had a serious quarrel T' — "Yes, I heard it." — 
 " Well, they have settled the matter now, for Chinnan 
 went to hirn last evening, and ' gave his hand under.' " 
 " The Modeliar is no longer angry with me, because I 
 have put down my hand to the ground." " That rebellious 
 son has, for many years, refused to acknowledge his father's 
 authority, but he has at last put his hand under," i. e. he 
 has submitted to him — has become obedient.— Roberts. 
 {See Engraving.^ 
 
THE SECOND BOOK OF CHRONICLES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 16. And Solomon had horses brought out of 
 Egypt, and linen yarn ; the king's merchants 
 received the linen yarn at a price. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 10. 28. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 12. Also the Levites, which were the singers, 
 all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, 
 with their sons and their brethren, being array- 
 ed in white linen, having cymbals and psalte- 
 ries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, 
 and with them a hundred and twenty priests 
 sounding with trumpets. 
 
 No person in Greece and Italy appeared at an entertain- 
 ment in black, because it was a colour reserved for times 
 of mourning, but always in white, or some other cheerful 
 colour, which corresponded with the joyous nature of the 
 occasion. Such were the garments of salvation in which 
 the people of Israel celebrated their festivals, or entertained 
 their friends. When Solomon brought up the ark of the 
 Lord from the city of David, and placed it between the 
 cherubim in the most holy place, the sons of Asaph, of 
 Heman, and Jeduthun, and their brethren, who conducted 
 the songs in the temple, stood at the east end of the altar, 
 arrayed in vestures of fine linen, ^the chosen emblem of 
 purity and joy. The few faithful witnesses that remained 
 in Sardis, and had not defiled their garments, were prom- 
 ised the distinguishing honour of walking with their Sa- 
 viour in white. And to encourage them in their steadfast 
 adherence to the cause of God and truth, it is added, 
 " He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white 
 raiment." On the mount of transfiguration, the raiment of 
 Christ became white as the light ; and in the same garb of 
 joy and gladness the angels appear at his resurrection. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 28. If there be dearth in the land, if there 
 be pestilence, if there be blasting, or mildew, 
 locusts, or caterpillars ; if their enemies besiege 
 them in the cities of their land ; whatsoever sore 
 or whatsoever sickness there be. 
 
 We are so little acquainted with the various species of 
 Qestructive insects that ravage the eastern countries, that 
 it may be thought extremely difl[icult to determine what 
 kind "\<^as meant by Solomon, in his prayer at the dedication 
 of the temple, 3 Chron. vi. 28, by the word Cj-ion) chaseel, 
 which our version renders caterpillars, and which is distin- 
 guished by him there from the locusts, which genus is so 
 remarkable for eating up almost every green thing; but 
 a passage of Sir John Chardin may probably illustrate 
 that part of Solomon's address to him whom he considered 
 as the God of universal nature. The paragraph of Solo- 
 mon's prayer is this : When heaven is shut up, and there is 
 no rain, because they have sinned against thee ; if they pray 
 
 tov-iards this place, &c If there be in the land famine, 
 
 if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locusts, or if there he 
 caterpillars ; if their enemies besiege them in the land of their 
 cities, &c Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling- 
 place, and forgive and do, &c. The causes of famine, 
 reckoned up here, are want of rain, blasting, mildew, lo- 
 custs, and caterpillars, according to our translation : with 
 which may be compared the followmg passage of Ch'ardin, 
 39 
 
 in the second tome of his Travels : " Persia is subject to 
 have its harvest spoiled by hail, by drought, or by insects, 
 either locusts, or small insects, which they call sim, which 
 are small white lice, which fix themselves on the foot of 
 the stalk of corn, gnaw it, and make it die. It is rare 
 for a year to be exempt from one or the other of these 
 scourges, which afiect the ploughed land and the gar- 
 dens," &c. The enumeration by Solomon, and that of this 
 modern writer, though not exactly alike, yet so nearly re- 
 semble each other, that one would be inclined to believe 
 these small insects are what Solomon meant, by the word 
 translated caterpillars in our English version. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 13. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, 
 or if I command the locusts to devour the land, 
 or if I send pestilence among my people. 
 
 A term used by the sacred writers to signify the locust, 
 is (3jn) hagab, which our translators render sometimes locust 
 and sometimes grasshopper. They translate it locusts in 
 the following passage: " If I shut up heaven that there be 
 no more rain, or if I command the locusts {hagab) to de- 
 vour the land, or if I send a pestilence among my people : 
 if my people shall humble themselves and pray unto me, and 
 seek my face, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive 
 their sin, and heal'their land." We cannot reasonably doubt 
 that the word, in this place, denotes the locust, for this decla- 
 ration was made in answer to Solomon's prayer at the dedica- 
 tion of the temple, that if the heaven should be shut up, and 
 there should be no rain ; or if there should be famine, pesti- 
 lence, blasting, mildew, locust, or caterpillar, then God would 
 hear them when they spread forth their hands towards that 
 holy place. It must also be remembered, that the grass- 
 hopper is an inoffensive animal, or noxious in a very slight 
 degree, and therefore by no means a proper subject for 
 deprecation in the temple. This circumstance also shows, 
 that the Hebrew term here does not mean the cicada, as 
 some writers have supposed ; for though the noise which 
 they make is extremely disagreeable and disturbing, as 
 Chandler complains, it is not an insect so distressing to the 
 Orientals, as to admit the idea that it was a subject of sol- 
 emn prayer at the dedication. To disturb the slumbers of 
 the weary traveller, or the toil-worn peasant, and to devour 
 the fruits of the earth, and plunge the inhabitants of a coun- 
 try into all the horrors of famine, are evils of a very differ- 
 ent magnitude. 
 
 Hagab is rendered grasshopper in the twelfth chapter 
 of Ecclesiastes ; and the circumstances, it must be confess- 
 ed, harmonize with the character of those creatures ; for 
 it will be readily admitted that their chirping must be dis- 
 agreeable to the aged and infirm, that naturally love quiet, 
 and are commonly unable to bear much noise. But it is 
 more probable that hagab denotes the locust, which is pro- 
 verbially loquacious. They make a very loud, screaking, 
 and disagreeable noise, with their wings ; if one begin, 
 others join, and the hateful concert becomes universal ; a 
 pause then ensues, and, as it were, on a signal given, it 
 again commences; and in this manner they continue 
 squalling for two or three hours without intermission. Mr. 
 Harmer is of opinion, that hagab ought to be rendered lo- 
 cust in this passage too, because it becomes a burden by 
 its depredations, and desire fails; that is, every green thing 
 disappears, and nature puts on the semblance of universal 
 deadness: and such istheaffecting appearance of the human 
 body in extreme old age ; it resembles a tree which the lo- 
 cust has stripped of its leaves, has deprived of its bark, and 
 left naked and bare, to wither in the blast, and moulder, by 
 degrees, into the dust from whence it rose. The interpre- 
 tation is ingenious ; but the common meaning seems to be 
 
306 
 
 2 CHRONICLES. 
 
 Chap. 9 
 
 still more expressive, and is certainly more affecting. 
 Some kinds of the locust are very small and light. "Were 
 the cicada not to be classed among the locust tribes, still 
 the figure remains in all its force and beauty. The mi- 
 nutest of those small insects becomes a burden to extreme 
 old age, weighed down with a load of years, and worn with 
 toils and cares, to the verge tf existence. The powers 
 and faculties of body and mind are equally debilitated, and 
 the relish for the enjoyments of sense, which he once felt 
 so keenly, is extinguished for ever. Some insects live under 
 a regular government, and, like the bee, submit to the au- 
 thority of a chief; but the wise man observes, " The locusts 
 have no king, yet they go forth by bands." How just is 
 this remark ! The head of the column, when the army is 
 not tossed and scattered by the winds, which often hap- 
 pens, is directed by their voracious desire of food ; and 
 the rest follow in long succession, under the influence of 
 the same instinct ; but the devastations they commit are as 
 methodical and complete, as if they acted under the strict- 
 est discipline. 
 
 In Barbary and Palestine,* the locusts appear about the 
 latter end of March. By the middle of April their num- 
 bers are so increased, that in the heat of the day they form 
 themselves into large and numerous swarms, fly in the air 
 like a succession of clouds ; and, as the prophet Joel ex- 
 presses it, " darken the sun." When a brisk gale happens 
 to blow, so that these swarms are crowded by others, or 
 thrown one upon another, the musing and intelligent trav- 
 eller obtains a lively idea of the Psalmist's comparison : 
 " I am tossed up and down like the locust." In the month 
 of May, when the ovaries of those insects are ripe and tur- 
 gid, each of these swarms begins gradually to disappear, 
 and retire into the plains, where they deposite their eggs. 
 These are no sooner hatched in June, than each of the 
 broods collect themselves into a large body, sometimes ex- 
 tended more than a furlong on every side ; and then march- 
 ing directly towards the sea, they suffer nothing to escape 
 them, eating up every thing that is green and juicy, from 
 the tender and lowly vegetable, to the coarse leaf and bark 
 of the vine and the pomegranate. In prosecuting their 
 work of destruction, they keep their ranks like soldiers in 
 order of battle, climbing as they advance, over every tree 
 or wall that stands in their way ; they enter into the very 
 houses and bedchambers, like so many thieves. It is im- 
 possible to stop their motions, or even to alter their line of 
 march ; while the front is regardless of danger, and the 
 rear presses on so close, that a retreat is altogether impos- 
 sible. A day or two after one of these broods is in motion, 
 others are already hatched to march and glean after them, 
 gnawing oflfthe very bark, and the young branches of such 
 trees as had before escaped with the loss only of their fruit 
 and foliage ; so justly have they been compared by the 
 prophet to a great army. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 24. And they brought every man his pres- 
 ent, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and 
 raiment, harness, and spices, horses, and mules, 
 a rate year by year. 
 
 Presents of vestments, on the other hand, are frequently 
 made in these countries to the great, and those that are 
 in public stations; and they expect them. Thevenot tells 
 us, it was a custom in Egypt, in his time, for the consuls 
 of the European nations to send the bashaw a present of so 
 many vests, and so many besides to some officers, both 
 when a new bashaw came, or a new consul entered his 
 office, as were rated at above a thousand piasters. Does 
 not this last account remind us of the presents that were 
 made to Solomon, by the neighbouring princes, at set times, 
 part of which, we are expressly told, consisted of raiment 1 
 2 Chron. ix. 24. This may be thought not very well to 
 agree with a remark of Sir J. Chardin, mentioned under 
 a former observation, " that vestments are not presented by 
 inferiors to superiors ; or even by an equal to an equal ;" 
 but there is really no inconsistency ; vestments are not the 
 things that are chosen by those that would make a present 
 to the great, in common ; but they may be ordered to be 
 .sent as a sort of a tribute, or a dne which the superior 
 claims. 
 The other things mentioned in that passage of Chroni- 
 
 cles, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, harness and spi- 
 ces, horses and mules, still continue to be thought fit pres- 
 ents to the great. So Russel tells us, in his account of the 
 eastern visits, that if it is a visit of ceremony from a ba- 
 shaw or a person in power, a fine horse, sometimes with fur- 
 niture, or some such valuable thing, is made a present to 
 him at his departure ; and the Baron Fabricius, in his letters - 
 concerning Charles XII. of Sweden, tells us, that when he 
 was seized at Bender, the house being set on fire, the rich 
 presents that had been made him, consisting of tents, sabres, 
 saddles and bridles adorned with jewels, rich housings and 
 harnesses, to the value of 200,000 crowns, were consumed. 
 Of the rest, the vessels of silver and the spices may be il- 
 lustrated by that story of D'Herbelot concerning Akhschid, 
 the commander of an eastern province, who is said to have 
 purchased peace of Jezid, general of the troops of one of 
 the califs, by sending him a present of seven hundred thou- 
 sand drachms of silver in ready money ; four hundred loads 
 of saffron, which that country produced in abundance ; and 
 four hundred slaves, who each of them carried a rich tur- 
 ban of silk in a silver basin. — Harmer. 
 
 Presents of dresses are alluded to very frequently in the 
 historical books of scripture, and in the earliest times : 
 when Joseph gave to each of his brethren a change of rai- 
 ment, and to Benjamin five changes of raiment, it is men- 
 tioned without particular notice, and as a customary inci- 
 dent, (Gen. xlv. 22, 23.) Naaman gave to Gehazi, from 
 among the presents intended for Elisha, w^ho declined ac- 
 cepting any, (as we have seen above, some persons did, on 
 extraordinary occasions,) two changes of raiment; and 
 even Solomon, king as he was, received raiment as pres- 
 ents, (2 Chron. ix. 24.) This custom is still maintained 
 in the East : it is mentioned by all travellers ; and we have 
 merely chosen to give the following extract from De la Mo- 
 traye, in nreference to what might easily have been pro- 
 duced from others, because he notices, as a particularity, 
 that the grand seignior gives his garment of honour before 
 the wearer is admitted to his presence; but the vizier gives 
 his honorary dresses after the presentation : will this apply 
 to the parable of the wedding garment, and to the behaviour 
 of the king, who expected to have found all his guests clad 
 in robes of honour! (Matt. xxii. 11.) Is any thing like 
 this management observable, Zech. iu.l Joshua being in- 
 troduced to the angel of the Lord, not to the Lord himself, 
 stood before the angel with filthy garments ; but he ordered 
 a handsome caffetan to be given him. Jonathan, son of 
 Saul, divested himself of his robe, and his upper garment, 
 even to his sword, his bow, and his girdle — partly intending 
 David the greater honour, as having been apparel Avorn by 
 himself; but principally, it may be conjectured, .through 
 haste and speed, he being impatient of honouring David, 
 and covenanting for his affection. Jonathan would not stay 
 to send for raiment, but instantly gave him his own. The 
 idea of honour connected with the caffetan, appears also in 
 the prodigal's father, — " bring forth the best robe." We find 
 the liberality in this kind of gifts was considerable : Ezra 
 ii. 69, " The chief of the fathers gave one hundred priests' 
 garments." Neh. vii. 70, " The Tirshatha gave five hun- 
 dred and thirty priests' garments." This would appear 
 sufficiently singular among us; but in the East, where to 
 give is to honour, the gift of garments, or of any other 
 usable commodities, is in perfect compliance with estab- 
 lished sentiments and customs. 
 
 " The vizier entered at another door, and their .excel- 
 lencies rose to salute him after their manner, which was 
 returned by a little inclining of his head ; after which he 
 sat down 07i the corner of his sofa, which is the most hononr- 
 ohle place; then his chancellor, his kiahia, and the Chia- 
 ouz Bashaw, came and stood before him, till coflfee was 
 brought in; after which M. de Chateauneuf presented M. 
 de Ferriol to him, as his successor, who delivered him the 
 king his master's letters, complimenting him as from his 
 majesty and himself, to which the vizier answered very 
 obligingly ; then they gave two dishes of coffee to their ex- 
 cellencies, with sweetmeats, and afterward the perfumes 
 and sherbet ; then they clothed them with cafpetans of a 
 silver brocade, with large ailk flowers; and to those that 
 were admitted into the apartments with them, they gave 
 others of brocade, almost all silk, except some slight gold or 
 silver flowers; according to the custom usually observed 
 towards all foreign ministers. 
 
 "Ca&etans are long vests of gold or silver brocadej 
 
Chap. 9—16. 
 
 2 CHRONICLES 
 
 307 
 
 flowered with silk, which the grand seignior and the viz- 
 ier present to those to whom they give audience : the 
 grand seignior before, and the vizier after audience." (De 
 la Motraye's Travels.) — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 28. And they brought unto Solomon horses 
 out of Egypt, and out of all lands. 
 
 The people of Israel were, by their law, forbidden to 
 ultiply horses ; for which several reasons may be as- 
 signed. The land of Canaan, intersected in almost every 
 direction by hills and mountains, was less adapted to the 
 rearing of horses than other parts of Syria ; but the prin- 
 cipal reason might be, to discourage the art of war, to 
 which mankind in all ages have shown so strong a pro- 
 pensity, which is so hostile to the interests of true religion, 
 of which they were the chosen depositaries, and prevent 
 them f'om relying for the defence of their country, rather 
 on the ^rength of their armies, which, in the East, chiefly 
 consistt> of cavalry, than on the promised aid of Jehovah. 
 This wis and salutary command, however, was often dis- 
 regarded, • ven by the more pious kings of David's line, 
 who imitated the princes around them in the number and 
 excellence of their horses. Solomon set the first example 
 of transgressing tha^ ->recept, and of departing from the 
 simpliciiy of his fathers: " For Solomon gathered together 
 chariots and horsemen ; and he had a thousand and. four 
 hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, whom 
 he bestowed in the cities for chariots, and with the king at 
 Jerusalem." Josephus informs us he had twenty thousand 
 horses, Avhich surpassed all others in beauty and swiftness. 
 These were mounted by young men in the bloom of youth, 
 excelling all their countrymen in stature and comeliness, 
 with long flowing hair, habited in rich dresses of Tyrian 
 purple, their hair powdered with gold-dust, which, by re- 
 flecting the beams of the sun, shed a dazzling splendour 
 around their heads. It was the practice of those in the 
 highest rank of society, in the time of Josephus, to adorn 
 their persons in the gorgeous manner he describes; and 
 the strong partiality which the historian cherished for his 
 country, it is evident, induced him to transfer the extrava- 
 gance of his own age to the time of Solomon. The same 
 overweening desire to exalt the power, the riches, and the 
 splendour of his nation, in the most brilliant epoch of her 
 history, has prevailed upon him to contradict the page of 
 inspiration itself, which expressly limits the number of 
 Solomon's horses to twelve thousand. The sacred his- 
 torian informs us, that these horses were purchased in 
 Egypt, and in all the surrounding countries, by the Jew- 
 ish merchants, where the fame of so great a king procured 
 them easy access, and liberal encouragement. It is extreme- 
 ly probable that Solomon's stud was replenished from re- 
 gions lying at a very great distance from Jerusalem ; but 
 the sacred writers particularly celebrate the breeds of As- 
 syria, Togarmah, and Egypt. The horses of Togarmah 
 were brought to the fairs of Tyre, and were sufficiently 
 numerous and valuable to attract the notice of Ezekiel, 
 who thus addresses the merchant city : " They of the house 
 of Togarmah traded in thy fairs, with horses, and horsemen, 
 and mules." These, in the opinion of Bochart and other 
 geographers, were the Cappadocians, whose country has 
 been, from time immemorial, celebrated for its superior 
 breed of horses. The prophets of Jehovah frequently ad- 
 vert to the admirable qualities of the Assyrian charger. 
 Isaiah, describing the terrible devastation which the land 
 of Judea was doomed to suffer by the Assyrian armies, 
 warns his people that their horses' hoofs shall be counted 
 like flint — compact and durable as the flinty rock ; qualities 
 which, in times when the shoeing of horses was unknown, 
 must have been of very great importance. The value of 
 a solid hoof has not escaped the notice of Homer's muse, 
 who celebrates, in many passages of his immortal poems, 
 the brazen-footed horses. In the admirable instructions 
 which Virgil communicates to the Italian husbandmen, a 
 solid hoof is mentioned as indispensably requisite in a good 
 'treed of horses. The amazing rapidity of their move- 
 ments is expressed with much beauty and forc^ in the 
 next clause : " Their wheels shall be like a whirlwind ;" 
 and, with equal felicity, in these w^ords of Jeremiah: " Be- 
 hold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be 
 as a whirlwind; his horses are swifter than eagles." The 
 prophet Habakkuk, in describing the same quality, uses a 
 
 different figure, but one equally striking : " Their horses 
 also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than 
 the evening wolves ; and their horsemen shall spread them- 
 selves, and their horsemen shall come from far ; they shall 
 fly as the eagle that hasieih to eat." — PaxtoN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 5. Ought ye not to know that the Lord God 
 of Israel gave the kingdom over Israel to Da- 
 vid for ever, even to him and to his sons by a 
 covenant of salt ? 
 
 The Orientals were accustomed also to ratify their fed- 
 eral engagements by salt. This substance was, among the 
 ancients, the emblem of friendship and fidelity, and there- 
 fore used in all their sacrifices and covenants. It is a sa- 
 cred pledge of hospitality which they never venture to vio- 
 late. Numerous instances occur of travellers in Arabia, 
 after being plundered and stripped by the wandering tribes 
 of the desert, claiming the protection of some civilized Arab, 
 who, after receiving nim mto his tent, and giving him salt, 
 instantly relieves his distress, and never forsakes him till 
 he has placed him in safety. An agreement, thus ratified, 
 is called in scripture, " a covenant of salt." The obliga- 
 tion which this symbol imposes on the mind of an Oriental, 
 is well illustrated by the Baron De Tott in the following 
 anecdote: One who was desirous of his acquaintance, 
 promised in a short time to return. The baron had already 
 attended him half way down the staircase, when stopping, 
 and turning briskly to one of his domestics. Bring me di- 
 rectly, said he, some bread and salt. What he requested 
 was brought ; when, taking a little salt between his fingers, 
 and putting it with a mysterious air on a bit of bread, he 
 ate it with a devout gravity, assuring De Tott he might 
 now rely on him. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 14. And they buried him in his own sepul- 
 chres, which he had made for himself in the 
 city of David, and laid him in the bed which 
 was filled with sweet odours and divers kinds 
 of spices prepared by the apothecaries' art; and 
 they made a very great burning for him. 
 
 A passage from Drummond's Travels ought not to be 
 omitted here, in which he gives an account of the manner 
 in which a large quantity of spices and perfumes was made 
 use of, to do honour to the dead. It seems, according to a 
 tradition that prevailed among the Turks, *' An eminent 
 prophet, who lived in Mesopotamia many ages ago, whose 
 name was Zechariah, was beheaded by the prince of that 
 country, on account of his virtuous opposition to some lewd 
 scheme of his. His head he ordered to be put into a stone 
 urn, two feet square, upon the top of which was an inscrip- 
 tion, importing that that urn enclosed the head of that great 
 prophet Zechariah. This urn remained in the castle of 
 Aleppo till about eight hundred years ago, when it was 
 removed into an old Christian church in that city, after- 
 ward turned into a mosque, which decaying, another was 
 built near it, and the place where the head was deposited 
 choked up by a wall." About forty years before Mr. 
 Drummond wrote this account, which was in December, 
 1748, consequently about the year 1708, a zealous grand 
 vizier, who pretended to have been admonished in a dream 
 to remove this stone vessel into a more conspicuous place, 
 had it removed accordingly, with many religious cere^ 
 monies, and affixed in a conspicuous part of a mosque : 
 and in the close of all it is said, " the urn was opened, and 
 filled with spices and perfumes, to the value of four hun- 
 dred pounds." Here we see in late times honour was done 
 to the supposed head of an eminent saint, by filling its re- 
 pository with odoriferous substances. The bed of sweet 
 spices, in which Asa was laid,, seems to have been of the 
 same kind, or something very much like it. Might not 
 large quantities of precious perfumes, in like manner, be 
 strewed, or designed to be strewed, about the body of our 
 ^ordl This would require large quantifies. Zechariah 
 of Mesopotamia had been dead so long, that nothing of tins 
 kind could be done with any view to preserve his head 
 
308 
 
 2 CHRONICLES, 
 
 Chap. 20—26. 
 
 from decay, it was merely to do him honour; the spices 
 used by the Jews in burial might be for the same purpose. 
 — Harmbr. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Ver. 20. And they arose early in the morning, 
 and went forth into the wilderness cf Tekoa : 
 and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and 
 said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem ; believe in the Lord your God, so 
 shall you be established ; believe his prophets, 
 so shall ye prosper. 
 See on 2 Sam. 10. 9, 10. 
 
 Ver. 28. And they came to Jerusalem with 
 psalteries and harps and trumpets, unto the 
 house of the Lord. 
 See on 1 Sam. 16. 20. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 20. Thirty and two years old was he when 
 he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem 
 eight years, and departed without being de- 
 sired ; howbeit they buried him in the city of 
 David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings. 
 
 The burying of persons in their cities is also an eastern 
 manner of doing them honour. They are in common 
 buried without the walls of their towns, as is apparent, 
 from many places of the Old and New Testament. The an- 
 cient Jews also were thus buried ; but sometimes they bury 
 in their cities, when they do a person a distinguished hon- 
 our. " Each side of the road," says the author of the His- 
 tory of the piratical states of Barbary, "without the gate, 
 IS crowded with sepulchres. Those of the pacha and the 
 deys are built near the gate of Babalonet. They are be- 
 tween ten and twelve feet high, very curiously white-wash- 
 ed, and built in the form of a dome. Hali Dey, as a very 
 eminent mark of distinction, was buried in an enclosed 
 tomb within the city. For forty days successively his tomb 
 was decorated with flowers, and surrounded with people, 
 offering up prayers to God for his soul. This dey was ac- 
 counted a saint, and a particular favourite of heaven, be- 
 cause he died a natural death ; a happiness of which there 
 are few instances since the establishment of the deys in 
 Algiers." No comment is more lively, or more sure, than 
 this, on those that speak of the burying of the kings of the 
 house of David within Jerusalem; those sepulchres, and 
 that of Huldah the prophetess, being the only ones to be 
 found there. But it is not a perfect comment ; for it is to 
 be remembered that a peculiar holiness belonged to Jeru- 
 salem, as well as the dignity of being the royal city, but no 
 particular sanctity is ascribed to Algiers, by those people 
 that buried Hali Dey there. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Ver. 11. But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the 
 king, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole 
 him from among the king's sons that were 
 slain, and put him and his nurse in a bedcham- 
 ber. So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of King 
 Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, (for 
 she was the sister of Ahaziah,) hid him from 
 Athaliah, so that she slew him not. 
 
 The bedchamber in the temple, in which Jehosheba hid 
 Joash in the days of Athaliah, mentioned 2 Kings xi. 2, 
 and 2 Chron. xxii. 11, does not seem to mean a lodging- 
 chamber, but a chamber used as a repository for beds. I am 
 indebted to Sir John Chardin for this thought, which seems 
 to be a just one ; for the original words niiSDn -\nn3 bachadar 
 hanmittolh, signify a chamber of beds, and the expression 
 differs from that which is used when a lodging-chamber 
 is meant. He supposes then that place is meant, wher^ 
 beds are kept : for in the East, and particularly in Persia 
 and Tuikey, beds are not raised from the ground with 
 
 bedposts, a canopy, and curtains; people lie on the ground. 
 In the evening they spread out a mattress or two of cotton, 
 very light, &c. Of these they have several laid up in great 
 houses, until they may have occasion to use them, and have 
 a room on purpose for them. In a chamber of beds, the 
 room used for the laying up beds, it seems Joash was se- 
 creted. Understand it how you will, it appears that people 
 were lodged in the temple ; and if any lodged there, it is to 
 be supposed at particular times there were many, especially 
 the relations and friends of the high-priest. Here it may 
 be right to consult Neh. xiii. 4, 5. In the room in which 
 beds were deposited, not a common bedchamber, it seems 
 the young prince lay concealed. Chardin complains the 
 Vulgar Latin translation did not rightly understand the 
 story; nor have others represented the intention of the sa- 
 cred writer perfectly, if he is to be understood after this 
 manner.— Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 19. And he set the porters at the gates of 
 the house of the Lord, that none which was 
 unclean in any thing should enter in. 
 
 The entrance of the inner chamber of a Budhuist temple 
 is usually low and narrow ; and on each side stands a 
 dreadful looking fellow formed of clay, and above the size 
 of the human form, with a huge serpent in his hand, 
 seemingly ready to lash with it whoever enters ; but in- 
 tended chiefly, I believe, to admonish such as come unpre- 
 pared. They are styled moorakdrayo, the usual word for 
 guards or servtinels. — Callaway. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Ver. 12. And other ten thousand left alive did 
 the children of Judah carry away captive, and 
 brought them unto the top of the rock, and cast 
 them down from the top of the rock, that they 
 all were broken in pieces. 
 
 The Greeks and Romans condemned some of their crim- 
 inals to be cast down from the top of a rock. In the time 
 of Piits, the inhabitants of Constantine, a town of Turkey, 
 built on the summit of a great rock, commonly executed 
 their criminals who had been guilty of more atrocious 
 crimes, by casting them headlong from the cliff. This pun- 
 ishment Amaziah, the king of Judah, inflicted on ten thou- 
 sand Edomites, whom he had taken captive in war : " Other 
 ten thousand left alive, did the children of Judah carry 
 away captive, and brought them to the top of the rock, and 
 cast them down from the top of the rock, and they all were 
 broken in pieces." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Ver. 1 0. Also he built towers in the desert, and 
 digged many wells: for he had much cattle, 
 both in the low country and in the plain.s ; 
 husbandmen also, and vinedressers in the 
 mountains, and in Carmel : for he loved hus- 
 bandry. 
 
 The Indians build pagodas, not to be used as temples, but 
 for the protection of their flocks, in case of any alarm. 
 They are placed in the fields, and surrounded with good 
 walls. Over the gates they raise high pyramids, full of 
 pictures of their gods ; and within their circuit were many 
 little chapels, every one of which contained an idol. In 
 these countries, the soldiers are very ill paid, and the com- 
 manders permit them to take what they can get. They 
 therefore often seize the cattle, when the shepherds think 
 least of it. Travellers a.so retire into these pagodas. 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 William of Tyre describes a country not far from the 
 Euphrates, as inhabited by Syrian and. Armenian Chris- 
 tians, who fed great flocks and herds there, but were in sub- 
 jection to the Turks, who, though few in number, yet 
 living in strong places among them, kept theni under, and 
 received tribute from these poor peasants who inhabited the 
 villages, and employed themselves in country business. I 
 do nSt know whether this may not give us a truer view of 
 
Chap. 28. 
 
 2 CHRONICLES. 
 
 309 
 
 the design of those towers that Uzziah built in the wilder- 
 ness, mentioned 2 Chron. xxvi. 10, than commentators have 
 done, who have supposed they were conveniences made for 
 sheltering the shepherds from bad weather, or to defend 
 them from the incursions of enemies ; for they might 
 rather be designed to keep the nations that pastured there 
 in awe ; to prevent their disputing with his servants about 
 wells, and also to induce them quietly to pay that tribute to 
 which the seventh and eighth verses seem to refer. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 15. And he made in Jerusalem engines, in- 
 vented by cunning men, to be on the towers 
 and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and 
 great stones withal : and his name spread far 
 abroad : for he was marvellously helped till he 
 was strong. 
 
 The batteringram was an engine with an iron head, re- 
 sembling the head of a ram, with which they beat down the 
 enemies' walls. Of this, Potter mentions three kinds ; the 
 first was plain and unartificial, being nothing but a long 
 beam with an iron head, which the soldiers drove with main 
 force against the wall ; the second was hung with ropes to 
 another beam, by the help of which they thrust it forward 
 with much greater force; the third differed from the former 
 only in being covered with a testudo, or shroud, to protect 
 the soldiers that worked it from the darts of the enemy. 
 The beam was sometimes no less than a hundred and 
 twenty feet in length, and covered with iron plates, lest 
 those who defended the walls should set it on fire ; the head 
 was armed with as many horns as they pleased. Josephus 
 reports, that one of Vespasian's rams, the length of which 
 was only fifty cubits, which came not up to the size of sev- 
 eral of the Grecian rams, had a head as thick as ten men, 
 and twenty-five horns, each of which was as thick as one 
 man, and placed a cubit's distance from the rest ; the weight, 
 hung (as was customary) upon the hinder part, was no less 
 than one thousand and five hundred talents ; when it was 
 removed from one place to another, it was not taken in 
 pieces ; a hundred and fifty yoke of oxen, or three hundred 
 
 fiair of horses and mules, laboured in drawing it ; and no 
 ess than fifteen hundred Ttien employed their utmost strength 
 in forcing it against the walls. At other times, we find 
 these rams driven upon wheels. Such was the formidable 
 engine, of which the prophet warned the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem, and which, in the hands of the Romans, levelled 
 at last the walls of that proud metropolis with the ground. 
 To this may be added, various engines for casting arrows, 
 darts, and stones of a larger size ; of which the most re- 
 markable was the balista, which hurled stones of a size not 
 less than millstones, with so great a violence as to dash 
 whole houses in pieces at a blow. Such were the engines 
 which Uzziah, the king of Judah, planted on the walls and 
 towers of Jerusalem, to defend it against the attacks of an 
 invading force : " And he made in Jerusalem engines, in- 
 vented by cunning men, to be on the towers, and upon the 
 bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal." Some 
 of these inventions, however, had been in use long before ; 
 for in the reign of David, the batteringram was employed 
 in the siege of Abel-Bethmaachah : " They cAst up a bank 
 against the city, and it stood in the trench ; and all the peo- 
 ple that were with Joab battered the wall to throw it down." 
 These powerful engines, invented by Jewish artists, and 
 worked bv the skill and vigour of Jewish soldiers, were 
 undoubtedly the prototypes of those which the celebrated 
 nations of Greece and Rome afterward employed with so 
 much success in their sieges. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 23. So Uzziah slept with his fathers, and they 
 buried him with his fathers in the field of the 
 burial which belonged to the kings ; for they 
 said, He is a leper : and Jotham his son reign- 
 ed in his stead. 
 
 The kings and princes of the oriental regions are often 
 subjected to trial after their decease by their insulted and 
 oppressed people, and punished according to the degree of 
 their delinquency. While the chosen people of God were 
 accustomed to honour in a particular maimer the memory 
 of those kings who had reigned over them with justice and 
 
 clemency, they took care to stamp some mark of posthumous 
 disgrace upon those who had left thie world under their dis- 
 approbation. The sepulchres of the Jewish kings were at 
 Jerusalem; where, in some appointed receptacle, the re- 
 mains of their princes were deposited; and from the cir- 
 cumstance of these being the cemetery for successive rulers, 
 it was said when one died and was buried there, that he was 
 gathered to his fathers. But several instances occur in the 
 history of the house of David, in which, on various ac- 
 counts, they were denied the honour of being entombed 
 with their ancestors, and were deposited in some other place 
 in Jerusalem. To mark, perhaps, a greater degree of cen- 
 sure, they were taken to a small distance from Jerusalem, 
 and laid in a private tomb. Uzziah, who had, by his pre- 
 sumptuous attempt to seize the office of the priesthood, 
 which was reserved by an express law for the house ot 
 Aaron, provoked the wrath of heaven, and been punished 
 for his temerity with a loathsome and incurable disease, 
 " was buried with his fathers in the field of the burial 
 which belonged to the kings ; for they said. He is a leper." 
 It was undoubtedly with a design to make a suitable impres- 
 sion on the mind of the reigning monarch, to guard him 
 against the abuse of his power, and teach him respect for 
 the feelings and sentiments of that people for whose benefit 
 chiefly he was raised to the throne, that such a stigma was 
 fixed upon the dust of his offending predecessors. He was, 
 in this manner, restrained from evil, and excited to good, 
 according as he was fearful of being execrated, or desirous 
 of being honoured after his decease. This public mark of 
 infamy was accordingly put on the conduct of Ahaz : 
 " They buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem, but they 
 brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel," — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Ver. 27. And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and 
 they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem ; 
 but they brought him not into the sepulchres 
 of the kings of Israei . and Hezekiah his son 
 reigned in his stead. 
 
 The Israelites were accustomed to honour in a peculiar 
 manner the memory of those kings who had reigned over 
 them uprightly. On the contrary, some marks of posthu- 
 mous disgrace followed those monarchs who left the world 
 under the disapprobation of their people. The proper place 
 of interment was in Jerusalem. There, in some appomted 
 receptacle, the remains of their princes were deposited : 
 and, from the circumstance of this being the cemetery for 
 successive rulers, it was said, when one died and was so 
 buried, that he was gathered to his fathers. Several instan- 
 ces occur in the history of the kings of Israel, wherein, on 
 certain accounts, they were not thus interred with their 
 predecessors, but in some other place in Jerusalem. So it 
 was with Ahaz, who, though brought into the city, was not 
 buried in the sepulchres of the kings of Israel. In some 
 other cases, perhaps to mark out a greater degree of cen- 
 sure, they were taken to a small distance from Jerusalem. 
 It is said that Uzziah was buried with his fathers in the field 
 of the burial which belonged to the kings ; for they said, He is 
 a leper. (2 Chron. xxvi. 23.) It was doubtless with a de- 
 sign to make a suitable impression on the minds of their 
 kings while living, that such distinctions were made after 
 their decease. They might thus restrain them from evil 
 or excite them to good, according as they were fearful cf 
 being execrated, or desirous of being honoured, when they 
 were dead. The Egyptians had a custom in some measure 
 similar to this ; it was however general as to all persons, 
 though it received very particular attention, as far as it 
 concerned their kings. It is thus described in Franklin's 
 History of Ancient and Modern Egypt : " As soon as a man 
 was dead, he was brought to his trial. The public accuser 
 was heard. If he proved that the deceased had led a bad 
 life, his memory was condemned, and he was deprived of 
 the honours of sepulture. Thus, that sage people were 
 affected with laws which extended even beyond the grave, ^ 
 and every one, struck with the disgrace inflicted on the 
 dead person, was afraid to reflect dishonour on his own 
 memory, and that of his family. But what was singular, 
 the sovereign himself was not exempted from this public 
 inquest upon his death. The public peace was interested 
 
310 
 
 EZRA 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 in the lives of their sovereigns in their administration, and 
 as death terminated all their actions, it was then deemed 
 for the public welfare, that they should suffer an impartial 
 ^scrutiny by a public trial, as well as the most common sub- 
 ject. Even some of them were not ranked among the hon- 
 oured dead, and consequently were deprived of public 
 burial. The Israelites would not suffer the bodies of some 
 of their flagitious princes to be carried into the sepulchres 
 appropriated to their virtuous sovereigns. The custom 
 was singular : the effect must have been powerful and in- 
 fluential. The most haughty despot, who might trample 
 on laws human and divine in his life, saw, by this solemn 
 investigation of human conduct, that at death he also would 
 be doomed to infamy and execration." 
 
 What degree of conformity there was between the prac- 
 tice of the Israelites and the Egyptians, and with whom the 
 custom first originated, may be difficult to ascertain and 
 decide, but the conduct of the latter appears to be founded 
 on the same principle as that of the former, and as it is 
 more circumstantially detailed, affords us an agreeable ex- 
 planation of a rite but slightly mentioned in the scriptures. 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 Ver. 3. He took counsel with his princes and his 
 mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains, 
 which were without the city ; and they did help 
 him. 4. So there was gathered much people 
 together, who stopped all the fountains, and the 
 brook that ran through the midst of the land, 
 saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come 
 and find much water ? 
 
 That stream which flowed fi'om Siloam is, I presume, 
 the brook that Hezekiah speaks of, which in the time of the 
 crusades was not attempted to be stopped up. What the 
 cause of that was we are not told, but it seems the waters 
 of some springs without the city were conveyed into 
 Jerusalem at the time ; and that Solomon in his reign had 
 attempted to do the like, and had effected it: as to part of 
 the water of the springs of Bethlehem, it was no wonder 
 then that Hezekiah should think of introducing the waters 
 of Siloam in like manner into the city, in order at once to 
 deprive the besiegers of its waters, and benefit the inhabit- 
 ants of Jerusalem by them. Probably it was done in the 
 same manner that Solomon brought the waters of Bethle- 
 
 hem thither, that is, by collecting the water of the spring 
 or springs into a subterraneous reservoir, and from thence, 
 by a concealed aqueduct, conveying them into Jerusalem,' 
 with this difference, that Solomon took only part of the 
 Bethlehem water, leaving the rest to flow into those cele- 
 brated pools which remain to this day ; whereas Hezekiah 
 turned all the water of Siloam into the city, absolutely 
 stopping up the outlet into the pool, and filling it up with 
 earth, that no trace of it might be seen by the Assyriafta. 
 Which seems indeed to be the account of the sacred writer, 
 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, " The same Hezekiah also stopped the 
 upper watercourse of Gihon, (which is another name for 
 Siloam,) and brought it straight down to the west side of 
 the city of David." Thus onr translators express it: but 
 the original may as well be rendered, " Hezekiah stopped 
 the upper going out (i^sio motsa) of the waters of Gihon, and 
 directed them underneath, (n->;ar lemattah,) to the west of the 
 city of David ;" and so Fagninus and Arias Montanus un- 
 derstand the passage ; he stopped up, that is, the outlet of 
 the waters of Gihon into the open air, by which they were 
 wont to pass into .the pool of Siloam, anci became a brook ; 
 and by some subterraneous contrivance directed the waters 
 to the west side of Jerusalem.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 5. Also he strengthened himself, and built 
 up all the wall that was broken, and raised it 
 up to the toAvers, and another wall without, and 
 repaired Millo in the city of David, and made 
 darts and shields in abundance. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 5. 9. 
 
 Ver. 8, With him is an arm of flesh : but with 
 us is the Lord our God, to help us, and to 
 fight our battles. And the people rested them- 
 selves upon the words of Hezekiah, king of 
 Judah. 
 
 The margin has, for rested upon, " leaned." " I lean 
 (from sarukirathu) on the words 'fthat good man." " Ail 
 people gladly lean on the words of '\aX just judge." " Who 
 would lean on the words of that faise man T' " Alas ! we 
 leaned upon his words, and have fallen into trouble." "My 
 husband, have I not leaned upon your words 1 Yes, and 
 therefore I have not fallen." — Roberts. 
 
 EZRA. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 1 4. Now, because we have maintenance from 
 the Tung's palace, and it Avas not meet for us to 
 see the king's dishonour, therefore have Ave sent 
 and certified the king. 
 
 Literally, " salted with the salt of his folaceJ^ Some 
 have supposed that the words refer to their receiving a 
 ?iipend from the king of Persia, which was wont to be 
 paid in salt; others suppose it expresses an acknowledg- 
 ment that they were preserved by that king's protection, as 
 flesh is preserved by salt. And many pieces of collateral 
 learning are introduced to embellish these conceits. It is 
 sufficient, to put an end to all these conjectures, to recite 
 the words of a modern Persian monarch, whose court 
 Chardin attended some time about business. " Rising in 
 wrath against an officer, who had attempted to deceive him, 
 he drew his sabre, fell upon him, and hewed him in pieces, 
 
 at the feet of the grand vizier, who was standing, and 
 whose favour the poor wretch courted by this deception. 
 And looking fixedly upon him, and the other great lords 
 that stood on each side of him, he said, with a tone of indig- 
 nation, ' I have then such ungrateful servants and traitors 
 as these to eat my salt. Look on this sword, it shall cut off 
 all these perfidious heads.' " (Tome iii. p. 149.) 
 
 The Persian great men do not receive their salaries, it is 
 well known, in salt; and the officer that was killed was 
 under the immediate protection of the grand vizier, not the 
 prince: our English version has given, then, the sense, 
 though it has not literally translated the passage. It means 
 the same thing as eating one's bread signifies hepe in the 
 West, but, perhaps, Avith a particular energy. I beg leave 
 to introduce one remark here, of a very different nature, 
 that we may learn from this story, that Samuel's hewing 
 Agag in pieces, though so abhorrent from our customs, dif- 
 fers very little, in many respects, from this Persian execu- 
 tion. Samuel was a person of high distinction in Israel : he 
 
Chap. 5—8. 
 
 EZRA. 
 
 311 
 
 had been their judge, or supreme governor under God ; he 
 was a prophet too ; and we are ready to think his sacred 
 hands should not have been employed in the actual shed- 
 ding of blood. How strange would it be in our eyes, if we 
 should see one of our kings cutting off the head of a traitor 
 with his own hands ; or an archbishop of Canterbury stab- 
 bing a foreign captive prince ! But different countries have 
 very different usages. Soliman, king of Persia, who he-^- 
 ed this unfaithful officer in pieces, reigned over a much 
 larger and richer country than Judea, and at the same time 
 was considered by his subjects as sacred a person as Sam- 
 uel ; supposed to be descended from their prophet Moham- 
 med, to reign by a divine constitution, and to be possessed, 
 we are assured by this writer in another place, of a kind of" 
 prophetic penetration and authority. — I have said, it appears 
 10 signify the same thing as eating one's bread, in the West, 
 but, probably, with some particular kind of energy, mark- 
 ing out not merely the obligations of gratitude, but the 
 .strictest ties of fidelity. For as the letter was written not 
 only by some of the great officers on the western side of the 
 Euphrates, but in the name of the several colonies of peo- 
 ple that had been transplanted thither, the Dinaites, the 
 Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, &c. ver. 9, 10, it is not to 
 be supposed these tribes of people all received their food 
 from the palace, or a stipend for their support ; but with 
 great adulation they might pretend they considered them- 
 selves as held under as strong engagements of fidelity to 
 the kings of Persia, as if they had eaten salt in his palace. 
 
 The following story from D'Herbelot will explain this, if 
 the views of these ancient Persians maybe supposed to cor- 
 respond with those of the Persians of the ninth century. 
 
 Jacoub ben Laith, the founder of a dynasty of Persian 
 princes called the Soffarides, rising, like many other of the 
 ancestors of the princes of the East, from a very low state 
 to royal power, being in his first setting out in the use of 
 arms no better than a freebooter or robber, is yet said to 
 have maintained some regard to decency in his depreda- 
 tions, and never to have entirely stripped those that he rob- 
 bed, always leaving them something to soften their afflic- 
 tion. Among other exploits that are recorded of him, he 
 is said to " have broken into the palace of the prince of that 
 country, and having collected a very large booty, which he 
 was on the point of carrying away, he found his foot kick- 
 ed something, which made him stumble. He imagined it 
 might be something of value, and putting it to his mouth, 
 the better to distinguish what it was, his tongue soon in- 
 formed him it was a lump of salt. Upon this, according to 
 the morality, or rather superstition of the country, where 
 the people considered salt as a symbol and pledge of hospi- 
 tality, he was so touched, that he left all his booty, retiring 
 without taking away any thing with him. The next morn- 
 ing, the risk they had run of losing many valuable things, 
 being perceived, great was the surprise, and strict the jn- 
 quiry, what should be the occasion of their being left. At 
 length Jacoub was found to be the person concerned, who 
 having given an account, very sincerely, of the whole 
 transaction to the prince, he gained his esteem so effectual- 
 ly, that it might be said with truth, that it was his regard 
 for salt that laid the foundation of his after fortune. The 
 prince employed him as a man of courage and genius in 
 many enterprises, and finding him successful in all of them, 
 he raised him, by little and little, to the chief posts among 
 his troops, so that at that prince's death, he found himself 
 possessed of the command in chief, and had such interest 
 in their affections, that they preferred his interests to those 
 of the children of the deceased prince, and he became abso- 
 lute master of that province, from whence he afterward 
 spread his conquests far and wide." When the Aphar- 
 sathchites, the Tarpelites, and the other transplanted tribes, 
 told Artaxerxes, the Persian monarch, that they were vsalt- 
 edwith the salt of his palace, it appears, according to these 
 things, to mean, that they considered themselves as eating 
 his bread, on account of being put and continued in pos- 
 session of a considerable part of the Jewish country, by him 
 and his predecessors; and that their engagements of fideli- 
 ty to him were indeed as strong, as if they had eaten salt 
 in his palace. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 7. They sent a letter unto him, wherein was 
 written thus : Unto Darius the king, all peace. 
 The people of the East are always very particular as to 
 
 the way in which they commence a letter. Thus, they 
 take into consideration the rank of the individual to whom 
 they write, and keep in view also whftt is their object. 
 " To you who are respected by kings." " To him who 
 has the happiness of royalty." " To the feet of his ex- 
 cellency, my father, looking towards the place where he 
 is worshipping, I write." A father to his son says, " Head 
 of all blessings, chief of life, precious pearl." When peo- 
 ple meet each other on the road, they say, " Salam, peace 
 to you." Or, when they send a message, or ask a favour, 
 it is always accompanied by a salam. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 2. And there was found at Achmetha, in the 
 palace that is in the province of the Medes, a 
 roll, and therein was a record thus written. 
 
 This passage proves the great antiquity of the custom of 
 making copies to be deposited in the archives, of the impor- 
 tant ordinances of the magistrates, and particularly of 
 charters, granted either to individuals or whole commu- 
 nities. Thus, in an inscription on an ancient marble, 
 quoted by Thomas Smith, it is said of a privilege granted 
 for a separate sepulchre, " Of this inscription two copies 
 have been made, one of which is deposited in the archives." 
 In the same manner, elsewhere, " A copy of this inscription 
 shall be deposited in the archives." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 11. Also I have made a decree, that who- 
 soever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled 
 down from his house, and, being set up, let him 
 be hanged thereon. 
 
 Lud. de Dieu observes, that there is no proper construc- 
 tion in the words which we render, and being set up; he 
 would therefore translate them, after the Seventy, "and 
 standing, let him be beat upon it," or " whipped,'' as the 
 manner was among the Persians and other nations. Among 
 the Jews, they who were beaten, did not stand, but lay 
 down. Deut. xxv. 2. If a greater punishment be here 
 meant, then he makes the first words refer to the Avood, 
 and the latter to the man. *' And from above, let it fall 
 upon him :" that is, the stake being lifted up, shall be stuck 
 into his body, and come out at his fundament. This was a 
 cruel practice among the eastern people, and is yet con- 
 tinued there. — Burder. *• 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 21. Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river 
 
 of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before 
 
 our God, to seek of him a right way for us, 
 
 and for our little ones, and for all our substance. 
 
 The whole valley was covered with the tents of the pil- 
 grims ; for a very few, compared with their numbers, 
 could find lodgings in the building. These several en- 
 campments, according to their towns or districts, were 
 placed a little apart, each under its own special standard. 
 Their cattle were grazing about, and the people who 
 attended them, in their primitive eastern garbs. Women 
 appeared, carrying in water from the brooks, and children 
 were sporting at the tent doors. Towards evening, this 
 pious multitude, to the number of eleven hundred at least, 
 began their evening orisons, literally shouting their prayers, 
 while the singing of the hymns, responded by the echoes 
 from the mountains, was almost deafening. At intervals, 
 during the devotion, matchlocks, muskets, and pistols, were 
 repeatedly fired, division answering division, as if it were 
 some concerted signal. This mixture of military and 
 religious proceeding, produced an effect perfectly novel 
 to a European eye, in the nineteenth century ; though it 
 might have been more than sufficiently familiar to that of 
 a knight-companion in the thirteenth, when the crusades 
 covered every hauberk with a pilgrim's amice. But the 
 recollection of what country I saw these in, conjured up a 
 very different image. I was in the land of the Medes, on ^ 
 the very spot to which the ten tribes were brought in cap- 
 tivitv about two thousand years asro; and from which, in 
 the fulness of time, the scattered remnants were collected, 
 (after the first return, B. C. 536, by command of Cyrus,) 
 and led back to their native land, on the decree of Arta- 
 
812 
 
 EZRA. 
 
 Chap. 9, 10. 
 
 xerxes the king, when Ezra gathered them together to the 
 river that runneth to Ahava, and there they abode in their 
 tents three days :^nd he viewed the people and the priests. 
 And he proclaimed a fast there, that they might afflict 
 themselves before God, to seek of him a right way for them, 
 and for their little ones, and for their substance. And the 
 Lord was entreated of them, and he delivered them from 
 the iisnd of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the 
 way. And Ezra, and those with him, came to Jerusalem. 
 We see in this account, from the book of Ezra, chap. viii. 
 that the wild tribes of the mountains were then regarded 
 as banditti; and that no decrees of safe-conduct from the 
 king would have more effect in those days, than in the 
 present, to protect a rich caravan from ambuscade and 
 depredation. But I must own, there are some points of 
 observation in the encampment before me, which a little 
 disturbed the resemblance between its holy grouping, and 
 that which followed the really pious ordinance of the sa- 
 cred scribe of Israel. The Mohammedan evening prayer 
 over, all was noise of another description ; bustle and riot- 
 ous merriment, more like preparations of a fair, than a 
 worship ; showing at once the difference in spirit between 
 the two religions. In the one, the moral law walked hand 
 in hand with the ceremonial ; and the mandate of wor- 
 shipping the one God, in purity of heart, and in strictness 
 of practice, was unvaryingly asserted in the chastisement 
 or welfare of the people ; and so we see it was acknowl- 
 edged by the seemly and humble joy under pardon, with 
 which the recalled Israelites returned to the land of their 
 temple. But here the performance of certain rites seemed 
 to be all in all. The preachers of the multitude holding 
 forth, that as they advance nearer to the shrines of their 
 pilgrimage, so in due proportion their sins depart from 
 them; and thus every step they approach, the load becomes 
 lighter and lighter, till the last atom flies off the moment 
 they fall prostrate before the tomb of the prophet, or saint : 
 and from which holy spot they rise perfectly clear, free, and 
 often too willing to commence a new score, to be as readily 
 wiped away. — Sm R, K. Porter. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 3. And when I heard this thing, I rent my 
 g-arment and my mantle, and plucked off the 
 hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down 
 astonished. »> 
 
 Oriental mourners divested themselves of all ornaments, 
 and laid aside their jewels, gold, and every thing rich and 
 splendid in their dress. The Grecian ladies were directed 
 in this manner to mourn the death of Achilles : " Not 
 clothed in rich attire of gems and gold, with glittering 
 silks or purple." This proof of humiliation and submis- 
 sion Jehovah required of his offending people in the wil- 
 derness : " Therefore, now put off thy ornaments from 
 thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. And the 
 children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments 
 by the Mount Horeb." Long after the time of Moses, that 
 rebellious nation again received a command of similar 
 import : " Strip you, and make you bare, and gird sack- 
 cloth upon your loins." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. And said, O my God ! I am ashamed and 
 blush to lift up my face to thee, my God : for 
 our iniquities are increased over our head, and 
 our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. 
 
 " Ah, that fellow's sins are on his head : how numerous 
 
 are the sins on his head. Alas 1 for such a head as that. 
 Who can take them from his head 1 His iniquity is so 
 great, you may see it on his head." Does a man wish to 
 extenuate his crime, to make himself appear not so great a 
 sinner as some suppose, he asks, " What ! has my guilt 
 grown up to heaven 1 no ! no !" " Abominable wretch, 
 your guilt has reached to the heavens." " Can you call 
 ttat little, which has grown up to the heavens 1"— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And now for a little space grace hath 
 been showed from the Lord our God, to leave 
 us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail 
 in his holy place, that our God may lighten 
 our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our 
 bondage. 
 
 See on Isa. 22. 23. 
 
 The margin has, " or a pin," that is, " a constant and 
 sure abode." It is worthy oi notice, that the Tamul trans- 
 lation has it, " a hut in his holy place." To " lighten" the 
 eyes signifies to give comfort, to strengthen, to refresh. A 
 father says to his son, when he wishes him to do any thing, 
 " My child, make these eyes light." " O woman, enlighten 
 my eyes, lest I be swallowed up with sorrow." " O that our 
 eyes were clear ! who will take away the darkness from my 
 eyes V — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 1. Now when Ezra had prayed, and when 
 he had confessed, weeping and casting himsell 
 down before the house of God, there assembled 
 unto him out of Israel a very great congrega- 
 tion of men, and women, and children : for the 
 people wept very sore. 
 
 People on their arrival from England are astonished at 
 the apparent devotion of the Hindoos, when they see them 
 cast themselves down before their temples. Those of high 
 rank, and in elegant attire, do not hesitate thus to prostrate 
 themselves in the dust, before the people. How often, as 
 you pass along, may you see a man stretched his full leng'h 
 on the ground, with his face in the dust, pouring out his 
 complaint, or making his requests unto the gods. It mat- 
 ters not to him who or what may be near him ; he heeds not, 
 and moves not, till his devotions are finished. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin 
 gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem 
 within three days : it was the ninth month, and 
 the twentieth day of the month ; and all the 
 people sat in the street of the house of God, 
 trembling because of this matter, and for the 
 great rain. 
 
 What a marked illustration we have of this passage 
 every wet monsoon. See the people on a court-day, or 
 when they are called to the different offices on business. 
 The rain comes on ; they have only a piece of cotton round 
 their loins, and a small" leaf, which they carry over their 
 heads : they all run in a stooping position (as if that would 
 save them from the rain) to the nearest tree, and there they 
 sit in groups, huddled together, and trembling " for the 
 great rain." — Roberts. 
 
NEHEMIAH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 11. O Lord, I beseech thee, let now thine 
 ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, 
 and to the prayer of thy servants, who desire 
 to fear thy name ; and prosper, I pray thee, 
 thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in 
 the sight of this man : for I was the king's cup- 
 bearer. 
 
 Houbigant supposes that Nehemiah repeated this prayer, 
 which he had often before used, now again in silence, 
 while he administered the cup to the king in his office. 
 The office of cupbearer was a place of great honour and 
 advantage in the Persian court, because of the privilege 
 which it gave him who bare it, of being daily in the king's 
 presence, and the opportunity which he had thereby of 
 gaining his favour, for procuring any petition he should 
 make to him. That it was a place of great advantage 
 seems evident by Nehemiah's gaining those immense 
 riches which enabled him for so many years, out of his 
 own purse only, to live in his government with great 
 splendour and expense, without burdening the people. 
 According to Xenophon, the cupbearer with the Persians 
 and Medes used to take the wine out of the vessels into 
 the cup, and pour some of it into his left hand, and drink 
 it, that if there was any poison in it, the king might not 
 be hurt ; and then he delivered it to him upon three fingers. 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 2. Wherefore the king said unto me, Why 
 is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not 
 sick ? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. 
 
 When friends, servants, or acquaintances, have a request 
 to make, or a secret to disclose, they walk about with a 
 gloomy countenance, and never speak but when spoken to. 
 Their object is to induce you to ask what is the matter, 
 because they think you will then be disposed to listen to 
 their complaint. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 7. Moreover, I said unto the king, If it 
 please the king, let letters be given me to the 
 governors beyond the river, that they may con- 
 vey me over, till I come into Judah. 
 
 No person of consequence travels in the East without a 
 letter, or kattali, i. e. a command from the Rasa, the gov- 
 ernor, the collector, or officer in authority, to the different 
 chiefs of the districts through which he may have to travel. 
 "Were it not for this, there would often be a difficulty in 
 getting supplies, and there would generally be a great de- 
 lay ; the officers would be insolent and overbearing, and 
 the purveyors would demand thrice the sum the articles 
 were worth. The letters in question are generally in 
 duplicate, so that one precedes the traveller, and the other 
 is in his possession. Thus, when he arrives at the choultry 
 or rest-house, there will always be people to receive him, 
 who are ready to furnish him with supplies, and coolies to 
 help him on his journey. Sometimes they declare they 
 are in the greatest want ; they cannot get rice, they have 
 neither fish nor fowls, and are brought to the lowest ebb of 
 misery. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And the king granted me, according to 
 the good hand of my God upon me. 
 
 The hand is sometimes taken in an ill sense for inflict- 
 ing punishments, and sometimes in a good sense, for we 
 extend favours to men with the hand. Thus DrOsius ex- 
 40 
 
 plains Psalm Ixxxviii. 5, cut off from thy hand, that is, fall- 
 en from thy grace and favour. Pindar thus uses the Mnd 
 of God, for his help and aid, Qeov civ raAa^ui, by the hand of 
 God : which the scholiast interprets, by the power and help 
 of God. Thus Nehemiah is here to be understood. — Bur- 
 
 DER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 3. Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, 
 and he said, Even that which they build, if a 
 fox go up, he shall even break down their stone 
 wall. 
 
 When men deride the workmanship of a mason, they 
 say, " Che! why, if a dog or a jackal run against that wall, 
 it will fall." " A. wall ! why, it will not keep out the jack- 
 als." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver, 14. And I looked, and rose up, and said unto 
 the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of 
 the people. Be not ye afraid of them : remem- 
 ber the Lord which is great and terrible, and 
 fight for your brethren, your sons and your 
 daughters, your wives and your houses. 
 
 The ancients appear to have done more to excite the 
 valour of their soldiers, than merely exhorting them to be 
 courageous. This will appear in the following citation .v 
 " A circumstance which greatly tends to inflame them with 
 heroic ardour, is the manner in which their battalions are 
 formed. They are neither mustered nor imbodied by 
 chance : they fight in clans, united by consanguinity, a 
 family of warriors : their tenderest pledges are near them 
 in the field. In the heat of the engagement, the soldier 
 hears the shrieks of his wife, and the cries of his children. 
 These are the darling witnesses of his conduct ; the ap- 
 plauders of his valour, at once beloved and valued. The 
 wounded seek their mothers and their wives: undismayed 
 at the sight, the women count each honourable scar, and 
 suck the gushing blood : they are even hardy enough to 
 mix with the combatants, administering refreshment, and 
 exhorting them to deeds of valour." (Tacitus, De Mor. 
 Germ.) — Border, 
 
 Ver. 21. So we laboured in the work: and half 
 of them held the spears, from the rising of the 
 morning till the stars appeared. 
 
 Thus did the people labour from the earliest dawn till 
 the latest glimpse of evening light. " Well, Tarnby, have 
 you found your cattle?" " Found them? no ! and I wan- 
 dered from the rising east, till the stars appeared." "At 
 what time do you intend to leave the temple 1" " Not till 
 the stars appear." " When do you expect the guests 1" 
 " Immediately when the stars appear." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 13. Also I shook my lap, and said, So God 
 shake out every man from his house, and from 
 his labour, that performeth not this promise, 
 even thus be he shaken out and emptied. 
 
 When men or women curse each other, they shake the 
 lap, i. e. their cloth, or robe, and say, " It shall be so with 
 thee." Does a man begin to shake his mli, or waistcloth, in 
 the presence of another, the other will say, " Why do you 
 shake your cloth here? go to some other place." "What! 
 can you shake your lap here ? do it not, do it not." " Y^s, 
 ves; it is all true enough; this misery has come upon me 
 through that wretched i-^^rn shrking his cloth in my pres- 
 
314 
 
 NEHEMIAIL 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 ence." The natives always carry a pouch, made of the 
 leaf of the cocoa, or other trees, in their lap ; in one part 
 of which they keep their money, and in another their areca- 
 nut, betel leaf, and tobacco. It is amusing to see how 
 careful they arc never to have that pouch empty ; for they 
 have an idea, that soiong as a single coin shall be found in 
 it, (or any of the articles alluded to,) the attraction will be 
 so great, that the contents of the pouch will not be long 
 without companions. See the Englishman, who wants any 
 thing out of a pouch or bag; if he cannot soon find the ar- 
 ticle he requires, he shakes out the whole : not so the Hin- 
 doo ; he will fumble and grope for an hour, rather than 
 shake out the whole. " Do that ! why, who knows how 
 long the pouch will remain empty V It is therefore evi- 
 dent, that to shake the lap conveyed with it the idea of a 
 curse. — Roberts. 
 
 Instead of the fibula that was used by the Romans, the 
 Arabs join together with thread, or with a wooden bodkin, 
 the two upper corners of this garment; and after having 
 placed them first over one of their shoulders, they then 
 fold the rest of it about their bodies. The outer fold serves 
 them frequently instead of an apron, in which they carry 
 herbs, loaves, corn, and other articles, and may illustrate 
 several allusions made to it in scripture: thus, "One of 
 the sons of the prophets went out into the field, to gather 
 herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered there of wild 
 gourds, his lapful." And the Psalmist offers up his prayer, 
 that Jehovah would " render unto his neighbours seven- 
 fold into their bosom, their reproach." The same al- 
 lusion occurs in our Lord's direction to his disciples: 
 "Give, and it sliall be given unto you; good measure, 
 pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, 
 shall men give into your bosom." It was also the fold of this 
 robe which Nehemiah shook before his people, as a signifi- 
 cant emblem of the manner in which Grod should deal with 
 the man who ventured to violate his oath, and promise to 
 restore the possessions of their impoverished brethren: 
 *' Also, I shook my lap, and said, So God shake out every 
 man from his house, and from his labour, that performeih 
 not this promise, even thus be he shaken out and emptied." 
 — Paxton. 
 
 He shook the dust out of the foreskirts of his garment, 
 as a symbol of what follows. A similar rite was used in 
 the case of peace and war, when the Roman ambassadors 
 proposed the choice of one to the Carthaginians, as having 
 either in their bosom to shake out. (Florus, 1. ii. c. 6. Livy, 
 1. xxi. c. 18.) " When the Roman ambassadors entered the 
 senate of Carthage, they had their toga gathered up in their 
 bosom. They said, We carry here peace and war: you 
 may have which you will. The senate answered. You 
 may give which you please. They then shook their toga, 
 and said, We bring you war. To which all the senate an- 
 swered, We cheerfully accept it." — Burdeb. 
 
 Ver. 14. Moreover from the time that I was ap- 
 pointed to be their g-overnor in the land of Ju- 
 dah, from the twentieth year even unto the two 
 and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that 
 is, twelve years, I and my brethren have not 
 eaten the bread of the governor. 
 
 Nehemiah did not eat that bread which properly be- 
 longed to him as the governor. When the Orientals say 
 they eat the rice of a person, it denotes they are under ob- 
 ligations to him. People who have formerly been em- 
 ployed by you often come and say, " Ah, my lord, how 
 long it is since I had the pleasure of eating your rice." 
 Those who are in the service of the government, are said 
 to eat the rice of the king. A servant, who is requested to 
 injure his master, says, "No, no; have I not eaten his rice 
 for many days 1" Of a person who has been faithful to a 
 superior, it is said, " Yes, yes; he has eaten his rice, or he 
 would not have been so true to him." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. But the former governors that had been 
 before me were chargeable unto the people, and 
 had taken of them bread and wine, besides forty 
 shekels of silver ; yea, even their servants bare 
 rule over the people : but so did not I, because 
 i)f the fear of God. 
 
 The demanding provisions with roughness and severity 
 by such as travel under the direction of government, or 
 authorized by government to do it, is at this day so prac- 
 tised in the East, as greatly to illustrate several passa- 
 ges of scripture. When the Baron De Tott was sent, in 
 1767, to the cham of the Tartars, by the French ministry, 
 as resident of France with that Tartar prince, he had a 
 mikmandar, or conductor, given him by the pacha of Kot- 
 chim, upon his entering the Turkish territories, whose 
 business it was to precede and prepare the way for him, 
 as is usually done in those countries to ambassadors, and 
 such as travel gratis, at the expense of the porte, or Turk- 
 ish court. This conductor, whose name, it seems, was Ali 
 Aga, made great use of his whip, when he came among 
 the poor Greeks of Moldavia, to induce them to furnish out 
 that assistance an/i those provisions he wanted for the 
 baron ; for though it was represented as travelling at the 
 expense of the porte, it was really at the expense of the 
 inhabitants of those towns or villages to which he came. 
 The baron appears to have been greatly hurt by that mode 
 of procedure with those poor peasants, and would rather 
 have procured what he wanted with his money, which he 
 thought would be sufficiently efficacious, if the command 
 of the mikmandar should not be sufficient without the whip. 
 The baron's account of the success of his eftorls is a very 
 droll one, which he has enlivened by throwing it into the 
 form of dialogues between himself and the Greeks, and 
 Ali Aga and those peasants, in which he has imitated the 
 broken language the Greeks made use of, pretending not 
 to understand Turkish, in order to make it more mirthful. 
 It would be much too long for these papers, and quite un- 
 necessary for my design, to transcribe these dialogues; it 
 is sufficient to say, that after the jealousy of the poor op- 
 pressed Greeks of their being to be pillaged, or more heavi- 
 ly loaded with demands by the Turks, had prevented their 
 voluntarily supplying the baron for his money, Ali Aga 
 undertook the business, and upon the Moldavian's pretend- 
 ing not to understand the Turkish language, he knocked 
 him down with his fist, and kept kicking him while he was 
 rising; which brought him to complain, in good Turkish, 
 of his beating him so, when he knew very well they were 
 poor people, who were often in want of necessaries, and 
 whose princes scarcely left them the air they breathed. 
 " Pshaw ! thou art joking, friend," was the reply of Ali 
 Aga, " thou art in want of nothing, except of oeing well 
 basted a little oftener ; but all in good time. Proceed we 
 to business. I must instantly have two sheep, a dozen of 
 fowls, a dozen of pigeons, fifty pounds of bread, four oques 
 of butter, with salt, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemons, 
 wines, salad, and good oil of olive, all in great plenty." 
 With tears the Moldavian replied, " I have already told 
 you that we are poor creatures, without so much as bread 
 to eat. Where must we get cinnamon V The whip, it 
 seems, was taken from under his habit, and the Moldavian 
 beaten till he could bear it no longer, but was forced to fly, 
 finding Ali Aga inexorable, and that these provisions must 
 be produced; and, in fact, we are told, the quarter of an 
 hour was not expired, within which time Ali Aga required 
 that these things should be produced, and affirmed to the 
 baron that they would be brought before the primate, or 
 chief of the Moldavians of that town, who had teen so se- 
 verely handled, assisted by three of his countrymen ; all 
 the provisions were brought, without forgetting even the 
 cinnamon. 
 
 May not this account be supposed to illustrate that pas- 
 sage of Nemehiah, chap. v. 15 : The former governors thai 
 had been before me, were chargeable iinlo the people, and had 
 taken of them bread and witw, besides forty shekels of silver : 
 yea^ even their servants bare rule over the people : hit so did 
 not I, because of the fear of God. It is evident something 
 oppressive is meant. And that it related to the taking 
 bread from them, or eatables in general, together with wine, 
 perhaps sheep, fowls, pigeons, butter, fruit, and other things, 
 when probably they were travelling, or sojourning in some 
 place at a distance from home. And that the like imperi- 
 ous and unrighteous demand had, from time to time, been 
 made upon them by the servants of these governors, whom 
 they might have occasion to send about the country. 1 
 cannot account for the setting down the precise number of 
 forty, when speaking of shekels, but by supposing that the 
 word besides, here, *>"« acher, should have been translated 
 afterward, whicl it more ccmmonly, if not more certainly, 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 NEHEMIAH, 
 
 815 
 
 signifies; and means, that afterward ihey were wont to 
 commute this demand for provisions into money, often 
 amounting to forty shekels. It is certain it would not mean 
 the whole annual allowance to the governor by the children 
 of the captivity ; that would have been much too small ; nor 
 could it mean what every householder was to pay annually 
 towards the governor's support, for fifty shekels was as 
 much as each mighty man of wealth was assessed at by 
 Menahem, when he wanted to raise a large sum of money 
 for the king of Assyria, and when Israel was not in so 
 low a state as in the time of Nehemiah : it must then, sure- 
 ly, mean the value of that quantity of eatables and wine 
 they might charge any town with, when single towns were 
 charged with the support of the governor's table for a sin- 
 gle repast, or a single day, which it is natural to suppose 
 could only be when they thought fit to travel from place to 
 place. This, it seems, their servants took the liberty too 
 to require, when they were sent on a journey. And if they 
 that belonged to the "officers of the king of Persia enforced 
 their requisitions in a manner similar to that made use of 
 by the people belonging to the Turkish governors of prov- 
 inces, when they travel on a public account among the 
 Greeks of Moldavia, it is no wonder that Nehemiah ob- 
 serves, with emotion, in this passage, Yca^ even their ser- 
 vants bare rule over the people : but so did not I, because of 
 tlie fear of God. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 17. Moreover, there were at my table a hun- 
 dred and fifty of the Jews and rulers, besides 
 those that came unto us from among the heathen 
 that are about us. 18. Now that which was 
 prepared for me daily was one ox and six choice 
 sheep ; also fowls were prepared for me, and 
 once in ten days store of all sorts of wine : yet 
 for all this required not I the bread of the gov- 
 ernor, because the bondage was heavy upon 
 this people. 
 
 Nehemiah calculated the expenses of his table, not by 
 the money he paid, but by the provisions consumed by his 
 guests. Such is still the practice in the East. So De la 
 Motraye informs us of the seraglio at Constantinople: 
 " One may judge of the numbers who live in this palace, 
 by the prodigious quantity of provisions consumed in it 
 yearly, which some of the hattchis, or cooks, assured me 
 amounted to more than 30,000 oxen, 20,000 calves, (30,000 
 sheep, 16,000 lambs, 10,000 kids, 100,000 turkeys, geese, 
 and goslings, 200,000 fowls and chickens, 100,000 pigeons, 
 without reckoning wild-fowl or fish, of the last of which 
 he only named 130,000 calcam-bats, or turbots." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 5. Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me, 
 in like manner, the fifth time, with an open, 
 letter in his hand. 
 
 A letter has its Hebrew name from the circumstance of 
 its being rolled or folded together. The modern Arabs roll 
 up their letters, and then flatten them to the breadth of an 
 inch, and instead of sealing them, paste up their ends. 
 The Persians make up their letters in a roll about six inches 
 long, a bit of paper is fastened round it with gum, and 
 sealed with an impression of ink. In Turkey, letters are 
 commonly sent to persons of distinction in a bag or purse ; 
 to equals they are also enclosed, but to inferiors, or those 
 who are held in contempt, they are sent open or unenclosed. 
 This explains the reason of Nehemiah's observation : 
 ** Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me, with an open 
 letter in his hand." In refusing him the mark of respect 
 usually paid to persons of his station, and treating him con- 
 temptuously, by sending the letter without the customary 
 appendages, when presented to persons of respectability, 
 Sanballat offered him a deliberate insult. Had this open 
 letter come from Geshem, who was an Arab, it might have 
 passed unnoticed, but as it came from Sanballat, the gov- 
 ernor had reason to expect the ceremony of enclosing it in 
 a bag, since he was a person of distinction in the Persian 
 G< urt, and at that time governor of Judea. — Paxton. 
 
 Norden tells us, that when he and his company were at 
 
 Essauen, an express arrived there, despatched by an Arab 
 prince, who brought a letter directed to the reys, (or mas- 
 ter of their barque,) enjoining him not to set out with his 
 barque, or carry them any farther, adding, that in a day's 
 time he should be at Essauen, and there would give his 
 orders relative to them. " The letter, however, accord- 
 ing to the usage of the Turks," says this author, " was 
 open ; and as the reys was not on board, the pilot carried 
 it to one of our fathers to read it." Sanballat's sending 
 his servant, then, with an open letter, which is mentioned 
 Neh, vi. 5, doth not appear an odd thing, it should seem ; 
 but if it was according to their usages, why is this circum- 
 stance complained of, as it visibly isl Why indeed is JL 
 mentioned at all % Why ! because, however the sending 
 letters open to common people may be customary in these 
 countries, it is not according to their usages to send them 
 so to people of distinction. So Dr. Pococke, in his account 
 of that very country where Norden was when this letter 
 was brought, gives us, among other things, in the 57ih 
 plate, the figure of a Turkish letter put into a satin bag, to 
 be sent to a great man, with a paper tied to it, directed and 
 sealed, and an ivory button tied on the wax. So Lady 
 Montague says, the bassa of Belgrade's answer to the Eng- 
 lish ambassador, going to Constantinople, was brought to 
 him in a purse of scarlet satin. The great emir, indeed, 
 of the Arabs, according to D'Arvieux, was not wont to en- 
 close his letters in these bags, any more than to have them 
 adorned with flourishes ; but that is supposed to have been 
 owing to the unpoliteness of the Arabs ; and he tells us, 
 that when he acted as secretary to the emir, he supplied 
 these defects, and that his doing so was highly acceptable 
 to the emir. Had this open letter, then, come from Geshem, 
 who was an Arab, it might have passed unnoticed ; but as 
 it was from Sanballat, the enclosing it in a handsome bag 
 was a ceremony Nehemiah had reason to expect from him, 
 since he w;.s a person of distinction in the Persian court, 
 and then governor of Judea ; and the noi doing it was the 
 greatest insult, insinuating, that though Nehemiah was, 
 according to him, preparing to assume the royal dignity, he 
 should be so far from acknowledging him in that charac- 
 ter, that he would not even pay him the compliment due 
 to every person of distinction. Chardin gives us a like 
 account of the eastern letters, adding this circumstance, 
 that those that are unenclosed as sent to common peo- 
 ple, are usually rolled up ; in which form their paper com- 
 monly appears. A letter in the form of a small roll of pa- 
 per, would appear very odd in our eyes, but it seems is very- 
 common there. If this is the true representation of the af- 
 fair, commentators have given but a poor account of it. San- 
 ballat sent him a message, says one of them, " pretend- 
 ing, it is likely, special respect and kindness unto him, in- 
 forming him what was laid to his charge." So far Mr. 
 Harmer. 
 
 Contrast with this open letter to Nehemiah the closed, 
 rolled, or folded letter, sent by Sennacherib to Hezekiah, 
 2 Kings xix. 14. We read, verse 9, " He sent messen- 
 gers to Hezekiah, saying" — " And Hezekiah received the 
 [sepher} letter at the hand of the messenger, and read it : 
 and Hezekiah went up into the house of the Lord, and 
 spread it before the Lord." It was therefore folded or roll- 
 ed, and no doubt enclosed in a proper envelope; and I 
 would not be certain whether this action of taking a letter 
 from its case is not expressed here by the vioxAperesh, which 
 signifies to divide, to separate. Consider also the passage, 
 Isaiah xxix. 11 : " And the vision shall be to you, as the 
 word of a {sepher, the same as the letter spread by Hezekiah] 
 letter that is sealed — sealed up in a bag, closely — which is 
 given to a man of learning to read, but he says, ' It is sealed' 
 — how should I know what information it contains *? I 
 merely can discover to whom it is directed ;" while the 
 unlearned cannot even read the address. We see such 
 occurrences daily in the streets of London: messengers 
 sent with letters, Sesire passengers to read the directions 
 for them.— Observe, the messengers sent to Hezekiah are 
 described as saying, when in fact, they say nothing, but 
 only deliver a letter containing the message. — Taylor in 
 Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 10. Afterward I came unto the house of 
 Shemaiah, the son of Delaiah, the son of Me- 
 hetabeel, who was shut up ; and he said, Let us 
 
S16 
 
 NEHEMIAH, 
 
 Chap. 7—13. 
 
 meet together in the house of God, within the 
 temple : and let us shut the doors of the tem- 
 ple : for they will come to slay thee ; yea, in the 
 night they will come to slay thee. 
 
 By the house of God, withi7i t/ie temple, (as it is in the text, 
 Nehem. vi. 10,) Shemaiah certainly meant the sanctuary ; 
 and to advise Neheraiah to retreat thither, he had a good 
 pretence, because it was both a strong and a sacred place, 
 being defended by a guard of Levites, and, by its holiness, 
 privileged from all rude approaches ; but his real design 
 herein might be, not only to disgrace Nehemiah, and dis- 
 hearten the people, when they saw their governor's cow- 
 ardice, but to prepare the way likewise for the enemies' 
 assauUing and taking the city, when there was no leader 
 to oppose them ; to give countenance to the calumny that 
 had been spread abroad, of his affecting to be made king, 
 because he fled upon the report of it ; and perhaps, by the 
 assistance of some other priests, that were his confederates, 
 either to destroy him, or to secure his person until the city 
 was jetrayed into the enemies' hands.— Stackhouse. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 1 . Now it came to pass, when the wall was 
 built, and I had set up the doors, and the porters, 
 and the singers, and the Levites were appointed, 
 2. That I gave my brother Hanani, and Hana- 
 niah the ruler of the palace, charge over Jeru- 
 salem : (for he was a faithful man, and feared 
 God above many.) 
 
 ISTehemiah, very likely, was now returning to Shushan, to 
 pve the king an account of the state of affairs in Judea ; 
 and therefore he took care to place such men in the city as 
 he knew would faithfully secure it in his absence. Hanani 
 is said to be his brother; but he chose his officers, not out 
 of partial views to his own kindred, but because he knew 
 that they would acquit themselves in their employment 
 with a strict fidelity. Hanani had given proof of his zeal 
 for God and his country, in his taking a tedious journey 
 from Jerusalem to Shushan, to inform Nehemiah of the 
 sad state of Jerusalem, and to implore his helping hand to 
 relieve it, chap. i. And the reason why Nehemiah put 
 such trust and confidence in Hananiah, was, because he 
 Avas a man of conscience, and acted upon religious princi- 
 ples, which would keep him from those temptations to per- 
 fediousness, which he might probably meet with in his 
 absence, and against which a man destitute of the fear of 
 God has no sufficient fence. — Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 3. And I said unto them. Let not the gates 
 of Jerusalem be opened until the sun be hot ; 
 and while they stand by, let them shut the 
 doors, and bar them : and appoint watches of 
 the inhabitants of Jerusalem, every one in his 
 watch, and every one to be over against his 
 house. 
 
 In the hot countries of the East, they frequently travel 
 in the night, and arrive at midnight at the place of their 
 destination, Luke xi. 5. Mark xiii. 35. Probably they 
 did not therefore usually shut their gates at the going 
 down of the sun, if they did so at all through, the night, 
 Thevenot could not, however, obtain admission into Suez 
 in the night, and was forced to wait some hours in the cold, 
 without the walls, Doubdan, returning from the river 
 Jordan to Jerusalem, in 1652, tells us, that when he and 
 his companions arrived in the valley of Jehoshaphat, they 
 were much surprised to find that the gates of the city were 
 shut, which obliged them to lodge on the ground at the door 
 of the sepulchre of the Blessed Virgin, to wait for the re- 
 turn of day, along with more than a thousand other people, 
 who were obliged to continue there the rest of the night, as 
 well as they. At length, about four o'clock, seeing every- 
 body making for the city, they also set forward, with the 
 design of entering by St. Stephen's gate ; but they found it 
 ' shut, and above two" thousand people, who were there in 
 waiting, without knowing the cause of all this. At first 
 they thought it might be too early, and that it was not cus- 
 
 tomary to open so soon : but an hour afler a report was 
 spread that the inhabitants had shut their gates because the 
 peasants of the country about, had formed a design of pil- 
 laging the city in the absence of the governor and of his 
 guards, and that as soon as he should arrive, the gates 
 should be opened. — Burder. 
 
 Ver, 4. Now the city was large and great, but 
 the people were few therein, and the houses 
 were not built. 
 
 One reason why the bulk of the Jews (who were origin- 
 ally pastural, and lovers of agriculture) might rather choose 
 to live in the country than at Jerusalem, was, because it was 
 more suited to their genius and manner of life ; but at this 
 time their enemies were so enraged to see the walls built 
 again, and so restless in their designs to keep the city from 
 rising to its former splendour, that it terrified many from 
 coming to dwell there, thinking themselves more safe in 
 the country, where their enemies had no pretence to dis- 
 turb them, — Stackhouse, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII, 
 Ver. 10. Then he said unto them. Go your way, 
 eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send por- 
 tions unto them for whom nothing is prepared : 
 for this day is holy unto our Lord : neither be 
 ye soxry ; for the joy of the Lord is your 
 strength. 
 
 The eastern princes, and the eastern people, not only 
 invite their friends to feasts, but it is their custom to sen'd 
 a portion of the banquet to those that cannot well come to 
 it, especially their relations, and those in a state of mourning. 
 This sending of portions to those for whom nothing was 
 
 Erepared, has been understood by those commentators I 
 ave consulted, to mean the poor"; sending portions, how- 
 ever, to one another, is expressly distinguished in Esth. 
 ix. 22, from, gifts to the poor. There would not have been 
 the shadow of a difficulty in this, had the historian been 
 speaking of a private feast, but he is describing a national 
 festival, where every one was supposed to be equally con- 
 cerned : those, then, /or tohom nothing loas prepared, it should 
 seem, means those that were in a state of mourning. 
 Mourning for private calamities being here supposed to 
 take place of rejoicing for public concerns. But it is not 
 only to those that are in a state of mourning that provisions 
 are sometimes sent ; others are honoured by princes in the 
 same manner, who could not conveniently attend to the 
 royal table, or to whom it was supposed not to be convenient. 
 So when the grand emir found it incommoded Monsieur 
 D'Arvieux to eat with him, he complaisantly desired him 
 to take his own time for eating, and sent him what he liked 
 from his kitchen, and at the time he chose. And thus, 
 when King David would needs suppose, for secret reasons, 
 loo well known to himself, that it would be inconvenient for 
 Uriah to continue at the royal palace, and therefore dis- 
 missed him to his own house, " there followed him a mess 
 of meat from the king," 2 Sam, xi, 8, 10.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 37, And it yieldeth much increase unto the 
 kings whom thou hast set over us because of 
 our sins: also they have dominion over our 
 bodies, and over our cattle, at their' pleasure, 
 and we are in great distress. 
 
 These people attribute all their losses and afflictions to 
 their sins. Has a man lost his wife or child, he says, " En- 
 pdvatin-nemityam, for the sake of my sins, this evil has 
 come upon me." "Why, friend, do you live in this 
 strange land V " Because of my sins." No people can 
 refer more to sin as the source of their misery, and yet 
 none appear more anxious to commit it, " The sins of my 
 ancestors, the sins of my ancestors, are in this habitation, 
 says the old sinner, who wishes to escape the sight of his 
 own, — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 15. In those days saw I in Judah .fr^we tread- 
 ing wine-presses on the sabbath, and bringing 
 
Chap. 13. 
 
 NEHEMIAH. 
 
 317 
 
 in sheaves, and lading asses; as also wine,^ 
 grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens,' 
 which they brought into Jerusalem on the sab- 
 bath-day : and I testified against them in the 
 day wherein they sold victuals. 
 
 In peaceful times, the press in which the grapes and 
 olives were trodden, was constructed in the vineyard : but 
 in time of war and danger, it was removed into the nearest 
 city. This precaution the restored cafjtives were reduced 
 to take for their safety, at the time they were visited by Ne- 
 hemiah. In a state of great weakness themselves, without 
 an efficient government or means of defence, they were ex- 
 posed to the hostile machinations of numerous and power- 
 ful enemies. For this reason, many of the Jews brought 
 their grapes from the vineyards, and trod them in Jerusa- 
 lem, the only place of safety which the desolated country 
 alForded. " In those days," said Nehemiah, " saw I in Ju- 
 dah, some treading wine-presses on the sabbath, and bring- 
 ing in sheaves, and lading asses; and also wine, grapes, 
 and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought in- 
 to Jerusalem on the sabbath-day." Had these wine-presses 
 been at a distance from Jerusalem, Nehemiah, who so 
 strictly observed the precept of resting on that day, would 
 not have seen the violation of which he complains. 
 
 Our translators, in Mr. Harmer's opinion, seem to have 
 been guilty of an oversight in the mterpretation of this 
 verse, which plainly supposes, that sheaves of corn were 
 brought into Jerusalem at the very time men were treading 
 the wine-presses. This, he observes, is a strange anachro- 
 nism, since the harvest there was finished in or before the 
 third month, and the vintage was not till the seventh. But, 
 it may be replied in favour of our translators, that by Mr. 
 Harmer's own admission, they have at present a species of 
 corn in the East, which is not ripe till the end of summer ; 
 which made Rauwolf say, it was the time of harvest when 
 he arrived at Joppa, on the thirteenth of September. But 
 if they have such a species of corn no\^, it is more than 
 probable they had it then ; for the customs and manage- 
 ment of the Orientals suffer almost no alteration from the 
 lapse of time, and change of circumstances. If this be ad- 
 mitted, the difficulty vanishes : and there is nothing incon- 
 gruous or absurd in supposing that Nehemiah might see 
 his countrymen bringing this late grain in sheaves from 
 th'^ field, to tread it out in the city, for fear of their numer- 
 ous and malicious foes, who might have set upon them, had 
 they not taken this precaution, as the Arabs frequently do 
 on the present inhabitants, and seized the heaps on the 
 barn-floor. Mr. Harmer translates the Hebrew term, par- 
 cels of grapes ; but as the word signifies a heap of any thing, 
 it may with equal propriety be rendered parcels or sheaves 
 of corn, especially as grapes are mentioned afterward. It 
 is true, our author makes them dried grapes, but for the 
 word dried he has no authority from the original text; 
 there is no good reason, therefore, to find fault with our 
 translators in this instance. — Paxton, 
 
 Though the conveniences they have in the wine coun- 
 tries for pressing their grapes, were frequently in peaceful 
 times in their vineyards, yet in times of apprehension these 
 conveniences were often in the cities themselves. Greece, 
 to the present day, is frequently alarmed, and always under 
 apprehension from corsairs : accordingly we find, that though 
 the pla"/a^'nns of olive-trees belonging to Athens are large, 
 and at some distance from thence, yet the mills for grind- 
 ing and pressing the olives are in that town; and this, 
 though, according to his description, the great olive-grove, 
 or wood of these trees, as Dr. Richard Chandler calls it, 
 watered by the Cephissus, is about three miles from the 
 city, and has been computed as at least six miles long. The 
 same reason that can induce men to fetch their olives from 
 a distance into their towns, must operate more or less for- 
 cibly with regard to their grapes. This was, in particular, 
 the state of things at the time Nehemiah visited the chil- 
 dren of the captivity. They had many enemies about them, 
 and those very spiteful; and they themselves were very 
 weak. For this reason, many of them trod their grapes in 
 Jerusalem itself: "In those days saw I in Judah some 
 
 treading winepresses on the sabbath, and bringing in 
 sheaves, and lading asses; and also M-ine, grapes, and figs, 
 and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jeru- 
 salem on the sabbath-day." Had these wine-presses been 
 at a distance from Jerusalem, he that so strictly observed 
 the precept of resting that day would not have seen that 
 violation of it. They appear, by that circumstance, as well 
 as by the other particulars mentioned there, to have been 
 within the walls of Jerusalem. The words of Nehemiah 
 are to be understood as signifying, " In those days saw I in 
 Judah some treading wine-presses on the sabbath, and 
 bringing in parcels of grapes for that purpose in baskets, 
 which they had laden on asses, and also jars of wine, press- 
 ed elsewhere, dried grapes and figs, and ail manner of bur- 
 dens of victuals, which they sold on the sabbath:" the 
 squeezing the grapes for wine, and drying them for raisins, 
 being, it seems, at least frequently attended to at one and 
 the same time. So when Dr. Chandler set out from Smyr- 
 na to visit Greece, in the end of August, the vintage was 
 just begun, " the black grapes being spread on the ground 
 in beds, exposed to the sun to dry for raisins ; while in an- 
 other part, the juice was expressed for wine, a man, with 
 feet and legs bare, treading the fruit in a kind of cistern, 
 with a hole or vent near the bottom, and a vessel beneath it 
 to receive the liquor." (Travels in Greece.) 
 
 If the same custom obtained in Judea then, which it seems 
 is practised in Greece now, and that the vintage was just 
 then finishing, Nehemiah must have been particularly 
 galled; for it seems they finish their vintage with dancing, 
 and therefore I presume with songs, and probably music. 
 For speaking of the Greek dances, of which some are sup- 
 posed of very remote antiquity, and of one in particular, 
 called the crane, he says, " the peasants perform it yearly 
 in the street of the French convent, where he and his com- 
 panions lodged at that time, at the conclusion of the vint- 
 age; joining hands, and preceding their mules and their 
 asses, which are laden with grapes in panniers, in a very 
 curved and intricate figure ; the leader waving a handker- 
 chief, which has been imagined to denote the clew given 
 by Ariadne ;" the dance being supposed to have been in- 
 vented by Theseus, upon his escape from the labyrinth. 
 
 Singing seems to have been practised by the Jews in 
 their vineyards, and shouting when they trod the grapes, 
 from what we read, Isaiah xvi. 10 : but whether dancing 
 too, and whether they carried their profanation of the sal^ 
 bath this length, in the time of Nehemiah, we are not in- 
 formed. Some may have supposed that the words of Jer- 
 emiah, ch. xxxi. 4, 5, refer to the joy expressed by the Jews 
 in the time of vintage : " Again, I will build thee, and thoii 
 shalt be built, O virgin of Israel ; thou shalt again be adorn- 
 ed with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them 
 that make merry. Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the 
 mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and eat 
 them as common things." Vines and dancing are here 
 joined together. — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 25. And I contended with them, and cursed 
 them, and smote certain of them, and plucked 
 off their hair, and made them swear by God, 
 saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto 
 their sons, nor take their daughters unto your 
 sons, or for yourselves. 
 
 In Judea, the punishment of infamy consisted chiefly in 
 cuuing off the hair of evil-doers : yet it is thought that pain 
 was added to disgrace, and that they tore off the hair with 
 violence, as if they were plucking a bird alive. This is 
 the genuine signification of the Hebrew word used by 
 Nehemiah in describing his conduct towards those Jews 
 who had violated the law by taking strange wives: "And 
 I contended with them, and smote certain of them, and 
 plucked off their hair." This kind of punishment was 
 common in Persia. King Ariaxerxes, instead of pluck- 
 ing off the hair of such of his generals as had been guilty 
 of a fault, obliged them to lay aside the tiara. The Em- 
 peror Domitian caused the hair and beard of the philoso- 
 pher Apollonius to be shaved. — Paxton. 
 
ESTHER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 5. A.nd when these days were expired, the 
 king- made a feast unto all the people that were 
 present in Shushan the palace, both unto great 
 and small, seven days, in the court of the gar- 
 den of the king's palace ; 6. Where were white, 
 ' green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords 
 01 fine linen and purple to silver rings and pil- 
 ars of marble : the beds loere of gold and silver, 
 upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, 
 and black marble. 
 
 In the houses of the fashionable and the gay, the lower 
 part of rhe walls is adorned with rich hangings of velvet 
 .or damask, tinged with the liveliest colours, suspended on 
 hooks, ur taken down at pleasure. A correct idea of their 
 richness and splendour may be formed from the description 
 which tiie inspired writer has given of the hangings in the 
 royal garden at Shushan, the" ancient capital of Persia: 
 " Where were white, green, and blue hangings, fastened 
 with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pil- 
 lars of marble." The upper part of the walls is adorned 
 with the most ingenious wreaihings and devices, in stucco 
 and fret-work. The ceiling is generally of wainscot, paint- 
 ed with great art, or else thrown into a variety of panels, 
 with gilded mouldings. In the days of Jeremiah the prophet, 
 when the profusion and luxury of all ranks in Judea were 
 at their height, their chambers were ceiled with fragrant 
 and costly wood, and painted with the richest colours. Of 
 this extravagance, the indignant seer loudly complains: 
 " Wo unto him that saith, I will build me a wide house 
 and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows : and it 
 is ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion." The 
 floors of these splendid apartments were laid with painted 
 tiles, or slabs of the most beautiful marble. A pavement of 
 this kind is mentioned in the book of Esther : at the sump- 
 tuous entertainment which Ahasuerus made for the princes 
 and nobles of his vast empire, " the beds," or couches, 
 upon which they reclined, " were of gold and silver, upon 
 a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble." 
 Plaster of terrace is often used for the same purpose ; and 
 the floor is always covered with carpets, which are, for the 
 most part, of the richest materials. Upon these^ carpets, 
 a range of narrow beds, or mattresses, is often placed 
 along the sides of the wall, with velvet or flamask bolsters, 
 for the greater ease and convenience of the company. To 
 these luxurious indulgences the prophets occasionally seem 
 to allude : Ezekiel was commanded to pronounce a " wo 
 to the women that sew pillows to all arm-holes;" and 
 Amos denounces the judgments of his God against them 
 "that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves 
 upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and 
 the calves out of the midst of the stall." — Paxton. 
 
 To give some idea of the grandeur of this feast, we may 
 remark, that in eastern countries their houses are built 
 round a court, in which, upon extraordinary occasions, 
 company is entertained, being strewed with mats and car- 
 pets. And as the court lies open to the sky, it is usual, in 
 the summer, to have it sheltered from the heat of the sun, 
 by a large awning or veil, which bei^ig extended upon ropes 
 reaching across the court, from one side of the top of the 
 house to the other, may be folded or unfolded at pleasure. 
 The Psalmist seems to allude to some covering of this kind, 
 Ps. 104. 2 : " Who stretchest out the heavens like a cur- 
 tain." Is. 40.2. (Shaw's Travels, p. 247.) Now the Persian 
 king entertained the whole city of Shushan, great and 
 small, for seven days together, in the court of the garden 
 of the king's palace. In that garden we must suppose a 
 
 very spacious area, probably containing many acres, cu- 
 riously paved, and having lofty columns of marble, erected 
 in rows at proper distances; to the tops of those columns 
 were fixed rings of silver, through which they drew pur- 
 ple cords of fine linen, across from row to row, and from 
 pillar to pillar; and over those cords they spread large 
 sheets of delicate calico, possibly painted with blue, which 
 would make a very splendid and beautiful sky over all the 
 court, and a delightful shade to all the guests. Instead of 
 mats and carpets, they had beds, or couches, of gold and 
 silver, to sit upon, and were served with wine in vessels 
 of gold. This is probably the idea we are to entertain of 
 the furniture of this gorgeous banquet, — Taylor's Concord- 
 ance. 
 
 Dr. Russel does not represent the pavement of the courts 
 as all mosaic work, and equally adorned, but he tells us, 
 that it is usually that part that lies between the fountain and 
 the arched alcove on the south side, that is thus beautified, 
 supposing that there is but one alcove in a court; howeverj 
 it should seem in some other parts of the East, there are 
 several of these alcoves opening into the court. Maun- 
 drell, who calls them duans, in his account of the houses of 
 Damascus, says expressly, that they have generally several 
 on all sides of the court, "being placed at such ditTerent 
 points, that at one or other of them you may always have 
 either the shade or the sun, which you please." Are not 
 the.se alcoves, or duans, of which, according to this, there 
 might be several in the court of the palace of Ahasuerus, 
 what the sacred writer means by the beds adorned with sil- 
 ver and gold 1 Esth. i. 6. I shall elsewhere show, that the 
 bed where Esther was sitting, and on which Haman threw 
 himself, must more resemble the modern oriental duans, 
 or divans, than the beds on which the Romans reclined at 
 their entertainments ; and consequently it is more natural 
 to understand those beds of these alcoves, or duans, richly 
 adorned with gold and silver, while on the lower variega- 
 ted pavements carpets were also ,laid, for the reception of 
 those that could not find a place in these duans ; on which 
 pavements. Dr. Shaw tells us, they are wont, in Barbary, 
 when much company is to be entertained, to strew mats and 
 carpets. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 9. Also Vashti the queen made a feast for 
 the women in the royal house which belonged 
 to King Ahasuerus. 
 
 The women are not permitted to associate with the other 
 sex at an eastern banquet ; but they are allowed to enter- 
 tain one another in their own apartments. When Aha- 
 suerus, the king of Persia, treated all the people of his 
 capital with. a splendid feast, Vashti, the queen, we are 
 informed, " made a banquet for the women in the royal 
 house, which belonged to King Ahasuerus. This, observes 
 Chardin, is the custom of all the East ; the women have 
 their feasts at the same time, but apart from the men. And 
 Maillet informs us, in his letters, that the same custom is 
 observed in Egypt. This is undoubtedly the reason that 
 the prophet distinctly mentions " the voice of the bride- 
 groom, and the voice of the bride ;" he' means that the noise 
 of nuptial mirth was heard in diflferent apartments. The 
 personal voices of the newly married pair cannot be un- 
 derstood, but the noisy mirth which a marriage feast 
 commonly excites ; for in Syria, and probably in all the 
 surrounding cotmtries, the bride is condemned to absolute 
 silence, and fixed by remorseless etiquette to the spot where 
 she has been seated. When the banquet was finished, and 
 the guests had removed, the poor came in and ate up the 
 fragments, so that nothing was lost. This custom will 
 account for the command to the servants, in the parable of 
 the supper, " Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of 
 the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed. 
 
Chap. 1. 
 
 ESTHER. 
 
 319 
 
 and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it 
 is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. 
 And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the high- 
 ways, and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my 
 house may be tiled." These poor and destitute persons 
 were called to the entertainment only before the time when, 
 according to the custom of the country, they were expected 
 to attend. — Paxton. 
 
 Females, in the East, never have their feasts in the same 
 room as the men, because it would be highly indecorous to- 
 wards their lords, and they would not be able to go to those 
 lengths of merriment, as when alone. On meeting, they 
 embrace, and smell each other ; and after they are seated, 
 comes the betel-leaf, the chunam, and the areca-nuts. Have 
 their lords given them any new jewels or robes ; they are 
 tioon mentioned, as a proof of the favour they are in ; and 
 alter they have finished their food, shroots and scandal 
 become the order of the day. — Roberts. 
 
 It may be taken as a general rule, that wherever our 
 translators have inserted a number of words in italic, they 
 have been embarrassed to make sense of the passage ; and 
 some have been inclined to think, that in proportion to the 
 number of words inserted, is the probability of their having 
 missed the true import of the place. Without adopting this 
 notion, we may venture to ask the reader, whether he has 
 been satisfied with the ideas communicated in the first 
 chapter of Esther 1 — "The king made a feast to all the 
 people that were present at Shushan, the palace; both unto 
 great and small, seven days, in the court of the garden of 
 the king's palace 5 where were white, green, and blue 
 hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen, and purple, to 
 silver rmgs and pillars of marble; the beds were of gold, 
 and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, 
 and black marble." What are we to understand by all 
 ihisi hangings fastened to silver rings, to pillars of mar- 
 ble 1 cords made of fine linen 1 beds of gold and silver, 
 laid on the pavement? (fcc. Commentators give very little 
 information on this passage: and it is much better to trust 
 at once to ourselves, than to transcribe their conjectures. 
 
 The first thing observable is the canopy covering the 
 court : it was of white canvass, {carpas, vs-^d-.) the braces of 
 it were blue, (rins n'7:3ni) that is, the cords, <*tc. used to 
 support this canopy, and to keep it in its place, properly 
 extended, &c. over head. Secondly, in the court below 
 were pavilions, platforms, or railed divisions [the word 
 chebeli (^"^^n) signifies the railed deck of a ship] of linen 
 [or, hung with linen] and of aragaman, [calico 1 fine 
 cotton '?] upon railings of silver pillars — smaller pillars 
 {galili, i^^Sj) silvered over, and columns of white marble ; 
 and the divan cushions were embroidered with gold and 
 silver : these were placed upon mustabys of porphyry (red 
 marble) and white marble, and round-spotted marble, and 
 marble with wandering, irregular veins. To justify this 
 description, w-e shall first consider the canopy ; the reader 
 will judge of its probability and use by the following quo- 
 tations : — 
 
 " Among the ruins remaining at Persepolis, is a court, 
 containing many lofty pillars: one may even presume that 
 these columns did not support any architrave, as Sir John 
 Chardin has observed, but we may venture to suppose, that 
 a covering of tapestry, or linen, was drawn over them, to 
 intercept the perpendicular projection of the sunbeams. It 
 is also probable that the tract of ground where most of the 
 columns stand, was originally a court before the palace, 
 like that which was before the king's house at Susa, men- 
 tioned Esther, chap. v. and through which a flow of fresh 
 air was admitted into the apartments." — (Le Bruyn.) This 
 idea of Le Bruyn, formed almost on the spot, supports our 
 suggestion of a canopy covering the court. It is confirmed 
 also by the custom of India. We have been told by a gen- 
 tleman from whom we requested information on this sub- 
 ject, that " at the festival of Burma Rajah, in Calcutta, the 
 great court of a very large house is overspread with a 
 covering made of canvass, lined with calico ; and this lining 
 is ornamented with broad stripes, of various colou.'s, in 
 which (in India, observe) green predominates. On occa- 
 sion of this festival, which is held only once in three years, 
 the master of the house gives wine and cake, and other 
 refreshments, to the English gentlemen and ladies who 
 wish to see the ceremonies ; he also gives payment, as well 
 as hospitality, to those who perform them." That such a 
 covering would be necessary in hot climates we may easily 
 
 suppose ; nor is the supposition enfeebled by remarking, 
 that the coliseum, or Flavian amphitheatre, at Rome, has 
 still remaining on its walls the marks of the masts, or 
 scaffoldings, which were erected when that immense area 
 was covered with an aw^ning, as it was during the shows 
 exhibited there to the Roman public. The word rendered 
 brace (nns) signifies to catch, to lay hold of, to connect; it 
 may be thought that these braces went from side to side of 
 the house ; were fastened to proper projections, high in the 
 sides of the building; and, passing under the white canvass, 
 blue braces must have had an ornamental effect. In the 
 lower part of the court the preparations consisted in what 
 may be called a railed platform on a mustaby : what these 
 were the reader will understand, by an extract from Dr. 
 Russel's History of Aleppo. 
 
 " Part of the principal court is planted with trees, and 
 flowering shrubs ; the rest is paved. At the south end is a 
 square basin of water, with jetsd'eaux, and close to it, upon 
 a stone mustaby, is built a small pavilion : or the mustaby 
 being only railed in, an open divan is occasionally formed 
 on it. [Note, a mustaby is a stone platform, raised about 
 two or three feet above the pavement of the court.] This 
 being some steps higher than the basin, a small fountain is 
 usually placed in the middle of the divan, the mosaic pave- 
 ment round which being constantly wetted by the jd d'eau, 
 displays a variety of splendid colours, and the water, as 
 it runs to the basin through marble channels, vhich are 
 rough at bottom, produces a pleasing murmur; Where 
 the size of the court admits of a larger shrubbery, tempo- 
 rary divans are placed in the grove, or arbours are formed 
 of slight latticed frames, covered by the vine, the rose, or 
 the jasmine ; the rose shooting to a most luxuriant height, 
 when in full flower, is elegantly picturesque. Facing the 
 basin, on the south side of the court, is a wide, lofty, arched 
 alcove, about eighteen inches higher than the pavement, 
 and entirely open to the court. It is painted in the same 
 manner as the apartments, but the roof is finished in plain 
 or gilt stucco ; and the floor round a small fountain is 
 paved with marble of sundry colours, with a jet d'eau in 
 the middle. A large divan is here prepared, but being 
 intended for the summer, chints and Cairo mats are em- 
 ployed instead of cloth, velvet, and carpets. It is called, by 
 way of distinction. The Divan, and by its north aspect, and 
 a sloping painted shed projecting over the arch, being pro- 
 tected from the sun, it ofl^ers a delicious situation in the hot 
 months. The sound, not less than the sight, of \he jetsd'eaux, 
 is extremely refreshing; and if there be a breath of air 
 stirring, it arrives scented by the Arabian jasmine, the 
 henna, and other fragrant plants, growing in the shrubbery, 
 or ranged in pots round the basin. There is usually on 
 each side of the alcove a small room, or cabinet, neatly 
 fitted up, and serving for retirement. These rooms are 
 called kubbe, whence probably the Spaniards derived their 
 al coba which is rendered by some other nations in Europe, 
 alcove. In another part t)r. Russel gives a print of a 
 mustaby, with sundry musicians sitting on it, on which he 
 observes, "The front of the stone mustaby is fitted with 
 marble of different colours. Part of the court is paved in 
 mosaic, in the manner represented in the print." This 
 print "shows, in miniature, the inner court of a great 
 house. The doors of the kaah, and part of the cupola, 
 appear in front ; on the side, the high arched alcove, or 
 divan, with the shed above; the marble facing of the mus- 
 taby, the mosaic pavement between that and the basin, and 
 the fountain playing." 
 
 This account of Dr. Russel's harmonizes perfectly with 
 the history in Esther, and we have only to imagine that the 
 railings, or smaller pillars of the divan, on the mustaby in 
 the palace of Ahasuerus, were of silver, (silver-gilt,) while 
 the larger, called columns, placed at the corners, or else- 
 where, were of marble; the flat part of the mustaby also 
 being overspread with carpets, &c. on which, next the rail- 
 ings, were cushions richly embroidered, for the purpose of 
 being leaned against. These things, mentioned in the 
 scripture narration, if placed according to the doctor's ac- 
 count, enable us to comprehend the whole of the Bible de- 
 scription, and justify every word in it. That the last three 
 words describe three different kinds of marble, of which 
 the mustaby of Ahasuerus was composed, is evident from 
 the signification of their roots. And as to the linen which 
 was appended to the railings, with its accompanying ara- 
 gaman, we may ask, if this word signifies jp^^r^Ze, what was 
 
320 
 
 ^ ESTHER. 
 
 Chap. 1—5. 
 
 the subject of it, silk, worsted, or cotton'? Was it the chints 
 of Dr. Russel 1 or was it of the diaper kind, that is, figured 
 'Jinen 1 or was it calico 1 which, on the whole, we think it 
 was. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 11. To bring Vashti the queen before the 
 king, witii the crown royal, to show the people 
 and the princes her beauty : for she was fair to 
 look on. 
 
 The Persians, on festival occasions, used to produce their 
 women in public. To this purpose Herodotus relates a 
 story of seven Persians being sent to Aijtiyntas, a Grecian 
 prince, who received them hospitably, and gave them a 
 splendid entertainment. When, after the entertainment, 
 they began to drink, one of the Persians thus addressed 
 Amyntas: " Prince of Macedonia, it is a custom with us 
 Persians, whenever we have a public entertainment, to 
 introduce our concubines and young wives." On this prin- 
 ciple Ahasuerus gave command to bring his queen Vashti 
 into the public assembly. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 12. But the queen Vashti refused to come 
 at the king's commandment by his chamber- 
 lains : therefore was the king very wroth, and 
 his 'anger burned in him. 
 
 When a person is speaking to you, on almost any sub- 
 ject, he keeps saying every moment, "Be not angry, my 
 lord;" or, "Let not your anger burn." Judah said to 
 Joseph, "Let not thine anger burn." "Go not near that 
 man ; his anger is on fire." " Well, well, what is the mat- 
 ter with that fellow'?" " Not much ; some one has put the 
 torch to his anger." " Go, throw some water on that fire, 
 or it will not soon be out." — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 9. And the maiden pleased him, and she 
 obtained kindness of him ; and he speedily gave 
 her her things for purification, with such things 
 as belonged to her, and seven maidens, which 
 were meet to be given her, out of the king's 
 house : and he preferred her and her maids 
 unto the best place of the house of the women. 
 
 After these presents followed eleven caroches (coaches) 
 full of young maidens, slaues to serue the bride : these 
 caroches were couered and shut, and either of them at- 
 tended by eunuchs, Moores : after these followed twenty- 
 eight virgins' slaues, attired in cloth of gold, and accom- 
 panied by twenty-eight blacke eunuchs all on horsebacke, 
 and richly clad. After which were seen two hundred and 
 forty mules, loaden with tents of tapestrie, cloath of gold, 
 sattm, veluet, with the ground of gold, with many cushions, 
 which are the chaires the ladies of Turkic use, with many 
 other rich and sumptuous moueables. (Knolles's History 
 of the Turks.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 11. And Mordecai walked every day before 
 the court of the women's house, to know how 
 Esther did, and what should become of her. 
 
 The apartments of the women are counted sacred and 
 inviolable, over all the East ; it is even a crime to inquire 
 what passes within the walls of the harem, or house of the 
 women. Hence, it is extremely difficult to be informed of 
 the transactions in those sequestered habitations; and a 
 man, says Chardin, may walk a hundred days, one after 
 -mother, by the house where the women are, and yet know 
 .'.D more what is done there than at the farther end of Tar- 
 tary. This sufficiently explains the reason of Mordecai's 
 conduct, who " walked every day before the court of the 
 women's house, to know how Esther did, and what should 
 become of her."— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 7. In the first month, (that is the month Ni- 
 san,) in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, 
 
 they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman, 
 from day to day, and from month to month, to 
 the twelfth month, that is the month Adar. 
 
 It was customary in the East, by casting lots into an urn, 
 to inquire what days would be fortunate, and what not, to 
 undertake any business in. According to this superstitious 
 practice, Haman endeavoured to find out ^vhat time in the 
 year was most favourable to the Jews, and what most un- 
 lucky. First he inquired what month was most unfortu- 
 nate, and found the month Adar, which was the last month 
 in the year, answerable to our February. There was no 
 festival during this month, nor was it sanctified by any pe- 
 culiar rites. Then he inquired the day, and found the thir- 
 teenth day was not auspicious to them, ver. 13. Some think 
 there were as many lots as there were days in the year, and 
 for every day he drew a lot ; but found none to his mind, till 
 he came to the last month of all, and to the middle of it. 
 Now this whole business was governed by providence, by 
 which these lots were directed, and not by the Persian gods, 
 to fall in the last month of the year ; whereby almost a 
 whole year intervened between the design and its execu- 
 tion, and gave time for Mordecai to acquaint Esther with 
 it, and for her to intercede with the king for the reversing, 
 or suspending his decree, and disappointing the conspira- 
 cy. — Patrick. 
 
 Ver. 10. And the king took his ring from his 
 hand, and gave it unto Haman the son of Ham- 
 medatha the Agagite, the Jews' enemy. 
 
 This he did both as a token of afiection and honour. 
 With the Persians, for a king to give a ring to any one, 
 was a token and bond of the greatest love and friendship 
 imaginable. It may be this was given to Haman to seal 
 with it the letters that were or should be written, giving or- 
 ders for the destruction of the Jews. Among the Romans, 
 in aftertimes, when any one was put into the equestrian or- 
 der, a ring was given to him, for originally none but knights 
 were allowed to wear them. It was sometimes used in ap- 
 pointing a successor in the kingdom: as when Alexander 
 was dying, he took his ring from off his finger, and gave it 
 to Perdiccas, by which it was understood that he was to 
 succeed him. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the king said unto Esther at the 
 banquet of wine, What is thy petition ? and it 
 shall be granted thee : and what is thy request ? 
 even to the half of the kingdom it shall be per- 
 formed. 
 
 The time of drinking wine in the East, is at the begin- 
 ning, not at the close of entertainments, as it is with us. 
 Sir John Chardin has corrected an error of a French com- 
 mentator, as to this point, in his manuscript note on Esther 
 V. 6. It seems the commentator had supposed the banquet 
 of wine meant the dessert, because this is our custom in 
 the West ; but he observes, " that the eastern people, on the 
 contrary, drink and discourse before eating, and that after 
 the rest is served up, the feast is quickly over, they eating 
 very fast, and every one presently withdrawing. They 
 conduct matters thus at the royal table, and at those of their 
 great men." Dr. Castell, in his Lexicon, seems to have 
 been guilty of the same fault, by a quotation annexed to 
 that note. 
 
 Chardin's account agrees with that of Olearius, who tells 
 us, that when the ambassadors he attended were at the Per- 
 sian court, " at a solemn entertainment, the floor of the 
 hall was covered with a cotton cloth, which was covered 
 with all sorts of fruits and sweetmeats, in basins of gold. 
 That with them was served up excellent Shiras wme. 
 That after an hour's time, the sweetmeats were removed, 
 to make way for the more substantial part of the entertain- 
 ment, such as rice, boiled and roasted mutton, fowl, game, 
 &c. That after having been at table an hour and a half, 
 warm water was brought, in a ewer of gold, for washing ; 
 and grace being said, they began to retire without speaking 
 a word, according to the "custom of the country, as also did 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 ESTHER. 
 
 321 
 
 the ambassadors soon after." This is Olearius's account, 
 in short : by which it appears, that wine was brought first ; 
 that the time of that part of the entertainment was double 
 ♦o the other ; and that immediately after eating they with- 
 drew. This was the practice of the modern court of Per- 
 sia, and probably might be so in the days of Ahasuerus. 
 Unluckily, Diodati and Dr. Castell did not attend to this 
 circumstance, in speaking of the banquet of wine prepared 
 by Clueen Esther.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 9. Then went Haman forth that day joyful 
 and with a glad heart : but when Haman saw 
 Mordecai in the king's gate, that he stood not 
 up, nor moved for him, he was full of indig- 
 nation against Mordecai. 
 
 This is, indeed, a graphic sketch of eastern manners. 
 The colours are so lively and so fresh, that they might 
 have been but the work of yesterday. See the native gen- 
 tleman, at the head of his courtly train: he moves along in 
 pompous guise, and all who see him arise from their seats, 
 take off their sandals, and humbly move in reverence to 
 him. To some he gives a graceful wave of the hand ; to 
 others not a word nor a look. Should there be one who 
 neither stands up nor moves to him, his name and place of 
 abode will be inquired after, and the first opportunity 
 eagerly embraced to glut his revenge. The case of Mut- 
 too-Chadde-Appa, modeliar of the Dutch governor Van 
 de Graaff's gate, is illustrative of this disposition. A 
 Moorman of high bearing and great riches had purchased 
 the rent of the pearl fishery of the bay of Ondachy, and, 
 in consequence, \^as a person of great influence among the 
 people. The proud modeliar was one day passing along 
 the road, where was seated on his carpet the renter of the 
 pearl fisliery. He arose not, moved not to him, when pass- 
 ing by, and the modeliar's soul was fired with indignation. 
 He forthwith resolved upon his ruin, and, by deeply-formed 
 intrigues, too well succeeded. The rent was taken from 
 the Moorman ; the money he had advanced to the head- 
 men, the officers, the boatmen, the divers, and others, was 
 lost; his estates were sold; and, to make up the deficiency, 
 he himself was disposed of by auction for four hundred 
 and twenty-five rix-dollars, and the modeliar became the 
 purchaser. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Haman said moreover, Yea, Esther the 
 queen did let no man come in with the king 
 unto the banquet that she had prepared but 
 myself; and to-morrow am I invited unto her 
 also with the king. 
 
 The kings of Persia very seldom admitted a subject to 
 their table. Athenaeus mentions it as a peculiar honour, 
 which no Grecian enjoyed before or after, that Artaxerxes 
 condescended to invite 'Timogoras,the Cretan, to dine even 
 at the table where his relations ate ; and to send sometimes 
 a part of what was served up at his own ; which some per- 
 sons looked upon as a diminution of his majesty, and a 
 prostitution of their national honour. Plutarch, in his life 
 of Artaxerxes, tells us, that none but the king's mother, 
 and his real wife, were permitted to sit at his table ; and 
 he therefore mentions it as a condescension in that prince, 
 that he sometimes invited his brothers. Haman, the prime 
 minister of Ahasuerus, had therefore some reason to value 
 himself upon the invitation which he received, to dine 
 •with the king: " Haman said, moreover, Yea, Esther the 
 queen let no man come in with the king, into the banquet 
 which she had prepared, but myself; and to morrow am I 
 invited unto her also with the king." The same ambitious 
 minister received another mark of great distinction from 
 his master : " The king took his ring from his hand, and 
 gave it unto Haman." This he did, both as a token of 
 affection and honour ; for when the king of Persia gives a 
 ring to any one, it is a token and bond of the greatest love 
 and friendship. " Here also," says Mr. Forbes, " we see 
 an exact description of the mode of conferring honour on 
 the favourite of a sovereign, a princely dress, a horse, and 
 a ring; these are now the usual presents to foreign ambas- 
 sadors, and between one Indian prince and another. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 41 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 1. On that night could not the king sleep; 
 and he commanded to bring the book of rec- 
 ords of the Chronicles; and they were read 
 before the king. 
 
 That which was practised in the court of Ahasuerus, in 
 the passage now referred to, appears to have been customary 
 in the Ottoman porte. " It was likewise found in the 
 records of the empire, that the last war with Russia had 
 occasioned the fitting out of a hundred and fifty galliots, 
 intended to penetrate into the sea of Azoph: and the par- 
 ticulars mentioned in the account of the expenses not spe- 
 cifying the motives of this armament, it was forgotten that 
 the ports of Azoph and Taganrag stood for nothing in the 
 present war; the building of the galliots was ordered, and 
 carried on with the greatest despatch." (Baron De Tott.) 
 
 " The king has near his person an ofiicer, who is meant 
 to be his historiographer ; he is also keeper of his seal, 
 and is obliged to make a journal of the king's actions, good 
 or bad, without comment of his own upon them. This, 
 when the king dies, or at least soon after, is delivered to 
 the council, who read it over, and erase every thing false 
 in it, while they supply every material fact that may have 
 been omitted, whether purposely or not." (Bruce.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 7. And Haman answered the king, For the 
 man whom the king delighteth to honour, 8. Let 
 the royal apparel be brought which the king 
 useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth 
 upon, and the crown royal which is set upon 
 his head : 9. And let this apparel and horse be 
 delivered to the hand of one of the king's most 
 noble princes, that they may array the man 
 withal whom the king delighteth to honour, 
 and bring him on horseback through the street 
 of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall 
 it be done to the man whom the king delighteth 
 to honour. 
 
 See on Matt. 11.21. 
 
 Pitts gives an account of a cavalcade at Algiers, upon a 
 person's turning Mohammedan, which is designed to do him, 
 as well as their law, honour. " The apostate is to get on 
 horseback, on a stately steed, with a rich saddle and fine 
 trappings; he is also richly habited, and hath a turban on 
 his head, IduI nothing of this is to be called his own ; only 
 there are given him about two or three yards of broadcloth, 
 which is laid before him on the saddle. The horse, with 
 him on his back, is led all round the city, which he is sev- 
 eral hours in doing. The apostate is attended with drums 
 and other music, and twenty or thirty sergeants. These 
 march in order, on each side of the horse, with naked 
 swords in their hands. The crier goes before, with a loud 
 voice giving thanks to God for the proselyte that is made." 
 The conformity of custom in the instance now cited, and the 
 passage alluded to in Esther, must appear remarkable.— 
 Burder. 
 
 Herodotus relates, that the kings of Persia had horses 
 peculiar to themselves, that were brought from Armenia, 
 and were remarkable for their beauty. If the same law 
 prevailed in Persia as did in Judea, no man might ride on 
 the king's horse, any more than sit on his throne, or hold 
 his sceptre. This clearly discovers the extent of Haman's 
 ambition, when he proposed to bring ** the royal apparel 
 which the king used to wear, and the horse that the king 
 rode upon, and the crown which is set upon his head." 
 The crown royal was not to be set on the head of the man, 
 but on the head of the horse ; this interpretation is allowed 
 by Aben Ezra, by the Targum, and by the Syriac version. 
 No mention is afterward made of the crown, as set upon the 
 head of Mordecai, nor would Haman have dared to advise 
 what, by the laws of Persia, could not be granted. But it 
 was usual to put the crown royal on the head of a horse 
 led in state ; and this we are assured is a custom in Peisia, 
 as it is with the Ethiopians, to this day; from them it passed 
 into Italy; for the horses which the Romans yoked in their 
 triumphal chariots were adorned with crowns. — Paxton. 
 
822 
 
 ESTHER. 
 
 Chap. 7—9. 
 
 Very few English readers are sufficiently aware of the 
 importance attached to the donation of robes of honour in 
 the East. They mark the degree of estimation in which 
 the party bestowing them holds the party receiving them ; 
 and sometimes the conferring or the withholding of them 
 leads to very serious negotiation, and misunderstandings. 
 " The prince of Shiraz," says Mr. Morier, " went in his 
 greatest state to Kalaat Poushan, there to meet and to be 
 invested with the dress of honour, which was sent him by 
 the king, on the festival of No-Rouz. Although the day of 
 the festival had long elapsed, yet the ceremony did not take 
 place until this time, as the astrologers did not announce a 
 day sufficiently fortunate for the performance of an act of 
 so much consequence as this is looked upon to be through- 
 out Persia. All the circumstances attendant upon the re- 
 ception of a Kalaat being the great criterions by which the 
 public may judge of the degree of influence which the re- 
 ceiver has at court, every intrigue is exerted during the 
 preparation of the Kalaat, that it may be as indicative of the 
 royal favour as possible. The person who is the bearer of 
 it, the expressions used in the firman, which announces its 
 having been conferred, the nature of the Kalaat itself, are 
 all circumstances that are examined and discussed by the 
 Persian public. A common Kalaat consists of a caba, or 
 coat ; a kumTner-bund, or zone ; a gouch-peech, or shawl for the 
 head : — when it is intended to be more distinguishing, a sword 
 or a dagger is added. To persons of distinction, rich furs 
 are given, such as a catabee, or a conrdee ; but when the Ka- 
 laat is complete, it consists exactly of the same articles as the 
 present which Cyrus made to Syennesis, namely, a horse with 
 a golden bridle, Xnrcov x9'<^<^'^X"-^'^'"''^'i ^ golden chain, arpEoSrov 
 ■\(pwovv ; a golden sword, dKivaKr)v x9V(Tovv ; besides the dress, the 
 nroXi\v ViEpaiKhv, which is complete in all its parts. Such, or 
 nearly such, was the Kalaat which the prince went out to 
 meet ; and consequently he gave as much publicity to it as 
 
 he could devise The prince himself was conspicuous at a 
 
 distance, by a parasol being borne over his head, which, to 
 this day, is a privilege allowed only to royalty, and is exem- 
 plified by the sculptures at Persepolis, where the principal 
 personage is frequently designated by a parasol carried over 
 him. . . . The road, about three miles, was strewn with roses, 
 and watered ; both of which are modes of doing honour to 
 persons of distinction ; and, at very frequent intervals, glass 
 vases, filled with sugar, were broken under his horses' feet. 
 The treading upon su^ar is symbolical, in their estimation, 
 of prosperity ; the scattering of flowers was a ceremony 
 performed in honour of Alexander, on his entry into Baby- 
 lon, and has perhaps some affinity to the custom of cutting 
 down branches off the trees, and strewing them in the way, 
 as was practised on our Saviour's entry into Jerusalem, 
 Mark xi. 5. The other circumstance, ' the spreading of 
 garments in the way,' is used in the scriptures as an- 
 nouncing ;-oyalty." 
 
 In another passage, Mr. Morier observes, that the Persian 
 plenipotentiary to the signature of a treaty with Russia, 
 " at first was at a loss how to make himself equal in person- 
 al distinctions (and numerous titles) to the Russian nego- 
 tiater ; but recollecting that, previous to his departure, his 
 sovereign had honoured him by a present of one of his 
 swords, and of a dagger set with precious stones, to wear 
 which is a peculiar distinction in Persia ; and besides, had 
 •'lothed him with one of his own shawl robes, a distinction 
 of still greater value, he therefore designated himself in the 
 preamble of the treaty as endowed with the special gifts of 
 the monarch, lord of the dagger set in jewels, of the sword 
 adorned with gems, and of the shaivl coat already worn. 
 This may appear ridiculous to us, but it will be remem- 
 bered that the bestowing of dresses as a mark of honour 
 amon^ eastern nations, is one of the most ancient customs 
 recorded both in sacred and profane history. We may 
 learn how great was the distinction of giving a coat already 
 worn, by what is recorded of Jonathan's love for David : 
 ' And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon 
 him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his 
 sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle,' (1 Sam. xviii. 4 ;) 
 and also in the history of Mordecai, we read, 'For the man 
 whom the king delighteth to honour, let the royal apparel 
 fee brought which the king used to wear,' &c. Esther v. 7, 8." 
 The r ?ader will be pleased with these additional circum- 
 stances and authorities: but, perhaps, he will do well to 
 consider the sword, the bow, and the girdle of Jonathan, as 
 viilitary appendages, and as peculiarly referring to the mil- 
 
 itary exploits of David. The history of Mordecai having 
 taken place in Persia, every custom of that country, by 
 which it may be illustrated, is the more strictly appropriate 
 and acceptable. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 y er. 7. And the king arising from the banquet 
 of Avine in his wrath, went into the palace-gar- 
 den : and Haman stood up to make request for 
 his life to Esther the queen ; for he saw that 
 there was evil determined against him by tht^ 
 king. 
 
 " When the king of Persia," says Tavernier, " orders g 
 person to be executed, and then rises, and goes into a wo- 
 man's apartment, it is a sign that no mercy is to be hoped 
 for." But even the sudden rising of the king in anger, was 
 the same as if he had pronounced the sentence of death. 
 Olearius relates an instance of it, which occurred when he 
 was in Persia. Schah Sefi once felt himself ofiended bv 
 unseasonable jokes, which one of his favourites allowed 
 hirnself in his presence. The king immediately rose and 
 retired, upon which the favourite saw that his life was for- 
 feited. He went home in confusion, and in a few hours 
 afterward the king sent for his head. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 8. Then the king returned out of the palace- 
 garden into the place of the banquet of wine ; 
 and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon 
 Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force 
 the queen also before me in the house ? As the 
 word went out of the king's mouth, they cover- 
 ed Haman's face. 
 
 The majesty of the kings of Persia did not allow male- 
 factors to look at them. As soon as Haman was so con- 
 sidered, his face was covered. Some curious correspon- 
 dent examples are collected together in Poole's Synopsis, in 
 loc. From Pococke we find the custom still continues. 
 Speaking of the artifice by which an Egyptian bey was 
 taken off", he says, " A man being brought before him like 
 a malefactor just taken, with his hands behind him as if 
 tied, and a napkin put over his head, as malefactors com- 
 monly have, when he came into his presence, suddenly shot 
 him dead." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 10. And he wrote in the king Ahasuerus' 
 name, and sealed it with the king's ring ; and 
 sent letters by posts on horseback, and riders 
 on mules, camels, and young dromedaries. 
 
 See on Job 9. 25. 
 
 Ver. 15. And Mordecai went out from the pres- 
 ence of the king in royal apparel of blue and 
 white, and with a great crown of gold, and 
 with a garment of fine linen and purple : and 
 the city of Shushah rejoiced and was glad. 
 
 See on Dan. 5. 29. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 19. Therefore the Jews of the villages, that • 
 dwelt in the unviralled towns, made the four- 
 teenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness 
 and feasting, and a good day, and of sending 
 portions one to another. 
 
 See on Nehem. 8. 10. 
 
 On the first of the Hindoo month of July, also on the fiisl 
 day of the new moon of their October, the people send por- 
 tions of cakes, preserves, fruits, oil, and clothes, one to 
 another. — Roberts. 
 
 The eastern princes and people not only mvite their 
 friends to feasts, but " it is their custom to send a portion of 
 the banquet to those that cannot well come to it, especiallj' 
 
Chap. 10. 
 
 ESTHER. 
 
 32S 
 
 iheir relations, and those in a state of mourning." (Char- 
 din.) Thus when the grand emir found it incommoded 
 M. D'Arvieux to eat with him, he desired him to take his 
 own time for eating, and sent him from his kitchen, what 
 he liked, and at the time he chose. 
 
 This was the name, after the Babylonish captivity, of the 
 vwelfth month, nearly answering to our February, O. S. and 
 perhaps so called from the richness or exuberance of the 
 earth in plants and flowers at that season, in the warm 
 eastern countries. " As February advances, the fields, 
 which were partly green before, now, by the springing up 
 of the latter grain, become entirely covered with an agree- 
 able verdure ; and though the trees continue in their leafless 
 Slate till the end of this month, or the beginning of March, 
 yet the almond, when latest, being in blossom before the 
 middle of February, and quickly succeeded by the apricot, 
 peach, &c. gives the gardens an agreeable appearance. 
 The sprmg now becomes extremely pieasant." (Russel's 
 Nat. Hist, of Aleppo.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 26. Wherefore they called these days Purim, 
 after the name of Pur. 
 
 This festival was to be kept two days successively, the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth of the month Adar, ver, 21. On 
 both days of the feast the modern Jews read over the Me- 
 gillah, or book of Esther, in their synagogues. The copy 
 there read must not be printed, but written on vellum, in 
 the form of a roll ; and the names of the ten sons of Haman 
 are written on it in a peculiar manner, being ranged, they 
 say, like so many bodies hanged on a gibbet. The reader 
 must pronounce all these names in one breath. Whenever 
 Haman's name is pronounced, they make a terrible noise 
 in the synagogue : some drum with their feet on the floor, 
 and the boys have mallets, with which to knock and make 
 a noise. They prepare themselves for tneir carnival by a 
 previous fast, which should continue three days, in imita- 
 tion of Esther's, Esther iv. 16, but they have mostly reduced 
 .t to one day. — Jennings, 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 3. For Mordecai the Jew was next unto the 
 king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, 
 and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, 
 seeking the wealth of his people, and sneaking 
 peace to all his seed. 
 
 Sir John Malcolm tells us, that the sepulchre of Esther 
 and Mordecai stands near the centre of the city of Hama- 
 dan. It is a square building, terminated by a dome, with 
 an inscription in Hebrew upon it, translated and sent to 
 him by Sir Gore Ouseley, late ambassador to the court of 
 Persia. It is as follows : " Thursday, fifteenth of the month 
 Adar, in the year 4474 from the creation of the world, 
 \vas finished the building of this temple, over the graves of 
 Mordecai and Esther, by the hands of the good-hearted 
 brothers,^ Elias and Samuel, the sons of the deceased Ish- 
 inael of Kashan." 
 
 A more particular and recent account of this tomb will 
 be found in the following extract: " This tomb is regarded 
 by all the Jews, who yet exist in the empire, as a place of 
 particular sanctity ; and pilgrimages are still made to it at 
 certain seasons of the year, in the same spirit of holy peni- 
 tence with which, in former times, they turned their eyes 
 towards Jerusalem. Being desirous of visiting a place, 
 
 which Christians cannot view without reverence, I sent to 
 request that favour of the priest, under whose care it is 
 preserved. He came to me immediately on my message, 
 and seemed pleased with the respect manifested towards 
 the ancient people of his nation, in the manner with which 
 I asked to be admitted to their shrine. I accompanied the 
 priest through ihe town, over much ruin and rubbish, to an 
 enclosed piece of ground, rather more elevated than any in 
 its immediate vicinity. In the centre was the Jewish tomb; 
 a square building of brick, of a mosque-like form, with y 
 rather elongated dome at the top; the whole seems in a 
 very decaying state ; falling fast to the mouldered condition 
 of some wall fragments around, which, in former times, 
 had been connected with, and extended the consequence ox" 
 the sacred enclosure. The door that admitted us into th(; 
 tomb is in the ancient sepulchral fashion of the country, 
 very small; consisting of a single stone of great thickness, 
 and turning on its own pivots from one side. Its key is 
 always in possession of tne head of the Jews, resident ai 
 Haniadan ; and doubtless has been so preserved, from the 
 time of the holy pair's interment, when the grateful sons of 
 the captivity, whose lives they had rescued from universal 
 massacre, first erected a monument over the remains of 
 their benefactors, and obeyed the ordinance of gratitude, in 
 making the anniversary of their preservation, a lastinj? 
 memorial of heaven's mercy, and the just faith of Esther 
 and Mordecai. ' So God remembered his people, and jus- 
 tified his inheritance. Therefore those days shall be untr 
 them, in the month Adar, the fourteenth and fifteenth day 
 of the .same month, and with an assembly, and joy, ani! 
 with gladness before God, according to the generation for 
 ever among his people.' Esth. x. 12, 13. The pilgrimage 
 yet kept up, is- a continuation of this appointed assembling. 
 And thus having existed from the time of the event, sucli 
 a memorial becomes an evidence to the fact, more convin- 
 cing, perhaps, than even written testimony ; it seems a kind 
 of eyewitness. The original structure, it is said, was de- 
 stroyed at the sacking of the place, by Timour ; and soon 
 after that catastrophe, when the country became a little 
 settled, the present unobtrusive building was raised on the 
 original spot. Certain devout Jews of the city stood at the 
 expense ; and about a hundred and fifty years ago, (nearly 
 five hundred after its re-erection,) it was fully repaired by 
 a rabbi of the name of Ismael. On passing through the 
 little portal, which we did in an almost doubled position, 
 we entered a small arched chamber, in which are vseen the 
 graves of several rabbis : probably, one may cover the re- 
 mains of the pious Ismael ; and, not unlikely, the others 
 may contain the bodies of the first rebuilders, after the 
 sacrilegious destruction by Timour, Having trod lightly 
 by their graves, a second door of such very confined 
 dimensions presented itself at the end of this vestibule, that 
 we were constrained to enter it on our hands and knees, and 
 then standing up, we found ourselves in a larger chamber, 
 to which appertained the dome. Immediately under its 
 concave, stand two sarcophagi, made of a very dark wood, 
 carved with great intricacy of pattern, and richness of 
 twisted ornament, with a line of inscription in Hebrew, 
 running round the upper ledge of each. Many other 
 inscriptions, in the same language, are cut on the walls, 
 while one of the oldest antiquity, engraved on a slab of 
 white marble, is let into the wall itself. The priest assured 
 me it had been rescued from the ruins of the first edifice, at 
 its demolition by the Tartars; and, with the sarcophagi 
 themselves, was preserved on the same consecrated spot." 
 (Sir R, K. Porter.)— Burder. 
 
;^^|»^, 
 ^IP 
 
 JOB. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 3. His substance also was seven thousand 
 sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hun- 
 dred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, 
 and a very great household ; so that this man 
 was the greatest of all the men of the east. 
 
 It is remarkable that in this passage female asses only 
 are enumerated; the reason is, because in them great part 
 of' their wealth consisted; the males being few, and not 
 held in equal estimation. "We find that the former were 
 chosen for riding by the natives of these parts : and the ass 
 of Balaam is distinguished as a female. They were prob- 
 fibly led to this choice from convenience ; for, where the 
 country was so little fertile, no other animal could subsist 
 so easily as this : and there was another superior advantage 
 in the female; that whoever traversed these wilds upon a 
 she-ass, if he could but find for it suflicient browse and wa- 
 'er, was sure to be rewarded with a more pleasing and nu- 
 tritious beverage. — Bryant. 
 
 Ver, 4. And his sons went and feasted in their 
 houses every one his day ; and sent and called 
 for their three sisters, to eat and to drink with 
 them. 
 
 Literally, " were wont and held a banquet-house ;" which 
 is not exactly an English idiom. The original phrase lit- 
 erally signifies, "a banquet-house," or "open house for 
 feasting;" and hence Tyndal renders it, "made bankettes;" 
 which is not perfectly literal, but far less paraphrastic than 
 our common rendering, " went and feasted in their houses." 
 •Good. 
 
 Ver. 5. And it was so, when the days of their 
 feasting were gone about, that Job sent and 
 sanctified them, and rose up early in the morn- 
 ing, and offered burnt-ofl!erings according to 
 the number of them all : for Job said, It may be 
 that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in 
 their hearts. Thus did Job continually. 
 
 The feasting continued till they had been at each other's 
 house in turn. Something like this is practised by the 
 Chinese, who have their co-fraternities, which they call the 
 brotherhood of the month; this consists of thirty, according 
 to the number of days therein, and in a circle they go every 
 day to eat at one another's houses by turns. If one man 
 have not conveniences to receive the fraternity in his own 
 house, he may provide for it at another ; and there are many 
 public-houses very well provided for this purpose. — Bur- 
 
 DER. 
 
 Ver. 7. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence 
 comest thou ? Then Satan answered the Lord, 
 and said, From going to and fro in the earth, 
 and walking up and down in it. 
 
 In our common version, "From going to and fro ;" but 
 this is not the exact meaning of the Hebrew b3>w; which, 
 as is well observed by Schultens, imports not so much the 
 act of going forward and backward, as of making a cir- 
 cuit or circumference; of going round about. It is hence 
 justly rendered in the Spanish, " De cercar por la tierra" 
 " From encircling or encompassing the earth ;" to which 
 is added, in the Chaldaic paraphrase, " to examine into 
 the works of the sons of man." The Hebrew verb wtf is 
 
 still in general use among Arabic writers, and, in every 
 instance, implies the same idea of gyration, or ciicuuiaro- 
 bulation. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 10. Hast thou not made a hedge about him, ' 
 and about his house, and about all that he hath 
 on every side? Thou hast blessed the work 
 of his hands, and his substance is increased in 
 the land. 
 
 It is said of a man who cannot be injured, " Why at- 
 tempt to hurt him 1 is there not a hedge about him ?" " You 
 cannot get at the fellow, he has a strong hedge about him." 
 " Yes, yes; the modeliar has become his hedge." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 To give the original verb the full force of its meaning, it 
 should be derived from the science of engineering, and ren- 
 dered, " Hast thou not raised a palisado about him 1" The 
 Hebrew verb nssr implies, to fence with sharp spikes, pali- 
 sades, or thorns ; and hence the substantive tr^'^ir:' is used for 
 spikes, palisades, or thorns themselves. The Arabian wri- 
 ters employ the same term, and even the same idiom, still 
 more frequently than the Hebrews. In the Arabic version 
 of the passage before us, the metaphor is varied still 
 further; but the observations thus ofiered will render the 
 variation not diflicult of comprehension : thus, instead of 
 being interpreted as above, " Hast thou not made a fence 
 about him V it is translated in the Arabic copy, " Hast 
 thou 7iot protected him with thy hand ?" The Syfiac runs 
 to the same effect, while the Chaldee paraphrast 'translates, 
 " Hast thou not overcovered him with thy word ?" 
 
 In the latter clause of this verse, the words, " increased 
 in the land," are, in the Hebrew, " overflowed the land." 
 Our common version merely gives the sense of the original, 
 without the figure, whose force and elegance render it 
 highly worthy of being retained. The Hebrew (v^b) peraz 
 does not simply mean to increase, but to burst or break forth 
 as a torrent ; and hence to overflmo or exundate its boun- 
 daries. The word is used in the same rendering in many 
 parts of the Bible, in which it cannot be otherwise trans- 
 lated. The following instance may suffice, from the stan- 
 dard English text, 2 Sam. v. 20: " The Lord hath broken 
 forthupon mine enemies before me, as the breach of waters : 
 therefore he called the name of that place Baal-vERAVAM." 
 The Arabians employ, to ihis hour, the very same term to 
 express the mouth or embouchure, the most rapirt and irre- 
 sistible part of a stream, in proof of which, Golius, with 
 much pertinency, brings the following couplet from Gjan- 
 hari, the whole of which is highly applicable, and where 
 the word mouth, in the second line, is in the original ex- 
 pressed by this very term : — 
 
 "His rushing wealth o'erflowed him with its heaps : 
 So, at its mouth, the mad Euphrates sweeps." 
 
 Dr. Stock has caught something of the idea, though it bt 
 not so clearly expressed as it might have been: 
 
 " And his possessions burst out through the land." 
 So the versions of Junius and Tremellius, and ^Piscator, 
 " Et pecns ejus in multitudinem eruperit in terra^' — " And 
 his cattle, for multit^ide, have burst forth through the land." 
 nspa substance or possession, is often used for cattle, as the 
 earliest substance or possession. So cattle, among our- 
 selves, is said by the etymologists to be derived from capi' 
 talia. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 12. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, 
 all that he hath is in thy power ; only upon 
 himself put not forth thine hand. So Sataa 
 went forth from the presence" of the Lord. 
 
Chap. 1. 
 
 JOB 
 
 325 
 
 The subject proposed by the writer of the ensuing poem 
 is the trial and triumph of the integrity of Job; a character 
 of whose origin no certain documents have descended to 
 as, but who, at the period in question, was chief magistrate, 
 or emir, as we should style him in the present day, of the 
 
 » city of Uz ; powerful and prosperous beyond all the sons of 
 the East, and whose virtue and piety were as eminently 
 distinguished as his rank. Of the four characters intro- 
 duced into the poem, as his frifends, Eliphaz, Bildad, 
 Zophar, and Elihu, the first three are denominated, in all 
 the Greek translations of the poem, kings of the respective 
 cities or districts to which their names are prefixed ; and 
 the last is particularized, in the Chaldee paraphrase, as a 
 relation of Abraham, and was probably, therefore, a des- 
 cendant of Buz, the second son of Nahor, the brother of 
 Abraham, as conjectured by Bochart. There are some 
 Critics, however, and of great distinction for learning and 
 piety, who, in opposition to these biographical remarks, 
 contend that the whole of the poem, as well in its charac- 
 ters as in its structure, is fabulous. Such especially is the 
 opinion of Professor Michaelis, whose chief arguments 
 are derived from the nature of the exordium, in which 
 Satan appears as the accuser of Job; from the temptations 
 and sufferings permitted by the great Governor of the 
 world to befall an upright character ; from the roundness 
 of the numbers by which the patriarch's possessions are 
 described, as seven thousand, three thousana, one thousand, 
 and five hundred ; and from the years he is said to have 
 lived after his recovery from disease. It may perhaps be 
 thought to demand a more subjugating force than is lodged 
 in these arguments, to transmute into fable what has uni- 
 formly been regarded as fact, both in Europe and Asia, for 
 perhaps upwards of four thousand years ; which appears 
 to have descended as fact, in a regular stream of belief, in 
 the very country which forms the scene of the history, from 
 the supposed time of its occurrence to the present day ; the 
 chief character in which is represented as having had 
 an actual existence, and is often associated with real char- 
 acters, as Noah, Abraham, Ismael, Isaac, Jacob, and So- 
 lomon, in various parts of the book which is there held 
 most sacred, and which, so far as it is derived from nation- 
 al history or tradition, is entitled to minute attention ; and 
 (which should seem long since to have settled the question 
 definitely) a character which, precisely in the same man- 
 ner, is associated with real characters in the authoritative 
 pages of the Old Testament. " It is altogether incredible," 
 observes M. Michaelis, " that such a conversation ever took 
 place between the Almighty and Satan, who is supposed to 
 return with news from the terrestrial regions." But why 
 
 .should such a conversation be supposed incredible 1 The 
 attempt at wit in this passage is somewhat out of place ; for 
 the interrogation of the Almighty, " Hast thou fixed thy 
 view upon my servant Job, a perfect and upright man f" 
 instead of aiming at the acquisition of news, is intended as 
 a severe and most appropriate sarcasm upon the fallen 
 spirit. " Hast thou, who, with superior faculties and a 
 rnore comprehensive knowledge of my will, hast not con- 
 tinued perfect and upright, fixed thy view upon a subordi- 
 nate being, far weaker and less informed than thyself, who 
 has continued so 1" The attendance of the apostate at the 
 tribunal of the Almighty is plainly designed to show us, that 
 good and evil angels are equally amenable to him, and 
 equally subject to his authority ; — a doctrine common to 
 every part of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and, ex- 
 cept in the mythology of the Parsees, recognised by perhaps 
 every ancient system of religion whatever. The part as- 
 signed to Satan in the present work is that expressly as- 
 signed to him in the case of Adam and Eve in the garden of 
 Eden, and of our Saviour in the wilderness ; and which is 
 assigned to him generally, in regard to mankind at large, 
 by all the Evangelists and Apostles, whose writings have 
 leached us, both in their strictest historical narratives, and 
 closest argumentative inductions. And, hence, the argu- 
 ment which should induce us to regard the present passage 
 as fabulous, should induce us to regard all the rest in the 
 same light, which are imbued with the same doctrine; — a 
 view of the subject which would sweep into nothingness a 
 much larger portion of the Bible than I am confident M. 
 Michaelis would choose to part with. The other argu- 
 ments are comparatively of small moment. We want not 
 fable to tell us that good and upris:ht men may occasionally 
 become the victims'of accumulated calamities ; for it is a 
 
 living fact, which, in the mystery of providence, is perpet- 
 ually occurring in every country : while as to the round- 
 ness of the numbers by which the patriarch's possessions 
 are described, nothing could have been more ungraceful 
 or superfluous than for the poet to have descended to units, 
 had even the literal numeration demanded it. And, al- 
 though he is stated to have lived a hundred and forty years 
 after his restoration to prosperity, and in an era in which 
 the duration of man did not perhaps much exceed that of 
 the present day, it should be recollected, that in his person, 
 as well as in his property, he was specially gifted by the 
 Almighty : that, from various passages, he seems to have 
 been younger than all the interlocutors, except Elihu, and 
 much younger than one or two of them ; that his longevity 
 is particularly remarked, as though of more than usual ex- 
 tent; and that, even in the present age of the world, we 
 have well-authenticated instances of persons having lived, 
 in different parts of the globe, to the age of a hundred and 
 fifty, a hundred and sixty, and even a hundred and seventy 
 years. 
 
 It is not necessary for the historical truth of the book of 
 Job, that its language should be a direct transcript of that 
 actually employed by the different characters introduced 
 into it ; for in such case we should scarcely have a single 
 book of real history in the world. The Iliad, Shah Nameh, 
 and the Lusiad, must at once drop all pretensions to such a 
 description; and even the pages of Sallust and Cesar, of 
 Rojlin and Hume, must stand upon very questionable au- 
 thority. It is enough that the real sentiment be given, and 
 the general style copied; and this, in truth, is all that is 
 aimed at, not only in our best reports of* parliamentary 
 speeches, but, in many instances, (which indeed is much 
 more to the purpose.) by the writers of the New Testament, 
 in their quotations from the Old. The general scope and 
 moral of the ensuing poem, namely, that the troubles and 
 aflliction of the good man are, for the most part, designed 
 as tests of his virtue and integrity, out of which he will 
 at length emerge with additional splendour and happiness, 
 are common to eastern poets, and not uncommon to those of 
 Greece. The Odyssey is expressly constructed upon such 
 a basis; and, like the poem before us, has every appear- 
 ance of being founded upon real history, and calls in to its 
 aid the machinery of a sublime and supernatural agency. 
 But in various respects the poem of Job stands alone and 
 unrivalled. In addition to every corporeal suffering and 
 privation which it is possible for man to endure, it carries 
 forward the trial, in a manner and to an extent which has 
 never been attempted elsewhere, into the keenest faculties 
 and sensations of the mind; and mixes the bitterest taunts 
 and accusations of friendship, with the agonies of family 
 bereavement and despair. The body of other poems con- 
 sists chiefly of incidents ; that of the present poem of col- 
 loquy or argument, in which the general train of reason- 
 ing IS so well sustained, its matter so important, its language 
 so ornamented, the doctrines it develops so sublime, its 
 transitions from passion to passion so varied and abrupt, 
 that the want of incidents is not felt, and the attention is 
 still riveted, as by enchantment. In other poems, the su- 
 pernatural agency is fictitious, and often incongruous : here 
 the whole is solid reality, supported, in its grand outline 
 by the concurrent testimony of every other part of the 
 scriptures ; an agency not obtrusively introduced, but de- 
 manded by the magnitude of the occasion ; and as much 
 more exalted and magnificent than every other kind of 
 similar interference, as it is more veritable and solemn. 
 The suffering hero is sublimely called forth to the perform- 
 ance of his part, in the presence of men and of angels ; 
 each becomes interested, and equally interested, in his 
 conduct ; the Almighty assents to the trial, and for a period 
 withdraws his divine aid; the malice of Satan is in its full 
 career of activity; hell hopes, earth trembles, and every 
 good spirit is suspended with awful anxiety. The wreck 
 of his substance is in vain; the wreck of his family 
 is in vain; the scalding sores of a corroding leprosy are in 
 vain ; the artillery of insults, reproaches, and railing, 
 poured forth from the mouth of bosom friends, are in vain. 
 Though at times put in some degree off his guard, the holy 
 sufferer is never completelv overpowered. He sustains the 
 shock without yielding : he still holds fast his integrity. 
 Thus terminates the trial cf faith : — Satan is confounded; 
 fidelity triumphs; and the Almighty, with a magnificence 
 well worthy of the occasion, unveils his resplendent tri- 
 
326 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 bunal, and crowns the afiiicted champion with his ap- 
 plause. 
 
 This poem has been generally supposed to possess a dra- 
 matic character, either of a more or a less perfect degree ; 
 but, in order to give it such a pretension, it has uniformly 
 been found necessary to strip it of its magnificent exordium 
 and close, which are unquestionably narrative ; and even 
 then the dramatic cast is so singularly interrupted by the 
 appearance of the historian himself, at the commencement 
 of every speech, to inform us of the name of the person who 
 is about to take up the argument, that many critics, and 
 among the rest Bishop Lowth, are doubtful of the propriety 
 of referring it to this department of poetry, though they do 
 not know where else to give it a place. In the present 
 writer's view of the subject, it is a regular Hebrew epic ; 
 and, were it necessary to enter so minutely into the ques- 
 tion, it might easily be proved to possess all the more prom- 
 inent features of an epic, as collected and laid down by 
 Aristotle himself ; such as unity, completion, and grandeur 
 in its action; loftiness in its sentiments and language ; mul- 
 titude and variety in the passions which it develops. Even 
 the characters, though not numerous, are discriminated, 
 and well supported ; the milder and more modest temper 
 of Eliphaz is well contrasted with the forward and unre- 
 strained violence of Bildad ; the terseness and brevity of 
 Zophar with the pent-up and overflowing fulness of Elihu; 
 while in Job himself we perceive a dignity of mind that 
 nothing can humiliate, a firmness that nothing can subdue, 
 still habitually disclosing themselves, amidst , the mingled 
 tumult of hope, fear, rage, tenderness, triumph, and de- 
 spair, with which he is alternately distracted. I throw out 
 this hint, however, not with a view of ascribing any addi- 
 tional merit to the poem itself, but merely to observe, so far 
 as a single fact is possessed of authority, that mental taste, 
 or the internal discernment of real beauty, is the same in 
 all ages and nations ; and that the rules of the Greek critic 
 are deduced from a principle of universal impulse and 
 operation. 
 
 Nothing can have been more unfortunate for this most 
 excellent composition, than its division into chapters, and 
 especially such a division as that in common use ; in which 
 not only the unity of the general subject, but, in many^ in- 
 stances, that of a single paragraph, or even of a single 
 clause, is completely broken in upon and destroyed. The 
 natural division, and that which was unquestionably in- 
 tended by its author, is into six parts, or books; for in this 
 order it still continues to run, notwithstanding all the confu- 
 sion it has encountered by sub-arrangements. These six 
 parts are. An openmg or exordium, containing the intro- 
 ductory history and decree concerning Job ;— three distinct 
 series of arguments, in each of which the speakers are re- 
 gularly allotted their respective turns ; — the summing up of 
 the controversy; — and the close or catastrophe, consisting 
 of the suffering hero's grand and glorious acquittal, and res- 
 toration to prosperity and happiness. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 14. And there came a messenger unto Job, 
 and said, The oxen were ploughing, and the 
 asses feeding beside them. 
 
 Heb. " She-asses." In our common version, which seems 
 borrowed from TyndpA, asses : yet why the sex, which is 
 so expressly mentioned in the original and the Septuagint, 
 and is copied into every version with which I am acquaint- 
 ed, excepting these two, should be here suppressed, I know 
 not. Female asses, on account of their milk, were much 
 more highly esteemed, at all times, in the East, than males, 
 a few of which only appear to have been kept for continu- 
 ing the breed ; and hence, perhaps, they are not noticed in 
 ver. 3 of this chapter, which gives us a catalogue of the 
 patriarch's live-stock. She-asses, moreover, on account of 
 their milk, were generally preferred for travelling. The 
 ass of Balaam is expressly declared to have been female, 
 Numb, xxii, 21 ; as is that of Abraham, Gen. xxii. 3. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 15. And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took 
 them away ; yea, they have slain the servants 
 with the edge of the sword; and I only am es- 
 caped alone to tell thee. 
 
 Heb. " And the Sabean rushed forth" — a poetic expres- 
 sion for " the Sabeans," or " Sabean tribe." The Syriac 
 
 version gives us, " a band or company rushed forth," the 
 word Sabean being omitted. Saba, or Sheba, was a town 
 or city of Arabia Deserta; and the Sabeans and Chal- 
 deans were wont to wander in distinct bands or hordes, 
 upon predatory excursions, over the whole of the border , 
 country, and perhaps, at times, as far as from the banks 
 of the Euphrates to the outskirts of Egypt. The Bedouin 
 Arabs of the present day present us with the best specimens 
 of these parties of irregular plunderers. Both are equally 
 entitled to the appellation of Kedarines ; the root of whicJi, 
 in Arabic as well as in Hebrew, implies assault, incursioii, 
 fytviuU; and both either have employed, or still continue 
 to employ, as a covering for their ten^s, a coarse brown 
 hair cloth, obtained from their dark-coloured and shaggy 
 goats : whence the fair bride of Solomon, in the song of 
 songs, — 
 
 ^' Brown am I, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem ! 
 As the tents of Kedar." -Good. 
 
 Ver. 20. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, 
 and shaved his head, and fell down upon the 
 ground, and worshipped. 
 
 These are two of the actions by which great distress or 
 agony of mind has, in all ages, been accustomed to be ex- 
 pressed in the East. In addition to these, sometimes the 
 hair of the beard was also shaven or plucked off, as was 
 done by Ezra, on his arrival at Jerusalem, on finding that 
 the Hebrews, instead of keeping themselves a distinct 
 and holy people, after their return from captivity, had in- 
 • termixed with the nations around them, and plunged into 
 all their abominations and idolatries. Ezra ix. 3. And 
 sometimes, instead of shaving the hair of the head, the 
 mourner, in the fulness of his humiliation and self-abase- 
 ment, threw the dust, in which he sat, all over him, and 
 purposely covered his hair with it. See Job ii. 12. After 
 shaving the head, when this sign of distress was adopted, 
 a vow was occasionally offered to the Almighty, in the 
 hope of obtaining deliverance. This seems lo have been 
 a frequent custom with St. Paul, who did both, as well at 
 Cenchrea as at Jerusalem, and m both places probably on 
 this very account. See Acts xviii. 18. and xxi. 24.— Good, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 4. And Satan answered the Lord, and said, 
 Skin for skin ; yea, all that a man hath will he 
 give for his life. 
 
 The Arabs set the exploits of their chiefs in the dialogue 
 form, like the book of Job. The Cingalese often spend 
 hours at night in reciting alternately the exploits of Budhu, 
 and of their gods and devils. I have often been disturbed 
 by them. Tliis passage, imperfectly explained by most 
 commentators, is, by Mr. Robinson, set in so clear a light, 
 that the reader will be better satisfied with a quotation, than 
 an abridgment. "Before the invention of money, trade 
 used to be carried on by barter, that is, by exchanging one 
 commodity for another. The man who had been hunting 
 in the woods for wild beasts, would carry their skins to 
 market, and exchange them with the armourer for so many 
 bows and arrows. As these tralRckers were liable to be 
 robbed, they sometimes agreed to give a party of men a 
 share for defending them; and skins were a very ancient 
 tribute. With them they redeemed their own shares of 
 property and their lives. ' It is to one or both of these cus- 
 toms, that the text alludes, as a proverb. Imagine one of 
 these primitive fairs. A multitude of people from all parts, 
 of difl^erent tribes and languages, in a broad field, all over- 
 spread with vawous commodities to be exchanged. Imagine 
 this fair to be held after a good hunting season, and a bad 
 harvest. The skinners are numerous, and clothing cheap. 
 Wheat, the staff of life, is scarce, and the whole fair dread 
 a famine. How many skins this year will a man give for 
 this necessarv article, without which, he and his family 
 must inevitably die 1 Whv, each would add to the heap, 
 and put 'skin upon skin," for all' the skins 'that a man 
 hath, will he give for his life.' Imagine the wheat growers, 
 of whom Job was one, carrving home the skms, which they 
 had taken for wheat. Imagine the party engaged to protect 
 them, raising the tribute, and threatening if it were not 
 paid, to put them to death. What proportion of skins would 
 these merchants give, in this case of necessity ? Skin v.j'on 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 327 
 
 skin, all the skins that they have, will they give for their lives. 
 The proverb then means, that we should save our lives at 
 any price." — Callaway, 
 
 Ver. 7. So went Satan forth from the presence of 
 the Lord, and smote Job with sore biles, from 
 the sole of his foot unto his crown. 
 
 Respectable people have the greatest possible dread and 
 disgust at biles, and all cutaneous diseases. Here, then, 
 we see the princely Job the victim of a loathsome disorder, 
 sitting among the ashes and broken earthen vessels, the 
 impure refuse of the kitchen and other places. See the 
 poor neglected object who is labouring tinder similar 
 diseases at this day, from the head to the foot ; he is cov- 
 ered with scales and blotches, around his loins is a scanty 
 rag, he wanders from one lonely place to another, and 
 when he sees you, stretches out a hand towards you, and 
 another to his sores, and piteously implores help ! — Robehts. 
 
 Ver. 7. So went Satan forth from the presence of 
 the Lord, and smote Job with sore biles, from 
 the sole of his foot unto his crown. 8. And he 
 took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal ; 
 and he sat down among the ashes. 
 
 A remarkable disease mentioned in the scriptures is that 
 which was inflicted on Job, and of which he so feelingly 
 complains in several parts of his book. Commentators 
 have differed as to its peculiar nature; but the best in- 
 formed have fixed upon elephantiasis, as a disease well 
 known in eastern countries, and corresponding with the 
 hints which Job gives of it in his conversations with his 
 'riends. The following is an abridgment of what is said 
 of it by Dr. Heberden and Michaelis. It begins with a 
 sudden eruption of tubercles or tumours of different sizes, 
 of a red colour, attended with great heal and itching, on 
 different parts of the body, and a degree of fever, by which 
 the skin acquires a remarkably shining appearance: but 
 when the fever abates, the tubercles become either indolent 
 knots, or in some degree scirrhous, and of a livid or copper 
 colour ; and after some months they degenerate into fetid 
 ulcers. As the disease advances, the features of the face 
 swell, the hair of the eyebrows falls off, the voice becomes 
 hoarse, the breath exceedingly offensive, the skin of the 
 body is unusually loose, wrinkled, rough, destitute of hairs, 
 and overspread with tumours, and often with ulcers, or else 
 with a thick, moist, scabby crust, upon those which have 
 begun to dry up; and the legs are sometimes emaciated 
 and ulcerated, sometimes affected with tumours, without 
 ulceration, and sometimes swelled like posts, and indurated, 
 having very thin scales, apparently much finer than those 
 in leprosy, only hot so white ; while the soles of the feet, 
 being thicker than the rest of the skin, feel peculiarly 
 pained by the tumours and ulcers. Such is the state of 
 those afflicted with elephantiasis; nor Have they even inter- 
 missions of ease by refreshing rest ; for as their days are 
 rendered v^retched by the distension of the skin by tumours, 
 and a succession of burning, ill-conditioned ulceVs, so their 
 nights are tormented by perpetual restlessness or frightful 
 dreams. The accuser of the brethren, therefore, evidently 
 showed his sagacity and malice, when he selected this as 
 the most likely means to provoke Job to impatience. But 
 having described the leading features of the disease, let us 
 next attend to the hints that are given us in the book of 
 Job, and see whether the one corresponds with the other. 
 In ch. ii. 7, 8, we are told, that "Satan smote Job with sore 
 biles, from the sole of his foot even to his crown; and that 
 he took a potsherd to scrape himself" This is evidently 
 descriptive of elephantiasis, in its most active and rapid 
 .state, when the body is covered with tumours, which break 
 into ulcers, and the skin becomes scaly. In ch. vi. 4, Job 
 complains, that "the arrows of the Almighty were within 
 him, and that the poison thereof drank up his spirit ;" 
 thereby comparing the pain he felt to that experienced 
 from poisoned arrows ; while the infection of the disease, 
 like the influence of poison, spreads itself over the whole 
 Irame. It was formerly mentioned as an attendant on ele- 
 phantiasis, that the patient could obtain no refreshing sleep, 
 bit was tormented with restlessness and frightful dreams. 
 Accordingly, Job, in ch. vii. 3, 4, 13, 14, 15, complains in 
 
 the following mournful manner : " I am made to possess 
 months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to 
 me. When I lie down, I say. When shall I arise, and the 
 night be gone 1 and I am full of tossings to and fro unto 
 the dawning of the day.— When I say. My bed shall com- 
 fort me, my couch shall ease my complaint; then thou 
 scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions: 
 so that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather thar. 
 my life." The itchiness of ill-conditioned ulcers has often 
 been ascribed to animalculae, and their stench is intolera- 
 ble. Accordingly, Job says, in ch. vii. 5, " My flesh is 
 clothed with worms and clods of dust : my skin is broken, 
 and become loathsome." It was said that the tumours and 
 ulcers were peculiarly painful on the soles of the feet, from 
 the thickness of the skin in those parts; and to that he 
 refers in ch. xiii. 27, where he says, " Thou settest a print 
 upon the heels of my feet ;" literally, " Thou imprintest 
 thyself, that is, thy wrath, on the soles of my feet." It was 
 noticed that the skin in elephantiasis, when the disease hath 
 become general, is loose, rough, and wrinkled ; and Job, 
 ch. xvi. 8, complains of this very thing, that " his skin was 
 filled with wrinkles." An offensive breath was noticed as 
 another evil under which the patient laboured ; and this 
 was the case with Job, for he complains, in ch. xvii. 1, that 
 " his breath was corrupt ; that his days were extinct ; and 
 that the grave was ready for him," as for a putrid carcass : 
 adding in verse 44th, " I have said to corruption. Thou art 
 niy father; and to the worm, thou art my mother and my 
 sister." The only other notice we have of the disease is 
 in ch. XXX. 17, 30, where we hear him complaining that his 
 bones were pierced with acute pain in the nvght season; 
 and that his sinews, by their starting, gave him no rest ; 
 that his skin was black upon him; and his bones were 
 burnt up with heat; all which accord well with the disease 
 in question, when it hath taken possession of the system, 
 and hath filled the body with livid, copper-coloured, scir- 
 rhous tumours, or black corrupted ulcers. Upon the whole, 
 then, it appears probable, that the disease with which Job 
 was afflicted was elephantiasis. — Brown. 
 
 Ver. 8. And he took him a potsherd to scrape 
 himself withal ; and he sat down among the 
 ashes. 
 
 This self-abasement appears to have been common amone 
 the Hebrews, as well as the Arabians or Idumaeans, and 
 was so probably among other oriental nations of high anti- 
 quity, in cases of deep and severe afliiction. The coarsest 
 dress, as of hair or sackcloth, was worn on such occasions ; 
 and the vilest and most humiliating situation, as a duvSt or 
 cinder-heap, surrounded by potsherds and other household 
 refuse, made choice of to sit in. It may easily be conjec- 
 tured what considerable quantities of potsherds, or frag- 
 ments oi- pottery, must have been collected in the dust-heaps 
 above referred to, from a recollection, that in the earlier 
 ages of the world, when the art of metallurgy was but in its 
 infancy, almost all the domestic utensils employed for 
 every purpose were of pottery alone. Pottery may hence 
 be fairly supposed the oldest of the mechanical inventions : 
 and on this account the Hebrew term here made use of, 
 (a'-^n, a potter, pottery, or potsherds,') became afterward 
 extended to signify wares of every other kind, or their 
 fabricators, and heiice artisans in general, whether in brass, 
 iron, wood, or stone. The same word also, -when used in 
 the signification of a potsherd, a fragment or splinter of 
 pottery, was also employed to import a sharp instrument in 
 general, as a rasp, scraper, or scalpel, a sense in which it 
 has to this day descended to the Arabs; for the Arabic 
 word, (identically, as to letters, the same as the Hebrew 
 a^"\r.,) as a verb, implies to scrape or rasp with an edged tool, 
 (the purpose to which the c'-in or shard, was directed in the 
 text;) and, as a substantive, a scab, or sharp and morbid 
 incrustation of the skin — the object to which it was applied. 
 — Good. 
 
 Ver. 9. Then said his wife unto him. Dost thou 
 still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and 
 die. 
 
 Some suppose this ought to be, bless God and die; but 
 Job would not have reproved his wife for such advice, ex- 
 cept she meant it ironically. It is a fact, that when the 
 
528 
 
 JOB 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 heathen have to pass through much suffering, they often 
 ask, " Shall we make an offering to the gods for this V'i. e. 
 Shall we offer our devotions, our gratitude, for afflictions 1 
 Job was a servant of the true God, but his wife might have 
 been a heathen ; and then the advice, in its most literal 
 acceptation, would be perfectly in character. Nothing is 
 more common than for the heathen, under certain circum- 
 stance:^, to curse their gods. Hear the man who has made 
 expensive offerings to his deity, in hope of gaining some 
 great blessing, and who has been disappointed, and he 
 will pour out all his imprecations on the god whose good 
 ofhces have (as he believes) been prevented by some su- 
 perior deity. A man in reduced circumstances says, " Yes, 
 yes ; my god has lost his eyes; they are put out; he cannot 
 look after my affairs." "Yes," said an extremely rich 
 devotee (V. Chetty) of the supreme god Siva, after he 
 had lost his property, "shall I serve him any more"? 
 What! make offerings to him 1 No, no; he is the lowest 
 of all gods." With these facts before us, it is not difficult 
 to believe that Job's wife actually meant what she said. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as 
 one of the foolish women speaketh. What ! 
 shall we receive good at the hand of God, and 
 shall we not receive evil ? In all this did not 
 Job sin with his lips. 
 
 It is not easy to know to whom Job alludes by " the 
 foolish women ;" but in all parts of the East, females are 
 spoken of as being much inferior to man in wisdom ; and 
 nearly all their sages have proudly descanted on the igno- 
 rance of women. In the Hindoo book called the Kurral, it 
 is said, " All women are ignorant." In other works it is 
 said, " Ignorance is a woman's jewel." " Female wis- 
 dom is from the evil one." " The feminine qualities are 
 four : ignorance, fear, shame, and impunity." " To a 
 woman disclose not a secret." " Talk not to me in that 
 way ; it is all female wisdom." — Roberts. 
 
 Sanctius thinks that Job refers to the Idumean women, 
 who, like other heathens, when their gods did not please 
 them, or they could not obtain of them what they desired, 
 would reproach and cast them away, and throw them into 
 the fire, or the water, as the Persians are said to do. — 
 
 BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 11. Now when Job's three friends heard of 
 all this evil that was come upon him, they came 
 ever}'- one from his own place ; Eliphaz the 
 Temanite, and Bildad the Shahite, and Zophar 
 the Naamathite : for they had made an appoint- 
 ment together to come to mourn with him, and 
 to comfort him. 
 
 Has a man fallen into some great calamity, his friends 
 immediately go to his house to comfort him. Thus, to the 
 house of mourning for the dead may be seen numbers of 
 people going daily, studying to find out some source of 
 comfort for their afflicted friend. " Whither are you 
 going 1" "As a comforter to my friend in sorrow." "How 
 great is his distress ! he will not listen to the voice of the 
 comforters." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. And when they lifted up their eyes afar 
 off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice 
 and wept ; and they rent every one his mantle, 
 and sprinkled dust upon their heads towards 
 heaven. 
 
 See ou Josh. 7. 6. 
 
 Ver. 1 3. So they sat down with him upon the 
 ground seven days and seven nights, and none 
 spake a word unto him : for they saw that his 
 grief was very great. 
 
 Those who go to sympathize with the afflicted, are often 
 silent for hours together. As there were seven days for 
 
 mourning in the scriptures, so here ; and the seventh is 
 always the greatest. The chief mourner, during the whole 
 of these days, will never speak, except when it is abso- 
 lutely necessary. When a visiter comes in, he simply 
 looks and bows down his head. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 1. After this opened Job his mouth, and cur- ^ 
 sed his day. | 
 
 It is to be observed, says Mr. Blackwell, (Inquiry into the ' 
 Life of Homer,) that the Turks, Arabians, and Indians, ' 
 and in general most of the inhabitants of the East, are a ' 
 solitary kind of people ; they speak but seldom, and never : 
 long without emotion. Speaking is a matter of moment 
 among such people, as we may gather from their usual in- 
 troductions: for, before they deliver their thoughts, they 
 give notice by saying, / will open my mouth, as here ; that 
 is, unloose their tongue. It is thus in Homer, Hesiod, and 
 Orpheus ; and thus also Virgil : 
 
 finem dedit ore loquendi. 
 
 He made an end of speaking with his mouth. — Burobr. 
 
 Ver. 3. Let the day perish wherein I was born, 
 and the night i?i which it was said. There is a 
 man-child conceived. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd prefers, " Perish the day in which I was 
 born; the night it was said, Lo! a man child." Dr. A. 
 Clarke thinks the word conceive " should be taken in the 
 sense of being born ;" and the Tamul translation takes the 
 same view. When a male child is born, the midwife goes 
 outside the house, and says aloud three times, " A male 
 child, a male child, a male child is born!" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Why did the knees prevent me? or why 
 the breasts that I should suck. 
 
 This is not to be understood of the mother ; but either of 
 the midwife, who received the new-born infant into her lap, 
 or of the father, as it was usual for him to take the child 
 upon his knees as soon as it was born, Gen. 1. 23. This 
 custom obtained among the Greeks and Romans. Hence 
 the goddess Levana had her name, causing the father in 
 this way to own the child. — Gill. 
 
 Ver. 14. With kings and counsellors of the earth, 
 which built desolate places for themselves. 
 
 This description is intended as a contrast to that con- 
 tained in the two ensuing lines ; and the same sort of con- 
 trast is admirably continued throughout the entire passage. 
 The grave is the common receptacle of all ; of the patri- 
 otic princes who have restored to their ancient magnifi- 
 cence the ruins of former cities, and fixed their palaces in 
 them; and of the sordid accumulators of wealth, which 
 they have not spirit to make use of; of the wicked, who 
 have never ceased from troubling, and of those who have 
 been wearied and worn out by their vexations; of the 
 high and the low, the slave and his task-master, the ser- 
 vant and his lord. This idea has not, in general, been at- 
 tended to, and hence the passage has not been clearly un- 
 derstood. Our common rendering, "Which built desolate 
 places for themselves," is hardly explicit, though it is liter- 
 ally consonant with most of the versions. Schulten«, not 
 adverting to the antithesis intended to subsist betweta the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth verses, imagines he perceives m the 
 passage a metaphorical reference to the massy pyramids or 
 sepulchres of the Egyptian monarchs, of which several 
 have descended to our own day ; and this idea has also 
 been generally followed. But the conception is too recon- 
 dite, and far less impressive, as it appears to me, than that 
 now offered. The images and phraseology of this poern, 
 as I have already had occasion to observe, were often copi- 
 ed bv the boldest writers of the Jewish people ; by King 
 David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; and the smallest at- 
 tention to their respective compositions will show us that 
 the idea here communicated soon became proverbial ; and 
 that " the restorer of ruined wastes," or " of ancient rums," 
 was not only a phrase in general acceptation, but regarded 
 
Chap. 4. 
 
 JOB, 
 
 32^ 
 
 as a character of universal veneration and esteem. Thus 
 Isai. Iviii. lii: — 
 
 And thy descendants shall rebuild the ancient waste. 
 
 TJie foundations prostrate for many ages shalt thou raise up : 
 
 And thou shalt be called The repairer of ruins, 
 
 The restorer of paths to walk in. 
 
 So Ezek. xxxvi. 33 : — 
 
 And I will also cause you to dwell in the cities ; 
 
 And the ruined wastes shall be rebuilt. 
 It is useless to quote further : the parallel passages are al- 
 most innumerable. — Goon. 
 
 Ver. 21. Which long for death, but it cometh not] 
 and dig for it more than for hid treasures. 
 
 We are constantly hearing of treasures which have been 
 or are about to be discovered. Sometimes you may .see a 
 large space of ground, which has been completely turned up, 
 or an old foundation, or ruin, entirely demolished, in hopes 
 of finding the hidden gold. A man has found a small coin, 
 has heard a tradition, or has had a dream, and off he goes 
 to his toil. Perhaps he has been seen on the spot, or he 
 has consulted a soothsayer ; the report gets out ; and then 
 come the needy, the old, and the young, a motley group, 
 all full of anxiety, to join in the spoil. Some have iron in- 
 struments, others have sticks, and some their fingers to 
 scratch up the ground. At last some of them begin to look 
 at each other with considerable suspicion, as if all were not 
 right, and each seems to wish he had not come on so foolish 
 an errand, and then steal off as quietly as they can. I once 
 knew a deep tank made completely dry , (by immense labour,) 
 in the hope of finding great treasures, which were said to 
 have been cast in during the ancient wars. Passing near, 
 one day, when they had nearly finished their work, and 
 their hopes had considerably moderated, I went up to the 
 sanguine owner, (whose face immediately began to show its 
 chagrin,) and inquired, " Why are you taking so much 
 trouble to empty that tank V He replied, as calmly as he 
 could, " We are merely cleaning it out." Poor man ! I 
 believe he found nothing but stones and bones, and a few 
 copper coins. " Dig for it more than for hid treasures," 
 finds a practical illustration in the East, and is a figure of 
 common use in the language. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 2. If we assay to commune with thee, wilt 
 thou be grieved ? but who can withhold him- 
 self from speaking? 
 
 The term hdj, *' to essay or attempt," is peculiarly expres- 
 sive in the Hebrew, and is derived from the sense of smell 
 exercised by hounds and other animals, in essaying or 
 exploring the track of the prey they are in pursuit of It is 
 still used among the Arabs for a pleasant smell or odour. 
 Eliphaz means to insinuate his desire to select the very 
 mildest reply he could possibly meet with upon a minute 
 research, such as, while it answered the purpose of expo- 
 sing the fallacy of the patriarch's reasoning, should hurt 
 his feelings as little as possible. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 6. Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, the 
 uprightness of thy ways, and thy hope? 
 
 The clew to the genuine sense of this passage will be 
 obtained by a slight transposition of the latter hemistich : 
 " Is not this fear of thine, tny confidence ; and the upright- 
 ness of thy ways, thy hope 1" Job had before aflSrmed, 
 chap. iii. 25, 26, " The thing which I greatly feared is come 
 upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. 
 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; 
 yet trouble came ;" i. e. I was continually exercised by a 
 godly fear, a holy misgiving; I did not dare to cherish a 
 sentiment of carnal security ; even in the height of my 
 prosperity, I was deeply sensible of my exposure to calam- 
 ity, and lived habitually under a trembling anticipation of 
 its approach. To this Eliphaz alludes; q. d. Here is some- 
 thing for which it is hard to account. " Behold, thou hast 
 instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak 
 hands. Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and 
 thou hast strengthened the feeble knees. But now it is come 
 upon thee, and thou faintest; ii toucheth thee, and thou art 
 42 
 
 troubled." How is this 1 Why is thy practice so much at 
 variance with thy precepts 1 If thou art the man thou 
 claimest to be; if thou hast been governed, as thou alle- 
 gest, by a prevailing fear of God, and hast never indulged a 
 feeling of self-sufficient security, why is not this thy fear a 
 source of humble confidence to thee in the day of distress 1 
 and why does not the recollection of the unimpeachable 
 integrity and uprightness of thy ways, serve as an anchor of 
 hope, amid the tossings of a tried and troubled spirit 1 
 This surely were to have been expected from one of thy 
 character. A heart conscious of innocence could not but 
 sustain itself in such a trial ; it would be entirely contrary 
 to the analogy of the divine dispensations to suppose that 
 such a one would be the victim of overwhelming judg- 
 ments; for " remember, I pray thee, who ever perished 
 being innocent 1 or when were the righteous cast ofi''?" 
 This interpretation makes the whole address of Eliphaz 
 consistent, coherent, and clear, though founded upon the 
 fallacy, that men are invariably dealt with in this world 
 according to their desert. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 9. By the blast of God they perish, and by 
 the breath of his nostrils are they consumed. 
 
 When people are angry, they distend their nostrils and 
 blow with great force : the action may be taken from some 
 animals, which, when angry, blow violently through their 
 noses. Of a man who is much given to anger, it is said, 
 " That fellow is always blowing through his nose." " You 
 may blow through your nose for a thousand years, it will 
 never injure me." " Go not near the breath of his nostrils, 
 he will injure you." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 15. Then a spirit passed before my face ; the 
 hair of my flesh stood up. 
 
 This refers to the great fear of Job ; but the same effect 
 is often ascribed to great joy. Thus, in Hindoo books, in 
 describing the ecstasy of gods or men, it is often said, 
 *' The hair of their flesh stood erect." A father says to his 
 long absent child, " My son, not having seen your lotus 
 face for so long, my hair stands up with joy." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. How much less on them that dwell in 
 houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, 
 which are crushed before the moth ? 
 
 It is probable that this means a moth-worm, which is one 
 state ol the creature alluded to. It is first enclosed in an 
 egg, from whence it issues a worm, and after a time 
 becomes a complete insect, or moth. The following ex- 
 tracts from Niebuhr may throw light on this passage, that 
 man is crushed by so feeble a thing as a worm : — " A dis- 
 ease very common in Yemen is the attack of the Guiney- 
 worm, or the Vena-Medinensis, as it is called by the physi- 
 cians of Europe. This disease is supposed to be occasioned 
 by the use of the putrid waters, which people are obliged 
 to drink in several parts of Yemen ; and for this reason the 
 Arabians always pass water, with the nature of which they 
 are unacquainted, through a linen cloth, before drinking it. 
 Where one unfortunately swallows any of the eggs of this 
 insect, no immediate consequence follows ; but after a con- 
 siderable time, the worm begins to show itself through the 
 skin. Our physician, Mr. Cramer, was, within a few days 
 of his death, attacked by five of these worms at once, 
 although this was more than five months after we had left 
 Arabia. In the isle of Karek I saw a French oflScer named 
 Le Page, who, after a long and difficult journey performed 
 on foot, and in an Indian "dress, between Pondicherry and 
 Surat, through the heart of India, was busy extracting a 
 worm out of his body. He supposed that he had got it by 
 drinking bad water in the country of the Mahrattas, This 
 disorder is not dangerous if the person affected can extract 
 the worm without breaking it. With this view it is rolled 
 on a small bit of wood as it comes out of the skin. It is 
 slender as a thread, and two or three feet long. It gives no 
 pain as it makes its way out of the body, unlef^s what may 
 De occasioned by the cafe which must be taken of it for some 
 weeks. If unliickily it be broken, it then returns into the 
 body, and the most disagreeable consequences ensue, palsy, 
 a gangrene, and sometimes death." — Burder. 
 
3S0 
 
 JOB, 
 
 Chap. 5, 6. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 5. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and 
 taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber 
 swalloweth up their substance. 
 
 This seems a manifest allusion to the half-starved Arabs 
 of the desert, who were always ready for plunder, as their 
 descendants are to this day. Such starvehngs are thus de- 
 scribed by Volney : " These men are smaller, leaner, and 
 blacker, than any of the Bedouins yet known; their wasted 
 legs had only tendons without calves; their belly was glued 
 to their back. In general, the Bedouins are small, lean, and 
 swarthy, more so, however, in the bosom of the desert, than 
 on the borders of the cultivated country. They are ordi- 
 narily about five feet two inches high. They seldom have 
 more than about six ounces of food for the whole day. Six 
 or seven dates, soaked in melted butter, a little milk, or 
 curd, serve a man for twenty-four hours; and he seems 
 happy when he can add a small portion of coarse flour, or 
 a litiie ball of rice. Their camels also, which are their 
 chief support, are remarkably meager, living on the mean- 
 est and most scanty provision. Nature has given it a 
 small head, without' ears, at the end of a long neck, with- 
 out flesh: she has taken from its legs and thighs every 
 muscle not immediately requisite for motion; and, in 
 short, has bestcjwed on its withered body only the vessels 
 and tendons necessary to connect its frame together; she 
 has furnished it with a strong jaw, that it may grind the 
 hardest aliments ; and lest it should consume too much, she 
 has straitened its stomach, and obliged it to chew the cud." 
 
 -BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 7. Yet man is born unto trouble, as the 
 sparks fly upward. 
 
 Hebrew, " Sons of the burning coal." The word son, 
 among the Hindoos, is applied to man, and all kinds of 
 animal life. Men of ignoble parentage are called sons of 
 the koddekal, i. e. the mechanics. When animals, reptiles, 
 or insects, are troublesome, they are called passdsinudia 
 Tiiaggal, Sons of the devil ; or vease-maggal, sons of the 
 prostitute, or of the treacherous ones. See the ploughman, 
 at his occupation; should the bullocks prove restive, he 
 immediately vociferates the epithets alluded to. Listen to 
 the almost breathless cowherd, who is running after some 
 of his refractory kine, to bring them to the fold, and he 
 abuses them in the most coarse and indelicate language. 
 The man also, who, for the first time, discovers the while 
 ants destroying his property, bawls out with all his might, 
 " Ah ! vease-maggal, sons of the prostitute." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of 
 the tongue : neither shalt thou be afraid of de- 
 struction when it cometh. 
 
 Dr. A. Clarke says, " the Targum refers this to the in- 
 cantations of Balaam : from the injury by the tongue of 
 Balaam thou shalt be hidden." The people live in great 
 fear of the scourge of the tongue, and that independent of 
 an incantation, because they believe the tongues of some 
 men have the power of inflicting a dreadful curse on any 
 object which has incurred their displeasure. Thus, many 
 of the evils of life are believed to come from nd-vooru, the 
 curse or the scourge of the tongue. " Have you heard 
 what Kandan's tongue has done for Muttoo V " No ! what 
 has happened V " Why, some time ago, Kandan promised 
 on his next voyage to bring Muttoo a cargo of rice, but he 
 did not keep his word ; Kandan, therefore, became very 
 angry, and said, ' I shall not be surprised at hearing of thy 
 \'^ssel being wrecked.' Muttoo again sailed, without caring 
 for Kandan's tongue; but lo ! his vessel has been knocked 
 to pieces on the rocks, and I saw him this morning on his 
 way home, beating his head, and exclaiming, * Ah ! this 
 nd-vooru, nd-vooru, this evil tongue, this evil tongue, my 
 vessel has gone to pieces on the rocks." But the tongues 
 of some men are believed to possess malignant power, not 
 only in imprecations, but also in their blessings and praises. 
 * The other day, when I and some others were sitting with 
 our friend the doctor, one of his daughters came to speak 
 to her father; as she was delivering her message, one of 
 
 the party exclaimed, * What a beautiful set cf teeth !' and 
 from that moment they began to decay.*' "Alas! alas! 
 poor old Murager purchased a fine milch cow yesterday, 
 and was driving her along the road this morning, on his 
 way home, when, behold, a fellow met them and said, ' Ah, 
 what large teals!' The cow broke from the string, she 
 rushed to the hedge, and a stake ran through her udder." 
 "Ah, what a miserable man is Valen ! a few days ago, as 
 his wife was nursing the infant, he said, 'How comely art 
 thou, my fawn !' when immediately a cancer made its ap- 
 pearance in her breast, from which she can never recover." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. For thou shalt be in league with the 
 stones of the field; and the beasts of the field 
 shall be at peace with thee. 
 
 See on 2 Kings 3. 19. 
 
 In a country where wild beasts are so numerous and so 
 fierce, and where the natives have so few means of dtfence, 
 can it be a matter of surprise that people on a journey are 
 always under the influence of great fear "l The father says 
 to his son, M'hen he is about to depart, "Fear not; the 
 beasts will be thy friends." The dealer in charms says, 
 when giving one of his potent spells, " Be not afraid, young 
 man ; this shall make the cruel beasts rasped thee." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall 
 be great, and thine offspring as the grass of the 
 earth. 
 
 When a priest, or an aged person, blesses a young couple, 
 he says, " Your children shall be as the grass, arruga-pillu^ 
 (Agrostis Linearis.) Yes; you shall twine and bind your- 
 selves together like the grass." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full 
 age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his sea- 
 son. 
 
 Literally, " in dried up," or, " shrivelled ag8;"aBd hence 
 the term here employed, (h'pd) is applied by the Aiabians 
 to designate the winter season, in which every thing is cor- 
 rugated or shrivelled. On which account some commen- 
 tators propose, that the text should be rendered " in the 
 lointer of life ;" poetically, indeed, but not thoroughly con- 
 sistent with the metaphor of a shock of corn : which, in 
 close congruity with the emblematic picture of winter, at its 
 season of maturity, is dried up and contracted, and thtis far 
 offers an equal similitude of ripe old age; but which forci- 
 bly increases the similitude by the well known fact, that, 
 like ripe old age also, it must be committed to the earth in 
 order to spring to newness of life ; for, in both cases, " the 
 seed which thou sowesi shall not quicken, except it die.** 
 Tyndal has given the passage thus: " In a fayre age lyke 
 as the corn sheewes are broughte into the barne in due sea- 
 son:" whence Sandys, 
 
 "Then, full of days, like weighty shocks of com, 
 In season reaped, shalt to thy grave be borne." 
 
 Nor very differently Schullens, notwithstanding that he ad- 
 raits that the Hebrew (n^h) in itself implies " congestion, 
 accumulation, or heaping together." " Intrabis in decrep- 
 ita senectute ad tumulum," " Thou shalt enter into the tomb 
 in decrepit age ;" meaning, as a shock of corn enters into 
 the barn. — Good. 
 
 Great is the desire of the men of the East to see a good 
 old age. Thus the beggars, when relieved, often bless you, 
 and say, " Ah ! my lord, may you live a thousand years." 
 " Live, live, till the shakings of age." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 2. Oh that my grief were thoroughly weigh- 
 ed, and my calamity laid in the balances to- 
 gether ! 
 
 " Ah ! my lord, could you weigh my poverty, I am sure 
 you would relieve me." " The sorrows of that man's soul, 
 who can weigh them 1" " Alas ! if my sorrows could be 
 weighed, then would pity be shown unto me."— Roberts. 
 
^HAP. 7. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 331 
 
 Ver. 4. For the arrows of the Almighty are with- 
 in me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spi- 
 rit : the terrors of God do set themselves in ar- 
 ray against me. 
 
 The practice of using poisoned arrows is universal among 
 the interior nations of Southern Africa, to whom the gospel 
 has not reached. The strongest of all the poisons used is 
 that which has been discovered by the most uncivilized of all 
 the nations, the wild Bushmen ; a wound from which is 
 attended with great pain and thirst, while the poison is 
 working throughout the system, and attended with great 
 depression. I brought some of the poison with me to 
 England, to see if any antidote against it could be discov- 
 ered. It has exactly the appearance of black wax, and is 
 found deposited in sheltered corners of rocks, but how it 
 came there is yet unknown. A medical gentleman, who 
 had devoted much attention to the different kinds of known 
 poisons, after delivering some lectures in London on that 
 particular subject, heard of the Bushman poison, and ap- 
 plied to me to furnish him with some of it, that he might 
 analyze it, and endeavour to find out an antidote. I rejoiced 
 that the matter had fallen into such good hands, and imme- 
 diately forwarded it by post. I received different letters, 
 containing various experiments, bat all had failed. I re- 
 member the first trial he made of the power of the poison 
 was, by wetting the point of a needle, and, after dipping it 
 into the powder, pricking a bird with it, which died almost 
 immediately. The same experiment was made on a second 
 bird, while some antidote was immediately applied to coun- 
 teract the effects of the poison. After a short time it also 
 died. Various antidotes were tried in the same way, but 
 all proved equally ineffectual. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 6. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten 
 without salt 1 or is there any taste in the white 
 of an egg. 
 
 The eastern people often make use of bread, with nothing 
 more than salt, or some such trifling addition, such as sum- 
 mer-savory dried and powdered. This, Russel says, is done 
 by many at Aleppo. The Septuagint translation of this 
 passage seems to refer to the same practice, when it renders 
 the first part of the verse, "will bread be eaten without 
 
 salt r'— BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 12. Is my strength the strength of stones? 
 or is my flesh of brass ? 
 
 ^Is a servant ordered to do a thing for which he has not 
 strength; to undergo great hardships; he asks, "Is my 
 strength as iron 1 Am I a stone ?" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a 
 brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass 
 away; 16. Which are blackish by reason of 
 the ice, and wherein the snow is hid : 17. What 
 time they wax warm they vanish : Avhen it is 
 hot, they are consumed out of their place. 
 
 The phrase in this place is a strict orientalism, " My 
 brethren have acted (or played) the flood with me :" and 
 the proverbial form is at least as common now among the 
 Arabians, as it could be when the present poem was com- 
 posed. Fairly explained, nothing can be more apposite, 
 nothing more exquisite, than the image before us, and the 
 whole of its description. Arabia has but few rivers ; 
 Proper Arabia perhaps none ; for what in this last country 
 are called rivers, are mere torrents, which descend from 
 the mountains during the rains, and for a short period af- 
 terward. A few rivers are found in Yemen, or the south- 
 ern province ; and the Tigris and Euphrates, as touching 
 its northern limits in their passage along Irak Arabi, have 
 occasionally been laid claim to by Arabian geographers. 
 . Even the Astam of Najd, or Neged, the province of Sandy 
 Arabia, though laid down as a considerable river in the 
 maps, is a mere brook. Hence the country is chiefly water- 
 ed and fertilized by exudations of its dry channels, an 
 overflow of which is uniformly regarded as a great treasure 
 and blessing; the inhabitants in the neighbourhood hail its 
 
 appearance, and prepare to enrich themselves out of its 
 stores, by admitting it into their tanks or reservoirs. But it 
 often happens, that the blessing is converted to a curse; 
 that the torrent rushes with so much abruptness and rapid- 
 ity, as to carry every thing before it; and that, exhausted 
 by its own violence, its duration is as brief as its stream is 
 rapid, allowing them scarcely lime to slake their own 
 thirst, or, at least, to fill their domestic utensils. Fair and 
 specious, therefore, as is its first appearance, it is in the end 
 full of deceit and cruel disappointment: " Et viatores(says 
 Dr. Lowth, upon the passage before us) per Arabse deserta 
 errantes sitique confectos perfide destituunt," Pra^l. xii. p. 
 110 — it promises comfort, but overwhelms with mortifica- 
 tion. Such (says Job) are the companions who come to 
 visit me in my affliction ; they affect to console me, but they 
 redouble my distress. — Good. 
 
 In desert parts of Africa it has afforded much joy to fall 
 in with a brook of water, especially when running in the 
 direction of the journey, expecting it would prove a valua- 
 ble companion. Perhaps before it accompanied us two 
 miles, it became invisible by sinking into the sand; but 
 two miles farther along, it would re-appear and run as be- 
 fore, and raise hopes of its continuance ; but after running 
 a few hundred yards, would finally sink into the sand, not 
 again to rise. In both cases it raised hopes M^hich were 
 not realized ; of course it deceived. Perhaps it is to such 
 brooks that Job refers in the 15th verse. There are many 
 in Africa, which are described in verse 17, which run in ^ 
 the winter, or rainy season ; but the return of the hot season 
 completely dries them up, which prove often great disap- 
 pointments to stranger travellers. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 18. The paths of their way are turned aside; 
 they go to nothing, and perish. 
 
 Rendered by Schultens and Reiske, " into thp desert, the 
 empty space, or land of nothing;" but the former is the 
 more forcible rendering. The torrent progressively evap- 
 orating and branching into fresh outlets, becomes at length 
 itself nothing. The original means equally " nothing," 
 and " a desert," or place of nothing. It is usually rendered 
 in the former signification. I have already observed that 
 the latter is preferred by Reiske and Schultens ; but either 
 will answer. 
 
 The whole description is directly coincident with a very 
 valuable article inserted by Major Colebrooke, in the sev- 
 enth volume of Asiatic Researches, and entitled, " On the 
 Course of the Ganges through Bengal," He observes, that 
 the occasional obstructions which the rivers of Bengal meet 
 with, on the return of their periodical flux, produce not un- 
 frequently some very extraordinary alterations in the course 
 and bending of their respective beds, and hence, some 
 equally extraordinary changes in the general face of the 
 country. While some villages that, in common, are scarce- 
 ly visited by a river, even at its utmost rise, are overflowed 
 and suddenly swept away ; others, actually seated on the 
 banks of an arm, and that used to be regularly inundated, 
 are totally deserted, and the inhabitants have to travel over 
 many miles to obtain water. He adds, that the Ganges has 
 evinced changes of this nature, in a greater degree than 
 any other Indian stream ; and that even since the survey 
 of Major Rennel, in 1764, it has deviated in its course not 
 less than two miles and a half ; whence several of the vil- 
 lages which figure in his map are no longer to be found in 
 the situations assigned them; while islands of considerable 
 magnitude, now inhabited and cultivated, have started into 
 being where the river then rolled its deepest waters.— 
 Good. 
 
 Ver. 28. Now, therefore, be content : look upon 
 me : for it is evident unto you if I lie. 
 
 When a person is accused of uttering a falsehood, he 
 says, " Look in my face, and you will soon see I am inno- 
 cent." "My face will tell you the truth." When the 
 countenance does not indicate guilt, it is said, " Ah ! his 
 face does not say so." " The man's face does not contain 
 the witness of guilt." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 2. As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, 
 
332 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 7—9. 
 
 and as a hireling looketh for the reward of his 
 work. 
 
 The people of the East measure time by the length of 
 their shadow. Hence, if you ask a man what o'clock it is, 
 he immediately goes in the sun, stands erect, then looking 
 where his shadow terminates, he measures the length with 
 his feet, and tells you nearly the time. Thus they earnest- 
 ly desire the shadow which indicates the time for leaving 
 th'^ir M^ork. A person wishing to leave his toil, says, 
 " How long my shadow is in coming." " Why did you 
 not come sooner 1" " Because I waited for my shadow." — 
 
 R 'BERTS. 
 
 Ver. 2. As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, 
 and as a hireling looketh for the reward o/his 
 work ; 3. So am I made to possess months of 
 vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to 
 me. 
 
 The expression, when fairly rendered from the original, 
 is peculiarly forcible: " So much worse is my destiny than 
 that of the bondsman and the hireling, that, while they pant 
 and look early for the night-shade, as the close oi their 
 trouble, even the night is not free from troubles to myself." 
 — Good. 
 
 Ver. 10. He shall return no more to his house, 
 neither shall his place know him any more. 
 
 Inanimate objects are often spoken of as if they knew their 
 owners. A man who has sold his field, says, " That will not 
 knoio me any more." Does a field not produce good crops, 
 it is said, " That field doth not know its owner." Has a 
 man been long absent from his home, he asks, wheji enter- 
 ing the door, " Ah ! do you know me 1" Does he, after 
 this, walk through his garden and grounds, the servants 
 say, " Ah ! how pleased these are to see you !" Has a per- 
 son been unfortunate at sea, it is said, ** The sea does not 
 kTww him." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest 
 a watch over me? 
 
 Some suppose this alludes to the sea overflowing its 
 banks. But the Orientals also believe that the sea is the 
 dwelling-place of many of their spiritual enemies. Hence 
 they have a deity to watch the shore, whose name is Kali. 
 Numerous enemies, also, are compared to the sea, and 
 wicked chiefs who oppress the people, to timingalam, i. e. 
 a whale. "Ah! that whale, who can escape him"?" — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Crocodiles are very terrible to the inhabitants of Egypt ; 
 when therefore they appear, they watch them with great 
 attention, and take proper precautions to secure them, so 
 that they should not be able to avoid the deadly weapons 
 afterward used to kill them. To these watchings, and 
 those deadly after-assaults, I apprehend Job refers, when 
 he says, am la whale, (but a crocodile no doubt is what is 
 meani there,) that thou settest a watch over me 7 " Different 
 methods," says Maillet, " are used to take crocodiles, and 
 some of them very singular ; the most common is to dig 
 deep ditches along the Nile, which are covered with straw, 
 and into which the crocodile may probably tumble. Some- 
 times they take them with hooks, which are baited with a 
 quarter of a pig, or with bacon, of which they are very fond. 
 Some hide themselves in the places which they know to be 
 frequented by this creature, and lay snares for him." — Bur- 
 
 DER. 
 
 Ver. 19. How long wilt thou not depart from me, 
 not let me alone till' I swallow down mv spit- 
 tie? 
 
 This is a proverb among the Arabians to the present day, 
 oy which they understand. Give me leave to rest after my 
 fatigue. This is the favour which Job complains is not 
 granted to him. There are two instances which illustrate 
 the passage (quoted by Schultens) in Harris's Narratives, 
 entitled the Assembly. One is of a person, who, when 
 eagerly pressed to give an account of his travels, answered 
 
 with impatience, " Let me swallow down my spittle, for my 
 journey hath fatigued me." The other mstance is of a 
 quick return made to one who used that proverb, " Suffer 
 me," said the person importuned, " to swallow down my 
 spittle :" to which his friend replied, " You may if you 
 please swallow down even Tigris and Euphrates ;" that is, 
 take what time you please. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 11. Can the rush grow up without mire? 
 can the flag grow without water ? 
 
 Tfbe reed grows in immense numbers on the banks and 
 in the streams of the Nile. Extensive woods of the canes 
 Phragmit and Calama magrostes, which rise to the height 
 of twelve yards, cover the marshes in the neighbourhood 
 of Suez. The stems are conveyed all over Egypt and 
 Arabia, and are employed by the Orientals in construct- 
 ing the flat terraces of their habitations. Calmet thinks 
 it probable that this extensive region of canes gave name 
 to the Red Sea, which, in those times, entirely inundated 
 the marshes on its borders. Jam Suph is a sea that pro- 
 duces canes ; and as the Arabs denote two sorts of canes 
 by the general name buz, the surname being added after- 
 ward, Moses, the sacred historian, following the same 
 ancient denominations, did not attend to the specifical nice- 
 ties of botanology. This same leader of the people, un- 
 derwent the first dangers of his life in a cradle made of 
 the reeds donax or hagni. This information induced Cal- 
 met to conclude, that in these reeds, which covered the 
 banks of the Nile, we have what our translation renders 
 the flags, (suph,") in which Moses was concealed in his trunk, 
 or ark of bulrushes, goma. The remarkable height to which 
 they grow, and their vast abundance, lead to the persuasion, 
 that in some thick tuft of them, the future prophet of Israel 
 was concealed. It appears also, from the interrogation of 
 Job, that the goma cannot reach its full stature without an 
 abundant supply of water: " Can the rush — goma, rather 
 the tall strong cane or reed — grow up without water 1" 
 This plant, therefore, being a tall reed, is with great pro- 
 priety associated with the kanah, or cane : " In the habita- 
 tion of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with canes 
 and reeds." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 12. While it is yet in his greenness, and not 
 
 cut down, it withereth before any other herb. 
 • 
 The application of this beautiful similitude is easy, and 
 its moral exquisitely correct and pertinent. As the most 
 succulent plants are dependant upon foreign support for a 
 continuance of that succulence, and in the midst of their 
 vigour are sooner parched up than plants of less humidity ; 
 so the most prosperous sinner does not derive his prosper- 
 ity from himself, and is often destroyed in the highday of 
 his enjoyments, more signally and abruptly than those who 
 are less favoured, and appear to stand less securely. — Good. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 18. He will not suffer me to take my breath, 
 but filleth me with bitterness. 
 
 Of a cruel master it is said, " When his servants stop to 
 take their breath, he abuses them." " The man grudges 
 me my breath." " What ! can I work without taking my 
 breath 1" " The toil is always upon me: I have not time 
 for breathing." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. Now my days are swifter than a post : 
 they flee away, they see no good. 
 
 " Ah 1 my days are like an arrow." *' What is my time 1 
 'tis like the wind." " 'Tis like cotton spread in the strong 
 wind." "See that falling leaf; that is life." '"Tis but 
 as a snap of the finger." " Am I not like a flower 1" 
 " Yes ; it is a stream."" " Aneer-mndle, i. e. a bubble ! how 
 softly it glides along ! how beautiful its colours! but how 
 soon it disappears." — Roberts. 
 
 The common pace of travelling in the East is very slow. 
 Camels go little more than two miles an hour. Those who 
 carried messages in haste moved very difl^erently. Drome- 
 daries, a sort of camel, which is exceedingly swift, are used 
 for this purpose ; and Lady M. W. Montague asserts, that 
 
Chap. 9—12. 
 
 JOB, 
 
 333 
 
 they far outrun the swiftest horses. There are also mes- 
 sei gers who run on foot, and who sometimes go a hundred 
 and fifty miles in less than twenty-four hours; with what 
 energy then might Job say, " My days are swifter than a 
 post." Instead of passing away with a slowness of motion 
 like that of a caravan, my days of prosperity Jiave disap- 
 peared with a swiftness like that of a messenger carrying 
 despatches. — Bdrder. ! 
 
 Ver. 26. They are passed away as the swift ships ; 
 as the eagle that hasteth to the prey. 
 
 "The swift ships." Many interpretations have been 
 given of this expression. The author of the Fragments an- 
 nexed to Calmet's Dictionary, observes, that if it can be 
 rendered supposable that any animal, or class of animals, 
 may be metaphorically called ships, it is the dromedary, 
 well known to Job. The eastern writers apply the term to 
 camels and dromedaries. " The whole caravan being now 
 assembled, consists of a thousand horses, mules, and asses, 
 and of five hundred camels : these are the ships of Arabia ; 
 their seas are the deserts." (Sandy's Travels.) " What 
 enables the shepherd to perform the long and tiresome jour- 
 neys across Africa, is the camel, emphatically called by the 
 Arabs, the ship of the desert : he seems to have been crea- 
 ted for this very trade." (Bruce's Travels.) Of the drom- 
 edary, which is a kind of camel, Mr. Morgan {History of 
 Algiers) says, " I saw one perfectly white all over, belong- 
 mg to Leila Oumane, princess of that noble Arab Neja, 
 named Heyl ben Ali, upon which she put a very great 
 value, never sending it abroad but upon some extraordina- 
 ry occasion, when the greatest expedition was required : 
 having others, inferior in swiftness, for more ordinary^ 
 messages. They say that one of these Aasharies will, in' 
 one night, and through a level country, traverse as much 
 ground as any single horse can perform in ten, which is no 
 exaggeration of the matter, since many have aflSrmed to 
 me, that it makes nothing of holding its rapid pace, which 
 is a most violent hard trot, for four-and-twenty hours on a 
 stretch, without showing the least sign of weariness or in- 
 clination to bait ; and that then having swallowed a ball or 
 two of a sort of paste made up of barley-meal, and, maybe, 
 a little powder of dry dates among it, with a bowl of wa- 
 ter, or camel's milk, if to be had, and which the courier 
 seldom forgets to be provided with in skins, as well for the 
 sustenance of himself as of his pegasus, the indefatigable 
 animal will seem as fresh as at first setting out, and ready 
 to continue running at the same scarcely credible rate, for 
 as many hours longer, and so on from one extremity of the 
 African desert to the other, provided its rider could hold 
 out without sleep, and other refreshments." The follow- 
 ing extracts from Arabic poetry, translated by Sir W. Jones, 
 speak the same language : — 
 
 "Even now she (the camel) has a spirit so brisk, that she flies with 
 the rein, like a dun cloud driven by tlie wind, after it has discharged 
 its shower. 
 
 " LonjT is her neck ; and when she raises it with celerity, it resem- 
 bles the stern of a ship, floating aloft on the billow^y Tigris. 
 
 "Ah, thevehicles whicli boreaway my fair one, on the morning \^(hen 
 the tribe of Malee departed, and their camels were traversing the bsmks 
 of Deda, resembled large ships. 
 
 "Sailing from Aduli, or vessels of (the merchant) Ibn Yamin, which 
 the mariner now turns obliquely, and now steers in a direct course : 
 
 "Ships which cleave the foaming waves with their prows, as a boy 
 at play divides with his hand the collected earth.'' 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 10. Hast thou not poured me out as milk, 
 and curdled me like cheese 1 
 
 Much philological learning has been brought to the ex- 
 planation of this passage. In the preceding verse, Job is 
 speaking of his death. " Wilt thou bring me unto dust 
 again T' But what has the pouring out of milk to do with 
 death 1 The people of the East pour milk upon their heads 
 after performing the funeral obsequies. Has a father a 
 profligate son, one he never expects to reclaim, he says, in 
 reference to him, " Ah ! I have poured milk upon my head," 
 t. e. " I have done with him ; he is as one dead to me." 
 "And curdled me like cheese." The cheese of the East is 
 little better than curds : and these also are used at the funeral 
 ceremonies.— Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 2. No doubt but ye are the people, and wis- 
 dom shall die with you. 
 
 The people of the East take great pleasure in irony, and 
 some of their satirical sayings are very cutting. When a 
 sage intimates that he has superior wisdom, or when he ]s 
 disposed to rally another for his meager attainments, he 
 says, " Yes, yes ; you are the m.an !" " Your wisdom is 
 like the sea." " You found it in dreams." " When you 
 die, whither will wisdom go V " You have all wisdom !'' 
 " When gone, alas ! what will become of wisdom 1" " O 
 the Nyani! O the philosopher !" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. I am as one mocked of his neighbour, 
 who calleth upon God, and he answereth him: 
 the just upright man is laughed to scorn. 
 
 Though Job, in his distress, cried unto the Lord, his 
 neighbours mocked him, and laughed him to scorn ; show- 
 ing their own impiety, and belief that God would not an- 
 swer him. Sometimes, when a heathen (who is supposed 
 to be forsaken of the gods) performs a penance or religious 
 austerity, others will mocK him, and say, "Fast for me 
 also; yes, perform the poosy for me, and you shall have all 
 you want." Should a man, who is suffering under the 
 punishment due to his crimes, cry to the gods for help, 
 those who are near reply, (for the gods,) " Yes, we are here ; 
 what do you want? we will help you." "When the gods 
 come, tell them I am gone home; I could not remain any 
 longer." Thus was the just, the upright Job, laughed to 
 scorn when he called upon God.— Roberts, 
 
 Ver, 5, He that is ready to slip with his feel is as 
 a lamp despised in the thought of him, that is at 
 ease. 
 
 The critics are by no means agreed on the import of this 
 passage ; and, to say truth, we cannot flatter ourselves with 
 a complete removal of its uncertainty. However, the 
 attempt to explain it is honourable, even though it fail. 
 To us it seems to suggest a comparison between the super- 
 abundant splendours of the interior of a wealthy man's 
 dwelling, and the dark, dismal, night-wandering of a way- 
 worn traveller. To add a lamp, however bri.<^htly burning, 
 to what Mr. Good calls " the sunshine of the prosperous," 
 were to render that lamp a contempt, a ridicule, whereas 
 the man who stays amid mire and clay, in outer darkness, 
 would rejoice to profit by its lustre. A travelling lamp, 
 though its light be vivid, would be laughed at amid the 
 various elegant illuminations in the interior of a house 
 fitted up with great taste by a man of fashion : nevertheless, 
 however awkward, coarse, and clumsy, it may be, the man 
 who is falling into a quagmire would be extremely thankful 
 for its assistance. This acceptation of the sentiment de- 
 mands no dislocation of any word in the text: but, whether 
 it completely dissipates the obscurity of the passage, the 
 reader must judge. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 D'Oyley and Mant quote from Caryl and Poole as fol- 
 lows : " A despised )amp is of the same signification with a 
 smoking firebrand ; which last is a proverb for that which 
 is almost spent, and therefore despised and thrown away as 
 useless." In view of these observations, it is worthy of 
 notice, that of a man who is much despised, or who is very 
 contemptible, it is said, " That fellow is like the half-con- 
 sumed firebrand of the funeral pile." Job, by his enemies, 
 was counted as a despised lamp. When a person is sick 
 unto death, it is said, " His lamp is going out." After 
 death, " His lamp has gone out." When a person is indis- 
 posed, should a lamp give a dim light, the people of the 
 house will become much alarmed, as they think it a bad 
 sign. A lamp, therefore, which burns dimly, (as did that 
 of Job,) will be lightly esteemed, — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. He removeth away the speech of the 
 trusty, and taketh away the understanding of 
 the aged. 
 
 The term n^jpr seems, in this present place, to imply some- 
 thing more than " of the aged," as it is commonly render- 
 ed ; and rather intimates, " the aged oflicially convened in 
 
334 
 
 JOB, 
 
 Chap. 12—15 
 
 public council ;" whence it is rendered " senator s^^^ "by Schul- 
 tens and Dr. Stock : but elders, or eldermen, is a more gene- 
 ral term, and hence more extensively appropriate, as well 
 as more consonant with what ought ever to be the unaffect- 
 ed simplicity of biblical language. Though the term seioa- 
 tors includes the idea of age, it includes it more remotely. 
 In Gen. 1. 7, we have a similar use of the term elders : for 
 we are told, that " when Joseph went up into the land of 
 Canaan to bury his father, with him went all the servants 
 of Pharaoh, the elde7-s of his house, and all the elders of the 
 land of Egypt;" in other words, the chief officers of state, 
 the privy counsellors, and the entire senate or body of le- 
 gislators, chosen from the land or people. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 22. He discovereth deep things out of dark- 
 ness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of 
 death. 
 
 The author of the poem discovers a great partiality for 
 this figure : the reader can scarely fail to recollect its oc- 
 currence in ch. X. 21, 22. In the present instance, how- 
 ever, it appears to be used in a different sense, and to 
 allude, in characteristic imagery, to the dark and recon- 
 dite plots, the deep and desperate designs, of traitors and 
 conspirators, or other state-villains : for it should be observ- 
 ed, that the entire passage has a reference to the machinery 
 of a regular and political government; and that its general 
 drift is to imprint upon the mind of the hearer the important 
 doctrine; that the whole of the constituent principles of such 
 a government, its officers and institutions, its monarch and 
 princes, its privy-counsellors, judges, and ministers of state ; 
 its chieftains, public orators, and assembly of elders; its 
 nobles, or men of hereditary rank; and its stout, robust 
 peasantry, as we should express it in the present day ; nay, 
 the deep^, designing villains that plot in secret its destruc- 
 tion,— that the nations themselves, and the heads or sove- 
 reigns of the nations, are all and equally in the hands of 
 the Almighty ; that, with him, human pomp is poverty, 
 human excellence turpitude, human judgment error, human 
 wisdom folly, human dignities contempt, human strength 
 weakness, — Good. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
 him: but I will maintain mine own ways be- 
 fore him. 
 
 When a master chastises an affectionate slave, or tells 
 him to leave his service, he says, " My lord, though you 
 slay me, yet will I trust in you." Does a husband beat his 
 wife, she exclaims, " My husband, though you kill me, I 
 will not let you go." *' Kill me, my lord, if you please,- but 
 I will not leave you : I trust in you." " Oh ! beat me not ; 
 do I not trust in you]" " What an affectionate wife that is : 
 though her husband cut her to pieces, yet she trusts in him." 
 " The fellow is always beating her, yet she confides in him." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and 
 boldest me for thine enemy ? 
 
 Job, in his distress, makes this pathetic inquiry of the 
 Lord. Should a great man become displeased with a per- 
 son to whom he has been previously kind, he will, when he 
 sees him approaching, avert his face, or conceal it with his 
 hand, which shows at once what is the state of the case. 
 The poor man then mourns, and complains, and asks, 
 " Ah ! why does he hide his face "?" The wife says to her 
 oflfended husband, " Why do you hide your face 7" The 
 son to his father, " Hide not your face from your son." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. For thou writest bitter things against me. 
 
 " Ah ! the things that man has written against me to the 
 
 1'udge, are all kassafu, all bitter," " Oh ! that is a bitter, 
 )itter fault," " Who will make this bitterness sweet T — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 27. Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, 
 and lookest narrowly unto all my paths ; thou 
 settest a print upon the heels of my feet. 
 
 The punishment of the stocks has been common in the 
 East from the most remote antiquity, as is seen in all their 
 records. But whether the stocks were formerly like clogs, 
 or as those of the present day, it is impossible to say. Those 
 now in use differ from those in England, as the unfortunate 
 culprit has to lie with his back on the ground, having his 
 feel fast in one pair, and his hands in another. Thus, all 
 he can do is to writhe his body; his arms and legs being 
 so fast, that he cannot possibly move them. A man placed 
 in great difficulty, says, " Alas! I am now in the stocks." 
 " I have put my boy in the tulungu" i. e. stocks ; which 
 means, he is confined, or sent to school. To a young man 
 of roving habits, it is said, " You must have your feet in the 
 stocks," i. e. get married. " Alas ! alas ! I "am now in the 
 slocks; the guards are around my path, and a seal is put 
 upon my feet." — Roberts. {^See Engraving.) 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 4. Who can bring a clean thing out of an 
 unclean ? not one. 
 
 The following are common sayings : — " Who can turn 
 a black crow into a white crane V' " Who can make the 
 bitter fruit sweet V " Who can make straight the tail of 
 the dog V " If you give the serpent sweet things, will his 
 poison depart?' — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut 
 down, that it will sprout again, and that the 
 tender branch thereof will not cease. 
 
 Trees here appear to be more tenacious of life than in 
 England. See ihem blown down ; yet from the roots fresh 
 shoots spring up. See them sometimes at such an angle 
 (through storms) that their branches nearly touch the 
 ground, and yet they keep that position, and continue to 
 bear fruit. Those trees, also, which have actually been 
 cut down, after a few showers, soon begin to send forth the 
 "tender branch." The plantain-tree, after it has borne 
 fruit o'fice, is cut down ; but from its roots another springs 
 up, which, in its turn, also gives fruit, and is then cut 
 down, to make way for another. Thus, in reference to 
 this tree, it may be truly said. Cut jt down, but " the tender 
 branch thereof will not cease." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, 
 and thou sewest up mine iniquity. 
 
 The money that is collected together in the treasures of 
 eastern princes is told up in certain equal sums, jnd into 
 bags, and sealed. — (Chardin.) These are what in some 
 parts of the Levant are called purses, where they reckon 
 great expenses by so many purses. The money collected 
 in the temple in the time of Joash, for its reparation, seems, 
 in like manner, to have been told up in bags of equal value 
 to each other, and probably delivered sealed to those who 
 paid the workmen, (2 Kings xii. 10.) If Job alludes to ihii^ 
 custom, it should seem that he considered his offences as 
 reckoned by God to be very numerous, as well as not suf- 
 fered to be lost in inattention, since they are only consider- 
 able sums which are thus kept. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 19. The waters wear the stones: thouwash- 
 est away the things which grow out of the dust 
 of the earth ; and thou destroyest the hope of 
 man. 
 
 Is a man found fault with because he makes slow pro- 
 gress in his undertaking, he says, " Never mind ; the water 
 which runs so softly, will, in lime, wear away the stones." 
 —Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 7. Art thou the first man that was born ? 
 or wast thou made before the hills 7 
 
 When a majority of people agree on any subject, should 
 an individual pertinaciouslv oppose them, it will be asked, 
 " What ! were you born before all others!" " Yes, yes; 
 he is the first man : no wonder he has so much wisdom ! 
 " Salam to Ihe first! man."— Roberts. 
 
Chap. 16. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 335 
 
 Hebrew, " Wast thou born first of mankind V Such ap- 
 
 Eears to me the true rendering, though it is given dilferently 
 y different commentators, and will admit of various sig- 
 nifications ; the word din (Adam) being either a proper 
 name, or an appellative for mankind at large ; whence 
 some of the oldest versions render the passage, " Wast 
 thou born before Adam V while the generality, and in my 
 opinion more correctly, give us, " An primus homo natus 
 es?""Art thou the first-born of men 1" or, "Wast thou 
 born first of mankind 1" — Good. 
 
 Ver. 26. He runneth upon him, ev^.n on his neck, 
 upon the thick bosses of his bucklers. 
 
 Wrestlers, before they began their combats, were rubbed 
 all over in a rough manner, and afterward anointed with 
 cil, in order to increase the strength and flexibility of their 
 limbs. But as this unction, in making the skin too slippery, 
 rendered it difficult for them to take hold of each other, 
 they remedied that inconvenience, sometimes by rolling 
 themselves in the dust of the Palaestra, sometimes by throw- 
 ing fine sand upon each other, kept for that purpose in 
 Xystse, or porticoes of the Gymnasia. Thus prepared, they 
 began their combat They were matched two against two, 
 and sometimes several couples contended at the same time. 
 In this combat, the whole aim and design of the wrestlers 
 was to throw their adversary upon the ground. Both 
 strength and art were employed to this purpose ; they 
 seized each other by the arms, drew forward, pushed back- 
 ward, used many distortions and Iwistings of the body; 
 locking their limbs in each other's, seizing by the neck or 
 throat, pressing in their arms, struggling, plying on all 
 sides, lifting from the ground, dashing their heads together 
 like rams, and twisting one another's necks. In this man- 
 ner, the athletjs wrestled standing, the combat ending with 
 the fall of one of the competitors. To this combat the 
 words of Eliphaz seem to apply: "For he stretcheth out 
 his hand against God" like a wrestler, challenging his an- 
 tagonist to the contest, " and strengthening himself," rather 
 vaunteth himself, stands up haughtily, and boasts of his 
 prowess in the full view of " the Almighty," throwing 
 abroad his arms, clapping his hands together, springing 
 into the middle of the ring, and taking his station there in 
 the adjusted attitude of defiance. " He runneth upon him, 
 even on his neck," or with his neck stretched out, furi- 
 ously dashing his head against the other ; and this he does, 
 even when he perceives that his adversary is covered with 
 defensive armour, upon which he can make no impression : 
 " he runneth upon the thick bosses of his bucklers." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 33. He shall shake off his unripe grape as 
 the vine, and shall cast, off his flower as the 
 
 olive. 
 
 It would be a valuable acquisition to the learned world, 
 if observations made in Judea itself, or rather, in this case, 
 in the land of Uz, were communicated to it, relating to the 
 natural causes which occasion, from time to time, a disap- 
 pointment of their hopes from their vineyards and olive 
 plantations; and the effects of a violently sultry southeast 
 wind on their most useful or remarkable vegetables. I very 
 much question, however, whether the words of Eliphaz, iii 
 the book of Job, xv. 33, refer to any blasting of the vine by 
 natural causes; they seem rather to express the violently 
 taking away the unripe grapes by the wild iVrabs, of which 
 I have given an account in the preceding volume. It is 
 certain the word -\d3 User, translated here unripe grape, is 
 used to express those grapes that were so far advanced in 
 growth as to be eaten, though not properly ripened, as ap- 
 pears from Jeremiah xxxi. 29, and Ezek. xviii. 2 ; and the 
 verb Doni yachmas, translated here shake off, signifies re- 
 moving by violence, consequently cannot be meant of any 
 thing done in the natural course of things, but by a human 
 hand ; and if so, may as well be applied to the depredations 
 of the Arabs, as the impetuosity or deleterious quality of 
 any wind, the energy of poetry making use of a verb ac- 
 tive instead of its passive. 
 
 It may not be amiss, before I close, just to take notice, 
 that the vulgar Latin translation was so little apprehensive 
 that grapes, when grown to any considerable size, were 
 wont to drop, that its authors, or "correctors, have rendered 
 the words after this manner : " Lsedetur quasi vinea in pri- 
 
 ma Jlore botrus ejus," that is, " his cluster shall be injured 
 as a vine when it first comes into flower;" intimating, that 
 if any damage is done to the vine at all by an intemperate 
 season, they supposed it would be upon its first flowering. 
 How arduous is the business of translating a foreign poem 
 into English verse ! A multitude of circumstances must be 
 attended to by such a translator, when he finds himsell 
 obliged, as he often does, to vary the expressions a little, on 
 account of his verse ; and, for want of full information as 
 to particular points, he must frequently fail. Mistakes ot 
 this kind demand great candour. — Harmer. 
 
 A north or northeast wind frequently proves injurious to 
 the olive-trees in Greece, by destroying the blossom. Dr. 
 Chandler says, " We ate under an olive-tree, then laden 
 with pale yellow flowers: a strong breeze from the sea 
 scattered the bloom and incommoded us, but the spot 
 afforded no shelter more eligible." In another place, he 
 observes, " The olive-groves are now, as anciently, a prin- 
 cipal source of the riches of Athens. The mills for pressing 
 and grinding the olives are in the town ; the oil is depos- 
 ited in large earthen jars, sunk in the ground, in the areas 
 before the houses. The crops had failed five years suc- 
 cessively, when we arrived; the cause assigned was a 
 northerly wind, called Greco-Tramontane, which destroyed 
 the flower. The fruit is set in about a fortnight, when the 
 apprehension from this unpropitious quarter ceases. The 
 bloom in the following year was unhurt, and we had the 
 pleasure of leaving the Athenians happy in the prospect 
 of a plentiful harvest." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Ver. 3. Shall vain words have an end ? or what 
 imholdeneth thee that thou answerest % 
 
 The Hebrew has, "words of wind." "His promise! 
 it is only wind," " His words are all wind." " The wind 
 ha.s taken away his words." " Breath, breath ; all breath !" 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. I also could speak as ye do: if your soul 
 were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words 
 against you, and shake my head at you. 
 
 The whole of this passage is rendered unintelligible, in 
 its usual mode of translating, by attributing a conditional 
 instead of a future tense to it : "I also could speak, &c." 
 or, " But I could speak," — instead of, " But I will speak," or 
 "talk on."— Good. 
 
 Ver. 9. He teareth me in his wrath who hateth 
 me : he gnasheth upon me with his teeth : 
 mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. 
 
 " Has not the cruel man been sharpening his eyes upon 
 me 1" "His eyes are like arrows : they pierce my life." 
 " Truly, his cutting eyes are always upon me." " Yes, 
 yes; the eyes of the serpent." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. They have gaped upon me with their 
 mouth ; they have smitten me upon the cheek 
 reproachfully : they have gathered themselves 
 together against me. 
 
 Here is another living picture of eastern manners. See 
 the exasperated man ; he opens his mouth like a wild beast, 
 shows his teeth, then suddenly snaps them together. Again 
 he pretends to make another snatch, and growls like a tiger. 
 Should he not dare to come near, he moves his hand, as if 
 striking you on the cheek, and says, " I will beat thy kan- 
 nan, i. e. cheek, thou low-caste fellow." — Roberts. 
 
 From the following extracts, this treatment appears to 
 have been considered very injurious. " Davage was deep- 
 ly incensed : nor could I do more than induce him to come 
 to the factory on business while I was there ; Mr. Pringle 
 having, in one of his fits, struck him on the cheek with the 
 sole of his slipper, thg deepest insult that can be offered to 
 an Asiatic; among whom it is considered as a mark of dis- 
 respect to touch even the sole of the foot." (Lord Valen- 
 tia.) " In the Mahratta camp, belonging to Scindia, his 
 prime minister, Surjee Rao, was murdered in the open 
 bazar : his mistresses were, as usual, stripped of all they 
 
336 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 17, 18 
 
 possessed ; and his favourite one was sent for to court, and 
 severely beaten in the presence of Scindia's wife, who add- 
 ed to the indignity, by giving her several blows herself 
 with a slipper." (Broughton.) " When the vazir declared 
 himself imable to procure the money, Fathh Ali Shah re- 
 proached him for his crimes, struck him on the face, and 
 wiih the high wooden heel of a slipper, always iron-bound, 
 beat out several of his teeth." (Sir W. Ouseley.) 
 
 The Hindoo, religiously abstaining from animal food 
 and intoxicating liquors, becomes thereby of so very mild 
 a temper, that he can bear almost any thing without emo- 
 f'on, except slippering ; that is, a stroke with the sole of a 
 slipper or sandal, after a person has taken it off his foot 
 and spit on it ; this is dreaded above all affronts, and con- 
 •■'dered as no less ignominious than spitting in the face, or 
 bespattering with dirt, among Europeans.— Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 1 . My breath is corrupt, my days are ex- 
 tinct, the graves are ready for me. 
 
 A man far advanced in years, or one who is in deep 
 affliction, says, " The place "of burning is near to me, and 
 the wood is laid together for my funeral pile." " How are 
 you, my friend T " How am H I will tell you. Go, order 
 them to get the wood together to burn this body." A father 
 sometimes says of his wicked sons, " Yes, I know they de- 
 sire my death ; they have been preparing for the funeral ; 
 they are ready to wash me: the bier is at hand, and the 
 wood is prepared." " Why do you all look so anxious *? I 
 am not ready for the washing." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 3. Lay down now, put me in a surety with 
 thee; who is he thai will strike hands with me % 
 
 See on Prov. 6. 1. 
 
 The difficulty in this passage has resulted, in, the first 
 place, from the abruptness of the transition; and, secondly, 
 from its being, in its common construction, very improperly 
 separated from the preceding verse, and applied to the Al- 
 mighty instead of to Eliphaz, the last speaker, to whom 
 Job is peculiarly addressing himself. The fair interpreta- 
 tion is, " But if there be any meaning in what ye say — if 
 ye do not revile my character, but believe me to be the op- 
 pressor and the hypocrite ye assert— come on : I will still 
 venture to stake myself against any of you. Will any of 
 you venture to state me against yourselves 1 Who is he 
 that will strike hands with me % that will dare to measure 
 his deserts with my own % and appeal to the Almighty, in 
 proof that he is a juster man than I am ?" It is an argumen- 
 tum ad, hominem, of peculiar force and appropriation, ad- 
 mirably calculated to confound and silence the persons to 
 whom it is addressed. The custom of staking one thing 
 against another is of very early origin, and found in the 
 rudest and simplest modes of social life ; hence the pasto- 
 rals of Theocritus, as well as of Virgil, abound with ref- 
 erences to this practice.— Good. 
 
 Ver, 9. The righteous also shall hold on his way, 
 and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger 
 and stronger. 
 
 The idea here suggested is that of purity and holiness. 
 Porphyry observes, that in the Leontian mysteries the initi- 
 ated had their hands washed with honey, instead of water, 
 to intimate that they were to keep their hands pure from all 
 wickedness and mischief; honey being of a cleansing na- 
 ture, and preserving other things from corruption. — Bur- 
 der. 
 
 Ver. 14. 1 have said to corruption, Thou art my 
 father : to the worm, Thou art my mother and 
 iny sister. 
 
 Those who retire from the world to spend their lives in 
 a desert place, for the purpose of performing religious aus- 
 terities, often exclaim to the beasts, " Yes ; you are my 
 relations, you are my parents ; these are my companions 
 and friends." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. They shall go down to the bars of the 
 pit, when our rest together is in the dust. 
 
 Literally, to the limis — " the grasping limbs," " the tre- 
 mendous claws or talons" of the grave. The imagery is 
 peculiarly bold, and true to the general character under 
 which the grave is presented to us in the figurative language 
 of sacred poetry, — as a monster, ever greedy to devour, 
 with horrid jaws wide gaping for his prey; and, in the pas- 
 sage before us, with limbs in unison with his jaws, and 
 ready to seize hold of the victims allotted to him, with a 
 strength and violence from which none can extricate them- 
 selves. The common rendering oi fulcra, vedes, or bars, 
 as of a prison, is as unnecessary a departure from the 
 proper figure, as it is from the primary meaning of the 
 original term. — Good. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 2. How long will it be ere you make an 
 end of words ? 
 
 The commentators are not agreed to whom the opening 
 of this speech is addressed. Being in the plural number, 
 it cannot, according to the common forms of Hebrew col- 
 loquy, be. addressed to Job alone. Le Clerc, however, at- 
 tempts to prove, that, under particular circumstances, such 
 a form may be admitted, a«d especially when particular 
 respect is intended. Other interpreters conceive that it is 
 addressed to Job and Eliphaz, to whom Job had been just 
 replying. But the greater number concur in supposing 
 that it relates to the family or domestics of Job, in conjunc- 
 tion with himself, who, it may be conceived, were present, 
 and at least tacitly approving his rebukes : " Tu cum tua 
 familid" is the explanation of Reiske. It is more probable 
 that it applies to the interlocutors generally. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 4. He teareth himself in his anger: shall 
 the earth be forsaken for thee? and shall the 
 rock be removed out of his place? 
 
 " Foolish man, why are you so angry 1 Will your anger 
 pull down the mountain, or take a single hair from the 
 head of your enemy 1" " This evil is only felt in your own 
 heart and house : it is your own destruction." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5. Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put 
 out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine. 
 6. The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, 
 and his candle shall be put out with him. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 11. 26. 
 
 Ver. 8. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, 
 and he walketh upon a snare. 
 
 The original implies a snare with pieces of wood, or 
 other substance, put crosswise, or bar-wise, so as to sus- 
 tain the deceitful covering of turf, or other soil, put over 
 it to hide the mischief it conceals. The term is used Exod. 
 xxvii. 4, to express a grating, or net-work of brass. The 
 same kind of snare or pitfall is still frequeiitly employed 
 throughout India, in elephant-hunting. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 15. It shall dwell in his tabernacle, because 
 it is none of his : brimstone shall be scattered 
 upon his habitation. 
 
 A very singular method of expressing sorrow among 
 the ancients, was by burning brimstone in the house of the 
 deceased. Livy mentions this practice as general among 
 the Romans ; and some commentators think it is referred 
 to in these words of Bildad : " Brimstone shall be scattered 
 upon his habitation." The idea corresponds with the de- 
 sign of the speaker, which is to describe the miserable end 
 of the hypocrite. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. His roots shall be dried up beneath, and 
 above shall his branch be cut off 
 
 Man is often described as a tree, and his destruction by 
 the cutting ofl" of the branches. " Alas ! alas ! he is like a 
 tree whose branches have been struck by the lightning. 
 " He is a tree killed by the shepherds ;" which alludes to 
 the practice (in dry weather, when the grass is burned up) 
 of climbing the trees to lop off the branches and leaves for 
 
Chap. 19. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 337 
 
 the use of the flocks and cattle. " His branches and shoots 
 are destroyed;" which means, himself and family. "I 
 know all his branches and bunches ;" meaning all his con- 
 nexions. (See on Luke xxiii. 31.) — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. His remembrance shall perish from the 
 earth, and he shall have no name in the street. 
 
 " What kind of a man is Ramar 1" " I will tell you : 
 his name is in every street;" which means, he is a person 
 of great fame. " Ah ! my lord, only grant me this favour, 
 and your name shall be m every street." " Who does not 
 wish his name to be in the streets ?' " Wretch, where is 
 thy name"? What dog of the street will acknowledge theel" 
 " From generation to generation ihall his name be in the 
 streets." " Where is thy name written in stone 1 No : it 
 is written in water." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. He shall neither have son nor nephew 
 among- his people, nor any remaining in his 
 dwellings. 
 
 Heb. " Among his sojournings"— from •^i " to sojourn," or 
 " dwell for a short and uncertain period," as in travelling. 
 The idea is peculiarly expressive and forcible : not only 
 among his own people, and in his own settled habitation, 
 shall his name, his memory, his family, be extinguished ; 
 but no asylum, no refuge, shall be afforded them in distant 
 countries, and among strangers, with whom he had casually 
 sojourned, and where his memory might be supposed to 
 call forth the hospitalities of friendship. The Jewish his- 
 tory affords innumerable instances of persons compelled 
 to fly from their native homes, and seelc an asylum in the 
 bosom of strangers, to whom they were only casually, or 
 even altogether unknown : and, without ranging further, 
 the history of Moses himself, the probable writer of the 
 poem, furnishes us with a memorable example. — Good. 
 
 The original word for dwellings, Schultens says, signi- 
 fies a territory of refuge for strangers. The great men 
 among the Arabs called their respective districts by this 
 name, because they took under their protection all defence- 
 less and necessitous persons who fled thither ; they prided 
 themselves in having a great number of these clients or de- 
 pendants. This was an ancient custom in Arabia, and 
 continues to the present day. The Arabian poets frequent- 
 .y refer to it.— Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ver. 3. These ten times have ye reproached me : 
 
 you are not ashamed that you make yourselves 
 
 strange to me. 
 See on Gen. 31. 7, 8. 
 
 Ver. 6. Know now that God hath overthrown 
 me, and hath compassed me with his net. 
 
 The allusion here may be to an ancient mode of combat 
 practised among the Persians, Goths, and Romans. The 
 custom among the Romans was this : one of the combatants 
 was armed with a sword and shield, the other with a tri- 
 dent and net ; the net he endeavoured to cast over the head 
 of his adversary; in which, when he succeeded, the entan- 
 gled person was soon pulled down by a noose, that fastened 
 round his neck, and then despatched. The person who 
 carried the net and trident was called Retiarius, and the 
 other, who carried the sword and shield, Secutor, or the 
 pursuer, because, when the Retiarius missed his throw, he 
 was obliged to run about the ground till he got his net in 
 order for a second throw, while the Secutor followed him, 
 to prevent, and despatch him. The Persians used a run- 
 ning loop, which horsemen endeavoured to cast over the 
 heads of their enemies, that they might pull them off their 
 horses. The Goths used a hoop fastened to a pole. (Olaus 
 Magnus.) " In the old Mexican paintings, we find war- 
 riors almost naked, with their bodies wrapped in a net of 
 large meshes, which they throw over the heads of their 
 enemy." (Humboldt.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 16. I called my servant, and he gave me no 
 answer : I entreated him with my mouth. 
 43 
 
 When a man becomes reduced in the world, his slaves 
 no longer obey him ; he calls, but they answer not ; he 
 looks, and they laugh at him. 
 
 Hence the verse — 
 
 Kandalum, Paysar 
 
 Alitalum, Varar 
 
 Kavi-Kavi-Endar. 
 " Though I call, he comes not ; though he sees, he 
 answers not ; or, I am engaged, engaged, says he." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 17. My breath is strange to my wife, though 
 I entreated for the children's sake of mine own 
 body. 
 
 It is not often that husbands, in these regions, conde- 
 scend to entreat their wives, but they are sometimes (as 
 when sick or in any way dependant) obliged to humble 
 themselves. He then says, " My wife's breath is not now 
 as mine." " For the sake of your children listen to my 
 words." Nothing is more provoking to a woman than to 
 say she has the breath of a man. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. My botie cleaveth to my skin and to my 
 flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my 
 teeth. 
 
 I suppose the above words have given rise to the old 
 English saying, " He has escaped with the skin of his 
 teeth ;" which denotes he has had great difficulty in avoid- 
 ing the danger. But have the teeth any skinl It was 
 formerly a custom among the heathen kings to knock out 
 the teeth of their prisoners, or those who had offended 
 them ; and to this practice the Psalmist seems to allude : 
 " Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly;" and, "Break 
 their teeth, O God ! in their mouth." Those who had 
 been thus treated said, " We have escaped with the mii- 
 rasu" i. e. the gums of our teeth. When a man is angry 
 with another, he says, " Take care ; I will knock thy teeth 
 out. Thou shalt only have thy gums left," " What !" asks 
 the person thus threatened, " am I thy slave, to have my 
 teeth knocked out 1" But the teeth are always spoken of 
 as being very valuable ; and by them the people often esti- 
 mate the worth of any blessing. •' Ah ! the king might 
 have granted me that favour; his teeth would not have 
 fallen out on that account." " Would his gums have been 
 left, if he had told me that secret 1" " Yes, yes , take care, 
 or you will lose your pearls," (teeth.) *' See the miserable 
 man ; the sickness has left him his gums only." — Roberts. 
 
 There is scarcely any verse in the whole poem that has 
 more puzzled the commentators, and excited a greater 
 variety of renderings, than this. The word skin is here 
 repeated from the preceding line, for the sake of an itera- 
 tion ; in which figure no poets have more largely indulged 
 than the Asiatics, whether ancient or modern. It is a word 
 of extensive meaning, and implies generally, cuticle, peel, 
 integument, skin; and in the present place more particu- 
 larly, the gums, which are the proper integuments of the 
 teeth, the substance in which they are first produced, and 
 which, through life, affords a nutritious covering to their 
 base. It may also be rendered Jilm., although I do not 
 think this the direct sense of the term in the present pas- 
 sage ; it rather implies integuments generally, and has been 
 preferred by the original writer to any other term expres- 
 sive of the same meaning, on account, as I have already 
 observed, of the iteration hereby produced. — Goop. 
 
 In the celebrated inscription on the pillar at Delhi, called 
 the Lat of Feeroz Shah, is the followmg passage, exhibit- 
 ing a similar hyperbole in different terms : " Blades of 
 grass are perceived between thine adversary's teeth." 
 (Asiatic Researches.) The author of the Fragments subjoined 
 toCalmet's Dictionary, thus paraphrases the passage : " My 
 upper row of teeth stands out so far as to adhere to my up- 
 per lip, that being so shrivelled and dried up, as to sink 
 upon my teeth, which closely press it." He observes, if 
 our translation be right, it may receive some illustration 
 from the following instances of those who did not escape 
 with the skin of their teeth. " Prithwinarayan issued an 
 order to Suruparatana, his brother, to put to death some of 
 the principal inhabitants of the town of Cirtipur, and to 
 cut off the noses and lips of every one, even the infants who 
 
338 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 19. 
 
 were not found in the arms of their mothers ; ordering, at 
 the same time, all the noses and lips that had been cut off 
 to be preserved, that he might ascertain how many souls 
 there were, and to change the name of the town to Naska- 
 tapir, which signifies, the town of cut noses. The order 
 was carried into execution with every mark of horror and 
 cruelty, none escaping but those who could play on wind 
 instruments: many put an end to their lives in despair; 
 others came in great bodies to us in search of medicines; 
 and it was most shockmg to see so many living people with 
 their teeth and noses resembling the sculls of the deceased." 
 (Asiatic Res.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 23. O that my words were now written ! 
 oh that they were printed in a book ! 24. That 
 they were graven with an iron pen and lead in 
 the rock for ever ! 
 
 The most ancient way of writing was upon the leaves 
 of the palm-tree. Afterward they made use of the inner 
 bark of a tree for this purpose ; which inner bark being in 
 Latin called liber, the Greek 0ifi\oi, from hence, a book, 
 hath ever since, in the Latin language, been called liJ>er, and 
 in the Greek, 0i0\oi, because their books anciently consisted 
 of leaves made of such inner barks. The Chinese still 
 make use of such inner barks, or rinds of trees, to write 
 upon, as some of their books brought into Europe plainly 
 show. Another way made use of among the Greeks and 
 Romans, and which was as ancient as Homer, (for he makes 
 mention of it in his poems,) was to write on tables of wood, 
 covered over with wax. On these they wrote with a bod- 
 kin, or stile of iron, with which they engraved their letters 
 on the wax ; and hence it is (hat the different ways of men's 
 writings or compositions are called different styles. This 
 way was mostly made use of in the writing of letters or 
 epistles ; hence such epistles are in Latin called tabellce, 
 and the carriers of them tabellarii. When their epivStles 
 were thus written, they tied the tables together with a 
 thread or string, setting their seal upon the knot, and so 
 sent them to the party to whom they were directed, who, 
 cutting the string, opened and read them. It is observable 
 also, that anciently they wrote their public records on vol- 
 umes or rolls of lead, and their private matters on fine 
 linen and wax. The former of these customs we trace in 
 Job's wish, " O that my words were now written ! O that 
 they were printed in a book ! that they were graven with 
 an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever !" There is a 
 way of writing in the East, which is designed to fix words 
 on the memory, but the writing is not designed to continue. 
 The children in Barbary that are sent to school, make no 
 use of paper. Dr. Shaw tells us, but each boy writes on a 
 smooth, thin board, slightly daubed over with whiting, 
 which may be wiped off" or renewed at pleasure. There 
 are few that retain what they have learned in their youth ; 
 doubtless things were often wiped out of the memory of the 
 Arabs in the days of Job, as well as out of their writing- 
 tables. Job therefore says, " O that they were written in a 
 book," from whence they should not be blotted out ! But 
 books were liable to injuries, and for this reason he wishes 
 his words might be even graven in a rock, the most lasting 
 way of all. Thus the distinction between writing and 
 writing in a hook, becomes perfectly sensible, and the gra- 
 dation appears in its beauty, which is lost in our translation, 
 where the word printed is introduced, which, besides its im- 
 propriety, conveys no idea of the meaning of Job, records 
 that are designed to last long not being distinguished from 
 less durable papers by being printed. — Border. 
 
 The word rock, which our translators have made iise of, 
 j^eems to me to be more just than that used by Schultens. 
 It is certain that the word iix tznr, which is in the original, 
 signifies in other places of the book of Job, a rock ; and 
 never there, or anywhere else in the scriptures, that I am 
 aware of, and I have with some care examined the point, 
 does it signify a small sepulchral stone, or monumental 
 pillar. On the other hand, I am sure the words that are 
 used for this purpose, when the sacred writers speak of the 
 sepulchral stone on Rachel's grave ; of the pillar erected 
 by Absalom to keep up his memory ; and of that monu- 
 ment which marked out the place where the prophet was 
 buried that prophesied against the altar of Jeroboam, and 
 which continued to the days of Josiah; are different. Nor 
 can the using this term appear strange, if we consider the 
 
 extreme antiquity of the book of J. b ; since it is easy to 
 imagine, that the first inscriptions on stones were engraved 
 on some places of the rocks, which were accidenlly smooth- 
 ed, and made pretty even. And, in fact, we find some that 
 are very ancient, engraved on the natural rock, and what 
 is remarkable, in Arabia, "where it is supposed Job lived. 
 This is one of the most curious observations in that account 
 of the prefetto of Egypt, which was publishi-d by the late 
 bishop of Clogher ; and is, in my apprehension, an ex- 
 quisite confirmation of our translation^ though there is 
 reason to think neither the writer nor editor of that journal 
 thought of this passage, and so consequently claims a place 
 in this collection. 
 
 The prefetto, speaking in his journal of his disengaging 
 himself at length from the mountains of Faran, says, " they 
 came to a large plain, surrounded however with high hills, 
 at the foot of which we reposed ourselves in our tents, at 
 about half an hour after ten. These hills are called Gebel 
 el Mokatab, that is, the Written Mountains : for, as soon as 
 we had parted from the mountains of Faran, we passed by 
 several others for an hour together, engraved with ancient 
 unknown characters, which were cut in the hard marble 
 rock, so high as to be in manv places at twelve or fourteen 
 feet distance from the ground : and though we had in our 
 company persons who were acquainted with the Arabic, 
 Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Armenian, Turkish, 
 English, lUyrican,' German, and Bohemian languages, yet 
 none of them had any knowledge of these characters ; 
 which have nevertheless been cut into the hard rock, with 
 the greatest industry, in a place where there is neither 
 wate*-, nor any thing to be gotten to eat. It is probable, 
 therefore, these unknown characters contain some very 
 secret mysteries, and that they were engraved either by the 
 Chaldeans, or some other persons long before the coming of 
 Christ." 
 
 The curious bishop of Clogher, who most laudably made 
 very generous proposals to the Antiquarian Society, to en- 
 gage them to try to decipher these inscriptions, was ready 
 to imagine they are the ancient Hebrew characters, which 
 the Israelites, having learned to write at the time of giving 
 the law, diverted themselves with engraving on these mount- 
 ains, during their abode in the wilderness. There are 
 still in Arabia several inscriptions in the natural rock ; and 
 this way of writing is very durable, for these engravings 
 have, It seems, outlived the knowledge of the characters 
 made use of; the practice was, for the same reason, very 
 ancient as well as durable ; and if these letters are not so 
 ancient as the days of Moses, which the Bishop of Clogher 
 supposes, yet these inscriptions might very well be the 
 continuation of a practice in use in the days of Job, and 
 may therefore be thought to be referred to in these words 
 of his, O that they were graven .... in the rock for ever ! — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 23. O that my words were now written ! oh 
 that they were printed in a book ! 24. That 
 they were graven with an iron pen and lead 
 in the rock for ever ! 25. For I know that my 
 Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the 
 latter day upon the earth: 26. And though, 
 after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in 
 my flesh shall I see (jrod : 27. Whom I shall 
 see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and 
 not another; though my reins be consumed 
 within me. 
 
 It has been the fashion with a class of interpreters and 
 divines, pleased perhaps to associate their own with the 
 celebrated names of Grotius, Le Clerc, and Warbnrton, to 
 explode from this passage any reference to a future life, or 
 the expectation of the Messiah ; and no slight contempt has 
 been expressed for the credulity and mental servitude (very 
 candidly taken for granted) of those who entertain the be- 
 lief of such a reference. This has, however, been the opin- 
 ion of the greater number of scripture critics, ancient and 
 modern, popish and protestant. The usual objections 
 against this interpretation are, that no vestiges appear in 
 the book of Job, of anv acquaintance with the doctrine of a 
 future life; that it would be very extraordinary if there 
 really existed in the mjad of the composer of this book, any 
 
Chap. 19. 
 
 JOB 
 
 339 
 
 knowledge of the Redeemer to come, that such a glorious 
 hope should show itself nowhere but in this single passage; 
 that we cannot reconcile such an avowal with the despond- 
 ency which appears to have prevailed in the mind of Job ; 
 and" that the terms employed do not necessarily import more 
 than- the { ersuasi'jn of a deliverance, by divine goodness, 
 from the present calamity, and a restoration to health and 
 happiness, in the present life. To these reasonings we 
 reply, 
 
 1. Admitting that there is no intimation of the doctrine 
 of immortality and a future judgment, or of the expectation 
 of a Messiah," in any other part of this book, the conseqitence 
 does not follow. It should be recollected that, in a poetical 
 bjok, the matter is disposed considerably according to the 
 taste and choice of the writer ; and that a more vivid im- 
 pression might be made, by presenting a capital circum- 
 stance, with its brightness and force collected into one point, 
 than wov.ld be produced if it were dispersed through the 
 general composition. The whole texture of this passage, 
 introduced with the most impassioned wish for attention 
 and perpetual remembrance, and sustained in thesublimest 
 style of utterance, is evidently thus contrived to interest 
 and impress in the highest degree. 
 
 Those of our objectors who ascribe the date of the poem 
 to the period of the captivity, cannot refuse to admit that 
 the writer possessed whatever knowledge the Jewish nation 
 had with respect to a Messiah and a future state. The 
 writings of Moses and the former prophets, and the greater 
 part of the works of the latter prophets, and the books 
 grouped with the Psalms, were, at this time, the accredited 
 scriptures of the Jews; and few will be so hardy as to 
 affirm, that no intimations occur in those writings of the 
 doctrines which constituted the hope and consolation of 
 Israel. On this (in my opinion, untenable) hypothesis, it 
 would appear highly credible that some very distinct ref- 
 erence to those doctrines would enter materially into the 
 structure of the work. 
 
 2. The alleged inconsistency between these expressions 
 of triumphant confidence, as we understand them, and the 
 gloominess and despondency generally prevalent in the 
 speeches of Job, presses equally on our opponents, who con- 
 fine the passage to the expectation of restored prosperity 
 in the present life. It lies even more against them, for Job, 
 not only before, but in his very last speech, evidently de- 
 spaired of a restoration to temporal felicity. His property 
 might, indeed, by some wonderful, though "almost incredible 
 reverse of God's providence, be retrieved ; or, at least, 
 equivalent comforts in that class of things might be obtain- 
 ed : but his children were destroyed ; they could not live 
 again : and his own disorder, probably the dreadful orien- 
 tal leprosy, was incurable and fatal.' Yet. between this 
 hopeless condition as to earthly enjoyments, and a vigorous 
 aspiration of the mind after spiritual and immortal bless- 
 ings, there is no inconsistency. A man must have little 
 judgment, little taste, and less moral sensibility, who does 
 not pereeiv^e in these alternations of faith and diflidence, 
 despair and hope, a picture exquisitely just and touching, 
 of the human mind, under the influence of the most agita- 
 ting conflict between religious principle resting on the be- 
 lief of invisible existences, and, on the other hand, the dic- 
 tates of sense, the pressure of misery, and the violence of 
 temptations. 
 
 3. But we are not disposed to grant either of the assump- 
 tions before mentioned. We have better evidence than the 
 dicta of German anti-supernaturalists, or the opinions of 
 English refiners upon theology, that the patriarchs from 
 whom the tradition of divine truths had descended to Job, 
 " confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
 earth, and desired a better country, that is, a heavenly." 
 Nor is it credible that the promise of a Messiah M^as totally 
 unknown to the true worshippers of Jehovah in Arabia, 
 allied to the family of Abraham, and in the habit of reve- 
 rentially cherishing the remains of primeval truth. And, 
 besides the possession of the patriarchal religion, what is 
 there to prevent any but a deist from conceiving that God 
 might INSPIRE his "^faithful and afflicted servant with the 
 knowledge and the joyful confidence which he expresses'? 
 Is not. such a supposition consonant with all the known 
 scheme and principles of the divine dispensations 1 Was not 
 the occasion worthy of the interposition 1 Has it not always 
 been the faith of the Jewish and of the Christian church, 
 that the ultimate sentiments which it is the design of the 
 
 book of Job to support and illustrate, and which, in the se- 
 quel of the book, receive the stamp of divine approbation, 
 form a part of the body of revealed truth % There are alst) 
 many passages in the book which may be rationally urged 
 as recognitions of a future styate. 
 
 4. The bare assertion that the terms of the passage do not 
 import so much as is usually attributed to them, may be 
 fairly enough met by asserting the contraiy. To the un- 
 learned reader, as well as to the critical scholar, the means 
 of judging for himself are industriously presented, in the 
 close version given above, and in the remarks and refer- 
 ences subjoined. The words are as plain as in any instance 
 the language of prophecy can be expected to be. It appears 
 to me strictly rational, probable, and in harmony with the 
 great plan of a progressive revelation, to regard this re- 
 markable passage as dictated by the Spirit of prophecy, whi, , 
 " in many portions, and in many modes, spake to the fathers. ' 
 Let me also entreat the reader's most impartial considera- 
 tion, whether the sense here maintained is not required, 
 even necessitated, by the words, taken in their fair meaning 
 and connexion ; and whether the affixing of a lower inter- 
 pretation does not oblige those who take this course, to put 
 a manifest force upon the phrases, and upon the marks of 
 pre-eminent importance with which the sacred autlfor has 
 signalized them. 
 
 After employing the utmost force and beauty of language 
 to stamp importance upon the words which he was about 
 to utter, and to ensure for them a never-dying attention, th^' 
 patriarch protests his confidence that the living God, th«i 
 eternal, independent, and unchanging One, would be his 
 Vindicator from injustice, and his Redeemer from all his 
 sorrows ; and would restore him from the state of death, to 
 a new life of supreme happiness in the favour and enjoy- 
 ment of God. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that Job undefstood the full 
 import and extent of what he was " moved by the Holy 
 Spirit to speak." The general belief on the divine testi- 
 mony of a future Saviour from sin and its consequent evils, 
 would place him on a level with other saints, in his own 
 and many succeeding ages, who "died in faith, not re- 
 ceiving the promises" in ihevc clearest development, "bu. 
 SEEING them afar OFF." Evcu whcn those promises bar! 
 received many accessions of successive revelations, the 
 Jewish prophets did not apprehend the exact design and 
 meaning of their own predictions ; for " they inquired and 
 searched diligently— what or what kind of time, the Spirit 
 of Christ which was in them did signify." Our inquiry is, 
 therefore, not so much what the patriarch actually under- 
 stood, as what the Author of inspiration intended; since it 
 was " not unto themselves, but unto us," that the patriarchs 
 and prophets " ministered those things." " No prophecy 
 of scripture is of self-solution;" but is made gradually 
 plainer by new communications from the same omniscient 
 source, and by the light of events. 
 
 Upon this principle, it is proper for us to compare the 
 language of this passage, with the character and declara- 
 tions of Him to whom " all the prophets gave witness." He, 
 in the fulness of the times, was manifested, as the Redeemer 
 from sin'and death, the First and the Last, and the Living 
 One, the Resurrection and the Life ; who, in the appointed 
 season, " is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall 
 see him ; whose voice the dead shall hear, and hearing, 
 shall live." 
 
 If, then, the evidence which we can attain in this case, 
 be suflficient to satisfy an impartial judgment, that the pas- 
 sage before us was " given by inspiration of God," as a 
 prophecy of the second coming of the only Redeemer and 
 Judge of mankind; it is no less evidence in point to our 
 present investigation, on the person of the Great Deliverer, 
 than if it directly regarded his first advent : — and it unequi- 
 vocally designates Him by the highest titles and attributes 
 of Deity. Upon the hypothesis of those who regard the book 
 of Job as a divine parable, all doctrinal and practical con- 
 clusions from it are strengthened, rather than rendered 
 weak or precarious. — J. P. Smith. 
 
 Ver. 24. That they were graven with an iron pen 
 ' and lead in the rock for ever ! 
 
 This probably refers to the ancient practice of writifig 
 on stone (by rrieans of an iron instrument) those events 
 which were to be conveyed to posterity. The fact, also, of 
 
340 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 19—21. 
 
 lead being used, may allude to the fixing of the stone by 
 means of that metal. In all parts of the East are to be 
 found records thus written, many of which have never 
 been deciphered, as they are in the languages not now 
 understood. It is proverbiaj to say, " The words of the 
 wise are written on stone." " Learning for the young is 
 litie a writing in stone." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 26. And though, after my skin, worms de- 
 stroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. 
 
 Though worms be not in the original, I believe the trans- 
 lators have acted wisely in supplying the word for the text. 
 Dr. Mason Good translates it, " After the disease hath 
 destroyed." But the opinion of the Orientals, as expressed 
 in their ancient writings, and also in those of the present 
 day, is, that worms do exist in the skin, and in all parts of 
 the body, and that they principally cause its destruction. 
 They say the life is first destroyed by them, and afterward 
 the body. A man who is very ill, often exclaims, " Ah ! 
 my body is but a nest for worms ; they have paths in all 
 parts of my frame." " Ah ! these worms are continually 
 eating my flesh." In the ancient medical work called 
 Kurru-Ndtich-Sooteram, written by the celebrated Agattiydr, 
 it is said, " The human body contains eighteen kinds of 
 worms: — 1. the skin; 2. the flesh; 3. the bones; 4. the 
 blood ; 5. (producing) wind; 6. the excrement; 7. the urine ; 
 8. intestines; 9. (rtrcpua; 10. abscess; 11. sores (generally 
 13. leprosy; 13. itch; 14. cancer; 15. mouth; 16. teeth; 17. 
 scull ; and 18. the hair." Is it not a fact that the medical 
 men of England have only of late years discovered that 
 animalcules exist in some of these parts alluded to 7 and 
 perhaps they may do well also to inquire, whether old 
 Agattiyar b| not correct in some of his other opinions. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 28. But ye should say, Why persecute we 
 him ? seeing: the root of the matter is found in 
 
 " What is the root of his conversation 7" " Is his root 
 right V " We cannot find out his root V " Ah ! he has a 
 good root." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 16. He shall suck the poison of asps: the 
 viper's tongue shall slay him. 
 
 In a country where serpents lurk in every path, and 
 where such numbers of people lose their lives from their 
 bite, can it be a matter of wonder that they are greatly afraid 
 of them, and that their language abounds with figures taken 
 from the destructive power of that reptile 1 Some modern 
 writers have asserted, that there are very few of them 
 which have poisonous qualities. It is said that some trav- 
 ellers take occasional journeys of several months into Italy, 
 Greece, and Egypt, that they may have an opportunity of 
 writing a book " for the gratification of their friends ;" 
 find that it is necessary to contradict, or alter a little, the 
 descriptions of their predecessors, in order to find a sale, 
 or to ensure a modicum of popularity. There may be 
 something like scandal in these observations ; but I am 
 quite sure they are not without force in reference to some 
 who have favoured the world with their sketches of the 
 East. To say there are many serpents whose bite is not 
 fatal, is correct ; but to assert that there are many whose 
 bile is not poisonous, is nonsense. Perhaps the most 
 <irmless of all the tribe is the rat-snake ; but its bite always 
 produces giddiness in the head, and a great degree of 
 deadness in the part where the wound has been inflicted. 
 Apologizing for this digression, I observe, that when a man 
 is enraged with another, and yet dare not make a personal 
 attack upon him, he says, " The viper shall bite thee." 
 *' From wliom art thoul the race of vipers T' "Yes, yes; 
 the poison of the jniddeyan-pdmbo , i. e. the beaver-serpent, 
 is in thy mouth." " What ! serpent, art thou going to bite 
 me 7 Chee, Chee ! I will break thy teeth." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. He shall not see the rivers, the floods, 
 
 the brooks of honey and butter. 
 See on chap. 29. 6. 
 
 Is a man about to leave his native place, to reside in 
 another country in hope of becoming rich, people say tC' 
 him, "We suppose there are rivers of ghee, and honey 
 and milk, in the town where you are going to live !"- 
 Roberts. 
 
 In these cool countries we have no idea of butter so liquid 
 as described in these words ; it appears among us in a 
 more solid form. But as the plentiful flowing of honey, 
 when pressed from the comb, may be compared to a little 
 river, as it runs into the vessels in which it is to be kept, 
 so, as they manage matters, butter is equally fluid, and may 
 be described in the same way: " A great quantity of butter 
 is made in Barbary, which, after it is hoiled with salt, they 
 put into jars, and preserve for use." (Shaw.) Streams of 
 butter then, poured, when clarified, into jars to be preserv- 
 ed, might as naturally be compared to rivers, as' streams of 
 honey flowing upon pressure into other jars in which it was 
 kept. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 23. When he is about to fill his belly, God 
 shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and 
 shall rain it upon him while he is eating. 
 
 . A man in the East does not, as in England, say he has 
 eaten plentifully, or he has not taken any thing to eat ; but 
 he has well filled his belly, or, " to his belly there is 
 nothing." Thus, the beggar at your door stoops a little, 
 then puts his hands on the abdomen, and exclaims, " My 
 lord, for my belly nothing, for my belly nothing !" — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver, 15. What is the Almighty, that we should 
 serve him ? and what profit should we have, if 
 we pray unto him 1 
 
 The heathen sometimes ask us, " Why should we pray 
 to your God *? is there any thing to be gained by it 1 When 
 we go to our own temples, we have often fruit given to us ; 
 but when we come to yours, nothing is otfered : give us 
 something, and we will pray to him." On one of these 
 occasions, a bystander repeated a favourite proverb, " Do 
 you ask for pay when requested to eat sugarcane ?' which 
 silenced the jester. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. Lo, their good is not in their hand: the 
 counsel of the wicked is far from me. 
 
 There has been a difficulty of great magnitude supposed 
 in the present and several of the ensuing verses. Reiske, 
 in order to explain it, has recourse to his usual method ; 
 and while he changes the divison of the letters in the first 
 member of the verse before us, in order so far to obtain an 
 explanation, he transfers the ensuing six verses, from 17 
 to 22 inclusively, to a place between verses 31 and 32. 
 Other commentators, with less hardihood, suppose a dia- 
 logue to be held between the speaker and some imaginary 
 respondent, and have attempted to mark out, by inverted 
 commas, the passages that belong to the respective dispu- 
 tants. There is no necessity for any such expedients : the 
 general drift of the argument is clear : " The righteous, I 
 admit, are generally rewarded with temporal prosperity ; 
 but do not, on this account alone, accuse me ot hypocrisy 
 and all wickedness, because I am at present a sufferer ; for 
 the wicked themselves, in the mysteries of providence, 
 are occasionally allowed to partake of an equal prosperity ; 
 they live in happiness, and die in quiet, even while they 
 abjure the Almighty, and laugh at those who serve him. 
 Do not however mistake me — far be it from me to become 
 an advocate for the wicked — I know the slipperiness of 
 their foundation, and that more generally they suffer for 
 their iniquity in the present world, as well in their own 
 persons as in their posterity; I am only anxious to prove 
 that your grand argument is fallacious ; that no conclusion 
 can be drawn from the actual prosperity or misery of man, 
 as to the moral rectitude or turpitude of his heart ; and 
 that, with a wisdom which it is impossible for mortals to 
 fathom, the Almighty not unfrequently allots a similar ea> 
 terTial fate, both to the righteous and the wicked." — Good. 
 
 Ver, 17. How oft is the candle of the wicked put 
 
Xutern PoBture of Submisaion,— 1 Ciiron, 
 
 Eastern Letters — Ezra 4: 7, S. Nell. 6: 5. 
 
 Funeral Clieriot of the East— 2 Kings 9: 23. 
 
 Eaiteru moJe of Punishment — Job 13: 27 
 
 Kneading Troughs — Ex. l$i 34. 
 
 Ibex or Rock Goat — Fsalio 104: 13. 
 
Chap. 21—24. 
 
 out ? and how oft cometh their destruction upon 
 them ? God distributeth sorrows in his anger. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 11. 26. 
 
 Ver. 24. His breasts are full of milk, and his 
 bones are moistened with marrow. 
 
 When the mother dies before she has suckled her child, 
 its life has been sometimes preserved by the milk of its 
 father's breast. This curious fact was not unknown to 
 Aristotle, who says, they that have a small quantity of milk, 
 yield it in abundance when their breasts are sucked ; that 
 women who are past age, by being often sucked, and even 
 males, have yielded milk in sufficient quantity to nourish 
 an infant. Humboldt declares, in his Personal Narrative, 
 that he saw a man, an inhabitant of Arenas, a village not far 
 from Cumana, Francisco Lozano, who suckled a child with 
 his own milk. " The mother having fallen sick, the father, 
 to quiet the infant, took it into his bed, and pressed it to his 
 bosom. Lozano, then thirty-two years of age, had never 
 remarked till that day that he had milk; but the irritation 
 of the nipple, sucked by the child, caused the accumulation 
 of that liquid. The milk was thick and very sweet. The 
 lather, astonished at the increased size of his breast, suckled 
 his child two or three times a-day, during five months. We 
 saw the certificate which had been drawn up on the spot to 
 attest this remarkable fact, eyewitnesses of which are still 
 living, (1799.) They assured us, that during this suckling, 
 the child had no other nourishment than the milk of his 
 father. Lozano, who. was not at Arenas during our jour- 
 ney in the missions, came to us at Cumana. He was 
 accompanied by his son, who was then thirteen or fourteen 
 years of age. Mr. Bonpland examined with attention the 
 father's breast, and found it wrinkled like those of women 
 who have given suck." The existence of milk in the 
 breast of a male was known so early as the days of Job: 
 " His breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened 
 with marrow." — Paxton. 
 
 The margin has, for breasts, " milkpails." Of a man 
 who is very rich, it is common to say, " His chatties (ves- 
 sels) are full of milk." But of a good king or governor it 
 is said, " He nourishes like the king whose breasts are 
 full of milk." "Yes; he so rules, that the hearts of the 
 goddess of the earth are full of milk."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 32. Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and 
 
 shall remain in the tomb. 33. The clods of 
 
 the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every 
 
 man shall draw after him, as there are innu- 
 
 I merable before him. 
 
 How came Job to speak of the clods of the valley, when 
 describing magnificence of burial 1 I should suppose, in 
 answer to this question, that Job is to be understood, not as 
 intending to mark out the wonted places of their interment, 
 but the manner of ornamenting their sepulchres ; planting 
 flowers, and odoriferous herbs or shrubs, on or about their 
 graves : " Clods like those of a valley or torrent, verdant 
 and flowery, shall surround him, and be pleasing to him." 
 The liveliness of eastern poet^y here representing the dead, 
 as having the same perceptions as if they were alive in 
 their sepulchres : " He shall watch in the heap of earth, or 
 stones, that cover him," for such the margin of out transla- 
 tion tells us, is the more exact import of the Hebrew: " The 
 clods around him, like those in some pleasant valley, or 
 on the border of some torrent, shall be sweet unto him." — 
 
 JOB. , S4i 
 
 to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from 
 the hungry. 
 
 It is one of the thirty-two charities of the Hindoos, " to 
 have water ready for the traveller to drink." Hence, on 
 the public roads, in front of the houses of charitable people, 
 may be seen vessels filled with water, for the use of all who 
 pass that way. But respectable men do not drink there : 
 they go inside, and say, " Conjuni-taneer" a little water ; 
 and It is given to them. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. Whereas our substance is not cut down : 
 but the remnant of them the fire consumeth. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the reference is to the cities 
 of Sodom and Gomorrah : and as all men are often spoken 
 of as constituting one family or community, so the aban- 
 doned inhabitants of these cities are poetically represented 
 as descendants or remnants of the wicked that perished 
 in the flood.— Good. 
 
 CHAPTER XXin. 
 Ver. 11. My foot hath held his steps: his way 
 have I kept, and not declined. 
 
 When a man follows another in a path so closely as al- 
 most to touch the feet of him who goes before, it is said, 
 " His feet hath laid hold of his steps," intimating that the 
 men are so near to each other, that the feet of him who fol- 
 lows, like unto the fingers of a man's hands, seize the feet 
 of him who goes before. Thus the devoted disciple of a 
 gooroo, or the man who closely pursues another, is said to 
 lake hold of the steps of him who goes before. Perhaps 
 the figure may be taken from the great adroitness that the 
 natives of the East have in seizing hold of any thing with 
 their toes ! See a man walking along the road : *he sees 
 something on the ground, which he wishes to pick up; but;, 
 he does not stoop, as an Englishman. No ! he takes it up 
 between his first and second toes. Look at tailors, shoe- 
 makers, or sailors : when they want to twist a cord, they 
 do not tie it to a nail, or ask another person to take hold. 
 No ; they make one end fast to the great toe, and perform 
 the other operation with the hands. But the most remark- 
 able illustration of this practice was in the case of Alypulle, 
 the Kandian chief, who was beheaded near Kandy . When 
 he arrived at the place where he was to be executed, he 
 looked around for some time for a small shrub ; and on 
 seeing one, he seized it with his toes, in order to be firm 
 while the executioner did his office. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 6. For thou hast taken a pledge from thy 
 
 brother for naught, and stripped the naked of 
 
 their clothing. 
 
 This proverbial form of speech is used when a man drags 
 
 from another that which is his last resource. " Why do 
 
 70U take this tax from the naked V " What ! take a cloth 
 
 Tom the naked 1 Is there no shame V How often, also, 
 
 lo we see a man seize another by the cloth on the public 
 
 •oad, and swear if he will not instantly pay his debt, he 
 
 ihall be left naked. — Roberts. 
 
 I, Ver. 7. Thou hast not given water to the weary 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 3. They drive away the ass of the father- 
 less ; they take the widow's ox for a pledge. 
 
 How various and important are the services which this 
 humble creature renders to his master ! He serves him for 
 riding, for bearing his burdens, drawing the plough, tread- 
 ing in the grain into the flooded soil, turning the millstone; 
 and to all these services the female adds the nutritious 
 beverage of her milk. To the poor man, therefore, a single 
 ass might prove an invaluable treasure. In many cases, it 
 was the principal means of support to himself and his 
 family ; a circumstance which accounts for the energetic 
 language respecting this animal, in some passages of scrip- 
 ture. To " drive away the ass of the fatherless," Job 
 denounces as a deed of atrocity, which none but a proud 
 and unfeeling oppressor could be guilty of perpetrating. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go 
 they forth to their work, rising betimes for a 
 prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them 
 and for their children. 
 
 See on Gen. 16. 12. 
 
 The passage refers, evidently, not to the proud and 
 haughty tyrants themselves, but to the oppressed and 
 needy wretches, the Bedouins and other plundering tribes, 
 whom their extortion and violence had driven from society, 
 and compelled in a body to seek for subsistence by public 
 robbery and pillage. In this sense the description is admi- 
 rably tbrcjble and characteristic— Good. 
 
842 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 24 
 
 Ver. 8. They are wet with the showers of the 
 mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a 
 shelter. 
 
 This exactly agrees with what Niebuhrsays of the mod- 
 ern wandering Arabs near Mount Sinai: "Those who can- 
 not afford a tent spread out a cloth upon four or six stakes ; 
 and others spread their cloth near a tree, or endeavour to 
 .shelter themselves from the heat and the rain in the cavities 
 of the rocks." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 9. They pluck the fatherless from the breast, 
 and take a pledge of the poor. 
 
 It used to be said of the cruel king of Kandy, that he 
 would not allow the infant to suck its mother's breast. Of 
 a wicked woman it is said, " She will not allow her own 
 child to suck her." " O the savage husband ! he snatches 
 d>e child from his wife's breast." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. In the dark they dig through houses, 
 which they had marked for themselves in the 
 daytime : they know not the light. 
 
 The short duration of mud-walled buildings is not the 
 only objection to the use of unburnt brick ; for in windy 
 weather the streets are incommoded with dust, and with 
 mire in time of rain. At Damascus, when a violent rain 
 happens to fall, the whole city, by the washing of the 
 houses, becomes as it were a quagmire. So great is the 
 quantity of dust and mire which sometimes accumulates 
 in the streets of an eastern city, that the prophet Zechariah 
 borrows a figure from it, of great force and significancy in 
 the ear of an Oriental, to denote the immense riches of 
 Tyre: " Tyrus did build herself a strong hold, and heaped 
 up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the 
 streets." The beauty of the figure is lost if we attempt to 
 judge of it by the state of an occidental city in modern 
 times ; but it will not be easy to conceive one more stri- 
 kingly appropriate, if the streets of an eastern city, choked 
 with mire, or suiFocated with dust, are considered. Dr. 
 Shaw directs the attention of his readers to the same cir- 
 cumstance, the dissolution of oriental buildings upon a 
 shower, and supposes it may illustrate what Ezekiel ob- 
 serves respecting untempered mortar. When that traveller 
 was at Tozer, in the month of December, they had a small 
 drizzling shower, which continued for the space of two 
 liours ; and so little provision was made against accidents 
 of this kind, that several of the houses, which, as usual, 
 were built only with palm branches, mud, and tiles baked in 
 the sun, fell down by imbibing the moisture of the shower. 
 Nay, provided the drops had been either larger, or the 
 shower of a longer continuance, he was persuaded the 
 whole city would have dissolved and dropped to pieces. 
 In his opinion, the phrase " untempered mortar" refers to 
 the square pieces of clay of which the wall is constructed ; 
 but on looking at the text, it is evident that it refers to the 
 plaster which is used in the East for covering the walls 
 after they are built. The words of the prophet are : " And 
 one built up a wall, and lo, others daubed it with untem- 
 pered mortar. — Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be 
 said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have 
 4 daubed it '?" The view which Chardin gives of this text 
 is, therefore, to be preferred. According to that intelligent 
 traveller, the mud walls fall down in consequence of the 
 rain dissolving the plaster. This plaster hinders the water 
 from penetrating the bricks ; but when it has been soaked 
 with wet, the wind cracks it, by which means the rain, in 
 .«;ome succeeding shower, gets between and dissolves the 
 whole mass. To this external coating of plaster, the proph- 
 et certainly refers, and not to the bricks, of which the wall 
 is constructed ; for these, however tempered, never can be 
 .s'.ipposed to resist the action of violent rains. The ruinous 
 effect of stormy winds and heavy rains upon such frail 
 structures, is well described in ttie thirteenth verse, and 
 exactly corresponds with the accounts of modern travel- 
 -ers: "Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, I will even 
 rend it with a stormy wind in my fury ; and there shall be 
 an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones 
 in my fury to consume it. So will I break down the wall 
 that ye have daubed with untempered mortar, and bring it 
 
 down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be 
 discovered, and it shall fall, and ye shall be consumed in 
 the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the Lord." 
 The same. allusion is involved in the prediction of Amos, 
 where he denounces the judgments of God against a profli- 
 gate and refractory people : " For, behold, the Lord com- 
 mandeth, and he will smite the great house with breaches, 
 and the little house with clefts." The palaces of the great 
 and the cottages of the poor, seem to have been constructed 
 of the same fragile material ; for they were affected by the 
 storm and the tempest in the same manner, and when the 
 cup of iniquity is full, are dissolved by the same shower, — 
 
 P.iXTON. 
 
 Nearly all the houses in the East are made of unburnt 
 bricks, so that there is veiy little difficulty in making a 
 hole sufficiently large to admit the human body. No won- 
 der, then, that this is the general way of robbuig houses. 
 Thus, in the morning, when the inmates awake, they see 
 daylight through a hole in the wall, and immediately know 
 what has been done. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 8. He is swift as the waters ; their portion 
 is cursed in the earth : he beholdeth not the 
 way of the vineyards. 
 
 From this verse to the end of ver. 24, it is agreed by all the 
 translators, that there is much difficulty and perplexity. 
 "Non nimium, (says Le Clerc,) quam hac periodo se ob- 
 scurius quicquam in Sanctis scripturis" — " There is hardly 
 any passage in the holy scriptures i*ore obscure than the 
 present :" and Schultens fully concurs in the observation. 
 Hence there are no two interpreters, perhaps, who have 
 translated it in precisely the same way, or understood it in 
 the same manner. By many the text has been sii.spected 
 to be erroneous in several instances; and a sense has been 
 attempted to be extorted by pretended amendments of it. 
 Reiske, here, as on all other occasions, is by far the boldest 
 emendator ; there is scarcely a verse into which he has not 
 introduced some alteration, and in some verses an altera- 
 tion amounting to nearly half the original text. It would 
 be in vain to investigate these numerous renderings, of which 
 no one appears to me to be more perspicuous than another, 
 or to propose a clearer sense than that contained in our 
 common version, obscure and in many parts unintelligible 
 as it is allowed to be. Without dwelling, therefore, upon 
 the misconceptions of my predecessors, I shall at once offer 
 to the reader's attention, 'with much diffidence, a new inter- 
 pretation of this contested passage, founded upon a difl^er- 
 ent view of the writers' general scope and intention : and 
 in doing this, while I adhere to the original text, without 
 any amendment, the reader will find, I trust, that I shall 
 be able to extract a very obvious meaning from it, even 
 by such strict and literal rendering. What is the grand 
 point of controversy between the pious patriarch and his 
 too severe companions % I have been compelled to advert to 
 it on various occasions, and especially in the note on chap, 
 xxi. 16, which contains the patriarch's preceding reply. 
 Job is, from first to last, accused by his friends of being an 
 enormous transgressor, because it had pleased the Almighty 
 to visit him with a severe affliction : and when he at first 
 denied his being such a transgressor, he was immediately 
 taxed with gross and open hypocrisy. He defends himself, 
 in several of his subsequent answers, from this cruel and 
 unfounded charge, and ably and completely refutes the 
 very ground of the argument, by observing, in chap. xxi. 
 that although it be true that the righteous are often, and 
 for the most part, rewarded sooner or lattr, in this life, with 
 prosperity, and the wicked punished as they deserve ; yet 
 that, in the mystery of providence, the rule by no means 
 holds universally ; for that the m icked also are often al- 
 lowed to be prosperous, even to the latest period of their 
 existence, and the upright to endure an uninterrupted series 
 of pain and affliction. In chapter xxii. the original charge 
 is again, however, advanced against the patriarch by Eli- 
 phaz, who once more advises him to repent of his misdeed'^, 
 in order that he might be restored to his former prosperjtv, 
 and ascribes his vindication of liimself to a spirit of ob- 
 stinacy and rebellion. In the chapter before us, Job re- 
 verts to the argument so forcibly opened in his preceding 
 replv: and in enlarging upon it, observes not only that the 
 conduct of providence is inscrutable to us m regard to its 
 dealings with the righteous and the wicked, bitl in regard 
 
Chap. 24—27. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 34y 
 
 lo all the different classes of mankind, all the different 
 modes of life they pursue, and all the different events that 
 accompany them. In every scene we behold evil, moral 
 or physical, permitted ; in the retirement of the country, 
 and in the crowded city ; by sea and by laud : it commences 
 in the womb itself, and accompanies miia through every 
 stage of his being. We know nothing of /,he laws of prov- 
 idence ; the Almighty often appears to be labouring in vain ; 
 and vjce and virtue, the righteous and the wicked, to be 
 almost equally, and almost promiscuously, the subject of 
 prosperity and of affliction. The corollary is clear and 
 imanswerable: " How absurd, then, is it to accuse me of 
 being more a sinner than the rest of mankind, from the 
 mere circumstance of my being a severer sufferer than 
 others." — Good. 
 
 Ver. 19. Drought and heat consume the snow- 
 waters ; so doth the grave those which have 
 sinned. 
 
 Literally, " ransack or plunder them." The reference 
 is to those dikes, tanks, or reservoirs of water, which, in 
 eastern countries, are always carefully filled during the 
 periodical exudations of the large rivers, as the Nile,' In- 
 dus, and Ganges, and preserved to fertilize the soil by 
 occasional irrigations through the rest of the year, and 
 without which there can be no harvest. So Isa. xxxvi. 16 : — 
 
 Make ye peace with me, and come out to me, 
 
 And eat ye, every one of his vine, and every one of his fig-tree ; 
 
 And drink ye, every one, of the waters of his own cistern, {tanJe.) 
 
 And Jeremiah, still more at large: — 
 
 And their nobles sent their little ones to the waters ; 
 
 Tliey came to the pits, (<anA;s)— they found no water ; 
 
 They returned with their vessels empty ; 
 
 They were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads. 
 
 Behold ! chapt was the ground, for there had been no rain on the earth ; 
 
 The ploughmen were ashamed, they covered their heads. 
 
 These exudations were uniformly ascribed, and with 
 great reason, to heavy periodical rains, and sudden thaw- 
 ings of the immense masses of snow deposited in the cold- 
 er months on the summits of the loftier mountains, and 
 especially of that vast and winding chain of rocks which, 
 under the name of Caucasus and Imaus, nftis, in almost 
 erery direction, from the eastern verge of Europe to the 
 scuthern extremity of India. The two physical evils here 
 adverted lo, therefore, are among the severest scourges ever 
 inflicted upon man— the failure of the vintage and of the 
 harvest. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 21. He evil entreateth the barren that bear- 
 eth not, and doeth not good to the widow. 
 
 It is considered to be very disgraceful for a married wo- 
 man not to have children; "and the evil treatment they re- 
 ceive from their own husbands and others is most shameful. 
 Nothing can be more common than for a poor woman of 
 that description, when she has given offence to another, to 
 be addressed by the term malady, i. e. barren. " Go, bar- 
 ren one, get out of my sight." " Chie! she cannot have a 
 child." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. They are exalted for a little while, but 
 are gone and brought low ; they are taken out 
 of the way as all other, and cut off as the tops 
 of the ears of corn. 
 
 Wicked men and tyrants may be prosperous for a sea- 
 son, but they will eventually be like the long stubble, having 
 had the ears lopped off. This alludes to the custom, in the 
 East, of taking off the ears of the corn, and leaving the straw, 
 as before, standing on the ground. The grain called kur- 
 rakan is gathered by simply taking off the ears; and rice, 
 where the water still remains in the fields, is gathered in the 
 same way. The proud oppressor, then, in the end, shall 
 be like the long straw standing in its place, having " the 
 ears" cut off, and carried away. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Ver. 5. Dead things are formed from under the 
 waters, and the inhabitants thereof 
 
 What possible sense can be elicited from this passage, as 
 thus rendered % The original for " dead things," (rephaim,) 
 
 properly signifies the mighty dead, and is a common denom- 
 ination of the dead giants who died before tlie flood. The 
 spirits of these men are frequently alluded to in the scrip- 
 tures, in accordance with the popular modes of belief, as 
 incarcerated in the bowels or cavernous recesses of the 
 earth, having been ingulfed in the waters of the deluge. 
 Here the speaker is descanting, in a sublime and somewhat 
 poetic manner, upon the ubiquity and omnipotence of God. 
 Though seated upon the circle of the heavens, yet his eye 
 penetrates, and his presence visits the profoundest abysses of 
 the globe, and the spirits of the mighty dead, the tenants of 
 these gloomy mansions, quail and quake before him. The 
 true import of the original word rendered " formed" is, to 
 trenMe, shake, quake, be put in commotion. It is, therefore, 
 in fact, but saying, that the regions of the dead are perfectly 
 exposed to the omniscient survey of Jehovah, and that the 
 despairing spirits of those who perished under the over- 
 whelming mass of waters in the days of Noah, perpetually 
 quake under the consciousness of his present ire. The * 
 ensuing verse is in a similar strain : " Hell (hades, the 
 invisible world) is naked before him, and destruction hath 
 no covering." A kindred figurative mode of representa- 
 tion occurs in Isaiah, ch. xiv. 6, where the approach of the 
 once-dreaded king of Babylon to the dreary mansions of 
 the dead, is spoken of as exciting commotion among the 
 silent occupants of that nether world. " Hell from beneath 
 is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up 
 the dead (rephaim, the mighty dead) for thee, even all the 
 chief ones of the earth." We suppose that the New Testa- 
 ment contains two distinct allusions to the subject of the 
 present passage in Job, if not to the passage itself; the first 
 is James ii. 19, " Thou believest there is one God; thou 
 doest well ; the devils also believe, and tremble." Here the 
 original word for devils (daimonia, demons) is, as Campbell 
 has shown, the New Testament term for spirits of dead men, 
 especially such as were deified and worshipped after death, 
 the heroes or demigods of antiquity. This view of the 
 subject brings the two passages into very near accordance 
 with each other. The import of both is, that the spirits of 
 these mighty dead tremble in awe before the most high 
 God. The other occurs 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20, " By which also 
 he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which 
 sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering 
 of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a 
 preparing, wherein few, that is to say, eight souls, were 
 saved by water." Christ, speaking by his spirit through 
 Noah, and perhaps other good men living belx)re the flood, 
 preached to those ancient sinners, " which were of old, 
 men of renown," but whose spirits, from their having proved 
 disobedient and incorrigible, are now confined in the 
 gloomy abodes of the under world, as in a prison from 
 which there is no escape. — Bosh. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Ver. 8. For what is the hope of the hypocrite, 
 though he hath gained, when God taketh away 
 his soul? 
 
 The argument now entered upon is admirably forcible, 
 and in point ; it opposes the adverse party with their own 
 weapons. " Yoti accuse me of hypocrisy and of all wick- 
 edness, and you accuse me of thus acting from a love of 
 gain. How absurd and irrational such a motive! what 
 hope of prosperity can the wicked man indulge'? what hope 
 that God should grant him tranquillity T' Ver 11, " I will 
 teach you his lot by the hand of God himself Ye your- 
 selves know it, and have seen it." Ver. 13, "Behold! this 
 is the portion of the wicked man," &c. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 15. Those that remain of him shall be buried 
 in death ; and his widows shall not weep. 
 
 Nothing can be bolder, nothing more highly imb.ied with 
 the spirit of oriental poetry, than the entire couplet: " No 
 sepulchre, no funeral dirge : corruption alone shall be his 
 tomb; his own household shall not bewail him ; not even 
 the affectionate females of his harem, his bereft wives and 
 concubines; those cf his own rank, who brought with them 
 a dowry upon marriage, and those selected on account of 
 their personal charms, and who were married without 
 dowries." No honourable man was ever interred, in an- 
 cient times, and in eastern nations, without the solemnity 
 
344 
 
 JOB, 
 
 Chap. 27. 
 
 of public mourners in long procession, loud lamentations, 
 and metrical dirges. But it is probable that the writer, in 
 the present placed more immediately alludes to those shrieks 
 of domestic grief, which are so often to be met with in every 
 quarter of the house, and especially among the females, 
 upon the death of its master; and which is admirably 
 described in the Iliad, upon the fall of Hector. The pas- 
 sage, however, has not been understood by any of the com- 
 mentators or translators who have concurred in regarding 
 "•i-iittf as meaning the remains of his house, instead of the re- 
 via.ins of his person ; and hence our common version, 
 " those that rerfiain of him" instead of literally, " his remains.'" 
 Equally erroneous the common version, " shall be buried 
 in death ;" in which nio, here rendered death, means also 
 " mortality," " corruption," " pestilence ;" i. e. " corruption 
 alone shall be his tomb, or covering," as just explained 
 above. Reiske, not knowing how to explain this expres- 
 sion upon the common interpretation, suspects, as usual, an 
 error in the reading, and proposes a choice of three amend- 
 ments; neither of which, however, it is necessary to par- 
 ticularize. — Good. 
 
 Ver. 16. Though he heap up silver as the dust, 
 and prepare raiment as the clay. ^ 
 
 According to D'Herbelot, Bokteri, an illustrious poet of 
 Cufah, in the ninth century, had so many presents made 
 him in the course of his life, that when he died he was 
 found possessed of a hundred complete suits of clothes, 
 two hundred shirts, and five hundred turbans. This anec- 
 dote proves how frequently presents of this kind are made 
 to persons of consideration in the Levant ; and at the same 
 time furnishes a beautiful illustration of that passage in the 
 book of Job, where the afiiicted patriarch describes the 
 treasures of the East, in his time, as consisting of clothes 
 and money : " Though he heap up silver as the dust, and 
 prepare raitnent as the clay ; he may prepare it, but the 
 just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver." 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. He buildeth his house as a moth, and 
 as a booth that the keeper maketh. 
 
 Feeble in its structure and materials, short in its duration, 
 and equally incapable of resisting a thunderstorm or shower 
 of rain. So ch. viii. 14: — 
 
 " Thus shall his support rot away, 
 
 And the building op the spider be his reliance." 
 
 The genus phalaena, or moth, is divided into plant-moths 
 and cloth-moths ; and the latter have been generally sup- 
 posed to be those immediately alluded to in the present 
 place. I have some doubt of this, but the question is not 
 of consequence ; the house or building referred to is, as- 
 suredly, that provided by the insect in its larvae or caterpil- 
 lar state, as a temporary residence during, its wonderful 
 change from a chrysalis to a winged or perfect insect. The 
 slightness of this habitation is well known to every one who 
 has attended to the curious operation of the silkworm, or 
 the tribes indigenous to the plants of our own country, as 
 the emperor-moth, tiger-moth, poplar, or willow-moth, 
 &c. Of these, some construct a solitary dwelling ; while 
 others, as the brown-tail-moth, are gregarious, vast num- 
 bers residing together under one common web, marshalled 
 with the most exact regularity. The web of the cloth- 
 moth is formed of the very substance of the cloth on which 
 it reposes, devoured for this purpose, and afterward work- 
 ed into a tubular case, with open extremities, and generally 
 approaching to the colour of the cloth by which the moth- 
 worm is nourished. — Good. 
 
 The moth forms her cell in the woollen garment ; a frail 
 structure, which is soon destroyed by the devouring energy 
 of the builder. Day after day she consumes the stuff in 
 which her dwelling is placed, "till both are involved in one 
 common ruin, and reduced to nothing. Such, in the esti- 
 mation of Job, is the prosperity of a wicked man : " He 
 buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper 
 maketh." The term which that afflicted patriarch uses in 
 this passage, signifies a moth, and also the constellation 
 Arctnrus. Some interpreters accordingly render the words: 
 •' the wicked man shall build his house like Arcturus; shall 
 raise, for his accommodation and pleasure, a splendid and 
 magnificent abode, bright as the stars of Arcturus in the 
 •sh-ning vault of ^heaven; but it shall speedily rush into 
 
 ruin, like a temporary booth, where the keeper of a vine- 
 yard watches his property for a little while till the vintage 
 IS gathered." But this interpretation by no means accords 
 with the design of the speaker ; for it introduces an anti- 
 thesis into the text, instead of the conjunction, which Job 
 evidently meant, and separates the two comparisons of the 
 same thing, as if they referred to different objects. Hence 
 the common version, which unquestionably expresses the 
 true sense of the clause, is to be preferred : " The wicked 
 man, like the moth, builds his house at the expense of an- 
 other. He expels his neighbours from their possessions, 
 that he may join house to house, and lay field to field, till 
 there be no place for others to inhabit, except as dependants 
 on his forbearance or bounty, that he may dwell alone, as 
 the sole proprietor, in the midst of the earth." The idea of 
 Job is thus expressed by another prophet : " They covet 
 fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take 
 them away ; so they oppress a man and his house, even a 
 man and his heritage." But his unrighteous acquisitions 
 shall be of short continuance ; they shall moulder insensi- 
 bly away, returning to the lawful owner, or passing into 
 the possession of others. — Paxton. 
 
 Strictly, the mothworm, as it proceeds from the ^^,^ be- 
 fore it is changed into the chrysalis, aurelia, or nymph, 
 (Nature Displayed, vol. i. p. 18,) so called from its corro- 
 ding and destroying the texture of cloth. Job xiii. 28. 
 Isaiah 1. 9. li. 8. " The young moth upon leaving the ^^,^, 
 which a papilio has lodged upon a piece of stuff, or a skin 
 well dressed, and commodious for her purpose, immediately 
 finds a habitation and food in the nap of the stuff, or hair of 
 the skin. It gnaws and lives upon the nap, and likewise 
 builds with it its apartment, accommodated both with a 
 front door and a back one ; the whole is well fastened to 
 the ground of the stuff, with several cords and a little glue. 
 The moth sometimes thrusts her head out of one opening, 
 and sometimes out of the other, and perpetually devours 
 and demolishes all about her ; and when she has cleared 
 the place about her, she draws out all the stakes of this 
 tent, after which she carries it to some little distance, and 
 then fixes it with her slender cords in a new situation. In 
 this manner she continues to live at our expense till she is 
 satiated with her food, at which period she is first trans- 
 formed into a nymph, and then changes into a papilio, or 
 
 moth." — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 19. The rich man shall lie down, but he 
 shall not he gathered : he openeth his eyes, and 
 he is not. 
 
 The heathen had a conceit that the souls of such per- 
 sons as had not had the due rites of burial paid them, were 
 not admitted into hades, but were forced to wander a hun- 
 dred years, a parcel of vagabond ghosts, about the banks of 
 the Styx. Hence we find the ghost of Patroclus supplica- 
 ting Achilles to give him his funeral rites: "Bury me," 
 says he, " that I may pass as soon as possible through the 
 gates of hades." So speaks Palinurus, in Virgil: " Throw 
 upon me some earth, that at last I may obtain rest in death, 
 in quiet habitations." Here the self-conceited philosopher 
 smiles at the rite of sprinkling the body three times with 
 dust; but this, although misunderstood, and tinged with 
 the fabulous, was borrowed from the Hebrew nation. To 
 gather denotes, as to the dead, the bringing of their souls to 
 Paradise. Although this cannot be effected by mortals, 
 yet they expressed the benevolent wish that the thing mipht 
 be. oh the other hand. Job says of the rich man, he shall 
 lie down, but he shall not be gathered. In the ages which 
 followed, the performance of this rite was termed sealing. 
 Ofthiswehave a bright instance in the second book of 
 Esdras: "Wheresoever thou findest the dead, seal them, 
 and bury them;" that is, express the benevciant prayer 
 which is in use among the Jews to this day : " May he be 
 in the bundle of life, may his portion be in Paradise, and 
 also in that future world which is reserved for the righ- 
 teous." It would also appear, that in this act of sealing a 
 corpse, they either wrote upon the head with ink, or sim- 
 ply made the form with the finger, (Le-hovah.) This at 
 bottom could make no difference in the state of the deceas- 
 ed, but it expressed their desire that such a person might be 
 among those who are written unto life. From a passage in 
 Isaiah, it appears that persons were in use to mark with 
 indelible ink on the hand, the words Le-hovah, the cou- 
 
Chap. 28. 
 
 JOB 
 
 345 
 
 traded form of this sentence, lam the Lordh. This agrees 
 with what Rabbi Simeon says, " The perfectly just are 
 sealed, and in the moment of death are conveyed to Para- 
 dise." This sealing St. Paul applies, as far as wishes can 
 go, to Onesiphorus: "May the Lord grant to Onesipho- 
 rus, that he may obtain mercy of the Lord in that day !" 
 " As many," says the same apostle, " as walk according to 
 this rule, peace be on them, and upon the Israel of God !" 
 (Gal. vi. 16.) 
 
 Such being marked in death with the expression, belong- 
 ing to the Lord, explains this sentence, " the foundation of 
 the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth 
 them that are his." " Hurt not the earth, nor the trees," 
 says the angel in the book of Revelation, "until we have 
 sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads." This 
 seal, we are told, is their father's name : that is, Le-hovah, 
 the Lord's, alluding to the Old Testament form. This 
 name Christ says he himself writes, and by doing so, acts 
 the part of the Kedosh- Israel, opening where none can shut. 
 This sealing, then, is taking them off by death, and placing 
 them in his father's house ; for after they are so sealed, we 
 find them before the throne, hungering and thirsting no 
 more, and the Lamb in the midst of them, and leading them 
 forth into pastures. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 23. Men shall clap their hands at him, and 
 shall hiss him out of his place. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 2. 15. 
 
 The present female way of expressing joy in the East, by 
 gently applying one of their hands to their mouths, seems 
 to have obtained in the times of remote antiquity, and to be 
 meant in several places of scripture. What their present 
 custom is, appears in the following passage of Pitts, descri- 
 bing the joy with which the leaders of their sacred caravans 
 are received, in the several towns of Barbary through which 
 they pass : " This emir Hagge, into whatsoever town he 
 comes, is received with a great deal of joy, because he is 
 going about so religious a work; and it is, who can have 
 the favour and honour of kissing his hand, or but his gar- 
 ment ! He goes attended in much pomp, with flags, kettle- 
 drums, &c. and loud acclamations do, as it were, rend the 
 skies ; nay, the very women get upon the tops of the houses 
 to view the parade, or fine show, where they keep striking 
 their fore lingers on their lips, as fast as they can, making 
 a joyful noise all the while, which sounds somewhat like 
 yow, yow, yow, hundreds of times." Others have given us 
 nearly the same account. This seems to me to be referred 
 to in some passages of scripture ; and that the sacred wri- 
 ters suppose two different methods of expressing joy by a 
 quick motion of the hand, which is lost in our translation ; 
 for I suppose the clapping of the hands in the plural, is a 
 very distinct thing from the clapping the hand in the sin- 
 gular, though our translators have confounded them to- 
 gether. The striking one hand against the other with 
 some smartness, which we mean by the term clapping of 
 the hands, might, and I believe did, obtain anciently, as an 
 expression of joy ; not unfrequently, if not always, of the 
 malignant kind ; so the prophet Jeremiah says of Jerusa- 
 lem, when it was destroyed, " All that pass by, clap their 
 hands at thee ; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter 
 of Jerusalem, saying. Is this the city that men call the per- 
 fection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth"?" Lam. ii. 15. 
 In like manner Job, after describing the sudden destruction 
 of the wicked, says, " Men shall clap their hands at him, 
 and shall hiss him out of his place," Job xxvii, 23.— 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Ver. 4. The flood breaketh out from the inhabit- 
 ant ; even the waters forgotten of the foot : they 
 are dried up, they are gone away from men. 
 
 The mighty flood which man had dammed up, by joining 
 together mountains and mLLS, and thus forming an im- 
 mense basin, had broken down by its weight the gigantic 
 mound; had rolled "away from men," and gone in the 
 desert places. The waters of the lake are now " forgot- 
 ten of the foot, they are dried up ;" for the feet of men in 
 walking there think of them no more. — Roberts, 
 
 Mr. Parkhurst considers this chapter as relating to 
 mineralog}', and renders these words, "a torrent bursteth 
 44 
 
 forth from the rubbish unexpectedly ; by the foot they are 
 drawn off, by man they are removed." As an explanation, 
 he adds the following extract from Mr. Hutchinson : " It 
 is hardly credible how great a quantity of water will be 
 sometimes flung upon mmers, when they come to break up 
 strata of stone, that have in them many of these cracks, 
 that are so small that they are scarcely discernible. These 
 are indeed the natural conveyances of w'ater, and when 
 once they are opened, it runs incessantly. I have observed 
 such an eruption of water in vast quantity out of stone, 
 that, excepting those cracks, is much loo dense and close to 
 let any humidity pass." " The vast profusion of water 
 that sometimes ensues the breaking up of the strata in coal- 
 pits, is well known to those who are in the least conversant 
 in that affair: and what amazing quantities are drawn off 
 from deep mines, either by drains or levels, or raised by 
 engines, is also well known ; nay, in digging common 
 wells and ponds, in places where there are no springs 
 above ground, it frequently happens that such a glut of 
 water issues forth as to endanger the lives of the work- 
 men." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 6. The stones of it are the place of sapphires ; 
 and it hath dust of gold. 
 
 The STONES which form and bind together the mounds 
 and hills are taken from the exact places where sapphires 
 are found. For Jameson informs us, that " the geognos- 
 tic situation of the sapphire is in alluvial soil, in the vicin- 
 ity of rocks, belonging to the secondary floetz trap formation, 
 and imbedded in gneiss." In reference to its geographic 
 situation, the same writer says, it is found particularly 
 beautiful in Asia, in the Capelan mountains, in Persia, and 
 the Island of Ceylon. Dr. Davy states, that "the sapphire 
 occurs in considerable abundance in the granitic alluvion 
 of Matura and Saffragam," (in Ceylon.) Thus, the stones 
 of which the mound is formed, are the true geognostic 
 situation where the sapphire is found ; and there can be no 
 doubt that the workmen, in hewing and detaching the 
 masses fom the rocks, and in joining them to the mount- 
 ains, did, by this secondary kind of mining, often find the 
 precious sapphire. " And it hath dust of gold." The 
 same mineralogist states, (and it is a well known fact,) 
 " that in Asia the sand of many rivers affords gold," and 
 it is washed down in great quantities from the mountains 
 on the coast of Sumatra, where it is afterward found in 
 the beds of rivers. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; 
 and his eye seeth every precious thing. 
 
 In our commor version, " he cutteth out rivers ;" in one 
 or two others, " canals." The exact meaning is, the hol- 
 lows that are delved by mmers in a metallic bed or mount- 
 ain, often serving as passages to the central chamber. By 
 cleaving such openings as these, the metallurgist may truly 
 be stated, which he could not be in the usual rendering 
 of " cutting out rivers," " to discover every precious gem," 
 — Good. 
 
 Savary informs us, the canal Bahr Joseph " must have 
 cost immense sums, being in many parts cut through the 
 rock !" Bishop Heber also states that the lake of Ajmeer 
 is formed " by damming up the gore of an extensive val- 
 ley, and conveying different small rills into it !'' Thus, 
 in making his rivers and rivulets through the rocks, in 
 order to convey the water to its destined place, he at the 
 same time sees '* every precious thing :" because his work 
 lies in the geognostic situation of those valuable gems. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. Hebindeth the floods from overflowing; 
 and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to 
 light. 
 
 According to Reiske, " E fonticulo'compellit in uftum 
 alveum," — " He driveth them from their spring into a com- 
 mon reservoir." According to the mare general interpreta- 
 tion, " He bindeth the flood from overflowing." The sense 
 has not been fairly understood. Every one acquainted with 
 mining knows, that, at different depths from the surface, the 
 shaft, or aperture, is so apt to be overflowed with water 
 from surrounding springs, that it is impossible to work it 
 till the water is drawn off; the macjiinery to accomplish 
 
346 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 29. 
 
 which is sometimes one of the most serious expenses inci- 
 dental to working a mine. It is to the restraint of these 
 waters, so perpetually oozing or weeping through e very- 
 pore, that the writer alludes in the present passage. — 
 Good. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Ver. 2. Oh that I were as in months past, as in 
 the days when God preserved me ; 3. When 
 his candle shined upon my head, and when by 
 his light I walked through darkness. 
 
 The winter in Canaan is extremely wet and cold. In 
 the time of the crusades, many of the troops perished 
 through want of provisions, intenseness of the cold, and 
 the heaviness of the Avinter rains. Fulcherius, who was 
 in the retinue of the prince of Antioch, in his journey to 
 Jerusalem, and saw many of both sexes die, besides num- 
 bers of their cattle, says, they were kept wet for four or 
 five days together, by the continual rains. So great is the 
 quantity of rain Avhich occasionally falls, and so intense 
 the cold, that the elements seem to conspire the ruin of every 
 living creature that is exposed to their fury. It is agreed 
 by all those who have written on the subject, that all the 
 winter months in Palestine are rainy ; and by consequence, 
 that Judea is not one of those regions where it only rains 
 at the equinoxes. The Hebrew word horeph, according- 
 ly, which we translate winter, in Mr. Harmer's opinion, 
 seems rather to mean precisely the wet season. " O that 
 I were as in months past," says Job, "as in the days 
 when God preserved me, as I was in the days of my win- 
 ter !" In the days of his moist time, when, as he expresses 
 it, " my root was spread out by the waters, and the dew 
 lay all night upon my branch: my glory was fresh in me." 
 Not in the days of his disgrace then, the days in which he 
 was stripped of his ornaments, as an herb of its leaves and., 
 flowers in the winter; but like a plant, in the latter part of 
 the rainy season, before the violent heats come on, which 
 scorch and burn up every green thing. But the term ho- 
 reph, from the verb haraph, to strip, literally means the 
 stripping season ; and signifies that part of the year which 
 strips vegetables of their flowers, fruit, and leaves, and 
 consequently, the earth of its beauty. It is opposed to 
 kaitz, from koutz, to awake, or quicken, the quickening 
 or awakening season, and includes both autumn and win- 
 ter. Is it probable that the cold-and rainy season of win- 
 ter would be an object of desire to Job, when " the heavens 
 are filled with clouds, when the earth swims to rain, and 
 all nature wears a lowering countenance 1" It is more 
 natural to render the phrase, in the days of his autumn, 
 which in those climates is a delightful season ; for then 
 the heats are abated, the earth is moistened with dew, or 
 refreshed with the first showers of the latter rain, and the 
 various fruits of the earth, to use the beautiful language 
 of inspiration, are ready to drop into the mouth of the eater; 
 or, the fields and trees being stripped of their produce, are 
 heaped on its board. The afflicted patriarch certainly re- 
 ferred to the end of harvest, in allusion to which he might 
 say, with strict propriety, " my root was spread out by the 
 waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branches; my 
 glory was fresh in me." — Paxton. 
 
 The slaughter of Saul filled his camp with terror and 
 mourning : before that, it is probable, his tent might some- 
 times be distinguished by lights ; at least these illumina- 
 tions are now used in those countries to do honour to 
 princes, and must not here be forgotten. So the tent of 
 the bey of Girge, Norden tells us, was distinguished from 
 the other tents in that encampment, by forty lanterns sus- 
 pended before it in form of checker-work. So Thevenot, 
 describing the reception of the new bashaw of Egypt under 
 tents, near Cairo, says there were two great trees, on which 
 two hundred lamps hung, at the gate of the little enclosure 
 which surrounded his pavilions, which were lighted in the 
 nighttime ; and that there was the same before the tents 
 of the principal officers, as in the caravan of Mecca. In 
 the East, it is now a customary thing; if it was the same 
 anciently, perhaps the words of Job might refer to it, ch. 
 xxix. 2, 3 : " Oli that it were with me as in months past, 
 as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle 
 shined upon my head," when I returned prosperous from 
 expeditions against the enemies of my tribe, and had my 
 
 tent adorned with lamps, " and I passed through the night 
 by the light of it."— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 4. As I was in the days of my youth, when 
 the secret of God was upon my tabernacle. 
 
 Job was reverting to the time of his prosperity, as is seen 
 in the preceding verse, " when his candle shined upon my 
 head, and when by his light I walked through darkness;" 
 " when my children were about me, when I washed my steps 
 with butter." The Psalmist also is speaking of the pros- 
 perity of those who fear the Lord. To say the secret of 
 the king is with such a person, is a strong way of descri- 
 bing the intimacy which exists betw^een them. ''' Take care 
 how you accuse him to the great man, because his secret 
 is with him." " Alas! alas! his secret is no longer with 
 me ; his lamp no longer shines in my heart." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 6. When I washed my steps with butter, 
 and the rock poured me out rivers of oil. 
 
 Bottles of goat-skin, with the hairy side inwards, receive 
 the milk of their flocks : and when ihey wish to make but- 
 ter, they put the cream into a goat-skin, prepared in the 
 same manner, Avhich they suspend in their tents, and then 
 pressing it to and fro, in one uniform direction, quickly 
 produce a separation of the unctuous from the wheyey part 
 of the fluid. In the Levant, they tread upon the skin with 
 their feet, which produces the same effect. The last method 
 of separating the butter from the milk, perhaps may throw 
 light upon a passage in Job, of some difficulty: " When I 
 washed my steps with butler, and the rock poured me out 
 rivers of oil." Commentators have observed, what must be 
 obvious to every reader, that the afflicted patriarch meant 
 to say, he once possessed great abundance of these products ; 
 but they have not been able to account for the manner of 
 his expression. The way of a great personage was some- 
 times swept, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes 
 watered ; but never, as far as we know, moistened with 
 butter. The feet were sometimes anointed with oil, in 
 which odoriferous substances had been infused ; but to them, 
 butter was never applied. It is more natural to suppose, 
 that these words of Job referred to the method of churning 
 their milk, by treading upon large skins full of cream, with 
 their bare feet. It conveys a still more lively idea of the 
 exuberant plentv which Job once possessed, if this method 
 was adopted when they had large quantities of milk to 
 churn. A variety of practice very similar to this appears 
 to have prevailed in the ancient vineyards. When a small 
 quantity of grapes was to be pressed, it seems to have been 
 done with the hand ; for Pharaoh's butler dreamed that he 
 took the grapes and pressed them in this manner into his 
 master's cup. This, it must be admitted, was only a vision- 
 ary scene ; but we must suppose it corresponded with gen- 
 eral custom. So, when they meant to churn a small quan- 
 tity of cream, they s' spended it in a skin, from the roof of 
 the tent ; and the 'female part of the family conducted the 
 process. But when the quantity was very "large, as it must 
 have been in the extensive dairies of the patriarchs, who 
 possessed such immense flocks and herds, it was put into a 
 number of skins, and churned by the feet of men. This 
 Mr. Harmer considers as no improbable account, and by no 
 means an unnatural explanation of the phrase, " I washed 
 my steps with butter;'^ and in the present state of our 
 knowledge, perhaps a more satisfactory one cannot be 
 given. Greece, indeed, lies at a great distance from the 
 land of Uz, and the age when Job flourished is far removed 
 from our times ; but as a skin is still the churning vessel 
 used by the Arabs in the Holy Land, as well as in Barbary, 
 and consequently, as their ciistoms admit of little or no va- 
 riation, the use of skins in churning must belong to a very 
 remote antiquity. And the same reason that might induce 
 the more opulent Greeks, in the time of Chandler, to tread 
 their cream, rather than swing it in the lent, or between tw^o 
 poles, as the Arabs generally do, might also mduce the 
 richer proprietors in Asia, who possessed such numerous 
 flocks, to adopt the same custom. The expression, it must 
 be allowed, is highly figurative, but not more so than many 
 others, in which the oriental muse delights. The term 
 washing, when used poetically, is not surely confined to 
 cleansing the feet, bv some purifving fluid ; for dipnmg the 
 feet in the blood of the slain, t n; Psalmist calls washmg the 
 
Chap. 29 
 
 JOB 
 
 347 
 
 feet. Hence, to plunge them into cream or buttei , or to 
 sprinkle them profusely with it, may be called washing 
 them in butter, with equal propriety ; and walking in it, 
 washing the steps. 
 
 The butter is carried to market in the same goat-skins in 
 which it is churned. In consequence of this mode of man- 
 agement, it becomes necessary to melt and strain it, in order 
 to separate the impurities; a process by which it acquires 
 a certain rancid taste, disagreeable, for the most part, to 
 strangers, though not to the natives. To this custom of 
 melting the butter, in order to clarify it, Zophar seems to 
 allude, in his description of the state and portion of a 
 wicked man: "He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the 
 brooks of honey and butter." As the flowing of honey 
 from the comb into the vessels in which it is to be kept, 
 may, by a bold figure, be compared to a little river ; so may 
 clarified butter, when poured into the jars in which it is 
 preserved for use. The wicked man, says Zophar, shall 
 not see the rivulets, much less the rivers, still less the tor- 
 rents of honey and butter, (as the clause ought to be ren- 
 dered,) which the righteous may hope to possess. In our 
 excellent translation, the beauty of the climax in this in- 
 stance is lost ; for instead of continuing to rise, it sinks in 
 the close, ending with brook, after mentioning rivers and 
 torrents ; but in the original it is equally striking and well 
 conducted. — Paxton. 
 
 These are figurative expressions to denote great pros- 
 perity. " The man is so rich, he washes himself with 
 ney" i. e. clarified botte-r. " Oh, the charitable man, milk 
 and honey accompany his feet." So great was the profu- 
 sion, " the honey caused the feet to slip," (in the paths,) the 
 creepers danced, the trees nodded their heads, and milk, 
 from the dwellings of the cattle, flowed in streams through 
 the streets. (Scanda Purana.)— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. When I went out to the gate, through the 
 city, when I prepared my seat in the street. 
 
 This intimates that Job was a judge among his people, 
 as the courts of justice in former times were kept in such 
 situations. Who has not seen a great man or a saint thus 
 having his seat prepared in the street 1 There he goes un- 
 der a shady tree, or under a veranda, or in a rest-house, 
 with his servant following him, having a mat or a tiger's 
 skin, or that of some other animal under his arm. The 
 seat is prepared, and the crosslegged sage sits to hear and 
 answer questions. — Roberts. 
 
 Chardin says, it is the custom of Asia not to go into the 
 shops, which are very small, but to sit down in seats pre- 
 pared for the purpose on the outside, on which cushions 
 are laid for persons of distinction ; and he adds, that people 
 of quality cause carpets and cushions to be carried wherever 
 they please, that they may repose themselves upon them 
 more agreeably. To a custom of this kind Job seems to 
 refer in his mournful retrospect of departed prosperity: 
 " When I went out to the gate through the city, when 1 
 prepared my seat in the street." This patriarch was a 
 prince and a judge among his people, and was, therefore, 
 entitled to' take his seat in the gate, which was the ordinary 
 place of hearing causes in the East, attended by a retinue of 
 servants, with carpets and cushions for his accommodation, 
 according to his rank, and theofiice he sustained. — Paxton. 
 
 Numbers of the Southern Arabs assemble in their mar- 
 kets by way of amusement, and consequently, for conver- 
 f.ation : the same custom appears anciently to have obtained, 
 m places of the East, less remote from us than Yemen. 
 
 "Notwithstanding this external gravity," says Niebuhr, 
 " the Arabs love a great deal of company ; accordingly, 
 one sees them assiduously assembling in the public coffee- 
 nouses, and, above all, running to fairs, in which no coun- 
 try, perhaps, more abounds than Yemen; since there is 
 scarcely a village of any consideration to be found, which 
 has not a weekly fair. When the villages are at some 
 distance from each other, their inhabitants assemble on the 
 appointed day in the open fields. Some come hither to buy 
 or to sell ; others, who are mechanics of various professions, 
 employ sometimes the whole week in going from one little 
 borcsigh to another, in order to work at these fairs; and 
 finally, many propose to themselves to pass away the time 
 there more agreeably than at home. From this taste of the 
 Arabs for society, and especially of those of Yemen, it is 
 easy to infer that they are more civilized than it may be 
 
 imagined." Michaelis, the great promoter of Niebuhr'sex- 
 pedition into the East, has taken notice of this passage in 
 his extract from this work, .saying, " The public places are, 
 to this day, in Yemen, the places of diversion, and thus 
 serve two uses; just as the gates of cities, which anciently 
 were made their public places, as we are told in the Bible, 
 Gen. xix. 1. Job xxix. 7. Ps. Ixix. 14," &c. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 8. The young men saw me, and hid them- 
 selves: and the aged arose, and stood up. 
 9. The princes refrained talking, and laid 
 their hand on their mouth. 
 
 What a graphic scene is this ! When a man of rank 
 passes a crowd, the young people and children conceal 
 themselves behind their seniors, and the aged always arise 
 from their seats. See the man in a court of justice, who is 
 listening to the address of the judge, and his hand is placed 
 on his mouth. To place the hand on the mouth also de- 
 notes astonishment ; and Major Laing says, when he was 
 at Toma, in Africa, a woman was so much surprised at 
 the sight of a white man, that she " did not stir a muscle 
 till the whole had passed, when .she gave a loud halloo of 
 astonishment, and covered her mouth with both her hands." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 This is a most elegant description, and exhibits most 
 correctly that great reverence and respect which was paid, 
 even by the old and decrepit, to the noly man in passing- 
 along the streets, or when he sat in public. They not only 
 rose, which in men so old and infirm was a great mark of 
 distinction ; but they stood ; they continued to do it, though 
 even the attempt was so difficult. — Lowth. 
 
 When the easterns wish to be silent, they place their 
 hand upon their mouth, to express their intentions by action, 
 and their sentiments by attitude. Many instances of this 
 practice are to be found. " In one of the subterranean 
 vaults in Egypt, where the mummies lie buried, they found 
 in the coffin an embalmed body of a woman, before which 
 was placed a figure of wood, representing a youth on his 
 knees, laying a finger on his mouth, and holding in his 
 other hand a sort of chafingdish, which was placed on his 
 head, and in which, without doubt, had been, some per- 
 fumes." (Maillet.) 
 
 " On our taking possession of Rosetta, at an entertain- 
 ment which was given, a young Greek came up to me, 
 kissed my .shoulder, and with his finger on his lips, without 
 uttering a single syllable, slipped privately into my hand a 
 nosegay which he'had brought me: this simple demonstra- 
 tion completely unfolded all his sensations, and was ex- 
 pressive of his political situation, his fears, and his hopes." 
 (Denon.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. I put on righteousness, and it clothed 
 me : my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. 
 
 See on Is. 28. 5. 
 
 Or turban. This consists of a cap and a sash of fine 
 linen or silk, wound round tjie bottom of it. This is the 
 usual headdress of the Turks, Persians, Arabs, and other 
 eastern nations. Dr. Shaw says, "The Moors and Turks, 
 with some of the principal Arabs, wear upon the head a 
 small hemispherical cap of scarlet cloth. The turban, as 
 they call a long narrow web of linen, silk, or muslin, is 
 folded round the bottom of these caps, and very properly 
 distinguishes, by the number and fashion of these folds, the 
 several orders and degrees of soldiers, and sometimes of 
 citizens, one from another." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I 
 to the lame. 
 
 The man who bestows great charities, is said to be the 
 eyes of the blind, and the feet of the cripples. " True, my 
 lord, I am blind ; but you are my eyes." " Ah ! sir, shall I 
 not love my eyes 1" " O king," says the lame man, " are 
 you not my staff 1" "Alas! alas! our eyes have gone," 
 say the blind, when their benefactor is dead. But when a 
 person confides in the wisdom of another, he says, " He is 
 my eyes." " I have two good eyes in the temple." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. My root icas spread out by the waters, 
 and the dew lay all night upon my bra'nch. 
 
348 
 
 JOB 
 
 Chap. 30. 
 
 " The precious water of the Cephissus is the property of 
 the waivode only during the season of watering the olive- 
 wood : for the remaining months the owners of the gar- 
 dens, in a proportion settled by long usage, divert the stream 
 into their grounds, for one, two, or three hours in a week 
 or fortnight, according to the bargain at which they have 
 hired or purchased their land. The instant that the stream 
 is turned into the required channel, a public inspector, who 
 is called Dragaris-too-nen, and is always in attendance, 
 turns his hourglass, and the gardener also measures the time 
 in the same manner ; other Greeks frequently being present 
 to prevent collusion, and cut off the rivulet immediately at 
 the expiration of the stipulated hour." — (Hobhouse.) 
 
 It is well known that in the hot eastern countries, where 
 it rarely rains during the summer months, the copious dews 
 which fall there during the night, coritribute greatly to the 
 nourishment of vegetables in general. " This dew," says 
 Hasselquist, speaking of the excessively hot weather in 
 Egypt, " is particularly serviceable to the trees, which 
 would otherwise never be able to resist this heat; but with 
 this assistance they thrive well, and blossom and ripen their 
 
 fruit."— BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 20. My glory was fresh in me, and my bow- 
 was renewed in my hand. 
 
 This figure is much used in their poetry. " The bow is 
 bent in his hand." " See the strong bow ; it is bent to kill 
 thee:" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 22. After my words they spake not again ; 
 and my speech dropped upon them. 
 
 Of a man who speaks with great euphony, it is said, " His 
 words come, tule tule ydka" i. e. drop by drop. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Ver. 2. Yea, whereto might the strength of their 
 hands profit me, in whom old age was perished? 
 
 The Tamul translation has this, " as the strength of the 
 hands being gone by old age." Of a man who has become 
 weak in consequence of age, it is said, " Ah ! by reason of 
 old age, the strength of his hands has departed from him." 
 " It is true he is an old man, but the strength of his hand 
 has not perished." But this mode of expression also refers 
 to a man's circumstances. Thus, when a person has lost 
 his property, it is said, " the strength of his hands has gone." 
 " Poor man ! he has not any strength in his hands." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 3. For want and famine thei/ were solitary ; 
 fleeing into the wilderness in former time deso- 
 late and waste : 4. Who cut up mallows by 
 the bushes, and juniper-roots for their meat. 
 
 This describes the ignoble ^tate of the parents of those 
 children by whom Job was now held in derision. In the 
 book called Sintha Manni, there is an account of some 
 princesses, who once had their rice, like jasmine flowers, 
 given them on golden plates ; but now they had to go with 
 potsherds, to beg for the leaves from the hedges for their 
 daily food. A rich man brought to poverty, sometimes 
 00I.0 u What care 1 7 Can I not go into the desert, and 
 
 asks, 
 
 live on roots and leaves V It is a fact, that numbers do thus 
 live, especially the Vedahs, and those who have retired 
 from men. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in 
 caves of the earth, and in the rocks. 
 
 The oriental shepherd and his family sometimes take 
 up their abode in caves, with which the country, particu- 
 larly about Askelon, abounds. These caverns are often so 
 capacious as to admit the master and his whole property. 
 In times of imminent danger, the people forsake their 
 towns and villages, and retire with their wives and chil- 
 dren, their flocks and herds, into these dark recesses, 
 which have been from time immemorial the refuge of the 
 oppressed. It was in these hiding-places that Baldwin I., 
 «ring of Jerusalem, in the barbarous age of the crusades, 
 
 found the inhabitants of many villages, with their flocks 
 and their herds, who had favoured the cause of his enemies, 
 and fled at his approach. In Egypt, such excavations ap- 
 pear to have been the sealed abodes of a numerous and 
 peaceful population. Dr. Richardson entered several mount- 
 ain defiles, on his way to Nubia, where he found " a num- 
 ber of excavations extremely well executed, covered with 
 sculpture, and painted in the most brilliant colours ; like- 
 wise a number of pits sunk perpendicularly into the rock, 
 all of which have been used as burying-places, and many 
 of them still contain handsome mummy cases, made of 
 wood and stone, beautifully painted in a variety of colours, 
 and covered with curious devices." But besides these, 
 " high up in the front, along the base of the mountain, and 
 over the rocky flat, all the way from Medina Thabou, there 
 are innumerable excavations, maiiy of them large and beau- 
 tifully formed, painted, and sculptured with many curious 
 devices, illustrative of ancient customs. In one place above 
 Medina Thabou, the doors into these excavations are so nu- 
 merous and so contiguous, that they resemble a row of 
 houses in a village. They have a long piazza in front, and 
 a large apartment within ; and a long shaft running back 
 into the rock. They rise in tiers above each other, accord- 
 ing to the different elevations of the mountain. They have 
 evidently been dwell inghouses, and, from the shady piaz- 
 za in front, the spectator enjoys the most delightful view 
 that can possibly be obtained of the plain of Thebes." In 
 Hindostan, too, the fainting inhabitants are forced to escape 
 from the severe fervours of an eastern noon, into vast arti- 
 ficial caverns, and into grottoes of the most refreshing cool- 
 ness, which the great and the wealthy cause to be con- 
 structed in their gardens.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And now my soul is poured out upon 
 me : the days of affliction have taken hold upon 
 me. 
 
 " Why are you so dejected, my friend 1" " Because the M- 
 takdlam, i. e. the ruinous time, has caught me." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear 
 me : I stand up, and thou regardest me not. 
 
 It is extremely mortifying, when a man stands up, nrit to 
 be noticed. A native gentleman had a case which he wish- 
 ed to bring before the notice of the king of Tanjore, and 
 asked my advice how to act. I recommended him to go to 
 the capital, and wait upon his majesty. On his return, he 
 informed me he had not stated his case to the king ; and, 
 upon my blaming him, he asked, " What could I do ? I 
 went to a place where I knew he would have to pass ; and 
 when he came near, I stood up ; but he regarded me not." 
 — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 22. Thou liftest me up to the wind ; thou 
 causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my 
 substance. 
 
 This figure is probably taken from the'custom of an an- 
 gry man, who takes any light substance and throws it into 
 the wind, saying to his antagonist, " Thus shall it be with 
 thee." — Roberts. 
 
 There is a remarkable figurative representation in Job, 
 chap. XXX. 22, thus rendered in our translation : " Thou 
 liftest me up to the wind ; thou causest me to ride upon it, 
 and dissolvest my substance." Possibly after we have ex- 
 amined the phraseology of this passage, its force may be 
 further evident, and it may receive additional illustration. 
 
 " Thou dost raise me up on high, into the air, by the 
 agency — of— upon — the wind ; thou dost make me to ride 
 on it, as on a chariot, or other vehicle ; and dost dissolve — 
 disperse — dissipate — my whole — entire — my all: all that I 
 ever was : all that I ever possessed." Such is the power of 
 the original. 
 
 This might perhaps be referred to a vapour raised by 
 the wind, which, after being borne about among the clouds, 
 is dissolved, and falls in dew: but, (1.) the wind which 
 raises it, seems rather to describe a storm, and during 
 storms dew does not perceptibly rise. (2.J The current of 
 wind, which, like a chariot, bears away the subject of its 
 power, is a vehement, powerful, rapid blast; as we say, a 
 high wind; and does net agree with the formation, &c. of 
 
Chap. 80. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 849 
 
 dew, which is a tranquil, deliberate process. (3.) The word 
 (jjn) megeg, is applied to express the melting of a solid 
 body; as of the earth with rain; Psalm Ixv. 10; of the hills, 
 through intense heat, Nahum i. 5; so Amos ix. 13. Mr. 
 Scott has rendered the passage — 
 
 Roused by Almighty force a furious storm — 
 Ilpcauglit me, wtiirl'd nie on its eddying gust, 
 Then dash'd me down, and shatter'd me to dust. 
 
 Under these considerations, we presume to think the 
 reader will agree with us in referring it to a sandstorm : 
 possibly such as we have noticed in the former number ; 
 or, much rather, such as is described by the following in- 
 formation, which the reader will not be displeased to pe- 
 ruse, as it stands high among the most picturesque and 
 most terrific descriptions of the kind to be met with. It is 
 from Mr. Bruce. 
 
 " On the 14th, at seven in the morning, we left Assa Nag- 
 ga, our course being due north. At one o'clock we alight- 
 ed among some acacia-trees, at Waadi el Halboub, hav- 
 mg gone twenty-one miles. We were here at once sur- 
 prised and terrified by a sight surely one of the most mag- 
 nificent in the world. In that vast expanse of desert, from 
 W. and to N. W. of us, we saw a number of prodigious 
 pillars of sand, at different distances, at times moving with 
 great celerity, at others stalking on with a majestic slow- 
 ness ; at intervals we thought they were coming in a very 
 few minutes to overwhelm us; and small quantities of sand 
 did actually more than once reach us. Again they would 
 retreat so as to be almost out of sight, their tops reaching to 
 the very clouds. There the tops often separated from the 
 bodies : and these, once disjoined, dispersed in the air, and 
 did not appear more. Sometimes they were broken near 
 the middle, as if struck with a large cannon shot. About 
 noon they began to advance with considerable swiftness 
 upon us, the wind being very strong at north. Eleven of 
 them ranged alongside of us about the distance of three 
 miles. The greatest diameter of the largest appeared to 
 me at that distance as if it would measure ten feet. They 
 retired from us with a wind at S. E. leaving an impression 
 upon my mind to which I can give no name, though sure- 
 ly one ingredient in it was fear, with a considerable deal 
 of wonder and astonishment. It was in vain to think of 
 flying; the swiftest horse, or fastest sailing ship, could be 
 of no use to carry us out of this danger, and the full per- 
 suasion of this riveted me as if to the spot, where I stood, 
 and let the camels gain on me so much in my state of 
 lameness, thaJ, it was with some diflliculty I could overtake 
 them. 
 
 " The whole of our company were much disheartened, 
 (except Idris,) and imagined that they were advancing 
 into whirlwinds of moving sand, from which they should 
 never be able to extricate themselves; but before four 
 o'clock in the afternoon, these phantoms of the plain had 
 all of them fallen to the ground, and disappeared. In the 
 evening we came to "Waadi Dimokea, where we passed the 
 »ight, much disheartened, and our fear more increased, 
 when we found, upon wakening in the morning, that one 
 side was perfectly buried in the sand that the wind had 
 blown above us in the night. The sun shining through 
 the pillars, which were thicker, and contained more sand 
 apparently than any of the preceding days, seemed to give 
 those nearest us an appearance as if spotted with stars of 
 gold. I do not think at any time they seemed to be nearer 
 than two miles. The most remarkable circumstance was, 
 that the sand seemed to keep in that vast circular space 
 surrounded by the Nile on our left, in going round by 
 Chaigie towards Dongola, and seldom was observed much 
 to the eastward of a meridian passing along the Nile through 
 the Magiran, before it takes that turn ; whereas the simoom 
 was always on the opposite side of our course, coming upon 
 us from the southeast. The same appearance or moving 
 pillars of sand presented themselves to us this day in form 
 and disposition like those we had seen at Waadi Halboub, 
 only they seemed to be more in number, and less in size. 
 They came several times in a direction close upon us ; that 
 is, I believe, within less than two miles. They began, im- 
 mediately after sunrise, like a thick wood, and almost dark- 
 ened the sun : his rays shining through them for near an 
 hour, gave them an appearance of pillars of fire." 
 
 If my conjecture be admissible, we now see a magnifi- 
 cence in this imagery, not apparent before : we see how 
 Job's dignity might be exalted in the air; might rise to 
 
 great grandeur, importance, and even terror, in the sight 
 of beholders; might ride upon the wind, which bears it 
 about, causmg it to advance, or to recede ; and, after all, 
 the wind diminishing, might disperse, dissipate, melt, 
 scatter this pillar of sand, into the undistinguished level 
 of the desert. This comparison seems to be precisely 
 adapted to the mind of an Arab, who must have seen, or 
 have been informed of similar phenomena in the countries 
 around him. — Taylor in Calmet, 
 
 Ver. 23. For I know that thou wilt bring me to 
 death, and to the house appointed for all living. 
 
 Those expressions in which the grave is described as the 
 house appointed for all living ; the long home of man ; and 
 the everlasting habitation; are capable of much illustration 
 from antiquity. Montfaiacon says, " We observed in the 
 fifth volume of our Antiquity a tomb styled quietorium, a 
 resting-place. Quiescere, to rest, is often said of the dead 
 in epitaphs. Thus we find in an ancient writer, a man 
 speaking of his master, who had been long dead and buried, 
 cujns ossa bene quiescant ; may his bones rest in peace. We 
 have an instance of the like kind in an inscription in 
 Gruter, (p. 696,) and in another, (p. bdi,) fecit sibi requieto- 
 rium, he made himself a resting-place. This resting-place 
 is called frequently, too, an eternal house. In his lifetime 
 he built himself an eternal house, says one epitaph. He 
 made himself an eternal house with his patrimony, says 
 another. He thought it better (says another) to build him- 
 self an eternal house, than to desire his heirs to do it. They 
 thought it a misfortune when the bones and ashes of the 
 dead were removed from their place, as imagining the dead 
 suffered something by the removal of their bones. This 
 notion occasioned all those precautions used for the safety 
 of their tombs, and the curses they laid on those who re- 
 moved them." — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 25. Did not I weep for him that was in 
 trouble? was not my soul grieved for the 
 poor? 
 
 Hebrew, " Should I not then weep for the ruthless day?" 
 The meaning of the preceding verse having been generally 
 misunderstood, that of the present, and, indeed, of the 
 greater part of the remainder of the chapter, which follows 
 concatenately, has been misunderstood also. The exquisite 
 pathos of this interrogative must wind itself into the heart 
 of every reader. The expression, " for the ruthless day," is 
 peculiarly forcible in the original, ov nc^pS, " for the stern, 
 rigid, immoveable, pitiless, or inexorable day." In the 
 latter clause of this verse, we may understand the Hebrew 
 to signify, " for the rock," not " for the poor," as given by 
 all the translators. The term indeed (p^^n) admits of both 
 these senses ; but the latter is obviously the true sense in 
 the present place; and for want of attending to this circum- 
 stance, the meaning of the passage has been utterly lost : 
 " Should not my soul pine for the marble tomb, or sepul- 
 chral rock," in which it was usual to deposite the bodies of 
 all those of higher rank and condition in life ; " for the 
 ROCK or STONY RECESS of darkucss and death-shade," as 
 mentioned in ch. xxviii. 3, in which the same term is used, 
 and rendered by every one in the sense now oflfered. — 
 Good. 
 
 Ver. 27. My bowels boiled, and rested not ; the 
 days of affliction prevented me. 
 
 People in great distress often say, " My belly, ray belly 
 is on fire." " Who will take away this fire T' In cursing 
 each other, " Wretch ! thou shalt soon have a fire in thy 
 belly." " Now they are beginning to errikuther,^' i. e. bum. 
 "Ashes! ashes ! thou art all ashes !" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. I am a brother to dragons, and a com- 
 panion to owls. 
 
 See on Mic. 1. 8. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd prefers, " A brother am I to sea-monsters.** 
 Dr. Harris says, the original is variously rendered ; drag- 
 ons, serpents, sea-monsters, and whales. The Tamul trai» 
 
350 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 31. 
 
 lation has it, " I am a brother to the maUi-pdmlm" i. e. the 
 rock snake, or boa constrictor ; and wherever the term 
 dragon occurs, (in that translation,) it is rendered in the 
 same way. Some of these serpents are of immense size, 
 and possess great muscular power. If they once get folded 
 round the body of an animal, it is impossible for it to escape. 
 A gentleman of my acquaintance, when on a shooting ex- 
 cursion, heard a sudden scream ; he ran to the spot, and 
 saw a beautiful deer in the embrace of one of these ser- 
 pents : he took his rifle, and put a ball through its head ; its 
 folds instantly became loose, and the deer was set at liberty, 
 but died soon after. He brought the reptile home, and it 
 measured eighteen feet. I know not what induced the 
 translators thus to render it by the name of that monster, 
 except they have taken the idea from the prophets Micah 
 and Jeremiah: "I will make a wailing like the dragons," 
 and, "they snuffed up wind like dragons-," as the malli- 
 pdmbu is said to make a dreadful wailing in the night, and 
 when in want of prey, to inhale the wind for food. The 
 sacred writers also describe it as loving to dwell in desert 
 places, which is another feature of its character. — Roberts. 
 When the ancient Hebrews observed the dragons erect, 
 and with expanded jaws fetching a deep inspiration, they 
 interpreted the circumstance as if these animals, with their 
 eyes lifted up to heaven, complained to their Maker of 
 their miserable condition, that, hated by all creatures, and 
 confined to the burning and steril deserts, they dragged 
 (mt a tedious and miserable existence. It was perhaps to 
 some idea of this kind that Job referred, when, bemoaning 
 the hardness of his lot, he complained : " I am a brother to 
 dragons, and a companion of owls." He was imable to 
 associate with mankind ; cut off from the comforts of life, 
 and doomed to wear out the rest of his days in poverty and 
 wretchedness. The prophet Micah has the same allusion, 
 in the day of his adversity, to the habits of that reptile: " I 
 will make a waiung like the dragons, and mourning as the 
 owls." He may refer also to its hissing, which iElian says 
 is so loud that it alarms and terrifies every creature within 
 hearing. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 31. My harp also is turned to motlrning, and 
 my organ into the voice of them that weep. 
 
 The people of the East are very fond of the ydl, or guitar, 
 also of the kinaru, or harp. When a person is ift trouble, 
 his instrument is also considered to be in sorrow. Many 
 stories are told of the fascinating powers of the ancient mu- 
 sicians. " There was once a man who neglected all his 
 affairs for the sake of his instrument : at which his wife 
 became much dissatisfied, and asked him, in a taunting 
 way, ' Will you ever gain a tusked elephant and a kingdom 
 by your harpl' He was displeased with her, and said, *I 
 will' He then went to the king of Kandy, and on his harp 
 asked his majesty for a tusked elephant and a kingdom. 
 The king was so delighted, that he gave him the elephant 
 and the province of Jaffna. The musician then returned, 
 and founded the town of Ydl-Pdnam" i. e. the harp and 
 the songster; or, as some render it, the harp-town, which 
 we call Jaffna. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 Ver. 1. I made a covenant with mine eyes ; why 
 then should I think upon a maid? 
 
 Has a man a strong desire to go on a pilgrimage to a dis- 
 tant temple, and should his friends remonstrate with him, 
 he will say, " I have made ^udam-puddiki," (i. e. a covenant 
 with my eyes ;) " I must go." Does a father reprove his 
 son for improper conduct, he replies, " What can I do *? 
 She has made a covenant with my eyes." " My friend, let 
 us have your opinion on this subject." — " I will not." 
 " Why r'— " Because I have made a covenant with my 
 mouth." — Roberts. 
 
 In Barbary, when the ladies appear in public, they always 
 fold themselves up so closely in their hykes, that even 
 without their veils one can discover very little of their 
 faces. But in the summer months, when they retire to 
 their conntry-seats, they walk abroad with less caution; 
 though even then, on the approach of a stranger, they always 
 drop their veils, as Rebecca did on the approach of Isaac. 
 But although they are so closely wrapped up, that those 
 M-ho look at them cannot even see their hands, still less their 
 
 face, yet it is reckoned indecent in a man to fix his eyes 
 upon them ; he must let them pass without seeming at all to 
 observe them. In allusion to this rigorous custom. Job 
 says, " I made a covenant with mine eyes ; why then should 
 I think upon a maid 1" When a lady of distinction, says 
 Hanway, travels on horseback, she is not only veiled, but 
 has generally a servant, who runs or rides before her, to 
 clear the way ; and on such occasions, the men, even in the 
 market-places, always turn their backs till the women are 
 passed, it being thought the highest ill manners to look at ' 
 them. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, 
 and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof 
 
 It is a very customary, and a very desirable thing in the 
 East, to eat under the shade of trees ; and this situation the 
 inhabitants seem to prefer, to taking their repasts in their 
 tents or dwellings : so De la Roque tells us, (p. 203,) " We 
 did not arrive at the foot of the mountain till after sunset, 
 and it was almost night when we entered the plain ; bni as 
 it was full of villages, mostly inhabited by Maronites, we 
 entered into the first we came to, to pass the night there It 
 was the priest of the place who wished to receive u? . he 
 gave us a supper under the trees, before his little dwel ing. 
 As we were at table, there came by a stranger, weari'ig a 
 white turban, who, after having saluted the company, sa' 
 himself down to the table, without ceremony ; ate with us 
 during some time, and then went away, repeating several 
 times the name of God. They told us it was some traveller, 
 who, no doubt, stood in need of refreshment, and who had 
 profited by the opportunity, according to the custom of the 
 East, which is to exercise hospitality at all times, and 
 towards all persons." 
 
 The reader will be pleased to see the ancient hospitality 
 of the East still maintained, and even a stranger profiting 
 by an opportunity of supplying his wants. It reminds u.s 
 of the guests of Abraham, (Gen. chap, xviii.,) of the con- 
 duct of Job, (chap. xxxi. 17,) and especially, perhaps, of 
 that frankness with which the apostles of Christ w^re to 
 enter into a man's house after a salutation, and there to con- 
 tinue " eating and drinking such things as were set before 
 them," Luke x. 7. Such Isehaviour would be considered as 
 extremely intrusive, and indeed insupportable, among our- 
 selves ; but the maxims of the East would qualify that, as 
 they do many other customs, by local proprieties, on which 
 we are incompetent to determine. — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 22. Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder- 
 blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. 
 
 It is said, " If I have done as you say, may these legs be 
 broken." " Yes, let these eyes be blind, if I have seen the 
 thing you mention." " May this body wither and faint, if 
 I am guilty of that crime." " If I uttered that expression, 
 then let the worms eat out this tongue."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. If I beheld the sun when it shined, eg* 
 the moon walking in brightness, 27. And my 
 heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth 
 hath kissed my hand : 28. This also were an 
 iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I 
 should have denied the God that is above. 
 
 To kiss the hand and place it on the head, is a token of 
 respect less revolting to our minds, than some of those which 
 have been mentioned. An Oriental pays his respects to a 
 person of superior station, by kissing his hand, and putting 
 it to his forehead ; but if the superior be of a condescending 
 temper, he will snatch away his hand, as soon as the othti 
 has touched it ; then the inferior puts his own fingers to hi ? 
 lips, and afterward to his forehead. It seems, according to 
 Pitts, to be a common practice among the Mohammedans, 
 that when they cannot kiss the hand of a superior, they kis? 
 their own, and put it to their forehead; thus also they ven- 
 erate an unseen being, whom they cannot touch. But the 
 custom existed long before the age of Mohammed ; for m the 
 same way the ancient idolaters worshipped their distant or 
 unseen deities. " If," said Job, " I beheld the sun when it 
 shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart 
 hath been secretly enticed, and my mouth hath kissed my 
 
Chap. 31—33. 
 
 roB. 
 
 351 
 
 hand, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge ; 
 for I should have denied the God that is above." Had the 
 afflicted man done this, in the case to which he refers, it 
 would have been an idolatrous action, although it is exactly 
 agreeable to the civil expressions of respect which obtained 
 in his country, and over all the East. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 32. The stranger did not lodge in the street ; 
 but I opened my doors to the traveller. 
 
 No people can be more kind and hospitable to travellers 
 of their own caste, than those of the East ; and even men 
 of the lower grades have always places to go to. See the 
 stranger enter the premises ; he looks at the master and says, 
 paraihease, i. e. a pilgrim, and he is allowed to take up his 
 abode for th3 night. For his entertainment, he has to re- 
 peat the pulhenam^ news of his country and journey, or any 
 legend of olden time. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 35. Oh that one would hear me ! bdhold, my 
 desire is that the Almighty would answer me, 
 and that mine adversary had written a book : 
 36. Surely I would take it upon my shoulder, 
 and bind it as a crown to me. 
 
 This refers to accusations against the innocent Job. A 
 man charged of a crime which he has not committed, says, 
 " If I am guilty, I will carry it on my head." " I am sure 
 y^u have done this deed."—" 1 1" " Yes."—" Then will I 
 wear it on my head." " That fellow wears his crimes on 
 his head," i. e. he is not ashamed of them. The head is 
 reckoned superior to all other parts of the body. — Roberts. 
 
 The business of book-making, it is to be presumed, had 
 made but little progress in the days of Job, and it is not easy 
 to see how such a performance, on the part of Job's adver- 
 sary, as the writing a book, could have afforded any peculiar 
 gratification to the afflicted man's feelings. In modern 
 times, when such an enterprise is of all others the most 
 hazardous, it might perhaps be a very appropriate expres- 
 sion of ill-will, to wish that an adversary had engaged in a 
 publishing speculation. But in the case of Job and his 
 maligners, we must seek for a different explication; for 
 even had the trade of authorship been as common and as 
 perilous in those days as it now is, we cannot but consider 
 Job too good a man to have given vent to so bad a wish. 
 From the context, we learn that the pious sufferer was 
 aggrieved by the vagueness of the charges preferred against 
 him by his harsh-judging comforters. They dealt in loose 
 generalities, affording him no opportunity to vindicate him- 
 self by answering to a specific accusation. In the words 
 cited, he utters the earnest wish that a definite form were 
 given to the injurious imputations of his false friends. He 
 would fain be summoned to a formal trial ; he would have 
 Ike c/iarges booked against him, that he might know what 
 were the aspersions which were to be wiped from his char- 
 acter. Such an accusation, thus definitely written, he would 
 bear about publicly and conspicuously, that he might pub- 
 licly and conspicuously confute it ; he would bear it as an 
 ornament, convinced it would, in the end, by his triumphant 
 disproval of it, redound to the still higher honour of his 
 innocence. That the Heb. sepher, book, may without vio- 
 lence be thus interpreted, is clear from Deut. xxiv. 1 : " Let 
 him write a bill of divorcement, (sepher,) and give it in her 
 hand, and send her out of his house." In the present con- 
 nexion it is tantamount to a bill of endidment. — Bush. 
 
 From the following extract it appears what is the cus- 
 tomary kind of homage which, in the East, is paid not only 
 to sovereignty, but to communications of the sovereign's 
 will, whether by word or letter: " When the mogul, by 
 letters, sends his commands to any of his governors, these 
 papers are entertained with as much respect as if himself 
 were present; for the governor, having intelligence that 
 such letters are coming near him, himself, with other infe- 
 rior officers, rides forth to meet the patamar, or messenger, 
 that brings them, and as soon as he sees those letters, he 
 alights from his horse, falls down on the earth, and takes 
 them from the messenger, and lays them on his head, whereon 
 he binds them fast : then retiring to his place of public meet- 
 ing, he reads and answers them." (Sir Thomas Roe.) — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 When Soliman ascended the throne, " the letter which 
 
 was to be presented to the new monarch was delivered to 
 the general of the slaves, contained in a purse of cloth of 
 gold, drawn together with strings of twisted gold and silk, 
 with tassels of the same. The general threw himself at his 
 majesty's feet, bowing to the very ground ; then rising 
 upon his knees, he drew out of the bosom of his garment 
 the bag containing the letter which the assembly had sent 
 to the new monarch. Presently he opened the' bag, took 
 out the letter, kissed it, laid it to his forehead, presented it 
 to his majesty, and then rose up." To such a custom Job 
 evidently refers in these words : " Oh that mine adversary 
 had written a book : surely I would take it upon my shoulder, 
 and bind it as a crown to me," or, on my head.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 38. If my land cry against me, or that the 
 furrows likewise thereof complain. 
 
 Does a man through idleness or meanness neglect to 
 cultivate, or water, or manure his fields and gardens, those 
 who pass that way say, " Ah ! these fields have good reason 
 to complain against the cwwner." " Sir, if you defraud 
 these fields, will they not defraud you V " The fellow 
 who robs his own lands, will he not rob you 1" " These 
 fields are in great sorrow, through the neglect of their 
 owner." — Roberts. • 
 
 Ver. 39. If I have eaten the fruits thereof without 
 money, or have caused the owners thereof to 
 lose their life. 
 
 Was not Job the owner of the land 1 Does he not say in 
 the preceding verse my land 1 How then could he have 
 caused the owners to lose their life % Dr. Boothroyd has it, 
 " or have grieved the soul of its managers." CoveVdale has 
 it, " grieved any of the ploughmen." The Tamul has the 
 same idea : " If I have eaten the fruits thereof without 
 paying for the labour, or have afilicted the soul of the culti- 
 vators." Great landowners in the East do not generally 
 cultivate their own fields : they employ men, who find all 
 the labour, and have a certain part of the produce for their 
 remuneration. The cultivator, if defrauded, will say, 
 " The furrows I have made bear witness against hini ; 
 they complain." Job therefore means, if the fields could 
 complain for want of proper culture, or if he had afflicted 
 the tiller, or eaten the produce without rewarding him for 
 his toils, then " let thistles grow instead of wheat and 
 cockle instead of barley."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 Ver. 5. When Elihu saw that there was no an- 
 swer in the mouth of these three men, then his 
 wrath was kindled. 
 
 When men are completely confounded, when they have 
 not a word to say in reply, it is said, " in their vayila, i. e. 
 mouth, there is no answer." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. Let me not, I pray you, accept any man's 
 person ; neither let me give flattering titles unto 
 man. 
 
 The Hebrew word here used signifies to surname, or 
 more properly to call a person by a name which does not 
 strictly belong to him, and that generally in compliment or 
 flattery. Mr. Scott on this passage informs us from Po- 
 cocke, that " the Arabs make court to their superiors by 
 carefully avoiding to address them by their proper names, 
 instead of which, they salute them with some title or epi- 
 thet expressive of respect." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 Ver. 6. Behold, I am according to thy wish in 
 God's stead ; I also am formed out of the clay. 
 
 " The body and the herb, which come from the clay, will 
 also return to it." " The body must return to the dust, why 
 then trouble yourself? Will it exist for an immeasurable 
 period V — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. Then he openeth the ears of men, and 
 sealeth their mstruction. 
 
352 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 33—38. 
 
 It is usual to say, " I will open that fellow's ears. I will 
 take away the covering." " Ah ! will you not open your 
 ears V — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, 
 Deliver him from going down to the pit ; I 
 • have found a ransom. 
 
 A species of capital punishment which serves to illus- 
 trate the sacred text, is the pit into which the condemned 
 r " isons were precipitated. The Athenians, and particu- 
 larly the tribe Hippothoontis, frequently condemned offend- 
 ers 10 the pit. It was a dark, noisome hole, and had sharp 
 spikes at the top, that no criminal might escape; and others 
 g». the bottom, to pierce and torment those unhappy persons 
 that were cast in. Similar to this place was the Lacede- 
 monian KaiaSa?, into which Aristomenes, the Messenian, 
 being cast, made his escape in a very surprising manner. 
 This mode of punishment is of great antiquity; for the 
 speakers in the book of Job make several allusions to it. 
 Thus, in the speech of Elihu : " He keepeth back his soul 
 from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword." — 
 " Then is he gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him 
 from going down to the pit ; I have found a ransom." — 
 " He will deliver his soul from going down into the pit, 
 and his life shall see the light." The allusions in the book 
 of Psalms are numerous and interesting ; thus the Psalmist 
 prays, " Be not silent to me ; lest if thou be silent to me, I 
 become like them that go down into the pit." — " Let them 
 be cast into deep pits, that they rise not up again." The 
 following allusion occurs in the prophecies of Isaiah : 
 " The captive exile hasteneth, that he may be loosed, and 
 that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should 
 fail." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Ver. 7. What man is like Job, who drinketh up 
 scorning like water ? 
 
 Of a man who does not care for contempt or hatred, it is 
 said, " He drinks up their hatred like water." When a 
 man is every way superior to his enemies, " Ah ! he drinks 
 them up like water." " He is a man of wonderful talents, 
 for he drinks up science as water." Thus, Elihu wished 
 to show that Job had hardened himself, and was insensible 
 to scorn, for he had swallowed it as water. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 Ver. 3. I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and 
 will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. 
 
 There is something in our nature which places superior 
 importance on any thing which comes from afar. When 
 a man has to contend with a person who is veiy learned, 
 should a friend express a doubt as to the result, or advise 
 him to take great care, he will say, " Fear not, veggutoora- 
 tila, from very far I will fetch my arguments." "The 
 arguments which are afar off, shall now be brought near." 
 *' Well, sir, since you press me, I will fetch my knowledge 
 from afar." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 Ver. 6. For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the 
 earth ; likewise to the small rain, and to the 
 great rain of his strength. 
 
 In the East Indies the commencement and the breaking of 
 the monsoons are generally very severe ; the rain descends 
 in the most astonishing torrents. In a few hours the inhab- 
 itants find themselves in a liquid plain. The high and the 
 low grounds are equally covered, and exhibit the appear- 
 ance of an immense lake, and surrounded by thick dark- 
 ness, which prevents them from distinguishing a single 
 object, except such as the vivid glare of lightning displays 
 in horrible forms. In the winter months the mountain 
 floods swell the small rivers of India in a wonderful man- 
 ner. Within a few hours they ol^en rise twenty or thirty 
 feet above their usual height, and run with astonishing 
 rapidity ; and the larger rivers, before gentle and pellucid, 
 are then furious and destructive, sweeping away whole 
 villages, with their inhabitants and cattle, while tigers and 
 
 other furious animals from the wilds join the general wrock, 
 and unite their horrid voices with the cries of old men and 
 helpless women, and the shrieks of their expiring children, 
 in its passage to the ocean. It is in such a scene that the 
 beauty of Elihu's speech to Job, in which he mentions "the 
 great rain of his strength," are properly understood. Even 
 in the milder climate of Judea, the rains pour down three 
 or four days and nights together, as vehemently as if they 
 would drown the country, sweeping away in their fuiious 
 course the produce of the field, and the soil on which it 
 grew, the flocks and herds, and human dwellings, with 
 their hapless inmates, in one promiscuous ruin. Far dif- 
 ferent are the feelings awakened in the mind, by the ; ight 
 of a majestic, pure, and quiet river, on whose verdant pas- 
 tures the flocks repose, or drink, without alarm or danger, 
 of its flowing waters. So full of majesty and gentleness, 
 neither alarming the fears, endangering the safety, nor 
 encouraging the carelessness of genuine Christians, are the 
 consolations of true religion. So the Psalmist felt, when he 
 selected the loveliest image in the natural world to convey 
 an idea of the rich and ample provision which the divine 
 bounty has made for man : " He maketh me to lie down in 
 green pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters."— 
 Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 7. He sealeth up the hand of every man, that 
 all men may know his work. 
 
 Has a man something in Ais hand which he does not 
 wish to show to another, he says, " My hand is sealed." Of 
 a gentleman who is very benevolent, it is said, " His hand 
 is sealed for charity only." " Please, sir, give me this." — 
 " What ! is my hand sealed to give to all 1" " What secret 
 was that which Tamban told you last evening 1" — " I can- 
 not answer ; my mouth is sealed." " That man never for- 
 gets an injury." — "No, no, he seals it in his mind." A 
 husband who has full confidence in his wife, says, "I have 
 sealed her." Canticles iv. 12. To seal a person, therefore, 
 is to secure him, and prevent others from injuring him. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 Ver. 3. Gird up now thy loins like a man ; for I 
 will demand of thee, and answer thou me. 
 
 " Well, Tamby, you have a difficult task before you : 
 gird up your loins." " Come, help me to gird this sdli, i. e. 
 mantle, or shawl, round my loins ; I have a long way to 
 run." "Poor fellow! he soon gave it up; his loins were 
 not well girded." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. It is turned as clay to the seal; and 
 they stand as a garment. 
 
 The birds pillage the granary of Joseph extremely, 
 where the corn of Egypt is deposited that is paid as a tax . 
 to the grand seignior, for it is quite uncovered at the top, 
 there being little or no rain in that country ; its doors how- 
 ever are kept carefully sealed, but its inspectors do not 
 make use of wax upon this occasion, but put their seal upon 
 a handful of clay, with which they cover the lock of the 
 door. This serves instead of wax ;' and it is visible, things 
 of the greatest value might be safely sealed up in the same 
 manner. Had Junius known this circumstance, or had he 
 at least reflected on it, he would not perhaps have explained 
 Job xxxviii. 14, It is turved as clay to the seal, of the potters 
 adorning clay with various paintings, or various emboss- 
 ings ; especially had he considered, that the productions of 
 the wheel of the potter, in the age and the country of Job, 
 were, in all probability, very clumsy, unadorned things, 
 since even still in Egypt, the ancient source of arts, the 
 ewer, which is made, according to Norden, very clumsy, is 
 one of the besi pieces of earthenware that they have there, 
 all the art of the potter, in that country, consisting in an 
 ability to make some vile pots or dishes, without varnish. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 16. Hast thou entered into the springs of 
 the sea ? or hast thou walked in the search of 
 the depth ? 
 
 To a vain boasting fellow it is said, " Yes, yes ; the 
 
Chap. 39. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 3(33 
 
 sea is only knee-deep to thee." *' It is all true ; thou hast 
 measured the sea." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 34. Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, 
 that abundance of waters may cover thee? 
 35. Canst thou send lightnings, that they may 
 go, and say unto thee, Here we are ? 
 
 This probably refers to thunder, and its effects in pro- 
 ducing rain. It is said, " Why, fellow, are you making 
 such a noise'? Are you going to shake the clouds 1 Is it 
 rain you are going to produce V " What is all this noise 
 about '? Is it rain you want 1" " Cease, cease your roaring ; 
 the rain will not come." " Listen to that elephant, rain is 
 coming." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 39. Wilt thou hunt the proy for the lions ? 
 or fill the appetite of the young lions ? 
 
 To a man who is boasting of the speed of his foot, or his 
 prowess, it is said, " Yes, there is no doubt thou wilt hunt 
 the prey for the tiger." When a person does a favour for 
 a cruel man, it is asked, " What ! give food to the tiger 1" 
 " O yes ; give milk to the serpent." *' Here comes the 
 sportsman; he has been hunting prey for the tiger." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 Ver. 1. Knowest thou the time when the wild 
 goats of the rock bring forth ? or canst thou 
 mark when the hinds do calve ? 
 
 It is well known that the hind goes with young eight 
 months, and brings forth her fawn in the beginning of au- 
 tumn. Why then does Jehovah address these interroga- 
 tions to Job : " Knowest thou the time when the wild goats 
 of the rock bring forth ^ Or canst thou mark when the 
 hinds do calve 1 Canst thou number the months that they 
 fulfil 1 Or knowest thou the time when they bring forth 1" 
 Could Job be ignorant of circumstances which were ob- 
 vious to all the shepherds in the East, who had numerous 
 opportunities of observing the habits and manners of these 
 creatures 1 It is obvious that Jehovah could not refer to 
 the mere speculative knowledge of these facts, but to that 
 which is proper to himself, by which he not only knows, 
 but also directs and governs all things. This is confirmed 
 by the use of the verb (nasr) shamar, which signifies to ob- 
 serve, to keep, or to guard: Knowest thou the time when 
 the wild goats bring forth, the parturition of the hinds dost 
 thou guard 1 Without the protecting care of God, who up- 
 holds all his works by the word of his power, the whole 
 race of these timid creatures would soon be destroyed by 
 the violence of wild beasts, or the arts of the hunter. It is 
 with great propriety, says one of the ancients, that Jehovah 
 demands, " The birth of the hinds dost thou guard 1" for, 
 since this animal is always in flight, and with fear and ter- 
 ror always leaping and skipping alWDut, she could never 
 bring her young to maturity without such a special protec- 
 tion. The providence of God, therefore, is equally con- 
 spicuous in the preservation of the mother and the fawn ; 
 both are the objects of his compassion and tender care ; and 
 consequently, that afflicted man had no reason to charge 
 his Maker with unkindness, who condescends to watch 
 over the goats and the hinds.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 3. They bow themselves, they bring forth 
 
 their young ones, they cast out their sorrows. 
 
 4. Their young ones are in good liking, they 
 
 grow up with corn ; they go forth, and return 
 
 ' not unto them. 
 
 The hind has no sooner brought forth her fawn, than the 
 pain she suffered is forgotten : " They bow themselves" to 
 bring forth their young ones, " they cast out their sorrows." 
 These words must forcibly remind the reader of tJie ma- 
 ternal pains and joys of a higher order of beings : " A 
 woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow, because her 
 hour is come : but as soon as she is delivered of the child, 
 she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man 
 iS born into the world." It is added, " Their young ones 
 are in good liking, they grow up with corn ; they go forth, 
 45 
 
 and return not unto them." Though they are brought forth 
 in sorroW; and have no human ownej" to provide for their 
 wants, and to guard them from danger, yet, after being 
 suckled a while, they become vigorous and active, and 
 shift for themselves in the open fields. They grow up 
 with corn, says our translation ; but the fawn is not com- 
 monly fed in the cornfield, because it lives in the deserts, 
 and frequents those places which are far remote from the 
 cultivated field. Besides, in Arabia, where Job flourished, 
 the harvest is reaped in the months of March and April, 
 long before the hinds bring forth their young. The fawn, 
 therefore, does not thrive with corn, but with the few 
 shrubs and hardy plants which grow in the wilderness or 
 open country. But the inspired writer has committed no 
 mistake ; the original phrase is capable of another transla- 
 tion, which perfectly corresponds with the condition of that 
 animal, in those parts of the world. In Chaldee, the word 
 (■^32) babar, or (n-^23) babara, is evidently the same as the 
 Hebrew (yina) bahouts. Thus in Laban's address to Jacob, 
 when he arrived in Padanaram, " Why slandest thou with- 
 out," the Hebrew word is (vna) bahouts; and in Jonathan 
 and Onkelos it is (n-\23) babara. The same remark applies 
 to a text in the book of Exodus : " If he rise again and 
 walk abroad upon his staff;" in Hebrew (pna) bahouts; in 
 Chaldee, (n'>33) babara. Hence, the phrase may be trans- 
 lated. They grow up without, or in the open field. Many 
 other instances might be specified, but these are sufficient 
 to establish the justice of the remark. Even the Hebrew 
 phrase itself is translated by Schultens, " in the open field," 
 which is indisputably the sense of the passage under con- 
 sideration. Thus, when the fawn is calved, it grows up in 
 the desert, under the watchful providence of God; it soon 
 forsakes the spot where it was brought forth, and suckled 
 by the dam, and returns no more. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. Who hath sent out the wild ass free? or 
 who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? 
 . 6. Whose house I have made the wilderness, 
 and the barren land his dwellings. 7. He 
 scorneth the multitlide of the city, neither re- 
 gardeth he the crying of the driver. 8. The 
 range of the mountains is his pasture, and he 
 searcheth after every green thing. 
 
 This animal was called ovoi aypios, among the Greeks, 
 and onager by the Romans. Some natural historians con- 
 sider it as a different species from the tame and domestic 
 ass ; but others, among whom is the celebrated Buffon, af- 
 firm, that it differs from its unhappy relation only in those 
 particulars which are the proper effects of independence 
 and liberty. Although more elegantly shaped, the general 
 form of its body is the same ; but in temper and manners 
 it is extremely dissimilar. Intended to fill a higher place 
 in the kingdom of nature, than its abject and enslaved 
 brother, it exhibits endowments which, in all ages, have 
 commanded the admiration of every observer. Animated 
 by an unconquerable love of liberty, this high-spirited ani- 
 mal submits his neck with great reluctance to the yoke of 
 man ; extremely jealous of the least restraint, he shuns the 
 inhabited country, and steadily rejects all the delicacies it 
 has to offer. His chosen haunt is the solitary and inhos- 
 pitable desert, where he roves at his ease, exulting in the 
 possession of unrestrained freedom. These are not acci- 
 dental nor acquired traits in his character ; but instincts, 
 implanted by the hand of his Maker, that are neither to be 
 extinguished nor modified by length of time, nor change of 
 circumstances. To this wild and untameable temper, Je- 
 hovah himself condescends to direct the attention of Job, 
 when he answered him out of the whirlwind, and said : 
 " Who hath sent out the wild ass free "? or who hath loosed 
 the bands of the wild ass 1 whose house I have made the 
 wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorn- 
 eth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the cry- 
 ing of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pas- 
 ture, and he searcheth after every green thing." 
 
 The proper name of this animal in the Hebrew language, 
 is (n->b) para, a term which, according to some writers, is 
 expressive of its extreme suspicion. It is employed by Mo- 
 ses to denote the wild and untractable disposition of Ish- 
 mael and his descendants; and by Zophar, to characterize 
 a vain, self-righteous, and obstinate person. In accordance 
 
354 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 39. 
 
 with this idea, tne noun furnishes a verb m the Hiphil form, 
 which signifies to act as wildly as the onager. Others de- 
 rive the noun from a Chaldee verb, which signifies to run 
 with great swiftness; and every writer, ancient and modern, 
 who has treated of this animal, has attested the wonderful 
 celerity with which it flies over the desert. According to 
 Leo Africanus, the wild ass yields only to the horses of 
 Barbary ; and Xenophon avers, in his Anabasis, that it out- 
 runs the fleetest horses. It has feet like the whirlwind, 
 says Oppian ; iElian asserts, that it seems as if it were car- 
 ried forward by wings like a bird. 
 
 These testimonies are confirmed by Professor Gmelin, 
 who saw numerous troops of them in the deserts of Great 
 Tartary, and says, The onagers are animals adapted to 
 running, and of such swiftness, that the best horses cannot 
 equal them. Relying on its extraordinary powers, it fre- 
 quently mocks the pursuit of the hunter ; and in the stri- 
 king description of its Creator, " Scorneth the multitude of 
 the city," that invade its retreats, and seek its destruction. 
 It laughs (as the original term properly signifies) at their 
 numbers and their speed, and seems to take a malicious 
 pleasure in disappointing their hopes. Xenophon states, 
 that the onagers in Mesopotamia, wien pursued on horse- 
 back, will stop suddenly in the midst of their career, till the 
 hunters approach, and then dart away with surprising ve- 
 locity ; and again stop, as if inviting them to make another 
 effort to overtake them, but immediately dart away again 
 like an arrow shot from a bow : indeed, it would be impos- 
 sible for men to take them, without the assistance of art. 
 " We gave chase," says Mr. Morier, " to two wild asses, 
 but which had so much the speed of our horses, that when 
 they had got at some distance, they stood still and looked 
 behind at us, snorting with their noses in the air, as if in 
 contempt of our endeavour^ to catch them." The hunters, 
 however, often lie in wait for them at the ponds of brackish 
 water, to which they resort to drink ; or take them alive by 
 means of concealed pits, half filled with plants and branches 
 of trees, to lessen the creature's fall. At other times the 
 chase is continued by relays of fresh horses, which the 
 hunters mount as the others are exhausted, till the strength 
 of the animal is so completely worn out, that it can be easily 
 overtaken. 
 
 The wild ass, unsocial in his temper, and impatient of 
 restraint, frequents the solitary wilderness, and the vast in- 
 hospitable desert, the salt marsh, and the mountain range. 
 This is the scene adapted to his nature and instincts, and 
 his proper domain allotted to him by the author of his 
 being. We are not left to infer this fact from the manners 
 and habits of the animal ; Jehovah himself has attested it 
 in these terms : " Whose house I have made the wilder- 
 tness, and the barren land his dwellings." He who made 
 (the wild ass free, and loosed his hands, provides a habita- 
 tion for him in the desert, where the voice of man is not 
 heard, nor a human dwelling meets his eye. But every 
 desert is not equally to his liking ; it is the barren or salt 
 land ia which he delights. So grateful is salt to his taste, 
 that he uniformly prefers brackish water to fresh, and se- 
 lects for his food those plants that are impregnated with 
 saline particles, or that have bitter juices. He therefore 
 retires from the cultivated or fertile regions, not merely to 
 be free from the domination of man, but to enjoy the pas- 
 ture which is agreeable to his instincts. " The multitude," 
 or the abundance of the city, " he despises for the salt or 
 bitter leaf on the sandy waste." 
 
 Into such a state of desolation and sterility was the in- 
 heritance of God's ancient people reduced, by the arms o^" 
 Nebuchadnezzar: *' Upon the land of my people shall come 
 up thorns and briers, yea, upon all the houses of joy in the 
 joyous city: because the palaces shall be forsaken, the mul- 
 titude of the city shall be left, the forts and towers shall be 
 dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks." A 
 more affecting picture can scarcely be conceived; the de- 
 populated fields and ruined cities of a country once flow- 
 ing with milk and honey, were to become the favourite 
 haunts of those shy creatures " for ever," or during the 
 long period of seventy years. " Until the spirit" should 
 be poured upon them from on high, from the beginning to 
 the end of the captivity, a tedious and irksome period to 
 the unhappy captives, were the wild asses to stray through 
 their barren fields,* and repose in their deserted houses, 
 undisturbed by the presence of man. But the pride and 
 ba.Tbarity of their oppressor were soon visited with corres- 
 
 ponding punishment. He was deprived of reason, which 
 ne had so greatly abused, and by the violence of his disor- 
 der, " driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made 
 like the beasts ; and his dwelling was with the wild asses," 
 in the salt land and frightful desert. He seems to have 
 been divested of every thing human but the form ; irra- 
 tional and sensual, he was guided solely by his animal 
 propensities. Nor was he longer able to distinguish what 
 was becoming or agreeable, even to the animal nature of 
 man; every desire and appetite was become so brutish, that 
 he felt no wish to associate with beings of his own kind, 
 but lived with the beasts, and fed in their pasture. 
 
 Some respectable writers have considered the onager as 
 a solitary creature, refusing to associate even with those 
 of his own species, because he ^huns the presence of man, 
 and frequents the most frightful solitudes. But this hasty 
 opinion is completely refuted by the testimony of modern 
 travellers, the nomadic hordes of Tartary, and the trading 
 companies of Bukharia. From their accounts we learn 
 that the wild asses are still very numerous in the deserts 
 of Great Tartary, and come annually in great herds, which 
 spread themselves in the mountainous deserts to the north 
 and east of Lake Aral. Here they pass the summer, and 
 assemble in the autumn by hundreds, and even by thou- 
 sands, in order to return in company to their former re- 
 treats in the mountains of Northern Asia. The grega- 
 rious character of the wild ass is not in reality contradicted 
 by the prophet in these words : " For they are gone up to 
 Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath hired 
 lovers." In this passage he describes the perverse and un- 
 tractable dispositions of Ephraim, and the certain destruc- 
 tion to which their obstinacy exposed them. A wild ass , 
 alone, tliey were by their foolish conduct ready to become 
 a prey to the destroyer. But it is rather the king of Assyria, 
 than the ten tribes, whom he compares to that animal. 
 Instead of trusting in the Lord their God, they courted the 
 favour, and solicited the protection of that ambitious and 
 artful monarch, who, like " a wild ass alone," consulted 
 only his own selfish inclinations, and aimed at his own 
 aggrandizement. This ill-advised measure, from which 
 they promised themselves so much advantage, he declares, 
 would certainly hasten this catastrophe, which they sought 
 to avoid. They should find, when too late, that they had 
 been the dupes of his deceitful policy, and the victims of 
 his unprincipled ambition. The wild ass, like almost 
 every creature that inhabits the barren wilderness, is re- 
 duced to subsist on coarse and scanty fare. The sweets of 
 unbounded liberty are counterbalanced by the unremitting 
 labour which is necessary to procure him a precarious 
 subsistence. In those salt "and dreary wastes, which provi- 
 dence has allotted for his residence, very few plants are 
 to be found, and those, from the heat of the climate and 
 the nature of the soil, are stinted in their growth, and bitter 
 to the taste : " They see not when good cometh ;" for they 
 grow in the parched places in the wilderness, " in a salt 
 land, and not inhabited." In such inhospitable regions, 
 the wild ass is compelled to traverse a great extent of 
 country, to scour the plains, and range over the mountains, 
 in order to find here and there a few blades of coarse, 
 withered grass, and browse the tops of the few stunted 
 shrubs which languish in those sandy wilds. Such are the 
 allusions involved in these words : " The range of the 
 mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green 
 thing." 
 
 Every natural historian has recorded the extreme wild- 
 ness of this animal. He is so jealous of his liberty, that 
 on the slightest alarm, or the first appearance of danger, 
 he flies with amazing swiftness into the desert. His senses 
 are so acute, that it is impossible to approach him in the 
 open country. But in spile of all his vigilance, the hunt- 
 er often encloses him in his toils, and leads him away into 
 captivitv. Even in this unhappy slate, he never submits 
 his neck to the yoke of man without a determined resist- 
 ance. " Sent out free" by Him that made him, he is tena- 
 cious of his independence, and opposes, to the extraordinary 
 methods which his captors are forced to employ, the most 
 savage obstinacy; and for the most part, he baffles all their 
 endeavours to tame him ; still he " scorneth the multitude 
 of the city, neither regards he the crying of the driver." 
 On the authority of this text, Chrysostom says, " this animal 
 is strong and untameable ; man can never subdue him, 
 whatever efforts he may make for that purpose." But Varro 
 
Chap. 39. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 355 
 
 affirms, on the contrary, that " the wild ass is fit for labour; 
 that he IS easily lamed ; and that when he is once tamed, 
 he never resumes his original wildness." The words of 
 Jehovah certainly give no countenance to the opinion of the 
 Greek father ; ihey only intimate, that it is extremely diffi- 
 cult to subdue the high spirit and stubborn temper of this 
 animal; for the apostle James declares, that " every kind 
 of beast is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind ;" and 
 great numbers of them are actually broken to the yoke in 
 Persia, and some other countries. But it appears from 
 the statement of Professor Gmelin, that the Persians tame 
 the young onagers ; and the reason probably is, that they 
 seldom or never succeed in rendering a full grown onager 
 serviceable to man. 
 
 Not more untameable and indocile is the wild ass, in the 
 mind of Zophar, than the human kind, in their present 
 degenerate state: " Vain man would be wise, though man 
 be born like a wild ass's colt." Empty, self-conceited man, 
 still aspires to equal God in wisdom and knowledge ; still 
 fondly supposes himself qualified to sit in judgment on the 
 divine proceedings, and to take the exclusive management 
 of his own affairs, although the wild ass's colt is not more 
 rude, indocile, and untractable. Nor is this an acquired 
 habit : he is born a wild ass's colt, and therefore, by nature 
 equally impatient of salutary restraint, equally wilful in 
 consulting his own inclinations. And this defect in his 
 character, no created arm is able to subdue; it yields only 
 to the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, who makes 
 him willing in the day of efiectual calling, by a display 
 of almighty power. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 13. Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the 
 peacocks ? or wings and feathers unto the 
 ostrich ? 
 
 These birds are exceedingly numerous in the East ; and 
 it gives a kind of enchantment to a morning scene, to see 
 flocks of them together, spreading their beautiful plumage 
 in the rays of the sun. They proudly stalk along, and then 
 run with" great speed, particularly if they get sight of a ser- 
 pent; and the reptile must wind along in his best style, or 
 ne will soon become the prey of the lordly bird. A hus- 
 band sometimes says to his wife, "Come hither, my beauti- 
 ful peacock. Had they not their beauty from you V This 
 bird is sacred to Scandan. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the 
 peacocks ? or wings and feathers unto the 
 ostrich? 14. Which leaveth her eggs in the 
 earth, and warmeth them in the dust, 15. And 
 forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that 
 the wild beast may break them. 1 6. She is 
 hardened against her young ones, as though 
 thep were not hers: her labour is in vain 
 without fear; 17. Because God hath deprived 
 her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her 
 understanding. 18. What time she lifteth up 
 herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his 
 rider. 
 
 The ostrich is by far the largest among the winged tribes, 
 and seems to be the connecting link between the quadruped 
 and the fowl She is not to be classed with the former, 
 because she is furnished with a kind of wings, which, if 
 they cannot raise her from the ground, greatly accelerate 
 her flight; not with the latter, for "the feathers which 
 grow out of her small wings, are all unwoven and decom- 
 posed, and their beards consist of long hairs detached from 
 one another, and do not form a compact body to strike the 
 air with advantage ; which is the principal office for which 
 the feathers of the wing are intended." Those of the tail 
 have also the same structure, and, by consequence, cannot 
 oppose to the air a suitable resistance. They can neither 
 expand nor close, as circumstances require, nor take differ- 
 ent inclinations; and what is not a little remarkable, all 
 the feathers which cover the body exhibit the same con- 
 formation. The ostrich has not, like the greater part of 
 other birds, feathers of various kinds, some soft and downy, 
 which are next the skin ; and others of a more firm arid 
 
 compact consistence, which cover the former ; and others 
 still longer and of greater strength, and on which the move- 
 ments of the animal depend. All her feathers are of one 
 kind, all of them bearded with detached hairs or filaments, 
 without consistence and reciprocal adherence ; in one word, 
 they are of no utility in flying, or in directing the flight. 
 Besides the peculiar structure of her wings, she is pressed 
 down to the earth by her enormous size. Buffbn calculates 
 the weight of a living ostrich, in middling condition, at no 
 less than sixty-five or eighty pounds; which would require 
 an immense pow-er in the wmgs and motive muscles of these 
 members, to raise and support in the air so ponderous a 
 mass. Thus by her excessive weight and the loose tex- 
 ture of her feathers, she is condemned, like a quadruped, 
 laboriously to run upon the surface of the earth, without 
 being ever able to mount up into the air. But although 
 incapable of raising herself from the ground, she is admira- 
 bly fitted for running. The greater part of her body is 
 covered with hair, rather than feathers ; her head and her 
 sides have little or no hair ; and her legs, which are very 
 thick and muscular, and in which her principal force re- 
 sides, are in like manner almost naked ; her large sinewy 
 and plump feet, which have only two toes, resemble consid- 
 erably the feet of a camel ; her wings, armed with two 
 spikes, like those of a porcupine, are rather a kind of arms 
 than wings, which are given her for defence. 
 
 These characteristic features throw great light on a part 
 of the description which Jehovah himself has condescend- 
 ed to give of this animal in the book of Job. It begins with 
 this interrogation: " Gavest thou wings and feathers unto 
 the ostrich'?" Dr. Shaw translates it: " The wing of the'; 
 ostrich is expanded ; the very feathers and plumage of the 
 stork." According to Buffbn, the ostrich is covered with 
 feathers alternately white and black, and sometimes gray 
 by the mixture of these two colours. They are shortest, 
 says the author, on the lower part of the neck, the rest of 
 which is entirely naked; they become longer on the back 
 and the belly; and are longest at the extremity of the 
 tail and the wings ; but he denies that any of them have 
 been found with red, green, blue, or yellow plumes. This 
 assertion, however, is not quite correct ; for if credit is due 
 to Dr. Shaw, " when the ostrich is full grown, the neck, 
 particularly of the male, which before was almost naked, 
 IS now very beautifully covered with red feathers. The 
 plumage, likewise, upon the shoulders, the back, and some 
 parts of the wings, from being hitherto of a dark grayisli 
 colour, becomes now as black as jet, while some of the 
 feathers retain an exquisite whiteness. They are, as de- 
 scribed in the thirteenth verse, the very feathers and plu- 
 mage of the stork ; that is, they consist of such black and 
 white feathers as the stork, called Irom thence Tn)<apyos, is 
 known to have. But the belly, the thighs, and the breast, 
 do not partake of this covering, being usually naked ; and 
 when touched are of the same warmth as the flesh of the 
 quadrupeds. 
 
 The ostrich, though she inhabits the sandy deserts, wherR 
 she is exposed to few interruptions, is extremely vigilant 
 and shy. She betakes herself to flight on the first alarm, 
 and traverses the waste with so great agility and swiftness, 
 that the Arab is never able to overtake her, even when he 
 is mounted upon his horse of Family. The fact is thus 
 stated by Jehovah : " What time she lifteth up herself on 
 high, she scorneth the horse and his rider." She affords 
 him only an opportunity of admiring at a distance the ex- 
 traordinary agility and stateliness of her motions, the rich- 
 ness of her plumage, and the great propriety of ascribiuj^ 
 to her " an expanded quivering wing." Nothing certainly 
 can be more beautiful and entertaining than such a sight ; 
 the wings, by their continual though unwearied vibrations, 
 serving her at once for sails and oars, while her feet, no 
 less assisting in conveying her out of sight, are equally in- 
 sensible of fatigue. Her surprising swiftness is confirmed 
 by the writer of a voyage to Senegal, who says, "She sets 
 off at a hard gallop; but after being excited a little, she ex- 
 pands her wings, as if to catch the wind, and ab^dons her- 
 self to a speed so great that she seems not to touch the 
 ground." " I am persuaded," continues that writer, " she 
 would leave far behind the swiftest English courser." 
 Buffon also admits that the ostrich runs faster than the 
 horse. These unexceptionable testimonies completely vin- 
 dicate the assertion of the inspired writer. But as it is on 
 horseback the Arab pursues and takes her, it is necessary 
 
356 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 39. 
 
 to explain how he accomplishes his purpose, and show its 
 consistency with the sacred writings. " When the Arab 
 rouses an ostrich," says Buffon, " he follows her at a dis- 
 tance, without pressing her too hard, but sufhciently to 
 prevent her from taking food, yet not to determine her to 
 escape by a prompt flight." Here the celebrated naturalist 
 fairly admits that she has it in her power to escape if she 
 were sufficiently alarmed. " It is the more easy," contin- 
 ues our author, *' to follow her in this manner, because 
 she does not proceed in a straight line, and because she de- 
 scribes almost always in her course a circle more or less ex- 
 tended." The Arabs, then, have it in their power to direct 
 their pursuit in a concentric interior circle, and by conse- 
 quence straighter ; and to follow her always at a just distance, 
 by passing over much less ground than she. When they 
 have thus fatigued and starved her for a day or two, they 
 take their opportunity, rush in upon her at full speed, lead- 
 ing her always as much as possible against the wind, and 
 kill her with their clubs, to prevent her blood from spoiling 
 the beautiful whiteness of her feathers. In this account of 
 Bnffon, the highest modern authority in matters of this 
 kind, nothing occurs to contradict the assertion of the in- 
 spired writer ; while he distinctly admits that she runs faster 
 than the fleetest horses, and could not be taken but by artful 
 >ianagement. 
 
 She constructs her humble nest in the bare ground, ex- 
 cavating the sand with her feet. It is hollow in the middle, 
 and fortified on all sides by a circular mound of some 
 height, for the purpose of preventing the rain from flowing 
 into the nest and wetting her young. From the most ac- 
 curate accounts which Dr. Shaw could obtain from his 
 conductors, as well as from Arabs of different places, it ap- 
 pears that the ostrich lays from thirty to fifty eggs, ^lian 
 mentions more than eighty; but Shaw never heard of so 
 great a number. The first egg is deposited in the centre ; 
 the rest are placed as conveniently as possible round about 
 it. In this manner, she is said to lay, deposite, or trust " her 
 eggs in the earth, and to warm them in the sand, and for- 
 geuelh (as they are not placed like those of some other 
 birds upon trees, or in the clefts of rocks, &c.) that the foot 
 (of the traveller) may crush them, or that the wild beast 
 may break them." She seems in a great measure insen- 
 .«;ible to the tender feelings which so powerfully operate in 
 the greater part of other animals. This assertion, indeed, 
 Buffon seems inclined to controvert : " As soon," says that 
 writer, " as the young ostriches are hatched, they are in a 
 condition to walk, and even to run and seek their food ; so 
 that in the torrid zone, where they find the degree of heat 
 which they require, and the food which is proper to them, 
 they are emancipated at their birth, and abandoned by their 
 mother, of whose care they have no need. But in countries 
 less warm, for example, at the Cape of Good Hope, the 
 mother watches over her young as long as her assistance 
 is necessary, and on all occasions her cares are propor- 
 tioned to their wants." 
 
 This account Buffon takes from Leo Africanus and 
 Kolbe, to whom he refers ; in which it is admitted, that the 
 mother abandons her offspring as soon as they are hatched, 
 although it is alleged, not for want of affection, but because 
 her cares are not necessary. But this is to suppose that 
 they are not like other young creatures, all of which re- 
 quire more or less attention from their parents, for some 
 time after their birth ; an anomaly which cannot be ad- 
 mitted but on the most convincing evidence. Let us now 
 hear the account of Dr. Shaw, who travelled in the native 
 country of the ostrich, and borrowed his information from 
 the Arabs, who were well acquainted with all her habits 
 and dispositions: " Upon the least distant noise, or trivial 
 occasion, she forsakes her eggs or her young ones, to which, 
 perhaps, she never returns ; or, if she does, it may be too 
 late either to restore life to the one, or to preserve the 
 lives of the other." Agreeably to this account, the Arabs 
 meet sometimes with whole nests of these eggs undisturb- 
 ed ; some of which are sweet and good ; others are addle 
 and corrupted ; others again have their young ones of dif- 
 ferent growths, according to the time, it may be presumed, 
 they have been forsaken by the dam. They oftener meet 
 a few of the little ones, no bigger than well-grown pullets, 
 half starved, straggling and moaning about, like so many 
 distressed orphans, for their mother. And in this manner, 
 the ostrich may be said, as in verse sixteenth, " to be hard- 
 ened against her young ones, as though they were not hers ; 
 
 her labour (in hatching and attending them so far) being 
 in vain without fear," or the least concern of what becomes 
 of them afterward. This* want of affection is also re- 
 corded by Jeremiah, in his Lamentations: " The daughter 
 of my people is cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness." 
 
 In her private capacity the ostrich is not less inconsider- 
 ate and foolish, particularly in the choice of food, which is 
 often highly detrimental and pernicious to her; for she 
 swallows every thing greedily and indiscriminately, whe- 
 ther it be pieces of rags, leather, wood, stone, or iron. 
 When Dr. Shaw was at Oran he saw one of these birds 
 swallow, without any seeming uneasiness or inconveniency, 
 several leaden bullets, as they were thrown upon the floor, 
 scorching hot from the mould; the inward coats of the 
 oesophagus and stomach being, in his opinion, probably 
 better stocked with glands and juices, than in other animals 
 with shorter necks. They are particularly fond of their 
 own excrement, which they greedily eat up as soon as it is 
 voided; no less fond are they of the dung of hens and 
 other poultry. It seems as if their optic, as well as their ol- 
 factory nerves, were less adequate and conducive to their 
 safely and preservation, than in other creatures. The 
 divine Providence in this, no less than in other respects, 
 " having deprived them of wisdom, neither hath it impart- 
 ed to them understanding." This part of her character is 
 fully admitted by Buffon, who describes it in nearly the 
 same terms. 
 
 The ostrich was aptly called by the ancients a lover of 
 the deserts. Shy and timorous in no common degree, she 
 retires from the cultivated field, where she is disturbed by 
 the Arabian shepherds and husbandmen, into the deepest 
 recesses of the Sahara. In those dreary and arid wastes, 
 which are scarcely ever refreshed with a shower, she is 
 reduced to subsist on a few tufts of coarse grass, which 
 here and there languish on their surface, or a few other 
 solitary plants, equally destitute of nourishment, and, in the 
 Psalmist's phrase, even " withered before they are grown 
 up." To this dry and parched food, may perhaps be added, 
 the great variety of land snails which occasionally cover 
 the leaves and stalks of these herbs, and which may afford 
 her some refreshment. Nor is it improbable that she 
 sometimes regales herself on lizards and serpents, together 
 with insects and reptiles of various kinds. Still, however, 
 considering the voracity and size of this camel bird, it is 
 wonderful how the little ones should be nourished and 
 brought up; and especially, how those of fuller growth, 
 and much better qualified to look out for themselves, are 
 able to subsist. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. She is hardened against her young ones, 
 as though thei/ were not hers : her labour i^in 
 vain without fear. 
 
 Mr. Vansittart, in his Observations on Select Places of 
 the Old Testament, proposes the following translation of 
 this verse : " She hath hardened her young ones for that 
 which is not hers ; her labour is for another without dis- 
 crimination." To justify this version he adduces these ex- 
 tracts from modern travellers : " We pursued our journey 
 next morning : in the course of the day I amused myselt 
 by firing my piece to start game. A female ostrich rose 
 from her nest, which was the largest I had seen, containing 
 thirty-two eggs : twelve more being distributed at some dis- 
 tance, in a little cavity by itself. I could not conceive that 
 one female could cover so many ; they were of an unequal 
 size, and on examination I found that nine of them were 
 much less than the rest. This peculiarity interested me, 
 and I ordered the oxen to be unyoked at about a quarter of 
 a league distance from the nest. I then concealed myself in 
 a thicket, from whence I could overlook the place, and yet 
 remain within gunshot. I had not watched long before the 
 female returned and sat on the eggs. During the rest of 
 the day which I passed in the thicket, three more came to 
 the same nest, covering it alternately; each continued sit- 
 ting for the space of a quarter of an hour, and then gave 
 place to another, who, while waiting, sat close by the side 
 of her it was to succeed, a circumstance that made me con- 
 jecture, that in cold or rainy nights they sit by pairs, or 
 perhaps more. The sun was almost down ; the male bird 
 approached : these, equally with the female, assist in hatch- 
 ing the eggs. I instantly shot him : but the report of my 
 gun scared the others, who in their Alight broke several of 
 
Chap. 39. 
 
 JOB. 
 
 them. I now drew nearer, and saw with regret that the 
 young ostriches were just ready to quit the shells, being per- 
 fectly covered with down. This peculiarity of female 
 ostriches assisting each other for the incubation of the same 
 nest, is, I think, calculated to awaken the atteniion of the 
 naturalists : and not being a general rule, proves that cir- 
 cumstances sometimes determine the actions of these crea- 
 tures, regulate their customs, and strengthen their natural 
 instinct, by giving them a knowledge not generally bestow- 
 ed. For is it not probable that they may associate to be the 
 more powerful, and better able to defend their young 1 
 
 " An ostrich starting before me at the distance of twenty 
 paces, I thought it might be sitting, and hastened to the spot 
 from whence she rose, where I found eleven eggs, quite 
 warm, and four others at a distance of two or three feet 
 from the nest. I called to my companions, who broke one 
 of the warm eggs, in which was a young ostrich, perfectly 
 formed, about the size of a chicken just hatched. I thought 
 these quite spoiled, but found my people entertained a very 
 different opinion of the matter, every one being eager to 
 come in for his share. Amiroo in the mean time caught 
 up the four outward ones, assuring me that I should find 
 them excellent. In the sequel, I learned from this African, 
 what the rest of my Hottentots, and even naturalists them- 
 selves. Were unacquainted with, since none that I recollect 
 have ever mentioned it : the ostrich ever places near her 
 nest a certain number of eggs, proportioned to those she 
 intends to sit on; these remaining separate and uncovered, 
 continue good a long while, being designed by the provi- 
 dential mother for the first nourishment of her young. 
 Experience has convinced me of the truth of this observa- 
 tion, for I never met with an ostrich's nest without finding 
 eggs disposed in this manner, at a small distance from it." 
 (Vaillant's Travels.) 
 
 " Among the very few polygamous birds that are found 
 in a state of nature, the ostrich is one. The male, distin- 
 guished by its glossy black feathers from the dusky gray 
 female, is generally seen with two or three, and frequently 
 as many as five, of the latter. These females lay their eggs 
 in one nest, to the number of ten or twelve each, which they 
 hatch altogether, the male taking his turn of sitting on them 
 among the rest. Between sixty and seventy eggs have 
 been found in one nest : and if incubation has begun, a few 
 are most commonly lyins; round the sides of the hole, having 
 been thrown out by the birds on finding the nest to contain 
 more than it could conveniently hold." (Barrow.) vElian 
 says, of the female ostrich, " She separates the unproductive 
 eggs; and sits only on the good ones, from which the brood 
 is produced ; and the others she uses for food for her young." 
 These accounts render obvious the propriety of the new- 
 proposed translation. Because by the four mother birds 
 having the same nest in common, and intermixing their 
 eggs, they would likewise, when the eggs were hatched, 
 have their young intermixed and in common; so that the 
 parents not being able to discern their own particular young, 
 would expend their affection equally on the whole brood, 
 and consequently on the young of another bird equally as 
 her own : thus she would he taking to herself the young of 
 others instead of her own ; so that in this respect she might 
 be said to harden her own young, by taking the young of 
 another, and dividing her affection upon them. In this 
 sense she might be called cruel as to her own young, though 
 she would at the same time be affectionate also.— Burder. 
 
 Ver, 26. Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and 
 stretch her wings towards the south? 
 
 It is considered an exceedingly fortunate thing to see a 
 hawk or a kite flying in circles from left to right, towards 
 the south. When the south wind blows, those birds may 
 be seen making their way in circles towards that quarter ; 
 but when they return they fly in a direct line. — Roberts. 
 
 The hawk is distinguished by the swiftness of her flight, 
 and the rapid motion of her wings in flying. But as it is 
 the first of these which naturally fixes the attention of an 
 observer, the Hebrews, according to then* invariable custom, 
 selected it as the reason of the name by which she is known 
 in their language ; they call her (ys) nets, from the verb 
 natsa, to fly. She was "reckoned by many of the ancients 
 the swiftest of the feathered race. In Homer, the descent 
 of Apollo from heaven is compared to her flight: "From 
 the mountains of Ida he descended like a swift hawk, the 
 
 destroyer of pigeons, that is the swiftest of birds." In the 
 thirteenth book, Ajax tells Hector the day should come 
 when he would wish to have horses swifter than hawks, to 
 carry him back to the city. Among the Egyptians the 
 hawk was the symbol of the winds; a sure proof that they 
 contemplated with great admiration the rapidity of her 
 motions. For the same reason, according to some writers, 
 she was consecrated to the sun, which she resembles in the 
 surprising swiftness of her career, and the faculty with 
 which she moves through the boundless regions of the sky. 
 This custom of consecrating the hawk to Apollo, the Greeks 
 borrowed from the Egyptians, amojig whom no animal was 
 so sacred as the ibis and the hawk. So great was their 
 veneration for these animals, that if any person killed one 
 of them, with or without design, he was punished with 
 death ; while for the destruction of any other animal, he 
 was only subjected to an arbitrary fine. This bird, so highly 
 venerated among the heathen, was pronounced unclean by 
 the Jewish lawgiver ; it was to be an abomination to the 
 people of Israel; its flesh was not to be eaten, nor its car- 
 cass touched with impunity. The reason of this law may 
 probably be found in her dispositions and qualities ; she is 
 a bird of prey, and, by consequence, cruel in her temper, 
 and gross in her manners. Her mode of living, too, may 
 probably impart a disagreeable taste and flavour to the flesh, 
 and render it, particularly in a warm climate, improper for 
 the table. Nor do we know that it was ever relished by any 
 people, although the pressure of necessitous circumstances 
 may have occasionally reconciled individuals to use it for 
 food. Her daring spirit, her thirst of blood, the surprising 
 rapidity of her flight, and her perseverance in the chase, 
 soon pointed her out to the hunter as a valuable assistant ; 
 but even he willingly resigns her carcass to be meat to the 
 beasts of the field. 
 
 Of this bird Jehovah demands, " Doth the hawk fly by 
 thy wisdom, and stretch her wings towards the south V 
 Jerome, and several other interpreters, render the words, 
 By thy prudence doth the hawk renew her plumage, having 
 expanded her wings towards the south? because the verb 
 (-\3n) abar, in the future of the Hiphil, seems to be formed 
 from the noun ("^^n) aber, or (h-izjn) abrah, which signifies 
 a feather; This law, by which the eagle, the hawk, and 
 other birds, annually shed their feathers, was not contrived 
 by the wisdom of man ; although it appears he is able, by 
 certain managements, to accelerate the moulting season, as 
 well as the renovation of the plumage. But, as means and 
 remedies derive all their efficacy from God, and depend for 
 success only upon his co-operation, it may still be demanded, 
 Doth the hawk renew her plumage by thy wisdom, expand- 
 ing her wings towards the south 7 It is said, by an ancient 
 writer on this passage, that humid and warm places are 
 favourable to this change, and are therefore diligently 
 sought for by hawkers, with the view of promoting the 
 moulting of their falcons. When the south wind blows, 
 the wild hawks, instructed by their instinctive sagacity, ex- 
 pand their wings till their limbs become heated ; and by 
 this means thedd plumage is relaxed, and the moulting 
 facilitated. But when the south wind refuses its aid, they 
 expand their wings to the rays of the sun, and shaking them 
 violently, produce a tepid gale for themselves; and thus 
 their bodies being heated, and their pores opened, the old 
 feathers more easily fall off, and new ones grow up in their 
 place. But it is more probable that these words refer, not 
 to the annual renovation of the plumage, but to the long 
 and persevering flight of the hawk towards the south, on 
 the approach of winter. Her migration is not conducted bv 
 the wisdom and prudence of man ; but by the superintend- 
 ing and upholding providence of the only wise God. The 
 words of Jehovah cannot be understood as referring to the 
 falconer's art ; for we have no evidence that the hawk was 
 employed in hunting, till many ages after the times in which 
 the patriarchs flourished. Besides, if the divine challenge 
 referred to that amusement, the direction of her flight could 
 not be confined to the south ; for she pursues the game to 
 every quarter of heaven. The renowned Chrysostom, on 
 this passage, inquires, why Jehovah has made no mention 
 of sheep and oxen, and oiher animals of the same kind, but 
 only of useless creatures, which seem to have been formed 
 for no beneficial or important purposes. But is it to be sup- 
 posed that God, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent 
 in workmg, has made any part of his works in vain ? We 
 may not be able to discover, after the most careful investi- 
 
3Sf8 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 40. 
 
 gation, the end which the Almighty had in view, when he 
 created some of his works ; but shall we presume on this 
 account to pronounce them useless or insignificant 1 So far 
 .from being a useless bird, the hawk, in some cases, brings 
 the most important and effectual assistance to the hunter. 
 It has already been observed, that the antelope, which seems 
 rather to fly than to run, leaves the swiftest dog far behind, 
 and could never be overtaken without the help of the felcon. 
 The hawk, then, is not the useless and insignificant creSure 
 which the Greek father represents her ; on the contrary, 
 she has conferred benefits on mankind of no inconsiderable 
 value. — Paxtcn. ^ 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 Ver. 15. Behold now behemoth, which I made 
 with thee ; he eateth grass as an ox. 
 
 Behemoth is an amphibious animal, whose real character 
 is involved in much obscurity. The greater part of mod- 
 ern writers have thought that behemoth is the elephant, and 
 leviathan the whale ; this indisputably the largest of the 
 aquatic, and that the largest of terrestrial animals. But 
 their sentiments are liable to objections so numerous and 
 weighty, that we are compelled, after the most careful inves- 
 tigation, to refer these names to very different animals. Bo- 
 r.hart is of opinion, that the sacred writers refer, under 
 Jiese terms, to the crocodile and the hippopotamus : and 
 he is probably correct. He follows Beza and Diodati in 
 supposing the leviathan to be the crocodile of the Nile ; and 
 from this he infers, that the behemoth is the hippopotamus, 
 an inhabitant of the same river. In the book of Job, the 
 Almighty, after describing a number of terrestrial animals 
 in a continued series, commences a new description in the 
 fortieth chapter, in which we find leviathan, which is al- 
 lowed by all to be an aquatic animal, joined with behe- 
 moth; therefore, to preserve the appointed order undis- 
 turbed, the latter must also be an aquatic animal. They 
 are, besides, very similar in several respects: both are 
 quadrupeds of enormous size— fierce in their dispositions- 
 amphibious in their nature— both of them inhabitants of 
 the Nile. Nor does the name, behemoth, ill agree with the 
 hippopotamus; for the Hebrew term behema, may denote 
 any beast, especially if it be of a superior size, as the hip- 
 popotamus is acknowledged to be. Aristotle gives him the 
 size of an ass ; Herodotus affirms that in stature he is equal 
 to the largest ox ; Diodorus makes his height not less than 
 five cubits, or above seven feet and a half; Tatius calls 
 him, on account of his prodigious strength, the Egyptian 
 elephant. The Arabian authors quoted by Bochaft, say 
 that the behema, th« same as the behemoth, is a four-footed 
 animal, although he lives in the water. But were it admit- 
 ted that behema by itself is always applied to land animals, 
 yet behemoth may signify the hippopotamus with sufficient 
 propriety, because that animal yields to very few in bulk 
 and stature ; it is amphibious, and resembles in many par- 
 ticulars terrestrial animals. No aquatic animal, indeed, 
 so much resembles the beasts of the field ; hence the hippo- 
 potamus alone, of all aquatic animals, is called, by way of 
 excellence, behema, or, in the Egyptian dialect, behemoth; 
 for behemoth is not a plural, but a singular noun, with an 
 Egyptian termination, like Thoth, Paoth, Phamenoth, the 
 names of Egyptian months, which are all in the singular 
 number. 
 
 The description of behemoth is introduced with these 
 words: " Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee ; 
 he eateth grass as an ox." The Almighty did not need to 
 fetch the arguments of his mighty power froia a distance ; 
 the Nile, which rolled its ample waters through regions 
 bordering on Arabia, the native country of Job, contained 
 tAe hippopotamus, one of the most surprising effects of 
 creating power and goodness. Such seems to be the mean- 
 ing of the command, "Behold now behemoth, which I 
 have made with thee," or in thy neighbourhood. The par- 
 ticle im often signifies, near orhard by : thus, in the book 
 of Joshua, the city of Ai is said to be im Bethaven, near 
 Bethaven; and, in the book of Judges, the Danites were, 
 m beth Micah, near the house of Micah. But as the pro- 
 priety of the translation cannot reasonably be disputed, it is 
 needless to multiply examples. The Almightv proceeds : 
 " he eateth grass like an ox." The ox and the elephant 
 are equally beasts of burden ; it is therefore by no means 
 wonderful that they live on the same kind of food ; but 
 
 that the hippopotamus, an aquatic animal, which lives for 
 the most part in the bottom of the Nile, should eat grass 
 like an ox, is a singular phenomenon, well entitled to our 
 consideration. Nor is it without design he is compared to 
 the ox ; for, he not only associates with him in the same 
 pastures, but also bears a considerable resemblance to him 
 in the size and stature of his body, and in the form of his 
 head and feet. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and 
 his force is in the navel of his belly. 
 
 The loins are the seat of strength in every animal; 
 hence, in the language of scripture, to strengthen the loins 
 denotes an augmentation of power. A very decisive in- 
 stance occurs m the second chapter of Nahum : " Make 
 thy loins strong;" fortity thy power mightily. The same 
 idea is involved in the prayer of the Psalmist, that the 
 power which the wicked had so greatly abused, might be 
 diminished, till it became consistent with the peace and 
 safety of others, or entirely taken away: "Make their loins 
 continually to shake." The last clause, " His force is in the 
 navel of his belly," cannot well be reconciled with the state- 
 ments of ancient wriiers, that the belly of the elephant is 
 the most tender and vulnerable part of his body. This is 
 a fact so generally known, so fully authenticated, that in 
 war the hostile spear is usually directed to the navel of that 
 formidable animal, where the most deadly wound may be 
 inflicted. We learn from Pliny, that when the rhinoceros 
 attacks the elephant, he likewise aims his furious thrust at 
 the same pan of the body. The same powerfnl instinct 
 which directs the horn of'the rhinoceros, leads the gnat, if 
 the Talmudical writers may be credited, to the navel of the 
 elephant, which it enters, and torments him with excrucia- 
 ting pains. But it is not to be supposed that the inspired 
 writer would place the strength of that animal in the softest 
 and most defenceless part of his frame, because it is not 
 consistent with the truth of natural history. But the navel 
 and belly of the hippopotamas are like the rest of his body, 
 protected by an impenetrable skin, of so great solidity and 
 thickness, that it is said to be formed into spears, and other 
 missile weapons. Diodorus asserts that the hippopotamus 
 has a skm nearly the strongest of all animals ; and Ptolemy 
 says hyperbolically, that the robbers in India have a skin 
 like the hippopotamus, which no arrow can pierce. Ze- 
 ringhi declares that a musket ball can make no impres- 
 sion on the dried skin of that animal, nor can any weapon 
 pierce it, till it has been long steeped in water.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. He moveth his tail like a cedar; the 
 sinews of his stones are wrapped together. 
 
 Many writers, among whom are Caryl and Schultens, in 
 order to support their hypothesis, that behemoth is the ele- 
 phant, venture to contradict the uniform sense of the term 
 zanab, which, in our translation, is properly rendered the 
 tail, and make it signify the proboscis or trunk of that ani- 
 mal. Zanab, in Parkhurst, signifies the extremity or hind- 
 ermost part of a thing, as the tail of an animal, or the 
 end of a firebrand almost extinguished ; and hence, as a 
 verb in a primitive sense, to cut off the extremity or hinder- 
 most part. Yet in opposition to' the constant meaning of 
 this word in scripture, these writers turn it into the snout 
 or trunk of the elephant, to make it agree with their fa- 
 vourite hypothesis. But if zanab be suffered to retain its 
 usual meaning, it furnishes a strong presumption, that the 
 hippopotamus is intended in the text under consideration, 
 and not the elephant, whose tail, like that of the hog, is 
 small, weak, and inconsiderable. It is, according to Buffon, 
 but two feet and a half or three feet long, and pretty slen- 1 
 der ; but the tail of the hippopotamus, he observes from , 
 Zeringhi, does not resemble that of a hog, but rather that ' 
 of a tortoise, only that it is incomparably thicker. The 
 tail of the hippopotamus, Scheuchzer observes, although 
 short, is thick, and maybe compared to the cedar for its 
 tapering, conical shape, its smoothness, thickness, and 
 strength. But although it is thick, short, and very firm, : 
 yet he moves and twists it at pleasure ; which, in the sacred 
 text, is considered as a proof of his prodigious strength. 
 
 " The sinews of his stones," continues the sacred writer, ^ 
 " are wrapped together." Bochart renders the words, The j 
 sinews of his thighs are interwoven or twisted togetbc. 
 
Chap. 40. 
 
 JOB, 
 
 359 
 
 From this short, but emphatical clause, we may certainly 
 infer, that behemoth is one of th,e most powerful animals 
 on the face of our globe. Such undoubtedly is the hippo- 
 potamus, if we may believe the accounts of Dampier, who 
 declares he has known him set one tooth in the gunnel of a 
 boat, an4 another at the distance of more than four feet, 
 and there bite a hole through the plank, and sink the boat; 
 and when he had done, he went away shaking his ears. 
 On another occasion he saw him in the wash of the shore, 
 vihen the sea tossed in a boat, with fourteen hogsheads of 
 water in her, and left it dry upon his back; and another 
 surge came and fetched the boat off, without the beast re- 
 ceiving any perceptible injury. Dampier and his crew 
 made several shots at him, but to no purpose, for the bullets 
 glanced from his sides as from a wall of adamant. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; 
 his bones are like bars of iron.* 
 
 The idea, of his prodigious strength is increased by the 
 account given of his bones, which are compared to strong 
 pieces of brass, and bars of iron. Such figures are com- 
 monly employed by the sacred writers, to express great 
 hardness and strength, of which a striking example occurs 
 in the prophecies of Micah : " Arise and thresh, O daughter 
 of Zion ; for I will make thy horn iron, and I will make 
 thy hoofs brass: and thou shall beat in pieces many people." 
 So hard and strong are the bones of the hippopotamus. 
 The cutting, and particularly the canine teeth of the lower 
 jaw, says Buffon, are very long, and so hard and strong, 
 that they strike fire with steel ; a circumstance which prob- 
 ably gave rise to the fable of the ancients, that the hippo- 
 potamus vomited fire. The substance of the canine teeth 
 is so white, so fine, and so hard, that it is preferable to ivory 
 for making artificial teeth. " His bones are like bars of 
 iron ;" and such, in the description of BuflJbn, are the bones 
 of this animal. The cutting teeth, says that celebrated 
 naturalist, especially those of the under jaw, are very long, 
 cylindrical, and chamfered. The canine teeth are also 
 long, crooked, prismatic, and sharp like the tusks of the 
 wild boar. The largest of the cutting and canine teeth are 
 twelve, and. sometimes sixteen inches long, and each of 
 them weighs from twelve to thirteen pounds. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. He is the chief of the ways of God : he 
 that made him can make his sword to approach 
 unto him. 
 
 It is added, " he is the chief of the ways of God : he that 
 made him can make his sword to approach unto him." 
 The phrase in the first clause, is evidently hyperbolical, 
 and signifies merely, that he is one of the noblest animals 
 which the almighty Creator produced. In size, the hippo- 
 potamus is inferior only to the elephant. The male, which 
 Zeringhi brought from the Nile to Italy, was sixteen feet 
 nine inches long, from the extremity of the muzzle to the 
 origin of the tail ; fifteen feet in circumference, and six feet 
 and a half high ; and the legs were about two feet ten inches 
 long. The head was three feet and a half in length, and 
 eight feet and a half in circumference. The opening of 
 the mouth was two feet four inches, and the largest teeth 
 were more than a foot long. Thus his prodigious strength ; 
 his impenetrable skin; the vast opening of his mouth, and 
 his portentous voracity ; the whiteness and hardness of his 
 teeth; his manner of life, spent with equal ease in the sea, 
 on the land, or at the bottom of the Nile, — equally claim 
 our admiration, and entitle him to be considered as the 
 chief of the ways of God. Nor is he less remarkable for 
 his sagacity ; of which two instances are recorded by Pliny. 
 After he has gorged himself with corn, and begins to return 
 with a distended belly to the deep, with averted steps he 
 traces a great many paths, lest his pursuers, following the 
 lines of one plain track, should overtake and destroy him 
 while he is unable to resist. The second instance is not 
 less remarkable; When he has become fat with too much 
 Indulgence, he reduces his obesity by copious bleedings. 
 • For this purpose, he searches for newly cut reeds, or sharp 
 pointed rocks, and rubs himself against them, till he make 
 a sufficient aperture for the blood to flow. To promote the 
 discharge, it is said, he agitates his body ; and when ho 
 
 thinks he has lost a sufficient quEntity, he closes the wound 
 by rolling himself in the mud. Hence, Pliny calls him the 
 discoverer of the art of blood-letting ; and the master of the 
 healing art: and Ammianus, the most sagacious of all an- 
 imals destitute of reason. 
 
 " He that made him can make his sword approach unto 
 him :" or, as the words may be rendered. He who made 
 him, has applied to him his sharp, crooked sword ; of which 
 the meaning seems to be. He has furnished his mouth with 
 long teeth, somewhat bent, sharp, and protruded, with which, 
 as with ^a crooked sword or sickle, he reaps and masticates 
 the grass and corn on which he feeds. But if behemoth 
 be understood of the elephant, lk)w can it be said with any 
 correctness, that he is provided with a crooked sword for 
 reaping his food. The shortness of his neck prevents him 
 from reaching the ground with his mouth, and using his 
 teeth for collecting herbage. This operation is performed 
 by his trunk, which receives the food, and conveys it into 
 his mouth. His teeth are perfectly inefficient, except for 
 mastication; and as for his trunk, it has no resemblance to 
 any sharp instrument ; on this account the ancients never 
 gave it the name of a sword or sickle, but called it a hand ; 
 a name which it may receive with great propriety. A very 
 learned interpreter, perceiving the inconvenience of this 
 exposition, if behemoth mean the elephant, prefers our 
 translation : " He that made him can make his sword ap- 
 proach unto him:" that is. He alone that made him can 
 take away his life. But whether we apply the words to the 
 elephant, or the hippopotamus, the sense is equally inadmis- 
 sible, for both these animals are frequently destroyed with- 
 out the immediate interference of God. Besides, to apply 
 the sword to any one, and to take away his life with it, are 
 not exactly the same ; nor does this view agree with the 
 whole series of the context, while the interpretation given 
 by Bochart perfectly accords with it, and connects the verse 
 with the rest of the narrative : He who made him, has fur- 
 nished him with a sickle, or crooked sword, to reap and col- 
 lect his food.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 20. Surely the mountains bring him forth 
 food, where all the beasts of the field play. 
 
 This is considered as a very strong argument in favour 
 of the elephant, an animal which, it is well known, browses 
 upon the mountains ; while, fully assured of his mild and 
 forbearing temper, all the beasts of the field sport around 
 him in peace and security. But the text applies with equal, 
 and even with more propriety, to the hippopotamus ; for it 
 seems to indicate something remarkable in the circumstance, 
 that such an animal should seek his food in peace, on the 
 hills and mountains which skirt his habitation. But surely 
 it is not strange, that the elephant, a creature which always 
 lives on the land, and whose disposition leads him to eat 
 grass like an ox, should be found on such a pasture. The 
 hippopotamus, on the contrary, lives for the most part in the 
 water, and walks on the bottom, as in the open air; yet he 
 seeks his food more frequently on the land, where he de- 
 vours sugarcanes, rushes, millet, rice, roots, and vegetables 
 of every kind, in immense quantities, and ravages, far and 
 wide, the cultivated fields. Not content with laying waste 
 the plains, he proceeds in the night to the hills and moun- 
 tains, and renews his depredations. Tatius asserts that he 
 is the most voracious of all animals, so that he devours the 
 standing corn of a whole field for nourishment. Natural 
 historians give the same account of the morse, an animal 
 which in many respects resembles the hippopotamus, and 
 inhabits the large rivers of Russia, which roll their waters 
 into the Frozen Ocean. He is about the size of an ox, with 
 very short legs; his breast is higher and broader than the 
 other parts of the body ; he has two large and long tusks, 
 resenibling ivory in whiteness, and of equal value. When 
 he is inclined to sleep, he forsakes the oi;ean, and, in com- 
 panies, retires to the mountains. Aroun*.. the hippopotamus, 
 the beasts of the field m.ay sport in safety ; for although he 
 feeds on fishes, crocodiles, and even cadaverous flesh, he is 
 not known to prey on other animals. It is not even diffi- 
 cult to drive him away from the cultivated fields, for he is 
 more timid on land than in the water. His only resource 
 in danger, is to plunge into the deep, and travel under it a 
 great way, before he ventures again to appear. The In- 
 dians, according to Dampier, are accustomed to throw him 
 a part of their fish when he comes near their canoes, an'i^ 
 
360 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 41 
 
 then he passes on without doing them any harm. The 
 same voyager relates an anecdote, which remarkably dis- 
 plays the mildness of his disposition ; as their boat lay 
 near the shore, he went under her, and with his back lifted 
 her out of the water, and overset her, with six men on 
 board, but did them no personal injury. These facts prove, 
 at once, his incredible strength, and his habitual gentle- 
 ness." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 21. He lieth under the shady trees, in the 
 covert of the reeds and fens. 22. The shady 
 trees cover him with their shadow ; the willows 
 of the brook compass him about. 
 
 When satiated with food, he reposes " under the shady 
 trees in the covert of the reed and fens." The elephant, it 
 is admitted, delights in the shade, but very seldom lies down 
 to sleep, as the sacred writer asserts of behemoth ; nor is 
 he known to frequent the reeds which cover the marsh, and 
 skirt the border of the lake. But the reeds are the chosen 
 haunt of the hippopotamus ; they supply him with a grateful 
 food, and screen him during his repose from the burning 
 heat of the sun. In this part of his history, ancient and 
 modern authors harmoniously accord. Marcellinus ob- 
 serves, that he reposes among the tall reeds, where they 
 grow thickest in the mire. They are his covert, his foodl, 
 and his medicine. Hence the prayer of David, Rebuke the 
 company of the spearmen, or, as it may be translated, the 
 wild beast of the reed, which has been supposed to refer to 
 the hippopotamus, as the symbol of the Egyptian people and 
 government; and this is the naore probable, as he mentions 
 the bulls and the calves, which that degenerate race hon- 
 oured with idolatrous reverence. The circumstance of 
 his making his bed among the thick reeds' of the marsh, 
 naturally suggests his relation to the Nile, whose banks are 
 richly clothed with that plant ; this is confirmed by many 
 Egyptian representations, in which he is joined with the 
 crocodile. Kimchi, and other v/riters, who contend that 
 the elephant is meant in this description, unable to recon- 
 cile the clause under consideration to their theory, are 
 compelled to throw it into the form of an interrogation : 
 Does he lie under the holy trees in the covert of the reeds 
 and fens 1 that is, he by no means lies in such places. But 
 they did not perceive that this solution of the difficulty is 
 destructive to their own theory, for the elephant does lie 
 under the shady trees, or takes his repose standing under 
 their covert. Besides, to throw the clause into the form 
 of an interrogation, is to break the texture of the descrip- 
 tion, and to mar its beauty ; and if such liberties with the 
 sacred text were admitted, nothing is so plain or express 
 in the word of God, which may not be eluded. The only 
 other remark necessary to be made is, that the words of the 
 sacred writer are confirmed by the testimony of Buffbn, 
 who says the hippopotamus, besides his usual cry, which 
 has a great resemblance to that of the elephant, or to the 
 stammering and indistinct sounds uttered by deaf persons 
 when asleep, makes a kind of snorting noise, which be- 
 trays him at a distance. To prevent the danger arising 
 from this circumstance, he generally lies among the reeds 
 that grow upon marshy grounds, and which it is difficult 
 to approach : there " the shady trees cover him with their 
 shadow ; the willows of the brook compass him about." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 23. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and 
 hasteth not : he trusteth that he can draw up 
 Jordan into his mouth. 
 
 B< nemoth, which before was feeding upon the mount- 
 ains, or sleeping under the shade of the reeds and the 
 willows, is in the next verse introduced quenching his 
 thirst at the river: "Behold, he drinketh up a river, and 
 hasteth not: he trusteth he can draw up Jordan into his 
 mouth." Bochart gives a different translation : " Behold, 
 let a river come upon him, he will not fear ; he is safe 
 though Jordan break forth upon his mouth." This ver- 
 sion, it must be allowed, agrees perfectly with what natural 
 historians say of the hippopotamus, that he walks deliber- 
 ately into the deepest floodsj and pursues his journey with 
 the same fearless composure as in the open air, along the 
 bottom of the torrent, or the channel of the sea. He re- 
 mains a long lime under water. Dampier has seen him 
 
 descend to the bottom of three fathoms water, and remain 
 there more than half an Jiour before he returned to the 
 surface. — Paxton. * 
 
 Ver. 24. He taketh it with his eyes : his nose 
 pierceth through snares. 
 
 The inspired writer thus concludes his description: " he 
 taketh it with his eyes : his nose pierceth through snares." 
 Bochart renders the words, Who shall take him in his 
 sight, and perforate his nose with hooks'? that is. Who 
 shall come before him, and attack him with open violence 1 
 It is found extremely difficult to subdue him in fair c(?m- 
 bat ; and therefore the Egyptians have recourse to strata- 
 gem. They watch near the banks of the Nile, till he 
 leave the river to feed in the adjacent fields : they then 
 make a large ditch in the way by which he passed, and 
 cover it with thin planks, earth, and herbage. Passing 
 without suspicion on his return to the flood, over the de- 
 ceitful covering, he falls into the ditch, and is immediately 
 despatched by the hunters, who rush from their ambush, 
 and pour their shot into his head. From this review, the 
 fair and necessary conclusion seems to be, that behemoth 
 is not the elephant, but the hippopotamus of the Nile. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Ver. 1. Canst thou draw out leviathan with a 
 hook ? or his tongue with a cord which thou 
 lettest down ? 
 
 From this passage Hasselquist observes, that the levia- 
 than " means a crocodile, by that which happens daily, and 
 without doubt happened in Job's time, in the river Nile ; to 
 wit, that this voracious animal, far from being drawn up by 
 a hook, bites off" and destroys all fishing-tackle of this kind, 
 which is thrown out in the river. I found, in one that I 
 opened, two hooks, which it had swallowed, one sticking in 
 the stomach, and the other in a part of the thick membrai r 
 which covers the palate." — Burder. 
 
 The term leviathan is properly the same as tannin, which 
 in our scripture is translated dragon. The royal Psalmist 
 uses them as convertible terms, in the seven ty-fo.urth Psalm, 
 yhere he celebrates the mighty power of God in these lofty 
 strains: " Thou brakest the heads of the dragons {tannin') 
 in the waters ; thou brakest the heads of leviathan in 
 pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting 
 the wilderness." He has been followed by the prophet in 
 a passage where he foretels the deliverance of the church, 
 from her cruel and implacable enemies: " In that day, the 
 Lord, with his sore, and great, and strong sword, 'shall 
 punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, even leviathan, that 
 crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in 
 the sea." Kimchi distinguishes leviathan and tannin, by 
 their magnitude alone. Leviathan, says he, is that enor- 
 mous serpent or dragon. Hence, leviathan is a sinuons 
 animal, which coils itself up like a dragon ; and is de- 
 scribed by the prophet as the oblique, tortuous, or crooked 
 serpent. But as the word tannin is often used to denote 
 the whale, and other marine animals; so, the term levia- 
 than is, in scripture, sometimes employed to denote the 
 same creatures. An example of this use of the term oc- 
 curs in David's description of the sea : " There go the 
 ships, there is that leviathan whom thou hast made to play 
 therein." It is not however certain, that the term is ever 
 used in this general sense ; for it will be shown, that the 
 creature to which it properly belongs, often infests the sea 
 near the mouth of the great rivers of Africa and the East. 
 Every part of the sublime description which Jehovah has 
 given of leviathan in the book of Job, exactly corresponds 
 with the natural history of the crocodile, which lives 
 equally in the sea and in the river. That terrible animal 
 bears a striking resemblance to the dragon or serpent. He 
 has the shape of our asp ; his legs are so short, that, like 
 the serpent, he seems to go upon his belly. His feet are 
 armed with claws, his back-bone is firmly jointed, and his 
 tail a most formidable weapon; his whole formation is 
 calculated for strength. Let us now hear Jehovah himself 
 describe the leviathan, and we shall find that it exactly 
 corresponds with the character and habits of the crocodile: 
 "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook; or his 
 tongue with a cord Which thou lettest down V He is of 
 
Chap. 41. 
 
 too great magnitude to be drawn out of the water like a 
 fish. The second clause manifestly refers to the impossi- 
 bility of drawing out his tongue, on account of its ad- 
 hering throughout to his under jaw. It is besides short, 
 thin, and broad, and by consequence, cannot be drawn out 
 to his lips, like the tongue of any other animal.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 2. Canst thou put a hook into his nose ? or 
 bore his jaw through with a thorn ? 
 
 He is too powerful and fierce to be treated like a small 
 fish : the elephant may submit to such indignities, but the 
 crocodile scorns the dominion of man. — Paxton. 
 
 The Hebrew word which is translated thorn, signifies 
 rather an iron ring, fixed in the jaw. Bruce, speaking of 
 the manner of fishing in the Nile, says, when a fisherman 
 has caught a fish, he draws it on shore, and puts a strong 
 iron ring into its jaw. " To this ring is fastened a rope, by 
 which the fish is attached to the shore, which he then throws 
 again into the water. Those- who want fish go to the fish- 
 erman, as to a fish-market, and purchase them alive. We 
 likewise bought a couple, and the fisherman showed us ten 
 or twelve, fastened in a similar manner." — Rosenmoller. 
 
 Ver. 3. Will he make many supplications unto 
 thee ? will he speak soft words unto thee ? 
 
 An elegant prosopopoeia, which expresses, with great 
 force and beauty, the difiiculty with which he is overcome. 
 — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 4. Will he make a covenant with thee ? wilt 
 thou take him for a servant for ever 1 
 
 As the vanquished are wont to redeem their life with 
 the loss of their liberty. This question seems to intimate, 
 that attempts have been made to tame the crocodile, but 
 they have uniformly proved abortive. If this allusion is 
 involved in the words, it is a certain proof that the whale 
 is not intended; for, while attempts have actually been 
 made to tame the crocodile, none have ever been made to 
 domesticate the whale. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? 
 wilt thou bind him for thy maidens 1 
 
 " Wilt thou play with him as with a bird 1 or wilt thou 
 .3ind him for thy maidens?' It cannot be: he is a trucu- 
 lent animal, and particularly hostile to children of both 
 sexes, that, by approaching the banks of the Nile without 
 sufficient circumspection, fall a prey to this vigilant de- 
 vourer. He will even rush upon a full grown person, and 
 drag him in a moment to the bottom of the stream. Maxi- 
 mus Tyrius mentions an Egyptian woman, who brought 
 up a young crocodile, of the same age with her son, and per- 
 mitted them to live together in the most familiar manner. 
 The crocodile was gentle and harmless during his early 
 youth, but his natural disposition gradually unfolded as he 
 advanced to maturity, till at last he seized upon his unsus- 
 pecting associate, and devoured him. Ancient authors 
 record many instances of crocodiles entering the houses of 
 the inhabitants near the Nile, and destroying their chil- 
 dren. These are sufficient to justify the interrogation of 
 the Almighty, and to show that the terrible animal in 
 question never can be completely tamed, nor safely trusted. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. Shall thy companions make a banquet of 
 him? shall they part him among the mer- 
 chants ? 
 
 If leviathan be the whale, both the one and the other are 
 done every year ; in some parts of the world, every day. 
 The inhabitants of some regions feast on the blubber of the 
 whale, and lay up the remainder for winter provisions. 
 Cetaceous fishes are sought by " the merchants" at great 
 expense, and constitute no inconsiderable portion of their 
 wealth. But the fishermen neither rejoice when the croco- 
 dile is taken, except for the death of a devouring monster, 
 nor feast upon his flesh ; they do not cut up his carcass, 
 nor expose him to sale, with the view of increasing their 
 riches.— Paxton. 
 46 
 
 JOB. 861 
 
 Ver. 7. Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? 
 or his head with fish-spears ? 
 
 If leviathan, in this sublime expostulation, signified the 
 whale, the answer might be given in the affirmative ; for 
 that prodigious creature has been often compelled to yield 
 to the harpoon ; his skin has been filled with barbed irons, 
 and his head with fish spears: nor is the capture of the 
 whale attended with much difficulty. But the crocodile is 
 said to defy the arm of the harpooner, and the point of his 
 spear ; and in attacking him, the assailant has to encounter 
 both great difficulty and imminent danger. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. Lay thy hand upon him, remember the 
 battle, do no more. 
 
 So great a horror shall seize thee, that thou shalt think 
 rather of flight than combat, and the very touch of his skin 
 shall convince thee, that it will not yield to thy stroke. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 9. Behold, the hope of him is in vain : shal\ 
 not one be cast down even at the sight of him? 
 
 If leviathan cannot be tabsn by these means, the hope of 
 subduing him is utterly vain ; none may expect to prevail 
 against him ; his very presence fills thestoutest heart with 
 terror. It cannot however be denied, that the crocodile is 
 often taken and destroyed ; but the remark equally applies 
 to the whale ; and consequently, if the words of Jehovah 
 describe a creature which is too powerful and loo fierce to 
 be vanquished, neither the one nor the other can be under- 
 stood. But it were absurd to suppose, that any creature on 
 the earth, or in the sea, is either invulnerable or uncon- 
 querable. The sacred writer says expressly, that every 
 creature may be tamed by the industry of man. Th^lan- 
 guage of Jehovah, therefore, only means, that the man who 
 attacks the leviathan, must not hope for an easy conquest; 
 and the experience of all ages attests the truth of the asser- 
 tion. In size, he is very inferior to the whale ; yet he 
 sometimes extends to the length of thirty feet ; and accord- 
 ing to some ancient writers of great name, to forty or fifty. 
 His strength is so great, that with one stroke of his tail he 
 is said to cast the strongest animals to the ground ; so that, 
 to hunt the crocodile has always been reckoned one of the 
 boldest and most perilous undertakings. In the time of 
 Diodorus, the Nile and its adjacent lakes swarmed with 
 crocodiles : yet very few were taken, and those not with 
 hooks, but with iron nets. How difficult an undertaking 
 this was, may be inferred from the coin which Augustus, 
 the Roman emperor, caused to be struck, when he had 
 completed the reduction of Egypt, on which was exhibited 
 the figure of a crocodile, bound with a chain to a palm-tree, 
 with this remarkable inscription, Nemo antea relegavit. 
 These words certainly insinuate that in the experience of 
 the ancients, to chain the crocodile was an achievement of 
 the utmost difficulty. If the crocodiles which inhabit the 
 Nile, are not, as modern travellers maintain, so fierce and 
 dangerous as the ancients represent them, it must be owing 
 to a number of adventitious circumstances; for in other 
 parts of the world they are as ferocious as ever. It ought 
 to be remembered, that Jehovah describes the general 
 character of the species, which are admitted by writers 
 of undoubted credit, to be the most fierce and savage of all 
 animals. Plutarch asserts in express terms, that no crea- 
 ture is so ferocious ; and in another part of his works, that 
 it is an animal extremely averse to society, and the most 
 atrocious of all the monsters which the rivers, the lakes, or 
 the seas, produce. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 10. None is so fierce that dare stir him up; 
 who then is able to stand before me ? 
 
 When the crocodile is satiated with prey, he leaves the 
 deeps to repose on the banks of the river, or on the shore 
 of the sea. At such a time, none are so bold as to disturb 
 his slumbers, or provoke his vengeance ; or if any one, 
 disregarding the dictates of prudence, or eager to display 
 his infrcpidity, ventures in such circumstances to attack 
 him, it is at the imminent hazard of his life, and is for the 
 most part attended with fatal consequences Diodorus 
 assigns this as the reason that he was worshipped by the 
 
362 
 
 JOB. 
 
 Chap. 41. 
 
 Egyptians, that their enemies, for fear of him, durst not 
 cross the river to attack them. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. Who hath prevented me, that I should 
 repay him ? whatsoever is under the whole 
 heaven is mine. 12. I will not conceal his 
 parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion. 
 13. Who can discover the face of his garment? 
 or who can come to him with his double bridle ? 
 
 These clauses, although teeming with important instruc- 
 ion, and, considering the authority with which they are 
 clothed, entitled to deep attention, contribute nothing to the 
 object of this review ; we therefore proceed to the twelfth 
 verse. " I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his 
 comely proportion." These are admirably displayed in the 
 following particulars: " Who can discover the face of his 
 garment, or come to him with a double bridle 1" The 
 crocodile never casts his skin, like the greater part of ser- 
 pents, which he so nearly resembles, but retains it to the 
 end of his life. The horse is a most powerful and spirited 
 ^imal, yet he suffers a bit to be put into his mouth, and 
 submits to the control of man; but the crocodile spurns his 
 dominion, and parts with his freedom only with his life. 
 Some interpreters propose a different version, which is 
 equally characteristic of that animal : " Who shall venture 
 within the reach of his jaws, which, when extended, have 
 the appearance of a double bridle V — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. Who can open the doors of his face? 
 his teeth are terrible round about. 
 
 The doors of his face are his immense jaws, which he 
 opens with a great and horrible hiatus. This feature of ihe 
 crocodile has been mentioned by all naturalists. On the 
 Ian* his motions are slow, but in the river he springs 
 eagerly on his prey, and either knocks it down with his tail, 
 or opens a wide mouth for its destruction, armed with nu- 
 merous sharp teeth of various lengths, with which, like the 
 shark, he sometimes severs the human body at a single 
 bite. Peter Martyr saw one, whose mouth was seven feet 
 in width. Tatius affirms, that in seizing the prey, he 
 becomes all mouth: and Albert, that the opening of his 
 mouth extends as far back as his ears. Leo Africanus and 
 Scaliger affirm, that he can receive within his moifth a 
 young heifer. The vast capacity of his jaws is attested 
 also by Martial, in the following lines : 
 
 "Cum comparata rictibus tuis ora 
 Nileacus habeas crocodilus angusta." 
 
 " His teeth are terrible round about :" or, in every respect, 
 calculated to inspire the beholder with terror. They are 
 sixty in number, and larger than the proportion of his body 
 seems to require. Some of them project from his mouth 
 like the tusks of a boar ; others are serrated and connected 
 like the teeth of a comb * hence, the bite is very retentive, 
 and not less difficult to cure than the wound inflicted by the 
 teeth of a mad dog. All the ancients agree, that his bite is 
 most tenacious and horrible. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. Hi5 scales are his pride, shut up together 
 as with a close seal. 16. One is so near to 
 another, that no air can come between them. 
 17. They are joined one to another, they stick 
 together, that they cannot be sundered. 
 
 In these remarkable words is described the closeness of 
 his scales, which, cohering to one another like the plates of 
 a shield, cover his whole back. Those writers who make 
 leviathan signify the whale, find themselves involved by 
 this part of the description in an inextricable difficulty, for 
 the whale has not a scale upon its body. This single cir- 
 cumstance, indeed, ought to determine the question : the 
 whale it cannot be, for that immense animal has a smooth 
 skin ; and the history of nature furnishes no other to which 
 the description of Jehovah will apply, but the crocodile, 
 whose back is covered with impenetrable sffales. One 
 writer endeavours to get quit of the difficulty, by supposing 
 that the text includes a comparison, and paraphrases it in 
 this manner : leviathan is as safe from the assault of man, 
 as if his body were defended with the strongest and broad- 
 
 est scales. But this mode of interpretation cannot be too 
 severely reprobated ; because it makes the sacred text say 
 any thing which may suit the taste or the purpose of a 
 writer. The words of Jehovah are express , the back of 
 leviathan is covered with numerous, strong, and closely 
 connected scales, under the protection of which, he fears 
 no assailant, he shrinks from no danger. Nor is it con- 
 sistent with truth, that a whale, which has no scales, is as 
 strongly defended against the point of a spear, as if he were 
 covered with this natural shield ; for if his prodigious frame 
 were defended by the broadest, the strongest, and the closest 
 scales, the capture, if at all practicable, would be as ardu- 
 ous and difficult, as it is now easy. Abandoning this feeble 
 and inadmissible argument, Caryl and others contend, that 
 some cetaceous fishes are covered with scales, quoting in 
 support of their assertion, a passage from Arrian, that he 
 had heard Nearchus say, that the latter had heard certain 
 mariners say, that they had seen cast upon the seashore, a 
 monstrous fish, of fifty cubits long, which had scales all 
 over, of a cubit thick. On this ridiculous story, it is need- 
 less to make any remark ; to state is to refute it : or, if 
 refutation be deemed necessary, it is sufficient to say, that 
 although hundreds of cetaceous fishes are caught every 
 year, both in the North and in the South Sea, not so much 
 as one has been found sheathed in scales, since the days of 
 Nearchus. — Paxton. 
 
 " The back of the crocodile," says Thevenot, " is covered 
 with scales, resembling a door studded with large nails, and 
 so hard that it cannot be pierced with a halberd." Bertram 
 says, that the w^hole back of the crocodile is covered with 
 horny flakes, or scales, which no musket-ball can pierce. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 18. By his neesings a light doth shine, and 
 his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. 
 
 It seems to be generally admitted, that the crocodile turns 
 his face to the sun when he goes to sleep on the. banks of 
 the river; and in this position becomes so heated, that the 
 breath, driven forcibly through his nostrils, issues with so 
 much impetuosity, that it resembles a stream of light. A 
 similar expressioii is used concerning the war-horse, in the 
 thirty-ninth chapter, which may give us a clearer idea of 
 the brightness which issues from tlie nostrils of this animal: 
 " The glory of his nostrils is terrible." Provoked by the 
 sound of the trumpet, and the sight of armed men. a white 
 fume streams from his expanded nostrils; which the Spirit 
 of inspiration calls his glory, and common authors com- 
 pare to fire. Thus, Silius Italicus, Frenoque leneri imfa- 
 tiens crebras expirat naribus ignes ; and Claudian, Ignescunt 
 patulcE nares. In the same manner are we to understand 
 the words of Jehovah concerning the crocodile. The heat 
 of that scaly monster, basking in the scorching beams of a 
 vertical sun, together with the force with which the breath 
 is emitted from the nostrils, produces the same luminous 
 appearance round his nose, as plays around that of the 
 high-mettled charger on the day of battle. The next clause 
 possesses very great poetical beauty: "His eyes are like 
 the eyelids of the morning :" like the brightening dawn of 
 day. The learned Bochart mentions a curious coincidence 
 between this striking figure, and the sentiments of the 
 Egyptians. Among that people, the eyes of the crocodile 
 is the hieroglyphic for the dawn; because they first arrest 
 the attention, as the terrible animal approaches the surface 
 of the deep ; or because they are dim, and command a 
 very limited field of vision under the water, but recover 
 their brilliancy and acuteness as soon as he returns to the 
 open air. Such is the appearance of the solar orb at his 
 rising; he seems to emerge from the waves of the sea with 
 a dim and faded lustre, but which increases every moment 
 as he advances towards the meridian. But how^ it can be 
 asserted of the whale, that his eyes are like the eyelids of 
 the morning, it is not easy to conjecture. His eyes, which 
 are not much larger than"those of an :x, are buried beneath 
 a ponderous eyelid, and imbedded Jn fat. Hence, blinder 
 than a mole, he wanders almost at random in the mighty 
 waters, equally unable to avoid being left by the retreating 
 surge upon the strand, or dashed against the pointed rocks. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, 
 and sparks of fire leap out. 20. Out of his 
 
Chap. 41. 
 
 JOB, 
 
 363 
 
 nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething-pot 
 or caldron. 21. His breath kindleth coals, and 
 a flame goeth out of his mouth. 
 
 Tatius gives a similar account of the hippopotamus: His 
 nostrils are very broad, and emit an ignited smoke, as from 
 a furnace of fire. The very same remark is made by Eus- 
 tathius : He has a broad nose, expiring an ignited smoke 
 as out of a furnace. These two animals live in the same 
 element, and have the same mode of respiration. The 
 longer Ihey continue under water without breathing, they 
 respire the more quickly when they begin to emerge. As 
 the torrent rushes along with greater impetuosity, when the 
 obstacle which opposed its progress 'is removed ; so their 
 breath, long repressed, effervesces and breaks out with so 
 much violence, that they seem to vomit flame from their 
 mouth and nostrils. The whale, it must be admitted, being 
 of much larger size than the crocodile, breathes with a pro- 
 portionate vehemence ; it does not, however, vomit fire, but 
 spouts water to an immense height in the air. The lan- 
 guage of the inspired writer is highly figurative and hyper- 
 bolical, painting, in the most vivid colours, the heat and 
 force with which the breath of the crocodile rushes from 
 his expanded nostrils. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver, 22. In his neck remaineth strength, and sor- 
 row is turned into joy before him. 
 
 The whale has no neck, and by consequence cannot be 
 the leviathan : like other fishes, his head is joined to his 
 shoulders; while the crocodile is formed like a serpent, 
 with a neck and shoulders, which enable him to move, to 
 raise, or turn back his head, when he seizes his prey. 
 " Sorrow is turned into joy before him ;" what afflicts, 
 alarms, or depresses other animals, animates his courage 
 and activity. Or the words may be rendered, Sorrow 
 dances before him; which may denote, that he spreads ter- 
 ror and destruction wherever he comes ; for he imme- 
 diately rushes upon those that happen to meet his eye, and 
 although they may be so fortunatV as to escape, still they 
 reckon it an ill omen to have fallen in the way of that 
 fierce and savage destroyer. Thus terror marches before 
 him, as a herald before his sovereign, to proclaim his 
 approach, and prepare his way. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 23. The flakes of his flesh are joined to- 
 gether : they are firm in themselves ; they can- 
 not be moved. 24. His heart is as firm as a 
 stone ; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether 
 millstone. 
 
 As the scales of leviathan present a coat of mail nearly 
 impenetrable to the attacks of his enemies ; so his flesh, or, 
 as it is rendered by some, the prominent parts of his body, 
 are like molten brass, the particles of which adhere so 
 closely, that they cannot be separated. The very reverse 
 of what Job affirmed of himself, may be asserted of the 
 crocodile ; his strength is the strength of stones, and his 
 flesh is formed of brass ; the very refuse, the vilest parts of 
 his flesh, (for so the word signifies,) are firm, and strong, 
 and joined; or, as the Septuagint translates it, glued to- 
 gether, that they cannot be moved. But if the refuse of his 
 iiesh be so firm and hard, how great must be the strength 
 which belongs to the nobler parts of his frame 1 This 
 question is answered in the next verse : " His heart is as 
 firm as a stone ; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether mill- 
 stone." In all creatures, the heart is extremely firm and 
 compact ; in the leviathan it is firm as a stone ; and to give 
 us the highest idea of its hardness, Jehovah compares it to 
 the nether millstone, which, having the principal part of 
 the work to perform, is required to be peculiarly hard and 
 solid. Some writers imagine, that the Almighty refers, not 
 so much to the natural hardness of the heart, as to the 
 cruel temper of the animal, or to his fearless intrepidity ; 
 he feels no pity, he fears no danger, he is insensible to ex- 
 ternal impressions as the hardest stone. — Paxton. 
 
 Vk. 25. When he raiseth up himself, the mighty 
 are afraid : by reason of breakings they purify 
 themselves. 
 
 They feel a secret horror shoot through the whole soul ; 
 they become as it were incapable of reflection, and know 
 not whiiher to turn, when they see the monster emerging 
 from the deep, thirsting for blood, and displaying the terrors 
 of his opening jaws. The stoutest heart is humbled, and, 
 like the mariners in the ship Avith Jonah, when they de- 
 spaired of life, they cry every one to his God, and promise 
 to break ofl' their sms by righteousness. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 26. The sword' of him that layeth at him 
 cannot hold ; the spear, the dart, nor the haber- 
 geon. 27. He esteemeth iron as a straw, and 
 brass as rotten wood. 28. The arrow cannot 
 make him flee : sling-stones are turned with 
 him into stubble. 29. Darffe are counted as 
 stubble : he laugheth at the shaking of a spear. 
 
 In this glowing description, it is plainly the design of the 
 Almighty to show, that the skin of the crocodile is impene- 
 trable to these offensive weapons; or else, that regardless 
 of danger, he scorns the wounds they inflict, and with fear- 
 less impetuosity seizes on his prey. This entirely accords 
 with the accounts which natural historians give of that ani- 
 mal. Peter Martyr asserts that his skin is so hard it can- 
 not be pierced with arrows ; and according to other writers, 
 he can be wounded only in the belly. But it is well known, 
 that the whale is vulnerable in every part, and is common- 
 ly struck with the harpoon on the back, where the croco- 
 dile is defended by an impenetrable buckler of large, ex- 
 tremely hard, and closely compacted scales. On this ar- 
 mour of proof, the edge of the sword is blunted, and its 
 point is broken ; the spear falls harmless to the ground, and 
 the dart rebounds from his impenetrable covering. But the 
 habergeon, the coat of mail which the combatant puts on 
 for his own defence, shall not save him from the devour- 
 ing jaws of the monster; for he esteemeth iron as straw, 
 and brass as rotten wood, which yield to the slightest touch, 
 and crumble into dust before the smallest force. A shower 
 of arrows makes no impression upon him ; and the blow of 
 a stone, slung by the most powerful hand, is no more to him 
 than the stroke of a feather, or bit of stubble. Nor do the 
 more dangerous weapons which the warrior hurls from his 
 military engines, depress his courage, or interrupt his as- 
 sault; for he laughs at the shaking of a spear, he regards 
 it not, when, in token of defiance it is brandished before 
 him. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 30. Sharp stones are under him : he spread- 
 eth sharp-pointed things upon the mire. 
 
 What is extremely incommodious, or even painful to 
 other creatures, occasions no uneasiness to him.' Crimi- 
 nals were punished among the ancients, by being compel- 
 led to lie on sharp stones ; but so insensible is he to pain, 
 that he can stretch his enormous bulk upon them without 
 inconvenience : " Sharp stones are under him ; he spread- 
 elh sharp-pointed things upon the mire." Such a place of 
 repose is his choice, not his punishment. Or the words 
 may refer to the scales of leviathan, which are hard and 
 sharp as a potsherd ; and to his skin, which resembles a 
 board set with sharp stones, or Iron spikes. So rough is 
 the skin of the crocodile, so hard are his scales, and so high 
 and pointed the protuberances which rise on his back, that 
 a more apt similitude could not be chosen than the tribula, 
 or sharp thrashing instrument with iron teeth, to represent, 
 in the liveliest manner, the appearance of this terrible ani- 
 mal, as he lies reposing in the mud of the Nile. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 31. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: 
 he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. 
 
 Having described his general appearance, in which we 
 have discovered almost every circumstance fitted to strike 
 the mind with terror, and the impression which his emerg- 
 ing from the deep, and approaching the land, produce in 
 the mind of a beholder, the inspired writer goes on to state 
 the astonishing effects of his return to the water: |'He 
 makes the deep to boil like a pot ; he makes the sea like a 
 pot of ointment." The first clause exhibits the natural ef- 
 fect of a large body plunging suddenly into deep water j th9 
 
364 
 
 JOB, 
 
 Chap. 41. 
 
 second brings into viewanotaer circumstance, which beau- 
 tifully expresses the violent agitation of the gulf into which 
 the leviathan precipitates himself: " He maketh the sea to 
 boil like a pot of ointment." The sudden and violent dis- 
 placing of the waters, makes the sea resemble a large cal- 
 dron furiously boiling over a strong fire ; or the ascending 
 water, being mixed with sand and mud from the bottom, 
 excited by the violent agitation, resembles in colour, and in 
 the smoothness of its swell, a pot of ointment; than which, 
 more striking figures can scarcely be presented to the mind. 
 It is the opinion of ancient writers, that the crocodile ex- 
 hales from his body an odour like musk, with which he 
 perfumes the pool where he gambols ; and they assign this 
 as the reason that the turbulence of the gulf which receives 
 him, is compared to the boiling of a pot of ointment. But 
 admittmg what so many have asserted, that the crocodile 
 diffuses a fragrant odour around him, it can hardly be sup- 
 posed that the quantity exhaled can be so great as to war- 
 rant such a comparison. The inspired writer seems to al- 
 lude, not to the ointment or its fragrance, but to the boiling 
 of the pot in which spices are decocting, an operation which 
 probably requires a very brisk ebullition. 
 
 Those who maintain that leviathan is the whale, demand 
 how the crocodile, which inhabits the river, can make the 
 sea boil ] But the difficulty admits of an easy solution ; the 
 word sea, both in Hebrew and English, is often used in a 
 restricted sense for any large expanse of water. The Jew- 
 ish and Arabian writers, agreeably to this sense, frequently 
 speak of the Nile, and its adjacent lakes, as a sea, and with 
 great propriety, for the river itself is broad and deep, and 
 at a certain season of the year, it overflows its banks, and 
 covers the whole surface of Lower Egypt. The lakes which 
 have been formed by the inundations, are of considerable 
 depth and extent, and swarm with crocodiles ; these may 
 be called seas, with as much propriety as the sacred writers 
 of the New Testament call the lake of Sodom the Salt Sea, 
 and the lake of Tiberias the Sea of Galilee. The royal 
 Psalmist, it must be admitted, mentions the sea in the prop- 
 er sense of the term, as the haunt of leviathan:." So is this 
 great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumer- 
 able; both small and great beasts. There go the ships: 
 there is that leviathan whom thou hast made to play there- 
 in." ^ But as the sea is, m that passage, opposed to the earth, 
 it may comprehend the whole body of waters which sur- 
 round and intersect the dry land, and by consequence, the 
 proper habitation of the crocodile. This solution, however, 
 is by no means necessary to establish the claims of this an- 
 imal to the scripture title of leviathan, for it has been fully 
 ascertained, by modern travellers, that he actually frequents 
 the sea, although he generally prefers those rivers which 
 are subject to annual inundations. Crocodiles, or aliga- 
 tors, are very common on the coast and in the deep rivers 
 of Jamaica, though they prefer the banks of such rivers as, 
 in consequence of frequent or periodical overflowing, are 
 covered with mud, in which they find abundance of testa- 
 ceous fish, worms, and frogs, for "food. In South America, 
 they chiefly frequent marshy lakes, and drowned savannas; 
 but in North America, they infest both the salt parts of the 
 rivers near the sea, the fresh currents above the reach of 
 the tide, and the lakes both of salt and fresh water. The 
 slimy banks of these rivers within the range of the tide, are 
 covered by thick forests of mangrove-trees, in the entangled 
 thickets of which the crocodiles conceal themselves, and lie 
 in wait for their prey. According to Pinto, they abound 
 on the coast of New Guinea ; and Dampier found several 
 on the shores of Timor, an island in the South Sea. The 
 hippopotamus is a powerful adversary to the crocodile, and 
 so much the more dangerous, that it is able to pursue him 
 to the very bottom of the gulf. They are so numerous in 
 the bay of Vincent Pinion, and the lakes which commun? i 
 cate with it, as to obstruct, by their numbers, the piraguas 
 and canoes which navigate those waters. When De la 
 Borde was sailing along the eastern shore of South Ameri- 
 ca in a canoe, and wishing to enter a small river, he found 
 its mouth occupied by about a dozen large crocodiles. 
 These testimonies prove, beyond a doubt, that the crocodile 
 frequents the mouths of rivers and the bays of the sea, as 
 well as the fresh-water stream and lake; and by conse- 
 quence, the Psalmist might, in perfect agreement with the 
 habits of that animal, represent him as playing in the great 
 and wide sea, while the ships pursue their way to the de- 
 sired haven.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 32. He maketlj a path to shine after him ; 
 one would think the deep to he hoary. 
 
 He swims with so much force and violence near the sur- 
 face of the water, that his path may be easily traced by 
 the deep furrow which he leaves behind him, and the 
 whitening foam he excites. The same appearances at- 
 tend the motion of the dolphin : but the long withdrawing 
 furrow, and the hoary foam, are not confined to the sea ; 
 they are likewise to be seen in the river and in the lake ; 
 and by consequence, may characterize, with sufficient pro- 
 priety, the niotion of the crocodile in the Nile and its adja- 
 cent lakes. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 33. Upon earth there is not his like, who is 
 made without fear. 
 
 This clause Bochart renders, There is not his like upon 
 the dust, (which is certainly the true meaning of the phrase, 
 al apJiar ;) because, the crocodile is rather to be classed 
 among reptiles than quadrupeds. His feet are so short, 
 that he rather seems to creep than walk, so that he may, 
 with great propriety, be reckoned among " the creeping 
 things of the earth." But he difl^ers from reptiles in this, 
 that while they are in danger of being trampled upon, and 
 bruised by the foot of the passenger, he is liable to no such 
 accident. It cannot be said, in strictness of speech, Ihat he 
 is made without fear, for he is known to fly from the bold 
 and resolute attack of an enemy ; but the expression may 
 be understood hyperbolically, as denoting a very high de- 
 gree of intrepidity. The words of the inspired writer, how- 
 ever, are capable of another version, which at once removes 
 the difficulty, and corresponds with the real character of 
 the animal : He is so made, that he cannot be bruised ; he 
 cannot be crushed like a serpent, or trampled under the feet 
 of his pursuer. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 34. He beholdeth all high things : he is a 
 king over all the children of pride. 
 
 " He beholdeth all high things ;" or, as it may be transla- 
 ted, he despiseth all that is high ; " he is a king over all the 
 children oi pride." No creature is so large, so strong, so 
 courageous, if we can believe the oriental writers, but he 
 regards it with indifference or contempt. Men, women, 
 and particularly children, who incautiously approach his 
 haunts, become a prey to his devouring maw. The camel, 
 the horse, the ox, and other portly quadrupeds, which fall 
 in his way, he fiercely attacks, and forthwith devours. He 
 will even venture to encounter, and not always Avithout 
 success, the elephant and the tiger, when they come to drink 
 in the stream. His first attempt is to strike them down to 
 the ground, or break their legs with his tail, in which he 
 generally succeeds : he then drags them to the bottom of 
 the river ; or if they are animals of a moderate size, he 
 swallows them up entire, without taking the trouble of 
 putting them to death. The alligator, says Forbes, some- 
 times basks in the sunbeams on the banks of the river, but 
 oftener floats on its surface : there concealing his head and 
 feet, he appears like the rough trunk of a tree both in shape 
 and colour : by this deception, dogs and other animals fear- 
 lessly approach, and are suddenly plunged to the bottom by 
 their insidious foe. Even the royal tiger, when he quits his 
 covert and comes to drink at the stream, becomes his prey. 
 From this description, it appears that no animal is more 
 terrible than the crocodile; no creature in form, in tempei-, 
 in strength, and in habits, so nearly resembles leviathan, £« 
 described by Jehovah himself, in the book of Job, and con- 
 ', equently none has equally powerful claims to the name. 
 This conclusion is greatly strengthened by several allusions 
 to the leviathan in other parts of scripture. In the prophe- 
 cies of Isaiah, he is called "the piercing serpent,' or 
 dragon : and that the prophet under that symbol refers to 
 the king of Egypt, appears from these words : " And it shall 
 come to pass on that day, that the Lord shall beat off from 
 the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye 
 shall be gathered one by one." The prophet Ezekiel gives 
 to Pharaoh the name of the great dragon, or leviathan : 
 " Speak and say, thus sayeth the Lord God: Behold, I am 
 againsi thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that 
 lieth in the midst of his rivers : which has said, My river is 
 
Chap. 42. 
 
 JOB, 
 
 365 
 
 mine own, and I have made it for myself." But it would 
 certainly be very preposterous to give the name of the ele- 
 phant to the king of Egypt, which is neither a native of that 
 country, nor ever known to visit the banks of the Nile. In 
 allusion to the destruction of Pharaoh and his army in the 
 Red Sea, the Psalmist sings : " Thou didst divide the sea 
 by thy strength ; thou brakest the heads of the dragons in 
 the water ; thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, 
 and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wil- 
 derness." But why s'hould Pharaoh and his people be com- 
 pared so frequently, and with so much emphasis, to the great 
 dragon or leviathan, but because some remarkable, some 
 terrible creature, infests their valley, to which that name 
 properly applies 1 But no formidable beast of prey, except 
 the crocodile, distinguishes Egypt from the surrounding re- 
 gions ; and since this creature is universally allowed to be 
 extremely strong, cruel, and destructive, we must conclude 
 it is no other than the leviathan of the inspired writers. 
 The inhabitants of Egypt regarded the crocodile as the most 
 powerful defender of their country, and the Nile as the 
 source of all their pleasures and sociable enjoyments, and 
 elevated both to the rank of deities. This accounts for the 
 singular language of the prophet Ezekiel, and the boast 
 which he puts into the mouth of Pharaoh : " My river is 
 mine own, and I have made it for myself." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 Ver. 10. And the Lord turned the captivity of 
 Job, when he prayed for his friends ; also the 
 Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 
 
 Our idea of captivity seems to be principally confined to 
 prisoners of war ; but in the East, adversity, great adver- 
 sity, and many other troubles, are spoken of in the same 
 way. Thus, a man formerly in great prosperity, speaks of 
 his present state as if he were in prison. " I am now a 
 captive." " Yes, I am a slave." If again elevated, " his 
 captivity is changed." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. Then came there unto him all his 
 brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that 
 had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat 
 bread with him in his house; and they be- 
 moaned him, and comforted him over all the 
 evil that the Lord had brought upon him: 
 every man also gave him a piece of money, and 
 every one an ear-ring of gold. 
 
 The custom alluded to of relations and friends giving re- 
 lief to a person in distress, is practised in the East at this 
 day. When a man has suffered a great loss by an accident, 
 by M'^ant of skill, or by the roguery of another, he goes to 
 his brothers and sisters, and all his acquaintances, and de- 
 scribes his misfortunes. He then mentions a day when he 
 will give a feast, and invites them all to partake of it. At 
 the time appointed they come, arrayed in their best robes, 
 each having money, ear-rings, finger-rings, or other gifts 
 suited to the condition of the person in distress. The indi- 
 vidual himself meets them at the gate, gives them a hearty 
 welcome, the music strikes uj?, and the guests are ushered 
 into t he apartments prepared for the feast. When they have 
 
 finished their repast, and are about to retire, they each ap- 
 proach the object of their commiseration, and present their 
 donations, and best wishes for future prosperity. A rich 
 merchant in North Ceylon, named Siva Sangu Chetty,was 
 suddenly reduced to poverty; but by this plan he was re- 
 stored to his former prosperity. Two money brokers, also, 
 who were sent to these parts by their employer, (who lived 
 on the opposite continent,) lost one thousand rix-dollars, 
 belonging to their master ; they therefore called those ol 
 their caste, profession, and country, to partake of a feast, at 
 which time the whole of their loss was made up. When a 
 young man puts on the ear-rings or turban for the first time, 
 a feast of the same descripiion, and for the same purpose, 
 is given, to enable him to meet the expense of the rings, and 
 to assist him in future pursuits of life. When a young 
 woman also becomes marriageable, the female relations 
 and acquaintances are called to perform the same service, 
 in order to enable her to purchase jewels, or to furnish a 
 marriage portion. In having recourse to this custom, there 
 is nothing that is considered mean ; for parents who ^re 
 respectable and wealthy often do the same thing. Here, 
 then, we have another simple and interesting illustration oi 
 a most praiseworthy usage of the days of ancient Job.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. And he called the name of the first Jemi- 
 ma ; and the name of the second, Kezia ; and 
 the name of the third, Kerenhappuch. 
 
 To vary names by substituting a word similar in sound, 
 is very prevalent in the East. The following extract from 
 Sir Thomas Roe, is a striking example of this circumstance. 
 " They speak very much in honour of Moses, whom they 
 call Moosa calim Alia, Moses the publisher of the m,ind of 
 God : so of Abraham, whom they call Ibrahim carim Alia, 
 Abraham the honoured, or the friend, of God : so of Ish- 
 mael, whom they call Ismal, the sacrifice of God : so of 
 Jacob, whom they call Acob, the blessing of God : so of Jo- 
 seph, whonWhey call Eesoff, the betrayed for God : so of 
 David, whmn they call Dakood, the lover and praiser of 
 God : so of Solomon, whom they call Selymon, the wisdom 
 of God : all expressed in short Arabian words, which they 
 sing in ditties, unto their particular remembrance. IVJany 
 men are called by these names : others are called Mahmud, 
 or Chaan, which signifies the moon ; or Frista, which sig- 
 nifies a star. And they call their women by the names of 
 spices or odours; or of pearls or precious stones; or else 
 by other names of pretty or pleasing signification. So Job 
 called his daughters." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15; And in all the land were no women 
 found so fair as the daughters of Job : and their 
 father gave them inheritance among their 
 brethren. 
 
 In the scriptures the word fair may sometimes refer to 
 the form of the features, as well as the colour of the skin : 
 but great value is attached to a woman of a light complex- 
 ion. Hence our English females are greatly admired in 
 the East, and instances have occurred where great exertions 
 have been made to gain the hand of a fair daughter of Brit- 
 ain. The acme of perfection in a Hindoo lady is to be of 
 the colour of gold '.—Roberts. 
 
THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 
 
 PSALM I. 
 
 Ver. 3. And he shall be like a tree planted by 
 the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit 
 in his season : his leaf also shall not wither ; 
 and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd has it, "Like a tree planted by water 
 streams ;" and Dr. A. Clarke says, " The streams or di- 
 visions of waters." This probably alludes to the artificial 
 streams which run from the lakes or wells : by the side of 
 these may be seen \./ees, at all seasons covered with luxuriant 
 verdure, blossoms, or fruit, because the root is deriving con- 
 tinual nourishment from the stream; while at a distance, 
 where no water, is, maybe seen dwarfish and unhealthy 
 trees, with scarcely a leaf to shake in the winds of heaven. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 We see no reason to suppose, with many commentators, 
 that allusion is had to any particular species of tree, as, for 
 example, the palm, the olive, or the pomegranate, each of 
 which has been conceived to be intended, from its peculiar 
 adaptedness to represent the permanent and prolific nature of 
 the good man's happiness. It is indeed said of the righte- 
 ous, Ps. xcii. 12, that " he shall flourish like the palm-tree ; 
 he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon;" but it wili-answer 
 all the demands of the passage to understand it of any tree 
 advantageously situated, and evincing a vigorous and llfirifty 
 growth. In the arid climes of the East,"the'4rees, unless 
 sustained by artificial irrigation, are apt to lose their ver- 
 dure during the sultriness of the summer months — a fact 
 which affords an interesting clew to the imagery here em- 
 ployed. Although the word " rivers" is adopted in our 
 authorized translation, yet it is by no means an adequate 
 representative of the original. •<j^b the term thus rendered, 
 from j'rs to divide^ to sunder, to split, properly signifies di- 
 visions, partitions, sections ; i. e. branching cuts, trenches, 
 or water-courses, issuing either from a large body of water, 
 as a lake, a pond, a river, Ps. xlvi. 4 ; or from a well or 
 fountain-head, Prov. v. 16. Job xxvi. 6; and alludes to the 
 methods still practised among the oriental nations, of con- 
 veying water to gardens and orchards. This was by means 
 of canals or rivulets flowing in artificial channels, called 
 ■D'^ibsi divisions ; i. e. cuts or trenches, which distributed the 
 water in all directions. The whole land of Egypt was 
 anciently sluiced in this manner, by innumerable canals 
 and water-courses, designed to convey the fertilizing waters 
 of the Nile over every part of the valley through which it 
 ran. Maundrell (Trav. p. 122) speaks of a similar mode of 
 irrigation in the neighbourhood of Damascus: "The gar- 
 dens are thick set with fruit trees of all kinds, kept fresh 
 and verdant by the waters of the Barady. This river, as 
 soon as it issues out of the cleft of the mountain before 
 mentioned, into the plain, is immediately divided into three 
 streams, of which the middlemost and largest runs directly 
 to Damascus, through a large open field called the Ager 
 Damascenus, and is distributed to all the cisterns and fount- 
 ains in the city. The other two, which I take to be the 
 work of art, are drawn round, the one to the right, the 
 other to the left, on the borders of the gardens, into which 
 they are let out, as they pass, by little rivulets, and so dis- 
 posed all over the vast woo ! ; insomuch that there is not a 
 garden, but has a fine, quick stream running through it." 
 The same traveller describing, p. 89, the orange garden of 
 the emir of Beyroot, observes, that " it contains a large 
 quadrangular plot of ground divided into sixteen lesser 
 squares, four in a row, with walks between them. The 
 walks are shaded with orange-trees of a large spreading 
 size. Every one of these sixteen lesser squares in the gar- 
 den was bordered with stone ; and in the stone- work were 
 troughs, very artificially contrived, for conveying the water 
 all over the garden j there being little outlets cut at every 
 
 tree for the stream, as it passed by, to flow out and water 
 it." A striking allusion to trees cultivated in this manner 
 occurs Ezek. xxxi. 3, 4 : " Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar 
 in Lebanon, with fair branches and with a shadowing 
 shroud, and of a high stature, and his top was among the 
 thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set 
 him up on high, with her rivers running round about his 
 plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the 
 Jield." So Eccl. ii. 6, " I made me pools of water to water 
 therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees." To the same 
 purpose, Prov. xxi. 1, " The king's heart is in the hand of 
 the Lord, as the rivers of waters, (jz^n-vho divisions of wa- 
 ters ;) he turneth it whithersoevei' he will ;" i. e. as these 
 fertilizing rivulets, the work of art, are conducted forward 
 and backward, to the right hand or the left, diverted or 
 stopped at the Avill of him who manages them, so is the 
 heart of kings, and, by parity of reasoning, of the rich 
 and mighty of the earth, swayed at the sovereign disposal 
 of the Lord of all creatures. He, by the course of his 
 providence, andby the inward promptings of his Spirit, can 
 turn the enriching tide of their bounty in any direction he 
 sees fit, whether to bless the poor with bread, or to supply 
 the means of salvation to the destitute. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 4. The ungodly are not so: but are liketbf^ 
 chaff which the wind driveth away. 
 
 "We must recollect here, that in the East the thrashing- 
 floors are places in the open air, (Gen. 1. 10,) on which 
 the corn is not thrashed, as with us, but beaten out by 
 means of a sledge, in such a manner that the straw is at 
 the same time cut very small. "When the straw is cut 
 small enough, they put fresh corn in the place, and after 
 ward separate the corn from the cut-straw, by throwing it 
 in the air with a wooden shovel, for the wind drives the 
 straw a little farther, so that only the pure corn falls to the 
 ground." (Thevenot.) — Rosenmuller. 
 
 PSALM II. 
 Ver. 1. Why do the heathen rage, and the people 
 imagine a vain thing? 
 
 The Hebrew word which Luther has translated heathen, 
 (gojim,) signifies, in fact, people in general ; but it is used | 
 in the Old Testament, for the most part, and by the later 
 (and even modern) Jews, exclusively of other nations who 
 are not Jews, and that with a contemptuous and odious 
 secondary meaning. Other nations, also, have similar 
 names for foreigners, and for such as are not of their re- 
 ligious faith. Thus the Greeks and Romans called them 
 Barbarians, that is, properly, inhabitants of the desert. The 
 Arabs called them Adsch^m, by which they mean, first, 
 their neighbours the Persians, and then all iforeigners in 
 general. The Mohammedans call all the people of the earth, 
 who do not believe the pretended divine mission of Mo- 
 hammed, Kuffar in the plural, Kafar in the singular, and 
 by a corrupted pronunciation, Gaur, (Giavur,) which signi- 
 fies unbelievers and infidels. Hence the name Kaflfers, 
 which the inhabitants of the southeastern coast of Africa 
 received from the Mohammedan Arabs. — Rosenmctller. 
 
 Ver. 9. Thou shalt break them with a rod of 
 iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a pot- 
 ter's vessel. 
 
 "Begone! wretch," savs the infuriated man, "or I will 
 dash thee to pieces as a kuddam," i. e. an earthen vessel.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 The rod, in remote antiquitv, was a wooden stafl^, not 
 much shorter than the height of a man, with golden studs 
 or nails, or sometimes ornamented at the top with a round 
 
Ps 5—7. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 367 
 
 knob, such as are seen in the hands of the Persian kings, 
 on the monuments of Persepolis. Justin says, " that at 
 the time of the rape of the Sabine virgins, the kings, as 
 insignia of their dignity, bore, instead of the diadem, long 
 staves, which the Greeks called sceptres." Hence it may 
 be conceived how, in Homer, kings made use of the scep- 
 tre to strike with. The sceptre, as well as throne, is often 
 used as a symbol of government. Hence in Ps. xlv. 6, a 
 right sceptre is the emblem of a just government. And in 
 the above passage it is said of the king celebrated in this 
 Psalm, that he would break his enemies with a rod, of iron ^ 
 by which his dominion is represented as terrible and de- 
 structiv^e over those who oppose him. The sense is, that 
 he will conquer them with irresistible power. A similar 
 picture is given of the Messiah in Num. xxiv. 17. " There 
 shall come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out 
 of Israel, and shall smite the corners (according to Luther, 
 the ' princes') of Moab." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 PSALM V. 
 Ver. 7. But as for me, I will come into thy house 
 in the multitude of thy mercy ; and in thy fear 
 will I worship towards thy holy temple. 
 
 It is very natural that people, when praying, should turn 
 the face towards the quarter where the place dedicated to 
 the Divinity is situated,, and which is considered as his 
 abode. Hence the Jews prayed with their faces turned 
 towards the temple, (1 Kings viii. 38,-44, 48;) and those re- 
 siding out of Jerusalem, turned it towards that point of the 
 heavens in which Jerusalem lay. Dan. vi. 10. Thus the 
 Mohammedans, when praying, always turn their faces 
 towards Mecca. " Kebla," says Bjornstahl, "signifies, in 
 Arabic, the point towards which all true Mussulmen turn 
 their faces when praying; whether in the open air or in 
 their temples, where it is always marked by a niche, in 
 which not only the iman stands, but also some finely written 
 copies of the Koran are lying. This point is always 
 towards Mecca ; for there stands the Caaba, or quadran- 
 gular hoMse, said to have been first built by Abraham and 
 Ishraael, and which is the great sanctuary of the Moham- 
 nedans, for the sake of which such great pilgrimages are 
 annually undertaken to Mecca, and thence to Medina, 
 where Mohammed is buried.'-RosENMOLLER. 
 
 Ver. 12. For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; 
 with favour wilt thou compass him as with a 
 shield. 
 
 A .shield is a defensive piece of armour, and is used to 
 ward off the blows that are aimed at the person who wears 
 it. In this passage of the Psalmist it is spoken of in a differ- 
 ent sense. It is to be used by a divine power for the pres- 
 ervation of the people of God : and, connected with their 
 * safety, they are to be honoured and exalted: and both their 
 preservation and exaltation are to be so complete, that they 
 are said to be compassed about with the favour of God as 
 with a shield, in the same manner as a person completely 
 covered with, or elevated upon, a large broad shield. This 
 interpretation of the words is paralleled by a practice 
 which, subsequent to the age of the Psalmist, obtained 
 among the Romans, of which the following instances may 
 be selected : " Brinno was placed on a shield, according to 
 the custom of the nation, and being carried in triumph on 
 the shoulders of the men, was declared commander-in- 
 chief." The shields of the ancients, as a scholiast observes 
 upon the Iliad, ii. 389, were so large as almost to cover a 
 whole man, and hollowed, so that they in a manner enclosed 
 the body in front. Hence Homer speaks of the surround- 
 ing shield. Tyrtasus, in the second of his hymns, still ex- 
 tant, says, " The warrior stands in the contest firm upon 
 both feet ; the hollow of the spacious shield covering below 
 his sides and thighs, and his breast and shoulders above." — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 PSALM VI. 
 
 To the chief Musician on Nesfinoth upon 
 
 Title 
 Sheminiih 
 
 A Psalm of David. 
 
 This superscription is in Luther, " ufmi eight strings^ I 
 can hardly think that a musica instrument of eight strings 
 
 is meant here, as the Hebrew word (scheminith) does not 
 appear among the musical instruments mentioned in the 
 Old Testament. The meaning of the Hebrew word is, 
 octave ; and in 1 Chron. xv. 21, where the singers of the 
 temple are enumerated, it stands after a word which prop- 
 erly signifies virgins, (alamoth,) and may therefore sig- 
 nify a treble part, which was sung by women. " Might not 
 this," says Forkal, " have signified among the Hebrews 
 nearly the same t^at ' virgin air' signified among the Ger- 
 man poets, called master-singers in the middle ages ^"— 
 Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 2. Have mercy upon me, O Lord ; for I am 
 weak : O Lord, heal me ; for my bones are 
 vexed. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd translates, " For my bones are troubled." 
 The object of the expression appears to be, to show that the 
 trouble has taken fast hold, it is deeply seated, my bones are 
 its resting-place. The Hindoos, in extreme grief or joy, 
 say, " our bones are melted;" t. e. like boiling lead, they are 
 completely dissolved. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. Depart from me, all ye workers of ini- 
 quity : for the Lord hath heard the voice of 
 my weeping. 
 
 Silent grief is not much known in the East: hence, 
 when the people speak of sorrow, they say its voice. 
 "Have I not heard the voice of his lamentation^" — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 PSALM VII. 
 Ver. 12. If he turn not, he will whet his sword ; 
 he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. 
 
 The Hebrew word signifies literally, " that he hath trod- 
 den on his bow," that is, to bend it. Arrian. in his Account 
 of India, says, " Such of their warriors as combat on foot, 
 carry a bow which is as long as a man. When they want 
 to bend it, they set it upon the ground, and tread on- it with 
 the left foot, while they draw on the string." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 13. He hath also prepared for him the in- 
 struments of death ; he ordaineth his arrows 
 against the persecutors. 
 
 This sentence maybe rendered more accurately, "he 
 makes his arrows burning." The image is deduced from 
 such fiery arrows as are described by Ammianus Marcelli- 
 nus. They consisted of a hollowed reed, to the lower part 
 of which, under the point or barb, was fastened a round re- 
 ceptacle, made of iron, for combustible materials, so that 
 such an arrow had the form of a distaff. The reed, as the 
 above author says, was filled with burning naptha ; and 
 when the arrow was shot from a slack bow, (for if dis- 
 charged from a tight bow the fire went out,) it struck the 
 enemies' ranks and remained infixed, the flame consuming 
 whatever it met with ; water poured on it increased its vio- 
 lence ; there was no other means to extinguish it but by 
 throwing earth upon it. Similar darts or arrows, which 
 were twined round with tar and pitch, and set fire to, are 
 described by Livy, as having been made use of by the in- 
 habitants of the city of Saguntum, when besieged by the 
 Romans. An allusion to such arrows is also made in 
 Ephesians vi. 16. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 14. Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and 
 hath conceived mischief, and brought forth false- 
 hood. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd translates this, " Lo, the wicked hath con- 
 ceived iniquity, and is big with mischief; but an abortion 
 shall he bring forth :" which certainly corresponds befltter 
 with the order of the figure of the text. " What induces 
 that man to come so much to this place 1 depend upon it, 
 he is preparing some plans." — "Yes, I am of opinion his 
 womb has conceived something." Does the person begin 
 to disclose his purposes, it is said, " Ah ! it is this you have 
 been conceiving the last few days." But when he puts his 
 plans into practice, "Yes, he is now in parturition." 
 
868 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 8—16. 
 
 " Well ! how has the matter ended V'—" Ended ! he has 
 brought forth poykul" i. e. lies. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM VIII. 
 Ver. 6. Thou madest him to have dominion over 
 the works of thy hands: thou hast put all 
 things under his feet. 
 
 This is a common figure of speech to denote the supe- 
 riority of one man over another ; hence the worshippers 
 of the gods often say in their devotions, " We put your feet 
 upon our heads." *' Truly, the feet of Siva are upon my 
 head." " My Gooroo, my Gooroo, have I not put your feet 
 upon my head V " My lord, believe not that man ; your 
 feet have always been upon my head." "Ah! a mighty 
 king was he ; all things were under his feet." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM IX. 
 
 Ver. 14. That I may show forth all thy praise in 
 the gates of the daughter of Zion : I will re- 
 joice in thy salvation. 
 
 That is, in Jerusalem, meaning in the temple itself The 
 " gates of the daughter of Zion" are opposed to the " gates 
 of death," mentioned in the preceding verse. Zion is the 
 general name of the mountain, on whose irregular emi- 
 nences the .city of Jerusalem was built. But in a more 
 limited sense, the name of Zion was given to the highest 
 of those eminences, on which, besides a part of the city, the 
 palace of David, and several public buildings, were built. 
 This Mount Zion was joined on the south side by means of 
 a bridge, with the mountain or hill of Moriah, which was 
 entirely occupied by the extensive building of the temple. 
 In the Old Testament, we are often to understand by Zion 
 and Jerusalem, the national sanctuary, the temple particu- 
 larly, where, as in the above passage, the adoration of God, 
 and the thanksgivings to be publicly offered him, are spoken 
 of. Zion or Jerusalem is called daughter, because the He- 
 brews used to figure cities, communities, and states, under 
 the images of women, and the inhabitants as children. 
 ThuSy the daughter of Tyre, the daughter of Babylon, for 
 the city of Tyre and the city of Babylon. Even now, the 
 head of the government of Tunis, in Barbary, is called Dey, 
 or Day, that is, as D Arvieux observes, mother's brother ; 
 because the republic is considered as the mother, the citi- 
 zens as her children, and the Turkish sultan as the consort 
 of the republic. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 15. The heathen are sunk down in the pit 
 that they made: in the net which they hid is 
 their own foot taken. 
 
 This image is taken from the catching of wild beasts, by 
 means of strong ropes or nets. Lichtenstein, in speaking 
 of the hunting of the Koofsa, (Kaffers,) says, " They catch 
 much game by means of nets ; in the woody districts, they 
 often make low hedges, miles in length, between which they 
 leave openings ; in these openings, through which the game 
 tries to escape, they conceal snares, which are placed so in- 
 geniously that the animals are caught in them by the leg, 
 and cannot extricate themselves." Also lions and elephants 
 are caught in this manner; the latter, when they have been 
 brought by means of fire, or by tame elephants, to a narrow 
 place, where they cannot turn back, are caught by throwing 
 ropes round their legs. 
 
 Ropes and nooses are meant by the figurative expression, 
 sriares of death, 2 Sam. xxii. 6, which the people of the an- 
 cient world used, both in the chase and in war. The word 
 is sometimes rendered net, as in this passage. Arrian, in 
 his Treatise on Hunting, relates, that Cyrus met with wild 
 asses in the plains of Arabia, which were so swift, that none 
 of his horsemen were able to catch them. Yet the young 
 Lybians, even boys of eight years of age, or not much 
 older, had pursued them, mounted on their horses, without 
 saddle or bridle, till they threw a noose over them, and 
 thus took them. He gives instructions to pursue stags with 
 ♦rained horses and dogs, till they can be either shot with 
 arrows, or taken alive b}"- throwing a noose over them. 
 These are the strong snares which Pollux means, when he 
 speaks of the wild asses, and they are also the same as 
 tnose in which Habis, the natural son of an ancient Span- 
 
 ish kmg, was taken. He was exposed when a child, and 
 suckled by a hind : having grown up among the stags, he 
 had aUained their swiftness, so that he fled with them over 
 the mountains, and traversed forests, till he was at length 
 caught in a noose. In the same manner Ulloa saw the 
 Guasos (one of the aboriginal Peruvian nations) catch with 
 their nooses (the Spanish lazo) the most active and cautious 
 man as easily as the wild bull. Some English pirates once 
 approaching their shore, and thinking to drive off the 
 Guasos with their firearms, the latter threw their nooses 
 towards the vessels, and so pulled on shore those who had 
 not fallen down at first sight ; one who was caught escaped 
 with his life, notwithstanding he had been thus violently 
 drawn from the boat to the shore, the noose having caught 
 him over the shoulder on the one side, and the arm on the 
 other ; but it was some time before he was able to recover 
 his strength. In the same manner the Sagarthian horse- 
 men in the Persian army used their nooses in war. — (He- 
 rodotus.) These people, who, according to Stephanus, 
 lived on the Caspian Sea, had,no other arms than a noose 
 and a dagger, to kill with the one the enemy whom they 
 had caught with the other. The same is related by Pausa- 
 nias, of the Sauromati. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 PSALM X. 
 Ver. 5. His ways are always grievous: thy judg- 
 ments are far above out of his sight : as for all 
 his enemies, he puffeth at them. 
 
 Of a proud and powerful man, it is said, " He pufl^s away 
 his foes;" i. e. they are so contemptible, so light, that like a 
 flake of cotton, he puflfs them from his presence. Great is 
 the contempt which is shown by pufling through the mouth 
 and blowing through the nostrils. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. Break thou the arm of the wicked and 
 the evil man: seek out his wickedness till 
 thou find none. 
 
 This member is often selected as an object for impreca- 
 tions. " Ah ! the kalian, the thief, his hand shall be torn 
 off for that." " Evil one, thou wilt lose thy hand for this 
 violence." But the hand or arm is also selected as an ob- 
 ject for blessings. " My son, (says the father,) may the 
 gods keep thy hands and thy feet." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XI. 
 
 Ver. 6. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, 
 fire, and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: 
 this shall he the portion of their cup. 
 
 The gods are described as doing this upon their enemies ; 
 and magicians, in cursing each other, or those who are the 
 objects of their ire, say, the fiery rain shall descend upon 
 them. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XIV. 
 Ver. 4. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowl- 
 edge ? who eat up my people as they eat bread, 
 and call not upon the Lord. 
 
 "Wicked one, the fiends shall eat thee." "That vile 
 king eats the people as he does his rice." " Go not near 
 that fellow, he will eat thee." But, .strange as it may ap- 
 pear, relations say of those of their friends who are dead, 
 they have eaten them. Thus, a son, in speaking of his 
 deceased parent, says, "Alas! alas! I have eaten my 
 father." " My child, my child !" says the bereaved mother, 
 " have I eaten you 7" The figure conveys extreme grief, 
 and an intimation that the melancholy event has been occa- 
 sioned by the sins or faults of the survivors. In cursing a 
 married man, it is common to say, " Yes, thou wilt soon 
 have to eat thy good wife." And to a poor widow, 
 "Wretch ! hast ihou not eaten thy husband *?"— Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XVI. 
 Ver. 4. Their sorrows shall be multiplied that 
 hasten after another ^o^.' their drink-offerings 
 of blood will I not ofl'eT, nor take up their 
 names into my lips. 
 
Ps. 16—18. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 369 
 
 This refers to the custom of many heathen people, to 
 drink the wine of the sacrifice mixed with blood, particu- 
 larly when they bound themselves by dreadful oaths, and 
 to the performance of fearful deeds. This drink was called 
 by the Romans vinum assiratum^ because assir, according 
 to Festus, signifies blood in the ancient Latin language. 
 In this manner, as Sallust relates, Catiline took the oaths 
 with his accomplices. " It was said at the time that Cati- 
 line, after making a speech, calling on the accomplices of 
 his crime to take an oath, presented them with human 
 blood mixed with wine, in cups ; and when every one had 
 drank of it, after pronouncing an imprecation, as is cus- 
 tomary in solemn sacrifices, explained his plan." In a 
 similar manner, Silius Italicus makes the Carthaginian 
 Hannibal swear, an instance which is particularly suitable 
 to illustrate the above passage, because the Carthaginians 
 were of Phenician or Canaanite origin. When the prophet 
 Zechariah describes the conversion of the Philistines, he 
 makes Jehovah say, (x. 7,) " And I will take away his 
 blood out of his mouth, and nis abominations from between 
 his teeth ; but he that remaineth, even he, shall be for our 
 God," The drinking of blood at sacrifices was prohibited 
 to the Israelites upon pain of death. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 7. I will bless the Lord, who hath given 
 me counsel ; my reins also instruct me in the 
 night-seasons. 
 
 Night is the time for the chief joys and sorrows of the 
 Hindoos, and it is then they are principally engaged in the 
 worship of their gods; because they believe praise is more 
 acceptable to them then, than at any other period. It is 
 believed, also, that the senses have more power in the 
 night ; that then is the time for thought and instruction ; 
 hence they profess to derive much of their wisdom at that 
 season. The Psalmist says, " Thou hast visited me in the 
 night;" and the heathen priests always pretend to have 
 their communications with the gods " when deep sleep 
 falleth on man." See them at their Bloody sacrifices, they 
 are nearly always held at the same time, and what with the 
 sickly glare of lamps, the din of drums, the shrill sound of 
 trumpets, the anxious features of the votaries, the ferocious 
 scowl of the sacrificer, the bloody knife, and the bleeding 
 victim, all wind up the mind to a high pitch of horror, and< > 
 excite our contempt for the deities and demons to whom 
 night is the time of oflTering and praise. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XVII, 
 
 Ver. 2. Let my sentence come forth from thy 
 presence; let thine eyes behold the things that 
 are equal. 
 
 David, in his integrity, thus cried to the Almighty, and so 
 people in the East, who are innocent, when pleading "in court^ 
 say, " Let us have your sentence ;" i. e. in contradiction of 
 that of their enemies. " See, my lord, the things that are 
 right," " Justice ! justice ["—Roberts. 
 
 Ver, 10. They are enclosed in their own fat: 
 with their mouth they speak proudly. 
 
 To say a man is fat, often means he is very proud. Of 
 one who speaks pompously, it is said, " What can we do 1 
 tassi-kul-lap-indl," i, e. from the fat of his flesh he declares 
 himself, "Oh! the fat of his mouth; how largely he 
 talks !" " Take care, fellow, or I will restrain the fat of 
 thy mouth," " From the intoxication of his blood he thus 
 talks to you." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. They have now compassed us in our 
 steps ; they have set their eyes bowing down 
 to the earth, 
 
 A man who has people watching him to find out a cause 
 for accusation to the king, or great men, says, " Yes, they 
 are around my legs and my feet ; their eyes are always 
 open; they are ever watching my suvadu," i, e. steps; i. e. 
 they are looking for the impress, or footsteps, in the earth. 
 For this purpose, the eyes of the enemies of David were 
 " bowing down to the earth," — Roberts, 
 47 
 
 PSALM XVIII. 
 Ver, 2. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, 
 and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in 
 whom 1 will trust ; my buckler, and the horn 
 of my salvation, and my high tower. 
 
 See on Eph. 6, 16. 
 
 That is, my strong, mighty deliverer. The image is 
 taken from the bull, whose strength and defensive weapon 
 lie in his horns. Hence a horn is the symbol of stren^h. 
 Jer. xlviii. 25, says, " The horn of Moab is cut off;" that 
 is, his power is weakened, Micah iv. 13, says, " Arise and 
 thrash, O daughter of Zion ; for I will make thy horn iron, 
 
 and I will make thy foot brass ; and thou shalt beat in pieces 
 many people." Ps. cxxxii, 17, " There will I make the 
 horn of David to bud : I have adorned a lamp for mine 
 anointed ;" translated by Luther, " will make him strong 
 and mighty," The Greeks and Romans made use of the 
 same image. The former said of a bold and valiant man, 
 " He has horns." Horace says of wine, that it revived the 
 hope of the aflJlicted, and gave the poor " horns," that is, 
 courage and strength. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 The most extraordinary oriental costume which I have 
 yet seen, is the head-dress worn by many females at Deir 
 el Kamr, and in all the adjacent region of Mount Lebanon. 
 In the cities on the seacoast it is not so frequently seen. It 
 is called Tantoor, and is set on the forehead, projecting 
 like a straight horn. It is from fifteen to twenty inches 
 long; in its thickness gradually diminishing; having its 
 diameter at one extremity about four inches, at the other 
 about two. It is hollow, otherwise the weight would be in- 
 supportable to the stiflfest neck ; and it is tinselled over, so as 
 to give it a silvery appearance. The end with the larger 
 diameter rests on the forehead, where it is strapped to, by 
 one strap passing behind the head, and another passing 
 under the chin : the horn itself protrudes straight forward, 
 inclining upward, at an angle of about twenty or thirty 
 degrees. Over the further extremity they throw the veil, 
 which thus serves the double purpose of modesty and shade. 
 
 I could hear no account of the origin of this unicorn 
 costume. In its style it difl^ers materially from the horns 
 described by Bruce in Abyssinia, and by other travellers, 
 which have been considered as illustrating thosepassages 
 in scripture, " Lift not up your horn on high. — Thy horn 
 hast thou exalted," &c. For here it is the females that 
 wear it ; and not the men, as in Abyssinia : it has no ap- 
 pearance of strength, nor indeed, to me, of beauty ; althougn, 
 doubtless, among the females of Mount Lebanon, there may 
 be as much vanity in their mode of adjusting and bearing 
 this article of dress, as is to be found at any European toilet. 
 Some, indeed, though very few, wear this monstrous orna- 
 ment protruding from one side of the face, instead of the 
 front : but I could obtain no satisfactory account of this 
 heretical fashion, any more than of the orthodox position 
 of the Tantoor. It is not worn by the Druse women only. 
 The servant of the house where I lived at Deir el Kamr 
 wore one : so also did a young woman, whose marriage I 
 there witnessed: several, likewise, of the virgins, that were 
 her fellows, and bore her company, wore this head-dress ; 
 all these were Christians. Hanna Doomani told me that 
 it is used chiefly by the lower orders: at least that those 
 who have been brought up at Damascus, or at the principal 
 cities, would not think of wearing it. In other words, 
 probably, it is the true ancient female mountaineer's cos- 
 tume ; but what is its degree of antiquity, it may be difiicult 
 to discover. — Jowett. 
 
 Ver. 5. The sorrows of hell compassed me about ; 
 the snares of death prevented me. 
 
 The margin has, for sorroias, " cords," (2 Sam, xxii, 6. 
 Prov, xiii. 14, and xiv. 27.) Dr. BootKroyd translates, 
 " The cords of hades enclosed me ; the snares of death 
 were laid for me." The Psalmist says in another place, 
 He " shall rain snares" upon the wicked. From the par- 
 allel texts in Samuel and Proverbs, it is evident that death, 
 by the ancients, in figure at least, was personified and de- 
 scribed as having snares, with which to catch the bodies of 
 men. The Hindoo Yavia, " the catcher of the souls of 
 men," bears some resemblance to the Charon and Minos of 
 the Egyptians and Grecians. Yama rides on a bufialo, has 
 
370 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 18—22 
 
 a large snare in his hand, and is every way a most hide- 
 ous looking monster. In his anxiety to fill his caves with 
 mortals, he was often involved in great disputes with the 
 gods and others ; as in the case of Marcander, who was a 
 favourite of the supreme Siva. He had already cast his 
 SNARE upon him, and was about to drag him to the lower 
 regions, when the deity appeared, and compelled him to 
 relinquish his prey. When people are in the article of 
 death, they are said to be caught in the snare of Yama. 
 (See Matt, xxiii. 33.) — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 33. He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and 
 setteth me upon my high places. 
 
 The allusions to this animal in the sacred volume, though 
 not numerous, are of considerable importance. Its name 
 in Hebrew, ('j-'n) ail, is considered by Dr. Shaw as a gen- 
 eric word, including all' the species of the deer kind ; 
 whether they are distinguished by round horns, as the 
 stag; or by flat ones, as the fallow-deer; or by the small- 
 ness of the branches, as the roe. The term originally 
 signified aid or assistance ; and, in the progress of language, 
 by a natural and easy transition, came to denote an animal 
 furnished with the means of defence, but limited to horned 
 animals, particularly the stag and the hind. This creature 
 seems to resemble the goat, in being remarkably sure-footed, 
 and delighting in elevated situations. 
 
 The royal Psalmist alludes to both circumstances in one 
 of his triumphant odes : " He maketh my feet like hinds' 
 feet, and setteth me upon my high places." He might also 
 refer, in the first clause, to the uncommon solidity and 
 hardness of its hoof, which Virgil compares to brass, which 
 enables it to tread, with ease, the pointed rocks. It may 
 seem, from the words of David, that the female possesses a 
 surer foot and a harder hoof than the male, for he ascribes 
 to himself the feet of the hind ; but since natural historians 
 have not remarked any difference between them, it is prob- 
 able he was led to the choice from some other cause, which 
 it may not be easy to discover. The prophet Habakkuk, 
 in the close of his prayer, has the same allusion, and nearly 
 in the same words : " He will make my feet like hinds' 
 feet, and he will make me to walk upon my high places." 
 While the Psalmist contents himself with referring merely 
 to the firmness and security of his position, " he setteth me ^ ' 
 upon my high places," the prophet encourages himself with 
 the persuasion, that his God would conduct him through 
 every danger, with the same ease and safety as the hind 
 walks among the clifis of the rock. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM XIX. 
 
 Ver. 4. Their line is gone out through all the 
 earth, and their words to the end of the world. 
 In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun ; 
 5. Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his 
 chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run 
 a race. 
 
 The espousals by money, or a written instrument, were 
 performed by the man and woman under a tent or canopy 
 erected for that purpose. Into this chamber the bride- 
 groom was accustomed to go with his bride, that he might 
 talk with her more familiarly ; which was considered as a 
 ceremony of confirmation to the wedlock.' While he was 
 there, no person was allowed to enter ; his friends and at- 
 tendants waited for him at the door, with torches and lamps 
 in their hands; and when he came out, he was received by 
 all that were present with great joy and acclamation. To 
 this ancient custom, the Psalmist alludes in his magnifi- 
 cent description of the heavens : " In them he set a taber- 
 Racle for the sun ; which is as a bridegroom coming out of 
 his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run a race." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 10. More to be desired are they than gold, 
 yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than 
 honey and the honey-comb. 
 
 There is no diiference made among us, between the 
 delicacy of honey in the comb, and after it? separation from 
 it. We may therefore be at a loss to CDter into the energy 
 
 of that expression, " Sweeter than honey, and the honey- 
 comb," Ps. xix. 10 ; or, to express it with the same emphasis 
 as our translation does the preceding clause, " Sweeter than 
 honey, yea, than the honeycomb," which last, it should seem, 
 from the turn of thought of the Psalmist, is as much to be 
 preferred to honey, as the finest gold is to that of a more 
 impure nature. 
 
 But this will appear in a more easy light, if the diet and 
 the relish of the present Moors of West Barbary be thought 
 to resemble those of the times of the Psalmist : for a paper 
 published first in the Philosophical Transactions, and after 
 that by Dr. Halley, in the Miscellanea Curiosa, informs us, 
 that they esteem honey a wholesome breakfast, " and the 
 most delicious that which is in the comb, with the young 
 bees in it, before they come out of their cases, while they 
 still look milkwhite, and resemble, being taking out, gen- 
 tles, such as fishers use : these I have often ate of, but they 
 seemed insipid to my palate, and sometimes I found they 
 gave me the heartburn." — Harmer. 
 
 PSALM XX. 
 Ver. 5. We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in 
 the name of our God we will set up our ban- 
 ners : the Lord fulfil all thy petitions. 
 
 In all religious as well as warlike processions, the people 
 carry banners. Hence on the pinnacles of their sacred cars, 
 on the domes or gateways of their temples, and on the roof 
 of anew house, may be seen the banner of the caste or sect 
 floating in the air. Siva, the supreme, also is described as 
 having a banner in the celestial world. 
 
 When a person makes a solemn vow to go on a pilgrim- 
 age, to perform a penance, or to bathe in holy water ; or 
 when a man has a dispute in a court of law, or in any other 
 way; or when a disobedient son has resolved to act as he 
 pleases ; it is said, " Why try to move him from his pur- 
 pose 1 lussil-katti, he has tied up, and stands by his ban- 
 ner :" which implies, he must and will abide by his purpose. 
 
 The banners formerly so much used were a part of mili- 
 tary equipage, borne in times of war to assemble, direct, 
 distinguish, and encourage the troops. They might possi- 
 bly be used for other purposes also. Occasions of joy, 
 splendid processions, and especially a royal habitation, 
 might severally be distinguished in this way. The words 
 of the Psalmist may perhaps be wholly figurative : but if 
 they should be literally understood, the allusion of erecting 
 abanner in the name ofthe Lord, acknowledging his glory, 
 and imploring his favour, might be justified from an exist- 
 ing practice. Certain it is, that we find this custom preva- 
 lent on this very principle, in other places, into which it 
 might originally have been introduced from Judea. Thus 
 Mr. Turner says, " I was told that it was a custom with the 
 soobah to ascend the hill every month, when he sets up a 
 white flag, and performs some religious ceremonies, to con- 
 ciliate the favour of a dewta, or invisible being, the genius 
 of the place, who is said to hover about the summit, dis- 
 pensing at his will good and evil to every thing around 
 him." (Turner's Travels.) — Burder. 
 
 PSALM XXIL 
 
 Title — To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Sha- 
 har, (Hind ofthe Morning.) A Psalm of Da- 
 vid. 
 
 Many curious observations have been made on the titles 
 of the Psalms, but attended with the greatest uncertainty. 
 Later eastern customs, respecting the titles of books arid 
 poems, may perhaps give a little more certainty to these 
 matters ; but great precision must not be expected. D'Her- 
 belot tells us, that a Persian metaphysical and mystic poem 
 was called a Rose Bush. A collection of moral essays, the 
 Garden of Anemonics. Another eastern book, the Lion of 
 the Forest. That Scherfeddin al Baussiri called a poem of 
 his, written in praise of his Arabian prophet, who, he .nf- 
 firmed, had cured him of a paralytic disorder in his sleep, 
 the Habit of a Derveesh ; and because he is celebrated there 
 for having given sight to a blind person, this poem is also 
 entitled bv its author, the Brif^ht Star. 
 
 The ancient Jewish taste may reasonably be sitpposed lo 
 have been of the same kind. Agreeable to which is the ex- 
 
Ps. 22. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 S7. 
 
 planation some learned men have given, of David's com- 
 manding the bow 10 be taught the children of Israel, 2 Sam. 
 i. 18, which they apprehended did not relate to the use of 
 that weapon in war, but to the hymn which he composed on 
 occasion of the death of Saul and Jonathan, and from which 
 he entitled this elegy, as they think, the Bow. The twenty- 
 second Psalm might, in like manner, be called the Hind of 
 the Morning; the fifty-sixth, the Dove dwmb in distant places ; 
 the sixtieth, the Lily of the Testimony; the eightieth, the 
 Lilies of the Testimony, in the plural'; and the forty-fifth, 
 simply the Lilies. 
 
 Ic is sufficiently evident, I should think, that these terms 
 do not denote certain musical instruments. For if they did, 
 v^hy do the more common names of the timbre , the harp, 
 the psaltery, and the trumpet, with which psalms were ^ 
 sung, Ps. Ixxxi. 2, 3, never appear in those titles 1 
 
 Do they signify certain tunes 7 It ought not however to 
 be imagined that" these tunes are so called from their bear- 
 mg some resemblance to the noises made by the things 
 mentioned in the titles, for lilies are silent, if this supposition 
 should otherwise have been allowed with respect to the 
 Hind of the Morning. Nor does the fifty-sixth Psalm speak 
 of the mourning of the dove, but of its dumbness. If they 
 signify tunes at all, they must signify the tunes to which 
 such songs or hymns were sung, as were distinguished by 
 these names : and so the inquiry will terminate in this 
 point, whether the Psalms to which these titles are affixed 
 were called by these names ; or whether they were some 
 other psalms, or songs, to the tune of which these were to 
 be sung. And as we do not find the bow referred to, nor 
 the same name twice made use of, so far as our lights 
 reach, it seems most probable that these are the names of 
 tho'^e very Psalms to which they are prefixed. 
 
 The forty-second Psalm, it may be thought, might very 
 well have been entitled the fyind of the Morning, because, 
 as that panted after the water brooks, so panted the soul of 
 '.he Psalmist after God ; but the twenty-second Psalm, it is 
 certain, might equally well be distinguished by this title. 
 Dogs have compassed rite, the assembly of the vmked have 
 enclosed me : and as the Psalmist, in the forty-second Psalm, 
 rather chose to compare himself to a hart, than a hind, the 
 twenty-second Psalm much better answers this title, in 
 which he speaks of his hunted soul in the feminine gen- 
 der : Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling (which in 
 the original is feminine) /r/?m the poioer of the dog. Every 
 one that reflects on the circumstances " of David, at the 
 time to which the fifty-sixth Psalm refers, and considers 
 the oriental taste, will not wonder to see that Psalm en- 
 titled the Dove dumb in distant places ; nor are lilies more 
 improper to be made the title of other Psalms, with proper 
 distinctions, than a Garden of Anem.onies to be the name of 
 a collection of moral discourses. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 6. But I am a worm, and no man ; a re- 
 proach of men, and despised of the people. 
 
 When a man complains and abhors himself, he asks, 
 " What am 11 a worm! a worm!" " Ah! the proud man; 
 he regarded me as a worm : well should I like to say to 
 him, we are all worms." " Worm, crawl out of my pres- 
 ence." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 7. All they that see me laugh me to scorn ; 
 they shoot out the lip, they shake the head. 
 
 ^nsworth has this—" All they that see me, doe skoff at 
 mee : they make-a-mow with the lip, they wag the head." 
 It is exceedingly contemptuous to protrude the lower lip ; 
 and, generally speaking, it is only done to those of a mean 
 condition. Those who cannot grant a favour, or who have 
 not the power to perform something they have been re- 
 quested to do, " shoot out the lip." To shake the head is 
 a favourite way of giving the negative, and is also a mark 
 ef disdain. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. I was cast upon thee from the womb. 
 
 " What !" asks the old slave, " will you dismiss me 
 now "? Have I not been cast upon you from the keipum ?" 
 womb — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Many bulls have compassed me: strong 
 bulls of Bashan have beset me round, 
 
 Bishop Home says, the latter verse, if literally transla- 
 ted, runs thus : " Rebuke the wild beast of the reeds, the 
 congregation of the mighty among Ihe calves of the nations, 
 skipping or exulting with pieces of silver." Wicked men, 
 or those who have much bodily strength, who insult and 
 domineer over the weak, and all "lewd fellows of the 
 baser sort," are called mddukul, i. e. bulls. " Of what 
 country are you the bull 1" People of docile dispositions 
 — those who live at peace with their neighbours — are called 
 cows or calves : hence when violent men -injure them, it 
 is said, " See those bulls how they are oppressing the 
 calves ; look at them, they are always butting the cows." 
 " Why has this mad bull of Point Pedro come hither ? Go, 
 bull, go, graze in thy own pastures." David, therefore, 
 prayed that the Lord would rebuke the bulls who thus 
 troubled his people. — Roberts. 
 
 The strength of the bull is too remarkable to require de- 
 scription; and his courage and fierceness are so great, that 
 he ventures at times to combat the lion himself Nor is 
 he more celebrated for thcvse qualities, than for his disposi- 
 tion to unite with those of his own kind, against their com- 
 mon enemy. For these reasons he has been chosen by the 
 Spirit of inspiration, to symbolize the powerful, fierce, and 
 implacable enemies of our blessed Redeemer ; who, for- 
 getting their personal animosities, combined against his 
 precious life, and succeeded in procuring his crucifixion : 
 " Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan 
 have beset me round." Nor can we conceive a more stri- 
 king and appropriate symbol of a fierce and ruthless war- 
 rior ; an instance of which occurs in that supplication of 
 David : " Rebuke the company of the spearmen, the mul- 
 titude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every 
 one submit himself with pieces of silver." In the sublime 
 description of Isaiah, which seems to refer to some' great 
 revolutions, which are to be effected in times long poste- 
 rior to the age in which he flourished ; probably in these 
 last days, antecedent to the millennial state of the church ; 
 the complete destruction of her strong and cruel enemies 
 is thus foretold : " And the unicorns shall come down with 
 them, and the bullocks with the bulls, and their land shall 
 be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fat- 
 ness." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. For dogs have compassed me; the as- 
 sembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they 
 pierced my hands and my feet. 
 
 " The dog," says Poiret, " loses in Barbary, as in the 
 East in general, a part of those social qualities which make 
 him the friend of man. He is no longer that domes- 
 tic, mild, insinuating animal, faithfully attached to his 
 master, and ever ready to defend him, even at the expense 
 of his life. Among the Arabs he is cruel, blood-tliirsty, 
 always hungry, and never satisfied. His look is savage, 
 his physiognomy ignoble, and his appearance disagreeable. 
 The Moors grant him, indeed, a corner of their tent ; but 
 this is all. They never caress him, never throw him any 
 thing to eat. To this treatment, in my opinion, must the 
 indifference of the dogs towards their master be ascribed. 
 Very often they have not even any master. They choose 
 a tent as a place of refuge ; they are suffered to remain 
 there, and no further notice is taken of them. Refuse, 
 carrion, filth, every thing is good enough for them, if they 
 can but appease their hunger. They are lean, emaciated, 
 and have scarcely any belly. Among themselves they sel- 
 dom bite each other ; but they unite against the stranger 
 who approaches the Arab tents, furiously attack him, and 
 would tear him to pieces if he did not seek safety in flight 
 from this starved troop. If any person were unable to de- 
 fend himself, or had the misfortune to fall, he would be in 
 danger of being devoured, for these dogs are very greedy 
 after human flesh." D'Arvieux also observes, that the 
 Bedouin Arabs keep a great number of dogs, which run 
 about in and out of the camp, begin to bark at the least 
 noise they hear, and answer each other. " These dogs," 
 says he, " are not accustomed to see people walking about 
 late at night, and I believe that they would tear any one in 
 pieces who should venture to approach the camp." " In Mo- 
 rocco," cays Host, " there are dogs in abundance, and as the 
 greater part of the Moors have scarcely enough to live on for 
 themselves, much less to feed dogs, they suffer them to lie 
 about the streets so starved that they can hardly hang to- 
 
372 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 23. 
 
 gether, and almost devoured by fleas and vermin. But these 
 dogs, which do not move during the daytime, though they 
 are frequently trodden on, are so^insupportable in the night, 
 not only on account of their barking, bellowing, and cries, 
 but also because they are so savage and sleep so little, that 
 nobody is able to go through the streets without a watch- 
 man." 
 
 "During all the long tour through this dreary and melan- 
 choly city, (Alexandria, in Egypt,) Europe and its liveli- 
 ness was pictured to me only by the bustle and by the activ- 
 ity of the sparrows. I here no longer recognised the dog, 
 that friend of man, the attached and faithful companion, 
 the lively and honest courtier ; he is here a gloomy egotist, 
 unknown to the host under whose roof he dwells, cut off 
 from human intercourse, without being less of a slave ; he 
 does not know him whose house he protects, and devours his 
 corpse without repugnance. The following circumstance 
 will fully paint his character." In the evening of the day 
 on which I arrived at Alexandria, I went to our ship to 
 supply myself with clean linen. It was eleven o'clock at 
 night when I came again on shore, and I was half a league 
 from my quarters. I was obliged to go through a city 
 taken only that morning by storm, and in which I did not 
 know a street. No reward could induce my man to quit 
 his boat and accompany me. I undertook the journey 
 alone, and went over the burying-ground, in spite of the 
 manes, as I was best acquainted with this road. At the 
 first habitations of the living, I was attacked by whole 
 troops of furious dogs, who made their attacks from the 
 doors, from the streets, and the roofs; and the barking re- 
 sounded from house to house, from one family to another. 
 I soon, however, observed that the war declared against me 
 v.as not grounded on any coalition ; for as soon as I had 
 quitted the territory of the attackers, they were driven 
 away by the others, who received me on their frontiers. 
 The darkness was only lightened by the stars, and by the 
 constant glimmer of the nights in this climate. Not' to 
 lose this advantage, to avoid the barking of the dogs, and 
 to take a road which I knew could not lead me astray, I 
 left the streets, and resolved to go along the beach; but 
 walls and timber-yards, which extended to the sea, blocked 
 up the way. After having waded through the water to 
 escape from the dogs, and climbed over walls where the 
 sea was too deep, exhausted by anxiety and fatigue, and 
 quite wet, I reached one of our sentinels about midnight, 
 in the conviction that the dog is the most dreadful among 
 % the Egyptian plagues." (Denon.) — Rosenmuller, 
 
 Ver. 21. Save me from the lion's mouth : for thou 
 hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 
 
 Those who are in great trouble from the power or cruelty 
 of others, often cry out to their gods — " Ah ! save me from 
 the tusk of the elephant ! From the mouth of the tiger, and 
 the tusks of the boar, deliver me— deliver me !" " Who 
 will save me from the horn of the kdndam ?" This animal 
 is now extinct in these regions, and it is not easy to deter- 
 mine what it was : the word in the Sathur-Agardthe is 
 rendered jungle-cow, but it was probably the rhinoceros ; 
 and Dr. Boothroyd translates, " from the horns of the 
 rhinoceros, defend me." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXIII. 
 Ver. 1. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not 
 want. 2. He maketh me to lie down in green 
 pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters. 
 
 In this figure the Psalmist had in his view a shepherd 
 leading his flock into luxuriant fields, and causing them to 
 quench their thirst and repose by gentle streams. In a 
 tropical clime, a tranquil stream and a green pasture are 
 peculiarly pleasing to the eye. Hence many eastern alle- 
 gories are taken from such scenes. " Never, never will I 
 forget my God : he has brought me into a plenteous pastur- 
 age, and folded me near an abundance of water." " Why 
 does he like this country*?" — "Because he has goodi gra- 
 zing." " Tamban has left his master, because there was 
 not^much grass." " Much grass ! why the bull was never 
 satisfied." " Well, friend, whither are you going 1 in 
 search of grass and water T' — " Yes ; the fat one has be- 
 come lean, because his grass has withered and his water 
 failed." — Roberts, 
 
 The patriarchs wandered with their cattle among the 
 towns and villages of Canaan, and fed them even in the 
 most populous districts without molestation. And it is a 
 remarkable fact, that the Kenites and Rechabites lived in 
 'Palestine under tents, and fed their cattle wherever they 
 could find pasture, when the country was crowded with in- 
 habitants, long after it had been divided by lot among the 
 tribes. The Bedouin Arabs claim the same privilege in 
 those countries to this day, which, depopulated as they are^ 
 probably contain as many inhabitants in their towns and 
 villages, as in the days of Abraham. Nor is this custom 
 peculiar to Palestine ; in Barbary and other places, they 
 live in the same manner. Great numbers of Arabian 
 shepherds come into Egypt itself, in the months of Novem- 
 ber, December, and January, from three or four hundred 
 leagues distance, to feed their camels and their horses. After 
 having spent some time in the neighbourhood of the Nile, 
 they retire into the deserts, from whence, by routes with 
 which they are acquainted, they pass into other regions to 
 dwell there, in like manner, some months of the year, till 
 the return of the usual season recalls them to the vale of 
 Egypt. To this custom of leading the flocks from one 
 country and region to another, the royal Psalmist alludes 
 in that beautiful pastoral: "The Lord is my shepherd ; I 
 shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pas- 
 tures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth 
 my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for 
 his name's sake." We are taught by the prophet to look 
 for the same blessings from the vigilant care and tender- 
 ness of Messiah : " They shall feed in the ways, and their 
 pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hun- 
 ger nor thirst ; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them ; 
 for he that hath mercy on them, shall lead them; even by 
 the Springs of water shall he,guide them, and I will make 
 all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalt- 
 ed." The conduct of the eastern shepherd in leading his 
 flock to the green pastures, and the still waters, is clearly 
 alluded to by Johii, in the book of Revelation: " For the 
 Lamb which is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, 
 and lead them unto living fountains of waters ; and God 
 shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 4. Yea, though I walk through the valley 
 of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for 
 thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff they . 
 comfort me. 
 
 " He was indeed a good king ; by his sceptre and um- 
 hrelUb he comforted his subjects." By the staff or sceptre 
 he gently governed and protected his people ; and by his 
 umbrella he defended them from the fierce rays of the sun. 
 " Yes ; by these are we instructed, guided, supported, and 
 defended; what have we to fear? great is our safety and 
 confidence." " You are now becoming an old man, and 
 your children are young, what will become of them after 
 your death V — " Ah ! friend, is there not a staff in the hand 
 of God?" " Truly, my wife and children have gone; they 
 have reclined in the place of burning, but my staff is still 
 with me." " See the wicked one, he has not a staff left." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 In the bag or scrip, which is mentioned by Samuel as 
 a part of the shepherd's furniture, his provisions, and other 
 necessaries, are carried. He bears in his hand a staff of 
 considerable length, with which he keeps his cattle in o|der, 
 and numbers them when they return from the field. WTo 
 this instrument the Psalmist refers in that beautiful and 
 affecting passage, where he addresses Jehovah as the shep- 
 herd of his soul: " Yea, though I walk through the valley 
 of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art 
 with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."— Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 5. Thou preparest a table before me in the 
 presence of mine enemies : thou anointest my 
 head with oil ; my cup runneth over. 
 
 In Hindostan, when a person of rank and opulence ra- 
 ceives a guest, whom he wishes to distinguish by peculiar 
 marks of regard, he pours upon his hands and arms, in the 
 presence of the whole company, a delightful odoriferous 
 perfume, puts a golden cup into his hand, and pours wme 
 into it till It run over ; assuring him at the same time, thai 
 
Ps. 24—29. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 373 
 
 it is to him a great pleasure to receive him into his house, 
 and that he shall find under his roof every comfort which 
 he could bestow. The reference to this custom, which at 
 one time was probably general throughout the East, in the 
 twenty-third Psalm, is at once beautiful and striking: 
 " Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine 
 em mies ; thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth 
 over." The Lord had early received the Psalmist into fa- 
 vour ; raised him to the highest honours, from a very hum- 
 ble condition ; and, what was infinitely better, he set before 
 him the inestimable blessings of redeeming love, prepared 
 him by a copious unction of the holy Spirit to enjoy them, 
 and welcomed him in the most honourable manner, by put- 
 ting the cup of salvation into his hand, in the presence of 
 all his people, and pouring into it with unsparing liberality, 
 the wine of heavenly consolation. — Paxton. 
 
 On all joyful occasions the people of the East anoint the 
 head with oil. Hence, at their marriages, and other festive 
 times, the young and old may be seen with their long black 
 tresses neatly tied on the crown of the head, shining and 
 smooth, like polished ebony. The Psalmist, therefore, re- 
 joicing in God as his protector, says, " Thou anointest my 
 head with oil." It is an act of great respect to pour per- 
 fumed oil on the head of a distinguished guest ; hence the 
 woman in the gospel manifested her respect for the Saviour 
 by pouring " precious ointment" on his head. — Roberts. 
 
 In the East, the people frequently anoint their visiters 
 with some very fragrant perfume ; and give them a cup or 
 a glass of some choice wine, which they are careful to fill 
 till it runs over. The first was designed to show their love 
 and respect ; the latter to imply that v;hile they remained 
 there, they should have an abundance of every thing. To 
 something of this kind the Psalmist probably alludes in 
 ^his passage. — Burder. 
 
 PSALM XXIV. 
 
 Vex. 7. Lift up your heads, ye gates ; and be 
 ye Jift up, ye everlasting" doors; and the King 
 of glory shall come in. 
 
 See on Prov. 17. 19. 
 
 PSALM XXV. 
 Ver. 15. Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord ; 
 for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. 
 
 " Those who delight in fowling, do not spring the game 
 with dogs, as we do; but, shading themselves with an ob- 
 long piece of canvass, stretched over, a couple of reeds or 
 sticks, like a door, they walk with it through the several 
 brakes and avenues, where they expect to find game. The 
 canvass is usually spotted, or painted with the figure of a 
 leopard, and perforated near the top in a few places, for the 
 fowler to look through, and observe what passes before him. 
 The partridge, and other gregarious birds, when the canvass 
 approaches, will covey together, although they were feeding 
 before at some distance from one another. The woodcock, 
 quail, and other birds, which . do not commonly feed in 
 flocks, will, at sight of the oxtended canvass, stand still and 
 look with astonishment, which gives the sportsman an op- 
 portunity of coming very near them; and then resting the 
 canvass upon the ground, and directing the muzzle of his 
 piece through one of the holes, he will sometimes shoot a 
 whole covey at a time. The Arabs have another, but a 
 more laborious method of catching these birds; for ob- 
 serving that thev become languid and fatigued, after they 
 have been hastily put up two or three times, they immedi- 
 ately run in upon them, and knock fhem down with their 
 bludgeons. They are likewise well acquainted with that 
 method of catching partridges called tunnelling ; and to 
 make the capture the greater, they will sometimes place 
 behind the nei a cage with some tame ones within, which, 
 by their perpetual chirping and calling, quickly bring 
 down the coveys which are within hearing, and by that 
 n leans destroy great numbers of them. To hunt the jack- 
 al, which greatly abounds in that country, they sometimes 
 use a leopard which has been trained to hunting from his 
 youth. The hunter keeps the animal before him on his 
 hoTse, and when he meets with a jackal, the leopard leaps 
 down, and creeps along till he thinks himself within reach 
 of the prey, when he leaps upon it with inc 'edible agility, 
 
 throwing himself seventeen or eighteen feet at a time." 
 These statements illustrate the force and propriety of those 
 passages of holy writ, which allude to the arts and imple- 
 ments of the hunter and the fowler, by which the timid vic- 
 tim is taken ere it is aware ; or the bold is compelled by 
 main force, or by deadly wounds, to submit to his more 
 cunning or powerful adversary. It is not without reason 
 the Psalmist rejoiced that the snare was broken, and his 
 soul had escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowler ; 
 and that God had brought his feet out of the net. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM XXVII. 
 Ver. 6. And now shall my head be lifted up 
 above mine enemies round about me : therefore 
 will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of j oy ; 
 I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the 
 Lord. 
 
 " The Modeliar is now fixed in his situation." — " Is he*?" 
 — " Yes, yes, he is on the mountain, and is like unto it." 
 " Who will take me out of this mud, and place me upon 
 the mountain 1" — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXVIII. 
 Ver. 1. Unto thee will I cry, O Lord, my rock; 
 be not silent to me : lest, if thou be silent to 
 me, I become like them that go down into the 
 pit. 
 
 See on Job 33. 18, 24 
 
 Ver. 2. Hear the voice of my supplications, when 
 I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands towards 
 thy holy oracle. 
 
 See on Ps. 44. 20. 
 
 PSALM XXIX. 
 
 Ver. 5. The voice of the Lord breaketh the ce- 
 dars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of 
 Lebanon. 
 
 See on Deut. 3. 25. 
 
 Ver. 9. The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds 
 to calve, and discovereth the forests : and in his 
 temple doth every one speak of his glory. 
 
 Ainsworth translates, " Jehovah maketh the hinds trem- 
 blingly to travel." The thunder of the East is far more 
 terrific than that of England. The explosion is so sudden 
 and so vast, that the earth literally trembles under its 
 power : fierce animals rush into the covert, and birds fly 
 afirighted to the shade. Then it is the people say, " Ah'! 
 this will cause the womb to tremble." " This thunder will 
 make the pains to come." " I fear there will be a falling 
 this day." — Roberts. 
 
 It seems to be generally admitted, that the hind brings 
 forth her young with great difficulty; and, so much appears 
 to be suggested in the third verse of the same chapter : 
 " They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, 
 they cast out their sorrows." But if Pliny, and other nat- 
 ural historians, are worthy of credit, divine providence has 
 been graciously pleased to provide certain herbs, which 
 greatly facilitate the birth ; and by an unerring instinct, he 
 directs the hind to feed upon them, when the time of ges- 
 tation draws towards a close. Whatever be in this asser- 
 tion, we know from higher authority, that providence does 
 promote the parturition of the hind, by awakening her fears 
 and agitating her frame by the rolling thunder: "The 
 voice of Jehovah, (a common Hebrew phrase, denoting 
 thunder,) maketh the hinds to calve." Nor ought we to 
 wonder that so timorous a creature as the hind should be 
 so much affected by that awfully imposing sound, when 
 some of the proudest men that ever existed, have been made 
 to tremble. Augustus, the Roman emperor, according to 
 Suetonius, was so terrified when it thundered, that he 
 wrapped a seal-skin round his body, with the view of de- 
 fending it from the lightning, and concealed himself in some 
 
374 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 30—32. 
 
 .secret corner till the tempest ceased. The tyrant Caligula, 
 who sometimes affected to threaten Jupiter himself, covered 
 his head, or hid himself under a bed; and Horace con- 
 fesses, he was reclaimed from atheism by the terror of thun- 
 der aud lightning. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM XXX. 
 
 Title — A Psalm and Song at the dedication of 
 the house of David. 
 
 It was common, when any person had finished a house, 
 and cRtered into it, to celebrate it with great rejoicing, and 
 keep a festival, to which his friends were invited, and to 
 perform some religious ceremonies, to secure the protection 
 of heaven. Thus, when the second temple was finished, 
 the priests and Levites, and the rest of the captivity, kept 
 the dedication of the house of God with joy, and offered 
 numerous sacrifices, Ezra $i. Ifi We read in the New 
 Testament of the feast of the dedicaricn, appointed by Judas 
 Maccabaeus, in memory of the purification and restoration 
 of the temple of Jerusalem, after it had been defiled and 
 laid in ruins by Antiochus Epiphanes; and celebrated an- 
 nually, to the time of its destruction by Titus, by solemn 
 sacrifices, music, songs, and hymns to the praise of God; 
 and feasts, and every thing that could give the people plea- 
 sure, for eight days successively. (Josephus.) This was 
 customary even among private persons. The Romans also 
 dedicated their temples and their theatres. So also they 
 acted with respect to their statues, palaces, and houses. — 
 Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 1. I will extol thee, O Lord; for thou hast 
 lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to re- 
 joice over me. 
 
 " Thou hast lifted me up." The verb is used, in its original 
 raeaning, to denote the reciprocating moiiort of the buckets 
 of a well, one descending as the other rises, and vice versa; 
 and is here applied, with admirable propriety, to point out 
 the various reciprocations and changes of David's fortunes, 
 ds described in this psalm, as to prosperity and adversity; 
 and particularly, that gracious reverse of his afflicted con- 
 .dition, which he now celebrates, God having raised him 
 up to great honour and prosperity; for having built his 
 palace, " he perceived that the Lord had established him 
 king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom, for 
 his people Israel's sake." — Chandler. 
 
 Ver. 5. For his anger endureth but a moment ; in 
 his favour is life : weeping may endure for a 
 night, but joy cometh in the morning. 
 
 The Tamul method of expressing a moment is to move 
 the hand once round the head, and give a snap of the finger. 
 Thus they say of any thing which endures but a short time, 
 " It is only as the snap of the fingers." The people of the 
 East have nearly all their festivities in the night ; they say 
 it is the sorrowful time, and therefore adopt this plan to 
 make it pass more pleasantly away. To those who are in 
 difficulties or sorrow; to widows, orphans, and strangers, 
 " night is the time to weep ;" hence in passing through the 
 village may be heard people crying aloud to their departed 
 friends, or bitterly lamenting their own condition. They 
 have, however, some very pleasing and philosophical say- 
 ings on the uncertainty oif the sorrows and joys of life. In 
 the book Scanda-Purdna, it is written, " The wise, when 
 pleasure comes, do not greatly rejoice ; and in sorrow they 
 yield not to distress ; for they judge that pleasure and pain 
 are incident to life. The indigent become wealthy, and the 
 wealthy indigent; and inferiors are exalted. Can wealth 
 or poverty, pleasure or pain, be regarded as permanent to 
 the soul f The phases of the moon remain not in one state ; 
 they diminish and increase : so your afflictions will one day 
 terrninate." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 9. What profit is there in my blood, when I 
 go down to the pit 1 Shall the dust praise thee ? 
 shall it declare thy truth ? 
 
 " When I go down to the pit, what fruit will there be in 
 my body V " Ah ! he has fallen into the pit," i. e. he is dead. 
 Of those whose bodies have been burned, it is said, they are 
 
 all sd'mbal, i. e. all ashes. " Where is your father V — " Alas! 
 my lord, he is ashes." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXXI. 
 Ver. 2. Bow down thine ear to me ; deliver me 
 speedily ; be thou my strong rock, for a house 
 of defence to save me. 
 
 " My lord, have you not always assisted me 1 As a 
 mountain and a fortress have you been to me." When a 
 rilan of rank dies, it is said, " that konavi (bastion or fortress) 
 has fallen." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And hast not shut me up into the hand of 
 the enemy : thou hast set my feet in a large 
 room. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd translates this, " hast set my foot in a 
 wider place." Many figures in the English language are 
 unquestionably borrowed from the scriptures, among which 
 may be, "he is in his hands;" for he is in his power. 
 When Zedekiah ordered Ebed-melech to draw Jeremiah 
 out of the dungeon, he was directed to take thirty men vnth 
 him ; but tjj^e margin has it, " in thy hand /" In eastern 
 language, therefore, to be in the hands of a person, signifies 
 to be in his possession or power. But David was not given 
 into the hand of his enemy, and his feet were at liberty in 
 a large place, so that he conlid walk whithersoever he pleased. 
 In another verse, he says, " Thou hast enlarged me ;" he 
 was increased and at liberty : and again, in speaking of his 
 enemies, and the misery he suffered, he says, " He brought 
 me forth into a large place ;" so that his feet were at liberty. 
 The feet (as well as the hands) are sometimes taken for the 
 whole maxi: thus, the Lord " will keep the feet of his saints," 
 finds an illustration here. " Have I not had a protector 
 through this journey 1" — " Yes, the gods have kept my feet." 
 "Well, have you heard from your son 1" — "Yes; be has 
 arrived in safety, and has written to me, saying, he will 
 return next month, if the gods keep his feet." A man who 
 is embarrassed in his circumstances, says, " My feet are in 
 shackles." *' Who will refresh my feet 1" " Who will give 
 liberty to my feet T' — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind ; 
 I am like a broken vessel. 
 
 " Yes," says the man who is reduced to poverty, " I am 
 now a corpse to all my former friends." " What is a man 
 without money 1 A naddukera-savvam" a walking corpse i 
 "I am now a" broken chatte" a potsherd. " Truly, I am 
 like the tarn-bat taw," the drum with its head broken. " I am 
 of no use ; no one enjoys me." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXXII. 
 Ver. 4. My moisture is turned into the drought of 
 summer. Selah. 
 
 The fields of Canaan are refreshed with frequent and co- 
 pious rains, while some of the neighbouring countries are 
 scarcely ever moistened with a shower. In the winter 
 months, the rain falls indiscriminately, but seldom in the 
 summer. Soon after the heats commence, the grass withers, 
 the flower fades, every green thing is dried up by the roots, 
 and the fields, so lately clothed with the richest verdure, 
 and adorned with the loveliest flowers, are converted into 
 a brown and arid wilderness. To the uniform withered 
 appearance of the fields during the reign of an eastern 
 summer, and not to any particular year of drought, the 
 Psalmist refers in these plaintive terms : " My moisture is 
 turned into the drought of summer." When conviction 
 slept, and conscience was silent, the soul of David resem- 
 bled a field refreshed bv the genial showers of heaven ; 
 but the moment God in anger entered into judgment with 
 him, and set his sins in order before his face, his courage 
 failed, his beautv was turned into corruption, and his 
 strength into weakness; "the commandment came, sin re- 
 vived, and he died." — Paxton. 
 
 In England and the neighbouring countries it is common 
 for rain to fall in all months of the year. But it is not so 
 in the Levant. Egypt has scarce any rain at all, and Di 
 
Ps. 32—37. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 375 
 
 Shaw affirms that it is as uncommon in what they call at 
 Algiers the Desert, which is the most southern part of that 
 country. These, however, are peculiar cases. Rain indis- 
 criminately in the winter months, and none at all in the 
 summer, is what is most common in the East. Jacobus de 
 Vitriaco assures us it is thus in Judea ; for he observes that 
 " lightning and thunder are wont, in the western countries, 
 to be in the summer, but happen in the Holy Land in win- 
 ter. In the summer it seldom or never rains there: but in 
 winter, though the returns of rain are not so frequent, after 
 they begin to fall, they pour down for three or four days 
 and nights together, as vehemently as if they would drown 
 the country." The withered appearance of an eastern 
 summer, which is very dry, is doubtless what the Psalmist 
 refers to when he says, " my moisture is turned into the 
 Irought of summer." The reference is not to any particu- 
 ar year of drought, but to what commonly occurs. — Har- 
 
 M£R. • 
 
 Ver. 7. Thou art my hiding-place; thou shalt 
 preserve me from trouble : thou shalt compass 
 me about with songs of deliverance. Selah. 
 
 We see in the case of David, and many others, that they 
 often had to conceal themselves in caves, mountains, and 
 desert places, from the pursuit of their enemies. In countries 
 like these, where the police is imperfect, where population 
 is so scattered, and where it is so easy to sustain life, it can 
 be no wonder that offenders and injured men oflen conceal 
 themselves for months and years from the vigilance of their 
 pursuers. It is an every-day occurrence to hear of men thus 
 hiding themselves. Has a person to account for his conduct, 
 or to appear in a court of justice, he packs up his valuables, 
 and makes a start into the jungle, or to some distant country. 
 Perhaps he prowls about the skirts of a forest, and occasion- 
 ally visits his family in the night. See him on his way, he 
 walks so softly that the most delicate-eared animal cannot 
 detect him ; he looks in every direction ; puts his ears near 
 the ground, and listens for any sound; again he proceeds, 
 sometimes crawling, sometimes walking, till he has reached 
 his hiding-place. But the natives themselves are famous for 
 assisting each other to elude the search of their pursuers ; 
 and often, as did Jonathan and Ahimaaz, they conceal them- 
 selves in the well ! Sometimes an offender will run to a man 
 of rank who is at enmity with his foe, and say, " My lord, 
 you must be my hiding-place against that wicked man, who 
 has committed so many crimes against you," " Ah ! the 
 good man, he was my hiding-place," — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXXIV. 
 
 Ver. 8. taste and see that the Lord is good: 
 blessed is the man that trusteth in him. 
 
 " I have russe-pdrtain," i. e, tasted and seen the holy man. 
 " The Modeliar is a good man ; I have lasted of him many 
 times." " Tamby, have you been to see the collector 1" — 
 " No, I am afraid of him."—" Fear not ; I have tasted of 
 him, and he is very sweet." " Do you pretend to know me 1" 
 — " Yes, I know you well ; many times have I tasted of 
 you, and have proved you to be all bitterness." A wife 
 says of a good husband, " I have tasted him, and he is very 
 sweet." Does a father chastise his child, he asks, " Do 
 you now taste me 7 Am I sweet or sour 7 When you 
 commit such things, I shall always be sour to you." Of a 
 good and absent child, he says, " My son, my son ! when 
 will you return, that I may again taste your sweetness."— 
 Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 20. He keepeth all his bones: 
 them is broken. 
 
 not one of 
 
 A curious opinion of the Jews is, that wherever their 
 bodies may be buried, it is only in their o-wti promised land 
 that the resurrection can take place ; and, therefore, they 
 who are interred in any other part of the world must take 
 their way to Palestine under ground; and this will be an 
 operation of dreadful toil and pain, although clefts and 
 caverns will be opened for them bv the Almighty. Whether 
 it arose from this superstition, or from that love for the land 
 ^ their fathers, which, in the Jews, is connected with the 
 strongest feeling, of faith and hope, certain it is, that 
 aim. 
 
 many have directed their remains to be sent there. " We 
 were fraughted with wool," says an old traveller, " from 
 Constantinople to Sidon, in which sacks, as most cer- 
 tainly was told to me, were many Jews' bones put into 
 little chests, but unknown to any of the ship. The Jews, 
 our merchants, told me of them at my return from Jeru- 
 salem to Saphet, but earnestly entreated me not to tell it, 
 for fear of preventing them another time." Sometimes a 
 wealthy Jew has been known to import earth from Jeru- 
 salem wherewith to line his grave. ((Quarterly Review.)— 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 PSALM XXXV. 
 
 Ver. 5. Let them be as chaff before the wind 
 let the angel of the Lord chase them. 
 
 and 
 
 " Begone ! fellow ; contend not with my brother or me : 
 thou aft as chaff before the wind !" " Not a word, or soon 
 wilt thou be as cotton before the wind !" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. Yea, they opened their mouth wide 
 against me, and said, Aha, aha ! our eye hath 
 seen it. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, " They open wide their mouth against 
 me, and say, Aha ! aha ! our eye seeth what we wished." 
 See that rude fellow, who has triumphed over another; he 
 distends his mouth to the utmost, then claps his hands, and 
 bawls out, " Agd! agd! I have seen, I have seen." So 
 provoking is this exclamation, that a man, though va7i- 
 quished, will often commence another attack. An officer 
 who has lost his situation is sure to have this salutation 
 from those he has injured. Has a man been foiled in 
 argument, has he failed in some feat he promised to per- 
 form, has he in any way made himself ridiculous, the 
 people open their mouths, and shout aloud, saying, " Agd I 
 finished, finished, fallen, fallen." Then they laugh, and 
 clap their hands, till the poor fellow gets out of their sight. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXXVI. 
 Ver. 11. Let not the foot of pride come against 
 me, and let not the hand of the wicked remove 
 me. 
 
 Here we have another instance of the feet and hands 
 being used for the whole man. Our Saviour said of the 
 man : " The hand of him that betrayeth me." Of a sick 
 person to whom the physician will not administer any more 
 medicine, it will be said, paregdri-kividtdn, " The hand of 
 the doctor has forsaken him." A servant is under the 
 hand of his master. The foot of pride probably alludes to 
 the custom of the conqueror trampling upon the vanquished: 
 for in the next verse it is said, '' The workers of iniquity 
 are fallen: they are cast down, and shall not be able to 
 rise." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXXVII. 
 
 Ver. 6. And he shall bring forth thy righteous- 
 ness as the light, and thy judgment as the noon- 
 day. 
 
 flf' Righteousness and the light are but one." " His righ- 
 teousness is as the light." " Yes, he is indeed a wise judge, 
 his decision is as the noonday." "What an erroneous 
 judgment is this ! my case was as powerful and clear as the 
 sun in his zenith." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 35. I have seen the wicked in great power, 
 and spreading himself like a green bay-tree. 
 
 The margin has, instead of green bay-tree, " a tree that 
 groweth in his own soil," Ainsworth, " I have seen the 
 wicked daunting terrible, and spreading himself bare, as a 
 green self-growing laurel." A truly wicked man is com- 
 pared to a tamarind-tree, whose wood is exceedingly hard, 
 and whose fruit is sour. " That jpassdm, i. e. fiend, is like 
 the maridha-marram" ( Terminalia-Alate.) This tree re- 
 sists the most powerful storms ; it never loses its leaves, 
 and is sacred to Vyraver, the prince of devils, I have 
 
876 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 39—42. 
 
 seen some that would measure from thirty to forty feet in 
 circumference. The tamarind-tree at Port Pedro, under 
 which Baldeus preached, measures thirty feet. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XXXIX. 
 
 Ver. 5. Behold, thou hast made my days as a 
 hand-breadth, and mine age is as nothing before 
 thee : verily every man at his best state is alto- 
 gether vanity. Selah. 
 
 " What are the days of man 1 Only four fingers." " My 
 son has gone, and has only had a life of four fingers." 
 "You have had much pleasure *?" — "Not so; it has only 
 been the breadth of four fingers." " Is he a great land- 
 owner V — " Yes, he has about the breadth of four fingers." 
 " I am told that the hatred betwixt those people is daily 
 decreasing'?" — " Yes; that which is left is about four fingers 
 in breadth." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 0. Remove thy stroke away from me : I 
 am consumed by the blow of thy hand. 
 11. When thou with rebukes dost correct man 
 for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume 
 away like a moth : surely every man is vanity. 
 Selah. 
 
 See on Job 4. 9. 
 
 The moths of the East are very large and beautiful, but 
 short-lived. After a few showers these splendid insects 
 may be seen fluttering in every breeze ; but the dry weather 
 and their numerous enemies soon consign them to the com- 
 mon lot. Thus the beauty of man consumes away like that 
 of this gay rover, dressed in his robes of purple, and scar- 
 let, and green. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XL. 
 
 Ver. 6. Sacrifice and offering thou didst not de- 
 sire ; mine ears hast thou opened : burnt-offer- 
 ing and sin-offering hast thou not required. 
 
 Ainsworth, "Mine ears hast thou digged open." In 
 scripture phrase, the Lord is said to speak in the ears of 
 his people. Those young heathen who are above ten years 
 of age, and under twenty, have the ubbatheasum whispered 
 in their ears, which is believed to have a very sacred ef- 
 fect.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. Then said I, Lo, I come : in the volume 
 of the book it is written of me. 
 
 I have elsewhere observed, that the oriental books and 
 letters, which are wont both of them to be rolled up, are 
 usually wrapped in a covering of an elegant kind: I would 
 here add, that they have sometimes words on these cover- 
 ings, which have a general notion of what is contained in 
 them ; which management obtained in much elder times, 
 and might possibly be in use when some of the Psalms 
 were written. Sir John Chardin, describing the manner 
 of dismissing the ambassadors and envoys that were at 
 the court of the Persian monarch, when he was there, 
 after mentioning the presents that were made them, goes on 
 to inform us, " that the letters to the crowned heads w<re 
 sealed; that for the cardinal natron was open: that for 
 the pope was formed so as to oe larger than the rest ; it 
 was enclosed in a bag of very rich brocade, and sealed at 
 the ends, which had fringes hanging down the bag half 
 way. The seal was applied to the place where the knot 
 was on both' sides, upon red wax, of the diameter of a 
 piece of fifteen sols, and very thick. Upon the middle of 
 one of the sides of the bag were written these two Persian 
 words, Hamel Fasel, which signify, excellent or precious 
 writing." After which he goes on to explain the reasons that 
 occasion the Persian prince to treat the popes with such 
 distinguished honour, which it would be of no use to con- 
 sider here. The remark I would make relates to the in- 
 scription on the outside of the rich bag enclosing these 
 despatches, and which, in few words, expressed the gen- 
 eral nature of what was contsfined in the roll within: it 
 was a royal writing. This practice of writing on the out- 
 
 side of the case of a letter, or book rolled up, seems to be 
 at least as ancient as the time of Chrysostom, according 
 to a note of Lambert Bos on the 40th Psalm. Chrysostom, 
 we are told there, remarks, that they call a wrapper the 
 Kefa'Sii, which is the word the Septuagint translators make 
 use of to express the Hebrew word nVja megillath, which 
 we translate volume : "In the volume of the book it is writ- 
 ten of me." Chrysostom seems to suppose there was 
 written in or on the sacred volume, a word or words 
 which signified the coming of the Messiah. But Chrysos- 
 tom would hardly have thought of such an intei-pretation, 
 had it not been frequently done at Constantinople in his 
 time, or by the more eastern princes that had business to 
 transact with the Greek emperors ; or been known to have 
 been before those times practised among the Jews. — Har- 
 
 MER. 
 
 PSALM XLI. 
 
 Ver. 9. Yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I 
 trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted 
 his heel against me. 
 
 " The man who has eaten my rice has now become a 
 traitor ; yes, he has cut my kuthe-kdl," i. e. heel. — Roberts. 
 
 To eat of the same bread has been reckoned in every 
 age a sure pledge of inviolable friendship. Pythagoras com- 
 manded his disciples not to break bread, because, say they, 
 the bond of friendship is not to be broken ; and all friends 
 should assemble round the same cake. A cake of bread, 
 observes Curtius, was the most sacred pledge of amity among 
 the Macedonians. Nothing was reckoned baser, in the 
 East, than to offer violence to those at whose table they 
 had been entertained, ^schines, in his oration against 
 Demosthenes, reproaches him especially because he had 
 accused him, though they had eaten at the same table, and 
 joined in the same sacred ceremonies. In perfect har- 
 mony with these views and feelings, which seem to have 
 been derived from a very remote antiquity, the holy Psalmist 
 complains of Ahithophel : " Yea, mine own familiar friend, 
 in whom I trusted, who did eat of my bread, hath lifted up 
 his heel against me." And a greater than David, in ref- 
 erence to Judas Iscariot: " I speak not of you all: I know 
 whom I have chosen ; but that the scripture maybe fulfilled, 
 he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against 
 me." The traitor had lived for more than three years in 
 the relations of peace and amity with his Lord : he had 
 been called in the apostolic office, and had been admitted to 
 the same familiar mtercourse with his divine Master, as 
 the other disciples had enjoyed. These invaluable privi- 
 leges greatly aggravated his crime; but his eating bread 
 at his Master's table, while he was plotting against his 
 life, was the crowning point of his enormous wickedness. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM XLII. 
 
 Ver. 1. As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
 so panteth my soul after thee, O God. 
 
 In the East, where streams are not common, and where 
 the deer are so often chased by their savage co-tenants of 
 the forest and the glade, no wonder that they are often 
 driven from their favourite haunts to the parched grounds. 
 After this, their thirst becomes excessive, but they dare 
 not return to the water, lest they should again meet the 
 enemy. When the good Ramar and his people went 
 through the thirsty wilderness, it is written, " As the deer 
 cried for water, so did they." " In going through the des- 
 ert yesterday, my thirst was so great, I cried out like the 
 deer for water." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. Deep calleth unto deep at the noisfj of thy 
 water-spouts: all thy waves and thy billows 
 are gone over me. 
 
 A water-spout at sea is a splendid sight ; in shape it re- 
 sembles a funnel, with the tube pointing to the water. In 
 1819, a large one burst near our ship, which caused con- 
 siderable alarm to all on board. We were near to it be- 
 fore we were aware, and the captain ordered the guns to 
 be loaded and discharged, to cause it to break. Happily 
 for us, it burst at some distance ; but the iioise the water 
 
Ps. 42—45. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 377 
 
 made in rushing from the water-spout^ and again in dash- 
 ing into the sea, strongly reminded me of this expression, 
 " Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of ,thy water-spouts." 
 Roberts. 
 
 Natural philosophers often make mention of water-spouts, 
 which are most surprising appearances ; but hardly any of 
 the commentators, that I have observed, speak of them, 
 though our translators have used the term, Psalm xlii. 7, 
 and the Psalmist seems to be directly describing those 
 r)henomena, and painting a storm at sea. And none of 
 hem, I think, take notice of the frequency of water-spouts 
 on the Jewish coasts, and consequently that it was natural 
 for a Jewish poet to mention them, in the description of a 
 violent and dangerous storm. *■ 
 
 That this however is the fact, we learn from Dr. Shaw, 
 who tells us, that water-spouts are more frequently near the 
 capes of Latikea, Greego, and Carmel, than in any other 
 part of the Mediterranean. These are all places on the 
 coast of Syria, and the last of them, everybody knows in 
 Judea, it being a place rendered famous by the prayers of 
 the prophet Elijah. The Jews then could not be ignorant 
 •of what frequently happened on their coasts, and David 
 must have known of these dangers of the sea, if he had 
 not actually seen some of them, as Dr. Shaw did. Strange 
 then ! since this is the case, that commentators should 
 speak of these water-spouts as only meaning vehement 
 rains ; or that any should imagine that he compares his 
 afflictions to the pouring of water through the spouts of a 
 house, as Bythner seems to do in his Lyra, when they 
 have nothing to do with a storm at sea, which the Psalmist 
 is evidently describing. 
 
 Others have remarked that these spouts are often seen 
 in the Mediterranean', but I do not remember to have seen 
 it anywhere remarked, before I read Dr. Shaw, that they 
 are more frequent on the Syrian and Jewish coasts, than 
 any other part of this sea \ and as the doctor has not ap- 
 plied the observation to the explaining any part of scrip- 
 ture, I thought it was right to take notice of it in these pa- 
 pers, and as it belongs to the natural history of Judea, it 
 comes into this chapter. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 11. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? 
 and why art thou disquieted within me ? Hope 
 thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who 
 is the health of my countenance, and my God. 
 
 Ainsworth, " the salvations of my face." " Oh ! Siva, 
 are you not the salvation of my facel" says the prostrate 
 devotee. " To whom shall I make known my distress 1 
 are not you the salvation of my face V " Alas ! alas ! the 
 salvation of my face has departed." '* The blossoming on 
 my face is now withered and gone," says the widow, la- 
 menting over the corpse of her husband. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XLIV. 
 Ver. 20. If we have forgotten the name of our 
 God, or stretched out our hands to a strange 
 god. 
 
 The stretching out the hand towards an object of devotion, 
 or a holy place, was an ancient usage among Jews and 
 heathens both, and it continues in the East to this time, 
 which continuance I do not remember to have seen re- 
 marked. " If," says the Psalmist, " we have forgotten the 
 name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange 
 god : shall not God search this out V Ps. xliv. 20, 21. " Ethi- 
 opia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God," Ps. Ixviii. 
 31. " Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto 
 thee : when I lift up my hand towards thy holy oracle," 
 Psalm xxviii. 2. 
 
 That this attitude in prayer has continued among the 
 eastern people, appears by the following passages from Pitts, 
 in his account of the religion and manners of the Moham- 
 medans. Speaking of the Algerines throwing wax can- 
 dles and pots of oil overboard, as a present to some marab- 
 Dot, or Mohammedan saint, Pitts goes on, and says, 
 " When this is done, they all together hold up their hands, 
 Degging the marabbot's blessing, and a prosperous voyage." 
 This they do in common, it seems, when in the Straits' 
 mouth ; " and if at any time they happen to be in a very 
 ■ great strait or distress, as being chased, or in a storm, they 
 48 
 
 will gather money, and do likewise." In the same page he 
 tells us, the " marabbots have generally a little neat room 
 built over their graves, resembling in figure their mosques 
 or churches, which is very nicely cleaned, and we]l looked 
 after." And in the succeeding page he tells us, " Many 
 people there are, who will scarcely pass by any of them 
 without lifting up their hands, and saying seme short 
 prayer." He mentions the same devotion again as prac- 
 tised towards a saint that lies buried on the snore -./f the 
 Red Sea. 
 
 In like manner, he tells us, that at quitting .ne oeet, or 
 holy house at Mecca, to which they make devout pilgrim- 
 ages, " they hold up their hands towards the beet, making 
 earnest petitions ; and then keep going backward till they 
 come to the abovesaid farewell gate. All the way as thev 
 retreat, they continue petitioning, holding up their hands, 
 with their eyes fixed on the beet, until they are out of sight 
 of it : and so go to their lodgings weeping." — Harmer. 
 
 PSALM XLV. 
 Ver. 1. My heart is enditing a good matter: I 
 speak of the things which I have made touch- 
 ing the King ; my tongue is the pen of a ready 
 writer. 
 
 This Psalm is a poetical composition, in the form of an 
 epithalamium, or song of congratulation, upon the marriage 
 of a great king, to be sung to music at the wedding- feast. 
 The topics are such as were the usual groundwork of such 
 gratulatory odes with the poets of antiquity : they all fall 
 under two general heads, the praises of tte bridegroom, 
 and the praises of the bride. The bridegroom is praised 
 for the comeliness of his person, and the urbanity of his 
 address, for his military exploits, for the extent of his con- 
 quests, for the upright adipinistration of his government, 
 for the magnificence of his court. The bride is celebrated 
 for her high birth, for the beauty of her person, the richness 
 of her dress, and her numerous train of blooming bride- 
 maids. It is foretold that the marriage will be fruitful, and 
 that the sons of the great king will be sovereigns of the 
 whole earth. In this general structure of the poem, we 
 find nothing but the common topics and the common ar- 
 rangement of every wedding-song : but when we recollect 
 that the relation between the Saviour and his church is 
 represented in the writings both of the Old and New Tes- 
 tament, under the image of the relation of a husband to his 
 wife, that it is a favourite image with all the ancient 
 prophets, when they would set forth the loving-kindness of 
 Goa for the church, or the church's dutiful return of love 
 to him ; while, on the contrary, the idolatry of the church, 
 in her apostacies, is represented as the adultery of a mar- 
 ried woman ; that this image has been consecrated to this 
 signification by our Lord's own use of it, who describes 
 God in the act of settling the church in her final state of 
 peace and perfection, as a king making a marriage for his 
 son ; — the conjecture that will naturally arise upon the 
 recollection of these circumstances will be, that this epi- 
 thalamium, preserved among the sacred writings of the an- 
 cient Jewish church, celebrates no common marriage, but 
 the great mystical wedding, that Christ is the bridegroom, 
 and the spouse his church. And this was the unanimous 
 opinion of all antiquity, without exception even of the 
 Jewish expositors. For although, with the veil of igno- 
 rance and prejudice upon their understandings and their 
 hearts, they discern not the completion of this or of any of 
 their prophecies in the Son of Mary, yet they allow, that 
 this is one of the prophecies which relate to the Messiah 
 and Messiah's people ; and none of them ever dreamed of 
 an application of it to the marriage of any earthly prince. 
 
 It is the more extraordinary, that there should have 
 arisen in the Christian church, in later ages, expositors of 
 great name and authority, and, indeed, of great learning, 
 who have maintained, that the immediate subject of the 
 psalm is the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter, 
 and can discover only a distant reference to Christ and the 
 church, as typified by the Jewish kiag and his Egyptian 
 bride. But read this psalm, and tell me if you can any- 
 where find King Solomon. We find, mdeej, passages 
 which may be applicable to Solomon, but not more appli- 
 cable to him than to many other earthlv kings ; such as 
 comeliness of person and urbanity of address, mentioned 
 
278 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 45. 
 
 in the second versa. These might be qualities, for any 
 thing that we know to the contrary, belonging to Solomon ; 
 I say, for any thing that we know to the contrary, for in 
 these particulars the sacred history gives no information. 
 We read of Solomon's learning, and of his wisdom, and of 
 the admirable sagacity and integrity of his judicial deci- 
 sions : but we read not at all, as far as I recollect, of the 
 extraordinary comeliness of his person, or the affability of 
 his speech. And if he possessed these qualities, they are 
 110 more than other monarchs have possessed, in a degree 
 not to be surpassed by Solomon. Splendour and stateliness 
 of dress, twice mentioned in this psalm, were not peculiar 
 to Solomon, but belong to every great and opulent mon- 
 arch. Other circumstances might be mentioned, applica- 
 ble, indeed, to Solomon, but no otherwise than as generally 
 applicable to every king. But the circumstances which are 
 cnaracteristic of the king who is the hero of this poem, are 
 every one of them utterly inapplicable to Solomon, inso- 
 much, that not one of them can be ascribed to him, without 
 contradicting the history of his reign. The hero of this 
 poem is a warrior, who girds his sword upon his thigh, 
 rides in pursuit of flying foes, makes havoc among them 
 with his sharp arrows, and reigns at last by conquest over 
 his vanquished enemies. Now Solomon was no warrior : 
 he enjoyed a long reign of forty years of uninterrupted 
 peace. He retained, indeed, the sovereignty of the coun- 
 tries which his father had conquered, but he made no new 
 conquests of his own. " He had dominion over all the 
 region west of the Euphrates, over all the kings on this 
 side of the river, (they were his vassals,) and he had peace 
 on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt 
 safely, every man under his vine, and under his fig-tree, 
 from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon." If 
 Solomon ever girded a sword upon his thigh, it must have 
 been merely for state ; if he had a quiver of sharp arrows, 
 he could have had no use for them but in huntmg. And it 
 was with great good judgment, that upon the revision of 
 our English Bible, in the reign of James the First, the 
 Calvinistic argument of this psalm, as it stood in Glueen 
 Elizabeth's Bible, was expunged, and that other substituted 
 which we now read in our Bible of the larger size, in these 
 Words: " The majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom; the 
 duty of the church, and the benefits thereof;" which, indeed, 
 contain a most exact summary of the whole doctrine of the 
 psalm. And the particulars of this, it is my intention in 
 future discourses to expound. 
 
 The psalm takes its beginning in a plain, unaflTected 
 manner, with a verse briefly declarative of the importance 
 of the subject, the author's extraordinary knowlecfge of it. 
 and the manner in which it will be treated: — 
 
 " My heaxt is enditing a good matter ;" 
 or rather, 
 
 " My heart labours with a goodly theme :" 
 for the word " enditing" answers but poorly, as our transla- 
 tors themselves appear from their margin to have been well 
 aware, to the emphasis of the original, which expresses, 
 that the mind of the prophet was excited and heated, boiling 
 over, as it were, with his subject, and eager to give utter- 
 ance to its great conceptions. " A good matter," or " a 
 goodly theme," denotes a subject of the highest interest and 
 importance : — 
 
 " My heart labours with a goodly theme : 
 
 I address my performance to the King ;" 
 
 that is, as haih been abundantly explained, to the great 
 King Messiah : — 
 
 "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer;" 
 that is, of a well-instructed writer, a writer prepared and 
 ready, by a perfect knowledge of the subject he undertakes 
 to treat. 
 
 But with what sense and meaning is it, that the Psalmist 
 compares his "tongue" to the " pen" of such a writer 1 It 
 is to intimate, as I apprehend, that what he is about to de- 
 liver is no written composition, but an extemporaneous 
 effusion, without any premeditation of his own, upon the 
 immediate impulse and suggestion of the Holy Spirit ; that 
 what will fall, however, in that manner, from his " tongue," 
 for the coherence and importance of the matter, for the 
 correct propriety of the expression, and for the orderly 
 arrangement of the parts, will in no degree fall short of the 
 most laboured production of the " pen" of any writer, the 
 best prepared by previous study of his subject ; inasmuch 
 
 as the Spirit of God inspires his thoughts, and prorspts his 
 utterance. After this brief preface, declaring that his sub- 
 ject is Messiah, chiefly in his kingly character; that he 
 cannot contain the thoughts which are rising in his mind; 
 that he speaks not from himself, or from previous study, 
 but from inspiration at the moment, he plunges at once 
 into the subject he had propounded, addressing the King 
 Messiah, as if he were actually standing in the royal pres- 
 ence. And in this same strain, indeed, the whole song 
 proceeds ; as referring to a scene present to the prophet's 
 eye, or to things which he saw doing. — Horsley. 
 
 Ver. 2. Thou art fairer than the children of men ; 
 grace is poured into thy lips : therefore God 
 hath blessed thee for ever. 
 
 We have no account in the gospels of our Saviour's 
 person. Some writers of an early age (but none so early 
 as to have seen him) speak of it as wanting dignity, and oi 
 his physiognomy as unpleasing. It would be difficult, I 
 believe, to find any better foundation for this strange no-, 
 tion, than an injudicious interpretation of certain prophe- 
 cies, in a literal meaning, which represent the humiliation 
 which the Son of God was to undergo, by clothing his 
 divinity with flesh, in images taken from" personal de- 
 formity. But from what is recorded in the gospels, of the 
 ease with which our Saviour mixed in what, in the modern 
 style, we should call good company ; of the respectful 
 attention shown to him, beyond any thing his reputed birth 
 or fortune might demand "; and the manner in which his 
 discourses, either of severe reproof or gentle admonition, 
 were received, we may reasonably conclude, that he had a 
 dignity of exterior appearance, remarkably corresponding 
 with that authority of speech, which, upon some occasions, 
 impressed even his enemies with awe, and with that digni- 
 fied mildness, which seems to have been his more natural 
 and usual tone, and drew the applause and admiration of 
 all who heard him. External feature, however, is gene- 
 rally the impression of the mind upon the body, and words 
 are but the echo of the thoughts ; and, in prophecy, more 
 is usually meant than meets the ear in the first sound, and 
 most obvious sense of the terms employed. Beauty and 
 grace of speech are certainly used in this text as figures of 
 much higher qualities, which were conspicuous in our Lord, 
 and in him alone of all the sons of men. That image of 
 God in which Adam was created, in our Lord appeared 
 perfect and entire ; in the unspotted innocency of his life, 
 the sanctity of his manners, and his perfect obedience to 
 the law of God ; in the vast powers of his mind, intellectual 
 and moral: intellectual, in his comprehension of all knowl- 
 edge ; moral, in his power of resisting all the allurements 
 of vice, and of encountering all the difficulties of virtue and 
 religion, despising hardship and shame, enduring pain and 
 death. This was the beauty with which he was adorned 
 beyond the sons of men. In him, the beauty of the divine 
 image was refulgent in its original perfection ; in all the 
 sons of Adam, obscured and marred, in a degree to be 
 scarce discernible; the will depraved, the imagination de- 
 bauched, the reason weak, the passions rampant ! This 
 deformity is not externally visible, nor the spiritual beauty 
 which is its opposite: but, could the eye be turned upon the 
 internal man, we should see the hideous shape of a will at 
 enmity with God ; a heart disregarding his law, insensible 
 of his goodness, fearless of his wrath, swelling with the 
 passions of ambition, avarice, vain-glory, lust. Yet this is 
 the picture of the unregenerated man, by the depravity 
 consequent upon the fall, born in iniquity, and conceived 
 in sin. Christ, on the contrary, by the mysterious manner 
 of his conception, was bcm without spot of sin ; he grew 
 up and lived full of grace and truth, perfectly sanctified in 
 flesh and spirit. With this beauty he was " adorned beyond 
 the sons of men." — Horsley. 
 
 Ver. 3. Gird thy sword upon thi/ thigh, O most 
 Mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. 
 
 From the commendation of the comeliness of the kingls 
 person, and the graciousness of his speech, the Psalmist, in 
 the same figurative style, passes to the topic of his prowess 
 as a warrior, under w'hich character our Lord is perpetu- 
 ally described in the prophecies. The enemies he Vad to 
 
Ps. 45. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 379 
 
 engage are ihe wicked passions of men, the devil in his i 
 wiles and machinations, and the persecuting powers of the 
 world. The warfare is continued through the whole of the 
 period I have mentioned, commencing upon our Lord's as- 
 cension, at which time he is represented, in the Revelation, 
 as going forth upon a " white horse, with a crown upon his 
 head, and a bow in his hand, conquering and to conquer." 
 The Psalmist, in imagery almost the same, accosts him as 
 a warlike prince preparing to take the field ; describes his 
 weapons, and the magnificence of his armour, and prom- 
 ises him victory and universal dominion. 
 
 This verse, I fear, must be but ill understood by the 
 English reader. The words, " O most Mighty !" very weak- 
 ly render the original, which is a single word, one of the 
 titles of Christ, in its literal sense expressive of might and 
 vaiour. But the great difficulty which, in my apprehen- 
 sion, must perplex the English reader, lies in the exhorta- 
 tion, to gircl on glory and majesty together with the sword. 
 The things have no obvious connexion; and how are ma- 
 jesty and glory, in any sense which the words may bear in 
 •our language, to be girt on upon the person 1 The truth is, 
 that, in the Hebrew language, these words have a great 
 variety and latitude of meaning; and either these very 
 words, or their synonymes, are used in other places for 
 splendid dress, and for robes of slate ; and being things to 
 be girt on, they must here denote some part of the warrior's 
 dress. They signify such sort of armour, of costly mate- 
 rials and exquisite workmanship, as was worn by the 
 greatest generals, and by kings when they led their armies 
 in person, and was contrived for ornament as well as safety. 
 The whole verse might be intelligibly and yet faithfully 
 rendered, in these words : — 
 
 " Warrior ! gird thy sword upon thy thigh ; 
 Buckle on thy refulgent, dazzhng armour.' 
 
 -HoBsusy. 
 
 Ver. 4. And in thy majesty ride prosperously, be- 
 cause of truth, and meekness, and righteous- 
 ness ; and thy right hand shall teach thee ter- 
 rible things. 
 
 That is, take aim with thy bow and arrow at the enemy ; 
 be prosperous, or successful in the aim taken ; ride on in 
 pursuit of the flying foe, in the cause of religious truth, 
 evangelical humility, and righteousness. 
 
 "And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things j" 
 rather, 
 
 " And thy own right hand shall show thee wonderful things." . 
 In these words, the Saviour, effecting every thing by his 
 own power, is represented under the image of a great 
 champion in the field, who is prompted by his own courage, 
 and a reliance on his own strength and skill, to attempt 
 what might seem impracticable; singly to attack whole 
 squadrons of the enemy; to cut his way through their em- 
 battled troops ; to scale their ramparts and their walls, and 
 at last achieve what seems a wonder to himself, when the 
 fray is over, when he is at leisure to survey the bulwarks 
 he has demolished, and the many carcasses his sin-gle arm 
 has stretched upon the plain. Such great things he will be 
 able to effect. 
 
 It yet remains to be more fully explained, what is meant 
 in the Psalmist's detail of the Messiah's war, by those 
 " wonders" which " his own right hand was to show him :" 
 
 "Thy own right hand shall show thee wonders." 
 Our public translation has it, " terrible things." But the 
 notion of terror is not of necessity included in the sense of 
 the original word, as it is used by the sacred writers : it is 
 sometimes, indeed, applied by them to frightful things : but 
 it is also applied, with great latitude, to things extraordi- 
 nary in their kind ; grand, admirable, amazing, awful ; 
 although they should not be frightful. We have no right, 
 therefore, to take it in the strict sense of " frightful," unless 
 something in the context points to that meaning, which is 
 not the case in this passage. And, accordingly, instead of 
 " terrible," we find, in some of the oldest English Bibles, 
 the better chosen word, *' wonderful." 
 
 Now the " wonderful things" which Messiah's " own right 
 hand" showed him, I take to be the overthrow of the pagan 
 superstition, in the Roman empire, and other great king- 
 doms of the world, by the mere preaching of the gospel, 
 seconded by the exemplary lives and the miracles of the 
 first preachers, and by the patient endurance of imprison- 
 
 ment, torture, and death,^for Ihe sake of Christ. It wa% 
 indeed, a wonderful thing, wrought by Christ's single arm, 
 when his religion prevailed over the whole system of idol- 
 atry, supported as it w^as by the authority of sovereigns, by 
 the learning of philosophers, and most of all, by the invet- 
 erate prejudices or the vulgar, attached to their false gods 
 by the gratification which their very worship afforded to 
 the sensual passions, and by the natural partiality of man- 
 kind in favour of any system, however absurd and corrupt, 
 sanctioned by a long antiquity. It was a wonderful thing, 
 when the devil's kingdom, with much of its invisible 
 power, lost at once the whole of its external pomp and 
 splendour; when silence being imposed on his oracles, and 
 spells and enchantments divested of their power, the idol- 
 atrous worship which by those engines of deceit had been 
 universally established, and for ages supported, notwith- 
 standing the antiquity of its institutions, and the bewitching 
 gayety and magnificence of its festivals, fell into neglect ; 
 when its cruel and lascivious rites, so long holden in super- 
 stitious veneration, on a sudden became the objects of a just 
 and general abhorrence ; when the unfrequented temples, 
 spoiled of their immense treasures, sunk in ruins, and the 
 images, stripped of their gorgeous robes and costly jewels, 
 were thrown into the Tiber, or into the common recepta- 
 cles of filth and ordure. It was a wonderful thing, when 
 the minds of all men took a sudden turn ; kings became the 
 nursing fathers of the church, statesmen courted her alli- 
 ance, philosophy embraced her faith, and even the sword 
 was justly drawn in her defence. These were the "won- 
 derful things" effected by Christ's right hand ; and in these, 
 this part of the Psalmist's prophecy has received its accom- 
 plishment. Less than this his words cannot mean ; and to 
 more than this they cannot with any certainty be extended : 
 since these things satisfy all that is of necessity involved in 
 his expressions. — Horsley, 
 
 Ver. 5. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of 
 the King's enemies; whereby the people fall 
 under thee. 
 
 The war in which the Psalmist represents the Saviour as 
 engaged, is very different from the wars which the princes 
 of this world wage with one another : it is not for the de- 
 struction of the lives of men, but for the preservation of 
 their souls. This prophetic text of the Psalmist relates 
 only to that spiritual war which Christ wages with the 
 enemies of man, for man's deliverance ; to the war arising 
 from that enmity which was originally put between the 
 seed of the serpent and the woman's seed. The offensive 
 weapons in this war of charity, according to the Psalmist, 
 are of two sorts, a sword and arrows. The common mili- 
 tary sword is a heavy massive weapon, for close engage- 
 ment : wielded by a strong and skilful arm, it stabs and 
 cuts, opens dreadful gashes where it falls, severs limbs, lops 
 the head, or cleaves the body. The arrow is a light mis- 
 sile weapon, which, in ancient times, was used to annoy the 
 enemy at a distance, and particularly when put to flight. _ It 
 comes whizzing through the air unseen, and, when it hits, 
 so small is the wound, and so swift the passage of the 
 weapon, that it is scarcely felt, till it fixes its sharp point in 
 the very heart. 
 
 Now both these weapons, the sword and the arrow, are 
 emblems of one and the same thing ; which is no other 
 than the word of God, in its different effects, and different 
 manners of operation on the minds of men, represented 
 under these two different images. 
 
 The word of God may be divided, indeed, into two parts, 
 the word of reproof, commination, and terror ; and the word 
 of persuasion, promise, and hope. The former holds up to 
 the sinner the picture of himself; sets forth the turpitude of 
 sin, the holiness of God, God's hatred of unrighteousness; 
 and alarms the conscience with the danger of a state ot" 
 enmity with God, and with denunciations of implacable 
 wrath and endless punishment. 
 
 The second, the word of persuasion, promise, and hope, 
 sets before the penitent the riches of God's mercy, display- 
 ed in the scheme of man's redemption ; points to the cross, 
 where man's guilt was expiated ; bids the contrite sinner 
 rely on the Redeemer's intercession ; offers the daily sup- 
 ply of grace to confirm him in his resolutions, and assist 
 him in his efforts to conform himself to the precepts and 
 example of the Saviour, and promises victory and glory to 
 
Sisa 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 45. 
 
 them that persevere : thus turning despondency into hope, 
 and fear into love. 
 
 The first, the word of terror, is the sword girt upon 
 Messiah's thigh; the second, the word of persuasion, is the 
 arrow shot from his bow. 
 
 For the sense of the first metaphor, we have the authority 
 of the sacred writers themselves. " The sword of the Spirit," 
 says St. Paul to the Ephesians, " is the word of God." And 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the full signification of the 
 figure is opened, and the propriety of ihe application shown: 
 " For the word of God," says the inspired author, " is quick 
 and powerful, (rather, lively and energetic,) and sharper 
 than any two-edged sword, and piercing to the parting of 
 soul and spirit, and to the joints and marrow ;"— that is, as 
 the soldier's sword of steel cuts through all the exterior in- 
 teguments of skin and muscle, to the bone, and even through 
 the hard substance of the bone itself, to the very marrow, 
 and divides the ligaments which keep the joints of the 
 body together ; so this spiritual sword of God's awful word 
 penetrates the inmost recesses of the human mind, pierces 
 to the very line of separation, as it were, of the sensitive and 
 the intelligent principle, lops ofi" the animal part, divides 
 the joints where reason and passion are united, sets the in- 
 tellect free to exert its powers, kills sin in our members, 
 opens passages for grace to enter and enrich the marrow 
 of the soul, and thus delivers the man from his body of 
 death. Such are the effects for which the powerful word 
 of terror is compared to a two-edged sword. 
 
 The comparison of the word of promise to the arrow is 
 more easily understood, being more familiar, and analo- 
 gous to those figures of speech which run through all lan- 
 guages, by which, whatever makes a quick and smart 
 impression on the moral feelings, is represented under the 
 image of a pointed missile weapon ; as when we speak of 
 " the thrilling darts of harmony," or " the shafts of elo- 
 quence." The Psalmist speaks of these arrows of God's 
 word, as sticking in " the hearts of the King's enemies," 
 that is, of the King Messiah ; for he, you will remember, 
 is the only king in question. His enemies, in the highest 
 sense of ihe word, are those who are avowedly leagued 
 with the apostate faction ; atheists, deists, idolaters, heretics, 
 perverse disputers, those who, in any manner of set design, 
 oppose the gospel ; who resist the truth by argument, or 
 encounter it with ridicule; who explain it away by sophis- 
 ticated interpretations, or endeavour to crush it by the 
 force of persecution. Of such hardened enemies there is 
 no hope, till they have been hacked and hewed, belaboured, 
 and all but slain (in the strong language of one of the ancient 
 prophets) by the heavy sword of the word of terror. But, 
 m a lower sense, all are enemies till they hear of Christ, 
 and the terms of his peace are offered to them. Many 
 such are wrought upon by mild admonition, and receive in 
 their hearts the arrows of the word of persuasion. Such, 
 no doubt, were many of those Jews who were pricked to 
 the heart by St. Peter's first sermon, on the day of Pente- 
 cost: and even those worse enemies, if they canbe brought 
 to their feeling by the ghastly wounds and gashes of the 
 terrific sword of the word of threatening, may afterward 
 be pierced by the arrow, and carry about in their hearts its 
 barbed point. And by the joint effect of these two weajjons, 
 the sword and the arrow, the word of terror and the word 
 of persuasion, " peoples," says the Psalmist, that is, whole 
 kingdoms and nations in a mass, " shall fall under thee ;" 
 shall forsake their ancient superstitions, renounce their 
 idols, and submit themselves to Christ. 
 
 So much for the offensive weapons, the sword and the 
 arrows. But the defensive armour demands our attention : 
 for it has its use, no doubt, in the Messiah's war. His 
 person, you will remember, is clad, in the third verse, 
 " with refulgent, dazzling armour." This may be under- 
 stood of whatever is admirable and amiable in the external 
 form and appearance of the Christian religion. First, the 
 character of Jesus himself; his piety towards God, his phi- 
 lanthropy towards man; his meekness, humility, ready for- 
 giveness of injuries, patience, endurance of pain and death. 
 Secondly, the same light of good works shining, in a less 
 degree, in the lives of his disciples, particularly the apos- 
 tles and blessed martyrs. Thirdly, whatever is clecent and 
 seemly in the government, the discipline, and the rites of 
 the church. All these things, as they tend to draw the 
 admiration, and conciliate the good-will of men, and miti- 
 gate the malice of the persecutor, are aptly represented 
 
 under the image of the Messiah's defensive armour, and 
 had a principal share in making "peoples fall under him." 
 
 — HORSLEY. 
 
 Ver. 6. Thy throne, God, is for ever and ever ' 
 the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptra 
 7. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wicked- 
 ness : therefore God, thy God, hath anointed 
 thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. 
 
 It was before shown, how inapplicable this address is to 
 Solomon ; and it is obvious, that it is equally inapplicable 
 to any earthly monarch : for of no throne but God^s can it 
 be affirmed with truth, that it is for ever and ever ; of no 
 king, but of God and of his Christ, it can be said, that he 
 loves righteousness with a perfect love, and hates wicked- 
 ness with a perfect hate ; of no sceptre, but the sceptre of 
 God and of his Christ, that it is a straight sceptre. The 
 sceptre has been, from the earliest ages, a badge of royalty. 
 It was originally nothing more than a straight slender rod, 
 studded sometimes for ornament with little nails of gold. 
 It was an emblem of the perfect integrity of the monarch 
 in the exercise of his power, both by himself and by his 
 ministers, inflexibly adhering to the straight line of right 
 and justice, as a mason or carpenter to his rule. The per- 
 fection of the emblem consisted in the straightness of the 
 stick ; for every thing else was ornament. The straight- 
 ness, therefore, ascribed by the Psalmist to Messiah's 
 sceptre, is to be understood of the invariable justice of the 
 administration of his government. Now, certainly there 
 have been many kings, both in ancient and in modern 
 times, to whom the praise is due of a cordial regard in 
 general to righteousness, and of a settled principle of dis- 
 like to wickedness; many who, in the exercise of their 
 authority, and the measure of their government, have been 
 generally directed by that just sense of right and wrong : 
 but yet kings are not exempt from the frailties of human 
 nature ; the very best of them are, at least, in an equal de- 
 gree with other good men, liable to the surprises of the 
 passions, and the seductions of temptation ; insomuch that 
 that predominant love of righteousness and hatred of ini- 
 quity, maintaining an absolute ascendency in the mind, 
 in all times, and upon all occasions, which the Psalmist 
 attributes to his heavenly King, has belonged to none that 
 ever wore an earthly crown: much less is the perfect 
 straightness of the sceptre, a perfect conformity to the rule 
 of right, to be found in the practice and execution of the 
 governments of the world. 
 
 But the kingdom of the God-man is in this place intended. 
 This is evident from what is said in the seventh verse: 
 " God, even thine own God, hath anointed thee with the oil 
 of gladness above thy fellows ;" that is, God hath advanced 
 thee to a state of bliss and glory above all those whom thou 
 hast vouchsafed to call thy fellows. It is said too, that the 
 love of righteousness, and hatred of wickedness, is the cause 
 that God hath so anointed him, who yet, in the sixth verse, 
 is himself addressed as God. It is manifest, that these 
 things can be said only of that person in whom the God- 
 head and the manhood are united ; in whom the human 
 nature is the subject of the unction, and the elevation to 
 the mediatorial kingdom is the reward of the man Jesus : 
 for, in his divine nature, Christ, being equal with the 
 Father, is incapable of any exaltation. Thus, the unction 
 with the oil of gladness, and the elevation above his fellows, 
 characterize the manhood ; and the perpetual stability of 
 the throne, and the unsullied justice of the government, 
 declare the Godhead. It is therefore with the greatest pro- 
 priety that the text is applied to Christ, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, and made an argument of his divinity; not by 
 any forced accommodation of words which, in the mihd 
 of the author, related to another subject, but according to 
 the true intent and purpose of the Psalmist, and the lit- 
 eral sense, and only consistent exposition of his words. — 
 
 HORSLEY. 
 
 Ver. 8. All thy garments smell of myrrh, and 
 aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, 
 whereby they have made thee glad. 
 
 The holy Psalmist having seated the King Messiah on 
 his everlasting throne, proceeds to the magnificence of his 
 
Ps. 45. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 bSl 
 
 court, as it appeared on the wedding-day ; in which, the 
 thing that first strikes him, and fixes his attention, is the 
 majesty and splendour of the king's own dress, which, in- 
 deed, is described by the single circumstance of the profu- 
 sion of rich perfumes with which it was scented. But 
 this, by inference, implies every thing else of elegance and 
 costly ornament: for among the nations of the East, in 
 ancient times, perfume was considered as ♦be finishing of 
 the dress of persons of condition, when they appeared in 
 public ; and modern manners give us no conception of the 
 costliness of the materials employed in the composition of 
 their odours, their care and nicety in the preparation of 
 them, and the quantity in which they were used. The 
 high-priest of the Jews was "not sprinkled with a few scanty 
 drops of the perfume of the sanctuary; but his person was 
 so bedewed with it, that it literally ran down from his beard 
 to the skirts of his garment. The high-priest of the Jews, 
 in his robes of office, was in this, as I shall presently ex- 
 plain, and in every circumstance, the living type of our 
 great High-priest. The Psalmist describes the fragrance 
 of Messiah's garments to be such, as if the aromatic Avoods 
 had been the very substance out of which the robes were 
 made : — 
 
 " Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes, and cassia." 
 The sequel of this verse is somewhat obscure in the origi- 
 nal, by reason of the ambiguity of one little word, which 
 different interpreters have taken differently. I shall give 
 what, in my judgment, is the literal rendering of the 
 passage, and trust I shall not find it difficult to make the 
 meaning of it very clear. 
 
 "Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes, and cassia, 
 Excelling the palaces of ivory, 
 ExceUing those which delight thee." 
 
 Ivory was highly valued and admired among the Jews, 
 and other eastern nations of antiquity, for the purity of its 
 white, the delicate smoothness of the surface, and the dura- 
 bility of the substance ; being not liable to tarnish or rust 
 like metals, or, like wood, to rot or to be worm-eaten. 
 Hence, it was a favourite ornament in the furniture of the 
 houses and palaces of great men ; and all such ornamental 
 furniture was plentifully perfumed. The Psalmist, there- 
 fore, says, that the fragrance of the King's garments far 
 exceeded any thing that met the nostrils of the visiters in 
 the stateliest and best-furnished palaces. But this is not 
 all : he says, besides, that these perfumes of the royal gar- 
 ments " excel those which delight thee." To understand 
 this, we must recollect that there were two very exquisite 
 perfumes used in the symbolical service of the temple, both 
 made of the richest spices, mixed in certain proportions, 
 and by a process directed by the law. The one was used 
 to anoint every article of the furniture of the sanctuary, 
 and the robes and persons of the priests. The composition 
 of it was not to be imitated, nor was it to be applied to the 
 person of any but a consecrated priest, upon pain of death. 
 Some, indeed, of the kings of David's line were anointed 
 with it : but when this was done, it was by the special di- 
 rection of a prophet, and it was to intimate, as I apprehend, 
 the relation of that royal house to the eternal priesthood, to 
 to be instituted in due season in that family. The other 
 was a compound of other ingredients, which made the 
 incense that was burnt upon the golden altar as a grateful 
 odour to the Lord. This, too, was most holy, and to at- 
 tempt to make the like for private use was a capital offence. 
 Now the perfumed garments of the Psalmist's King de- 
 note the very same thing which was typified under the law 
 by the perfumed garments of the high-priest ; the Psalmist's 
 King being, indeed, the real person of whom the high-priest, 
 in every particular of his office, his services, and his dress, 
 was the type. The perfumed garments were typical : first, 
 of the graces and virtues of the Redeemer himself in his 
 human character; secondly, of whatever is refreshing, en- 
 couraging, consoling, and cheering, in the external minis- 
 tration of the word ; and, thirdly, of the internal comforts 
 of the Holy Spirit. But the incense fumed upon the golden 
 altar was typical of a far inferior, though of a precious and 
 holy thing ; namely, of whatever is pleasing to God in the 
 faith, the devotions, and the good works of the saints. Now 
 the Psalmist says, that the fragrance breathing from the 
 garments of the King far excels, not only the sweetest 
 odoujii of any earthly monarch's pa. ace, but that it sur- 
 passes those spiritual odours of sanctity in which the King 
 
 himself delights. The consolations which the faithful, un- 
 der all their sufferings, receive from him, in the example 
 of his holy life, the ministration of the word and sacra- 
 ments, and the succours of the Spirit, are far beyond the 
 proportion of any thing they have to offer in return to him, 
 in their praises, their prayers, and their good lives, not- 
 withstanding in these their services he condescends to lake 
 delight. This is the doctrine of this highly mystic text, 
 that the value of all our best works of faith and obedience, 
 even in our own eyes, must sink into nothing, when they 
 are contrasted with the exuberant mercy of God extended 
 to us through Christ. — Horsley. 
 
 Ver. 9. Kings' daughters were among thy hon- 
 ourable women : upon thy right hand did stand 
 the queen in gold of Ophir. 
 
 It will be observed that the word "women," in the Bibles 
 of the larger size, is printed in that character which is used 
 to distinguish the words which have been inserted by the 
 translators, to make the sense perspicuous to the English 
 reader, without any thing expressly corresponding in the 
 original. Omitting the word "women," our translators 
 might have given the verse, according to their conceptions 
 of the preceding word, which describes the women, thus: — 
 
 "Kings' daughters are among thy honourables ;" 
 that is, among the persons appointed to services of honour. 
 But the original word, thus expressed by " honourable 
 women," or, by " honourables," is indeed applied to what- 
 ever is rare and valued in its kind, and, for that reason, to 
 illustrious persons, ennobled and distinguished by marks of 
 royal favour: and in this sense, it certainly is figuratively 
 applicable to the persons whom I shall show to be intended 
 here. But the primary meaning of the word is, " bright, 
 sparkling ;" and it is particularly applied to brilliant gems, 
 or precious stones. Sparkling is, in all languages, figura- 
 tively applied to female beauty ; and the imagery of the 
 original would be better preserved, though the sense would 
 be much the same, if the passage were thus rendered: — 
 
 "Kings' daughters are among the bright beauties of thy court." 
 
 The beauty certainly is mystic ; the beauty of evangelical 
 sanctity and innocence. 
 
 But who and what are the kings' daughters, the lustre of 
 whose beauty adorns the great monarch's court '? " Kings' 
 daughters," in the general language of holy writ, are the 
 kingdoms and peoples which they govern, of which, in 
 common speech, they are called fathers. The expression 
 may be ?ip taken here ; and then the sense wjll be, that the 
 greatest kingdoms and empires of the world, converted to 
 the faith of Christ, and shining in the beauty of the good 
 works of true hminess, will be united, at the season of the 
 wedding, to Messiah's kingdom. But, inasmuch as Mes- 
 siah's kingdom is not one of the kingdoms of the world, 
 and that secular kingdoms will never be immediately, and 
 in their secular capacity, vassals of his kingdom, I rather 
 think, that the kings' daughters mentioned here, are the 
 various national churches, fostered for many ages by the 
 piety of Christian princes, and now brought to the perfec- 
 tion of beauty, by the judgments which shall have purged 
 every one of them of all things that offend : for they may 
 well be called " kings' daughters," of whom kings and 
 queens are called, in the prophetic language, the fathers 
 and the mothers. From these, the Psalmist turns our 
 attention to another lady, distinguished above them all, by 
 her title, her place, and the superlative richness of hei 
 robes. 
 
 "Kings' daughters are among the bright beauties of thy court ; 
 At thy right hand the consort has her station, 
 In standard gold of Ophir. ' 
 
 Some expositors have imagined, that the consort is an em- 
 blem of the church catholic in her totality ; the kings' 
 daughters, typical of the several particular churches, of 
 which that one universal is composed. But the queen 
 consort here, is unquestionably the Hebrew church ; the 
 church of the natural Israel, reunited, by her conversion, 
 to her husband, and advanced to the high prerogative of 
 the mother church of Christendom; and the kings' daugh- 
 ters are the churches which had been gathered out of the 
 Gentiles, in the interval between the expulsion of his wife, 
 and the taking of her home again; that is, between the dis» 
 
PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 45. 
 
 persion of the Jews by the Romans, and their restoration. 
 The restoration of the Hebrew church to the rights of a 
 wife,- to the situation of the queen consort in Messiah's 
 kingdom upon earth, is the constant strain of prophecy. 
 To prove this, by citing all the passages to that purpose, 
 would be to transcribe whole chapters of some of the 
 prophets, and innumerable detached passages from almost 
 all. I shall produce only the latter part of the second 
 chapter of Hosea. In that chapter, Jehovah, after discard- 
 ing the incontinent wife, and threatening terrible severity 
 of punishment, adds, that nevertheless the time should 
 come, when she should again address her offended lord, 
 by the endearing name of husband. " And I will betroth 
 thee to myself for ever. Yes; I will betroth thee to myself, 
 with justice, and with righteousness, and with exuberant 
 kindness, and with tender love. Yes ; with faithfulness, 
 to myself I will betroth thee." These promises are made 
 to the woman that had been discarded, and cannot be 
 understood of mercies to be extended to any other. The 
 prophet Isaiah speaks to the same effect, and describes the 
 Gentile converts as becoming, upon the reunion, children 
 of the pardoned wife. And I must not omit to mention, 
 that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, to clear up the 
 mystery of "God's dealing with the Jews, tells us, that 
 " blindness is, in part only, happened unto Israel, till the 
 time shall arrive for the fulness of the Gentiles to come in; 
 and then all Israel shall be saved ; for the gifts and callings 
 of God are without repentance." To expound these pre- 
 dictions of the ancient prophets, and this declaration of the 
 apostle, of any thing but the restoration of the natural 
 Israel, is to introduce ambiguity and equivocation into the 
 plainest oracles of God. 
 
 The standard gold upon the queen's robe, denotes the 
 treasures of which the church is the depositary ; the writ- 
 ten word, and the dispensation of grace, and forgiveness 
 of sins, by the due administration of the sacraments. — 
 
 HORSLEy. 
 
 Ver. 10. Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and 
 incline thine ear ; forget also thine own people, 
 and thy father's house; 11. So shall the King 
 greatly desire thy beauty ; for he is thy Lord, 
 and worship thou him. 
 
 If a princess from a distant land, taken in marriage by a 
 great king, were admonished to forget her own people and 
 her father's house, the purport of the advice would easily 
 be understood to be, that she should divest herself of all 
 attachment to the customs of her native country, and to the 
 style of her father's court, and learn to speak the language, 
 and assume the dress, the manners, and the taste of her 
 husband's people. The " father's house," and " own peo- 
 ple," which the Psalmist advises the queen consort to forget, 
 is the ancient Jewish religion in its external form, the cere- 
 monies of the temple service, the sacrifices and the typical 
 purgations of the Levitical priesthood. Not that she is to 
 forget God's gracious promises to Abraham, nor the cove- 
 nant with her forefathers, (the benefit of which she will 
 enjoy to the end of time,) nor the many wonderful deliv- 
 erances that were wrought for them; nor is she to forget 
 the history of her nation, preserved in the scriptures of the 
 Old Testament ; nor the predictions of Moses and her 
 prophets, the full accomplishment of which she will at this 
 time experience : and historically, she is never to forget 
 even the ceremonial law; for the Levitical rites were no- 
 thing less than the gospel itself in hieroglyphics; and, 
 rightly understood, they afford the most complete demon- 
 stration of the coherence of revelation with itself, in all its 
 different stages, and the best evidence of its truth ; showing 
 that it has been the same in substance, in all ages, differing 
 onl> in external form, in the rites of worship, and in the 
 manner of teaching. But practically, the rites of their 
 ancient worship are to be forgotten, that is, laid aside : for 
 they never were of any other importance than in reference 
 to the gospel, as the shadow is of no value but as it resem- 
 bles the substance. Practically, therefore, the restored 
 Hebrew church is to abandon her ancient Jewish rites, and 
 become mere and pure Christian ; and thus she will secure 
 the conjugal affections of her husband, and render the 
 beauty of her person perfect in his eyes. And this she is 
 bound to do; for her royal husband is indeed her Lord: 
 
 Moses was no more than his servant ; the prophets after 
 Moses, servants in a lower rank than he. But the authority 
 of Christ, the husband, is paramount over all; he is entitled 
 to her unreserved obedience; he is indeed her God, entitlecJ 
 to her adoration. — Horsley. 
 
 Ver. 12. And the daughter of Tyre shall be there 
 with a gift ; eve?i the rich among the people 
 shall entreat thy favour. 
 
 This submission of the consort to her wedded lord, will 
 set her high in the esteem of the churches of the Gentiles. 
 The " daughter of Tyre," according to the principles of 
 interpretation we have laid down, must be a church estab- 
 lished, either literally at T}'re, or in some country held 
 forth under the image of Tyre. Ancient Tyre was famous 
 for her commerce, her wealth, her excellence in the fine 
 arts, her luxury, the profligate debauched manners of her 
 people, and the grossness of her idolatry. The " daughter 
 of Tyre" appearing before the queen consort "with a gift," 
 is a figurative prediction, that churches will be established, 
 under the protection of the government, in countries,which 
 had been distinguished for profligacy, dissipated manners, 
 and irreligion. It is intimated in the next line, that some 
 of these churches will be rich ; that is, rich in spiritual 
 riches, which are the only riches of a church, in the mystic 
 language of prophecy; rich in the holy lives of their mem- 
 bers, in the truth of their creeds, and the purity of their 
 external forms of worship, and in God's favour. — ^^Horsley. 
 
 Ver. 13. The King's daughter is all glorious 
 within ; her clothing is of wrought gold. 
 
 From this address to the queen, the Psalmist, in the pref^ 
 ent verse, returns to the description of the great scene lying 
 in vision before him. 
 
 "The King's daughter is all glorious within." 
 
 In this line, the same person that has hitherto been repre- 
 sented as the King's wife, seems to be called his daughter. 
 This, however, is a matter upon which commentators have 
 been much divided. Some have imagined that a new per- 
 sonage is introduced ; that the King's wife is, as I have all 
 along maintained, the figure of the Hebrew church; but 
 that this "daughter of the King" is the Christian church in 
 general, composed of Jews and Gentiles indiscriminately, 
 considered as the daughter of the King Messiah by his 
 Hebrew queen. This was Martin Luther's notion. Others 
 have thought that the wife is the Hebrew church by itself, 
 and the daughter, the church of the Gentiles by itself. 
 But neither of these explanations are perfectly consistent 
 with the imagery of this psalm. Far to be preferred is the 
 exposition of the late learned and pious Bishop Home, who 
 rejects the notion of the introduction of a new personage, 
 and observes, " that the connexion between Christ and his 
 spouse unites in itself every relation and every affection." 
 She is, therefore, daughter, wife, and sister, all in one. 
 The same seems to have been the notion of a learned Do- 
 minican of the seventeenth century, who remarks, that the 
 Emperess Julia, in the legends of some ancient coins, is 
 called the daughter of Augustus, whose wife she was. 
 
 But, with nmch general reverence for the o]>inions of 
 these learned commentators, I am persuaded that the stops 
 have been misplaced in the Hebrew manuscripts, by the 
 Jewish critics, upon the last revision of the text ; that trans- 
 lators have been misled by their false division of the text, 
 and expositors misled by translators. The stops being 
 rightly placed, the Hebrew words give this sense ;— 
 "She is all glorious" — 
 
 She, the consort of whom we have been speaking, is glori 
 ous in every respect — 
 
 " Daughter of a king !'' 
 
 That is, she is a princess bom ; (by which title she is saluted 
 in the Canticles ;) she is glorious, therefore, for her high 
 birth. She is, indeed, of high and heavenly extraction ! 
 She may say of herself, collectively, what the apostle has 
 taught her sons to say individuallv, " Of his own will begat 
 he us, with the word of his truth." Accordingly, in the 
 Apocalypse, the bride, the Lamb's wife, is " the holy Jeru- 
 salem, descending out of heaven, from God." 
 
Ps 45— 51.^ PSALMS 
 
 The Psalmist goes on :— 
 
 " Her inner garment is bespangled with gold ; 
 
 Her upper garment is embroidered with the needle." 
 
 Th«se two lines require little comment. The spangles of 
 gold upon the consort's inner garment, are the same thing 
 with the standard gold of Ophir, of the ninth verse ; the in- 
 valuable treasure with which the church is endowed, with 
 the custody and distribution of which she is intrusted. The 
 embroidery of her upper garment is, whatever there is of 
 beauty in her external form, her discipline and her rites, 
 
 — HoitSLEY. 
 
 Ver. 14. She shall be brought unto the King in 
 raiment of needle-work : the virgins her com- 
 panions that follow her shall be brought unto 
 thee. 15. With gladness and rejoicing shall 
 they he brought: they shall enter into the 
 King's palace. 
 
 Our public translation has simply, " She is brought ;" but 
 the original word implies, the pomp and conduct of a public 
 procession. The greatest caution is requisite in attempting 
 to interpret, in the detail of circumstances, the predictions 
 of things yet remote. We may venture, however, to apply 
 this conducting of the queen to the palace of her lord, to 
 some remarkable assistance which the Israelites will re- 
 ceive from the Christian nations of the Gentile race, in 
 their resettlement in the Holy Land ; which seems to be 
 mentioned under the very same image by the prophet 
 Isaiah, at the end of the eighteenth chapter, and by the 
 prophet Zephaniah, chap. iii. 10, and is clearly the sub- 
 ject of more explicit prophecies. " Thus saith Jehovah," 
 speaking to Zion, in the prophet Isaiah, " Behold, I will 
 lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to 
 the peoples ; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, 
 and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders." 
 And in another place, " They" (the Gentiles mentioned in 
 the preceding verse) " shall bring all your brethren, for an 
 offering unto Jehovah, out of all nations, upon horses, and 
 in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift 
 beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem." 
 
 But the Psalmist is struck with the appearance of a very 
 remarkable band, described in the next verse, which makes 
 a part in this procession : — 
 
 "She is conducted in procession to the King, 
 
 Virgins follow her, her companions, 
 
 Coming unto thee ; 
 
 They are conducted in procession, with festivity and rejoicing ; 
 
 They enter the palace of the King." 
 
 These virgins seem to be different persons from the kings' 
 daughters of the ninth verse. Those " kings' daughters" 
 were already distinguished ladies of the monarch's own 
 court : these virgins are introduced to it by the queen : they 
 follow her as part of her retinue; and are introduced as her 
 companions. The former represent, as we conceive, the 
 churches of Gentile origin, formed and established in the 
 period of the wife's- disgrace : these virgins we take to be 
 new churches, formed among nations, not sooner called to 
 the knowledge of the gospel, and the faith in Christ, at the 
 very season of the restoration of Israel, in whose conver- 
 sion the restored Hebrew church may have a principal 
 share. This is that fulness of the Gentiles of which St. 
 Paul speaks as coincident in time with the recovery of the 
 Jews, and, in a great degree, the effect of their conversion. 
 " Have they stumbled that they should fall 1" saith the 
 apostle, speaking of the natural Israel ; " God forbid : but 
 rather, through their fall, salvation is come unto the Gen- 
 tiles, for to provoke them to emulation. Now, if the fall of 
 them be the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of 
 the Gentiles, how much more their fulness 1 For if the 
 casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what 
 shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead'?" 
 In these texts, the apostle clearlyiJays out this order of the 
 business, in the conversion of the whole world to Christ : 
 First, the rejection of the unbelieving Jews : then, the first 
 call of the Gentiles : the recovery of the Jews, after a long 
 season of obstinacy and blindness, at last provoked to emu- 
 lation, brought to a right understanding of God's dispensa- 
 tions, by that very call which hitherto has been one of their 
 stumbling-blocks: and lastlv, in consequence of the con- 
 Version of the Jews, a prodigious influx from the Gentile 
 
 383 
 
 nations yet unconverted, and immersed in the darkness and 
 corruptions of idolatry ; which make little less than two 
 thirds, not of the civilized, but of the inhabited world. 
 The churches of this new conversion seem to be the vir- 
 gins, the queen's bridemaids, in the nuptial procession. — 
 
 HORSLEY. 
 
 Ver. 16. Instead of thy fathers shall be thy chilo- 
 ren, whom thou mayest make princes in all the 
 earth. 17. I will make thy name to be remem- 
 bered in all generations : therefore shall the 
 people praise thee for ever and ever. 
 
 In the next verse (the sixteenth) the Psalmist again ad- 
 dresses the queen : — 
 
 "Thy children shall be in the place of thy fathers; 
 Thou Shalt make them princes in all the earth." 
 
 Thy children shall be what thy fathers were, God's peculiar 
 people ; and shall hold a distinguished rank and character in 
 the earth. 
 
 The Psalmist closes his divine song with a distich setting 
 forth the design, and predicting the effect, of his own per- 
 formance : — 
 
 "I will perpetuate the remembrance of thy name to all generations. 
 Insomuch that the peoples shall praise thee for ever." 
 
 By enditing this marriage-song, he hoped to be the means 
 of celebrating the Redeemer's name from age to age, and 
 of inci'.ing the nations of the world to join in his praise. 
 The event has not disappointed the holy prophet's expecta- 
 tion. His composition has been the delight of the congre- 
 gations of the faithful for little less than three thousand 
 years. For one thousand and forty, it was a means of 
 keeping alive in the synagogue the hope of the Redeemer 
 to come: for eighteen hundred since, it has been the means 
 of perpetuating in Christian congregations the grateful re- 
 membrance of what has been done, anxious attention to 
 what is doing, and of the cheering hope of the second 
 coming of our Lord, who surely cometh to turn away 
 ungodliness from Jacob, and to set up a standard to the na- 
 tions which yet sit in darkness and the shadow of death. 
 " He that witnesseth these things, saith, Behold, I come 
 quickly. And the Spirit saith. Come ; and the bride saith, 
 Come; and let every one that heareth say. Amen. Even 
 so. Come, Lord Jesus !" — Horsley. 
 
 PSALM XLVL 
 
 Ver. 5. God is in the midst of her ; she shall not 
 be moved : God shall help her, and that right 
 early. 
 
 The Hebrew has, instead of early, " when the morning 
 appeareth." Ainsworth, " God will help it at the looking 
 forth of the morning." A person in perplexity says, "Yes, 
 I hope the morning will soon come ; then will my friends 
 help me." " When the daylight shall appear, many will be 
 ready to assist me." " Ah ! when will the morning come 1 
 How long has been this night of adversity !"— Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XLVIL 
 Ver. 1. O clap your hands, all ye people, shout 
 
 unto God with the voice of triumph. 
 See on Lam. 2. 15. 
 
 PSALM XLVIIL 
 Ver. 6. Fear took hold upon them there, and 
 pain, as of a woman in travail. 
 
 " His pain not great % it was equal to that of a woman in 
 travail." " Alas ! alas ! this is like the agony of the womb." 
 " Nothing but the womb knows trouble like this."— Roberts. 
 
 OPSALM LI. 
 
 Ver. 7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be 
 clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than 
 snow. 
 
 Hyssop, a name, derived from the Hebrew esoM, and 
 like many other names of plants, passed from the eastern 
 
384 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Chap. 55—57. 
 
 into the Greek, and from this into most European languages, 
 signifies the plant called in German, Wohlgemuth, (i. e. 
 pleasant,) probably on account of its aromatic smell, and 
 also marjoram, but called by botanists origanum creticum. 
 Rauwolf found this plant on the Mount of Olives, and be- 
 tween Ramah and Joppa. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 PSALM LV. 
 Ver. 6. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a 
 dove ! for then would I flee away, and be at 
 rest. 
 
 The Hindoos have a science called Aagiija-Kann-am.y 
 which teaches the art of flying ! and numbers m every age 
 have tried to acquire it. Those who wish to attain a bless- 
 ing which is afar off, or who desire to escape from trouble, 
 often exclaim, " Oh ! that I had learned the Aagiya-Kan- 
 nam; then should I gain the desire of my heart." " Could 
 I but fly, these things would not be so." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 7. Lo, then would I wander far off, and re- 
 main in the wilderness. Selah. 
 
 The classical bards of Greece and Rome make frequent 
 allusions to the surprising rapidity of the dove, and adorn 
 their lines with many beautiful figures from the manner in 
 which she flies. Sophocles compares the speed with which 
 she cleaves the ethereal clouds, to the impetuous rapidity 
 of the whirlwind ; and Euripides, the furious impetuosity 
 of the Bacchanals rushing upon Pentheus, to the celerity 
 of her motions. And Kirachi gives it as the reason why 
 the Psalmist prefers the dove to other birds, that while they 
 become weary with flying, and alight upon a rock or a tree 
 to recruit their strength, and are taken, the dove, when she 
 is fatigued, alternately rests one wing and flies with the 
 other, and by this means escapes from the swiftest pur- 
 suers. The Orientals knew well how to avail themselves 
 of her impetuous wing on various occasions. It is a curious 
 fact, that she was long employed in those countries as a 
 courier, to carry tidings of importance between distant 
 cities, ^lian asserts, that Taurosthenes communicated to 
 his father at ^gina, hy a carrier pigeon, the news of his 
 success in the Olympic games, on the very same day in 
 which he obtained the prize. The Romans, it appears 
 from Pliny, often employed doves in the same service ; for 
 Brutus, during the siege of Mutina, sent letters tied to their 
 feet, into the camp of the consuls. This remarkable cus- 
 tom has descended to modern times ; Volney informs us, 
 that in Turkey the use of carrier pigeons has been laid 
 aside, only for the last thirty or forty years, because the 
 Curd robbers killed the birds, and carried off" their de- 
 spatches.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will 
 I pray, and cry aloud ; and he shall hear my 
 voice. 
 
 The frequency and the particular seasons of prayer are 
 circumstances chiefly connected with the situation and dis- 
 position of such as habituate themselves "to this exercise. 
 But from a singular conformity of practice in persons re- 
 mote both as to age and place, it appears probable that some 
 idea must have obtained generally, that it was expedient 
 and acceptable to pray three times every day. Such was 
 the practice of David, and also of Daniel, (see ch. vi. 10,) 
 and as a parallel, though, as far as connected with an idol- 
 atrous system, a different case, we are informed that " it is 
 an invariable rule with the Bramins to perform their devo- 
 tions three times every day: at sunrise, at noon, and at sun- 
 set." (Maurice.)— BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 21. The words of his mouth were smoother 
 than butter, but war was in his heart: his 
 words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn 
 swords. 
 See on Cant. 3. 8. 
 
 PSALM LVI. 
 Ver. 8. Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou 
 my tears into thy bottle : are they not in thy 
 book ? 
 
 The lachrymatories used in Greece and Rome are, I be- 
 lieve, unknown to the Hindoos. A person in distress, as he 
 weeps, says, " Ah ! Lord, take care of these tears, let them 
 not run in vain." " Alas ! my husband, why beat me 1 my 
 tears are known to God." — Roberts. 
 
 The custom of putting tears iato the ampulla or urna 
 lacrymales, so well known among the Romans, seems to 
 have been more ancient.ly in use in Asia, and particularly 
 among the Hebrews. These lachrymal urns were of differ- 
 ent materials, some of glass, some of earth, and of various 
 forms and shapes. One went about to each person in the 
 company at the height of his grief with a piece of cotton 
 in his hand, with which he carefully collects the falling 
 tears, and which he then squeezes into the bottle, preserving 
 them with the greatest care. This was no diificult matter ; 
 for Homer says the tears of Telemachus, when he heard 
 of his father, dropped on the ground. They were placed 
 on the sepulchres of the deceased as a memorial of the 
 affection and sorrow of their surviving relations and 
 friends. It will be difficult to account, on any other suppo- 
 sition, for the following expressions of the Psalmist : " Put 
 thou my tears into thy bottle." If this view be admitted, 
 the meaning will be : " Let my distress, and the tears I 
 shed in consequence of it, be ever before thee." — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM LVIl. 
 
 Ver. 4. My soul is among lions ; and I lie even 
 among them that are set on fire, even the sons 
 of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and 
 their tongue a sharp sword. 
 
 The arrows were usually made of light wood, with a 
 head of brass or iron, which was commonly barbec^. Some- 
 times they were armed with two, three, or four hooks. The 
 heads of arrows were sometimes dipped in poison. Horac€ 
 mentions the venenata, agitta, the poisoned arrows of the 
 ancient Moors in Africa. They were used by many other 
 nations in diflferent parts of the world ; and if we believe 
 the reports of modern travellers, these cruel weapons are 
 not yet laid aside by some barbarous tribes. The negroes 
 in the countries of Bornou and Soudan fight with poisoned 
 arrows ; the arrow is short, and made of iron ; the smallest 
 scratch with it causes the body to swell, and is infallibly 
 mortal, unless counteracted by an antidote known among 
 the natives. Everywhere, the poison used for this inhu- 
 man purpose was of the deadliest kind ; and the slightest 
 wound was followed by almost instant death. From this 
 statement it will appear, that arrows were by no means 
 contemptible instruments of destruction, although they are 
 not to be compared with the tremendous inventions of mod- 
 ern warfare. We are not therefore to be surprised that so 
 many striking allusions to the arrow, and the trodden bow, 
 occur in the loftier strains of the inspired writers. The 
 bitter words of the wicked are called " their arrows ;" " their 
 teeth are spears and arrows ;" and the man that beareth 
 false witness against his neighbour, is " a sharp arrow." But 
 in these comparisons there is perhaps a literal meaning, 
 which supposes a connexion between the mouth and the 
 arrow. The circumstance related by Mr. Park might pos- 
 sibly have its parallel in the conduct of the ancients; and 
 if it had, clearly accounts for such figures as have been 
 quoted. " Each of the negroes took from his quiver a 
 handful of arrows, and putting two between his teeth, and 
 one in his bow, waved to us with his hand to keep at a dis- 
 tance." Some are of opinion, that "the fiery darts," con- 
 cerning which the apostle Paul warned his Ephesian con- 
 verts, allude to the poisoned arrows, or javelins, which 
 were so frequently used in those times ; others contend, 
 that the allusion is made to those missile weapons, which 
 were sometimes employed by the ancients in battles and 
 sieges, to scatter fire in the ranks, or among the dwell- 
 ings ©f their enemies. These were the -rrvpcpopa /J^Xn of 
 Arrian, and the rvpipopni otaoi of Thucydides, the heads of 
 which were surrounded with combustible matter, and set 
 on fire, when they were launched against the hostile army." 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. Awake up, my glory; awake psaltery 
 and harp; I myself wiW awake early. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd has this, " Awake, my glory! awake, lyre 
 
Ps. 58. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 385 
 
 and harp!" The Orientals oAen speak to inanimate ob- 
 .'ectsfas if they had intelligence. Thus, a strolling musician, 
 Defore he begins to play in your presence, says, " Arise, 
 arise, my harp, before this great king ! play sweetly in his 
 hearing, and well shalt thou be rewarded." A person who 
 has sold an article, says to it, when being carried away, " Go, 
 thou, go." The Prophet says, "Awake, oh sword!" "When 
 two heroes were preparing for a duel, one of them found a 
 difficulty in drawing his sword from the scabbard; at 
 which his antagonist asked, ' What ! is thy sword afraid 1' 
 — ' No,' replied the other, ' it is only hungry for thy blood.' " 
 — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LVIII. 
 Ver. 3. The wicked are estranged from the womb ; 
 they go astray as soon as they be born, speak- 
 ing lies. 4. Their poison is like the poison of 
 a serpent ; they are like the deaf adder that 
 stoppeth her ear. 
 
 " Do you ask whence he had this disposition *? I will tell 
 you ; it was from the womb." " Expect him not to change ; 
 he had it in the womb." The figure of the wicked going 
 astray as soon as they are born, seems to be taken from the 
 disposition and power of a young serpent soon after its birth. 
 The youngest serpent can convey poison to any thing it 
 bites ; and the suffering in all cases is great, though the 
 bite is seldom fatal. Put a stick near the reptile, whose age 
 does not amount to many days, and he will immediately 
 .snap at it. The young of the tiger and alligator are equally 
 fierce in their earliest habits. — Roberts. 
 
 Several of the serpent tribe are believed to be deaf, or 
 very dull of hearing. Perhaps that which is called the 
 puddeyan, the beaver serpent, is more so than any other. I 
 have several times been close upon them, but they did not 
 offer to get out of the way. They lurk in the path, and the 
 victim bitten by them will expire a few minutes after the 
 bite. " Talk not to him : he is as the deaf serpent, he will 
 not hear." " Truly, I am a deaf serpent, and may soon 
 bite you." "Young man, if you repeat the ubbatheasum, 
 which the priest has whispered in your ear, your next 
 birth will be that of a deaf serpent." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. Their poison is like the poison of a ser- 
 pent ; they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth 
 her ear. 
 
 " It appears, says Chardin, that all the teeth of a serpent 
 are not venomous, because those that charm them will cause 
 their serpents to bite them till they draw blood, and yet the 
 wound will not swell. Adders will swell at the sound of a 
 flute, raising themselves up on one half of their body, turn- 
 ing the other part about, and beating proper time ; being 
 wonderfully delighted with music, and following the in- 
 strument. Its head, before round and long like an eel, it 
 spreads out broad and flat, like a fan. Adders and serpents 
 twist themselves round the neck and naked body of young 
 children, belonging to those that charm them. At Surat, 
 an Armenian seeing one of them make an adder bite his 
 flesh, without receiving any injury, said, I can do that; and 
 causing himself to be wounded in the hand, he died in less 
 than two hours." A serpent's possessing a musical ear, its 
 keeping time in its motions with the harmony, its altering 
 the shape of its head, are circumstances which, if true, are 
 very wonderful. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 5. Which will not hearken to the voice of 
 charmers, charming never so wisely. 
 
 Whether any man ever possessed the power to enchant 
 or charm adders and serpents ; or whether those who pre- 
 tended to do so profited only by popular credulity, it is cer- 
 tain that a favourable opinion of magical power once 
 existed. Numerous testimonies to this purpose may be 
 collected from ancient writers. Modern travellers also 
 afford their evidence. Mr. Browne, in his Travels in 
 Africa, thus describes the charmers of serpents. Romeili 
 is an open place of an irregular form, where feats of jug- 
 gling are performed. The charmers of serpents seem also 
 worthy of remark, their powers seem extraordinary. The 
 serpent most common at Khaira is of the viper class, and 
 49 
 
 undoubtedly poisonous. If one of them enter a house, the 
 charmet is sent for, who uses a certain form of words. I 
 have seen three serpents enticed out of the cabin of a ship 
 lying near the shore. The operator handled them, and 
 then put them into a bag. At other times I have seen the 
 serpents twist round the bodies of these psylli in all direc- 
 tions, without having had their fangs extracted or broken, 
 and without doing them any injury, — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 5. Which will not hearken to the voice of 
 charmers, charming never so wisely. 6. Break 
 their teeth, O God, in their mouth ; break out 
 the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord. 
 
 See on Eccl. x. 11. 
 
 Hhekuravan, or serpent charmer, maybe found in every 
 village, and some who have gained great fame actually 
 live by the art. Occasionally they travel about the district, 
 to exhibit their skill. In a basket they have several ser- 
 pents, which they place on the ground. The kuravan then 
 commences playing on his instrument, and to talk to the 
 reptiles, at which they creep out, and begin to mantle about 
 with their heads erect, and their hoods distended. After 
 this, he puts his arm to them, which they affect to bite, and 
 sometimes leave the marks of their teeth. 
 
 From close observation I am convinced that all these 
 serpents thus exhibited have their poisonous fangs extract- 
 ed, and the Psalmist seems to have had his eyes on that 
 when he says, " Break their teeth." Living animals have 
 been repeatedly offered to the man for his serpents to bite, 
 but he would never allow it ; because he knew no harm 
 would ensue. 
 
 It is, however, granted, that some of these men may be- 
 lieve in the power of their charms, and there can be no 
 doubt that serpents in their wild state are affected by the 
 influence of music. One of these men once went to a friend 
 of mine (in the civil service) with his serpents, and charmed 
 them before him. After some time the gentleman said, " I 
 have a cobracapella in a cage, can you charm him f " Oh ! 
 yes," said the charmer. The serpent was let out of the 
 cage, and the man began his incantations and charms ; the 
 reptile fastened on his arm, and he was dead before the 
 night. 
 
 The following is said to be a most potent charm for all 
 poisonous serpents : — Suttelldm, pande, keere, soolave, akaru- 
 dan, varan, orou, vattami, kiddantha, pdmba, valliya, vulta- 
 kal, vdya ; which means, " Oh ! serpent, thou who art 
 coiled in the path, get out of my way ; for around thee are 
 the mongoos, the porcupine, and the kite in his circles is 
 ready to take thee." The mongoos is in shape and size 
 much like the English weasel. The porcupine is also a 
 great enemy of the serpent. The kite, before he pounces on 
 his prey, flies round in circles, and then drops like a stone; 
 he seizes the reptile with his talons just behind the head, 
 carries it up in the air, and bills it in the head till it 
 expires. 
 
 But there are also charmers for bears, tigers, elephants, 
 and other fierce animals. A party having to go through 
 forests or deserts to a distant country, generally contrive 
 to have some one among them possessed of that art. A 
 servant of mine joined himself to a company who were 
 going from Batticaloa to Colombo. There was a magician, 
 who walked in front, who had acquired great fame as a 
 charmer of serpents and other wild animals. After a few 
 days ihey saw a large elephant, and the charmer said, " Fear 
 not." But the animal continued to approach ; and my ser- 
 vant thought it expedient to decamp and climb a tree. The 
 others, also, began to retire ; but the old man remained on the 
 spot, repeating his charms. At last the elephant took him 
 in his proboscis, and laid him gently on the ground ; then 
 lopped off the charmer's head, arms, and legs, and crushed 
 the lifeless body flat on the earth. 
 
 By the power of charms the magicians pretend to have 
 influence over ghosts, beasts, fire, wind, and water. — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 8. As a snail which melteth, let every one of 
 them pass away ; like the untimely birth of a 
 woman, that they may not see the sun. 
 
 The snail is, in the Hebrew scriptures, called h^h^^ sab- 
 helul, which the learned Bochart derives from b-^^v, a path^ 
 
386 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 58—62. 
 
 because the snail marks out his path with his slime, and so 
 is called S'^^b', the path-maker ; or, from ^w\ to lodge 3 in, 
 and Vi*?, a winding shell, cochfea, the well-known habitation 
 which this animal carries about with him. Parkhurst is 
 of opinion, that a better account of the name may be de- 
 duced from the peculiar manner in which snails thrust them- 
 selves forward in moving, and from the force with which 
 they adhere to any substance on which they light. The 
 wise Author of nature, having refused them I'eet and claws 
 to creep and climb, has compensated them in a way more 
 commodious for their state of life, by the broad skin along 
 each side of the belly, and the undulating motion observa- 
 ble there. By the latter, they creep ; by the former, as- 
 sisted by the glutinous slime emitted from their body, they 
 adhere firmly and securely to all kinds of superficies, partly 
 by the tenacity of their slime, and partly by the pressure of 
 the atmosphere. Thus, the snail wastes herself by her own 
 motion, every undulation leaving some of her moisture be- 
 hind ; and in the same manner, the actions of wicked men 
 prove their destruction. They may, like the snail, carry 
 their defence along with them, and retire into it on every 
 appearance of danger ; they may confidently trust in their 
 own resources, and banish far away the fear of evil ; but 
 the principles of ruin are at work within them, and although 
 the progress may be slow, the result is certain. The holy 
 Psalmist, guided by the spirit of inspiration, prayed, " As 
 a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away ;" 
 and Jehovah answered, " The wicked shall be turned into 
 hell, and all the nations that forget God." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 9. Before your pots can feel the thorns, he 
 shall take them away as with a whirlwind, 
 both living, and in his wrath. 
 
 The Arabs heat stone pitchers by kindling fires in them, 
 and then daub the outside with dough, which is thus baked. 
 " They kindle a fire in a large stone pitcher, and when it 
 is hot they; mix the meal in water, as we do to make paste, 
 and daub it with the hollow of their hands upon the outside 
 of the pitcher, and this soft pappy dough spreads and is 
 baked in an instant; the heat of the pitcher having dried 
 up all its moisture, the bread comes on in small thin slices, 
 liKe one of our wafers." (D'Arvieux.) — Burder. 
 
 PSALM LIX. 
 Ver. 14. And at evening let them return, and \e* 
 them make a noise like a dog, and go round 
 about the city. 
 
 Many cities in Syria, and other parts of the East, are 
 crowded with dogs, which belong to no particular person, 
 and by consequence, have none to feed them, but get their 
 food in the streets, and about the markets. Dogs also 
 abound in all the Indian towns and villages, and are nu- 
 merous, noisy, and troublesome, especially to travellers. 
 Like those in Syria, they have no respective owner, gen- 
 erally subsist upon charity, and are never destroyed. They 
 frequently hunt m large packs, like the jackals, which they 
 resemble in many other respects. These allusions are 
 clearly involved in the prayer of the royal Psalmist for de- 
 liverance from his enemies : " And at evening let them 
 return ; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round 
 about the city. Let them wander up and down for meat, 
 and grudge, if they be not satisfied." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. Let them wander up and down for meat, 
 and grudge, if they be not satisfied. 
 
 The great external purity which is so studiously attended 
 to by the modern eastern people, as well as the ancient, 
 produces some odd circumstances with respect to their 
 • dogs. They do not suffer them in their houses, and even 
 with care avoid their touching them in the streets, which 
 would be considered as a defilement. One would imagine 
 then, that imder these circumstances, as they do not appear 
 by any means to be necessary in their cities, however im- 
 
 Ebrtant they may be to those that feed flocks, there should 
 e rery few of these creatures found in those places; they 
 are notwithstanding there in great numbers, and crowd 
 their streets. They do not appear to belong to particular 
 persons, as our dogs do, nor to be fed distinctly by such 
 
 as might claim some interest in them, but get their food as 
 they can. At the same time they consider it as right to 
 take some care of them, and the charitable people among 
 them frequently give money every week, or month, to 
 butchers and bakers, to feed them at stated times, and some 
 leave legacies at their deaths, for the same purpose. This 
 is Le Bruyn's account. Thevenot and Maillet mention 
 something of the same sort. 
 
 In like manner, dogs seem to have been looked upon 
 among the Jews in a disagreeable light, yet they had them 
 in considerable numbers in their cities, Ps. lix. 14. They 
 were not, however, shut up in their houses or courts, Ps. 
 lix. 6, 14 ; but seem to have been forced to seek their food 
 where they could find it, Ps. lix, 15; to which I may add, 
 that some care of them seems to be indirectly enjoined to the 
 Jews, Exod. xxii. 31 ; circumstances that seem to be more 
 illustrated by these travellers into the East, than by any 
 commentators that I know of— Harmer. 
 
 PSALM LX. 
 
 Ver. 3. Thou hast showed thy people hard things ; 
 thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonish- 
 ment. 4. Thou hast given a banner to them 
 that fear thee, that it may be displayed because 
 of the truth. Selah. 
 
 Albertus Aquensis tells us, that when Jerusalem was 
 taken in 1099, about three hundred Saracens got upon the 
 roof of a very lofty building, and earnestly begged for 
 quarter, but could not be induced by any promises of safety 
 to come down, until they had received the banner of Tan- 
 cred, one of the chiefs of the crusade army, as a pledge 
 of life. It did not indeed avail them, as that historian ob- 
 serves ; for their behaviour occasioned such indignation, 
 that they were destroyed to a man. The event showed the 
 faithlessness of these zealots, whom no solemnities couH 
 bind ; but the Saracens surrendering themselves upon the 
 delivery of a standard to them, proves in what a strong 
 light they looked upon the giving them a banner, since it in- 
 duced them to trust it, when they would not trust any prom- 
 ises. Perhaps the delivery oif a banner was anciently 
 esteemed, in like manner, an obligation to protect, and that 
 the Psalmist might consider it in this light, when, upon a 
 victory gained over the Syrians and Edomites, after the 
 public affairs of Israel had been in a bad state, he says, 
 TViou hast showed thy people hard things, &c. Thou hast 
 given a banner to them that fear thee. Though thou didst 
 for a time give up thine Israel into the hands of their 
 enemies, thou hast now given them an assurance of thy 
 having received them imder thy protection. When the 
 Psalmist is represented as saying, TTiou hast given a ban- 
 ner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed, it may be ■ 
 questioned whether it is rightly translated, since it is most 
 probable they used anciently only a spear, properly orna- 
 mented, to distinguish it from a common one, as this same 
 Albertus tells us, that a very long spear, covered all over 
 with silver, to which another writer of those crusade wars 
 adds a ball of gold on the top, was the standard of the 
 Egyptian princes at that time, and carried before their 
 armies, TJiou hast given a banner, cj nes, an ensign, or a 
 standard, to them, thai fear thee, that it may be lifted up, may 
 perhaps be a better version ; or rather, that thev may lift it 
 up to themselves, or encourage themselves with the confident 
 persuasion that they are under the protection of God because 
 of the truth, thy word of promise, which is an assurance 
 of protection, like the givmg me and my people a banner, 
 the surest of pledges. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 4. Thou hast given a banner to them that 
 fear thee, that it may be displayed because of 
 the truth. Selah. 
 
 Has a person gained a signal triumph over his enemy by 
 the assistance of another, he then says of the latter, " He 
 has given me a victorious kuddi," banner. "Yes," say 
 the conquerors, " we have gained a victorious banner "— 
 Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LXII. 
 Ver. 3. How long will ye imagine mischier 
 against a man ? ye shall be slain all of you: 
 
Ps. 63—58. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 ^67 
 
 as a bowing wall shall ye he, and as a totter- 
 ing fence. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, " like a tottering wall." In consequence 
 of heavy rains and floods, and unsound foundations, it is 
 VERY common to see walls much out of perpendicular, and 
 some of them so much so, that it might be thought scarcely 
 possible for them to stand. " Poor old Raman is very ill, I 
 hear."—" Yes, the wall is bowing." " Begone, thou low 
 caste ; thou art a kutte-chivver," i. e. a ruined wall. " By 
 the oppression of the head man the people of that village 
 are like a ruined wall." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LXIII. 
 
 Ver. 10. They shall fall by the sword ; they shall 
 be a portion for foxes. 
 
 The jackal is here probably referred to. In India, the 
 disgusting sight of jackals devouring human bodies, may 
 be seen every day. So ravenous are these animals, that 
 they frequently steal infants as they lie by the breast of the 
 mother ; and sick persons, who lie friendless in the street, 
 or by the side of the Ganges, are sometimes devoured alive 
 bv these animals in the night. Persons in a state of intoxi- 
 cation have thus been devoured as they lay in the streets of 
 Calcutta. (Ward.) — Burder. 
 
 PSALM LXV. 
 
 Ver. 1. Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Zion; 
 and unto thee shall the vow be performed. 
 
 Margin, " is silent." Ainsworth, " Prayse silent way- 
 teth for thee, O God." The people of the East are much 
 given to meditation and silent praise, and sometimes they 
 may be seen for hours so completely absorbed, as to be in- 
 sensible to all surrounding objects. " Oh ! Swamv, have 
 you not heard my silent praises V* Among the devotees 
 are to be found the silent praises of Siva. " My lord, only 
 grant me this favour, and you will hear even my silent 
 praises." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. The pastures are clothed with flocks: 
 the valleys also are covered over with corn : 
 they shout for joy, they also sing. 
 
 People in passing fields or gardens, after a fine rain, say, 
 " Ah ! how these fields and trees are laughing to-day." 
 " Yes, you may well laugh; this is a fine time for you." 
 " How nicely these flowers are laughing together." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 PSALM LXVIII. 
 Ver. 9. Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, 
 whereby thou* didst confirm thine inheritance, 
 when it was weary. 
 
 I have taken notice of the traces of rain found in the des- 
 ert between the Nile and the Red Sea ; and I would here 
 remark, that rain sometimes is found to fall in that part of 
 the desert which lies on the eastern side of the Red Sea, 
 where Israel wandered so many years, which circumstance 
 is referred to in the scripture, and therefore claims some 
 attention among the other observations contained in these 
 papers. 
 
 Pitts, in his return to Egypt from Mecca, which he visit- 
 ed on a religious account, found rain in this desert. His 
 words are as follows: "We travelled through a certain 
 valley, which is called by the name of Attash el Wait, i. e. 
 ihe river of the fire, the vale being so excessively hot, that 
 the very water in their goat skins has sometimes been dried 
 up with the gloomy, scorching heat. But we had the hap- 
 piness to pass through it when it rained, so that the fervent 
 heat was much allayed thereby ; Vhich the hagges looked 
 on as a great blessing, and did not a little praise God for 
 it." This naturallv reminds us of a passage in the 68th 
 Psalm, ver. 9 : " Thou, O God, didst send a plentiful rain, 
 whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance, when It was 
 aweary ;" speaking of God's going before his people when 
 Mhey came out of Egvpt, and entered upon their sojourning 
 in this wilderness. The Mohammedan pilgrims that were 
 
 with Pitts, do not seem to have wanted water to drink, but 
 the fall of rain, it seems, was highly acceptable to them, 
 on account of cooling the air in a place where, from its 
 situation, it was frequently wont to be extremely hot. 
 
 One of the first things that occurs to a reflecting mind 
 upon reading this passage of the Psalmist, is, an inquiry 
 whether this rain was miraculous, or a common exertion 
 of the power of the God of nature, though under the direc- 
 tion of a gracious provid«)ce. It seems now, from this 
 account of Mr. Pitts, to have been the last, and not contrary 
 to the common course of things in that wilderness. 
 
 No mention is made of this merciful shower in the books 
 of Moses, so far as I remember; but as we are told in the 
 Psalm, immediately after, of the fleeing of kings, if the 
 circumstances referred to here are ranged in exact order, 
 it must have been before the Amalekites set upon Israel 
 in Rephidim ; but there can be no dependance upon that, 
 especially as mention is made of Sinai m a preceding verse, 
 and in the outset of the description of God's marching be- 
 fore his people through the wilderness.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 13. Though ye have lain among the pots, 
 yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered 
 with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. 
 
 The dove is universally admitted to be one of the most 
 beautiful objects in nature. The brilliancy of her plumage, 
 the splendour of her eye, the innocence of her look, the 
 excellence of her dispositions, and the purity of her man- 
 ners, have been the theme of admiration and praise in 
 every age. To the snowy whiteness of her wings, and the 
 rich golden hues which adorn her neck, the inspired Psalm- 
 ist alludes in these elegant strains : " Though ye have lain 
 among the pots, yet ye shall be as the wings of a dove cov- 
 ered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." 
 These bold figures do not seldom occur in the classical 
 poets of antiquity. Virgil celebrates the argenteus anser, 
 the silver-coloured goose; Ovid, the crow, which once ri- 
 valled the dove in whiteness; Lucretius, the changeful 
 hues of her neck, which she turns to the sunbeam, as if 
 conscious of its unrivalled beauty. Mr. Harmer is of opin- 
 ion, that the holy Psalmist alludes, not to an animal adorned 
 merely by the hand of nature, but to the doves that were 
 consecrated to the Syrian deities, and ornamented with 
 trinkets of gold ; and agreeably to this view, he interprets 
 the passage, " Israel is to me as a consecrated dove; and 
 though your circumstances have made you rather appear 
 like a poor dove, blackened by taking up its abode in a 
 smoky hole of the rock ; yet shall ye become beautiful and 
 glorious as a Syrian silver-coloured pigeon, on whom some 
 ornament of gold is put." But this view makes the Holy 
 Ghost speak with some approbation, or at least without cen- 
 sure, of a heathenish rite, and even to borrow from it a fig- 
 ure to illustrate the eflfects of divine favour among his cho- 
 sen people. No other instance of this kind occurs in the 
 sacred scriptures, and therefore it cannot be admitted here 
 without much stronger evidence than that respectable writer 
 has produced. It is much more natural to suppose, that the 
 Psalmist alludes to party-coloured doves, with white wings, 
 and the rest of their feathers of a bright brown. Bufibn 
 mentions a species of turtle-dove in the bay of Campeachy, 
 which is entirely brown, while others are of a snowy 
 white ; and both'^Elian and Homer mention a dove of a 
 red, or deep yellow colour, resembling gold. To these va- 
 rieties the sacred writer might refer ; and the more effectu- 
 ally to represent the blissful effects of divine favour, might 
 combine the beauties of each into one picture. — Paxton. 
 
 In Asia Minor, according to Chandler, the dove lodges 
 in the holes of the rock ; and Dr. Shaw mentions a city in 
 Africa, which derives its name from the great number of 
 wild pigeons which breed in the adjoining cliffs. It is not 
 uncommon for shepherds and fishermen, to seek for shelter 
 in the spacious caverns of that country, from the severity 
 of the weather, and to kindle fires in them, to warm their 
 shivering limbs, and dress their victuals; in consequence 
 of which, the doves which happen to build their nests on 
 their shelves, must be frequently smutted, and their plu- 
 mage soiled. Some have'conjectured, that the royal Psalm- 
 ist may allude to this scene, in which he had perhaps acted 
 a part," while he tended his father's flocks, in that singular 
 promise, " Though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall 
 ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her 
 
388 
 
 PSALMS 
 
 Ps. 69. 
 
 feathers with 3'-ellow gold." The people of Israel, who 
 had long bent their necks to the galling yoke of Egypt, and 
 groaned under th« most cruel oppression, may not unfitly 
 be compared to a dove in the fissure of a rock, which had 
 been terrified by the intrusion of strangers, and polluted by 
 the smoke of their fires, which ascended to the roof of the 
 cavern, and penetrated into the most remote and secret 
 corner ; or by the smut of the pots, which they had set 
 over these fires for culinary , purposes, among which she 
 fluttered in her haste to escape. The dove issues from the 
 cave of the shepherds, black and dirty, her heart dejected, 
 and her feathers in disorder; but, having washed herself 
 in the running stream, and trimmed her plumage, she 
 gradually recovers the serenity of her disposition, the pu- 
 rity of her colour, and the elegance of her appearance. 
 So did the people of Israel more than once escape by the 
 favour of Jehovah, from a low and despised condition, and 
 gradually rise to great prosperity and splendour. In Egypt, 
 they laboured in the brick-kilns, and in all the services of 
 the field — a poor, enslaved, and oppressed people ; and after 
 their settlement in the land of promise, they were often re- 
 duced to a state of extreme distress ; but in their misery 
 they cried to the Lord, and he heard and delivered them 
 from all their calamities ; he subdued the surrounding na- 
 tions to their sway; he poured the accumulated riches of 
 ancient kings into their treasury ; he made them the terror 
 or the admiration of the East, But the holy Psalmist may 
 have a prospective reference to the deliverance which the 
 Gentile nations were to obtain, from the basest and most 
 despicable condition, the worshipping of wood and stone, 
 the gratifying of the vilest lusts, and their advancement to 
 the service of Christ, and the practice of universal holiness 
 and virtue. His words are not less applicable to the de- 
 liverance of the church, from the distresses in which she 
 may be at any time involved, and the restoration of individ- 
 ual believers from a state of spiritual decline. On these 
 joyous occasions, the people of God shake off their fears 
 aiid their sorrows, and resume their wonted serenity, 
 peace, and joy ; they worship God in the beauty of holi- 
 ness ; they press forward with renovated vigour to the 
 promised "inheritance ; they are as a dove, the most beauti- 
 ful of the species, whose wings rival silver in whiteness, 
 and the feathers of whose neck, the yellow radiance of 
 gold. — Ibid. 
 
 The Hebrew word may refer to those fire-ranges or rows 
 of stones on which the caldrons or pots were placed for 
 boiling, probably something like, but more durable in their 
 structure, than those which Niebuhr says are used by the 
 wandering Arabs. " Their fireplace is soon constructed ; 
 they only set their pots upon several separate stones, or 
 over a hole digged in the earth." Lying among these, 
 denotes the most abject slavery; for this seems to have 
 'been the place of rest allotted to the vilest slaves. So old 
 Laertes, grieving for the loss of his son, is described in 
 Homer, as in the winter, sleeping where the slaves did, 
 in the ashes near the fire,- Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. When the Almighty scattered kings in 
 it, it was white as snow in Salmon. 
 
 Perhaps in allusion to the bones of the slaughtered foe, 
 which were scattered about, and lay bleaching on the sum- 
 mit of Salmon.- -B. 
 
 Ver. 15. The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan ; 
 a high hill, as the hill of Bashan. 
 
 The Hebrew word is plural, and means a mountain of 
 eminences, or backs. Tnis may, perhaps, be a title pecu- 
 liarly applicable to Bashan. The mountain with teeth, 
 might be a name given it, from the appearance of the face 
 of it, studded over with small hills. Monserrat, in Spain, 
 is an instance of a mountain deriving its name from its 
 shape ; as it is Mons Serratas, or a mountain whose craggy 
 cliffs have, at a distance, the resemblance of the teeth of a 
 saw. The Sierra Morena, in Spain, is named from its 
 shape and colour. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 21. But God shall wound the head of his 
 enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as 
 goeth on still in his trespasses. 
 
 This language, in the East, is equivalent to saying, " 1 
 will kill you." " The king will soon break the uche (the 
 scalp) of that fellow." " Tamban's uche is broken, he died 
 last week." " Under the scalp is the royal wind, which is 
 the last to depart after death." " With those who are 
 buried, it remains three days in its place : but when the 
 body is burned, it immediately takes its departure, which is 
 a great advantage." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. The singers went before, the players on 
 instruments followed after ; among them were 
 the damsels playing with timbrels. 
 
 This, no doubt, is a description of a religious procession 
 in the time of David. In the sacred and domestic proces 
 sions of the Hindoos they observe the same order, and hav(? 
 the same class of people in attendance. See them taking 
 their god to exhibit to the people, or to remove some calam- 
 ity; he is put into his car or tabernacle, and the whole is 
 placed on men's shoulders. As they move along, the men 
 and women precede, and sing his praises ; then follow the 
 musicians, who play with all their might in honour of the 
 god, and for the enjoyment of the people. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 30. Rebuke the company of spearmen, the 
 muhitude of the bulls, with the calves of the 
 people, till every one submit himself with pieces 
 of silver : scatter thou the people that delight 
 in war. 
 
 Literally, rebuke the beast of the reeds, or canes. This in 
 all probability means the wild-boar, which is considered as 
 destructive to the people of Israel, Psalm Ixxx. 13. That 
 wild-boars abound in marshes, fens, and reedy places, ap- 
 pears from Le Bruyn, who says, " we were in a large plain 
 full of canals, marshes, and bullrushes. This part of the 
 country is infested by a vast number of wild-boars, that 
 march in troops, and destroy all the seeds and fruits of the 
 earth, and pursue their ravages as far as the entrance intc 
 the villages. The inhabitants, in order to remedy this mis- 
 chief, set fire to the rushes which afford them a retreat, anc 
 destroyed above fifty in that manner: but those that escaped 
 the flames spread themselves all round in such a manner, 
 that the people themselves were obliged to have recourse 
 to flight, and have never disturbed them since for fear of 
 drawing upon themselves some greater calamity. They 
 assured me that some of these creatures were as large as 
 cows." — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 31. Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethi- 
 opia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. 
 
 See on Ps. 44. 20. 
 
 PSALM LXIX. 
 
 Ver. 9. For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me 
 up ; and the reproaches of them that reproach- 
 ed thee are fallen upon me. 
 
 He who is zealous in his religion, or ardent in his attach- 
 ments, is said to be eaten up. *' Old Muttoo has determined 
 to leave his home for ever ; he is to walk barefoot to the 
 Ganges for the salvation of his soul: his zeal has eaten him 
 up," — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me 
 not stink : let me be delivered from them that 
 hate me, and out of the deep waters. 
 
 "Ah! this chearu, this cAmrw," (this mud, this mud,^ 
 says the man who is in trouble, " who will pull me out 1 ' 
 " i am like the bullock, with his legs fast in the mud; the 
 more I struggle, the faster I am." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. They gave me also gall for my meat; 
 and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. 
 
 The refreshing quality of vinegar cannot be doubted ; 
 but a royal personage had reason to complain of his treat- 
 ment in having this only presented to him to quench his 
 
Ps. G9— 74. 
 
 PSALMS 
 
 389 
 
 thirst, -when it was only made use of by the meanest people. 
 Pitts tells us, that the'food that he and the rest had when 
 first taken by the Algerines, was generally only five or six 
 spoonfuls of vinegar, half a spoonful of oil, a few olives, 
 with a small quantify of black biscuit, and a pint of water, 
 a day. The juice of lemons is what those of higher life 
 now use, and probably among the higher orders the juice 
 of pomegranates might be used, to produce a grateful 
 acidity. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 31. This also shall please the Lord better 
 than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, " For this will be more acceptable to Je- 
 hovah than a full-horned and a full-hoofed steer." Bufia- 
 loes, which are offered in sacrifice, must always be full 
 grown, and must have their horns and hoofs of a particular 
 size and shape. Those without horns are offered to devils. 
 Thus, it is difficult and expensive to procure a victim of 
 the right kind. The writer of this psalm is supposed to 
 have been a captive in Babylon, and consequently poor, 
 and otherwise unable to bring an acceptable sacrifice to the 
 Lord ; but he rejoiced to know that he " heareth the poor, 
 and despiseth not his prisoners ;" and that, by praising " the 
 name of God with a song," and by magnifying him with 
 thanksgiving, would be more acceptable than the most 
 perfect victim offered to him in sacrifice. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LXXI. 
 Ver. n. Saying, God hath forsaken him; per- 
 secute and take him : for there is none to de- 
 liver him. 
 
 When a respectable man, in the service of his sovereign, 
 or superior, falls into disgrace ; when rich men become 
 
 Soor, or servants lose the favour of their masters ; then a 
 orde of accusers, who did not before dare to show their 
 faces, come forward with the most fearful stories of the 
 wickedness of the fallen man. Formerly they were ever 
 flattering and cringing at his feet ; but now they are the 
 most brutal and bold of his enemies. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LXXII. 
 Ver. 5. They shall fear thee as long as the sun 
 and moon endure, throughout all generations. 
 
 At the time appointed for the commencement of the 
 new year, which, among the Singalese, is always in April, 
 the king sat on his throne in state, surrounded by his chiefs, 
 and the event was announced to the people by the discharge 
 of jingalls. At the hour appointed for the second ceremo- 
 ny, young women of certain families, with lighted tapers 
 in their hands, and a silver dish containing undressed rice, 
 and turmeric water, stood at a little distance from the king, 
 and when he directed his face to the southeast, with imbal 
 leaves under his feet, and nuga leaves in his hand, and ap- 
 plied the medicinal juice to his head and body, they thrice 
 exclaimed, Increase of age to our sovereign of five thou- 
 sand years ! increase of age as long as the sun and moon 
 last ! increase of age as long as heaven and earth exist ! 
 By the chiefs and people of consequence, this part of the 
 ceremony was performed in a manner as nearly similar as 
 possible. (Davy's Account of Ceylon.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 9. They that dwell in the wilderness shall 
 bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the 
 dust. 
 
 This is a very favourite way of threatening among the 
 Hindoos. The half frantic man says to his foe, " Yes, thou 
 shalt soon eat the earth ;" which means his mouth will 
 soon be open to receive it, as in death. " Soon, soon wilt 
 thou have maw," i. e. earth, " in thy mouth." In time of 
 great scarcity, it is said, " The people are now eating earth ; 
 the cruel, cruel king, did nothing but put earth in the 
 piouths of his subjects."— Roberts. 
 
 In Mr. Hugh Boyd's account of his embassy to the king 
 of Candy, in Ceylon, there is a paragraph which sinsrularly 
 illustrates this part of the Psalm ; and shows the adulation 
 and obsequious reverence with which an eastern monarch 
 is approached. Describing his introduction to the king, he 
 
 says, " The removal of the curtain was the signal of our 
 obeisances. Mine, by stipulation, was to be only kneeling. 
 My companions immediately began the performance ot 
 theirs, which were in the most perfect degree of eastern 
 humiliation. They almost literally licked the dust ; pros- 
 trating themselves with their faces almost close to the stone 
 floor, and throwing out their arms and legs; then rising on 
 their knees, they repeated in a very loud voice a certain 
 form of words of the most extravagant meaning that can be 
 conceived : — that the head of the king of kings might resch 
 beyond the sun; that he might live a thousand years," &c. 
 Compare this with the passage of scripture now referred to. 
 " He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from 
 the river unto the ends of the earth. They that dwell in 
 the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall 
 lick the dust," i. e. the wild unconquered Arabians shall be 
 brought to abject submission. This is beautifully emble- 
 matic of the triumph of Christ over those nations and indi- 
 viduals, whom it appeared impossible for the Gospel to sub- 
 due. " The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring 
 presents ; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. 
 Yea, all kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall 
 serve him." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 16. There shall be a handful of corn in the 
 earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit 
 thereof shall shake like Lebanon : and thcii oi 
 the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. 
 
 The rapidity with which grass grows in the East is the 
 idea here referred to. " When the ground there hath been 
 destitute of rain nine months together, and looks all of it 
 like the barren sand in the deserts of Arabia, where there 
 is not one spire of green grass to be found, within a few 
 days after tnose fat enriching showers begin to fall, the 
 face of the earth there (as it were by a new resurrection) is 
 so revived, and, as it were, so renewed, as that it is present- 
 ly covered all over with a pure green mantle. (Sir Thomas 
 Roe.)^BuRDER. 
 
 PSALM LXXIV. 
 Ver. 11. Why withdrawest thou thy hand, even 
 thy right hand ? pluck it out of thy bosom. 
 
 The word which we translate bosom does not always, in 
 eastern language, mean the breast ; but often the lap, or 
 that part of the body where the long robe folds round the 
 loins. Thus, in the folds of the garment, in front of the 
 body, the Orientals keep their little valuables, and there, 
 when they are perfectly at ease, they place their hands. 
 Sternhold" and Hopkins,' who translated from the original 
 text, have the same idea : — 
 
 " Why dost thou draw thy hand aback. 
 And hide it in thy lap 7" 
 
 To a king, whose enemies have invaded his territories, 
 and are ravaging his kingdom, it will be said, should he 
 not make any exertions to repel them, " Why does your 
 * majesty keep your hands in your maddeyila, (bosom 1) 
 Take your sword, your heroism thence." When two men 
 go to a magistrate to complain of each other, perhaps one 
 says, " He has beaten me severely, my lord." Then the 
 other replies, " It is true, I did strike him, but these wounds 
 on my body show he did not keep his hands in his bosom." 
 " Complain not to me, fellow, for want of food ; do I not 
 see you always with your hands in your bosom 1" "He 
 has been cursing me in the most fearful way, but I told 
 him to put the imprecations in his own bosom." 
 
 " Thy rightliand," which is the hand of honour. Hence, 
 " the right hand of the Most High." The Hindoos have a 
 right-hand caste, and when they take a solemn oath they 
 lift up that hand to heaven. 
 
 The whole of the right side of a man is believed to be 
 more honourable than the left, and all its members are said 
 to be larger and stronger ; and, to give more dignity to it, 
 they call it the dnpackhom, i. e. the male side; whereas the 
 other is called the female. This idea, also, is followed up 
 in reference to their great deity, Siva; his right side is call- 
 ed male, and the other the female; which notion also ap- 
 plies to the Jupiter of western antiquity, a^ he was said to 
 be male and also female. — Roberts- 
 
;90 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 75. 
 
 Ver. 13. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: 
 thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the 
 waters. 1 4. Thou brakest the heads of levia- 
 than in pieces, and gavest him to he meat to the 
 people inhabiting the wilderness. 
 
 See on Job 41. 1, &c. 
 
 Ver. 19. O deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove 
 unto the multitude of the wicked ; forget not the 
 Congregation of thy poor for ever. 
 
 It has already been observed, that the turtle-dove never 
 admits a second mate, but lingers out her life in sorrowful 
 v\?idowhood. To this remarkable circumstance, these 
 words of David are by many thought to refer : " O deliver 
 not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the multitude of the 
 wicked ; forget not the congregation of thy poor for ever," 
 As the turtle cleaves to her mate with unshaken fidelity, 
 so these interpreters say, had Israel adhered to their God. 
 But it is well known that God's ancient people were a stiff- 
 necked and rebellious race, equally fickle and perfidious, 
 and discovering on almost every occasion a most violent and 
 unreasonable inclination to the worship of heathen deities. 
 \i is, therefore, more natural to suppose, that the holy 
 Psalmist, by this term, alludes to the weak and helpless 
 state of his people, that like the turtle had neither power 
 nor inclination to resist their numerous enemies. The 
 dove is a harmless and simple creature, equally destitute 
 of skill and courage for the combat; and the turtle is the 
 smallest of the family. She is therefore a most proper 
 emblem of the national imbecility into which the people of 
 l;rael had sunk, in consequence of their numerous iniqui- 
 ties, with which they had long provoked the God of their 
 fathers. They who were the terror of surrounding na- 
 tions, while they feared the Lord and kept his command- 
 ments, whom God himself instructed in the art of war, and 
 ted to certain victory, had by their folly become the scorn 
 of their neighbours, and an easy prey to every invader. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Sometimes those that have no tents, shelter themselves 
 from the inclemency of the night air, in holes and caverns 
 \vhich they find in th^ir rocky hills, where they can kindle 
 (ires to warm them^fclves, as well as to dress their provis- 
 ions; to which may be added, that doves also, in those 
 countries, frequently haunt such places, as well as some 
 o'her birds. Dr. Richard Chandler, in his travels in Asia 
 Minor, has both taken notice of the doves there lodging in 
 txoles of ihc locks; and of the shepherds and fishermen 
 oeing woPi t j make use of such retreats, and of their kin- 
 dling files ia them, by which practice those doves must be 
 irequeiitl} very much smutted, and their feathers dirtied. 
 And I iixTe been sometimes ready to imagine, that an at- 
 ventiou 10 these circumstances may afford as easy and 
 natura^. an account as any that has been given of that 
 association of such very different things as doves and smoky 
 places, which we meet with in the 68th Psalm. It is 
 certain the people of Israel are compared to a dove, in the 
 book of Psalms ; " O deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove 
 unto the multitude of the wicked ; forget not the congrega- 
 ■ tion of thy poor for ever," Ps. Ixxiv. 19 ; and the same 
 image appears to have been made use of, in this 68th Psalm. 
 If it was made use of, it was not unnatural to compare Israel, 
 who had been in a very afflicted state in Egypt, to a dove 
 making its abode in the hollow of a rock, which had been 
 smutted by the fires shepherds had made in it for the heat- 
 ing their milk, or other culinary purposes ; which led them 
 to make such little heaps of stones, on whioti they might 
 set their pots, having a hollow under them, in which they 
 pat the fuel, according to the eastern mode, of which I 
 have given an account Elsewhere, and which little build- 
 ii:gs are meant by the word here translated pots. 
 
 This image might very properly be made use of to ex- 
 press any kind of affliction Israel niight have suffered, when 
 they are compared as a body of people to a dove ; and cer- 
 tainly not less so, when they had been forced to work with- 
 out remission in the brick-kilns of Egypt. For so the sense 
 will be something like this : O my people ! though ye have 
 been like a dove in a hole of a rock, tliat hath been black- 
 ened by the fires of the shepherds for the boiling their pots ; 
 yet on this joyous occasion did yon. appear as the most 
 
 beautiful of that species, whose wings are like silver, and 
 the more muscular parts, from whence the strength of 
 the wings are derived, like the splendour of gold, — Hab- 
 
 MER. 
 
 PSALM LXXV. 
 
 Ver. 4. I said unto the fools, Deal not foolishly ; 
 and to the wicked, Lift not up the horn : 5. Lift 
 not up your horn on high : speak not with a 
 stiff neck. 
 
 This passage will receive some illustration from Bruce's 
 remarks in his Travels to discover the source of the Nile, 
 where, speaking of the head-dress of the governors of the 
 provinces of Abyssinia, he represents it as consisting of a 
 large broad fillet bound upon their forehead, and tied be- 
 hind their head. In the middle of this was a horn, or a ' 
 conical piece of silver gilt, about four inches long, much 
 in the shape of our common candle extinguishers. This 
 is called kirn, or horn, and is only worn in reviews, or 
 
 Earades after victory. The crooked manner in which they 
 old the neck, when this ornament is on their furehead, 
 for fear it should fall forward, seems to agree with what 
 the Psalmist calls speaking with a stiff neck^ for it perfectly 
 shows the meaning of speaking with a stiff neck, when you 
 hold the horn on high, or erect, like the horn of a unicorn. 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Mr. Munroe, speaking of the females in a Maronite vil- 
 lage, in Mount Lebanon, observes : " But the most remark- 
 able peculiarities of their dress, are the immense silver 
 ear-rings hanging forward upon the neck, and the tantmira, 
 or * horn,' which supports the veil. This laUer ornament 
 varies in form, material, and position, according to the 
 dignity, taste, and circumstances of the wearer. They are 
 of gold, silver gilt, or silver, and sometimes of wood. The 
 former are either plain or figured in low relief, and occa- 
 sionally set with jewels ; but the length and position of 
 them is that upon which the traveller looks with the great- 
 est interest, as illustrating and explaining a familiar ex- 
 pression of scripture. The young, the rich, and the vain, 
 wear the tantaura of great length, standing straight up 
 from the top of the forehead ; whereas the humble, the 
 poor, and the aged, place it upon the side of the head, much 
 shorter, and spread ing at the end like a trumpet. I do not 
 mean to .say, that these distinctions are universal, but I was 
 told that they are very general, and thus the 'exalted 
 horn' still remains a mark of power and confidence, as it 
 was in the davs of Israel's glory." — (Summer Ramble in 
 Syria, 1833.)— B. 
 
 " We stopped for the night at the village of Barook, 
 chiefly inhabited by Druses, many of whom are said to 
 have adopted the creed of their Maronite neighbours. 
 Our tent was placed close to the house of the principal 
 vender of small wares, round which an arrival soon attract- 
 ed a crowd, but far superior in appearance and civility to 
 the inhabitants of any district we had previously seen. 
 Most of the men wore clean white turbans, and the women 
 were wrapped in blue veils, beneath which a tanloor, that in- 
 variable article of Druse luxury, which is worn day and night, 
 made a conspicuous figure. This we had now an opportunity 
 of examining, for our host, accompanied by his wife, came 
 to our tent, aUracted by the novelty of tea, which they both 
 drank, when well sweetened, with apparent satisfaction. 
 The lady, in return, satisfied our curiosity by taking off 
 her tantoor^ which was of silver, rudely enclosed with 
 flowers, stars, and other devices. In length it was, per- 
 haps, something more than a foot : but in shape had little 
 resemblance to a horn, being a mere hollow tube, increas- 
 ing in size from the diameter of an inch and a half at one 
 extremity, to three inches at the other, where it terminated ^ 
 like the mouth of a trumpet. If the smaller end was closed, 
 it might serve for a drinking-cup ; and in Germany glasses 
 of the same form and size are occasionally used. This 
 strange ornament, placed on a cushion, is securely fixed to 
 the upper part of the forehead by two silk cords, M^hich, 
 afler surrounding the head, hang behind nearly to the . 
 ground, terminating in large tassels, which a niong the better 
 classes are capped with silver." — (Hogg's Visit to Damas- 
 cus, Jerusalem, (fee, 1833.) — B. 
 
 A man of lofty bearing is said to carry his horn- very 
 high. To him who is proudlv interfering with the affairs 
 of another it will be said, " Why show your komhu (horn) 
 
Ps. 75—78. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 39* 
 
 herel" "What! are yon a horn for me T "See that fel- 
 low, what a fine horn he has; he will make the people run." 
 " Truly, my lord, you have a great horn." " Chinnan has 
 lost his money, ay, and his hornship too." " Alas ! alas ! 
 I am like the deer, whose horns have fallen off." — Rob- 
 
 Ver. 8. For in the hand of the Lord there is a 
 cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture, 
 and he poureth out of the same : but the dregs 
 thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring 
 t/iem out, and drink them. 
 
 Red wine, in particular, is more esteemed in the East than 
 white. And we are told in the travels of Olearius, that it 
 is customary with the Armenian Christians in Persia to 
 put Brazil wood, or saffron, into their wine, to give it a 
 higher colour, when the wine is not so red as they like, 
 they making no account of white wine. He mentions the 
 same thing also in another place. These accounts of their 
 putting Brazil wood or saffron into their wines, to give them 
 a deeper red, seem to discover an energy in the Hebrew 
 word DIN adam, which is used Prov. xxiii. 31, that I never 
 remarked anywhere. It is of the conjugation called Hiih- 
 pahel, DiNni ijitkaddam, which, according to grammarians, 
 denotes an action that turns upon the agent itself: it is not 
 always, it may be accurately observed ; but in this case it 
 should seem that it ought to be taken according to the strict- 
 ness of grammar, and that it intimates the wine's making 
 itself redder by something put into it : Look not on the wine 
 when it maketh itself red. It appears, indeed, from Is. Ixiii. 
 2, that some of the wines about Judea were naturally red ; 
 but so Olearius supposed those wines to be which he met 
 with in Persia, only more deeply tinged by art ; and this 
 colouring it, apparently is to make it more pleasing and 
 tempting to the eye. 
 
 There are two other places relating to wine, in which 
 our translators have used the term red ; but the original 
 word -»an chemer differs fVom that in Proverbs, and I should 
 therefore imagine intended another idea ; what that might 
 be, may, perhaps, appear in the sequel. The word, it is 
 certain, sometimes signifies what is made thick or turbid ; 
 so it expresses the thickening water with mud, Ps. Ixxvi. 3. 
 May it not then signify the thickening wine with its lees 1 It 
 seems plainly to do so in one of the passages : " In the hand 
 of the Lord is a cup, and the wine is red, or turbid: it is 
 full of mixture, and he poureth out the same : but the dregs 
 thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, 
 and drink them," Ps. Ixxv. 8. The turbidness of wine 
 makes it very inebriating, and consequently expressive of 
 the disorder affliction brings on the mind ; thus, Thevenot, 
 I remember, tells us the wine of Shiras, in Persia, is full of 
 lees, and therefore very heady ; to remedy which, they fil- 
 trate it through a cloth, and then it is very clear, and free 
 from fumes. — Harmer. 
 
 The punishments which Jehovah inflicts upon the wick- 
 ed, are compared to a cupfull of fermenting wine, mixed 
 , with intoxicating herbs, of which all those to whom it is 
 I given must drink the dregs or sediment. The same image 
 is found, not only frequently in other places in the Old Tes- 
 I lament, but also very often in the Arabian poets. Thus 
 [ Taabbata Scharran, in a passage of an Arabic Anthology, 
 by Alb. Schultens: " To those of the tribe of Hodail, we 
 gave the cup of death, whose dregs were confusion, shame, 
 and reproach." Another poet says: " A cup such as they 
 gave us, we gave to them." When Calif Almansor had 
 his valiant, though dreaded general, Abre-Moslem, murder- 
 ed, he repeated the following verse, in which he addressed 
 the corpse : " A cup such as he gave, gave I him, bitterer 
 to the taste than wormwood." (Elmacin.) — Burder. 
 
 PSALM LXXVI. 
 Ver. 11. Vow, and pay unto the Lord your God : 
 let all that be round about him bring presents 
 unto him that ought to be feared. 
 
 Taxes in Persia are commonly levied under the form of 
 Vresents to the monarch. The usual presents are those 
 made annually by all governors of provinces and districts, 
 chiefs of tribes, ministers, and all others invested with high 
 'iffice, at the feast of the vernal equinox. These gifts are 
 
 regulated by the nature of the office, and the wealth of the 
 individual, and consist of the best oi the produce of every 
 part of the kingdom. Sometimes a large sum of money is 
 given, which is always the most acceptable present. Allu- 
 sive to this custom isthat command in relation to Messiah: 
 " Let all that are round about him bring presents unto him 
 that ought to be feared." Besides these ordinary presents, 
 extraordinary largesses, of a less defined nature, but which 
 are also of very considerable amount, are expected. Of 
 this kind were, in the opinion of some writers, the pres- 
 ents which the enemies of Saul refused to bring, at his 
 accession to the throne of Israel : " Bui the children of 
 Belial said. How shall this man save us 1 And they de- 
 spised him, and brought him no presents. But he held his 
 peace," — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM LXXVII. 
 Ver. 2. In the day of my trouble I sought the 
 Lord : my sore ran in the night, and ceased 
 not : my soul refused to be comforted. 
 
 The margin has, instead of sore, " hand." Ainsworth, 
 " In the day of my distress I sought the Lord : my hand by 
 night reached out and ceased not." Dr. Boothroyd, " In 
 the day of my distress I seek Jehovah : by night, my hand, 
 without ceasing, is stretched out unto him." Dr. A. Clarke 
 says, " My hand was stretched out," i. e. in prayer. The 
 Tamul translation, "My hands, in the night, were spread 
 out, and ceased not," " Ah !" says the sorrowful mother, 
 over her afflicted child, " all night long were my hands 
 spread out to the gods on thy behalf." In that position do 
 they sometimes hold their hands for the night together. 
 Some devotees do this with their right hand throughout 
 the whole of their lives, till the arm becomes quite stiff.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver, 10. And I said, this is my infirmity: but I 
 will remember the years of the right hand of 
 the Most High. 
 
 Dr, Boothroyd, " Then I said, this is the time of my 
 scrrow ; but the right hand of the Most High can change 
 it." I have shown that superior honour is given to the 
 RIGHT hand. It is that with which men fight : the •' sword 
 arm," consequently protection, or deliverance, comes from 
 that. David was in great distress ; but, he asks, has " God 
 forgotten to be gracious'?" To this his heart replied. No ! 
 and he determined to believe in the right hand of ihe Most 
 High, which had often delivered and defended him in days 
 past, and which could again change all his circumstances. 
 The right hand is that which dispenses gifts ; no Hindoo 
 would offer a present with his left hand. A miser is said 
 to have two left hands ! " Never, never shall I forget the 
 right hand of that good man : he always relieved my wants." 
 " Ah ! the ungrateful wretch, how many years have I 
 helped him! he has forgotten my right hand." "Yes, 
 poor fellow, he has lost all his property ; he cannot now 
 use his right hand." " My children, my children," says 
 the aged father, " how many years have I supported you*? 
 Surely you will never forget the right hand of your father." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LXXVIII, 
 Ver 21. Therefore the Lord heard /Aw, and was 
 wroth: so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and 
 anger also came up against Israel. 
 
 The first supply of quails was followed by no visible 
 judgment from heaven ; for although they were guilty of 
 murmuring against the Lord, he spared them in his love 
 and in his pity; but they provoked him on this occasion, 
 by their indecent desire of good living ; by loathing the 
 manna, which was provided for them by his distinguishing 
 kindness; by regretting the provisions which they had en- 
 joyed in Goshen ; and by denying the divine power and 
 goodness, which they had already experienced in supplying 
 them with quails, soon after they came out of Egypt, and 
 jof which they had every day the most substantial proofs, 
 in giving them bread from heaven. Incensed by this un- 
 dutifnl conduct, Jehovah unequivocally notified his righ- 
 teous displeasure, before he granted their demands : " Ye 
 shall eat it a whole month, until it come out at your ncs- 
 
892 
 
 PSALMS 
 
 Ps. 78 
 
 trils, and it be loathsome unto you ; because that ye have 
 despised the Lord which is among you, and have wept be- 
 fore him, saying. Why came we forth out of Egypt"?" 
 These words are a proof, that he had heard the murmur- 
 ings of his people with great indignation. When, there- 
 fore, the month was completed, and while the flesh with 
 which they had gorged themselves was yet in their mouth, 
 " the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, 
 and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague." 
 Various are the views which interpreters have given of 
 this judgment; but their opinion seems entitled to the 
 preference, who suppose it was a fire from heaven, by 
 which some of the people were consumed. Their undu- 
 tiful murmurings were punished in this manner, a very 
 short time before : " And when the people complained, it 
 displeased the Lord ; and the Lord heard it, and his anger 
 was kindled ; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, 
 and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the 
 camp." Bochart, indeed, considers this brief statement as 
 a summary view of the scene which is more minutely de- 
 scribed in the rest of the chapter. The same place, he 
 thinks, is called Taberah, from the conflagration, and Ki- 
 broth-hataavah, " because there they buried the people that 
 lusted." But this opinion seems to rest upon no solid foun- 
 dation ; no trace of a more brief, and then of a more extended 
 narrative, can be discovered in the passage. The sacred 
 writer plainly describes two different calamities, of which 
 the first was indisputably by fire, which renders it not im- 
 probable that the second was also produced by the same de- 
 vouring element. This probability is greatly increased hy 
 the words of David, in his sublime descriutien ol this very- 
 judgment : " Therefore, the Lord hearu, and was wroth ; 
 so afire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up 
 against Israel ; because they believed not God, nor trusted 
 in his salvation." An instance of similar perverseness is 
 recorded of this people, soon after they came out of Egypt. 
 But, although they were perhaps equally blameable, they 
 were not subjected to the same punishment ; for, in this in- 
 stance, Jehovah bestowed upon them a supply of quails that 
 evening ; and the day after, he rained manna from heaven 
 around their tents. He had a right to punish them for their 
 iniquity ; but he graciously turned away his anger, and 
 yielded to their importunities. And for this forbearance, 
 several reasons may be assigned. If any fall a second time 
 into the sins which had already been forgiven, he is more 
 guilty than before ; because he both insults the justice, and 
 tramples on the grace and mercy of God. Besides, in this 
 instance, the people of Israel murmured against their lead- 
 ers, because they were pressed by famine, and in want of 
 all the necessaries of life. But in the desert of Paran, bread 
 from heaven descended in daily showers around their en- 
 campment, in sufficient quantity to satisfy the whole con- 
 gregation ; they lived on angel s food ; they were satiated 
 with the bread of heaven; and by consequence, the flesh 
 which they demanded with so great eagerness and impor- 
 tunity, was not required to supply their necessity, but to 
 gratify their lustful desires. When they murmured against 
 Moses and Aaron in the wilderness of Sin, they had but 
 lately come out of Egypt — they were still in a rude and un- 
 tutored state, for the law was not yet given ; but in Paran 
 they rebelled, after long and various experience of the di- 
 vine care and goodness, after the law was given, and after 
 they had been instructed by many sufferings, in the evil 
 nature and bitter consequences of sin ; their conduct, there- 
 fore, was much more criminal, and deservedly subjected 
 them to severe castigation.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. Man did eat angels' food : he sent them 
 meat to the full. 26. He caused an east wind 
 to blow in the heaven ; and by his power he 
 brought in the south wind. 27. He rained 
 flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered 
 fowls like as the sand of the sea. 
 
 See on Ex. 16. 12, 13, 
 
 On this passage it has been asked. How can these winds 
 blow together, and at the same time bring up the quails" 
 from the sea into the desert 1 The Seventy interpreters, 
 and the Vulgate, found it so difficult to give "a satisfactory 
 answer to these queries, that they were induced to render 
 
 the first clause, " He removed the east wind from the hea- 
 ven;" as if the removal of one wind was necessarily suc- 
 ceeded by another. But this version cannot be admitted, 
 because the Psalmist clearly intends to represent the east 
 and the south winds, as the joint instruments of divine 
 goodness, which, by their united force, collected and brought 
 up the quails from the sea. If the Psalmist had meant to 
 express the removing of the east wind, he must have used 
 the phrase, (cDSfn ]v)from tJie heaven; but instead of this, 
 he uses the words, (a-^na'n) in or into the heavens, which con- 
 vey an idea quite the reverse. Our version, thereforCj 
 gives the true sense of the sacred text: He caused an east 
 wind to blow in the heaven ; that is, he introduced it for the 
 very purpose of bringing the quails into the camp. To 
 this may be added, that in the whole of this Psalm, as often 
 in the other poetical books of the Hebrews, the two hemi- 
 stiches are almost parallel, and mutually explain each other. 
 From whence it follows, that (yn-') yasah in this text, has 
 nearly the same meaning as its parallel verb, (:inri) vain- 
 hag, which signifies to introduce. This is accordingly the 
 sense which all interpreters, ancient and modern, "have 
 adopted, except the Septuagint and the Vulgate. 
 
 From this statement it appears, that the royal Psalmist in 
 this passage means to excite, not to remove the east wind ; 
 to introduce, not to expel it from the heavens. But to un- 
 derstand the matter clearly, let it be remembered, that the 
 people of Israel were at that time in the wilderness of Pa- 
 ran; at the distance of three days' journey from Sinai, di- 
 rectly north from the extremity of the Arabian gulf; and 
 by consequence, from Theman, the country from whence 
 the south wind blows, whose name it commonly bears, in 
 the Hebrew text, which brought the quails into the camp 
 of Israel. The same region is named (D->ip) kadim, that is, 
 the east; because it lay towards the southeast; and was de- 
 nominated sometimes by the one name, and sometimes by 
 the other. Although the cardinal winds are reckoned four 
 in number, which are again subdivided into many more ; 
 yet the ancient philosophers, and particularly Aristotle and 
 Theophrastus, distributed them into two, the north and the 
 south. The westerly winds they included in the north, be- 
 cause they are colder; and the easterly winds in the south, 
 because they are attended by a greater degree of heat! 
 But, since the east wind was anciently comprehended in the 
 south, the east and the south maybe used in this text as sy- 
 nonymous ; and by consequence, the east is the same, or 
 nearly the same, as the south wind. Nor is it in this text 
 alone, that the sacred writers ascribe to the east, what 
 might seem to be the proper effects of the south wind ; the 
 same thing may be observed in every part of scripture. It 
 burns up the fruits of the earth ; it blasts the vines, and 
 other fruit-bearing trees ; it drove back the Red Sea, and 
 opened a passage to the people of God; it dries up the 
 fountains of water ; and by its irresistible violence, it 
 dashes the ships of Tharshish in pieces ; and, in fine, scatters 
 destruction among the dwellings of wicked men, and sweeps 
 them from the face of the earth, into the silent mansions ol 
 the grave. The prophet Isaiah on this account, calls it a 
 rough wind ; and Jonah feelingly describes the vehemence 
 with which it beat upon his head till he fainted, and wish- 
 ed in himself to die. The Greek interpreters uniformly 
 render it the south wind ; and Theodoret regards these two 
 winds as nearly the same. Although, therefore, the phrase 
 (onpn nn) ruah hakadim, properly and precisely speaking, 
 denotes the east wind ; yet, because the east and the south 
 winds resemble each other in many particulars, the He- 
 brews, in the opinion of Bochart and other learned writers, 
 appear to have used these names promiscuously ; which is 
 the reason that (o-np) kadim is, in every part of the Greek 
 version, and particularly in the text under review, render- 
 ed the south wind. Thus the same wind seems to have 
 been intended by both these terms, the south or African 
 wind, which, from the interior of Egypt, wafted the quails 
 into the desert, and scattered them round the tents of Israel. 
 
 This difficulty admits of other solutions equally natural 
 and easy. The inspired writer maybe understood to mean 
 the southeast wind, which might bring the quails as well 
 from the east as from the south ; or, that both the east and 
 the south winds were employed on that occasion, the'first 
 to scatter about the tents of Israel the congregated flocks, 
 which the last had swept into the desert ; or, in order to se- 
 cure a complete supply for so great a multitude, to gather 
 at the same time from the east and the south, the widely dis« 
 
Ps. 78. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 303 
 
 persed troops of these birds, which, in distant regions of the 
 sky, were pursuing their annual journey from their winter 
 quarters, to the more temperate latitudes. 
 
 It is indeed objected by some writers, that the west wind, 
 rather than the east, ought to blow, in order to produce the 
 effect recorded by Moses ; and that, according to Pliny and 
 Aristotle, the quails do not trust themselves to the sky when 
 the humid and boisterous south wind blows ; and for this 
 reason, the winds blowing from the north and west, are dis- 
 tinguished by the name of ornithian, because they are fa- 
 vourable to the migratory tribes. But no miracle is in- 
 volved in this circumstance ; for these ancient authors only 
 mean, that the quails pursue their journey with greater dif- 
 ficulty, and are more easily taken when the south wind 
 blows ; while, according to the observation of others, these 
 birds of passage were brought back in the spring, by the 
 south winds, which are the most proper for conducting them 
 from the banks of the Nile and the shores of the Red Sea, 
 into the wilderness of Paran. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 31. The wrath of God came upon them, and 
 slew the fattest of them, and smote down the 
 chosen men of Israel. 
 
 See on Ps. 22. 12. 
 
 Ver. 45. He sent divers sorts of flies among them, 
 which devoured them; and frogs, which de- 
 stroyed them. 
 
 See on Ex. 8. 4. 
 
 Ver. 47. He destroyed their vines with hail, and 
 their sycamore-trees with frost. 
 
 The land of Egypt never produced a sufficient quantity 
 of wine to supply the wants of its inhabitants : but still it 
 •contained many vines, although it could not boast of ex- 
 tensive and loaded vineyards. The vines of Egypt are 
 conjoined by the Psalmist, with the sycamores, in his tri- 
 umphant song on the plagues which desolated that country, 
 and procured the liberation of his ancestors: ** He destroy- 
 ed their vines with hail, and their sycamore-trees with frost." 
 This was to the people of Egypt a very serious loss ; for 
 the grape has been in all ages a principal part of the viands, 
 with which they treated their friends. Norden was enter- 
 tained with coffee and grapes by the aga of Essauen : and 
 when Maillet resided in that country, the natives used the 
 young leaves of their vines even more than the fruit. A 
 principal article of their diet consist in minced meat, which 
 they wrap up in small parcels in vine leaves, and laying 
 thus one leaf upon another, they season it according to the 
 custom of their country, and make of it one of the most 
 delicate dishes presented on their tables. The remainder 
 of the vintage they convert into wine, of so delicious a taste 
 and flavour, that it was carried to Rome in the days of her 
 pride and luxury, and esteemed by epicures the third in the 
 number of their most esteemed wines. The use of wine 
 being prohibited by the Mohammedan law, very little is 
 manufactured at present; but it seems, in ancient times, 
 to have been produced in much greater abundance. In the 
 reign of the Pharaohs, it was certainly made in considerable 
 quantities for the use of the court, who probably could pro- 
 cure no such wine from other countries, nor were they 
 acquainted with such liquors as the great now drink in 
 Egypt; and consequently the loss of their vines, as the 
 sacred writer insinuates, must have been considerable. 
 
 The grapes of Egypt are said to be much smaller than 
 those which grow in the land of Canaan. Dandini, though 
 an Italian, seems to have been surprised at the extraordi- 
 nary size of the grapes produced in the vineyards of Leb- 
 anon. They are as large as prunes, and as may be in- 
 ferred from the richness and flavour of the wines for which 
 the mountains of Lebanon have been renowned from time 
 immemorial, of the most delicious taste. To the size and 
 flavour of these grapes, brought by the spies to the camp 
 in the wilderness, the Italian traveller, little versed, it 
 should seem, in the history of the Old Testament, imputes 
 the ardour with which the people of Israel prosecuted the 
 conquest of Palestine. The magnificent cluster which the 
 spies brought from Eshcol, was certainly fitted, in no com- 
 mon degree, to stimulate the parched armies of Israel to 
 50 
 
 deeds of heroic valour ; but their kindling spirit was effec- 
 tually damped by the report of the spies, who were intimi- 
 dated by the robust and martial appearance of the Canaan- 
 ites, the strength of their cities, and the gigantic stature of 
 the sons of Anak. 
 
 The grapes produced in the land of Egypt, although very 
 delicious, are extremely small : but those which grow in 
 the vineyards of Coelo Syria and Palestine, swell to a sur- 
 prising bigness. The famous bunch of Eshcol required 
 the strength of two men to bear it. This difference suffi- 
 ciently accounts for the surprise and pleasure which the 
 people of Israel manifested, when they first beheld, in the 
 barren and sandy desert, the fruits which grew in their fu- 
 ture inheritance. The extraordinary size of the grapes ol 
 Canaan, is confirmed by the authority of a modern traveller. 
 In traversing the country about Bethlehem, Doubdan found 
 a most delightful valley full of aromatic herbs and rose 
 bushes, and planted with vines, which he supposed were of 
 the choicest kind : it was actually the valley of Eshcol, 
 from whence the spies carried that prodigious bunch ot 
 grapes to Moses, of which we read in the book of Num- 
 bers. That writer, it is true, saw no such cluster, for he 
 did not visit that fruitful spot in the time of the vintage •, 
 but the monks assured him, they still found some, even in 
 the present neglected state of the country, which weighed 
 ten. or twelve pounds. 
 
 The vineyards of Canaan produce grapes of different 
 kinds ; some of them are red, and some white, but the 
 greater part are black. To the juice of the red grape, the 
 sacred writers make frequent allusions : " Wherefore art 
 thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that 
 treadeth in the wine fat 1" '* In that day, sing ye unto her 
 a vineyard of red wine : I the Lord do keep it." It is, 
 therefore, with strict propriety, the inspired writer calls it 
 " the blood of the grape," a phrase which seems intended 
 to indicate the colour of the juice, or the wine produced 
 from it : " Thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape." 
 
 The sycamore forms the middle link in the vegetable 
 kingdom, between the fig and the mulberry ; and partakes, 
 according to some natural historians, of the nature of both. 
 This is the reason the Greeks call it avKaftopog, — a name 
 compounded of cvKOi, a fig-tree, and nopos^ a mulberry. It 
 resembles the fig-tree in the shape and size of its fruit ; 
 which grows neither in clusters, nor at the end of the 
 branches, but by a very singular law, sticking to the trunk 
 of the tree. Its taste is much like that of the wild fig, and 
 pretty agreeable : Pliny says the fruit is very sweet. 
 
 It may seem strange that so inferior a tree as the syca- 
 more should be classed by the Psalmist with the choicest 
 vines, in his ode on the plagues of Egypt : " He destroyed 
 their vines with hail, and their sycamore-trees with frost.** 
 Many other trees, it may be supposed, might be of much 
 greater consequence to them ; and in particular, the date, 
 which, on account of its fruit, the modern Egyptians hold 
 in the highest estimation. But it ought to be remembered, 
 that several trees which are now found in Egypt, and highly 
 valued, might not then be intro<luced. Very few trees at 
 present in Egypt, are supposed to "he natives of the country. 
 If this idea be just, the sycamore and the vine might, at 
 that early period, be in reality the most valuable trees in 
 that kingdom. But, admitting that the sycamore was, in 
 respect of intrinsic properties or general utility, much in- 
 ferior to some other trees which they possessed, accidental 
 circumstances might give it an importance to which it had 
 originally no claim. The shade of this umbrageous tree 
 is so grateful to the inhabitants of those warm latitudes, 
 that they plant it along the side of the ways near their villa- 
 ges ; and as a full-grown sycamore branches out to so great 
 a distance, that it forms a canopy for a circle of forty paces 
 in diameter, a single row of trees on one side of the way 
 is sufficient. It is often seen stretching its arms over the 
 houses, to screen the fainting inhabitant from the glowing 
 heats of the summer. This was a benefit so important to 
 them, that it obtained a place in the divine promise : " They 
 shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree i" 
 and to show at once the certainty of the promise, and the 
 value of the favour, it is repeated by another inspired 
 prophet: "Ye shall call every man his neighbour under 
 his vine and under his fig-tree." Now, it appears from 
 the most authentic records^ that the ancient Egyptian cof- 
 fins, intended to preserve to many generations the bodies 
 of departed relatives; the little* square boxes which were 
 
394 
 
 PSALMS, 
 
 Ps. 78—80, 
 
 placed at the feet of the mummies, enclosing the instru- 
 ments and utensils in miniature, wliich belonged to the 
 trade and occupation of the deceased ; the figures and in- 
 struments of wood found in the catacombs, — are all made 
 of sycamore wood, which, though spongy and porous to 
 appearance, has continued entire and uncorrupted for at 
 least three thousand years. The innumerable barks which 
 ply on the river and over all the vale, in the time of the 
 inundation, are also fabricated of sycamore wood. But 
 besides the various important uses to which the wood was 
 applied, the sycamore produces a species of fig, upon which 
 the people almost entirely subsist, thinking themselves well 
 regaled, when they have a piece of bread, a couple of 
 sycamore figs, and a pitcher filled with water from the 
 Nile. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 63. The fire consumed their young- men ; 
 and their maidens were not given to marriage. 
 
 This is described as one of the effects of God's anger 
 upon Israel. In Hindoo families, sometimes, the marriage 
 of daughters is delayed; this is, however, always consid- 
 ered as a great calamity and disgrace. If a person sees 
 girls more than twelve years of age unmarried in a family, 
 he says, " How is it, that that Bramin can sit at home, 
 and eat his food with comfort, when his daughters, at such 
 an age, remain unmarried 1" (Ward.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 64. Their priests fell by the sword; and 
 their widows made no lamentation. 
 
 When the cholera swept off such multitudes, the cities 
 from every house had a fearful effect on the passers by ; 
 but, after some time, though the scourge remained, the 
 people ceased to lament, asking, " Why should we mourn 1 
 the Amma" i. e. the goddess, " is at her play." Thus, in- 
 stead of the shrieks and howls so common on such occa- 
 sions, scarcely a sigh or a whisper was heard from the 
 survivers. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 66. And he smote his enemies in the hinder 
 parts ; he put them to a perpetual reproach. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, " And smote his enemies in the hinder 
 parts, and he put them to perpetual disgrace." Some com- 
 mentators think this alludes " to the emerods inflicted on 
 the Philistines;" but the figure is used in reference to 
 those who are conquered, and who consequently show their 
 backs when running away. " I will make that fellow show 
 his back," means, " I will cause him to run from me." It 
 is also considered exceedingly disgraceful to be beaten on 
 that part. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM LXXIX. 
 Ver. 2. The dead bodies of thy servants have they 
 given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, 
 the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the 
 earth. 3. Their blood have they shed like 
 water round about Jerusalem ; and there was 
 none to bury them. 
 
 See on 1 Sam. 31. 9. 
 
 Criminals were at other times executed in public ; and 
 then commonly wil!!iout the city. To such executions 
 without the gate, the Psalmist undoubtedly refers in this 
 complaint : *' The dead bodi^of thy saints have they given 
 to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy 
 saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they 
 shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was 
 none to bury them." The last clause admits of two senses. 
 1st. There was no friend or relations left to bury them. 
 2d. None were allowed to perform this last oflfice. The des- 
 potism of eastern j)rinces often proceeds to a degree of ex- 
 travagance which is apt to fill the mind with astonishment 
 and horror. It has been thought, from time immemorial, 
 ^highly criminal to bury those who had lost their lives by 
 the hand of an executioner, without permission. In Mo- 
 rocco, no person dares to bury the body of a malefactor 
 without an order from the emperor; and Windus, who 
 visited that country, speaking of a man who was sawed in 
 two, iniorms us, that " his body must have remained to be 
 
 eaten by the dogs, if the emperor had not pardoned him ; 
 an extravagant custom to pardon a man after he is dead ; 
 but unless he does so, no person dares bury the body." To 
 such a degree of savage barbarity it is probable the ene- 
 mies of God's people carried their opposition, that no per- 
 son dared to bury the deadbodies of their innocent victims. 
 — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 11. Let the sighing of the prisoner come be- 
 fore thee; according to the greatness of thy 
 power preserve thou those that are appointed 
 to die. 
 
 To illustrate the miserable condition of an oriental pris- 
 oner, Chardin relates a story of, a very great Armenian 
 merchant, who for some reason was thrown into prison. 
 So long as he bribed the jailer with large donations, he was 
 treated with the greatest kindness and attention ; but upon 
 the party who sued the Armenian presenting a consider- 
 able sum, first to the judge and afterward to the jailer, the 
 prisoner first experienced a change of treatment. His 
 privileges were retrenched ; he was then closely confined ; 
 then treated with such inhumanity, as not to be permitted 
 to drink but once in twenty-four hours, and this in the hot- 
 test time of the year ; and no person was suffered to see him 
 but the servants of the prison ; at length he was thrown into 
 a dungeon, where he was in a quarter of an hour brought 
 to the point, which all this severe usage was intended to 
 gain. After such a relation, we cannot be surprised to find 
 the sacred writers placing so strong an emphasis on "the 
 sighing of the prisoner," and speaking of its coming before 
 God, and the necessity of almighty power being exerted for 
 his deliverance. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM LXXX. 
 Ver. 4. O Lord God of hosts, how long wihthou 
 be angry against the prayer of thy people- 
 
 Hebrew, "wilt thou smoke 1" Ainsworth, "Jehovah, 
 God of hosts; how long wilt thou smoke against the prayer 
 of thy people V Of an angry man, it is said, " He is con- 
 tinually smokmg." " My friend, why do you smoke s« 
 to-day 1" " This smoke drives me away; I cannot bear 
 it." " How many days is this smoke to remain in my 
 house 7" " What care I for the smoke 1 It does not hurt 
 me." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 5. Thou feedest them with the bread of 
 tears ; and givest them tears to drink in great 
 measure. 
 
 When a master or a father is angry, he says to his chil- 
 dren or servants, " Yes, in future you shall have rice, and 
 the water of your eyes to eat.". " You shall have the water 
 of your eyes in abundance to drink." " Alas ! alas ! I am 
 ever drinking tears." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 3. The boar out of the wood doth waste it, 
 and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 18. 8. 
 
 Wild hogs are exceedingly numerous and destructive in 
 the East: hence a fine garden will in one nisrht be com- 
 pletely destroyed. The herd is generally led by old boars, 
 that go along with great speed and fierceness. Should 
 there be a fence, they Avill go round till they find a weak 
 place, and then they all rush in. In travelling, "sometimes 
 a large patch of grass may be seen completely torn up, 
 which has been done by the wild hog for the sake of the 
 roots. These animals are also very ferocious, as they will 
 not hesitate to attack either man or beast, when placed in 
 circumstances of difficulty. One of them once ran at a 
 friend of mine, when travelling in his palanquin ; but the 
 creature, not calculating well as to the speed of the coolies, 
 only just struck the pole with his tusk ; but the hole he left 
 behind in the hard wood was nearly half an inch deep.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Under the beautiful allegory of a vine, the royal Psalm- 
 ist describes the rise and fall of the Jewish common Avealth, 
 in this address to Jehovah : " Thou hast brought a vine out 
 of Egypt, thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. 
 
Ps. 81. 
 
 PSALMS, 
 
 395 
 
 Thou preparedst a room before it, and didst cause it to take 
 deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered 
 with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the 
 goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and 
 her branches unto the river. Why hast thou then broken 
 down her hedges, so that all they that pass by the way, do 
 pluck her 1 The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and 
 the wild beast of the field doth devour it." This terrible 
 Animal is both fierce and cruel, and so swift that few of the 
 savage tribes can outstrip him in running. His chief abode, 
 says Forbes, is in the forests and jungles; but when the 
 grain is nearly ripe, he commits great ravages in the fields 
 and sugar plantations. The powers that subverted the 
 Jewish nation, are compared to the wild boar and the 
 wild beast of the field, by which the vine is wasted and 
 devoured; and no figure could be more happily chosen. 
 That ferocious and destructive animal, not satisfied with 
 devouring the fruit, lacerates and breaks with his sharp 
 and powerful tusks the branches of the vine, or with his 
 snout digs it up by the roots, pollutes it with his touch, or 
 tramples it under his feet. In Egypt, according to Herod- 
 otus and other writers, the labours of this ferocious animal 
 are rendered useful to man. When the Nile has retired 
 within his proper channel, the husbandman scatters his 
 grain upon the irrigated soil, and sends out a number of 
 swine, that partly by treading it with their feet, partly by 
 digging it with their snout, immediately turn it up, and by 
 this means cover the seed. But in every other part of the 
 world, the hog is odious to the husbandman. It was an es- 
 tablished custom among the Greeks and Romans, to offer a 
 hog in sacrifice to Ceres, at the beginning of harvest, and 
 another to Bacchus, before they began to gather the vint- 
 age; because that animal is equally hostile to the growing 
 corn and the loaded vineyard. From these examples it is 
 quite evident that the prophet meant to describe, under the 
 figure of a wild boar, the cruel and implacable enemies of 
 the church. And it is extremely probable, that he alluded 
 to some more remarkable adversary, as Sennacherib, the 
 king of Assyria, or Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon; 
 both of whom were not less ferocious and destructive than 
 the savage by which they were symbolized. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 17. Let thy hand be upon the man of thy 
 right hand, upon the son of man whom thou 
 madest strong for thyself 
 
 If we would understand the genuine import of this 
 phrase, we must attend to a custom which obtained in 
 Judea and other eastern countries. At meals the master 
 . of the feast placed the person whom he loved best on his 
 right hand, as a token of love and respect : and as they sat 
 on couches, in the intervals between the dishes, when the 
 master leaned upon his left elbow, the man at his right 
 hand, leaning also on his, would naturally repose his head 
 on the master's bosom ; while at the same time the master 
 laid his right hand on the favourite's shoulder or side, in 
 testimony of his favourable regard. See also John xxi. 20. 
 { Pirie.) — Burder. 
 
 PSALM LXXXI. 
 
 Ver. 2. Take a psalm, and bring hither the tim- 
 brel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery. 
 
 By timbrels are meant the hand-instruments, still used in 
 the East, and called diff, the same name which stands here 
 in the Hebrew text. By the Hebrew word Mnnor, here 
 translated harp, we are probably to understand a stringed 
 instrument, a kind of guitar, similar to those called by the 
 Arabs, tawbura. Josephus says, that this instrument had 
 ten strings, and was played with a plectrum ; in more an- 
 cient times, however, it appears to have been played with 
 the fingers, as we may infer from 1 Sam. xvi. 23. xviii. 16. 
 xix. 9. It is almost always mentioned in the Old Testa- 
 ment on occasions of cheerful entertainments and rejoi- 
 cings.- The name of the third instrument, njibel, men- 
 tioned in the text, and here translated psaltery, has also 
 been preserved in the Greek and Latin languages;, nabla, 
 nablium. As the Hebrew word signifies a leathern bottle, 
 it has been conjectured that the sounding-board was of that 
 Bhape. But St. Jerome and Isidore say that the instrument 
 resembled a Greek delta inverted, v- This leads us to 
 oonjecture that nabel was that kind of lyre so frequently 
 
 found on ancient monuments, and in statues of Apollo. A 
 similar stringed instrument is still usual in the East. Nie- 
 buhr has given a description and drawing of one in his 
 Travels, vol. i. p. 179. He saw it in the hand of the bar- 
 bari, who came from Dongola to Cairo, and call it in their 
 language kussir, whereas the Arabs call it, like other foreign 
 stringed instruments, tavrbo-a. " The belly of it is like a 
 wooden dish, with a small hole below, and having a skin 
 stretched over it, which is higher in the middle than on the 
 sides. Tvv^o sticks, which are united at the top by a third, 
 go obliquely through the skin. Five catgut strings lie over 
 it, supported by a bridge. There are no pegs to this in- 
 strument, but each string is tuned by having some linen 
 wound with it round the transverse stick. It is played in 
 two different ways, namely, either pinched with the fingers, 
 or by passing a piece of leather, which hangs at the side, 
 over the strings ; and my barbari danced as he played." 
 According to the observation of one Rabbi Simeon, quoted 
 by Rabbi Salomon Jarchi, in his commentary on the above 
 passage in the Psalms, kinnor diflfered from nabel only in 
 number of strings and pegs. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 1 0. I am the Lord thy God, which brought 
 thee out of the land of Egypt : open thy mouth 
 wide, and I will fill it. 
 
 " My friend, you tell me you are in great distress : take 
 my advice : go to the king, and open your mouth wide." " I 
 went to the great man and opened my mouth, but he has 
 not given me any thing." " I opened my mouth to him, 
 and have gained all I wanted." " Why open your mouth 
 there 1 it will be all in vain." Does a person not wish to 
 be troubled, he says to the applicant, " Do not say Ah, ah ! 
 here;" which means, do not open your mouth, because that 
 word cannot be pronounced without opening the mouth. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. He should have fed them also with the 
 finest of the wheat : and with honey out of thf^ 
 rock should I have satisfied thee. 
 
 The soil, both of the maritime and inland parts of Syria 
 and Phenicia, is of a light loamy nature, and easily culti- 
 vated. Syria may be considered as a country consisting of 
 three long strips of land, exhibiting diflferent qualities : one 
 extending along the Mediterranean, forming a warm hu- 
 m.id valley, the salubrity of which is doubtful, but which is 
 extremely fertile ; the other, which forms its frontier, is a 
 hilly, rugged soil, but more salubrious; the third, lying be- 
 yond the eastern hills, combines the drought of the latter, 
 with the heat of the former. We have seen by what a 
 happy combination of climate and soil this province unites 
 in a small compass the advantages and productions of dif- 
 ferent zones, insomuch that the God of natur? seems to 
 have designed it for one of the most agreeable habitations 
 of this continent. The soil is a fine mould, without stones, 
 and almost without even the smallest pebble. Volney 
 himself, who furnishes the particulars of this statement, is 
 compelled to admit, that what is said of its actual fertility, 
 exactly corresponds with the idea given of it in the Hebrew 
 scriptures. Wherever wheat is sown, if the rains do noi 
 fail, it repays the cultivator with profusion, and grows to 
 the height of a man. The Mount of Olives, near Jerusa- 
 lem, and several other districts in Judea and Galilee, are 
 covered with olive plantations, whose fruit is equal to any 
 produced in the Levant. The fig-trees in the neighbour- 
 hood of Joppa, are equally beautiful and productive as the 
 olive. Were the Holy Land as well inhabited and culti- 
 vated as formerly, Dr. Shaw declares it would still be 
 more fruitful than the very best part of Syria or Phenicia ; 
 for the soil itself is generally much richer, and all things 
 considered, yields a preferable crop. Thus, the cotton, 
 which is gathered in the plains of Rama, Esdraelon, and 
 Zabulon, is in greater esteem, according to that excellent 
 writer, than what is cultivated near Sidon and Tripoli ; 
 neither is it possible for pulse, wheat, or grain of any kind, 
 to be richer or better tasted, than what is commonly sold at 
 Jerusalem. The barrenness, or scarcity rather, of which 
 some authors may either ignorantly or maliciously com- 
 plain, does not proceed, in the opinion of Dr. Shaw, from 
 the incapacity or natural unfruitful ness of the country, \m 
 
396 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 84. 
 
 from the want of inhabitants, and from the great aversion 
 to labour and industry in those few by whom it is possess- 
 ed. The perpetual discords and depredations among the 
 petty princes who share this fine country, greatly obstruct 
 the operations of the husbandman, who must have small 
 encouragement to sow, when it is quite uncertain who 
 shall gather in the harvest. It is in other respects a fertile 
 country, and still capable of afibrding to its neighbours the 
 like ample supplies of corn and oil, which it is known to 
 have done in the days of Solomon, who gave yearly to 
 Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his 
 household, and twenty measures of pure oil. 
 
 The parts about Jerusalem particularly, being rocky and 
 mountainous, have been therefore supposed to be barren 
 and unfruitful: yet, granting this conclusion, which is 
 however far from being just, a country is not to be charac- 
 terized from one single district of it, but from the whole. 
 And besides, the blessing which was given to Judah was 
 not of the same kind with the blessing of Asher or of Issa- 
 char, that " his bread should be fat or his land pleasant," 
 but that " his eyes should be red with wine, and his teeth 
 should be white with milk." In the estimation of the Jew- 
 ish lawgiver, milk and honey (the chief dainties and sub- 
 sistence of the earlier ages, as they still continue to be of 
 the Bedouin Arabs) are the glory of all lands ; these pro- 
 ductions are either actually enjoyed in the lot of Judah, or 
 at least, might be obtained by proper care and application. 
 The abundance of wine alone is wanting at present ; yet 
 the acknowledged goodness of that little, which is still 
 made at Jerusalem and Hebron, clearly proves, that these 
 barren rocks, as they are called, would yield a much 
 greater quantity, if the abstemious Turk and Arab would 
 permit the vine to be further propagated and improved. 
 
 Wild honey, which formed a part of the food of John the 
 Baptist in the wilderness, may indicate to us the great 
 plenty of it in those deserts ; and, that consequently taking 
 the hint from nature, and enticing the bees into hives and 
 larger cojonies, it might be produced in much greater quan- 
 tity. Josephus accordingly calls Jericho the honey-bearing 
 &ountry. The great abundance of wild honey is often 
 mentioned in scripture ; a memorable instance of which 
 occurs in the first book of Samuel : " And all they of the 
 land came to a wood, and there w^as honey upon the 
 ground; and when the people were come to the wood, be- 
 hold the honey dropped." This circumstance perfectly 
 accords with the view which Moses gave of the promised 
 land, in the song with which he closed his long and event- 
 ful career : " He made him to suck honey out of the rock, 
 and oil out of the flinty rock." That good land preserved 
 its character in the time of David, who thus celebrates the 
 distinguishing bounty of God to his chosen people : " He 
 would have fed them also with the finest of the wheat, and 
 with honey out of the rock would I have satisfied thee." 
 In these holy strains, the sacred poet availed himself of the 
 most valuable products of Canaan, to lead the faith and 
 hope of his nation to bounties of a higher order, of greater 
 price, and more urgent necessity, than any which the soil 
 even of that favoured region, stimulated and sustained as it 
 certainly was by the special blessing of heaven, produced, 
 — the bounties of sovereign and redeeming mercy, pur- 
 chased with the blood, and imparted by the spirit of the 
 Son of God.— Paxton. 
 
 PSALM LXXXIV. 
 
 Ver. 1. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O 
 
 Lord of hosts! 2. My soul longeth, yea, 
 
 even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord ; my 
 
 heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. 
 
 The first part of the Psalm cannot be better illustrated 
 (let there be no misinterpretation of our meaning) than by 
 the example of those who go in pilgrimage to Mecca. As 
 their enthusiasm increases in proportion as they advance 
 through the desert to the holy place ; as they are used to be 
 ravished when they behold the shining towers of the Kaaba, 
 so does the journey to Jerusalem proceed with increasing 
 longing spirit and joy through the scorched valleys. They 
 become as it were a well of water, for already at* Baca they 
 behold the face of Jehovah. — Rosenmtjller. 
 
 A parallel instance of pious enthusiasm is exhibited in 
 Dr Clarke's account of his approach to the Holy City, 
 
 (Travels in the Holy Land, p. 144.) " At three P. M. we 
 again mounted our horses, and proceeded on our route. 
 No sensation of fatigue or heat could counterbalance the 
 eagerness and zeal which animated all our party, in the 
 approach to Jerusalem; every individual pressed forward, 
 hoping first to announce the joyful intelligence of its ap- 
 pearance. "We passed some insignificant ruins, either of an- 
 cient buildings or of modern villages; but had they been 
 of more importance, they would have excited little notice, 
 at the time, so earnestly bent was every mind towards the 
 main object of interest and curiosity. At length, after about 
 two hours had been passed in this state of anxiety and sus- 
 pense, ascending a hill towards the south, ' Hagiofolis !' 
 exclaimed a Greek in the van of our cavalcade : awd in- 
 stantly throwing himself from his horse, was seen bare- 
 headed, upon his knees, facing the prospect he surveyed. 
 Suddenly the sight burst upon us all. Who shall describe 
 it 1 The effect produced was that of total silence through- 
 out the whole company. Many of the party, by an imme- 
 diate impulse, took off" their hats, as if entering a church, 
 without being sensible of so doing. The Greeks and 
 Catholics shed torrents of tears ; and presently beginning 
 to cross themselves with unfeigned devotion, asked if they 
 might be permitted to take off" the covering from their feet, 
 and proceed, barefooted, to the Holy Sepulchre. We had 
 not been prepared for the grandeur of the spectacle, which 
 the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and ruined 
 town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jeru- 
 salem, we beheld, as it were, a flourishing and steady me- 
 tropolis ; presenting a magnificent assemblage of domes, 
 towers, palaces, churches, and monasteries ; all of which, 
 glittering in the sun's rays, shone with inconceivable splen- 
 dour. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was en- 
 grossed by its noble and interesting appearance. The lofty 
 hills whereby it is surrounded give to the city itself an 
 appearance of elevation inferior to that which it really pos- 
 sesses." — B. 
 
 Ver. 3. Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, 
 and the swallow a nest for herself, where she 
 may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord 
 of hosts, my King, and my God. 
 
 The ibis was so venerated in Egypt, as to be an allowed 
 inmate in sacred structures. Something of the same kind 
 occurs also in Persia. " Within a mosque at Oudjicun, 
 lies interred the son of a king, called Schah-Zadeh-Imam 
 Dgiafer, whom they reckon a saint: the dome is rough cast 
 over ; before the mosque there is a court, well planted with 
 many high plane-trees, on which we saw a great many 
 storks that haunt thereabout all the year round." (Theve- 
 not.) 
 
 By the altars of Jehovah we are to understand the tem- 
 ple. The words probably refer to the custom of several 
 nations of antiquity, that "birds which build their nests on 
 the temples, or within the limits of them, were not suffered to 
 be driven away, much less killed, but found a secure and 
 uninterrupted dwelling. Hence, when Aristodikus dis- 
 turbed the birds'-nests of the temple of KumEe,and took the 
 young from them, a voice, according to a tradition preserv- 
 ed by Herodotus, is said to have spoken these words from 
 the interior of the temple: " Most villanous of men, how 
 darest thou do such a thing*? to drive away such as seek 
 refuge in my temple 1" The Athenians were so enraged 
 at Atarbes, who had killed a sparrow which built on the 
 temple of ^sculapius, that they killed him. Among the 
 Arabs, who are more closely related to the Hebrews, birds 
 which have built their nests on the temple of Mecca were 
 inviolable from the earliest times. In the very ancient 
 poem of a Dschorhamidish prince, published by A. Schul- 
 tens, m which he laments that his tribe had been deprived 
 of the protection of the sanctuary of Mecca, it is said, 
 
 We lament the house, whose dove 
 Was never suffered to be hurt, 
 She remained there secure ; in it also 
 The sparrow built its nest. 
 
 Another ancient Arabian poet, Nabega, the Dhobianit, 
 swears " by the sanctuary which affords shejter to the birds 
 which seek it there." Niebuhrsays: " I will observe, that 
 among the Mohammedans, not only is the Kaaba a refuge 
 for pigeons, but also on the mosques over the graves of Ali 
 and Hossein, on the Dsjamea, or chief mosque at Helle 
 
Ps. 85. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 39T 
 
 and in other cities, they are equally undisturbed." — Rosen- 
 
 MUr.LER. 
 
 The term in this passage is connected with the proper 
 name of the swallow ; and therefore cannot be understood 
 as the common name of the feathered race, bftt like the 
 other, must denote a particular species of bird, which, by 
 the general suffrage of interpreters, is the sparrow. This 
 idea is confirmed by the plaintive description of David, 
 according to which, that little bird, under the direction of 
 instinct alone, provides a habitation for herself, in the 
 abodes of men, where she rears her young, and enjoys the 
 sweets of repose. Some of these birds the Psalmist had 
 probably seen constructing their nests, and propagating 
 their kind, in the buildings near the altar, or in the courts 
 of the temple ; and piously longs to revisit a scene so dear 
 to his heart. The altar is here by a synecdoche of a part 
 for the whole, to be understood of the tabernacle, among 
 the rafters of which the sparrow and the swallow were al- 
 lowed to nestle; or rather, for the buildings which sur- 
 rounded the sacred edifice, where the priests and their as- 
 sistants had their ordinary residence. Even these exterior 
 buildings were extremely desirable to the exiled monarch, 
 because oi their vicinity to the splendid symbols of the 
 divine presence, and the instruments of his worship. The 
 holy Psalmist sometimes wished for the wings of a dove, 
 to waft him into the desert from the cruel oppression of his 
 enemies : but on this occasion, when he is compelled to flee 
 for his life into the wilderness, he longs for the enjoyment 
 of a sparrow, which flew unobserved into the courts of the 
 tabernacle, and flitted among the beams without interrup- 
 tion. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. Who passing through the valley of Baca, 
 make it a well : the rain also filleth the pools. 
 
 The words, Who passing through the valley of Baca, 
 make it a pool : the rain also filleth the pools,— are, in the 
 margin, Who passing through the valley of mulberry-trees. 
 The Seventy, in Chronicles, render it pear-trees ; in which 
 they are followed by Aquila and the Vulgate. Some think 
 Baca, in the eighty-fourth Psalm, is the name of a rivulet, 
 which burst out of the earth, at the foot of a mountain, with 
 a plaintive murmur, from which it derived its name. But 
 it is more probable that Baca is the name of some shrub 
 or tree. Those who translate it the mulberry-tree, to 
 illustrate the passage in the Psalm, pretend it grows best in 
 the dry groimd ; but this seems to be unfounded. Marinus 
 imagines, that Baca signifies the mulberry-tree, because 
 the fruit of the mulberry exudes a juice resembling trees. 
 Parkhurst rather thinks that Baca means a kind of large 
 shriib, which the Arabs likewise call Baca, and which 
 probably was so named from its distilling an odoriferous 
 gum. For Baca with an alepk, seems to be" related to Bacah 
 with a hay, which signifies to ooze, to distil in small quan- 
 tities, to weep or shed tears. This idea perfectly corre- 
 sponds with the description which Celsius has giveiri of this 
 valley. It is not, according to him, a place abounding with 
 fountains and pools of water, but rugged and embarrassed 
 with bushes and stones, which could not be passed through 
 without labour and suflJering; a striking emblem of that 
 vale of thorns and tears, through which all believers must 
 pass to the heavenly Jerusalem. 
 
 The great uncertainty among interpreters concerning 
 the real meaning of the term Becalm, has induced Mr. 
 Harmer to hazard a conjecture, that the tree meant in this 
 passage is the weeping-willow. But this plant is not found 
 m a dry sandy vale, where the thirsty traveller is compelled 
 to dig for water, and to form cisterns in the earth, to receive 
 the rain of heaven. In such a situation, we expect to find 
 the pungent aromatic shrub distilling its fragrant gum; 
 not the weeping-willow, the favourite situation of which 
 IS the watery plain, or the margin of the brook. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 7. They go from strength to strength; every' 
 07ie of them in Zion appeareth before God. 
 
 The scarcity of water in the East makes travellers particu- 
 larly careful to take up their lodgings as much as possible 
 nearsome river or fountain. D'Herbelot informs us, that the 
 Mohammedans have dug wells in the deserts, for the accom- 
 modation of those who go in pilgrimage to Mecca. To con- 
 
 veniences perhaps of this kind, made, or renewed, by the de- 
 vout Israelites in i h e valley of Baca,to facilitate their going up 
 to Jerusalem, the Psalmist may refer in these words. Hence 
 also there appears less of accident than we commonly think 
 of, in Jacob's lodging on the banks of Jabbolc, and the men 
 of David awaiting for him by the brook Besor, when they 
 could not holdout with him in his march. — Harmer. 
 
 In this Psalm are described the journeys of the Israelites 
 to their feasts at Jerusalem, from the distant parts of the 
 country. It mentions their digging wells in the valley of 
 Baca, which, in the rainy season, were filled with excel- 
 lent M'ater, and became a great convenience to succeeding 
 travellers. In reference to them, the travellers are said to 
 have gone from strength to strength till they arrived at 
 Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, to appear before God there, 
 which M'as the object of their journey. When a weary 
 traveller arrives at a well in the wilderness, his strength is 
 nearly gone, but on drinking of its water he is revived and 
 strengthened for another stage; and, on falling in with an- 
 other well, he receives fresh vigour for again proceeding 
 on his journey. So that going from strength to strength 
 may literally mean from well to well; though some under- 
 standby this, going from company to company. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 10. For a day in thy courts is better than a 
 thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in 
 the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents 
 of wickedness. 
 
 Ainsworth, " I have chosen to sit at the threshold, in the 
 house of my God." And Dr. Boothroyd, " Abide, or sit, at 
 the threshold." I believe the word door-keeper does not 
 convey the proper meaning of the words, " to sit at the 
 threshold ;" because the preference of the Psalmist was evi- 
 dently given to a very humble situation, whereas that of a 
 door-keeper, in eastern estimation, is truly respectable and 
 confidential. The gods are always represented as having 
 door-keepers, who were of great dignity and power, as they 
 also fought against other deities. In the heathen temples 
 there are images near the entrance, called kaval-kdran, i. e. 
 guards or door-keepers. Kings and great men also have 
 officers, whose business it is to stand at the door, or gate, 
 as keepers of the entrance. The most dignified native of 
 Ceylon is the Maha Modeliar of the governor's gate, to 
 whom all others must make obeisance. The word door- 
 keeper, therefore, does not convey the idea of humility, but 
 of honour. 
 
 The marginal reading, however, " to sit at the threshold," 
 at once strikes an eastern mind as a situation of deep hu- 
 mility. See the poor heathen devotee, he goes and sits near 
 the threshold of his temple. Look at the beggar, he sits, 
 or prostrates himself at the threshold of the door or gate, 
 till he shall have gained his suit, " I am in great trouble ; 
 I will go and lie down at the door of the temple." " Friend, 
 you appear to be very ill." — " Yes !" " Then go and pros- 
 trate yourself at the threshold of the temple !" " Muttoo, I 
 can get you the situation of a Peon ; will you accept of it 1" — 
 " Excuse me, sir, I pray you ; I had better lie at your thresh- 
 old than do that." " Go, do that ! it is far better for me to 
 lie at the threshold as a common beggar." I think, there- 
 fore, the Psalmist refers to the attitude of a beggar, a sup- 
 pliant at the threshold of the house of the Lord, as being 
 preferable to the splendid dwellings of the wicked. — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 PSALM LXXXV. 
 
 Ver. 10. Mercy and truth are met together; 
 righteousness and peace have kissed each other. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, " Righteousness and peace have em- 
 braced." In the Hindoo book called Iraku-Vangesham, it 
 is said, the " lotus flowers were kissing each other." When 
 the branches of two separate trees meet, in consequence of 
 strong winds, it is said, " they kiss each other." When a 
 young palmirah- tree, which "grows near the parent stock, 
 begins to move, (by the wind,) the people say, " Ah ! the 
 mother is kissing the daughter." A woman says of the 
 ornaments around her neck, " Yes, these embrace my 
 neck." Has a female put on the nose-ring, it is, it is said', 
 kissing her. The idea, therefore, is truly oriental, and 
 shows the intimate union of righteousness and peace. — 
 Roberts, 
 
398 
 
 PSALMS, 
 
 Ps. 87—90. 
 
 PSALM LXXXVII. 
 Ver. 2. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more 
 than all the dwellings of Jacob. 
 
 " Truly, I love the gates of Chinna Amma more than 
 the gates of Pun- Amma." " No, no ; he does not love the 
 gates of that woman ; he will never marry her." " He is 
 angry with my gates ; he will not pass them." "Love his 
 gates ! ay, for a good reason ; he gets plenty of help from 
 them."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. As well the singers as the players on in- 
 struments shall be there : all my springs are 
 in thee. 
 
 A man of great charities is said to have many springs : 
 " His heart is like ihe springs of a well." " Where are my 
 springs, my lord ; are they not in yonl" Tears also are 
 spoken of as coming from springs in the body ; thus the 
 mother of Ramar said to him, in consequence of great sor- 
 row, " The waters of my eyes have dried up the springs of 
 affection." — Roberts. 
 
 • PSALM LXXXIX. 
 
 Ver. 9. Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when 
 the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. 
 10. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one 
 that is slain : thou hast scattered thine enemies 
 with thy strong arm. 11. The heavens are 
 thine, the earth also is thine : as for the world, 
 and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. 
 
 See on Eph. 6. 16. 
 
 Ver. 12. The north and the south thou hast crea- 
 ted them : Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in 
 thy name. 
 
 The northeast part of Lebanon, adjoining to the Holy 
 Land, is in scripture distinguished by the name of Hermon ; 
 and is, by consequence, mentioned as the northern boundary 
 of the country beyond Jordan, and more particularly of the 
 kingdom of Og, or of the^half tribe of Manasseh, on the east 
 of that river. But, besides this Mount Hermon, in the 
 northern border of the country beyond Jordan, we read of 
 another mountain of the same name, lying within the land 
 of Canaan, on the west of the river Jordan, not far from 
 Mount Tabor. To this mountain the holy Psalmist is 
 thought to refer in these words : " The north and the south 
 thou hast created them : Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice 
 in thy name ;" and in the following passage : " As the dew 
 of Hermon, and as the dew that descends upon the mount- 
 ains of Sion." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. Justice a:nd judgment are the habitation 
 of thy throne : mercy -and truth shall go before 
 thy face. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, "Are the basis of thy throne." The 
 Hebrew, " the establishment of thy throne." " What was 
 the foundation of his throne V '" Justice ! Truly righ- 
 teousness is the atle-vdram, foundation or basis, of all his 
 ways." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. I will set his hand also in the sea, and 
 his right hand in the rivers. 
 
 The meaning is: he shall reign from the Mediterranean 
 Sea to the Euphrates. This is figuratively expressed thus : 
 his right hand shall extend to the sea, or his left to the 
 Euphrates. A similar expression was used, according to 
 Curtius, by the Scythian ambassadors to Alexander. " If," 
 said they, " the gods -had given thee a body as great as thy 
 mind, the whole world would not be able to contain thee ; 
 thou wouldst reach with one hand to the east, and with the 
 other to the west."— Rosenmdller. 
 
 PSALM XC. 
 Ver. 4. For a thousand years in thy sight are hui 
 
 as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in 
 the night. 
 
 It is evident in the scriptures, that besides these cares, 
 they had watchmen who used to patrol in their streets: and 
 it is natural to suppose, that they were these people that 
 gave them notice how the seasons of the night passed away. 
 I am indebted for this thought to Sir John Chardin. He 
 observes, in a note on Ps. xe. 4, that as the people of the East 
 have no clocks, the several parts of the day and of the night, 
 which are eight in all, are given notice of. In the Indies, 
 the parts of the night are made known as well by instru- 
 ments of music, in great cities, as by the rounds of the watch- 
 men, who with cries and small drums, give them notice that 
 a fourth part of the night is passed. Now as these cries 
 awaked those who had slept all that quarter part of the 
 night, it appeared to them but as a moment. There are 
 sixty of these people in the Indies, by day, and as many by 
 night; that is, fifteen for each division. 
 
 It is apparent the ancient Jews knew how the night 
 passed away, which must probably be by some public 
 notice given them : but whether it was by simply publish- 
 ing at the close of each watch, what watch was then ended; 
 or whether they made use of any instruments of music in 
 this business, may not be easily determinable ; and still 
 less what measures of time the watchmen made use of. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood j 
 they are as a sleep : in the morning they are 
 like grass which groweth up. 6. In the morn- 
 ing it flourisheth, and groweth up ; in the even- 
 ing it is cut down, and withereth. 
 
 In temperate latitudes, the fields are generally covered 
 with durable verdure ; but in Asia, gramineous plants of 
 all kinds are extremely perishable. The wonderful ra- 
 pidity of their growth is celebrated by every traveller into 
 the East. Sir Thomas Roe says, that when the ground 
 has been destitute of rain nine months together, and looks 
 all of it like the barren sand in the desert of Arabia, 
 where there is not one spire of green grass to be found, 
 within a few days after those fat enriching showers begin 
 to fall, the face of the earth there (as it were by a new 
 resurrection) is so revived, and throughout so renewed, 
 as that it is presently covered all over with a pure green 
 mantle. Dr. Russel, in the same admiring terms, de- 
 scribes the springing of the earth as a resurrection of 
 vegetable nature. Vegetation is so extremely quick in 
 Hindostan, that, as fast as the water rises, the plants of rice 
 grow before it, so that the ear is never immersed. To the 
 powerful influence of the rain upon the face of oriental 
 nature, Moses compares, with singular beauty and force, 
 the effect which the lessons of heavenly wisdom produce in 
 the human mind : " My doctrine shall drop as the raiji, my 
 speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the 
 tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." Even the 
 dews, which are most copious in those regions, produce a 
 change so beneficial and sudden, that Solomon compares to 
 their energy, the influence of royal favour, which, in oriental 
 courts, frequently raises in one day a person from the lowest 
 condition, to the highest ranks of life : The king's " favour 
 is as a dew upon the grass." But such extraordinary quick- 
 ness of growth is incompatible with strength and perma- 
 nence ; the feeble and sickly blade yields as quickly to the 
 burning heat, and vanishes away. To this rapid change 
 the Psalmist compares the short-lived nrosperity of wicked 
 men : his own evanescent comforts ; tne swift progress of 
 his days, and of time in general. So soon are the powers 
 of nature exhausted, that the grass does net always come to 
 maturity, even in the best soils ; in the language^ of an- 
 cient prophecy, " it is blasted before it be grown up." — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 9. For all our days are passed away in thy 
 wrath ; we spend our years as a tale that is 
 told. 
 
 " This year has been to me as a fabulous stor>' : like the 
 repetition of a dream, my davs pass away. The beginning 
 of life is as the dew-drop upon the tender herb; m ten moons 
 
Ps. 90—92. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 399 
 
 it assumes its shape, and is brought forth ; it lies down, 
 crawls, prattles, walks, and becomes acquainted with science. 
 At sixteen he is a man ; goes forth in the pride of his youth, 
 gets a wife, and becomes the father of children. The husk 
 of his rice he refuses to part with, and his wish is to enjoy all. 
 He thinks by living cheaply, by refusing to support charities, 
 or to dispense favours, he is of all men the most happy. 
 He is regardless of the writing on his forehead, (fate,) and is 
 like the lamp which shineth, and ceaseth to shine ; pour in 
 oil, and there will be light ; take it away, and there will be 
 darkness. In old age come the rheumatics, the jaundice, and 
 an enlarged belly; the eyes are filled with rheums, and the 
 
 Ehlegm comes forth. His body becomes dry, his back ben ds, 
 is wife and children abhor him, and in visions he sees the 
 deathly car and horse. The place of burning says, ' Come, 
 come;' and his family say, ' Go, go.' His strength is gone, 
 his speech falters, his eyeballs roll, and his living soul is 
 taken away. The people then talk of his good and evil 
 deeds, and ask, * Is this lifel' The funeral rites follow; 
 the music sounds forth, and the dying carry the dead to its 
 place of burning." Thus sung the devoted Aruna-Kiriydr. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. O satisfy us early with thy mercy, that 
 we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 
 
 Ainsworth, " Satisfie us in the morning with thy mercie." 
 Afflictions and sorrows are spoken of as the " night of life ;" 
 and the deliverance from them, as the " morning of joy." 
 " Yes, the night has been long and gloomy, but the morning 
 lias at last come." *' Ah ! morning, morning, when wilt thou 
 come 1" — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM XCI. 
 Ver. 1. He that dwelleth in the secret place of 
 the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of 
 the Almighty. 
 
 To say a person i^ under the shadow of a great man, 
 means, he is under his protection. " Oh, my lord, all the 
 people are against me ; they are pursuing me as the tiger: 
 let me come under your unne'.J^ i. e. shadow. " Ay, ay, the 
 fellow is safe enough, now he has crept under the shadow of 
 the king." " Begone, miscreant, thou shall not creep under 
 my shadow." " Many years have I been under the shadow 
 of my father ; how shall I now leave it V *' Gone, for ever 
 gone, is the shadow of my days !" says the lamenting widow. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by 
 night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day. 
 6. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in dark- 
 ness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at 
 noonday. 
 
 "When the cholera rages, no one will go out while the sun 
 is at its zenith, because it is believed that the demon of the 
 pestilence is then actively engaged. " The hot exhalations 
 of noonday are the chariots of the fiends." The demons 
 of darkness are said to have the most power at midnight. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 The arrow, in this passage, means the pestilence. The 
 Arabs thus denote it: "I desired to remove to a less con- 
 tagious air. I received from Solyman, the emperor, this 
 message : that the emperor wondered what I meant, in 
 desiring to remove my habitation. Is not the pestilence 
 God's arrow, which will always hit his mark. If God 
 would visit me herewith, how could I avoid it. ' Is not the 
 plague,' said he, ' in my own palace; and yet I do not think 
 of removing.' " (Busbequius.) 
 
 We find the same opinion expressed in Smith's Remarks 
 on the Turks. " What," say they, " is not the plague the 
 dart of Almighty God, and can we escape the blow he 
 levels at us. Is not his hand steady to hit the persons 
 he aims af? Can we run out of his sight, and beyond 
 his power V^ So Herbert, (p. 99,) speaking of Curroon, 
 says, " that year his empire was so wounded with God's 
 arrows of plague, pestilence, and famine, as this thousand 
 years before was never so terrible." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 13. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and ad- 
 
 der : the young lion and the dragon shalt thou 
 trample under foot. 
 
 " Thou shalt tread upon the lion." This expression de- 
 notes the subjection of the lion, and the fiercest beasts, to the 
 power of man. His superiority is indisputable. Eastern 
 monarch have on particular occasions displayed their 
 grandeur by exhibiting lions in a tame condition. When 
 a Greek ambassador was introduced to the Calif Moctader, 
 " among the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury, 
 a hundred lions were brought out, with a keeper to each 
 lion." This embassy was received at Bagdad, A. H. 305. 
 A. D. 917. When Mr. Bell, of Antermony, accompanied 
 the Russian ambassador to the audience of the unfortunate 
 Shah Hussein, of Persia, two lions were introduced, to 
 denote the power of the king over the fiercest animals. — 
 Burder. 
 
 The adder was known to the ancient Hebrews under 
 various names. — It is the opinion of some interpreters, that 
 the word Sn«r soxhal, which in some parts of scripture de- 
 notes a lion, in others means an adder, or some other kind 
 of serpent. Thus, in the ninety-first Psalm, they render it 
 the basilisk : " Thou shalt tread upon the adder and the 
 basilisk, the young lion and the dragon, thou shalt trample 
 under foot." Indeed, all the ancient expositors agree, that 
 some species of serpent is meant, although they cannot de- 
 termine what particular serpent the sacred writer had in his 
 eye. The learned Bochart thinks it extremely probable, 
 that the holy Psalmist in this verse treats of serpents only ; 
 and by consequence, that both the terms ("jnr) sachal and 
 (-\ibd) chephir, mean some kind of snakes, as well as (inc) 
 phetkan and (rsn) tannin, because the coherence of the verse 
 is by this view better preserved, than by mingling lions 
 and serpents together, as our translators and other inter- 
 preters have commonly done. The union of lions, adders, 
 and dragons, is not natural; nor is it easy to imagine what 
 can be meant by treading upon the lion, and trampling the 
 young lion under foot; for it is not possible in walking to 
 tread upon the lion, as upon the adder, the basilisk, and 
 other serpents. 
 
 As the term (Sner) sachal, when applied to wild beasts, 
 denotes a black lion ; so in the present application, it means 
 the black adder. Many serpents are of a black colour, but 
 some of them are much blacker than others. The sachal, 
 therefore, denotes the black snake, the colour of which is 
 intensely deep. 
 
 Another name which the adder bears in scripture is 
 (2i»3j;) achsub. It occurs in the following description of 
 wicked men : " They have sharpened their tongues like a 
 serpent : adders' poison is under their lips." The Chaldee 
 renders it the poison of a spider ; but the most common in- 
 terpretation is that which our translators have adopted. 
 Some, however, contend that the asp is intended ; and in 
 support of their opinion, quote the authority of many Greek 
 and Latin interpreters, and what must be decisive with 
 every Christian, the suffrage of an inspired apostle, who 
 gives this version of the Hebrew text : " The poison of asps 
 is under their lips." The name in Hebrew is derived from 
 an Arabic verb, which signifies to coil up ; which perfectly 
 corresponds with the nature of this animal, for, in prepar- 
 ing to strike, it contracts itself into a spiral form, and raises 
 its horrid head from the middle of the orb. It assumes the 
 same form when it goes to sleep, coiling its body into a num- 
 ber of circles, with its head in the centre. This is the 
 reason that in Greek, Aotti? denotes a shield, as well as a 
 serpent. Now, the Grecian shield>are circular, as we 
 learnfrom Virgil, but whether the name of the shield (Affwif) 
 was derived from the serpent, or the name of the serpent 
 from the form of the shield, it is of no consequence to deter- 
 mine. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM XCIL 
 Ver. 10. But my horn shalt thou exalt like the 
 horn of a unicorn : I shall be anointed with 
 fresh oil. 
 
 Montanus has, instead of fresh oil, given the literal 
 meaning of the original, virido oleo, with green oil. Ains- 
 worth also says, " fresh or green oile.' Calmet, " As the 
 plants imparted somewhat of their colour, as well as of their 
 fragrance, hence the expression green oil." Harmer, " I 
 shall be anointed with green oil." Some of these writer* 
 
400 
 
 PSALMS, 
 
 Ps. 92. 
 
 think the term gree!.^, as it is in the original, means " pre- 
 cious fragrant oil ;" others, literally green in colour; and 
 others, fresh or newly made oil. But I think it will ap- 
 pear to mean cold drawn oil, that which has been expressed 
 or squeezed from the nut or fruit without the jyrocess of 
 boiling. The Orientals prefer this kind for anointing them- 
 selves to all others; it is considered the most precious, the 
 most pure and efficacious. Nearly all the medicinal oils 
 are thus extracted ; and because they cannot gain so much 
 by this method as by the boiling process, oils so drawn are 
 very dear. Hence their name for the article also thus pre- 
 pared is patche, i. e. green oil ! But this term in eastern 
 phraseology is applied to other things^ which are miboiled ov 
 raw ; thus unboiled water is called patche, green water : 
 patche-pdl, also, green milk, means that which has not been 
 boiled, and the butter made from it is called green butter ; 
 and uncooked meat, or yams, go by the same name. I think, 
 therefore, the Psalmist alludes to that valuable article 
 which is called green oil, on account of its being expressed 
 from the nut, or fruit, without the process of boiling.— Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 The virgin-oil (I'ogleo virgineo) is made as well from 
 green and unripe, as from ripe fruit;. but with the differ- 
 ence, that no hot water, or very little, is used, in the press- 
 ing: by which the berries are less affected, and less of the 
 acrid or crude elements extracted from them. In this 
 mannerless oil is obtained, but it is whiter, more pleasant, 
 and justly preferred to every other sort. The ancients 
 called it green oil, probably on account of its being ex- 
 tracted from green and unripe berries. This explains a 
 passage in Suetonius, which says, " that Julius Cesar, out 
 of politeness, ate old and spoiled oil, instead of green, not 
 to give the person who had invited him any ground to 
 complain of his want of politeness, or his inattention. 
 Some commentators on the Bible reasonably suppose that 
 this green oil is spoken of as being the best, when the 
 Psalmist expresses the happiness with which God had 
 blessed him : / am anointed with green oil. (Keyssler.)^ 
 Burder. 
 
 Mr. Bruce, after having given it as his opinion that the 
 reem of scripture is the rhinoceros, says, " the derivation 
 of this word, both in the Hebrew and in the Ethiopic, seems 
 to be from erectness, or standing straight. This is certainly 
 no particular quality in the animal itself, which is not more, 
 or even so much erect, as many other quadrupeds, for in its 
 knees it is rather crooked ; but it is from the circumstance 
 and manner in which his hornis placed. The horns of other 
 animals are inclined to some degree of parallelism with the 
 nose or os frontis. The horn of the rhinoceros alone is 
 erect and perpendicular to this bone, on which it stands at 
 right angles, thereby possessing a greater purchase, or 
 power, as a lever, than any horn could possibly have in 
 any other position. " This situation of the horn is very 
 happily alluded to in the sacred writings : m,y horn shall 
 thou exalt like the horn of a unicorn; and the horn here al- 
 luded to is not wholly figurative, as I have already taken 
 notice in the course of my history, but was really an orna- 
 ment worn by great men in the days of victory, preferment, 
 or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or 
 fresh oil, a circumstance which David joins with that of 
 erecting the horn." ' 
 
 The term for unicorn, in the Hebrew text, is (=)i-») 
 rim, or (nsNi) reem ; and is derived from a verb, which sig- 
 nifies to be exalted or lifted up. This term, which in He- 
 brew signifies only height, is rendered by the Greek inter- 
 preters jiovoKEpos, and by the Latins unicornis ; both which 
 answer to our English word unicorn, Jerome and others, 
 doubtful to what animal it belongs, render it sometimes 
 rhinoceros, and sometimes unicorn. It is evident from the 
 sacred scriptures, that the reem is an animal of considera- 
 ble height, and of great strength. Thus Balaam reluctant- 
 ly declared concerning Israel : " God brought them out of 
 Egypt ; he hath as it were the strength of (a reem) a uni- 
 corn." So great in the estimation of that reluctant seer, 
 was the strength of the reem, that he repeats the eulogium 
 in the very same words in the next chapter. From the 
 grateful ascriptions of David, we learn that it is a horned 
 animal : " But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a 
 unicorn." And Moses, in his benediction of Joseph, states 
 a most important fact, that it has two horns ; the words are : 
 His horns are like the horns of (3n-> a reem,, in the sin- 
 gular number) a unicorn. Some interpreters, determined 
 
 to support the claims of the unicorn to the honour of a place 
 in the sacred volume, contend, that in this instance the sin- 
 gular, by an enallage or change of number, is put for the 
 plural. But this is a gratuitous assertion ; and besides, if 
 admitted, would greatly diminish the force and propriety of 
 the comparison. The two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and 
 Manasseh, had been adopted into the family of Jacob, and 
 appointed the founders of two distinct tribes, whose descend- 
 ants in the times of Moses were become numerous and re- 
 spectable in the congregation. These were the two horns 
 with which Joseph was to attack and subdue his enemies ; 
 and by consequence, propriety required an allusion to a 
 creature, not with one, but with two horns. 
 
 In the book of Job, the reem is represented as a very 
 fierce and intractable animal, which, although possessed of 
 sufficient strength to labour, sternly and pertinaciously re- 
 fuses to bend his neck to the yoke : " Will the unicorn (in 
 Hebrew the reem) be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy 
 crib^ Canst thou bind the reem with his band in the fur- 
 row, or will he harrow the valleys after thee *? Wilt thou 
 trust him because his strength is great ? Or wilt thou leave 
 thy labour to him*? Wilt thou believe him th^t he will 
 bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn V So far 
 from being disposed to submit to the dominion of man, he 
 is extremely hostile and dangerous. Little inferior to the 
 lion himself in strength and fury, he is sometimes associa- 
 ted in scripture with that destroyer. " Save me." cried our 
 Lord to his Father, " save me from the lion's mouth : for 
 thou hast heard me from the horns of (cion">) the unicorns." 
 In the prophecies of Isaiah, it is united with other power- 
 ful animals, to symbolize the great leaders and princes of 
 the hostile nations, that laid waste his native land : " And 
 the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks 
 with the bulls: and their land shall be soaked with blood, 
 and their dust made fat with fatness." Such are the gene- 
 ral characters of the reem, as delineated in the sacred vol- 
 ume: but besides these, several hints are given, which seem 
 to point out, with no little certainty, the genus under which 
 the reem ought to be classed. In that sublime composition, 
 where the Psalmist assigns the reasons why God is to be 
 honoured, he joins the calf with the young reem, and as- 
 cribes to them the same kind of movement : " He maketh 
 them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a 
 young (reem, or) unicorn." The prophet Isaiah, in a pas- 
 sage already quoted, classes him with the bullocks and the 
 bulls; and Moses assigns him the same station, furnishes 
 him with horns, and makes him push like a bullock. If 
 these circumstances are duly considered, no doubt will re- 
 main that he is nearly allied to the creatures with which he 
 is associated. 
 
 These observations will enable us to examine with inore 
 success the various interpretations of the original name 
 proposed by different expositors. Our translators, follow- 
 ing the Greek fathers, consider the reem as a creature with 
 one horn ; and, agreeably to this idea, render it unicorn. 
 But this interpretation is encumbered with insuperable dif- 
 ficulties. The unicorn is a creature totally unknown in 
 those countries where the scriptures were written, and the 
 patriarchs sojourned. But is it probable, that God him- 
 self, in his expostulation with Job, would take an illustra- 
 tion of considerable length, from a creature with which the 
 afflicted man was altogether unacquainted; and mention 
 this unknown animal in the midst of those with which he 
 was quite familiar 1 Nor is it to be supposed, that Moses, 
 David, and the prophets, would so frequently speak of an 
 animal unknown in Egypt and Palestine, and the surround- 
 ing countries ; least of all, that they would borrow their 
 comparisons from it, familiarly mention its great strength, 
 and describe its habits and dispositions. Aware of this ob- 
 jection, and at loss how to elude its force, some writers, on 
 the authority of Pliny, remove the native land of the uni- 
 corn to India. But this will be found of no advantage to 
 their cause ; for still the objection returns with nearly un- 
 diminished force ; how could the sacred writers borrow 
 their illustrations from a creature with which, even on this 
 supposition, they were so little acquainted? They make 
 no mention of the elephant, a creature not less powerful 
 and fierce than the unicorn, renowned for its docility, and 
 the various important services which it renders to man ; 
 and numerous in Africa, and many countries of Asia. Of 
 this noble animal, the people of Israel seem to have had 
 no knowledge at all, except what they derived from t • ' 
 
Ps. 92. 
 
 PSALMS 
 
 401 
 
 trade in ivory, which they carried on during the reign of 
 Solomon to some extent. But if the elephant, which 
 abounded in countries much nearer the Holy Land than In- 
 dia, whose teeth formed an article of commerce among the 
 ancient Israelites, was so little known to them; it cannot be 
 supposed that they l^ad any knowledge of an animal which 
 was proper to India. 
 
 But we have in reality no proof that such an animal 
 ever existed in any part of the world. It must be admitted, 
 that both Pliny and -Elian have described the unicorn in 
 their writings ; but these eminent authors borrowed their 
 statements from Ctesias, a writer of little respectability. 
 Had the unicorn existed in any part of the East, it must 
 have been discovered and brought to Rome by those whom 
 the Romans employed to explore the remotest countries, 
 with the express view of collecting the rarest animals they 
 contained, in order to be exhibited at the public shows. 
 The tiger, the rhinoceros, and other animals, natives of re- 
 gions which the Roman eagles never visited, were often 
 exhibited in the amphitheatre, before the proud oppressors 
 of the world. So numerous and diversified were the ani- 
 mals produced on the arena at their public entertainments, 
 that Aristides, in his encomium of Rome, declared, " All 
 things meet here, whatsover is bred or made ; and whatso- 
 ever is not seen here, is to be reckoned among those things 
 which are not, nor ever were." But although these shows 
 continued for many ages, not a single unicorn was ever ex- 
 hibited at Rome ; a strong proof that no such animal exist- 
 ed. In modern times, the remotest countries in Asia have 
 been traversed, in almost every direction, by intelligent 
 and inquisitive travellers; but no animal of this kind has 
 been discovered; nor has the least information been ob- 
 tained concerning the unicorn, among the natives. From 
 these facts it may be safely concluded, that the unicorn ex- 
 ists only in the imagination of vain and credulous writers, 
 and by consequence, cannot be the reem of the sacred 
 scriptures. 
 
 The rhinoceros, on the contrary, was often exhibited in 
 the amphitheatre at Rome ; and has been frequently seen 
 by modern travellers. No doubt, therefore, can be enter- 
 tained concerning the reality of its existence : but the char- 
 acter of the reem, given in the scriptures, will not apply to 
 this animal. The reem, it is evident, was equally well 
 known to Moses and the prophets, and the people whom 
 they addressed, as the bullocks and the bulls with which 
 they are mentioned. But the rhinoceros inhabits the south- 
 ern parts of Africa, and the remotest parts of the East, be- 
 yond the Ganges ; and by consequence, could be still less 
 known to the people of Israel than the elephant, which is 
 not once mentioned in the sacred volume. 
 
 Besides, the reem has large horns ; for, says the Psalm- 
 ist, " My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a uni- 
 corn;" but the rhinoceros has seldom more than one, and 
 that of a small size, not exalted like the horn of a reem, but 
 turned back towards the forehead. Nor will the use to 
 which the reem applies his horns, correspond with the man- 
 ners of the rhinoceros : the former pushes with his horns, 
 which must therefore be placed on his forehead ; but the 
 horn of the latter, which is placed on his nose, and bent 
 backwards, is not formed for pushing, but for ripping up 
 the trunks or bodies of the more soft and succulent trees, 
 and reducing them into a kind of laths, which constitute a 
 part of the animal's food. 
 
 It is the opinion of others, that the reem is a species of 
 wild bull; which they have endeavoured to establish by 
 several plausible arguments. In many places of scripture, 
 say they, the ox and the reem are joined together, as ani- 
 mals of the same family; in others, the latter is represent- 
 ed as a strong and fierce animal, with large and very strong 
 horns, greatly addicted to push, and by consequence, an 
 enemy much to be dreaded. The reem, therefore, cannot 
 be the buffalo, because his horns being turned inward, are 
 unfit for the combat ; but either the bison, or the urus. It 
 is rather supposed, however, that the urus is the reem of 
 the Hebrews, because the bison, though a very fierce and 
 obstinate animal, may be subdued by the art of man, and at 
 length entirely domesticated. But as to the urus, Cesar 
 says expressly, that they cannot be tamed and rendered use- 
 ful to mankind, not even their young ones excepted ; they 
 are therefore taken in pits and destroyed. Pliny thus de- 
 scribes the urus : He is of a size little inferior to the ele- 
 phant ; in appearance, colour, and figure, he resembles the 
 51 
 
 bull ; his strength and velocity are great ; and he neither 
 spares man nor beast that comes in his way. 
 
 These arguments have considerable weight ; but they are 
 liable to the same objections which these very writers have 
 urged with so much force against the claitas of the uni- 
 corn and the rhinoceros. It is by no means probable that 
 the sacred writers would make so many allusions to ani- 
 mals, with which the people whom they addressed were ut- 
 terly unacquainted ; would speak so familiarly about them ; 
 would borrow their figures and illustrations, from their 
 form, dispositions, and manners; or that Jehovah him- 
 self would converse with Job so long about a creature 
 which was unknown to the people of those countries. The 
 urus skulked from the remotest times in the deep recesses 
 of the Hircanian forest ; and was quite unknown to the Ro- 
 mans before the ttme of Cesar. Neither the urus nor the 
 bison, according to Pliny, were to be found in Greece : and 
 the former has been considered by some authors as a na- 
 tive of Germany. It is even admitted by Boetius, who 
 strenuously maintains the claims of the urus, that he can 
 find no writer who says that these wild oxen are produced 
 in Syria and Palestine. Aben Ezra, on the contrary, as- 
 serts, in his commentary on the prophecies of Hosea, that 
 no wild bull is to be found in Judea, and the surrounding 
 countries. It is not sufficient to say, that these varieties of 
 the bovine family, may have existed there in the times of 
 Moses and the prophets, for a mere conjecture proves no- 
 thing. If they existed once, why do they not exist now, as 
 well as the wild goat, the hart, and the antelope 1 Why is 
 not a single trace of them to be found in the warmer cli- 
 mates of Greece and Asia 1 Pliny indeed states, that the 
 Indian forests abounded with wild oxen ; but it will not 
 follow, that the urus was known to the Jews, because it was 
 discovered in the forests of India, the regions of Scythia, or 
 the more remote wilds of Africa. But the truth is, we have 
 no proof that he meant to speak of the urus or the bison ; 
 he only mentions wild oxen in general ; from which no 
 certain argument can be drawn in support of the opinion, 
 which Boetius and others maintain. — Paxtox, 
 
 Bochart, and after him, Rosenmuller and others, regard 
 the reem of the Hebrews as a species of antelope, the rim of 
 the Arabs, and the oryx or leucoryx of the Greeks. The 
 argument of most weight in Bochart's mind, seems to be 
 the fact, that rim, in Arabic, which is equivalent to reem in 
 Hebrew, is thus used for a species of white gazelle or ante- 
 lope, (Niebuhr, Descr. of Arab. p. xxxviii. Germ, ed.) 
 which would seem to be very probably the leucoryx. But 
 then the other characteristics of these animals by no means 
 correspond to those of the reem, which is everywhere de- 
 scribed as a fierce, intractable animal, acting on the offen- 
 sive, and attacking even men of its own accord. Now, 
 however wild and untameable many species of antelopes 
 may be, they are universally described as a shy and retir- 
 ing animal, always flying from pursuit, and avoiding even 
 the approach of man. In opposition to this, Bochart and 
 Rosenmuller produce a passage of Martial, where he gives 
 to the ofyx the e^iihei fierce, (saevus oryx, Epigr. xiii. iJ5,) 
 and another from Oppian, where he says, " There is a 
 beast, with pointed horns, familiar to the woods, the savage 
 oryx, most terrible to other beasts." (Cyneget. ii. 445.) Now 
 all these epithets and descriptions, even allowing nothing 
 for poetical amplification, are perfectly applicable to the stag 
 of our forests and of Asia ; they imply no more than that 
 the oryx, when hard pushed, will turn upon its pursuers, 
 and defend himself with fury. Yet no one would hence 
 draw the conclusion, that it was characteristic of the stag 
 to act on the offensive ; nor can such a conclusion be drawn 
 with better reason in regard to the oryx. — The oryx of 
 Pliny and other ancient writers, is understood to be the 
 antelope oryx of zoologists ; the gazella hidica of Ray, the 
 capra gazella of the Syst. Nat., the Egyptian antelope of 
 Pennant, and the pasan of Buffon. It is about the size of a 
 fallow deer, having straight, slender, annulated horns, 
 which taper to a point ; the horns are about three feet long, 
 the points sharp, and about fourteen inches asunder ; the 
 body and sides are of a reddish ash colour ; the face is 
 Avhite, with a black spot at the base of the horns, and an- 
 other on the middle of the face. It is a native of Asia and 
 Africa. — The leucoryx, which some suppose to be the oryx 
 of Oppian, is in general similar to the animal above de- 
 scribed, except that the body is of a milk-white colour. It 
 inhabits the neighbourhood of Bassora, on the Persian gulf. 
 
402 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 92. 
 
 Most obviously neither of these animals answer the de- 
 scription of the Hebrew reem. The fact that the Arabs 
 apply the word rim, to this class of animals, has probably 
 its origin in the same cause, which also leads them to ap- 
 ply to the races of deer and antelopes, in general, the 
 epithet wild oxen. (See Schultens, Comm. in Job xxxix. 3.) 
 
 Other writers have supposed the reem of the Hebrews to 
 be the n/rus, bison, or wild ox, described by Cesar, which 
 is understood to be the same animal as the American buf- 
 falo. The characteristics erf this animal accord well with 
 those attributed to the reem, ; but there is no evidence that 
 the bison existed in Palestme, or was known to the He- 
 brews. A more obvious supposition, therefore, is that of 
 Schultens, De Wette, Gesenius, and others, that under the 
 ■reem we are to understand the buffalo of the eastern conti- 
 nent, the bos bubalus of Linnaeus, which differs from the 
 bison, or American buffalo, chiefly in ihe shape of the horns 
 and the absence of the dewlap. This animal is indigenous, 
 originally in the hotter parts of Asia and Africa, but also 
 in Persia, Abyssinia, and Egypt; and is now also natural- 
 ized in Italy and southern Europe. As, therefore, it existed 
 in the countries all around Palestine, there is every reason 
 to suppose that it was also found in that country, or at least 
 in the regions east of the Jordan, and south of the Dead 
 Sea, as Bashan and Idumea. 
 
 The oriental buffalo appears to be so closely allied to our 
 common ox, that without an attentive examination it might 
 be easily mistaken for a variety of that animal. In point 
 of size it is rather superior to the ox ; and upon an accu- 
 rate inspection, it is observed to differ in the shape and 
 magnitude of the head, the latter being larger than in the 
 ox. But it is chiefly by the structure of the horns that the 
 buffalo is distinguished, these being of a shape and curva- 
 ture altogether different from those of the ox. They are 
 of gigantic size in proportion to the bulk of the animal, 
 and of a compressed form, with a sharp exterior edge ; for 
 a considerable length from their base these horns are 
 straight, and then bend slightly upward ; the prevailing 
 colour of them is dusky, or nearly black. The buffalo has 
 no dewlap; his tail is small, and destitute of vertebrae near 
 the extremity ; his ears are long and pointed. This ani- 
 mal has the appearance of uncommon strength. The bulk 
 of his body, and prodigious muscular limbs, denote his 
 force at the first view. His aspect is ferocious and malig- 
 nant; at the same time that his physiognomy is strongly 
 marked with features of stupidity. His head is of a pon- 
 derous size ; his eyes diminutive ; and what serves to 
 render his visage still more savage, are the tufts of frizzled 
 hair which hang down from his cheeks and the lower part 
 of his muzzle. 
 
 This animal, although originally a native of the hotter 
 parts of India and Africa, is now completely naturalized to 
 the climate of the south of Europe. Mr. Pennant supposes 
 the wild bulls of Aristotle to have been buffaloes, and Gmelin 
 and other distinguished naturalists are of the same opin- 
 ion. Gmelin also supposes the Bos Indicus of Pliny to 
 have been the same animal. Buffon, however, endeavours 
 to show, that the buffalo of modern times was unknown to 
 ihe Greeks and Romans, and that it was first transported 
 from its native countries, the warmer regions of Africa and 
 the Indies, to be naturalized in Italy, not earlier than the 
 seventh century. 
 
 The buffalo grows in some countries to an extremely 
 large size. The buffaloes of Abyssinia grow to twice the 
 size of our largest oxen, and are called elephant bulls. 
 Mr. Pennant mentions a pair ofhorns in the British Museum, 
 which are six feet and a half long, and the hollow of which 
 will hold five quarts. Father Lobo affirms that some of 
 the horns of the buffaloes in Abyssinia will hold ten quarts; 
 and Dillon saw some in India that were ten feet long. They 
 are sometimes wrinkled, but generally smooth. The dis- 
 tance between the points of the two horns is usually five feet. 
 
 Wild buffaloes occur in many parts of Africa and India, 
 where they live in great troops in the forests, and are re- 
 garded as excessively fierce and dangerous animals. In 
 all these particulars they coincide with the buffaloes of 
 America. The hunting of them is a favourite, but very 
 dangerous pursuit; the hunters never venture in any 
 numbers to oppose these ferocious animals face to face; 
 but conceal themselves in the thickets, or in the branches 
 of the trees ; whence they attack the buffaloes as they pass 
 along. 
 
 In Egypt, as also in Southern Europe, the buffalo has 
 been pariially domesticated. In Egypt especially, it is much 
 cultivated, where, accoiding to Sonnini, it yields plenty of 
 excellent milk, from which butter and various kinds of 
 cheese are made. 
 
 " The buffalo," says Sonnini, " is an acquisition of the 
 modern Egyptians, with which their ancestors were unac- 
 quainted. It was brought over from Persia into their 
 country, where the species is at present universally spread, 
 and is very much propagated. It is even more numerous 
 than the common ox, and is there equally domestic, though 
 but recently domesticated ; as is easily distinguished by the 
 constantly uniform colour of the hair,andstillmoreby a rem- 
 nant of ferocity and intractability of disposition, and a wild 
 and lowering aspect, the character's of all half-tamed animals. 
 The buffaloes of Egypt, however, are not near so wild, nor 
 so much to be feared, as those of other countries. They 
 there partake of the gentleness of other domestic animals, 
 and only retain a few sudden and occasional caprices. 
 They are so fond of water, that I have seen them continue 
 in it a whole day. It often happens that the water which 
 is fetched from the Nile, near its banks, has contracted their 
 musky smell." 
 
 These animals multiply more readily than the common 
 ox; they breed in the fourth year, producing young for 
 two years together, and remaining steril the third ; and 
 they commonly cease breeding after their twelfth year. 
 Their term of life is much the same as that of the common 
 ox. They are more robust than the common ox, better 
 capable of bearing fatigue, and, generally speaking, less 
 liable to distempers. They are therefore employed to ad- 
 vantage in different kinds of labour. Buffaloes are made 
 to draw heavy loads, and are commonly guided by means 
 of a ring passed through the nose. In its habits the buffalo 
 is piuch less cleanly than the ox, and delights to wallow in 
 the mud. His voice is deeper, more uncouth and hideous, 
 than that of the bull. The milk is said by some authors to 
 be not so good as that of the cow, but more plentiful ; Buf- 
 fon, on the contrary, asserts that it is far superior to cow's 
 milk. The skin and horns are of more value than all the 
 rest of the animal ; the latter are of a fine grain, strong, and 
 bear a good polish, and are therefore in much esteem with 
 cutlers and other artisans. 
 
 Italy is the country where buffaloes are, at present, most 
 common perhaps in a domesticated state. They are used 
 more particularly in the Pontine marshes, and those in the 
 district of Sienna, where the fatal nature of the climate 
 acts unfavourably on common cattle, but affects the buffa- 
 loes less. The Spaniards also have paid attention to them; 
 and indeed the cultivation of this useful animal seems to 
 be pretty general in all the countries bordering on the 
 Mediterranean Sea, both in Europe and Africa. Niebuhr 
 remarks, that he saw buffaloes not only in Egypt, but also 
 at Bombay, Surat, on the Euphrates, Tigris, Orontes, at 
 Scanderoon, &c. and indeed in almost all marshy regions, 
 and near large rivers. He does not remember any in 
 Arabia, there being perhaps in that country too liule wa- 
 ter for this animal. (Descr. of Arabia, p. 165, Germ, edit.) 
 
 We have been thus particular in describing the buffalo 
 of Asia, in order to show that it possesses, in its wild state, 
 all the characteristics attributed to the HebrcAV reem. All 
 the evidence goes to show that it has been domesticated 
 only at a comparatively recent period ; and that the He- 
 brews therefore were probably acquainted with it only as 
 a wild, savage, ferocious animal, resembling the ox ; and it 
 was not improbably often intended by them under the 
 epithet, bulls of Bashan. The appropriateness of the fore- 
 going description to the Hebrew reem will be apparent, on 
 a closer inspection of the passages where this animal is 
 mentioned. 
 
 In Deut. xxxiii. 17, and Ps. xcii. 10, the comparison is 
 with his horns ; which requires no further illustration after 
 what is said above. In Numb, xxiii. 22, xxiv. 8, it is said, 
 " he hath as it were the stren^rlh of a reem. ;" this is cer- 
 tainly most appropriate, if we adopt here the ^'or&stre'nsfh^ 
 as the proper translation. But the Hebrew word here ren- 
 dered strength, means strictly, rapidity of motion, speed, 
 combined, if you please, with force. In this sense also, it 
 is not less descriptive of the buffalo, which runs with great 
 speed and violence when excited ; as is often the case in 
 ree:ard to whole herds, which then rush blindly forwards 
 with tremendous power. (See the account of Major Long's. 
 
Ps. 92. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 403 
 
 expedition to the Rocky Mountains.) In three other pas- 
 s'd'j:es, the reem is closely coupled vvilh the common ox, or 
 with the employment of the latter. In Ps. xxix. 6, it is 
 said, " He maketh them also to skip like a calC- Lebanon 
 and Sirion like a yonng reem ;'' where the } ^ing of the 
 rcem stands in parallelism with the calf, ^o that we should 
 n.iturally expect a great similarity between them. Isa. 
 ■ \xiv. 7, " And the reemim shall comedown wiih them, 
 1 the bullocks with the bulls," &c. Here, in verse 6, it is 
 i'l that the Lord has a great sacrifice in Bozrah; and the 
 idea in verse 7 is, according to the LXX and Gesenius, 
 that the reemim shall come doion, i. e. shall make part of 
 this sacrifice, as also the bullocks, old and young, of the 
 land of Edom, so that their " land shall be soaked wath 
 blood," &c. The other passage is Job xxix. 9 — 12, " Will 
 the reem be willing to serve thee, or abide by the crib'? 
 Canst thou bind the reem with his band in the furrow, or 
 will he harrow the valleys after thee 1 Wilt thou trust him 
 because his strength is great, or wilt thou leave thy labour 
 to himl Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home 
 thy seed, and gather it into thy barn 1" Here Job is asked, 
 whether he would dare to intrust to the reem such and such 
 labjurs as were usually performed by oxen. Nothing can 
 be more appropriate to the wild buffalo than this language ; 
 and we have seen above that the Hebrews probably knew 
 it only in a wild state. The only other passage where the 
 reem is mentioned is Ps. xxii. 21, and this requires a more 
 extended notice. The Psalmist in deep distress says in 
 verse 12, " Many bulls (n->-i£3) have compassed me, strong 
 bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon 
 me with their mouths, as a ravening and roarmg lion. For 
 dogs have compassed me," &c. Here it will be observed 
 that three animals are mentioned as besetting the writer, 
 bulls of Bashan, lions, dogs. The Psalmist proceeds to 
 speak of his deliverance ; verse 20, " Deliver my soul 
 [me] from the sword, my darling [me] from the power of 
 the dog. Save me from the lion s mouth ; for thou hast 
 heard [and saved] me from the horns of the reemim." 
 Here also it will be seen are three animals, corresponding 
 to the three before mentioned as besetting him, but ranged 
 in an inverted order, viz. the dog, the lion, and the reem. in 
 place of the bulls of Bashan ; that is, from the whole struc- 
 ture of the poem, and the fact that these animals and no 
 others are alluded to, the inference is almost irresistible, 
 that the reemim of verse 21 are the pdrim of verse 12, the 
 bulls of Bashan, as has been already suggested above. At 
 least we may infer that the reem was an animal not so 
 unlike those bulls, but that it might with propriety be in- 
 terchanged with them in poetic parallelism ; a circumstance 
 most appropriately true of the wild buffalo, and of him only. 
 From all these considerations, and from the fact that the 
 buffalo must have been far better known in western Asia 
 than either the rhinoceros or the oryx, (even if the descrip- 
 tion of the reem suited these animals in other respects,) Ave 
 feel justified in assuming the tmcrus bubalus, or wild buf- 
 falo, to be the reem of the Hebrew scriptures, and the unicorn 
 of the English version. 
 
 The principal difficulty in the way of this assumption, is 
 the fact that the LXX have usually translated the Hebrew 
 reem by imov6k£om<;, unicorn, one-horn. It must, however, be 
 borne in mind, that these translators lived many centuries 
 after the Hebrew scriptures were written, ancl not long 
 indeed before the birth of Christ ; they lived, too, in Egypt, 
 where it is not impossible that the buffalo had in their age 
 begun to be domesticated. In such circumstances, and 
 being unacquainted with the animal in his fierce and sav- 
 age state, they may have thought that the allusions to the 
 reem were not fully answered by the half-domesticated ani- 
 mal before them, and they may, therefore, have felt them- 
 selves at liberty to insert the name of some animal which 
 seemed to them more appropriate. That they did often 
 take such liberties, is well known. An instance occurs in 
 the very passage of Isaiah above quoted, ch. xxxiv. 7, 
 where the Hebrew is n-i^-^^N ny d-'-idi, "and the bullocks with 
 the bulls," i. e. the bulls with the strong ones, or, according 
 to Gesenius, "the bulls both young and old:" this the LXX 
 translates, Kal nl Kptni kuI nl ravoni, " and the rams (or wethers) 
 and the bulls," — certainly a quid pro quo not less striking 
 than that of putting unicorn for buffalo. 
 
 That the LXX, in using the word monoceros, (unicorn, 
 one-horn,) did not understand by it the rhinoceros, would 
 seem obvious; both because the latter always had its ap- 
 
 propriate and peculiar name in Greek, (^pivoKepus. rhinoceros, 
 nose-horn,) taken from the position of its horn upon the 
 snout ; and also from the circumstance so much insisted 
 on above in the extracts from Mr. Bruce, that the rhino- 
 ceros of that part of Africa adjacent to Egypt actually has 
 two horns. They appear rather to have had in mind the 
 half-fabulous unicorn, described by Pliny, but lost sight of 
 by all subsequent naturalists; ahhough imperfect hints and 
 accounts of a similar animal have been given by travellers 
 in Africa and India, in different centuries, and entirely in- 
 dependent of each other. The interesting nature of the 
 subject renders it proper to exhibit here all the evidence 
 which exists in respect to such an animal; especially as it 
 is nowhere brought together in the English language, or 
 at least in no such form as to render it generally accessible. 
 
 The figure of the unicorn, in various attitudes, is depict- 
 ed, according to Niebuhr, on almost all the stair-cases 
 found among the ruins of Persepolis. One of these figures 
 is given in vol. ii. plate xxiii. of Niebuhr's Travels; and 
 also in vol. i. p. 594, 595, of the Travels of Sir R. K. Por- 
 ter. The latter traveller supposes it to be the representa- 
 tion of a bull with a single norn. Pliny, in speaking of 
 the wild beasts of India, says with regard to the animal in 
 question : Asperrimam autem feram monocerntem, reliquo 
 corpore equo similem, capite cervo, pedibus elephanti, cauda 
 apro, mugitu gravi, uno cornu nigra media fronte cubiiorum 
 duum eminente. Hanc feram vivam neganl capi. (Hist. 
 Nat. vii. 21.) "The unicorn is an exceeding fierce ani- 
 mal, resembling a horse as to the restof its body, but having 
 the head like a stag, the feet like an elephant, and the tail 
 like a wild boar: its roaring is loud, and it. has a black 
 horn of about two cubits projecting from the middle of its 
 forehead." These seem to be the chief ancient notices of 
 the existence of the animal in question. 
 
 In 1530, Ludivico de Bartema, a Roman patrician, trav- 
 elled to Egypt, Arabia, and India; and having assumed the 
 character of a Mussulman, he was able to visit Mecca with 
 the Had], or great caravan of pilgrims. In his account of 
 the curiosities of this citv, in Ramusio's Collection of 
 Travels, (Racotta di Viaggi, Venet. 1563, p. lG3,)he says : 
 " On the other side of the Caaba is a walled court, in which 
 we saw two unicorns, which were pointed out to us as a 
 rarity ; and they are indeed truly remarkable. The larger 
 of the two is built like a three-year-old colt, and has a horn 
 upon the forehead about three ells long. The other unicorn 
 was smaller, like a yearling foal, and has a horn perhaps 
 four spans long. — This animal has the colour of a yellowish 
 brown horse, a head like a stag, a neck not very long, with 
 a thin mane ; the legs are small and slender, like those of a 
 hind or roe ; the hoofs of the forefeet are divided, and re- 
 semble the hoofs of a goat. These two animals were sent 
 to the sultan of Mecca, as a rarity of great value, and very 
 seldom found, by a king of Ethiopia, who wished to secure, 
 by this present, the good will of the sultan of Mecca." 
 
 Don Juan Gabriel, a Portuguese colonel, who lived 
 several years in Abyssinia, assures us, that in the region 
 of Agamos, in the Abyssinian province of Damota, he had 
 seen an animal of the form and size of a middle-sized horse, 
 of a dark chestnut-brown colour, and with a whitish horn, 
 about five spans long, upon the forehead ; the mane and tail 
 were black, and the legs short and slender. Several other 
 Portuguese, who were placed in confinement upon a high 
 mountain in the district of Namna, by the Abyssinian king, 
 Adamas Saghedo, related that they had seen, at the foot of 
 the mountain, several unicorns feeding. (Ludolf's Hist, 
 .^thiop. lib. i. c. 10. n. 80, seq.) These accounts are con- 
 firmed by Father Lobo, who lived for a long time as a mis- 
 sionary in Abyssinia. He adds, that the unicorn is extremely 
 shy, and escapes from closer observation by a speedy flight 
 into the forests ; for which reason there is no exact de- 
 scription of him. (Voyage histor. d'Abyssinie, Amst. 1728, 
 vol. i.p. 83, 291.) All these accounts are certainly not ap- 
 plicable to the rhinoceros; although it is singular that Mr. 
 Bruce speaks only of the latter animal as not uncommon 
 in Abyssinia, and makes apparently no allusion to the above 
 accounts. 
 
 In more recent times we find further traces of the ani- 
 mal in question in Southern Africa., Dr. Sparrmann, the 
 Swedish naturalist, who visited the' Cape of Good Hope 
 and the adjacent regions, in the years 1772-1776, gives, in 
 his travels, the following account : Jacob Knock, an ob- 
 serving peasant on Hippopotamus river, who had travelled 
 
404 
 
 PS4LMS. 
 
 Ps. 92. 
 
 over the greater part of Southern Africa, found on the face 
 of a perpendicular rock a drawing made by the Hottentots, 
 representing a quadruped with one horn. The Hottentots 
 told him that the animal there represented was very like 
 the horse on which he rode, but had a straight horn upon 
 the forehead. They added, that these one-horned animals 
 were rare, that they ran with great rapidity, and were also 
 very fierce. They also described the manner of hunting 
 them. " It is not probable," Dr. Sparrmann remarks, " that 
 the savages wholly invented this story, and that too so very 
 circumstantially ; still less can we suppose, that they should 
 have received aud retained, merely from history or tradi- 
 tion, the remembrance of such an animal. These regions 
 are very seldom visited ; and the creature might, therefore, 
 long remain unknown. That an animal so rare should not 
 be better known to the modern world, proves nothing 
 against its existence. The greater part of Africa is still 
 among the terrd incognita. Even the giraffe has been 
 Hgain discovered only wiihin comparatively a few years. 
 So also the gnu, which, till recently, was held to be a fable 
 of the ancients." 
 
 A somewhat more definite account of a similar animal is 
 contained in the Transactions of the Zealand Academy of 
 Sciences at Flushing. (Pt. xv. Middelb. 1792. Prsef. p. 
 Ivi.) The account was transmitted to the society in 1791, 
 from the Cape of Good Hope, by Mr. Henry Cloete. It 
 states that a bastard Hottentot, Gerrit Slinger by name, re- 
 lated, that while engaged several years before with a party, 
 in pursuit of the savage Bushmen, they had got sight of 
 nine strange animals, which they followed on horseback, 
 and shot one of them. This animal resembled a horse, and 
 was of a light-gray colour, with white stripes under the 
 lower jaw. It had a single horn, directly in front, as long 
 as one's arm, and at the base about as thick. Towards the 
 middle the horn was somewhat flattened, but had a sharp 
 point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but 
 fixed only in the skin. The head was like that of the 
 horse, and the size also about the same. The hoofs were 
 round, like those of a horse, but divided below like those of 
 oxen. This remarkable animal was shot between the so- 
 called Table Mountain and Hippopotamus river, about six- 
 teen days' journey on horse-back from Cambedo, which 
 would be about a month's journey in ox- wagons from Cape- 
 town. Mr. Cloete mentions, that several different natives 
 and Hottentots testify to the existence of a similar animal 
 with one horn, of which they profess to have seen drawings 
 bv hundreds, inade by the Bushmen on rocks and stones. 
 He supposes that it would not be difficult to obtain one of 
 these animal'^, if desired. His letter is dated at the Cape, 
 April 8, 1791, (See thus far Rosenmuller's Altes u. neues 
 Morgenland, ii. p. 269, seq. Leipz. 1818.) 
 
 Such appear to have been the latest accounts of the ani- 
 mal in question, when it was again suddenly brought into 
 notice as existing in the elevated regions of central India. 
 The Quarterly Review for Oct. 1820, (vol. xxiv. p. 120,) 
 in a notice of Frazier's tour through the Himalaya Moun- 
 tains, goes on to remark as follows: "We have no doubt 
 that a little time will bring to light many objects of natural 
 History peiculiar to the elevated regions of Central Asia, 
 and hitherto unknown in the animal, vegetable, and mineral 
 kingdoms, particularly in the two former. This is an 
 opinion which we have long entertained ; but we are led 
 to the expression of it on the present occasion, by having 
 been favoured with the perusal of a most interesting com- 
 munication from Major Latter, commanding in the rajah of 
 Sikkim's territories, in the hilly country east of Nepaul, 
 addressed to Adjutant-general Nicol, and transmitted by him 
 to the Marquis of Hastings. This important paper expli- 
 citly states that the unicorn, so long considered as a fabu- 
 lous animal, actually exists at this moment in the interior 
 of Thibet, where it is well known to the inhabitants. 
 'This,'— we copy from the Major's letter — 'is a very 
 curious fact, and it may be necessary to mention how the 
 circumstance became known to me. In a Thibetian man- 
 uscript, containing the names of different animals, which 1 
 procured the other day from the hills, the unicorn is classed 
 under the head of those whose hoofs are divided : it is call- 
 ed the one-horned tso'po. Upon inquiring what kind of 
 animal it was, to our astonishment, the person who brought 
 the manuscript described exactly the unicorn of the an- 
 c ients ; saying, that it was a native of the interior of Thibet, 
 about the size of a tattoo, [a horse from twelve to thirteen 
 
 hands high,] fierce and extremely wild ; seldom, if ever, 
 caught alive, but frequently shot : and that the flesh was 
 used for food.' — ' The person,' Major Latter adds, ' who 
 gave me this information, has repeatedly seen these ani- 
 mals, and eaten the flesh of them. They go together in 
 herds, like our wild buffaloes, and are very frequently to 
 be met with on the borders of the great desert, about a 
 month's journey from LasGa, in that part of the country in- 
 habited by the wandering Tartars.' 
 
 " This communication is accompanied by a drawing 
 made by the messenger from recollection. It bears some 
 resemblance to a horse, but has cloven hoofs, a long curved 
 horn growing out of the forehead, and a boar-shaped tail, 
 like that ofihefera monoceros described by Pliny. From 
 its herding together, as the unicorn of the scriptures is said 
 to do, as well as from the rest of the description, it is evi- 
 dent that it cannot be the rhinoceros, which is a solitary 
 animal ; besides, Major Latter states, that in the Thibetian 
 manuscript the rhinoceros is described under the name of 
 servo, and classed with the elephant; 'neither,' says he, 
 ' is it the wild horse, (well known in Thibet,) for that has 
 also a different name, and is classed in the manuscript with 
 the animals which have the hoof's undivided.' — ' I have 
 written,' he subjoins, ' to the Sachia Lama, requesting him 
 to procure me a perfect skin of the animal, with the head, 
 horn, and hoofs; but it will be a longtime before I can get 
 it down, for they are not to be met with nearer than a 
 month's journey from Lassa.' " 
 
 As a sequel to- this account, we find the following para- 
 graph in the Calcutta Government Gazette, August, 1821 : 
 " Major Latter has obtained the horn of a young unicorn 
 from the Sachia Lama, which is now before us. It is 
 twenty inches in length; at the root it is four inches and a 
 half in circumference, and tapers to a point ; it is black, 
 rather flat at the sides, and has fifteen rings, but they are 
 only prominent on one side ; it is nearly straight. Major 
 Latter expects to obtain the head of theanimal, with the hoofs 
 and the skin, very shortly, which will afford positive proof 
 of the form and character of the tso'po, or Thibet unicorn." 
 
 Such are the latest accounts which have reached us of 
 this animal ; and although their credibility cannot well be 
 contested, and the coincidence of the description with that 
 of Pliny is so striking, yet it is singular that in the lapse of 
 more than ten years, (1832,) nothing further should have 
 been heard on a subject so interesting. — But whatever rnay 
 be the fact as to the existence of this animal, the adoption 
 of it by the LXX, as being the Hebrew reem, cannot well 
 be correct ; both for the reasons already adduced above, 
 and also from the circumstance, that the reem was evident- 
 ly an animal frequent and well known in the countries 
 where the scenes of the Bible are laid ; while the unicorn, 
 at all events, is and was an animal of exceeding rarity. — 
 Robinson in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 12. The righteous shall flourish like the 
 palm-tree : he shall grow like a cedar in Leb- 
 
 The palm-tree is very common in Judea, and in the sur- 
 rounding regions. The Hebrews call it ("lan) tamar, and 
 the Greeks (poivi^, phenix. The finest-palm trees grow 
 about Jericho and Engeddi; they also flourish in great 
 numbers along the banks of Jordan, and towards Scytho- 
 polis. Jericho is by way of distinction called " the citv of 
 palm-trees." It seems indeed to have been recognised, as 
 the common symbol of the Holy Land ; for Judea is repre- 
 sented on several coins of Vespasian, by a disconsolate 
 woman, fitting under a palm-tree ; and in like manner, upon 
 the Greek coin of his son Titus, struck on a similar occa- 
 sion, we see a shield suspended on a palm-tree, with a vic- 
 tory writing upon it. The same tree is delineated upon a 
 medal of Doraitian, as an emblem of Neapolis or Naplosa, 
 the ancient Sichem ; and upon a medal of Trajan, it is the 
 symbol of Sepphoris, the metropolis of Galilee. From these 
 facts it may be presumed that the palm-tree was formerly 
 much cultivated in Palestine. Several of them still grow 
 in the neighbourhood of Jericho, which abounds with 
 water, where the climate is warm, and the soil sandy ; a 
 situation in which they delight, and where they rise to full 
 maturity. But at Jerusalem, Sichem, and other places 
 to the northward, two or three of them are rarely seen 
 together; and even these, as their fruit seldom or never 
 
Ps. 92— 102. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 405 
 
 comes to maturity, are of no further service than, like the 
 palm-tree of Deborah, to shade the dwelhngs of the parched 
 inhabitants, or to supply them with branches at the solemn 
 festival. The present condition and quality of palm-trees 
 ill Canaan, h;ads us to conclude, that they never at any time 
 were either very numerous or fruitful in that country. The 
 opinion that Pfienice is the same with a country of date- 
 trees, does not appear probable; for if such a valuable 
 plant had ever been cultivated in Palestine with success, it 
 would have been cultivated down to the present times, as 
 in Egypt and in Barbary. In these countries the traveller 
 meets with large plantations of palm-trees on the seacoast, 
 as well as in the interior; although those only which grow 
 in the sandy deserts of Sahara, and the regions of Getulia, 
 and the Jereeda, bring their fruit to perfection. They are 
 propagated chiefly from young shoots taken from the roots 
 of full-grown trees ; which, if well transplanted and taken 
 care of, will yield their fruit in the sixth or seventh year ; 
 while those which are raised immediately from the kernel, 
 will not bear till about their sixteenth year. This method 
 of raising the (poivi^, or palm, and particularly the circum- 
 stance, that when the old trunk dies, young shoots are 
 never wanting to succeed it, may have given occasion to 
 the well-known fable of ihe phe?iix, which perishes in a 
 flame of her own kindling ; while a young one springs 
 from her ashes, to continue the race. 
 
 The palm-tree arrives at its greatest vigour about thirty- 
 years after being transplanted, and continues in full strength 
 and beauty for seventy years longer, producing yearly fif- 
 teen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them weighing fif- 
 teen or twenty pounds. After this period it begins grad- 
 ually to decline, and usually falls about the latter end of 
 its second century. "Cui placet curas agere seculorum," 
 says Palladius, " depalmis cogitet conserendis." It requires 
 no other culture and attendance than to be well watered 
 once in four or five days, and to have a few of the lower 
 boughs lopped oiF when they begin to droop or wither. 
 These, whose stumps or poUices, in being thus gradually 
 left upon the trunk, serve, like so many rounds of a ladder, 
 to climb up the tree, either to fecundate or to lop it, or to 
 gather the fruit, are quickly supplied with others, which 
 gradually hang down from the crown or top, contributing 
 both to the regular and uniform growth of this tall, knot- 
 less, and beautiful tree, and to its perpetual and delightful 
 verdure. 
 
 It is usual with persons of better station, to entertain their 
 guests on days of joyous festivity with the honey of the 
 palm-tree. This they procure by cutting off the head or 
 crown of one of the more vigorous plants, and scooping 
 the top of the trunk into the shape ot a basin, where the 
 sap in ascendmg lodges itself, at the rate of three or four 
 quarts a day, during the first week or fortnight; after 
 which the quantity daily diminishes, and at the end of six 
 weeks or two months the juices are entirely consumed, the 
 tree becomes dry, and serves only for timber or fire- wood. 
 This liquor, which has a more luscious sweetness than 
 honey, is of the consistence of a thin syrup, but quickly 
 grows tart and ropy, acquiring an intoxicating quality, 
 and giving by distillation an agreeable spirit — the Aaraky 
 of the natives, and the palm-wine of the natural his- 
 torian. 
 
 The palm is onfc Df the most beautiful trees in the vege- 
 table kingdom; it is upright, lofty, verdant, and embower- 
 ing. It grows by the brook or well of living water ; and 
 resisting every attempt to press or bend it downward, shoots 
 directly towards heaven. For this reason, perhaps, it was 
 regarded by the ancients as peculiarly sacred, and there- 
 fore most frequently u.v?d in adorning their temples. The 
 chosen symbol of constancy, fruitfulness, patience, and 
 victory ; the more it is oppressed, the more it flourishes, the 
 higher it grows, and the stronger and broader the top ex- 
 pands. To ihis majestic and useful tree the child of God 
 IS compared in the holy scriptures, with singular elegance 
 and propriety. Adorned with the beauties of holiness, and 
 rich in the mercies of the covenant, fruitful in good works, 
 and reposing all his thoughts in heaven, precious in the 
 sight of God, and lovely in the view of every rational being 
 capable of forming a just estimate of his character, he may 
 well be said to flourish like the palm-tree, and to grow like 
 a cedar in Lebanon. "Planted in the house of the Lord, 
 he shall flourish in the courts of our God. He shall still 
 ' bring forth fruit in old age ; he shall be fat and flourish- 
 
 ing ; to show that the Lord is upright ; that he is his rock ; 
 and there is no unrighteousness in him." — Paxton. 
 
 " The wicked spring as the grass, but good men endure 
 like the palm-tree, and bear much fruit." " A grateful 
 man is like the palmirah-tree ; for small attentions he gives 
 much fruit." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Those that be planted in the house of 
 the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our 
 God. 
 
 The being planted in the house of God, or in its courts, 
 may allude to an ancient custom, still used in the East, of 
 planting trees in the courtyard of a house. Plais^^^d, in 
 his Journal from Busserah to Aleppo, informs us, tr.at the 
 people of Aleppo plant a cypress-tree in the courtyard of 
 their houses. Dr. Fryer, in his new account of iLe East 
 Indies and Persia, describes a nabob's apartments as en- 
 compassing in the middle a verdani. quadrangle of trees 
 and plants. It is also observable, that the Jews, though 
 forbidden to plant trees in the temple, planted them in 
 their proseuchae, which were, in some sort, houses of God. 
 — Border. 
 
 Ver. 14. They shall still bring forth fruit in old 
 age ; they shall be fat and flourishing. 
 
 The Hebrew, instead of flourishing, has, "green!" 
 Ainsworth, " shall be fat and green." Of a very old man 
 who has retained his strength, the Hindoos say, " he is a 
 GREEN veteran." " See that palche-killavcn, (green old 
 man,) how strong he is." " My friend, if you act in this 
 way, you will never be a green old man." A man who 
 has been long noted for roguery is called a patche-Jcallan, a 
 green rogue ; and a well-known utterer of falsehoods, a 
 green liar. " Ah ! my lord !" says the relieved mendicant, 
 " in your old age you will be fat and flourishing ;" or, " You 
 will be a green old man." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CI. 
 Ver. 3. I will set no wicked thing before mine 
 eyes : I hate the work of them that turn aside ; 
 it shall not cleave to me. 
 
 Pleasure or displeasure, approbation or abhorrence, may 
 be known by the look, or the cast of the eye. What we 
 are pleased and delighted with attracts and fixes the eye. 
 What we dislike or hate, we turn away from the sight of; 
 and when the Psalmist resolves that he would not fix his 
 eyes upon any evil thing, he means, he would never give 
 it the least countenance or encouragement, but treat it with 
 displeasure, as what he hated, and was determined to pun- 
 ish. For he adds, " I hate the work of them that turn 
 aside." Mr. Schultens hath shown in his commentary on 
 Prov. vii. 25, that r^v hath a much stronger and more sig- 
 nificant meaning than that of mere turning aside ; and 
 that it is used of an unruly horse, that champs upon the 
 bit through his fiery impatience; and when applied to a 
 bad man, denotes one impatient of all restraint, of unbridled 
 passions, and who is headstrong and ungovernable in the 
 gratification of them, trampling on all the obligations of 
 religion and virtue. Such as these are the deserved objects 
 of the hatred of all good men, whose criminal deviations 
 and presumptuous crimes they detest ; none of which shall 
 cleave to them ; they will not harbour the love of or incli- 
 nation to them, nor habitually commit them, nor encourage 
 the practice of them. — Chandler. 
 
 PSALM CII. 
 
 Ver. 3. For my days are consumed like smoke, 
 and my bones are burned as a hearth. 
 
 A person believing himself to be near death, says, in the 
 bitterness of his soul, " Alas ! my days have passed away 
 like smoke ; my bones are as a firebrand." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness ; I 
 am like an owl of the desert. 
 
 The pelican is another bird of the desert, to which the 
 sacred writers sometimes allude. Its Hebrew name is 
 kaath, literally, the vomiter from the Hebrew verb kaath, 
 
406 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 102. 
 
 Ic vomit. The reason assigned for this name by the an- 
 cients is, that it discharges the shells it had swallowed, 
 after they have been opened by the heat of its belly, in order 
 -.0 pick out the fish, which form its prmcipal food. This 
 fact, says Bochart, is so generally attested by the writers of 
 antiquity, that it cannot be called in question; and then 
 cites a great number of authorities in its support. But with 
 all deference to this learned writer, it may be justly doubt- 
 ed, if this bird really takes the shell-fish on which it feeds 
 into its stomach, in the first instance ; it is more probable 
 that it deposites them in the bag or pouch under its lower 
 chap, which serves not only as a net to catch, but also as a 
 repository for its food. In feeding its young ones, (whether 
 this bag is loaded with water or more solid food,) the peli- 
 can squeezes the contents of it into their mouths, by strong- 
 ly compressing it upon its breast with its bill ; an action 
 which may well justify the propriety of the name which it 
 received from the ancient Hebrews. To the same habit, it 
 is probable, may be traced the traditionary report, that the 
 pelican, in feeding her young, pierces her own breast, and 
 nourishes them with her blood. 
 
 Dr. Shaw contends, that kaath cannot mean the pelican, 
 because the royal Psalmist describes it as a bird of the wil- 
 derness, where that fowl must necessarily starve, because 
 its large webbed feet, and capacious pouch, with the man- 
 ner of catching its food, which can only be in the water, 
 show it to be entirely a water-fowl. But this objection pro- 
 ceeds on the supposition, that the deserts which it frequents 
 contain no water, which is a mistake; for Ptolemy places 
 three lakes in the interior parts of Marmorica, which is ex- 
 tremely desolate ; and Moses informs us, that the people of 
 Israel met with the waters of Mara, and the fountains of 
 Elim, in the barren sands of Arabia. Besides, it is well 
 known that a water-fowl often retires to a great distance 
 from her favourite haunts ; and this is confirmed by a fact, 
 which Parkhurst states from the writings of Isidore, that 
 the pelican inhabits the solitudes of the Nile. This far- 
 famed river, as v/e know from the travels of Mr. Bruce, 
 rolls its flood through an immense and frightful desert, 
 where water-fowls of diiferent kinds undoubtedly find a se- 
 cure retreat. Mr. Bruce himself sprang a duck in the 
 burning wilderness, at a considerable distance from its 
 banks, which immediately winged her flight towards it; a 
 clear proof of her beiitg familiarly acquainted with its 
 course. From this circumstance we may infer, that the 
 
 Eelican is no stranger to the most desert and inhospitable 
 orders of the Nile. It also appears from Damir, the Ara- 
 bian naturalist quoted by Bochart, that the pelican, like the 
 duck which Bruce found in the deseit of Senaar, does not 
 always remain in the water, but sometimes retires from it 
 to a great distance ; and indeed its monstrous pouch, which, 
 according to Edwards, in his natural history of birds, is ca- 
 pable of receiving twice the size of a man's head, seems to 
 be given it for this very reason, that it might not want food 
 for itself and its young ones, when at a distance from the 
 water. 
 
 Bochart is of opinion, that kaath, in some passages of 
 scripture, is intended to express the bittern, which differs 
 from the pelican; by his own admission, only in the form of 
 the bill. Thus the holy Psalmist complains, " I am like a 
 pelican (bittern) of the wilderness; I am like an owl of the 
 desert." The clear and consistent exposition of this pas- 
 sage, he contends, requires the word kaath to be rendered 
 bittern; because the sacred writer compares himself to the 
 bittern and the owl, or more properly the ostrich, on ac- 
 count of his groaning. It is therefore natural to conclude, 
 that both these animals have a mournful cry. Many rea- 
 sons -have been advanced, to prove that the chos, rendered 
 in our translation the owl, is in reality the female ostrich ; 
 of which this is one, that it has a most hideous voice, re- 
 sembling, in a very remarkable manner, the lamentations 
 of a human being in deep aflliction. That the Psalmist 
 may be consistent with himself, the same thing must be as- 
 serted of the kaath, which it would be difficult to admit, if 
 that term signified only the pelican ; for natural historians 
 observe a profound silence in relation to the voice of that 
 bird. But if the name kaath is common to the bittern and 
 the pelican, the diflicully vanishes, for the former has a 
 clear voice. All the ancient natural historians agree, that 
 the bittern, by inserting its bill in the mud of the marsh, or 
 
 filunging it under water, utters a most disagreeable cry, 
 ike the roaring of a bull, or the sound of distant thunder. 
 
 But the opinion of that celebrated writer, in this instance, 
 rests upon a false, or at leasi r.n uncertain foundation. The 
 afflicted P.salmist seems to refer, not so much to the plaint- 
 ive voice of these birds, as to their lonely situation in the 
 wilderness. One of the first and most common eflTects of 
 pungent sorrow, is the desire of solitude; and on this occa- 
 sion the royal Psalmist, oppressed with grief, seems to have 
 become weary of society, and like the pelican, or the fe- 
 male ostrich, to have contracted a relish for deep retire- 
 ment. Besides, as our author allows, that the pelican and 
 the bittern difier only in the form of the bill, the translation 
 for which he contends is of no real importance; and it is 
 certainly a good rule to admit of no change in a received 
 translation, unless it can be shown, that the new term or 
 phrase expresses the meaning of the original with greater 
 justness, propriety, or elegance. 
 
 The bird of night, which, like the ostrich, delights in the 
 desert and solitary place, is distinguished by several names 
 in the sacred writings. In the book of Psalms, it is men- 
 tioned under the name kous, which is evidently derived 
 from the verb kasa/i, to hide; because the owl constantly 
 hides herself in the daytime, and comes abroad in the 
 evening. The Seventy, Theodotion, Aquila, and other in- 
 terpreters, render it vvKriKopa^, in English, the horned owl. 
 The learned Bochart suspected that kovs might denote the 
 onocrotaLus, thus named from its monstrous cap or bag un- 
 der the lower chap. It must be admitted, that kous might 
 properly enough be given as a name to that bird, from this 
 extraordinary circumstance in its form ; but after the most 
 diligent inquiry, the writer has not been able to discover 
 any diflJerence between the pelican of the ancients, and the 
 onocrotalus ; and as kaath is mentioned in the same con- 
 texts with kous, and rendered in the ancient versions either 
 the pelican or o7wcrotalus, kous, in his opinion, must have 
 a different meaning. This idea receives no little confirm- 
 ation from a passage in the hundred and second Psalm, where 
 kous is followed in construction by haraboth, and signifies 
 kous, not of the desert, as we render it, but of the desolate 
 or ruined buildings; which exactly corresponds with the 
 habits of the owl, but does not seem so applicable to the 
 onocrotalus, or pelican. Buflbn calls the horned owl the 
 eagle of the night, and the sovereign of that tribe of birds 
 which shun the light of day, and never fly but in the even- 
 ing, or after it is dark. But, as a description of it is con- 
 nected with the illustration of no passage of scripture, it 
 falls not within the design of this work. The voice of the 
 horned owl is said to be frightful, and is often heard re- 
 sounding in the silence of night ; which is the season of his 
 activity, when he flies abroad in search of his prey. He 
 inhabits the lonely rocks or deserted towers on the sides of 
 the mountains; he seldom descends into the plain, and 
 never willingly perches upon trees. The dreary and fright- 
 ful note of the owl sounding along the desert, and alarming 
 or terrifying the birds that are reposing in their nests, rep- 
 resents, in a very striking manner, the deep and lonely af- 
 flictions of the royal Psalmist, and the affecting complaints 
 which his distresses wrung from his bosom. 
 
 Yansuph is another term which our translators render 
 the owl ; it occurs only three times in the sacred volume, 
 and is derived from the verb tiashaph, to blow, or from ne- 
 sheph, the twilight or the dawn. It is supposed to denote a 
 species of owl, which flies about in the twilight ; and is the 
 same as the twilight bird. But of this interpretation Park- 
 hurst disapproves, contending, that since the yansuph is 
 clearly mentioned by Moses among the water-fowls, and 
 the Seventy have in two passages rendered it by ibis, it 
 should seem to mean some kind of water-fowl, resembling 
 the bird of that nam.e; and from its derivation, remarkable 
 for its blowing. And of such birds, he says, the most emi- 
 nent seems to be the bittern, which, in the north of Eng- 
 land, is called the mire-drum, from the noise it niakes, 
 which may be heard a long way off". But the opinion of 
 Bochart, that it denotes the owl, is more probable ; because 
 the owl delights in the silent desert, where little or no wa- 
 ter is to be found ; while the ibis is an aquatic bird, whose 
 instincts lead it to the lake, or running stream. In the 
 thirty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, the yansuph is mentioned as 
 frequenting the desolated land of Edom, which, according 
 to Dr. Shaw, is remarkably destitute of water, and by con- 
 sequence, quite improper "for the abode of a water- fowl, 
 which feeds on fish. It is admittted that the kaath, or peli- 
 can, another water-fowl, is mentioned in the same text 
 
Ps. 102—104. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 407 
 
 with yansuph ; that all the larger water-fowls are extreme- 
 ly shy ; that they sometimes build their nests in retired 
 places, a long way from the water where they seek their 
 food ; and that even the common heron will come at least 
 twelv^e or fourteen miles, and perhaps much farther, from 
 her usual residence, to the lakes and streams which abound 
 with fish. But no argument can be founded on the ar- 
 rangements of scripture, in matters of this kind ; because 
 the inspired writers do not always observe a strict order, 
 or scientific classification. It ought also to be remember- 
 ed, that in the passage quoted from Isaiah, the yansuph is 
 connected with the raven, which is not an aquatic bird. 
 The owl and the raven are associated with greater propri- 
 ety in scenes of desolation, to which they have been assign- 
 ed by the common suffrage of mankind, and accordingly re- 
 garded as inauspicious birds, and objects of fear and aver- 
 sion : — 
 
 "Foedaque fit volucris venturi nuntia luctus 
 Ignavus bubo dirum mortalibus omen." — Ovid. 
 
 The presence of the owl and the raven, two hateful birds, 
 in company with the cormorant and the bittern, greatly 
 heighten the general effect of the picture delineated by the 
 prophet: " But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess 
 It; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he 
 shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones 
 of emptiness." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. 1 watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon 
 the house-top. 
 
 Brookes says of this bird, " It usually sits alone on the 
 tops of old buildings and roofs of churches, singing very 
 sweetly, especially in the morning ; and is an oriental bird." 
 — Border. 
 
 The sparrow has been considered by some interpreters 
 as a solitary moping bird, which loves to dwell on the 
 house-top alone ; and so timid, that she endeavours to con- 
 ceal herself in the darkest corners, and passes the night in 
 sleepless anxiety. Hence they translate the words of the 
 Psalmist : " I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the 
 house-top." But her character and manners by no means 
 agree with their description. She is a pert, loquacious, 
 bustling creature, which, instead of courting the dark and 
 solitary corner, is commonly found chirping and fluttering 
 about in the crowd. The term in this text, therefore, must 
 be understood in its general sense, and probably refers to 
 some variety of the owl. Jerome renders it, I was as a sol- 
 itary bird on the roof The Hebrew text contains nothing 
 which can with propriety suggest the sparrow, or any sim- 
 ilar bird; and indeed, nothing seems to be more remote 
 from the mind of David : all the circumstances seem to 
 indicate some bird of the night; for the Psalmist, bending 
 under a load of severe afl^^iction, shuns the society of men, 
 and mingles his unceasing groans and lamentations with 
 the mournful hootings of those solitary birds which disturb 
 the lonely desert. " By reason of the voice of my groaning, 
 my bones cleave to my skin ; I am like a pefican of the 
 wilderness; I am like an owl of the desert." He then pro- 
 ceeds with his comparison : " I watch, and am as a bird 
 upon the house-top alone ;" I watch, that is, I have spent a 
 sleepless night: or, as it is paraphrased in the Chaldee, I 
 have watched the whole night long, without once closing 
 my eyes. Every part of this description directs our atten- 
 tion to some nocturnal bird, which hates the light, and 
 comes forth from its hiding-place when the shadows of 
 evening fall, to hunt the prey, and from the top of some 
 ruined tower, to tell its joys or its sorrows to a slumbering 
 world. But, with what propriety can the sparrow be called 
 a solitary bird, when it is gregarious, and, so far from lov- 
 ing solitude, builds her nest in the roofs of our dwellings 7 
 Natural historians mention two kinds of this bird, one do- 
 mestic, and the other wild. But the wild sparrow does not 
 repair for shelter, like her relative, mentioned by David, to 
 the human dwelling; she never takes her station on the 
 house-top, but seeks a home in her native woods. If the 
 allusion, therefore, be made to the sparrow, it must be to 
 the domestic, not to the wild species. It is in vain to argue, 
 that the domestic sparrow may be called solitary, when she 
 is deprived of her mate ; for she does not, like the turtle, 
 when she loses her spouse, remain in a state of inconsola- 
 ble widowhood, but accepts, without reluctance, the first 
 companion that solicits her affections. Hence the Psalm- 
 
 ist undoubtedly refers to some species of the owl, whose 
 dreary note and solitary dispositions, are celebrated by 
 almost every poet of antiquity.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. My days a/re like a shadow that declineth ; 
 and I am withered like grass. 
 
 " My days are like the declining shadow," says the old 
 man: "my shadow is fast declining:" sirjanthu, siyanthu, 
 declining, declining. " I am withered." Indran, the king 
 of heaven, said of himself and others. They were vnthcred 
 by the mandates of Sooran. " Alas ! his face and heart 
 are withered." " My heart is withered, I cannot eat my 
 food." " Sorrow, not age, has withered my face." " Alas ! 
 how soon this blossom has withered." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 26. They shall perish, but thou shall endure; 
 yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; 
 as a vesture shall thou change them, and they 
 shall be changed. 
 
 It is reckoned in the East, according to Dr. Pococke, a 
 mark of respect often to change their garments, in the 
 time of a visit for a night or two. He expresses himself, 
 however, with obscurity and some uncertainty; but it is 
 made certain by the accounts of other travellers, that it is 
 a matter of state and magnificence. So Thevenot tells us, 
 that when he saw the grand seignior go to the new mosque, 
 he was clad in a satin doliman of a flesh colour, and a vest 
 of almost the same colour; but when he had said his 
 prayers, then he changed his vest, and put on one of a 
 particular kind of green. At another time he went to the 
 mosque in a vest of crimson velvet, but returned in one of 
 a fired satin. To this frequent change of vestments among 
 the great, possibly the Psalmist alludes, when, speaking of 
 the Lord of all, he says. The heavens, unchangeable as 
 they are, when compared with the productions of the earth, 
 shall perish, while he shall remain ; yea, they shall be laid 
 aside, in comparison of his immortality, as soon as a gar- 
 ment grows old ; or rather, this change which they shall 
 undergo, shall come on more speedily, with respect to his 
 eternity, than the laying aside of a vestment which kings 
 and princes change often in a day. The changing of 
 clothes is a piece of eastern magnificence : how wonder- 
 fully sublime, then, in this view, is this representation of 
 the grandeur of God, " Thou shalt change these heavens as 
 a prince changes his vesture," — Harmer, 
 
 PSALM cm. 
 
 Ver. 15, As for man, his days are as grass; as a 
 
 flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 
 See on 2 Kings 19. 7. 
 
 Ver. 16. For the wind passeth over it, and it is 
 
 gone ; and the place thereof shall know it no 
 
 more. 
 See on Est. 1. 5, 6. 
 
 PSALM CIV. 
 Ver. 2. Who coverest thyself with light as with 
 
 a garment ; who stretchest out the heavens like 
 
 a curtain. 
 
 It is usual in the summer season, and upon all occasions 
 when a large company is to be received, to have the court 
 of the house (which is the middle of an open square) shel- 
 tered from the heat of the weather by an umbrella or veil, 
 which, being expanded upon ropes from one side of the 
 parapet-wall to the other, may be folded or unfolded at 
 pleasure. The Psalmist seems to allude to some covering 
 of this kind in that beautiful expression of " stretching out 
 the heavens like a curtain." — Shaw. 
 
 Ver. 10. He sendeth the springs into the valleys, 
 ^chich run among the hills. 11. They give 
 drink to every beast of the field : the wild asses 
 quench their thirst. 
 
 See on Job 39. 5. 
 
408 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 104. 
 
 Ver. 17. Where the birds make their nests: as 
 ^- for the stork, the fir-trees are her house. 
 
 This bird has long been celebrated for her amiable and 
 pious disposition, in which she has no rival among the 
 feathered race. Her Hebrew name is chasida, which sig- 
 nifies pious or benign ; to the honour of which, her char- 
 acter and habits, as described by the pen of antiquity, 
 prove her to be fully entitled. Her kind, benevolent tem- 
 per, she discovers in feeding her parents in the time of 
 incubation, when they have not leisure to seek their food, 
 or when they have become old, and unable to provide for 
 themselves. This attention of the stork to her parents is 
 confirmed by the united voice of antiquity; and we find 
 nothing in the scriptures to invalidate the testimony. She 
 was classed by the Jewish lawgiver among the unclean 
 birds, probably because she feeds on serpents, and other 
 venomous animals, and rears her young by means of the 
 same species of food. In the challenge which the Almighty 
 addressed to Job, the wings and feathers of the ostrich are 
 compared with those of the stork: "Gavest thou the goodly 
 wings unto the peacocks, or wings and feathers unto the 
 ostrich ;" or, as it is rendered by the learned Bochart, and 
 after him by Dr. Shaw, "the plumage of the stork." Nat- 
 ural historians inform us, that the wings are tipped with 
 black, and a part of the head and thighs are adorned with 
 feathers of the same colour ; the rest of the body is white. 
 Albert says, the stork has black wings, the tail and other 
 parts white; while Turner asserts, that the wings are white, 
 spotted with black. From these diflferent accounts, it is 
 evident that the feathers of the stork are black and white, 
 and not always disposed in the same manner. She con- 
 structs her nest with admirable skill, of dry twigs from the 
 forest, and coarse grass from the marsh; but wisely yield- 
 ing to circumstances, she does not confine herself to one 
 situation. At one time she selects for her dwelling the 
 pinnacle of a deserted tower, or the canal of an ancient 
 aqueduct ; at another, the roof of a church or dwelling- 
 house. She frequently retires from the noise and bustle of 
 the town, into the circumjacent fields; but she never builds 
 her nest on the ground. She chooses the highest tree of 
 the forest for her dwelling; but always prefers the fir, 
 when it is equally suitable to her purpose. This fact is 
 clearly stated by the Psalmist, in his meditation on the 
 
 Eower of God : " As for the stork, the fir-trees are her 
 ouse." In another passage, the Psalmist calls the nest of 
 the sparrow her house : " Yea, the sparrow hath found a 
 house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may 
 lay her young." But the term house is not used in these 
 passages, merely by a figure of speech ; if the descrip- 
 tion of ancient writers be true, it is in every respect the 
 most proper and expressive that can be selected. The 
 stork chooses the site of her dwelling with much care and 
 intelligence ; she combines her materials with great art, 
 and prosecutes her plan with surprising exactness. After 
 the structure is finished, she examines it on all sides, tries 
 its firmness and solidity, supplies any defect she may dis- 
 cover, and with admirable industry, reduces with her bill 
 an unsightly projection, or ill-adjusted twig, till it perfectly 
 corresponds with her instinctive conception of safety, neat- 
 ness, and comfort. 
 
 The inspired writer alludes to this bird, with an air of 
 constant and intimate acquaintance : " As for the stork, 
 the fir-tree is her house." "We learn from the narrative of 
 Doubdan, that the fields between Cana and Nazareth are 
 covered with numerous flocks of them, each flock contain- 
 ing, according to his computation, more than a thousand. 
 In some parts, the ground is entirely whitened by them ; 
 and on the wing they darken the air like a congeries of 
 clouds. At the approach of evening, they retire to roost 
 on the trees. The inhabitants carefully abstain from hurt- 
 ing them, on account of their important services in clearing 
 the country of venomous animals. The annual migration 
 of this bird did not escape the notice of the prophet Jere- 
 miah, who employs it with powerful eflfect for the purpose 
 of exposing the stupidity of God's ancient people : " Yea, 
 the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time, and 
 the turtle, the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of 
 their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the 
 Lerd." They know, with unerring precision, the time 
 whea il is necessary for them to remove from one place to 
 anolhei, and the region whither they are to bend their 
 
 flight ; but the people of God, that received many special 
 revelations from heaven, and enjoyed the cgnti'nual in- 
 structions of his prophets, had become so depraved, that 
 they neither understood the meaning of mercies nor judg- 
 ments ; they knew not how to accommodate themselves to 
 either, nor to answer the design of heaven in such dispen- 
 sations ; they knew not the signs of their times, nor what 
 they ought to do. The stork, that had neither instructer to 
 guide her, nor reason to reflect, and judgment to deter- 
 mine, what was proper to be done, found no difiiculty in j 
 discerning the precise time of her departure and return. — j 
 Paxton, ' 
 
 Ver. 18. The high hills are a refuge for the wild ; 
 goats, and the rocks for the conies. 
 
 The wild goat, or ibex, belongs to the same species with 
 the domestic goat, and exhibits nearly the same character 
 and dispositions. His Hebrew name, yaala, from a verb 
 which signifies to ascend, indicates one of the strongest 
 habits implanted in his nature, to scale the loftiest pinnacle 
 of the rock, and the highest ridge of the mountains. He 
 takes his station on the edge of the steep, and seems to de- 
 light in gazing on the gulf below, or surveying the immense 
 void before him. Those frightful precipices which are in- 
 accessible to man, and other animals, where the most 
 adventurous hunter dares not follow him, are his favourite 
 haunts. He sleeps on their brow ; he sports on their small- 
 est projections, secure from the attack of his enemies. 
 These facts were observed by the shepherds of the East, 
 recorded by the pen of inspiration, and celebrated in the 
 songs of Zion : " The high hills are a refuge for the wild 
 goats." In the expostulation which Jehovah addressed to 
 Job, they are called " the wild goats of the rock ;" because 
 it is the place which the Creator has appointed for their 
 proper abode, and to which he has adapted all their dispo- 
 sitions and habits. The dreary and frightful precipices, 
 which frown over the Dead Sea, towards the wilderness of 
 Engedi, the inspired historian of David's life calls em- 
 phatically " the rocks of the wild goats," as if accessible 
 only to those animals. 
 
 The ibex is distinguished by the size of his horns. No 
 creature, says Gesner, has horns so large as those of the 
 mountain goat, for they reach from his head as far as hi.s 
 buttocks. Long before his time, Pliny remarked, that the 
 ibex is a creature of wonderful swiftness, although its head 
 is loaded with vast horns. According to Scaliger, the horns 
 of an elderly goat are sometimes eighteen pounds weighty 
 and marked by twenty-four circular prominences, the indi- 
 cations of as many years. The horns of the ibex, accord- 
 ing to the Chaldee interpreter, are mentioned by the prophet 
 among the valuable commodities which enriched the mer- 
 chants of Tyre, in the days of her prosperity: " The men 
 of Dedan were thy merchants ; many isles were the mer- 
 chandise of thy hand ; they brought thee for a present, 
 horns of ivory and ebony." It is certain that the horns of 
 this animal were greatly esteemed among the ancients, on 
 account of the various useful purposes to which they were 
 converted. The Cretan archers had them manufactured 
 into bows ; and the votaries of Bacchus, into large ciips, 
 one of which, says jElian, could easily hold three measures. 
 The conjecture of Bochart is therefore extremely probable, 
 that the I'laXo? of Homer, is the ibex of the Latins ; for hf 
 calls it a wild goat, says that it was taken among the rocks 
 and had horns of sixteen palms, of which the bow of Pan 
 darus was fabricated. We may conclude from the wisdon* 
 and goodness of God, which shine conspicuously in all his 
 works, that the enormous horns of the ibex are not a use- 
 less encumbrance, but, in some respects, necessary to its 
 safety and comfort. The Arabian writers aver, that when 
 it sees the hunter approach the top of the rock, where it 
 happens to have taken its station, and has no other way of 
 escape, turning on its back, it throws itself down the preci- 
 pice, at once defended by its long bending horns from the 
 projections of the rock, and saved from being dashe^^ in 
 pieces, or even hurt by the fall. The opinion of Pliny is 
 more worthy of credit," that the horns of the ibex serve as a 
 poise to its body in its perilous excursions among the pre- 
 cipitous rocks, or when it attempts to leap from one crag to 
 another. The feats which it is said to perform among ihe 
 Alpine summits, are almost incredible; one fact, however, 
 seems to be certain, that in bounding from one height to 
 
Ps. 104. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 409 
 
 another, it far surpasses all the other varieties of the spe- 
 cies. To hunt the ibex has been justly reckoned a most 
 Eerilous enterprise, which frequently terminates in the 
 unter's destruction. These facts place in a very strong 
 light the extreme dangers which at one time compelled 
 David to seek a refuge from the pursuit of his infatuated 
 father-in-law, among the rocks of the wild goats ; and, at 
 the same time, the bitter and implacable spirit which, 
 prompted Saul to follow him in places so full of peril. 
 
 The Hebrew name of the cony is derived from a verb 
 which signifies to hide, and seems to indicate a creature of 
 a timid and harmless disposition. Unable to avoid or en- 
 counter the various dangers to which it would be exposed 
 in the plain, it seeks a shelter among the rocks, in the fis- 
 sures of which it hides itself from the pursuit of its ene- 
 mies. This circumstance is attested by the sacred writer, 
 in one of the songs of Zion : " The high hills are a refuge 
 for the wild goats, and the rocks for the (s^jstf) shaphans." 
 The choice which the shaphan makes of the rock for the 
 place of its abode, is mentioned by Solomon as a proof of 
 sagacity : " The shaphans are but a feeble folk, yet make 
 they their houses in the rocks." It is evident from these 
 words also, that the shaphan is a gregarious animal, al- 
 though they afford us no hint from which the numbers 
 which constitute their little communities may be inferred. 
 To what particular animal the name shaphan really be- 
 longs, has been much disputed among the learned. In 
 our version it is rendered by the word cony or rabbit ; in 
 which our translators have followed the greater part of 
 modern interpreters. Several circumstances seem to fa- 
 vour this interpretation ; it is twice connected in the law 
 of Moses with the hare, as if it were a kindred animal ; 
 the noun in the plural is rendered hare by the Seventy, in 
 which they have been followed by many ancient inter- 
 preters of great name : the meaning of shaphan seems to 
 correspond with the timidity of the rabbit; and it is certain 
 that the Rabbinical writers formerly interpreted the origi- 
 nal word in this manner. Besides, the rabbit is a gregari- 
 ous animal, of a diminutive size, and found in great num- 
 bers in the plain of Jericho. But these facts are not 
 sufficient to establish the point for which they are brought 
 forward ; for, instead of seeking a habitation in the fissures 
 of the rocks, the rabbit delights to burrow in the sandy 
 downs. Sometimes, indeed, he digs a receptacle for him- 
 self in rocky eminences, where the openings are filled with 
 earth, but he generally prefers a dwelling in the sand, a 
 situation for which he is evidently formed by nature. The 
 words of David clearly show, that the instincts and habits 
 of the shaphan, as naturally and constantly lead him to 
 the rocks for shelter, as those of his associate impel him to 
 rove among the mountains. He does not allude to an occa- 
 sional residence, but to a fixed and permanent abode ; not 
 to the wanderings of a few, but to the habitual choice of a 
 whole species. But the rabbit as uniformly seeks the 
 sandy plain, as the wild goat the summit of the mountain. 
 The shaphan, according to Solomon, discovers great wis- 
 dom and sagacity in retiring from the plain country, to the 
 natural fastness which the almighty Creator has provided 
 for its reception ; but it is no mark of wisdom in the rabbit, 
 that he forsakes occasionally the sandy plain, which he is 
 naturally formed to occupy, and retires to the rocks, which 
 are so little suited to his habits and manners. This is an 
 act of rashness or folly, not of wisdom. The wise man is 
 also noting the sagacity of a whole species, not of a ram- 
 bling individual; but the species is to be found on the 
 plain, not among the rocks. Nor is the rabbit a feeble 
 creature ; he runs with considerable swiftness ; and he is 
 provided with the means of digging his burrow, which he 
 employs with so great energy, particularly when alarmed 
 by the approach of danger, that he buries himself in the 
 sand with surprising rapidity. To exert his strength, ac- 
 cording to existing circumstances, is all the sagacity which 
 he discovers ; and this, it must be admitted, is not peculiar 
 to him, but common to the hare, the hedgehog, and many 
 other animals. He betrays no foresight, except in prepa- 
 ring his dwelling, and he is never known to supply the 
 want of strength by any contrivance. The shaphan, as 
 described both by David and Solomon, exhibits a very dif- 
 ferent character, and therefore cannot be the same animal. 
 But if we apply these characters to the daman Israel, or, 
 as Mr. Bruce calls it, the ashkoko, the identity of this ani- 
 jnal with the shaphan of the scriptures will instantly 
 53 
 
 appear : " The daman is a harmless creature, of the same 
 size and quality with the rabbit, and with the like incur- 
 vating posture and disposition of the fore-teeth. But it is 
 of a browner colour, with smaller eyes, and a head more 
 pointed, like the marmot's ; the forefeet likewise are short, 
 and the hinder are nearly as long in proportion as those 
 of the jerboa. Though this animal is known sometimes 
 to burrow in the ground, yet he is so much attached to 
 the rock, that he is seldom or never seen on the ground, 
 or from among large stones in the mouth of caves, where 
 he fixes his constant residence. He is gregarious, as the 
 wise man intimates, and lives in families ; he is a native 
 of Judea, Palestine, and Arabia, and consequently, must 
 have been familiar to Solomon, and other inspired writers. 
 The royal Psalmist, in a passage already quoted, describes 
 him with great propriety, and joins him with other animals, 
 which were perfectly known in that country. Solomon 
 favours us with a more detailed account of his character: 
 " There be four things which are little upon the earth, but 
 they are exceeding wise ; the sephanim are a feeble folk, 
 yet make they their houses in the rocks." This exactly 
 corresponds with the character which natural historians 
 give us of the daman Israel, which they represent as 
 equally feeble in body and temper. The toes of his fore- 
 feet very much resemble the fingers of the human hand ; 
 his feet are perfectly round, very pulpy or fleshy, liable to 
 be excoriated or hurt, and of a soft fleshy substance. They 
 are quite inadequate to dig holes in the ground, much 
 more to force their way into the hard rock. Unable or 
 afraid to stand upright on his feet, he steals along every 
 moment as it were apprehensive of danger, his belly al- 
 most close to the ground, advancing a few steps at a time, 
 and then pausing, as if afraid or uncertain whether he 
 should proceed. His whole appearance and behaviour in- 
 dicate a mild, feeble, and timia disposition ; which is con- 
 firmed by the ease with which he is lamed. Conscious as 
 it were of his total inability to dig in the ground, or to 
 mingle with the sterner beasts of the field, he builds his 
 house on rocks, more inaccessible than those to which the 
 cony retires, and in which he resides in greater safety, not 
 by exertions of strength, for he has it not, but by his own 
 sagacily and judgment. Solomon has therefore justly char- 
 acterized him as " a feeble animal, but exceeding wise." 
 
 The Arabian writers confound the daman Israel with 
 the jerboa, which seems to be a species of rat. It ruminates, 
 builds its house on the rocks, or digs its abode in the 
 ground, but always in some high and rocky place, where it 
 may be safe from the influx of waters, and the foot of the 
 wild beast. If we may believe tlie Arabic writer quoted by 
 Bochart, these diminutive animals discover no little saga- 
 city in the conduct of public affairs, particularly in appoint- 
 ing a leader, whose business it is to give them notice on the 
 approach of danger, and who in case of neglect is punished 
 with death, and succeeded by another more attentive to 
 their safety. Mr. Bruce, on the contrary, contends with 
 great earnestness, that the habits of the jerboa are quite 
 diflferent from those which Solomon ascribes to the sha- 
 phan ; he asserts, that the jerboa always digs his habita- 
 tion in the smoother places of the desert, especially where 
 the soil is fixed gravel ; for in that chiefly he burrows, 
 dividing his hole below into many mansions. He is not 
 gregarious, like the shaphan, nor is he distinguished for his 
 feebleness, which he supplies by his wisdom. Although, 
 therefore, he ruminates in common with some other ani- 
 mals, and abounds in Judea, he cannot be the shaphan of 
 the scripture. Hence, it is probable, that the Arabian wri- 
 ters improperly confounded the daman Israel, or shaphan, 
 and the jerboa; and it may be considered as nearly certain, 
 that the shaphan of Solomon is not the rabbit, but the daman 
 Israel, which, though bearing some resemblance to it, is an 
 animal of a different species. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 20. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, 
 wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep 
 forth. 
 
 Immediately after landing, we hired horses to conduct 
 us to Fanskog, ten miles and a half, where we arrived at 
 so neat an inn, and were withal so subdued by want of sleep 
 and fatigue, that we rested for a few hours, writing our 
 journals without candles half an hour after midnight, by a 
 light that could not be called twilight; it was ratherlhe 
 
410 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 105—110. 
 
 glare of noon, being reflected so strongly from the walls 
 and houses, that it was painful io our eyes, and we began 
 already to perceive, what we never felt before, that dark- 
 ness is one of those benevolent gifts of Providence, the value 
 of which, as conducive to repose, we only become sensible 
 of, when it ceases altogether to return. There were no 
 shutters to the windows, and the continual blaze which sur- 
 rounded us, we could gladly have dispensed with, had it 
 been possible. When we closed our eyes, they seemed to be 
 still open ; we even bound on them our handkerchiefs ; but 
 a remaining impression of brightness, like a shining light, 
 wearied and oppressed them. To this inconvenience we 
 were afterward more exposed, and although use rendered 
 us somewhat less affected by it, it was an evil of which we 
 all complained, and we hailed the returning gloom of au- 
 tumn as a comfort and a blessing. — Clarke. 
 
 PSALM CV. 
 Ver. 26. He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron 
 whom he had chosen. 
 
 Calmet says the word servant, among the Hebrews, 
 " generally signifies a slave :" and Dr. A. Clarke says, (on 
 Rom. i. 1, " Paul a servant of Jesus Christ,") the word 
 6ov\ui, which we translate servant, properly means a slave, 
 one who is the entire property of his master, and is used 
 here by the apostle with great propriety. In eastern lan- 
 guage the word used as expressive of the relationship of 
 men to their deities is slave. " I am the adumi" i. e. slave, 
 *' of the supreme Siva." " I am the devoted slave of Vishnoo." 
 Hindoo saints are always called the stores of the gods. The 
 term servant is applied to one who is at liberty to dispose of 
 himself, in serving diflferent masters : but not so a slave, he 
 is the property of his owner ; from him he receives protec- 
 tion and support, and he is not at liberty to serve another 
 master ; hence it is that the native Christians, in praying 
 to the true God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ, always speak 
 of themselves as slaves ; they are not their own, but " bought 
 with a price." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 30. The land broug-ht forth frogs in abun- 
 dance; in the chambers of their kings. 
 
 It isr-)t -difficult for an Englishman in an eastern wet 
 monsoon, io form a tolerable idea of that plague of Egypt, 
 in which the frogs were in the " houses, bedchambers, beds, 
 and kneading-troughs," of the Egyptians. In the season 
 alluded to, myriads of them send forth their constant croak 
 in every direction, and a man not possessed of overmuch 
 patience, becomes as petulant as was the licentious god, and 
 is ready to exclaim, 
 
 " Croak, croak, indeed I shall choke 
 
 If you pester and bore my ears any more 
 
 With your croak, croak, croak." 
 
 A new-comer, on seeing them leap about the rooms, be- 
 comes disgusted, and forthwith begins an attack upon them, 
 but the next evening will bring a return of his active visiters. 
 It may appear almost incredible, but in one evening we 
 killed upwards of forty of these guests in the Jaffna Mission 
 House. They had principally concealed themselves in a 
 small tunnel connected with the bathing-room, and their 
 noise had become almost insupportable. I have been 
 amused when a man has been making a speech which has 
 not given pleasure to his audience, to hear another per- 
 son ask, " What has that fellow been croaking about, like 
 a frog of the wet monsoon 1" The natives also do us the 
 honour of saying, that our singing, in parts, is very much 
 like the notes of the large and small frogs. The bass 
 singers, say they, resemble the croak of the bull-frogs, and 
 the other parts the notes of the small fry.— Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CVII, 
 
 . Ver. 5. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in 
 them. 
 
 Many perish, victims of the most horrible thirst. It is 
 then that the value of a cup of water is really felt ; he that 
 has a zenzabia of it is the richest of all : in such a case, 
 there is no distinction ; if the master has none, the servant 
 will not give it to him ; for very few are the instances where 
 a man will voluntarily lose his life to save that of another, 
 
 particularly in a caravan in the desert, where people are 
 strangers to each other. What a situation for a man, though 
 a rich one, perhaps the owner of all the caravans! He is 
 dying for a cup of water; no one gives it to him ; he offers 
 all he possesses; no one hears him; they are all dying, 
 though by walking a few hours farther they might be saved. 
 The camels are lying down, and cannot be made to ri-e^ 
 no one has strength to walk ; only he that has a glass of 
 that precious liquid lives to walk a mile farther, and per- 
 haps dies too. If the voyages on seas are dangerous, so are 
 those in the deserts. At sea, the provisions very often fail; 
 in the desert, it is worse. At sea, storms are met with; in 
 the desert there cannot be a greater storm than to find a 
 dry well. At sea, one meets pirates; we escape, we sur- 
 render, or die ; in the desert they rob the traveller of all his 
 property and water. They let him live, perhaps, but what 
 a life ! to die the most barbarous and agonizing death. In 
 short, to be thirsty in a desert, without water, exposed to 
 the burning sun, without shelter, and no hopes of^ finding 
 either, is the most terrible situation that a man can be placed 
 in, and I believe that it is one of the greatest sufferings that 
 a human being can sustain. The eyes grow inflamed, the 
 tongue and lips swell, a hollow sound is heard in the ears, 
 which brings on deafness, and the brains appear to grow 
 thick and inflamed. All these feelings arise from the want 
 of a little water. In the midst of all this misery, the deceit- 
 ful mirages appear before the traveller, at no great distance, 
 something like a lake or river of clear fresh water. The 
 deception of this phenomenon is well known, but it does not 
 fail to invite the longing traveller towards that element, and 
 to put him in remembrance of the happiness of being on 
 such a spot. If perchance a traveller is not undeceived, he 
 hastens his pace to reach it sooner : the more he advances 
 towards it, the more it goes from him, till at last it vanishes 
 entirely, and the deluded passenger often asks where is the 
 water he saw at no great distance. He can scarcely believe 
 that he was so deceived; he protests that he saw the waves 
 running before the wind, and the reflection of the high 
 rocks in the water. (Belzoni.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 16, For he hath broken the gates of brass, 
 
 and cut the bars of iron in sunder. 
 See on Acts 12. 10. 
 
 PSALM CIX. 
 Ver. 9. Let his children be fatherless, and his 
 wife a widow. 10. Let his children be con- 
 tinually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek 
 their bread also out of their desolate places. 
 
 Listen to two married men who are quarrelling, you will 
 hear the one accost the other, " Thy family will soon come 
 to destruction." " And what will become of thine ?" rejoins 
 the other: "I will tell thee ; thy wife will soon take off her 
 thdli" which means she will be a widow, as the IhdliisXhe 
 marriage jewel, which must be taken off on the death of a 
 husband. "Yes, thy children will soon be beggars; I shall 
 see them at my door." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. I am gone like the shadow when it de- 
 clineth : I am tossed up and dowTi as the locust. 
 
 See on 2 Chron. 7. 13. 
 
 Dr. Shaw, speaking of the swarms of locusts, which he 
 saw near Algiers, in 1724 and 1725, says, " when the wind 
 blew briskly, so that these swarms were crowded by others, 
 we had a lively idea of that comparison of the Psalmist, 
 of being tossed up and down as the locust." — Burder. 
 
 PSALM ex. 
 Ver. 1. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou 
 at my right hand, until I make thine enemies 
 thy footstool. 
 
 The host always places a distinguished guest on his right 
 hand, because that side is considered more honourable than 
 the other. Hence the rank known by the name of vnlang- 
 kiyar, right-hand caste, is very superior to the idumgkiyar^ 
 or left-hand caste.— Roberts. 
 
 J 
 
Ps. 112—120. 
 
 PSALMS 
 
 m 
 
 PSALM CXII. 
 Ver. 10. The wicked shall see i^, and be grieved; 
 he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away; 
 the desire of the wicked shall perish. 
 
 An enraged man snaps his teeth together, as if about to 
 bite the object of his anger. Thus, in the book Ramyanum, 
 the giant Rdvanan is described as in his fury gnashing 
 tog.ither his " thirty-two teeth !" " Look at the beast, how- 
 he gnashes his teeth." "Go near that fellow."— " Not I, 
 indeed, he will only gnash his teeth." — Roberts, 
 
 PSALM CXIII. 
 Ver. 9. He maketh the barren woman to keep 
 house, to he a joyful mother of children. 
 
 Should a married woman, who has long been considered 
 steril, become a mother, her joy, and that of her husband 
 and Iriends, is most extravagant. " They called her 
 Malady" i. e. barren, " but she has given us some good 
 fruit." " My neighbours pointed at me, and said, Malady : 
 but what will they say now V A man who manifests great 
 delight, is said to be like the barren woman, who has borne 
 a child. Of any thing which is exceedingly valuable, it is 
 said, " This is as precious as the son of the barren woman," 
 i. e. of her who had long been reputed barren. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXIX. 
 82. Mine eyes fail for thy word, saying. 
 
 Ver. 
 
 When wilt thou comfort me ? 
 
 Has a mother promised to visit her son or daughter, and 
 should she not be able to go, the son or daughter will say, 
 *• Alas ! my mother promised to come to me ; how long have 
 I been looking for her 1 but a speck has grown upon my eye." 
 " I cannot see, my eyes have failed me ;" i.e. by looking so 
 intensely for her coming. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 83. For I am become like a bottle in the 
 smoke ; yet do I not forget thy statutes. 
 
 Bottles are made of the skins of goats, sheep, and other 
 animals ; and there are several articles preserved in them, 
 in the same way as the English keep hogs' lard in bladders. 
 Some kinds of medicinal oil, assafoetida, honey, a kind of 
 treacle, and other drugs, arc kept for a great leiigth of time, 
 by hanging the bottles in the smoke, which soon causes 
 them to become black and shrivelled. The Psalmist was 
 ready to faint for the salvation of the Lord : his eyes had 
 failed in looking for His blessing, and anxiety had made 
 him like unto a skin bottle, shrivelled and blackened in the 
 smoke. — Roberts. 
 
 Cups and drinking vessels of gold and silver were doubt- 
 less used in the courts of princes. (1 Kings x. 21.) But in 
 the Arab tents leathern bottles, as well as pitchers, were 
 used. These of course were smoky habitations. To this 
 latter circumstance, and the contrast between the drinking 
 utensils, the Psalmist alludes : " My appearance in my 
 present state is as different from what it was when I dwelt 
 at court, as the furniture of a palace differs from that of a 
 poor Arab's tent."— Harmer. 
 
 The eastern bottle is made of a goat or kid skin, stripped 
 off, without opening the belly ; the apertures made by cutting 
 off the tail and legs are sewed up, and when filled, it is 
 tied about the neck. The Arabs and Persians never go a 
 journey without a small leathern bottle of water hanging by 
 their side like a scrip. These skin bottles preserve their 
 water, milk, and other liquids, in a fresher state than any 
 other vessels they can use. The people of the East, indeed, 
 put into them every thing they mean to carry to a distance, 
 whether dry or liquid, and very rarely make use of boxes 
 and pots, unless to preserve such things as are liable to be 
 broken. They enclose these leathern bottles in woollen 
 sacks, because their beasts of carriage often fall down under 
 their load, or cast it do\vn on the sandy desert. This method 
 of transporting the necessaries of life has another advan- 
 tage ; the skin bottles preserve them fresher ; defend them 
 against the ants, and other insects, which cannot penetrate 
 the skin ; and prevent the dust, of which immense quanti- 
 ties are constantly moving about, in the arid regions of 
 
 Asia, and so fine, that no coffer is impenetrable to it, from 
 reaching them. It is for these reasons that provisions ol 
 every kind are enclosed in vessels made of the skins of 
 these animals. The conjecture, therefore, is highly proba- 
 ble, that not only the balm and the honey, which are some- 
 what liquid, but also the nuts and almonds, which were 
 sent as a present to Joseph from Canaan, were enclosed in 
 little vessels of kid skin, that they might be preserved fresh; 
 and to defend them against injuries, from therestivenessoi 
 the camels or asses, or other accidents, the whole were en- 
 closed in woollen sacks. This custom has descended to the 
 present times; for fruits and provisions of every kind are 
 still commonly packed up in skins, by the inhabitants of 
 Syria. 
 
 To those goat-skin vessels the Psalmist refers in this 
 complaint: " I am become as a bottle in the smoke." My 
 appearance in the slate of my exile is as different from 
 what it was when I dwelt at court, as are the gold and sil- 
 ver vessels of a palace, from the smoky skin bottle of a poor 
 Arab's tent, where I am now compelled to reside. Not 
 less emphatical is the lamentation of the prophet, that the 
 precious sons of Zion, comparable to tine gold, or to ves- 
 sels fabricated of that precious metal, were considered as 
 no better than earthen pitchers, the work of the potter. 
 The holy Psalmist compares himself to a bottle in the 
 smoke ; which is a convertible phrase with a bottle in the 
 tent of an Arab ; because, when fires are lighted in it, the 
 smoke instantly fills every part, and greatly incommodes 
 the tenant. Nor will this appear surprising, when it is con- 
 sidered that an Arabian tent has no aperture but the door, 
 from which the smoke can escape. The inspired writer, 
 therefore, seems to allude both to the meanness of a skin 
 bottle, and to its blackness, from the smoke of the tent in 
 which it is placed. And a most natural image it was for 
 him to use, driven from the vessels of silver and gold in the 
 palace of Saul, to quench his thirst with the wandering 
 Arabs, from a smutted bottle of goat-skin. These bottles 
 are liable to be rent, when old or much used, and at the 
 same time capable of being repaired. In the book of Joshua 
 we are informe*, the Gibeonites " took wine bottles, old 
 and rent, and bound up." This is perfectly according to 
 the custom of the East ; and the manner in which they mend 
 their old and rent bottles is various. Sometimes they set 
 in a piece; sometimes they gather up the wounded place 
 in the manner of a purse ; sometimes they put in a round 
 flat piece of wood, and by that means stop the hole. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 103. How sweet are thy words unto my taste ! 
 yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. 
 
 An affectionate wife often says, " My husband, your words 
 are sweeter to me than honey ;'yes, they are sweeter than the 
 sugarcane." " Alas ! my husband is gone," says the widow ; 
 " how sweetwere his words! honey dropped from his mouth; 
 his words were ambrosia." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 136, Rivers of water run down mine eyes, 
 because they keep not thy law. 
 
 This figure occurs in the poem called Veerale-vudu-toothe. 
 " Rivers of tears run down the face of that mother bereft of 
 her children," is a saying in common use. " The water of 
 her eyes runs like a river,"— Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXX. 
 
 Ver. 4. Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of 
 juniper. 
 
 " Coals of juniper ;" more properly, like the glowing of 
 coals of broom. The Hebrew word rothern, here trans- 
 lated juniper, means a shrub of the genista or broom species, 
 the Spartium junceum of Linnaeus, which grows in the south 
 of France and in Spain, where it has retained its Arabic 
 name, roterna. It is a moderate shrub, with thin branches. 
 and white flowers, that grows in the deserts. Forskal found 
 it frequently in the sandy heaths about Suez.. The caravans 
 use it for fuel. When the Psalmist compares the tongue of 
 the slanderer with the glowing of the coals of broom, he 
 doubtless alludes to the severe pain caused by touching those 
 coals, which continue to glow for a very long time. — Rosen* 
 
 MULLER, 
 
412 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 121—123. 
 
 PSALM CXXI. 
 Ver. 5. The Lord is thy keeper ; the Lord is 
 thy shade upon thy right hand. 
 
 An umbrella is a very ancient, as well as honourable de- 
 fence against the pernicious effects of the scorching beams 
 of the sun, in those sultry countries ; may we not then sup- 
 pose this is that kind of shade the Psalmist refers to in the 
 121st Psalm 1 ver. 5, " The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord 
 is thy shade upon thy right hand." " The sun shall not smite 
 thee by day, nor the moon by night." 
 
 Niebuhr, who visited the southern part of Arabia, gives 
 us the following account of a solemn procession of the Iman 
 that resides at Sana, who is a great prince in that part of 
 Arabia, and considered as a holy personage, being descend- 
 ed from Mohammed, their great prophet. " It is well known 
 that the sultan at Constantinople goes every Friday to the 
 mosque, if his health will at all admit of it. The Iman of 
 Sana observes also this religious practice, with vast pomp. 
 We only saw him in -his return, because this was repre- 
 sented to us as the most curious part of the solemnity, on 
 account of the long circuit he then takes, and the great 
 number of his attendants, after their having performed their 
 
 devotions in other mosques The Iman was preceded 
 
 by some hundreds of soldiers. He, and each of the princes 
 of h^s numerous family, caused a mdalla, or large umbrella, 
 to be carried by his side, and it is a privilege which, in this 
 country, is appropriated to princes of the blood, just as the 
 sultan of Constantinople permits none but his vizier to have 
 his kaik, or gondola, covered behind, to keep him from the 
 heat of the sun. They say that in the other provinces of 
 Yemen, the independent lords, such, for example, as the 
 .;heiks of Jafa, and those of Haschid u Bekil, the scherif 
 of Abu Arisch, and many others, cause these mdallas, in 
 like manner, to be carried for their use, as a mark of their 
 independence. Besides the princes, the Iman had in his 
 train at least six hundred lords of the most distinguished 
 rank, as well ecclesiastics as seculars, and those of the mili- 
 tary line, many of them mounted on superb horses, and a 
 great rnultitude of people attended him on foot. On each 
 side of the Iman was carried a flag, different from ours, in 
 that each of them was surmounted with a little silver vessel 
 like a censer. It is said that within some charms were put, 
 to which they attributed a power of making the Iman in- 
 vincible. Many other standards were unfurled with the 
 same censer-like vessels, but without any regularity. In 
 one word, the whole train was numerous, and in some 
 measure magnificent, but no order seemingly was observed." 
 It appears by the carvings at Persepolis, umbrellas were 
 very anciently used by the eastern princes ; charms, we 
 have reason to believe, were at least as ancient: may we 
 not, with some degree of probability, suppose then this 
 121st Psalm refers to these umbrellas, where the response 
 made, probably, by the ministers of the sanctuary, to the 
 declaration of the king, in the two first verses, reminded him 
 that Jehovah would be to him all that heathen princes 
 hoped for, as to defence and honour, from their royal um- 
 brellas and their sacred charms, but hoped for in vain, as 
 to them 1 " The Lord shall be thy shade on thy right hand. 
 The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by 
 night." — Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 6. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor 
 the moon by night. 
 
 A meridian summer's sun in England gives but a faint 
 idea of the power of this luminary in the East; and yet, 
 even in this temperate climate, who has not been incon- 
 venienced when exposed to his rays 1 But how much 
 greater is his effect in India ! Sometimes " a stroke of the 
 sun" smites rnan and beast with instant death. The moon has 
 also a pernicious effect upon those who sleep in its beams : 
 and fish, having been exposed to them for one night, be- 
 comes most injurious to those who eat it : hence our English 
 seamen, when sailing in tropical climes, always take care 
 to place their fish out of " the sight of the moon." — Roberts. 
 
 The veryseverecoldof the nights in the East was ascribed 
 by the ancients to the influence of the moon, which they 
 also supposed to be the origin of the dew. Macrobius say's 
 " that tne nurses used to cover their sucklings against the 
 moon, that they might not, as damp wood which bends in 
 
 the heat, get crooked limbs from the superabundance of 
 moisture. It is also well known," continues he, " that he 
 who has slept in the moonlight is heavy when he awakes, 
 and as if deprived of his senses, and, as it were, oppressed by 
 the weight of the dampness which is spread over his whole 
 body." The same opinion of the injurious effects of the 
 light of the moon upon the human body, still prevailed in 
 the East Indies in later times. Iwrgen Anderson, in his 
 Description of the East, says, " One must here (in Batavia) 
 take great care not to sleep in the beams of the moon un- 
 covered. I have seen many people whose neck has become 
 crooked, so that they look more to the side than forward. 
 I will not decide whether it is to be ascribed to the moon, 
 as people imagine here." In some of the southern parts of 
 Europe the same opinions are entertained of the pernicious 
 influence of the moonbeams. An English gentleman walk- 
 ing in the evening in the garden of a Portuguese nobleman 
 at Lisbon, was most seriously admonished by the owner to 
 put on his hat, to protect him from the moonbeams. The 
 fishermen in Sicily are said to cover, during the night, the 
 fish which they expose to dry on the sea-shore, alleging 
 that the beams of the moon cause them to putrefy. — Rosen- 
 
 MULLER. 
 
 PSALM CXXII. 
 Ver. 2. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 O 
 
 I think, so far as the sense is concerned, it does not mat- 
 ter whether this be read in the past, present, or future tense ; 
 for, in my opinion, the arguments on that subject are of 
 little importance. I believe it to be a declaration of affec- 
 tion for Jerusalem, in which the feet, as the instruments of 
 going to the holy place, were in eastern style naturally as- 
 sociated. The devout Hindoo, when absent from the sacred 
 city of Sedambarum, often exclaims, " Ah ! Sedambarum, 
 my feet are ever walking in thee." " Ah ! Ska-stalham, 
 are not my feet in thee 1" A man who has long been absent 
 from his favourite temple, says, on his return, " My feet 
 once more tread this holy place." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXXIII. 
 
 Ver. 2. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto 
 the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a 
 maiden unto the hand of her mistress : so our 
 eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that 
 he have mercy upon us. 
 
 The HAND is looked at as the member by which a supe- 
 rior gives protection or dispenses favours ; and if this 
 Psalm be, as some suppose, a complaint of the captives in 
 Babylon, it may refer to the hand as the instrument of de- 
 liverance. A man in trouble says, " I will look at the hand 
 of my friend." " I looked at the hand of my mistress, and 
 have been comforted." A father, on returning from a 
 journey, says, " My children will look to my hands," i. e. 
 for a present. Of a troublesome person it is said, " He is 
 always looking at my hands." A slave of a cruel master 
 says to his god, " Ah ! Swamy, why am I appointed to look 
 at his hands 1" — Roberts. 
 
 The Easterns direct their servants very generally by 
 signs — even in matters of consequence. The Cingalese 
 intimate their wish for a person to approach, by bending 
 the finger with the point towards the person wanted, as if 
 to seize him — quite in the opposite direction to the English 
 way of beckoning. To depart is signified by a side nod ; 
 and a frown by a front one. — Callaway. 
 
 The servants or slaves in the East attend their masters 
 or mistresses with the profoundest respect. Maundrell 
 observes, that the servants in Turkey stand round their 
 master and his guests with the profoundest respect, silence, 
 and order, imaginable. Pococke says, that at a visit in 
 Egypt, every thing is done with the greatest decency, and 
 the most profound silence, the slaves or servants standing 
 at the bottom of the room, with their hands joined before 
 them, watching with the utmost attention every motion of 
 their master, who commands them by signs. De La Motraye 
 says, that the eastern ladies are waited on " even at the 
 least wink of flip eye, or motion of the fingers, and that in 
 a manner not perceptible to strangers." The Baron De Toll 
 
Ps. 124—127. 
 
 PSALM^. 413 
 
 relates a remarkable instance of the authority attending this 
 mode of commanding, and of the use of significant motions. 
 "The customary ceremonies on these occasions were over, 
 and Racub (the new vizier) continued to discourse familiarly 
 with the ambassador, when the muzar aga (or high provost) 
 coming into the hall, and approaching the pacha, whispered 
 something in his ear, and we observed that all the answer 
 he received from him was a slight horizontal motion with 
 his hand, after which the vizier instantly resuming an 
 agreeable smile, continued the conversation for some time 
 longer: we then left the hall of audience, and came to the 
 foot of the great staircase, where we remounted our horses : 
 here, nine heads, cut off, and placed in a row on the out- 
 side of the first gate, completely explained the sign^ which 
 the vizier had made use of in our presence." Hence we 
 discover the propriety of the actions performed by the pro- 
 phets. Ezekiel wSs a sign to the people in not mourning 
 for the dead, (chap, xxiv.) in his removing into captivity, 
 and digging through the wall, (chap, xii.) Such conduct 
 was perfectly well understood, and was very significant. — 
 Bl'rder. 
 
 PSALM CXXIV. 
 
 Ver. 7. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the 
 snare of the fowlers : the snare is broken, and 
 we are escaped. 
 
 A man who has narrowly escaped danger says, " My life 
 is like that of the bird which has escaped from the snare." 
 The life of a man is often compared to that of a bird. 
 Thus, of him whose spirit has departed, it is said, " Ah ! 
 the bird has left its nest ; it has gone away." " As the im- 
 hatched bird must first burst from the shell before it can 
 fly, so must this soul burst from its body." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXXV. 
 Ver. 2. As the mountains are round about Jeru- 
 salem, so the Lord is round about his people 
 from henceforth, even for ever. . 
 
 The description which Volney gives of his approach to 
 Jerusalem, furnishes no contemptible illustration of this 
 verse ; and as it is pleasant to compel an avowed infidel 
 to illustrate and confirm the religion of Christ, which he 
 detests, I shall subjoin his account. " Two days' jour- 
 ney south of Nablous, following the direction of the mount- 
 ains, which gradually become more rocky and barren, 
 we arrive at a town, which, like many others already men- 
 tioned, presents a striking example of the vicissitude of 
 human affairs : when we behold its walls levelled, its 
 ditches filled up, and all its buildings embarrassed with 
 ruins, we scarcely can believe we view that celebrated 
 metropolis, which formerly bafl^led the efforts of the most 
 powerful empires, and for a time resisted the efforts of 
 Rome herself; though by a whimsical change of fortune, 
 its ruins now receive her homage and reverence : in a 
 word, we with difficulty recognise Jerusalem. Nor is our 
 astonishment less, to think of its ancient greatness, when 
 we consider its situation amidst a rugged soil, destitute of 
 water, and surrounded by dry channels of torrents and steep 
 heights. Distant from every great road, it seems neither 
 to liave been calculated for a considerable mart of com- 
 merce, nor the centre of a great consumption. It however 
 ovttrcame every obstacle, and may be adduced as a proof 
 of what popular opinion may effect, in the hands of an able 
 iegi.ilator, or when favoured by happy circumstances." 
 The proud unbeliever had found a shorter and easier road 
 to his conclusion, in the volume of inspiration; and par- 
 ticularly in the passages quoted above, from the Psalms of 
 David, who refers the singular prosperity of Jerusalem to 
 the peculiar favour of Heaven. This was the real source 
 of her greatness, and it was this alone, and not the natural 
 strength of her situation, nor the skill and valour of her 
 dinenders, which enabled her so long to baffle the designs 
 of her enemies. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM CXXVI. 
 
 Ver. 2. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, 
 and our tongue with singing; then said they 
 
 among the heathen, The Lord hath done great 
 things for them. 
 
 " See that happy man ; his mouth is always full of laugh- 
 ing, his tongue is always singing; he is ever showing his 
 teeth." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as 
 the streams in the south. 
 
 This image is taken from the torrents in the deserts to the 
 south of Judea; m Idumea, Arabia Petraea, &c., a mount- 
 ainous country. These torrents were constantly dried up 
 in the summer, (Job vi. 17, 18,) and as constantly returned 
 after the rainy season, and filled again their deserted chan- 
 nels. The point of the comparison seems to be the return 
 and renewal of these (not rivers, but) torrents, which 
 yearly leave their beds dry, but fill them again ; as the 
 Jews had left their country desolate, but now flowed again 
 into it. — Bp. Horne. 
 
 Ver. 5. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. 
 6. He that goeth forth and weeppth, bearing 
 precious seed, shall, doubtless, come again with 
 rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. 
 
 See on Ezek. 25. 4. 
 
 These figures are taken from agricultural pursuits ; tne 
 seed, being well watered, will produce a plenteous harvest. 
 The Jews in their captivity had been sowing good seed, had 
 watered it with their tears, and the time was now come for 
 them to reap with joy, and to return with their sheaves re- 
 joicing. It is proverbial to say to a boy who weeps because 
 he must go to school, or because he cannot easily acquire his 
 lesson, " My child, the plants of science require the water of 
 the eyes," " If you sow with tears, the profit will appear in 
 your own hands."-— Roberts. 
 
 The writer of the account of the ruins of Balbec, speak- 
 ing of the valley in which it stood, observes, that it has very 
 little wood; and adds, "though shade be so essential an 
 article of oriental luxury, yet few plantations of trees are 
 seen in Turkey, the inhabitants being discouraged from 
 labours, which produce such distant and precarious enjoy- 
 ment, in a country where even the annual fruits of their in- 
 dustry are uncertain. In Palestine we have often seen the 
 husbandman sowing, accompanied bv an armed friend, to 
 prevent his being robbed of the seed. The Israelites that 
 returned from Babylon upon the proclamation of Cyrus, 
 were in similar circumstances to husbandmen sowing their 
 corn amidst enemies and robbers. The rebuilding of their 
 towns and their temple resembled a time of sowing ; but 
 they had reason to fear that the neighbouring nations would 
 defeat these eflTorts. (Nehem. iv. 7.) In opposition to this 
 apprehension the Psalmist expresses his hope, perhaps pre- 
 dicts, that there would be a happy issue of these beginnings, 
 to re-people their country. — Harmer. 
 
 PSALM CXXVII. 
 Ver. 4. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty 
 man : so are children of the youth. 5. Happy 
 is the man that hath his quiver full of them : 
 they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak 
 with the enemies in the gate. 
 
 The margin has, instead of speak, " subdue the enemies 
 in the gate." In ancient books, and also among the learnea, 
 (in common conversation,) sons are spoken of as the arrows 
 of their fathers. To have a numerous male progeny is con- 
 sidered a great advantage ; and people are afraid of offend- 
 ing such a family, lest the arrows should be sent at them. 
 " What a fine fellow is the son of Kandan ! he is like an 
 arrow in the hand of a hero." — Roberts, 
 
 The Orientals are accustomed to call brave and valiant 
 sons the "arrows" and " darts" of their parents, because 
 they are able to defend them, " To sharpen arrows," " t« 
 make sharp arrows," is among them, to get brave and valiant 
 sons. Merrick mentions a similar Chinese mode of ex- 
 pression, " When a son is born in a family, it is customary 
 
414 
 
 P&ALMS. 
 
 Ps. 128—132. 
 
 10 hang up bows and arrows before the house, as a sign 
 ihat the family has acquired a defender." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 PSALM CXXVIII. 
 
 Ver. 3. Thy wife shall he as a fruitful vine by 
 the sides of thy house : thy children like olive- 
 plants round about thy table. 
 
 The people are exceedingly fond of having their houses 
 covered with different kinds of vines ; hence may be seen 
 various creepers thus trained, bearing an abundance of 
 fruit. Many interesting figures, therefore, are taken from 
 plants which are thus sustained. A priest in blessing a 
 married couple, often says, "Ah! may you be like the 
 trees Cama- Valley and Cat-Pagga-Tkarul" These are 
 said to grow in the celestial world, and are joined together: 
 the Cama- Valley, being parasitical, cannot live without the 
 other. — Roberts. 
 
 The natives of those countries are careful to decorate 
 their habitations wiih the choicest products of the vegetable 
 kmgdom. The quadrangular court in front of their houses, 
 is adorned with spreading trees, aromatic shrubs, and fra- 
 grant flowers, which are continually refreshed by the crys- 
 tal waters of a fountain playing in the middle. To increase 
 the beauty of the scene they cover the stairs which lead to 
 the upper apartments with vines, and have often a lattice- 
 work of wood raised against the dead walls, upon which 
 climbs a vine, or other mantling shrub. This pleasing 
 custom justifies Doddridge in supposing the occasion of our 
 Lord's comparing himself to a vine, might be his standing 
 near a window, or in some court by the side of the house, 
 where the sight of a vine creeping upon the staircase or the 
 wall might suggest this beautiful simile. This kind of 
 ornament seems to have been very common in Judea, and 
 may be traced to a very remote antiquity. From the fa- 
 miliar manner in which the Psalmist alludes to it, we may 
 suppose if was one of the decorations about the royal palace : 
 " Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thy 
 house ; thy children like olive-plants round about the table. 
 Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the 
 Lord." Kimehi, a celebrated Jewish writer, explains the 
 psalm in the same way ; and observes, that a wife is com- 
 pared to a vine, because that alone of all trees can be plant- 
 ed in a house. In confirmation of Kimchi's remark, Dr. 
 Russel says, " It is generally true, if fruit-bearing trees 
 be intended, as the vine is almost the only fruit-tree which 
 is planted in the houses ; pomegranates are another." — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 PSALM CXXIX. 
 
 Ver. 3. The ploughers ploughed upon my back ; 
 they made long their furrows. 
 
 " The enemies of Israel cut their backs, as the ploughers 
 cut the soil." (Dr. Boothroyd.) When a man is in much 
 trouble through oppressors, he says, " How they plough me 
 and turn me up ! All are now ploughing me. Begone ! 
 have you not already turned me up T "Alas ! alas ! my 
 enemies,, nay, my children, are now ploughing me," — Rob- 
 
 Ver. 6. Let them be as the grass upon the house- 
 tops, which withereth afore it groweth up; 
 7. Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, 
 nor he that bindeth sheaves, his bosom. 
 
 See on Ruth 2. 4, 5. 
 
 The tops of the houses in Judea were flat, and so grass 
 grew upon them, being covered with plaster of terrace. 
 As it was but small and weak, and, being on high, was 
 exposed to the scorching sun, it was soon withered. (Shaw.) 
 Menochius says, that he saw such roofs in the island of 
 Corsica, flat, and having earth upon them, on which grass 
 grew of its own accord ; but being burnt up in summer 
 time by the sun, soon withered. But what Olaus Magnus 
 relates is extraordinary. He says, that in the northern 
 Gothic countries they feed their cattle from the tops of 
 houses, especiallv in a time of siege ; that their houses are 
 built of stone, high and large, and covered with rafters of 
 fir and bark of birch: on this is laid grass-earth, cut out 
 
 of the fields four-square, and sowed with barley or oats, 
 so that their roofs look like green meadows : and that 
 what is sown, and the grass that grows thereon, may not 
 wither before plucked up, they verv diligently water it. 
 Maundrell says, that these words allude to the custom of 
 plucking up corn from the roots by handfuls, leaving the 
 most fruitful fields as naked as if nothing had ever grown 
 in them ; and that this is done, that they may not lose any of 
 the straw, which is generally very short, and necessary 
 for the sustenance of their cattle, no hay being made in 
 that country. — Burder. 
 
 In the morning the master of the house laid in a stock of 
 earth, which was carried and spread evenly on the top of 
 the house, which is flat. The whole roof is thus formed of 
 mere eai-th, laid on and rolled hard and flat. On the top of 
 every house is a large stone roller, for the purpose of hard- 
 ening and flattening this layer of rude soil, so that the rain 
 may not penetrate; but upon this surface, as may be sup- 
 posed, grass and weeds grow freely. It is to such grass 
 that the Psalmist alludes, as useless and bad. — Jowitt. 
 
 The reapers in Palestine and Syria make use of the 
 sickle, in- cutting down their crops, and according to the 
 present custom in this country, " fill their hand" with the 
 corn, and those who bind up the sheaves, their " bosom." 
 When the crop is thin and short, which is generally the 
 case in light soils, and with their imperfect cultivation, it 
 is not reaped with the sickle, but plucked up by the root 
 with the hand. By this mode of reaping they leave the 
 most fruitful fields as naked as if nothing had ever grown 
 on them; and as no hay is n.ade in the East, this is done, 
 that they may not lose any of the straw, which is necessary 
 for the sustenance of their cattle. The practice of reaping 
 with the hand is perhaps involved in the%e words of the 
 Psalmist, to which reference has already been made: " Let 
 them be as the grass upon the house-tops, which withereth 
 afore it groweth up ; wherewith the mower filleth not his 
 hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves, his bosom." The tops of 
 the houses in Judea are flat, and being covered with plas- 
 ter of terrace, are frequently grown over with grass. As it 
 is but small and weak, and from its elevation exposed to the 
 scorching sun, it is soon withered. To prevent this, fhev 
 pluck it up for the use of their cattle, with the hand. A 
 more beautiful and striking figure, to display the weak and 
 evanescent condition of wicked men, cannet easily be con- 
 ceived. They are every moment exposed to the judgments 
 of God, like the grass on the house-top, which is tossed by 
 the breeze, and scorched by the sun, and to the grasp of 
 Omnipotence, which, weak and defenceless as they are, they 
 can neither avoid nor resist. The sudden destruction of 
 the wicked is described by the same writer, under another 
 figure not less remarkable for its force and propriety : " I 
 have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading him- 
 self like a green bay-tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he 
 was not ; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 " Ah ! that wretched family shall soon be as withered 
 grass." " Go, vile one, for soon wilt thou be as parched 
 grass." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. 
 ness: 
 
 PSALM CXXXII. 
 
 Let thy priests be clothed with righteous- 
 and let thy saints shout for joy. 
 
 " See that excellent man ; he wears the garments of jus- 
 tice and charity." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. There will I make the horn of David to 
 bud : I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed. 
 
 " Yes, that man will flourish ; already his horn has begun 
 to appear — it is growing." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 18. His enemies will 1 clothe with shame : 
 but upon himself shall his crown flourish. 
 
 This idea seems to be taken from the nature of the 
 ancient crowns bestowed upon conquerors. From the 
 earliest periods of history the laurel, olive, and ivy, fur- 
 nished crowns to adorn the heads of heroes, who had con- 
 quered in the field of battle, gained the prize in the race, 
 
Ps. 133—141. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 415 
 
 or performed some other important service to the public. 
 These were the dear-bought rewards of the most heroic 
 exploits of amiquity. This sets the propriety of the phrase 
 in full view. The idea of a crown of gold and jewels 
 flourishing, is at least unnatural: whereas flourishing is 
 natural to laurels and oaks. These were put upon the 
 heads of the victors in full verdure. (Pirie.) — Burder. 
 
 PSALM CXXXIII. 
 
 Ver. 3. As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew 
 that descended upon the mountains of Zion : 
 for there the Lord commanded the blessing, 
 even life for evermore. 
 
 See on Ps. 89. 12. 
 
 A great difliculty occurs in the comparison which the 
 Psalmist makes to the^dew of Hermon, that fell on the hill 
 of Zion ; which might easily be interpreted, if it had been 
 observed, that the clouds which lay on Hermon, being 
 brought by the north winds to Jerusalem, caused the dews 
 to fall plentifully on the hill of Zion. But there is a Shihon 
 ient:'- • i'^ ii the tribe of Issachar, (Josh. xix. 19,) which 
 may oe ihe Zion spoken of by Eusebius and Saint Jerome, as 
 near Mount Tabor ; and there might be a hill there of that 
 name, on which the dew of the other Hermon might fall, 
 that was to the east of Esdraelon. However, as there is 
 no certainty that Mount Hermon in that part is even men- 
 tioned in scripture, so I should rather think it to be spoken 
 of this famous mountain, and that Tabor and Hermon are 
 joined together, as rejoicing in the name of God, not on 
 account of their being near to one another, but because 
 they are two of the highest hills in all Palestine. So that 
 if any one considers this beautiful piece of eloquence of 
 the Psalmist, and that Hermon is elsewhere actually called 
 Zion, (Deut. iv. 48,) he v/ill doubtless be satisfied, that the 
 most natural interpretation of the Psalmist would be to 
 suppose, though the whole might be called both Hermon 
 and Zion, yet that the highest summit of this mountain was 
 in particular called Hermon, and that a lower part of it 
 had the name of Zion; on which supposition, the dew 
 falling from the top of it down to the lower parts, might 
 well be compared in every respect to the precious ointment 
 n/por: the head that ran down unto the beard, even unto Aaron's 
 beard, and went down to the skirts of his clothing, and that 
 both of them in this sense are very proper emblems of the 
 blessings of unity and friendship, which diff'use themselves 
 throughout the whole society. (Pococke.) — Burder. 
 
 When Maundrell was in the neighbourhood of Mount 
 Hermon, he remarked, " We were instructed by expe- 
 rience, what the Psalmist means by the dew of Hermon, 
 our tents being as wet with it as if it had rained all night." 
 In Arabia, says Dr. Shaw, the dew often wets the traveller 
 who has no covering but the heavens, to the skin ; but no 
 sooner is the sun risen, and the atmosphere a little heated, 
 than the mists are quickly dispersed, and the copious moist- 
 ure which the dews communicated to the sands would be 
 « entirely evaporated. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM CXXXV. 
 
 Ver. 7. He causeth the vapours to ascend from the 
 ends of the eartlT : he maketh lightnings for the 
 rain : he bringeth the wind out of his treasures. 
 
 
 
 , In Syria, lightnings are frequent in the autumnal months. 
 Seldom a night passes without a great deal of lightning in 
 the northwest, but without thunder; but whfen it appears 
 ;in the west or southwest points, it is a sure sign of ap- 
 proaching rain, and is often attended with thunder. It 
 nas been observed already, that a squall of wind and clouds 
 of dust, are the usual forerunners of the first rains. To 
 iihese natural phenomena, the sacred writers frequently 
 allude ; and in the precise order which has been marked 
 in the preceding observations. The royal Psalmist, in a 
 very beautiful strain, ascribes them to the immediate agen- 
 -cy of heaven : " He causeth the vapours to ascend from 
 the ends of the earth : he maketh lightnings for the rain : 
 he bringeth the wind out of his treasures." The cisterns of 
 ■the clouds are replenished by exhalations from every part 
 ^ the globe ; and, when they are ready to open and pour 
 
 out their refreshing showers on the parched ground, the 
 glad tidings are announced by the rapid lightning, and the 
 precious treasure is scattered over the fields by the attendant 
 winds ; and that the sweet singer of Israel looked through 
 nature with an accurate, discriminating eye, is confirmed 
 by the concurring testimony of all ages.— Paxton. 
 
 Russel says, that at Aleppo a night seldom passes with- 
 out lightning in the northwest quarter, but not attended 
 with thunder. When it appears in the west or southwest 
 points, it is a sure sign of the approaching rain ; this light- 
 ning is often followed by thunder. Thus " God maketh 
 the lightnings for the rain ; and when he uttereth his voice, 
 there is a multitude of waters in the heavens;" and as these 
 refreshing showers are preceded by squalls of wind, " he 
 bringeth forth the wind out of his treasure," Jer. li. 16. — 
 Harmer, 
 
 PSALM CXXXVII. 
 Ver. 1. By the rivers of Babylon there we sat 
 down ; yea, we wept, when we remembered 
 Zion. 
 
 See on Lam. 2. 10. 
 
 Ver. 5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right 
 
 hand forget her cunning. 
 
 In the Hindoo book, Scanda-Purana, it is written, " Singa- 
 Muggam,on seeing that his heart throbbed, the tears flowed, 
 and his hands and feet forgot their cunning." "Yes; if I 
 lose thee, if I forget thee, it will be like the losing, like 
 the forgetting of these eyes and arms." — Roberts. 
 
 The last words mean, may my right hand forget, refuse 
 to perform its service ; namely, cease to move, be benumbed. 
 A similar, and, as it appears, proverbial expression, is found 
 in an old Arabian poem, in De Sacy's Chrestom Arab: 
 " No, never have I done any thing that could displease 
 thee ; if this is not true, may my hand be unable to lift my 
 scourge ;" that is, may it be lamed.— Rosenmdller. 
 
 PSALM CXXXVIII. 
 Ver. 6. Though the Lord he high, yet hath he 
 respect unto the lowly : but the proud he know- 
 eth afar off 
 
 This is truly oriental : " Nan avari veggu tooratila ar- 
 rilca-rain, i. e. I know him afar oflT. Let him be at a great 
 distance ; allow him to conduct his plans with the greatest 
 secrecy; yet, I compass his path, I am close to him. You 
 pretend to describe the fellow to me : I know him well ; 
 there is no need to go near to him, for I can recognise him 
 at the greatest distance. See how he carries his head ; 
 look at his gait; who can mistake his proud bearing 1" 
 "How does your brother conduct himself 1" — "I cannot 
 tell, for he knows me afar off." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXL. 
 Ver. 4. Keep me, O Lord, from the hand of the 
 wicked ; preserve me from the violent man ; 
 who have purposed to overthrow my goings. 
 
 See on Ps. 91. 13. 
 
 PSALM CXLI. 
 Ver. 5. Let the righteous smite me ; it shall be 
 a kindness : and let him reprove me ; it shall 
 he an excellent oil, which shall not break my 
 head : for yet my prayer also shall he in their 
 calamities. 
 
 Certain oils are said to have a most salutary effect on the 
 head ; hence in fevers, or any other complaints which af- 
 fect the head, the medical men always recommend oil. I 
 have known people who were deranged, cured in a very 
 short time by nothing more than the application of a peculiar 
 kind of oil to the head. There are, however, other kinds, 
 which are believed (when thus applied) to produce delir- 
 ium. Thus the reproofs of the righteous were compared 
 
 g%»-a.jb^v 
 
:1G 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 Ps. 141—148. 
 
 to excellent oil, which produced a most salutary effect on 
 the head. So common is this practice of anointing the 
 head, that all who can afford it do it every week. But 
 strange as it may appear, the crown of the head is the place 
 selected for chastisement. Thus owners of slaves, or hus- 
 bands, or schoolmasters, beat the heads of the offenders 
 with their knuckles. Should an urchin come late to school, 
 or forget his lesson, the pedagogue says to some of the 
 other boys, "Go, beat his head." "Begohe, fellow! or I 
 will beat thy head." Should a man be thus chastised by 
 an inferior, he quotes the old proverb — " If my head is to 
 be beaten, let it be done with the fingers that have rings 
 on ;" meaning a man of rank. "Yes, yes ; let a holy man 
 smite my head : and what of that % it is an excellent oil." 
 " iNIy master has been beating my head, but it has been 
 good Dil for me." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. When their judges are overthrown in 
 stony places, they shall hear my words; for 
 they are sweet. 
 
 Ainsworth, " Their judges are thrown down by the rock 
 sides." In 2 Chronicles xxv. 12, it is recorded that the chil- 
 dren of Judah_ took ten thousand captives, " and brought 
 them unto the top of the rock, and cast them down from 
 the top of the rock, that they were all broken in pieces." 
 It was a custom in all parts of the East thus to despatch 
 criminals, by casting them down a precipice ; the Tar- 
 peian rock affords a similar instance. But who were 
 these judges'? probably those " men that work iniquity," as 
 mentioned in the 4th verse. In the 5th verse he speaks of 
 the salutary nature of the reproofs of the righteous, but 
 in the 7th he seems to refer to the cruel results of having 
 unrighteous judges ; for in consequence of their smitings 
 he says, " Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, 
 as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood ;" i. e. their bones 
 were like the fragments and chips scattered on the earth, 
 left by the hewers of wood. Therefore these judges were 
 to be " overthrown in stony places." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. Our bones are scattered at the grave's 
 mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood 
 upon the earth. 
 
 A remarkable expression of the Psalmist David, Psalm 
 cxli. 7, appears to have much poetical heightening in it, 
 which' even its author, in all probability, did not mean 
 should be accepted literally; while, nevertheless, it might 
 be susceptible of a literal acceptation, and is sometimes a 
 fact. — The Psalmist says, " Our bones are scattered at the 
 grave's mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth v)ood 
 upon the earth." This seems to be strong eastern paint- 
 ing, and almost figurative language; but that it may be 
 strictly true, the following extract demonstrates : " At five 
 o'clock we left Garigana, our journey being still to the 
 eastward of north ; and at a quarter past six in the evening 
 arrived at the village of that name, whose inhabitants had 
 all perished loith hunger the year before ; their wretched bones 
 being all U7iburied, and scattered upon the surface of the 
 ground, where the village formerly stood. We encamped 
 among the bones of the dead ; no space co^dd be found free 
 from them ; and on the 23d, at six in the morning, full of 
 horror at this miserable spectacle, we set out for Teawa ; 
 this was the seventh day from Ras El Feel. After an 
 hour's travelling, we came to a small river, which still 
 had water standing in some considerable pools, although 
 its banks were destitute of any kind of shade." (Bruce.) 
 The reading of this account thrills us with horror ; what 
 then must have been the sufferings of the ancient Jews at 
 such a sight 7 — when to have no burial was reckoned 
 among the greatest calamities ; when their land was 
 thought to be polluted, in which the dead (even criminals) 
 were in any manner exposed to view ; and to whom the 
 very touch of a dead body, or part of it, or of any thing 
 that had touched a dead body, was esteemed a defilement, 
 and required a ceremonial ablution 1 — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 PSALM CXLII. 
 
 Ver. 7. Bring- my soul out of prison, that I may 
 praise thy name ; the righteous shall compass 
 
 me about ; for thou shalt deal bountifully with 
 me. 
 
 These people speak of afflictions, difficulties, and sorrows, 
 as so many prisons. " lyo intha marryil eppo vuttu pome ?'• 
 i. e. " Alas ! when will this imprisonment go %" exclaims 
 the man in his difficulties. — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXLIV. 
 
 Ver. 12. That our sons may be as plants grown 
 up in their youth ; that our daughters may be 
 as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of 
 a palace. 
 
 Of a man who has a hopeful and beautiful family, it is 
 said, " His sons are like shoots, (springing up from the 
 parent stock,) and his daughters arfe like carved work and 
 precious stones." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. That our garners may he full, affording 
 all manner of store ; that our sheep may bring 
 forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets. 
 
 The surprising fecundity of the sheep has been celebrated 
 by writers of every class. It has not escaped the notice of 
 the royal Psalmist, who, in a beautiful ascription of praise 
 to the living and the true God, entreats, that the sheep of 
 his chosen people might " bring forth thousands and ten 
 tjhousands in their streets." In another song of Zion, he 
 represents, by a very elegant metaphor, the numerous 
 flocks, covering like a garment the face of the field: " The 
 pastures are clothed with flocks ; the valleys also are cov- 
 ered over with corn ; they shout for joy, they also sing." 
 The bold figure is fully warranted by the prodigious num- 
 bers of sheep which whitened the extensive pastures of 
 Syria and Canaan. In that part of Arabia which borders 
 on Judea, the patriarch Job possessed at first seven thou- 
 sand, and after the return of his prosperity, fourteen thou- 
 sand sheep ; and Mesha, the king of Moab, paid the king 
 of Israel " a yearly tribute of a hundred thousand lambs, and 
 an equal number of rams with the wool." In the war 
 which the tribe of Reuben waged with the Hagarites, the 
 former drove away " two hundred and fifty thousand sheep." 
 At the dedication" of the temple, Solomon offered in sacri- 
 fice " a hundred and twenty thousand sheep." At the feast 
 of the passover, Josiah, the king of Judah, " gave to the 
 people, of the flock, lambs and kids, all for the passover- 
 offerings, for all that were present, to the number of thirty 
 thousand, and three thousand bullocks ; these were of the 
 king's substance." The ewe brings forth her young com- 
 monly once a year, and in more ungenial climes, seldom 
 more than one lamb at a time. But in the oriental regions, 
 twin lambs are as frequent as they are rare in other places ; 
 which accounts in a satisfactory manner for the prodigious 
 numbers which the Syrian shepherd led to the mountains. 
 This uncommon fruitfulness seems to be intimated by Sol- 
 omon-in his address to the spouse : " Thy .teeth are like a 
 flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from 
 the washing ; whereof every one beareth twins, and none 
 is barren among them." — Paxton, 
 
 PSALM CXLVIII. 
 Ver. 9. Mountains, and all hills ; fruitful trees, 
 and all cedars: 10. Beasts, and all cattle; 
 creeping things, and flying fowl : 11. Kings of 
 the earth, and all people; princes, and all 
 judges of the earth: 12. Both young men and 
 maidens; old men and children: 13. Let them 
 praise the name of the Lord : for his name 
 alone is excellent ; his glory is above the earth 
 and heaven. 
 
 Those who are unacquainted with oriental literature, 
 sometimes affect to smile at the addresses which are made 
 in scripture to animate and inanimate nature. "How 
 ridiculous," say thev, "to talk about the mountains skipping 
 like rams, and the 'little hills like lambs !" but they know 
 not that this is according to the figurative and luxuriant 
 
Ps. 149, 150. 
 
 PSALMS. 
 
 417 
 
 genius of the people of the East. The proprietor of lands, 
 brests, orchards, and gardens, often exclaims, when walk- 
 /ng among them in time of drought, " Ah ! trees, plants, 
 and flowers, tanks and cattle, birds and fish, and all living 
 creatures, sing praises to the gods, and rain shall be given 
 to you." — Roberts. 
 
 PSALM CXLIX. 
 
 Ver. 5. Let the saints be joyful in glory : 
 sing aloud upon their beds. 
 
 let them 
 
 After the troops were assembled, a public sacrifice was 
 offered upon the national altar, which was succeeded by a 
 martial feast prepared for the whole army ; and to confirm 
 their purpose and inflame their courage, a hymn to Jehovah 
 closed the festival. • The hundred and forty-ninth psalm, 
 was, in the opinion of Doddridge, composed on such an 
 occasion ; it was sung when David's army was marching 
 out to war against the remains of the devoted nations of 
 Canaan, and first went up in solemn procession to the 
 house of God, there, as it were, to consecrate the arms he 
 put into their hands. On that occasion, the devout mon- 
 arch called on his associates in arms (ver. 5) "to sing 
 aloud upon their beds," that is, the couches upon which 
 they reclined at the banquet attending their sacrifices, 
 which gives a clear and important sense to a very obscure 
 and difficult passage. To these military sacrifices and 
 banquets the people were summoned by the sound of two 
 silver trumpets of a cubit long, according to Josephus, but, 
 like ours, wider at bottom. These were blown by two 
 priests, as the law of Moses required; and they were 
 sounded in a particular manner, that the people might 
 know the meaning of the summons. Then the anointed 
 for the war, going from one battalion to another, exhorted 
 the soldiers in the Hebrew language, no other being al- 
 lowed on that occasion, to fight valiantly for their country, 
 and for the cities of their God. Officers were appointed to 
 give notice, that those whose business it was should make 
 sufficient provision for the army, before they marched ; 
 and every tenth man was appointed for this purpose. 
 This arrangement was made by a resolution of the tribes, 
 recorded in the book of Judges : " And we will take ten 
 men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and a 
 hundred of a thousand, and a thousand out often thousand, 
 to fetch victual for the people, that they may do, when they 
 come to Gibeah of Benjamin, according to all the folly that 
 they have wrought in Israel." Mr. Harmer contends, that 
 " these men were not intended so much to collect food for 
 53 
 
 the use of their companions in that expedition, as to dress 
 it, to serve it up, and to wait upon them in eatmg it." But 
 although the difference is not very material, the suppo- 
 sition that the tenth part of the army was to forage for the 
 rest is more natural, and at the same time more agreeable 
 to the literal meaning of the text, which signifies to hunt 
 the prey. — Paxton. 
 
 PSALM CL. 
 
 Ver. 3. Praise him with the sound of the trum- 
 pet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. 
 4. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: 
 praise him with stringed instruments and or- 
 gans. 5. Praise him with the loud cymbals : 
 praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals. 
 
 • Instruments of music were used in the worship of the 
 Most High God : and the Hindoos, in singing praises, and 
 performing religious ceremonies to their deities, always 
 nave the same accompaniments. Thus the trumpet and 
 the " high-sounding cymbals," the timbrels, (which corre- 
 spond partly with the tambarine,) the harp, -^iss kinnor, 
 (also called kirmora in Tamul,) is a stringed instrument, 
 played with the fingers: and maybe heard in all their tem- 
 
 Eles at the time of service. The devotee engaged in ma- 
 ing offerings often exclaims, " Praise him, O ye musicians ! 
 praise him; praise the Swamy :" and great is their enthu- 
 siasm ; their eyes, their heads, their tongues, their hands, 
 their legs, are all engaged. At a marriage, or when a great 
 man gives a feast, the guests go to the players on instru- 
 ments, and say, " Praise the noble host, praise the bride and 
 the groom ; praise aloud, O cymbals ! give forth the voice, 
 ¥6 trumpets; strike up the harp and the timbrel; praise 
 him in the song, serve him, serve him."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5. Praise him with the loud cymbals : 
 him upon the high-sounding cymbals. 
 
 praise 
 
 The Hebrew word, which is here translated cymbal, sig- 
 nifies rather, metal plates or basins. In the above passage, 
 a larger and smaller kind are probably meant, both ot 
 which are still customary in the East, The latter are 
 metal plates, castanets, such as the oriental female dancers 
 take two on each hand, over one finger and the thumb. For 
 military music, they have large plates of the same form. 
 And these are those which are here called " high-sounding 
 cymbals." — Bubder. 
 
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Vev. 1. The proverbs of Solomon, the son of Da- 
 vid, king of Israel. 
 
 In those periods of remote antiquity, which may with the 
 utmost propriety be styled the infancies of societies and 
 nations, the usual, if not the only mode of instruction, was 
 by detached aphorisms or proverbs. Human wisdom was 
 then indeed in a rude and imfinished state : it was not 
 digested, methodized, or reduced to order and connexion. 
 Those who by genius and reflection, exercised in the school 
 rf experience, had accumulated a stock of knowledge, were 
 desirous of reducing it into the most compendious form, 
 and comprised in a few maxims those observations which 
 they apprehended most essential to human happiness. This 
 mode of instruction was, in truth, more likely than any 
 other to prove efficacious with men in a rude stage of soci- 
 ety ; for It professed not to dispute, but to command ; not to 
 persuade, but to compel : it conducted them, not by a circuit 
 of argument, but led immediately to the approbation and 
 practice of integrity and virtue. That it might not, how- 
 ever, be altogether destitute of allurement, and lest it should 
 disgust by an appearance of roughness and severity, some 
 degree of ornament became necessary ; and the instructers 
 of mankind added to their precepts the graces of harmony, 
 and illuminated them with metaphors, comparisons, allu- 
 sions, and the other embellishments of style. This manner, 
 which with other nations prevailed only during the first 
 periods of civilization, with the Hebrews continued to be a 
 favourite style to the latest ages of their literature, — 
 
 LOWTH. 
 
 Ver. 6. To understand a proverb, and the interpre- 
 tation ; the words of the wise, and their dark 
 sayings. 
 
 The people of the East look upon the acquirements of 
 antiquity as being every way superior to those of modem 
 times : thus their noblest works of art and their sciences 
 are indebted to antiquity for their invention and perfection. 
 Instead, therefore, of their minds being enlightened and 
 excited by the splendid productions of modern genius, they 
 are ever reverting to the wisdom of their forefathers, and 
 sighing over the loss of many of their occult sciences. We, 
 .on the other hand, by contemplating the imposing achieve- 
 •ments of the present age, are in danger of looking with 
 contempt on antiquity, and of pursuing with thoughtless 
 avidity the novelties and speculations of modern inven- 
 tions. 
 
 Solomon could repeat " three thousand proverbs, and his 
 songs were a thousand and five;" and many of the philos- 
 ophers of the present age in the East have scarcely any 
 other wisdom. Listen to two men engaged in argument : 
 should he who is on the point of being foiled, quote an ap- 
 posite proverb against his antagonist, an advantage is con- 
 sidered as having been gained, which scarcely any thing 
 can counteract. See a man who is pondering over some 
 difficulty : his reason cannot decide as to the course he 
 ought to pursue, when, perhaps, some one repeats a palla- 
 mulle, i. e. an old saying: the whole of his doubts are at 
 once removed, and he starts with vigour in the prescribed 
 course. 
 
 " Young man, talk not to me with infant wisdom, what 
 are the sayings of the ancients ! you ought to obey your 
 parents. Listen ! * The father and the mother are the 
 first deities a child has to acknowledge.' Is it not said, 
 ' Children who obey willingly are as ambrosia to the 
 gods V " " Were you my friend, you would not act thus ; 
 because, as the proverb says, ' True friends have but one 
 »cul in two bodies.' " "I am told you have been trying to 
 
 ruin me ; ' but will the moon be injured by the barking of 
 a dog 7' " "You have become proud, and conduct yourself 
 like the upstart who must ' carry his silk umbrella lo keep 
 off the sun at midnight !' " " You talk about your hopes 
 of some coming good : what say the ancients '? ' Expect- 
 ation is the midday dream of life.' " '^Cease to be indolent, 
 for, as our fathers said, ' Idleness is the rust of the mind.' " 
 " That you have been guilty of many crimes I cannot 
 doubt, as the proverb says, ' Will there be smoke without 
 fire V Your wife has, I fear, led you astray, but she wiL 
 be your ruin : what said the men of antiquity 1 ' As is the 
 affection of a file for the iron, of a parasitical plant for the 
 tree which supports it ; so is the affection of a violent 
 woman for her husband: she is like Yama, (the deity oi 
 death,) who eats and destroys without appearing to do so.'" 
 With these specimens, the English reader may form a 
 tolerable idea of the importance which is attached to 
 proverbs. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. So are the ways of every one that is 
 greedy of gain ; which taketh away the life of 
 the owners thereof 
 
 The words rendered " greedy of gain," denote one who- 
 cuts or clips off every scrap of money he possibly can. In 
 the times of Abraham and Moses, and long after, they used 
 to weigh their silver, and, no doubt, to cut and clip off 
 pieces of it, to make weight in their dealings with each 
 other, as is practised by some nations, particularly the 
 Chinese, to this day. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 26. .1 also Avill laugh at your calamity ; 1 
 will mock when your fear cometh ; 27. When 
 your fear cometh as desolation, and your de- 
 struction cometh as a whirlwind ; when distress 
 and anguish cometh upon you. 
 
 According to Savary, the south wind, which blows in 
 Egypt from February to May, fills the atmosphere with a 
 subtile dust, which impedes respiration, and brings with it 
 pernicious vapours. Sometimes it appears only in the 
 shape of an impetuous whirlwind, which passes rapidly, 
 and is fatal to the traveller, surprised in the middle of the 
 deserts. Torrents of burning sand roll before it, the firma- 
 ment is enveloped in a thick veil, and the sun appears of 
 the colour of blood. It is therefore with strict propriety 
 that the sacred writers distinguish from all others the 
 whirlwinds of the south, and with peculiar force and 
 beauty, compare the sudden approach of calamity to their 
 impetuous and destructive career. " I also will laugh at 
 your calamity ; I will mock when your fear cometh : 
 when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction 
 cometh as a whirlwind : when distress and anguish cometh 
 upon you." Whole caravans have been overwhelmed in 
 a moment, by the immense quantity of sand which it puts 
 in motion. The Arab who conducted Mr. Bruce through 
 the frightful deserts of Senaar, pointed out to him a spot 
 among some sandy hillocks, where the ground seemed to 
 be more elevated than the rest, where one of the largest 
 caravans which ever came out of Egypt was covered wi.h 
 sand, to the number of several thousand camels. This 
 awful phenomenon Addison has well described in the fol- 
 lowing lines, which he puts into the mouth of Syphax, a 
 Numidian prince : — 
 
 " So where our wide Numidian states extend, 
 
 Sndden tlie impetuous hurricanes descend, 
 
 Wheel through the air, in circhng eddies play, 
 
 Tear up the sands, and sweep whole plains away. 
 
 The helpl«^ss traveller, with wild surprise. 
 
 Sees the dry desert all around him rise, 
 
 And, smothered in the dusty whirlwind, dies."-rAiTO». 
 
Chap. 3—6. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 419 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 8. It shall be health to thy navel, and mar- 
 row to thy bones. 
 
 The navel of an infant is often very clumsily managed 
 in the East : hence it is no uncommon thing to see that part 
 greatly enlarged, and diseased. The fear of the Lord, 
 therefore, would be as medicine and health to the navel, 
 uM-[ng it to grow and prosper. Strange as it may appear, 
 the riavel is often spoken of as a criterion of prosperity; 
 an- ;1 Solomon appears to have had the same idea, for he 
 mentions this health of the navel as being the result of 
 trusting in the Lord, and of acknowledging Him in all our 
 ways. He says in the next verse, " Honour the Lord with 
 thy substance, and with the first-fruits of all thine increase : 
 so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses 
 shall burst "out with new wine." And this reference to the 
 *iavel, as being connected with earthly prosperity, is com- 
 mon at this day. Has a person arisen from poverty to af- 
 "uence, it is said, " His navel has grown much larger." 
 Should he insult the man from whom he has derived his 
 prosperity, the latter will ask, " Who made your navel to 
 grow V — Roberts. 
 
 Medicines in the East are chiefly applied externally, and 
 in particular to the stomach and belly. This comparison, 
 Chardin says, is drawn from the plasters, ointments, oils, 
 and frictions, which are made use of in the East upon the 
 belly and stomach inmost maladies; they being ignorant 
 in the villages, of the art of making decoctions and potions, 
 and the proper doses of such things. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 13. Take fast hold of instruction; let her 
 not go : keep her ; for she is thy life. 
 
 It is said of the fixed will or purpose of those who take 
 fast hold of learning or any other thing, " Ah! they are like 
 'he hand of the monkey in" the shell of the cocoa-nut ; it will 
 aot let go the rice." 
 
 " On the banks of a broad river there was once a very 
 large herd of monkeys, which greatly injured the fields and 
 gardens of the inhabitants. Several consultations were held 
 as to the best way of getting rid of those troublesome ma- 
 rauders : to take their lives was altogether contrary to the 
 religious prejudices of the people ; and to take them in traps 
 was almost impossible, as the monkeys never approached 
 any place without well examining the ground. At last it 
 was determined to procure a sufficient number of cocoa- 
 nuts; to make in each a small hole, and fill them with rice. 
 These were strewed on the ground, and the people retired 
 to watch the success of their plan. The offenders soon 
 went to the place, and seeing the rice (their favourite food) 
 in the nuts, they began to eat the few grains scattered about 
 on the ground : but these only exciting their appetite, they 
 each thrust a hand through the small hole into the nut, 
 which was soon clasped full of rice. The hand now be- 
 came so enlarged that it could not be withdrawn without 
 losing its booty : to leave such a dainty was more than the 
 monkey could consent to: the people therefore came for- 
 ward, and soon seized their foes, as the cocoa-nut attached 
 to the hand prevented them from getting quickly out of the 
 way. They were, therefore, all made prisoners, and fer- 
 ried across the river, and left to seek their food in the wil- 
 derness," " Take fast hold of instruction ; let her not go; 
 keep her ; for she is thy life."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 18. Let thy fountain be blessed; and rejoice 
 with the wife of thy youth. 19. Let her be as 
 the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her 
 breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou 
 ravished always with her love. 
 
 The hind is celebrated for affection to her mate ; hence 
 a man, in speaking of his wife, often calls her by that name, 
 "_My hind, my hind! where is my hind"?" "Alas! my 
 hind has fallen; the arrow has pierced her life." — Roberts. 
 
 The hind of loves, and the roe of grace, in the language 
 of the ancient Hebrews, mean, the amiable hind and the love- 
 ly roe. These creatures, it is generally admitted, in the whole 
 
 form of their bodies, and in all their dispositions and man- 
 ners, are wonderfully pleasing. The ancients were partic- 
 ularly delighted with them; they kept them in their houses; 
 they fed them at their tables with the greatest care ; they 
 washed, and combed, and adorned them with garlands of 
 flowers, and chains of gold or silver. The hind seems to 
 have been admitted to all those privileges, except that of 
 reposing with her master on the same couch, which must 
 have been rendered inconvenient by the largeness of her 
 size. If these things are duly considered, the charge of the 
 wise man will not appear so singular ; to the ear of an Ori- 
 ental it was quite intelligible, and perfectly proper. Let a 
 man tenderly love his spouse ; relax in her company from 
 the severer duties of life ; take pleasure in her innocent 
 and amiable conversation ; and in fine, treat her with all 
 the kindness, and admit her to all the familiarity, which 
 the beauty of her form, the excellence of her dispositions, 
 and the nearness of her relation, entitle her to expeci. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 The Orientals still compare a beautiful woman to a hind, 
 or the gazelle, which resembles the roe. " When the 
 Arabs wish to describe the beauty of a woman, they say, 
 that she has the eyes of a gazelle. All their songs, in 
 which they celebrate their mistresses, speak of nothing but 
 gazelle eyes, and they need only compare them to this 
 animal, to describe, in one word, a perfect beauty. The 
 gazelle is in fact a very pretty animal ; it has something 
 innocently timid about it, not unlike the modesty and bash- 
 fulness of a young girl." (D'Arvieux.) Sparrmann says 
 of the Cape or African gazelle, which is very nearly re- 
 lated to that of Palestine, " This animal is, perhaps, the 
 most beautiful of all gazelles, and is particularly distin- 
 guished, as the gazelle in general, for its fiery and beauti- 
 ful eyes : hence, in some parts of the East, it is properly 
 considered as the greatest praise which can be bestowed oil 
 the beauty of a woman, to say, Thy eyes are like the eyes 
 of a gazelle." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 19. Le/ Agr Z>e (2.5 the loving hind and pleasant 
 roe ; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and 
 be thou ravished always with her love. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 2. 18. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 1. My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, 
 if thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger, 
 2. Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth. 
 
 It was at first reckoned sufficient if the covenant was 
 made in the presence of all the people ; but in process of 
 time, the ceremony of striking hands was introduced at the 
 conclusion of a bargain, which has maintained its ground 
 among the customs of civilized nations down to the present 
 time. To strike hands with another was the emblem of 
 agreement among the Greeks under the walls of Troy ; for 
 Nestor complains, in a public assembly of the chiefs, that 
 the Trojans had violated the engagements which they had 
 sanctioned by libations of wine, and giving their right 
 hands. And in another passage, Agamemnon protests that 
 the agreement which the Trojans had ratified by the blood 
 of lambs, libations of wine, and their right hands, could not 
 in any way be set aside. The Roman faith was plighted 
 in the same way ; for in Virgil, when Dido marked from 
 her watch-towers the Trojan fleet setting forward with bal- 
 anced sails, she exclaimed. Is this the honour, the faith 1 
 " En dextra fidesque V The wise man alludes often to this 
 mode of ratifying a bargain, which shows it was in gene- 
 ral practice among the people : " My son, if thou be sure- 
 ty for thy friend, if thou hast stricken thy hand with a 
 stranger, thou art snared with the words of thy mouth." 
 Traces of this custom may be discovered in ages long an- 
 terior to that in which Solomon flourished ; for Job, in his 
 solemn appeal to God from the tribunal of men, thus ex- 
 presses himself: " Lay down now, put me in surety with 
 thee ; who is he that will strike hands with me V — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of 
 the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the 
 fowler. 
 
420 
 
 PROVERBS, 
 
 Chap. 7. 
 
 Does a man complain of his numerous enemies, it will 
 be said, " Leap away, friend, as the deer from the snare." 
 " Fly off, fly oif, as the bird from the fowler." " Go slyly to 
 the place; and then, should you see the snare, fly away like 
 a bird." — Roberts. 
 
 Before dogs were so generally employed, the hunters 
 were obliged to make use of nets and snares, to entangle 
 he game. When the antelope finds itself enclosed in the 
 toils, terror lends it additional strength and activity ; it 
 strains every nerve, with vigorous and incessant exertion, 
 to bieak the snare, and escape before the pursuer arrives. 
 And such is the conduct which the wise man recommends 
 to him who has rashly engaged to be surety for his neigh- 
 bour : " Deliver thyself as (an antelope) from the haiid of 
 the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler." 
 The snare is spread, the adversary is at hand, instantly 
 exert all thy powers to obtain a discharge of the obligation ; 
 a moment's hesitation may involve thee and thy family in 
 irretrievable ruin. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 6. Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider 
 her ways, and be wise. 
 
 The name of this minute insect in Hebrew is (nVn;) ne- 
 mo2a, from a root which signifies to cut down ; perhaps 
 because the God of nature has taught it to divide or cut off" 
 the top of the grain, which it lays up in its subterraneous 
 cells for the winter, to prevent their germination. This 
 operation is attested by numerous ancient writers, among 
 whom we observe the celebrated names of Pliny and Plu- 
 tarch. It is at least certain, that the ant cuts off" the tops of 
 growing corn, that it may seize upon the grain ; which may 
 perhaps be the true reason of its Hebrew name. The al- 
 lusions to this little animal in the sacred writings, although 
 not numerous, are by no means unimportant. The wisest 
 of men refers us to the bright example of its foresight and 
 activity : " Go to the ant, thou sluggard ; consider her ways, 
 and be wise : which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 
 provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food 
 -.n the harvest." Their uniform care and promptitude in 
 improving every moment as it passes ; the admirable order 
 in which they proceed to the scene of action ; the perfect 
 harmony which reigns in their bands ; the eagerness which 
 they discover in running to the assistance of the weak or 
 the fatigued ; the readiness with which those that have no 
 burden yield the way to their fellows that bend under their 
 loads, or when the grain happens to be too heavy, cut it in 
 two, and take the half upon their own shoulders; furnish 
 a striking example of industry, benevolence, and concord, 
 *to the human family. Nor should the skill and vigour 
 which they display in digging under ground, in building 
 their houses, and in constructing their cells, in filling their 
 granaries with corn for the winter, in forming channels for 
 carrying off the rain, in bringing forth their hidden stores 
 which are in danger of spoiling by the moisture, and ex- 
 posing them to the sun and air, be passed over in silence. 
 These, and many other operations, clearly show how in- 
 structive a teacher is the ant, even to men of understanding ; 
 and how much reason Solomon had to hold up its shining 
 example to their imitation. 
 
 We find another allusion to the ant near the close of the 
 same book : " The ants are a people not strong, yet they 
 prepare their meat in the summer." It is, according to the 
 royal preacher, one of those things which are little upon 
 the earth, but exceeding wise. The superior wisdom of the 
 ant has been recognised by many writers. Horace, in the 
 passage from which the preceding quotation is taken, 
 praises its sagacity ; Virgil celebrates its foresight, in pro- 
 viding for the wants and infirmities of old age, while it is 
 young and vigorous : 
 
 " atqne inopi metuens formica senectce." 
 
 And we learn from Hesiod, that among the earliest Greeks 
 it was called Idris ; that is, wise, because it foresaw the 
 coming storm, and the inauspicious day, and collected her 
 store. Aristotle observes, that some of those animals which 
 have no blood, possess more intelligence and sagacity than 
 some that have blood; among which are the bees and the 
 ants. Cicero believed that the ant is not only furnished 
 with senses, but also with mind, reason, and memory: " In 
 formica non modo sensus sed etiam mens, ratio, memorite." 
 Some authors go so far as to prefer the ant to man himself, 
 
 on account of the vigorous intelligence and sagacity which 
 they display in all their operations. Although this opinion 
 is justly chargeable with extravagance, yet it must be ad- 
 mitted, that the union of so many noble qualities in so small 
 a corpuscle, is one of the most remarkable phenomena 
 in the works of nature. This is admitted by Solomon 
 himself: " The ants are a people not strong, yet they pre- 
 pare their meat in the summer." He calls them a people, 
 because they are gregarious ; living in a state of society, 
 though without any king or leader to maintain order and 
 superintend their affairs. The term people is frequently 
 applied to them by ancient writers, ^lian says, in a pas- 
 sage already quoted, that the ants which ascend the stalks 
 of growing corn, throw down the spikes which they have 
 bit off, rw Sriiiw, TM KUTO), to the people, that is, the ants below. 
 Apuleius, describing the manner in which the ants convoke 
 an assembly of the nations, says, that when the signal is 
 given, Ruunt alise superque alise sepedum populorum undaj. 
 The wise man adds, they are not strong; that is, they are 
 feeble insects ; nor is it possible that great strength can re- 
 side in so minute a creature. Hence the Arabians say con- 
 temptuously of a man that has become weak and infi m, "he 
 is feebler than the ant."— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 3. He winketh with his eyes, he spe iketh 
 with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers 
 
 See on Matt. 6. 3. 
 
 It should be remembered, that when people are in their 
 houses, they do not wear sandals; consequently their feet 
 and toes are exposed. When guests wish to speak with 
 each other, so as not to be observed by the host, they convey 
 their meaning by the feet and toes. Does a person wish to 
 leave a room in company with another, he lifts up one of 
 his feet ; and should the other refuse, he also lifts up a foot, 
 and then suddenly puts it down on the ground. 
 
 " He teacheth with his fingers." When merchants wish 
 to make a bargain in the presence of others, Avithout making 
 known their terms, they sit on the ground, have a piece of 
 cloth thrown over the lap, and then put each a hand under, 
 and thus speak with the fingers ! When the Bramins con- 
 vey religious mysteries to their disciples, they teach with 
 their fingers, having the hands concealed in the folds ol 
 their robes. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 27. Can a man take fire in his bosom, and 
 his clothes not be burnt ? 
 
 When an individual denies a crime of which he has been 
 accused, it will he asked, " Will you put fire in your 
 bosom V " I am innocent, I am innocent ; in proof of which 
 I will put fire in my bosom." Does a man boast he will do 
 that which is impossible, another will say, " He is going .to 
 put fire in his bosom without being burned." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 34. For jealousy is the rage of a man; 
 therefore he will not spare in the day of ven* 
 geance. 
 
 Jealousy is very common and powerful among the people 
 of the East ; and is frequently carried to an extent, of which 
 we have no example in European countries. " Whoever, 
 in Persia, has the misfortune to see, or ihe imprudence to 
 look at, the wife of a man of rank, were it but as she travels 
 on the road, and at ever so great a distance, is sure to be 
 severely beaten by her eunuchs, and, perhaps, put to death ; 
 and to meet any of the king's concubines is such a capital 
 crime, that, on a certain occasion, when the favourite queen 
 happened, during the chase, to be overtaken by a storm, and 
 under the necessity of taking refuge in a hamlet, not one 
 of the people would let her majesty in, that they might not 
 have the misfortune of seeing her." (Michaelis.)— Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 10. And, behold, there met him a woman, 
 with the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart. 
 
 Females of that class are generally dressed in scarlet ; 
 have their robes wound tightly round their bodies ; their 
 eyelids and finger nails are painted or stained ; and they 
 wear numerous ornaments. (2 Kings ix. 30.) Sw on Isa. 
 iii. 16, and following verses.— Roberts. 
 
Chap. 9. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 421 
 
 Ver. 1 1. She is loud and stubborn ; her feet abide 
 not in her house. 
 
 In ancient Greece, the women were strictly confined 
 within their lodgings, especially virgins and widows ; of 
 whom the former, as having less experience in the world, 
 were more closely watched. Their apartment was com- 
 monly well guarded with locks and bolts ; and sometimes 
 they were so straitly confined, that they could not pass 
 from one part to another without permission. New-mar- 
 ried women were almost under as strict a confinement as 
 virgins ; but when once they had brought forth a child, they 
 commonly enjoyed greater liberty. This indulgence, how- 
 ever, was entirely owing to the kindness of their husbands ; 
 for those who were jealous or morose, kept their wives in 
 perpetual imprisonment. But how gentle and kind soever 
 husbands might be, it was considered as very indecent for 
 women to go abroad. A Jewess was not so much confined ; 
 but still it was deemed improper for her to appear much in 
 public ; for in Hebrew she is called (n^H') almah, from a 
 verb which signifies to hide or conceal, because she was 
 seldom or never permitted to mingle in promiscuous com- 
 pany. The married women, though less restrained, were 
 still expected to keep at home, and occupy their time in the 
 management of their household. In the book of Proverbs, 
 the wise man states it as a mark of a dissolute woman, that 
 •' her feet abide not in her house :" while "every wise wo- 
 man," by her industrious and prudent conduct, "buildeth 
 her house." " She looketh well to the ways of her house- 
 hold, and eateth not the bread of idleness." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. I have decked my bed with coverings 
 of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen 
 of Egypt. 
 
 We are not co suppose that all beds were alike ; no 
 doubt, when King David wanted warmth, his attendants 
 would put both mattresses below, and coverlets above, to 
 procure it for him. Neither are we to understand, when a 
 bed is the subject of boasting, that it consisted merely of 
 the krabbaton, or oresh. In Pro. vii. 16, the harlot vaunts 
 of her bed, as highly ornamented " with tapestry-work — 
 with brocade I have brocaded — bedecked — my orcsh ; the 
 covering to my duan (rather the makass) is fine linen of 
 Egypt, embossed with embroidery." This description may 
 be "much illustrated by the account which Baron De Tott 
 gives of a bed, in which he was expected to sleep, and in 
 which he might have slept, had not European habit incapaci- 
 tated him from that enjoyment: " The time fortaking our re- 
 pose was now come, and we were conducted into another 
 large room, in the middle of which was a kind of bed, with- 
 md bedstead or curtains. Though the coverlet and pillows 
 exceeded in magnificence the richness of the sofa, which 
 likewise ornamented the apartment, I foresaw that I could 
 expect but little rest on this bed, and had the curiosity to 
 examine its make in a more particular manner. Fifteen 
 matlresscs of quilted cotton, about three inches thick, placed 
 on£ upon another, formed the ground-work, and were cov- 
 ered by a sheet of Indian linen, sewed on the last mattress. 
 A coverlet of green satin, adorned with gold, embroidered 
 in embossed work, was, in like manner, fastened to the sheets, 
 the ends of which, turned in, were sewed down alternately. 
 Two large pillows of crimson satin, covered with the like 
 evwroidery, in which th^re was no want of gold or spangles, 
 rested on two cushions of the sofa, brought near to serve 
 for a back, and intended to support our heads. The taking 
 of the pillows entirely away would have been a good re- 
 source, if we had hai any bolster; and the expedient of 
 turning the other side upward having only served to show 
 they were embroidered in the same manner on the bottom, 
 we at last determined to lay our handkerchiefs over them, 
 which, however, did not prevent our being very sensible 
 of the embossed ornaments underneath." 
 
 Heie we have (1.) many mattresses of quilted cotton: 
 (2.) a sheet of Indian linen ; {query, muslin, or the fine 
 linen of Egypt X) (3.) a coverlet of green satin, embossed: 
 (4.) two large pillows, embossed also: (5.) two cushions 
 from the sofa, to form a back. So that we see an eastern 
 bed may be an article of furniture sufiiciently complicated. 
 This description, compared with a note of De La Mo- 
 traye, (p. 172,) leads to the supposition, that somewhat like 
 vhat he informs us is called makass, i. e. a brocaded cover- 
 
 ing for show, is what the harlot boasts of, as being the 
 upper covering to her minder, or oresh. " On a rich 
 sofa," says he, " was a false covering of plain green silk, 
 for the same reason as that in the hall ; but I lifted it up, 
 while the two eunuchs who were with us had their bacxis 
 turned, and I found that the makass of the minders was % 
 very rich brocade, with a gold growid, and flowered with silk 
 of several colours, and the cushions of green velvet also, 
 grcmnded vrith gold, and floioered like them." Note. "The 
 minders have two covers, one of which is called MAKAss,for 
 ornament : and the other to preserve that, especially when 
 they are rich, as these were." This was in the seraglio at 
 Constantinople. 
 
 It is perfectly in character for the harlot, who (r;^. i\ 
 14) " sits on a kind of throne at her door," and who in. 
 this passage boasts of all her shoAvy embellishments, to 
 mention whatever is gaudy, even to the tinsel bedeckings 
 of her room, her furniture, and her makasses, assuming 
 nothing less than regal dignity in words and description : 
 though her apartment be the way to hell; and the alcove 
 containing her bed be the very lurking chamber of death.— 
 Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 27. Her house is the way to hell, going 
 down to the chambers of death. 
 
 See on Is. 22. 16. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 1. Wisdom hath built her house, she hath 
 hewn out her seven pillars : 2. She hath kill- 
 ed her beasts ; she hath mingled her wine ; 
 she hath also furnished her table : 3. She hath 
 sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the 
 highest places of the city, 4. Whoso is simple, 
 let him turn in hither : as for him that wanteth 
 understanding, she saith to him, 5. Come, eat 
 of my bread, and drink of the wine which I 
 have mingled. 
 
 Hasselquist takes notice of what appears to us an old cus- 
 tom in Egypt, which he supposes is very ancier.t, uough 
 he does not apply it to the illustration of any passage of 
 scripture ; it seems, however, to be referred to by Solomon 
 in the book of Proverbs. He saw, he says, a number of 
 women, who went about inviting people to a banquet, in a 
 singular, and, without doubt, very ancient manner. They 
 were about ten or twelve, covered with black veils, as is 
 customary in that country. They were preceded by four 
 eunuchs :' after them, and on the side, were Moors with 
 their usual walking staves. As they were walking, they 
 all joined in making a noise, which he was told signified 
 their joy, but which he could not find resembled a joyful or 
 pleasing song. The sound was so singular, as that he 
 found himself at a loss to give an idea of it to those that 
 never heard it. It was shrill, but had a particular quaver- 
 ing, which they learnt by long practice. The passage in 
 Proverbs, which seems to allude to this practice, is the 
 beginning of the ninth chapter: " Wisdom hath killed her 
 beasts ; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnish- 
 ed her table ; she hath sent forth her maidens : she crieth 
 upon the highest places of the city. Whoso is simple, let him 
 turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she 
 saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine 
 which I have mingled." 
 
 Here the reader observes, that the invitation is supposed 
 to be made by more than one person ; that they were of the 
 female sex that were employed in the service ; and that the 
 invitation is supposed not to have been, as among us, a 
 private message, but open to the notice of all. Whether it 
 was with a singing tone of voice, as now in Egypt, does 
 not, determinately at least, appear by the word her made 
 use of, and which is translated crieth: She crieth. by hfr 
 rmiidens, upon the highest places of the city. It may not he 
 improper to add, that though the eastern people now eat 
 out of the dishes oftentimes, w^hich are brought in singly, 
 and follow one another with great rapidity, not out of plates, 
 yet many lesser appendages are placed round about the 
 table by way of preparation, which seems to be what is 
 meant by the expression, she also hath furnished her table „ 
 in one word, all things were then ready, and the more di» 
 
422 
 
 PROVERBS, 
 
 Chap. 9—1 i 
 
 lant kinds of preparation had been followed by the nearer, 
 till every thin^ was ready, so as that the repast might im- 
 mediately begin. The cattle were killed, the jars of wine 
 emptied into drinking vessels, and the little attendants on 
 the great dishes placed on the table. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 14. For she sitteth at the door of her house, 
 on a seat in the high places of the city. 
 
 The custom of sitting at their doors, in the most alluring 
 pbmp that comes within their reach, is still an eastern prac- 
 iice. " These women," says Pitts, speaking of the ladies 
 of pleasure at Grand Cairo, " used to sit at the door, or 
 walk in the streets unveiled. They are commonly very 
 "-.^oh in their clothes, some having their shifts and drawers 
 of silk, &c. These courtesans, or ladies of pleasure, as 
 well as other women, have broad velvet caps on their heads, 
 beautified with abundance of pearls, and other costly and 
 gaudy ornaments, &c. These madams go along the streets 
 smoking their pipes of four or five feet long ; and when 
 they sit at their doors, a man can scarce pass by but they 
 will endeavour to decoy him in." — Burder, 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 11. The mouth of a righteous man is a well 
 of life : but violence covereth the mouth of the 
 wicked. 
 
 " The language of a holy man is like a well with good 
 springs : thousands may be refreshed there." " The words 
 of a bad man are like the springs of the sea ; though very 
 strong, they are not sweet." " Violence covereth the mouth 
 of the wicked." To cover the mouth is the sign of sorrow : 
 thus, they who act violently will sooner or later reap the 
 fruits thereof They will have to cover their mouth in 
 token of sorrow for the past, and in anticipation of the fu- 
 ture, — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Ver. 1. A false balance is abomination to the 
 Lord : but a just weight is his delight. 
 
 Great severity has been frequently exercised in the pun- 
 ishment of those who were detected in the kind of fraud 
 here referred to. " A police-officer observing one morning 
 a female, not a native, carrying a large piece of cheese, in- 
 quired where she had purchased it ; being ignorant of the 
 vender's name, she conducted him to his shop, and the 
 magistrate, suspecting the quantity to be deficient in weight, 
 placed it in the scales, and found his suspicion verified : 
 whereupon he straightway ordered his attendants to cut 
 from the most fleshy part of the delinquent's person what 
 would be equivalent to the just measure : the order was 
 instantly executed, and the sufiferer bled to death." (Joliffe.) 
 — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 21. Though hand join in hand, the wicked 
 shall not be unpunished : but the seed of the 
 righteous shall be delivered. 
 
 See on 2 Kings 10. 15 
 
 To join hands was anciently, and still continues in the 
 East, a solemn method of taking an oath, and making an 
 engagement. This circumstance is probably alluded to m 
 these words of Solomon ; its present existence is clearly 
 ascertained by what Mr. Bruce (Trav. vol. i. p. 199) re- 
 lates : " I was so enraged at the traitorous part which Has- 
 san had acted, that, at parting, I could not help saying to 
 Ibrahim — Now, shekh, I have done every thing you have de- 
 sired, without ever expecting fee or reward ; the only thing 
 I now ask you, and it is probably the last, is, that you avenge 
 me upon this Hassan, who is every day in your power. 
 Upon this he gave me his hand, saying, he shall not die in 
 Lis bed, or I shall never see old age." — Burder. 
 
 The expression, though homd join in hand, may bear a 
 slight correction, conformable both to the original Hebrew, 
 and also to the custom actually prevailing in Syria. The 
 original t-V T" simply signifies, hand to hand. And this is 
 the custom of persons in the East, when they greet each 
 other, or strike hands, in token of friendship and agreement. 
 They touch their right hands respectively ; and then raise 
 them up to their lips and forehead. This is th» universal 
 
 eastern courtesy; the English version, and the devices 
 grounded upon it, give the idea of hand clasped in hand^ 
 which is European, rather than oriental. The sense, there- 
 fore, is, Though hand meet hand — intimating that heart as- 
 sents to heart in the perpetration of wickedness — ijel shall 
 not the loicked go unpunished. — Jowett. 
 
 There is a remarkable passage (Proverbs xi. 21) thus 
 rendered by our translators: '•' Though hand join in hand, 
 the wicked shall not be unpunished; but the 
 
 nn 111 xmuu, j 
 seed of the I 
 make many ' 
 
 righteous shall be delivered :" i. e. though they mal 
 associations, and oaths, and join hands among themselves, 
 (as formed part of the ceremony of swearing among these 
 shepherds of Suakem,) yet they shall not be punished." But 
 Michaelis proposes another sense of these words, " hand in 
 hand" — my hand in your hand, i. e.as a token of swearing, 
 " the wicked shall not go unpunished." — Taylor in Cal- 
 
 MET. 
 
 Ver. 22. As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so 
 is a fair woman which is without discretion. 
 
 Nearly all the females of the East wear a jewel of gold 
 in their nostrils, or in the septum of the nose ; and some -of 
 them are exceedingly beautiful, and of great value. The 
 oriental lady looks with as much pleasure on the gem which 
 ADORNS her nose, as any of her sex in England do upon 
 those which deck their ears. But as is that splendid jewel 
 in the snout of a swine, so is beauty in a woman without 
 discretion. She may have the ornament, her mien may 
 be graceful, and her person attractive ; but without the 
 matchless jewel of virtue, she is like the swine with a 
 gem in her nose, wallowing in the mire. "The most 
 beautiful ornament of a woman is virtue," Tamul proverb. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 This proverb is manifestly an allusion to the cust' m of 
 wearing nose-jewels, or rings set with jewels, hanging 
 from the nostrils, as ear-rings from the ears, by holes bored 
 to receive them. This fashion, however strange it may 
 appear to us, was formerly, and is still, common in many 
 parts of the East, among women of all ranks. Paul Lucas, 
 s-peaking of a village, or clan of wandering people, a little 
 on this side of the Euphrates, says, " The women al- 
 most all of them travel on foot ; I saw none handsome 
 among them. They have almost all of them the nose bored, 
 and wear in it a great ring, which makes them still more 
 deformed." But in regard to this custom, better authority 
 cannot be produced than that of Pietro della Valle, in the 
 account which he gives of Signora Maani Gioerida, his 
 own wife. The description of her dress, as to the orna- 
 mental parts of it, with which he introduces the mention of 
 this particular, will give us some notion of the taste of the 
 eastern ladies for finery. " The ornaments of gold, and of 
 jewels, for the head, for the neck, for the arms, for the legs, 
 and for the feet, (for they wear rings even on their toes,) 
 are indeed, unlike those of the Turks, carried to great ex- 
 cess, but not of great value: as turquoises, small rubies, 
 emeralds, carbuncles, garnets, pearls, and the like. My 
 spouse dresses herself with all of them, according' to their 
 fashion, with exception however of certain ugl\ nngs, of 
 very large size, set with jewels, which, in truth /ery ab- 
 surdly, it is the custom to wear fastened to oneof tneir nos- 
 trils, like buffaloes; an ancient custom however in the 
 East, which, as we find in the holy scriptures, prevailed 
 among the Hebrew ladies, even in the time of Solomon. 
 These nose-rings, in complaisance to me, she has left oflT; 
 but I have not yet been able to prevail Mith her cousin and 
 her sisters to do the same. So fond are they of an old cus- 
 tom, be it ever so absurd, who have been long habituated 
 to it." To this account may be subjoined the observation 
 made by Chardin, as cited in Harmer: " It is the custom 
 in almost all the East for the women to wear rings in their 
 noses, in the left nostril, which is bored low down in the 
 middle. These rings are of gold, and have commonly two 
 pearls and one ruby between, placed in the ring. I never 
 saw a girl or young woman in Arabia, or in all Persia, who 
 did not wear "a ring after this manner in her nostril." — 
 Burder. 
 
 Ver. 26. He that withholdeth corn, the people 
 shall curse him : but blessing shall be uponihe 
 head of him that selleth it. 
 
 Mirza Ahady, in conjunction with the prince's mother. 
 
Chap. 11—15. 
 
 PROVERBS, 
 
 42a 
 
 was believed to have monopolized all the corn of the coun- 
 try ; and he had no sooner reached Shiraz than he raised 
 iis price, which, of course, produced a correspondent ad- 
 vance in that of bread. Ventre aflame n'a point d'oreilles, 
 — the people became outrageous in their misery. As is 
 \isu;>l !n nil public calamities in the East, they commenced 
 by sliytting their shops in the bazar. They then resortedto 
 the louse of the sheikh-el-islam, the head of the law, re- 
 I quiring him to issue difetwah, which might make it lawful 
 to kill Mirza Ahady, and one or two more, whom they 
 knew to be his coadjutors in oppressing them. They then 
 appeared in a body before the gate of the prince's palace, 
 where they expressed their grievances in a tumultuous way, 
 and demanded that Mirza Ahady should be delivered up to 
 them. Mohammed Zeky Khan, our former mehmander, was 
 sent out by the prince to appease them, accompanied by 
 i Mirza Banker, the chief baker of the city, who was one of 
 i /hose whose life had been denounced. As soon as the lat- 
 1; ter appeared, he was overwhelmed with insults and re- 
 j proaches : but he managed to pacify them, by saymg, "What 
 crime have I committed 1 Mirza Ahady is the man to abuse ; 
 if he sells corn at extravagant prices, bread must rise in 
 consequence. In the meantime, Mirza Ahady had secreted 
 himself from the fury of the mob ; but being countenanced 
 by the prince's mother, and, consequently, by the prince 
 himself, he let the storm rage, and solaced himself by ma- 
 king fresh plans for raising more money. The price of 
 bread was lowered for a few days, until the commotion 
 should cease : and, as it was necessary that some satisfac- 
 tion should be given to the people, all the bakers of the 
 town were collected together, and publicly bastinadoed on 
 the soles of their feet." (Morier.) " We are told of the 
 fate of one person in whose house an immense quantity of 
 grain was found : a stake was fixed in the centre of his 
 granary, to which he was bound, and left to perish from 
 hunger amidst that abundance which he had refused to 
 share with his fellow-citizens." (Malcolm.) — Burdeb. 
 
 Ver. 29. He that troubleth his own house shall 
 inherit the wind : and the fool shall he servant 
 to the wise of heart. 
 
 This form of expression is still used in India. " I un- 
 derstand Kandan will give a large dowry with his daugh- 
 ter ; she will, therefore, be a good bargain for vour son." 
 — " You are correct, my friend ; she is to inherit the wind." 
 " I once had extensive lands for my portion ; but now I in- 
 herit the wind." " I know you would like to have hold of 
 my property: but you may lake the wind."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 10. A righteous ot^ti regardeth the life of his 
 beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked 
 are cruel. 
 
 " During my stay at Surat, I rode out most evenings with 
 our worthy chief, and, among other uncommon sights to a 
 stranger, I took notice that many trees had jars hanging to 
 several of the boughs ; on inquiring, I was told that they 
 were filled with water every evening, by men hired on pur- 
 pose by the Gentops, in order to supply the birds with drink. 
 This account excited a desire of visiting the banyan hospi- 
 tal, as I had heard much of their benevolence to all kinds 
 of animals that were either sick, lame, or infirm, through 
 age or accident. On my arrival, there were presented to my 
 view many horses, cows, and oxen, in one apartment; in 
 another, dogs, sheep, goats, and monkeys, with clean straw 
 for them to repose on. Above-stairs were depositories for 
 seeds of many sorts, and flat broad dishes for water, for the 
 use of those birds and insects which might chance to come 
 into the apartment through the windows, which were lat- 
 ticed, with apertures large enough to admit small birds to 
 enter. I was told by the attendants, that each apartment 
 was cleaned every morning, the beasts fed and littered once 
 a day, the seeds above-stairs winnowed, the dishes washed, 
 and clean water put in them daily." (Parson's Travels in 
 Asia.) Thevenot describes a banyan hospital, where he 
 saw a number of sick oxen, camels, and horses, and many 
 invalids of the feathered race. " Animals deemed in- 
 curable," he says, "were maintained there for life ; those 
 that recovered were sold to Hindoos exclusively."— 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 27. The slothful man roasteth not that which 
 he took in hunting ; but the substance of a dili- 
 gent man is precious. 
 
 There is something particular in the word (n^n) charak, 
 used in this passage of Solomon; it is not the word that is 
 commonly used for roasting, but it signifies rather singing, 
 as appears from Dan. iii. 27. No author, I think, gives us 
 an account what this should mean, understood in this sense. 
 Besides wild-boars, antelopes, and hares, which are par- 
 ticularly mentioned by D'Arvieux, when he speaks of the 
 Arabs as diverting themselves with hunting in the Holy 
 Land, Dr. Shaw tells us, all kinds of game are found in 
 great plenty in that country : but I do not remember an ac- 
 count of any thing being prepared for food by singing, that 
 is taken either in hunting or hawking, except hares, which 
 I have indeed somewhere read of as dressed, in the East, 
 after this manner: a hole being dug in the ground, and the 
 earth scooped out of it laid all round its edge, the brush- 
 wood with which it is filled is set on fire, the hare is thrown 
 unskinned into the hole, and afterward covered with heated 
 earth that was laid round about it, where it continues till it 
 is thought to be done enough, and then being brought to 
 table, sprinkled with salt, is found to be very agreeable 
 food. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 17. Better is a dinner of herbs where love 
 is, than a stalled ox, and hatred therewith. 
 
 This passage is rendered by the Septuagint, as if they 
 understood it of the forced accommodation of travellers, 
 which Arabs and conquered people were obliged to submit 
 to. It was not unusual for travellers to eat at the expense of 
 those who were not pleased with entertaining them ; and 
 to use a kind of force, which produced hatred. Dr. Shaw 
 notices this circumstance. Speaking of Barbary, he says, 
 "In this country, the Arabs and other inhabitants are 
 obliged, either by long custom, by the particular tenure 
 of their lands, or from fear and compulsion, to give the 
 Spahees, and their company, the Moquanah, as they call 
 it, which is such a sufficient quantity of provisions, for 
 ourselves, together with straw and barley for our mules 
 and horses. Besides a bowl of milk, and a basket of figs, 
 raisins, or dates, which, upon our arrival, were presented 
 to us, to stay our appetites, the master of the tent where 
 we lodged fetched us from his flock, according to the 
 number of our company, a kid or a goat, a lamb or a sheep, 
 half of which was immediately seethed by his wife, and 
 served up with cuscasooe ; the rest was made Kab-ab, i. e. 
 cut into pieces, and roasted, which we reserved for our 
 breakfast or dinner the next day." In the next page he 
 says, " when we were entertained in a courteous manner, 
 (for the Arabs will sometimes supply us with nothing till 
 it is extorted by force,) the author used to give the master 
 of the tent a knife, a couple of flints, or a small quantity 
 of English gunpowder," &c. To prevent such parties from 
 living at free charges upon them, the Arabs take care to 
 pitch in woods, valleys, or places the least conspicuous, 
 and that in consequence they found it difficult often to dis- 
 cover them. — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 19. The way of the slothful man is as a hedge 
 of thorns : but the way of the righteous is made 
 plain. 
 
 The oriental gardens were either open plantations, or 
 enclosures defended by walls or hedges. Rauwolf found, 
 about Tripoli, many gardens and vineyards enclosed fcr 
 the most part with hedges, and separated by shady wa.ics. 
 Some fences in the Holy Land, in later times, are not less 
 beautiful than our living fences of white thorn, and per- 
 fectly answer the description of ancient Jewish prophets, 
 who inform us, that the hedges in their times consisted of 
 thorns, and that the spikes of these thorny plants were ex- 
 ceedingly sharp. Doubdan found a very fruitful vineyard, 
 full of olives, fig-trees, and vines, about eight miles south- 
 west from Bethlehem, enclosed with a hedge; and that 
 part of it adjoining to the road, strongly formed of thorns 
 and rose-bushes, intermingled with pomegranate-trees of 
 surpassing beauty and fragrance. A hedge composed of 
 
424 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 Chap. 16. 
 
 rose-bushes and wild pomegranate-shrubs, then in full 
 flower, mingled with other thorny plants, adorned in the 
 varied livery of spring, must have made at once a strong 
 and beautiful fence. The wild pomegranate-tree, the spe- 
 cies probably used in fencing, is much more prickly than 
 the other variety ; and when mingled with other thorny 
 bushes, of which they have several kinds in Palestine, 
 some whose prickles are very long and sharp, must form a 
 hedge very difficult to penetrate. These facts illustrate 
 the beauty and force of several passages in the sacred vol- 
 ume : thus, in the Proverbs of Solomon, " The way of 
 the slothful man is as a hedge of thohis ;" it is obstructed 
 with difficulties, which the sloth and indolence of his tem- 
 per represent as galling or insuperable ; but which a mod- 
 erate share of resolution and perseverance would easily 
 remove or surmount. — Paxton. 
 
 Hasselquist says, that he saw the plantain-tree, the vine, 
 the peach, and the mulberry-tree, all four made use of in 
 Egypt to hedge about a garden : now these are all un- 
 armed plants. This consideration throws a great energy 
 into the words of Solomon : The way of the slothful man 
 is a hedge of thorns. It appears as difficult to him, not 
 only as breaking through a hedge, but even through a 
 ihorii fence: and also into that threatening of God to Israel: 
 Behold, I will hedge up the way with thorns^ Hosea ii. 6. 
 —Border. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Ver. 11. A just weight and balance are the 
 Lord's; all the weights of the bag are his 
 work. 
 
 The Jews were required to be exact in their weights and 
 measures, that the poor might not be defrauded. Hesy- 
 chius remarks upon this point, as a reason for such great 
 care, that what the possession of a field or house is to a 
 wealthy man, that the measure of corn, or wine, or the 
 weight' of bread, is to the poor, who have daily need of 
 such things for the support of life. " The Jewish doctors 
 assert, that it was a constitution of their wise men, for the 
 preventing of all frauds in these matters, that no weights, 
 balances, or measures, should be made of any metal, as of 
 ivGU, lead, tin, (which were liable to rust, or might be bent, 
 or easily impaired,) but of marble, stone, or glass, which 
 were less subject to be abused : and therefore the scripture, 
 speaking of the justice of God's judgments, observes, (ac- 
 cording to the Vulgate,') that they are weighed with all the 
 stones in the bag" (Lewis.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. The wrath of a king is as messengers 
 of death ; but a wise man will pacify it. 
 
 Executions in the East are often very prompt and arbi- 
 trary. In many cases the suspicion is no sooner entertained, 
 or the cause of offisnce given, than the fatal order is issued; 
 the messenger of death hurries to the unsuspecting victim, 
 shows his warrant, and executes his orders that instant in 
 silence and solitude. Instances of this kind are continually 
 occurring in the Turkish and Persian histories. '* When 
 the enemies of a great man among the Turks have gained 
 influence enough over the prince to procure a warrant for 
 his death, a capidgi (the name of the officer who executes 
 these orders) is sent to him, who shojvs him the order he 
 has received to carry back his "head ; the other takes the 
 warrant of the grand seignior, kisses it, puts it on his head 
 in token of respect, and then having performed his ablu- 
 tions, and said his prayers, freely resigns his life. The 
 capidgi having strangled him, cuts off" his head, and brings 
 it to Constantinople. The grand seignior's order is im- 
 plicitly obeyed ; the servants of the victim never attempt to 
 hinder the executioner, although these capidgis come very 
 often with few or no atte'ndants." It appears from the 
 writings of Chardin, that the nobility and grandees of 
 Persia are put to death in a manner equally silent, hasty, 
 and unobstructed. Such executions were not uncommon 
 among the Jews under the government of their kings. 
 Solomon sent Benaiah as his capidgi, or executioner, to 
 
 ?ut Adonijah, a prince of his own family, to death; and 
 oab, the commander-in-chief of the forces in the reign of 
 his father. A capidgi likewise beheaded John the Baptist 
 in the prison, and carried his head to the court of Herod. 
 To such silent and hasty executioners the royal preacher 
 
 seems to refer in that proverb, "The wrath of a king is 
 as messengers of death ; but a wise man will pacify it ;" 
 his displeasure exposes the unhappy offender to immediate 
 death, and may fill the unsuspecting bosom with terror and 
 dismay, like the appearance of a capidgi ; but by wise and 
 prudent conduct, a man may sometimes escape the danger. 
 From the dreadful promptitude with which Benaiah exe- 
 cuted the commands of Solomon on Adonijah and Joab, 
 it may be concluded that the executioner of the court was 
 as little ceremonious, and the ancient Jews nearly as pas- 
 sive, as the Turks or Persians. The prophet Elisha is the 
 only person on the inspired record, who ventured to resist 
 the bloody mandate of the sovereign ; the incident is re- 
 corded in these terms : " But Elisha sat in his house, and 
 the elders sat with him ; and the king sent a man from 
 before him ; but ere the messenger came to him, he said 
 to the elders. See how this son of a murderer has sent to 
 take away my head 1 Look when the messenger cometh ; 
 shut the door, and hold him fast at the door — is not the 
 sound of his master's feet behind him V But if such 
 mandates had not been too common among the Jews, and 
 in general submitted to without resistance, Jehoram bad 
 scarcely ventured to despatch a single messenger to take 
 away the life of so eminent a person as Elisha. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. In the light of the king's countenance 
 is life ; and his favour is as a cloud of the latter 
 rain. 
 
 Poets often speak of the generosity of the great, as the 
 clouds full of rain, but the uncharitable are like the clouds 
 without rain. " 6 the benevolent man ! he is like the fruit- 
 ful rain ; ever givmg, but never receiving." — Roberts. 
 
 The former and latter rains is a phrase quite familiar 
 to every reader of the scriptures. The distinction which 
 it announces is founded in nature, and is of great impor- 
 tance in those parts of the world. At Aleppo, the drougni 
 of summer commonly terminates in September, by some 
 heavy showers, which occasionally continue some days ; 
 after which, there is an interval of fine weather, of between 
 twenty and thirty days, when the showers return, which 
 are called the second rains. The first rains fall between 
 the twenty-sixth of September and the sixth of October: 
 but it is later in Judea ; the former rain, descending in 
 Palestine about the beginning of November. The seasons 
 in the East are exceedingly regular, yet it is not to be sup- 
 posed that they admit of no variation ; the descent of the 
 first and second rain occasionally varies a whole month. 
 But the first and second rains of Syria, mentioned by Rus- 
 sel, do not seem to correspond with the former and latter 
 rains of the holy scriptures. This is the opinion of Jerome, 
 who lived Jong in Palestine : nor do the natural historians 
 of those countries take any notice of the first and second 
 rains in autumn ; but uniformly speak of the former and 
 latter rains. It is therefore of some importance to inquire, 
 what are the times of the year when these rains descend. 
 Here it may be proper to observe, that rain in the vernal 
 season, is represented by oriental writers as of great ad- 
 vantage. The more wet the spring, the later the harvest, 
 and the more plentiful the crop. In Barbary, the vernal 
 rains are indispensably requisite to secure the hopes of the 
 husbandman. If the latter rains fall as usual in the middle 
 of April, he reckons his crop secure; but extremely doubt- 
 ful if they happen to fail. This accounts well for the 
 great valiie which Solomon sets upon them : " In the 
 light of the king's countenance is life, and his favour is as 
 a cloud of the latter rain." To this may be added, that 
 the words translated the former and latter rains, are not 
 expressive of first and second ; and by consequence, do 
 not refer to the rains mentioned by Russel, but mark a 
 distinction of much greater importance. They must there- 
 fore be the same as the vernal rains, which are universally 
 allowed to be of the utmost consequence in those regions. 
 
 The time of the first rains is differently stated by modern 
 travellers. According to Dr. Shaw, the first autumna. 
 rains usually fall about the eleventh of November; from 
 a manuscript journal of travels in those countries, Mr. 
 Harmer found that the rain fell in the Holy Land on the 
 second of November; and he was assured by the historian 
 of the revolt of Ali Bev, who lived some years in Palestine 
 that the rains begin to fall there about the eighteenth day of 
 September ; at first they descend in slight showers, but as 
 
Chap. 17. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 429 
 
 Ihe season advances, they become very copious and heavy, 
 though never continual. < 
 
 Dr. Shaw seems to suppose, that the Arabs of Barbary 
 do not begin to break up their grounds till the first rains 
 of autumn fail ; while the author of the history of Ali Bey's 
 revolt supposes thai they sometimes plough their land before 
 the descent of the rain, because the soil is then light, and 
 easily worked. This statement contains nothing incredi- 
 ble ; grain will '^emain long in the earth unhurt, and vege- 
 tate as soon as the descending showers communicate suf- 
 ficient moisture. The oriental husbandman may cultivate 
 his field, as is often done in other countries, in expectation 
 of rain ; a circumstance to which Solomon seems to refer : 
 *' He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that 
 regardeth the clouds shall not reap." If they never sowed 
 in the East but when the soil was moistened with rain, 
 they could have no reason to observe whether the wind 
 threatened ram or promised fair weather; but if the seed 
 was cast into the ground previous to the descent of the rain, 
 they might naturally enough be induced to wait till they 
 observed the signs of its approach. The rainy season in 
 the beginning of wmter, by the concurring testimony of 
 travellers, is commonly introduced by a gale of wind from 
 the northeast. In Syria, the winds are variable in Novem- 
 ber, and the two succeeding months; seldom strong, but 
 more inclined to the north and east, than any of ths other 
 quarters. They continue to blow nearly in the same di- 
 rection, till about the end of February, when they begin 
 to blow hard westerly. The weather in April is in general 
 fair and clear ; seldom dark or cloudy, except when it rains, 
 which it does in hard thundershowers, as in the last month, 
 but not so often. When light northerly or easterly breezes 
 happen to blow, they have commonly a few close, hazy 
 days ; but the westerly winds are generally fresh. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 12. Let a bear, robbed of her whelps, meet 
 a man, rather than a fool in his folly. 
 
 The furious passions of the female bear never mount 
 so high, nor burn so fiercely, as when she happens to be de- 
 prived of her young. When she returns to her den, and 
 misses the objects of her love and care, she becomes almost 
 frantic with rage. Disregarding every consideration of 
 danger to herself, she attacks, with intense ferocity, every 
 animal that comes in her way, " and in the bitterness of 
 her heart, will dare to attack even a band of armed men." 
 The Russians of Kamschatka never venture to fire on a 
 young bear when the mother is near ; for if the cub drop, 
 she becomes enraged to a degree little short of madness ; 
 and if she get sight of the enemy, will only quit her revenge 
 with her life. " A more desperate attempt, therefore, can 
 scarcely be performed, than to carry olFheryoimgin her ab- 
 sence. The moment she returns, and misses them, her pas- 
 sions are inflamed ; her scent enables her to track the plun- 
 derer ; and unless he has reached some place of safety before 
 the infuriated animal overtake him, his only safety is in 
 dropping one of the cubs, and continuing to flee ; for the 
 mother, attentive to its safety, carries it home to her den, be- 
 fore she renews the pursuit." 
 
 These statements furnish an admirable illustration of a 
 passage in the counsel of Hushai to Absalom, in which he 
 represents the danger of attacking David and his followers 
 with so small a force as twelve thotisand chosen men, when 
 their tried courage was inflamed, and their spirits were 
 imbittered by the variety and severity of their suflferings, 
 and when their caution, matured by long and extensive 
 experience in the art of war, and sharpened by the novelty 
 and peril of their circumstance, would certainly lead them 
 to anticipate, and take measures to defeat the attempt. 
 " Hushai said unto Absalom, The counsel that Ahithophel 
 hath given, is not good at this time ; for (said Hushai) thou 
 knowest thy father and his men, that they be mighty men, 
 and they be chafed in their minds as a bear robbedof her 
 whelps in the field." The frantic rage of the female bear, 
 when she has lost her young, gives wonderful energy to 
 the proverb of Solomon : " Let a bear, robbedof her whelps, 
 meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly." Dreadful as 
 it is to meet a bear in such circumstances, it is yet more 
 dangerous to meet a " fool in his folly," a furious and re- 
 vengeful man, under the influence of his impetuous pas- 
 - sions, and bis heart determined on their immediate gratifi- 
 54 
 
 cation. Naturally stubborn and cruel as the bear, and 
 equally devoted to his lusts as she is to her young, he pur- 
 sues them with eqvial fury and eagerness. It is possible to 
 escape the vengeance of a bereaved bear, by surrendering 
 part of the litter, and diverting part of her pursuit ; but no 
 consideration of interest or duty, no partial gratifications, 
 can arrest his furious career, or divert his attention. Rea- 
 son, degraded and enslaved, lends all her remaning wis- 
 dom and energy to passion, and renders the fool more cruel 
 and mischievous than the bear, in proportion as she is su- ' 
 perior to instinct. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 18. A man void of understanding striketh 
 hands, and becometh surety in the presence of 
 his friend. 
 
 See on ch. 6. 1. 
 
 The Hindoo proverb says, " Muniddrmuneruka-Jcaduvar" 
 i. e. " He who stands before may have to pay." This, there- 
 fore, is the idea of a surety ; he stands before the debtor, 
 and covenants with the creditor for the payment ot the mo- 
 ney : he, therefore, who stands before, is literally betwixt 
 the contending parties. In this respect " was Jesus made a 
 surety" for us: he stood before, and became our //fffjrijy, or 
 Mediator. 
 
 The melancholy instances of ruin, in consequence of be- 
 coming surety for others, are exceedingly numerous in the 
 East. Against this they have many proverbs, and fearful 
 examples ; but nothing seems to give them wisdom. Near- 
 ly all the government monopolies, both among native and 
 European rulers, are let to the highest bidders : thus, the 
 privilege of searching for precious stones in certain dis- 
 tricts, of taking up the chiar root, salt rents, fishing for 
 chanks, or pearls, is confined to those who pay a fixed sum 
 to government. As the whole of the money cannot be ad- 
 vanced till a part of the produce shall be sold, sureties have 
 to be accountable for the amount. But as such specula- 
 tions are generally entered into, in order to better a reduced 
 fortune, an extravagant price is often paid, and ruin is the 
 consequence, both to the principal and his surety. This 
 practice of suretyship, however, is also common in the most 
 TRIFLING affairs of liie : ^' Parrellutha-vonum, i. e. Sign your 
 name," is asked for to every petty agreement. In every 
 legal court or magistrate's oftice may be seen, now and then, 
 a trio entering, thus to become responsible for the engage- 
 ments of another. The cause of all this suretyship is prob- 
 ably the bad faith which so commonly prevails among the 
 heathen. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. He that exalteth his gate seeketh de- 
 struction. 
 
 The general style of buildings in the East, seems to have 
 continued from the remotest ages down to the present times, 
 without alteration or any attempt at improvement. Large 
 doors, spacious chambers, marble pavements, cloistered 
 courts, with fountains sometimes playing in the midst, are 
 certainly conveniences well adapted to the circumstances 
 of these hotter climates. All the windows of their dwell- 
 ings, if we except a small latticed window or balcony which 
 sometimes looks into the street, open into their respective 
 courts or quadrangles; an arrangement probably dictated 
 by the jealousy which unceasingly disturbs the repose of an 
 oriental householder. It is only* during the celebration of 
 some public festival, that these houses, and their latticed 
 windows, or balconies, are left open. The streets of an 
 oriental city, the better to shade the inhabitants from the 
 sun, are commonly narrow, with sometimes a range of 
 shops on each side. People of the same trade occupy the 
 same street. Both in Persia and in Turkey the trades are 
 carried on in separate bazars, in which their shops are ex- 
 tended adjacent to each other oh both sides of the building. 
 The remark equally applies to Damascus and other citie? 
 in the Lesser Asia. The entrance from the streets into 
 one of the principal houses, is through a porch or gateway, 
 with benches on each side, where the master of the family 
 receives visits, and despatches business ; few persons, not 
 even the nearest relations, having further admission, ex- 
 cept upon extraordinary occasions. The door of the porch 
 by which a person enters the court, is very small ; some- 
 times not above three feet high. The design of such low 
 and inconvenient doors is, to prevent the Arabs from riding 
 
4^6 
 
 PROVERBS, 
 
 Chap. 18, 19. 
 
 into the houses to plunder them ; for these freebooters, who 
 are almost centaurs, seldom think of dismounting in iheir 
 excursions ; and therefore the peaceable inhabitants find 
 such small entrances the easiest and most effectual way of 
 preventing their violence. To this singular practice the 
 royal preacher may be supposed to refer: "He that exalt- 
 eth his gate, seeketh destruction." It can hardly be sup- 
 posed that Solomon mentioned the loftiness of the gate, 
 rather than other circumstances of magnificence in a build- 
 ing, as the wideness of the house, the airiness of the rooms, 
 the cedar ceilings, and the vermilion paintings, which the 
 prophet Jeremiah specifies as pieces of grandeur, without 
 some particular meaning. But if bands of Arabs had taken 
 the advantage of large doors to enter into houses in his 
 territories, or in the surrounding kingdoms, the apothegm 
 possesses a singular propriety and force. We have the 
 more reason to believe that Solomon had his eye on the in- 
 solence of the Arabs in riding into the houses of those they 
 meant to plunder, because the practice seems not to have 
 been unusual in other countries ; and is not now peculiar 
 to those plunderers. The Armenian merchants at Julfa, 
 the suburb of Ispahan, in which they reside,,find it necessa- 
 ry to make the front door of their houses in general small, 
 partly to hinder the Persians, who treat them with great 
 rigour and insolence, from entering them on horseback, 
 and partly to prevent them from observing the magnificent 
 furniture within. But the habitation of a man in power is 
 known by his gate, which is generally elevated in propor- 
 tion to the vanity of its owner. A lofty gate is one of the 
 insignia of royally ; and it must have been the same in an- 
 cient times. The gates of Jerusalem, of Zion, and other 
 places, are often mentioned in the scripture with the same 
 notions of grandeur annexed to them: thus the Psalmist 
 addresses the gates of Zion: " Lift up your heads, O ye 
 gates ; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors : and the king 
 of glory shall come in." — Paxton. 
 
 The Arabs are accustomed to ride into the houses of 
 those they design to harass. To prevent this, Thevenot 
 tells us that the door of the house in which the French mer- 
 chants lived at Rama was not three feet high, and that all 
 the doors of that town are equally low. Agreeably to this 
 account, the Abbe Mariti, speaking of his admission into a 
 monastery near Jerusalem, says, " the passage is so low 
 that it will scarcely admit a horse ; and it is shut by a gate 
 of iron, strongly secured in the inside. As soon as we en- 
 tered, it was again made fast with various bolts and bars 
 of iron : a precaution extremely necessary in a desert 
 place, exposed to the incursions and insolent attacks of the 
 Arabs." To exalt the gate, would consequently be to court 
 destruction. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Ver. 10. The name of the Lord is a strong 
 tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is 
 
 Mvn of wealth are called towers. Thus, when such a 
 person dies, it is said, " The pellata-koburam, i. e. strong 
 tower, has fallen." " I am going to my koburam" says the 
 man who is going to his powerful friend. — Roberts. ' 
 
 Ver. 16. A man's giftmaketh room for him, and 
 
 brmgeth him before great men. 
 See on 1 Sara. 9. 7. 
 
 Ver. 18. The lot causeth contentions to cease and 
 parteth between the mighty. 
 
 In nearly all cases where reason cannot decide, or where 
 the light of several claimants to one article has to be set- 
 tled, recourse is had to the lot, which " causeth contentions 
 to cease." Though an Englishman might not like to have 
 a wife assigned to him in such a way, yet many a one in 
 the East has no other guide in that important acquisition. 
 
 Perhaps a young man is either so accomplished, or so 
 respectable, or so rich, that many fathers aspire to the 
 honour of calling him son-in-law. Their daughters are 
 ■AID to be beautiful, wealthy, and of a good family : what 
 is he to do 1 The name of each young lady is written on a 
 separate piece of olah; and then all are mixed together. 
 Tiie youth and his friends then go to the front of the tem- 
 
 ple ; and being seated, a person who is passing by at the 
 time is called, and requested to take one of the pieces of 
 olah, on which a lady's name is inscribed, and place it near 
 the anxious candidate. This being done, it is opened, and 
 she whose name is written there, becomes his wife ! 
 
 Are two men inclined to marry two sisters, a dispute of- 
 ten arises as to whom the youngest shall be given. To 
 cause the " contentions to cease," recourse is again had to 
 the lot. The names of the sisters and the disputants are 
 written on separate pieces of olah, and taken to a sacred 
 place : those of the men being put on one side, and the 
 females on the other. A person then, who is unacquainted 
 with the matter, takes a piece of olah from each side, and 
 the couple whose names are thus joined together become 
 man and wife. But sometimes a wealthy father cannot 
 decide betwixt tM'o young men who are candidates for the 
 hand of his daughter: "what can he dol he must settle 
 his doubts by lot." Not long ago, the son of a medical 
 man, and another youth, applied for the daughter of Sedam- 
 bara-Suppiyan, the rich merchant. The old gentleman 
 caused two " holy writings" to be drawn up, the names of 
 the lovers were inscribed thereon : the son of Kandan, the 
 doctor, was drawn forth, and the young lady became his 
 wife. Three Bramins, also, who were brothers, each ar- 
 dently desired the hand of one female ; and, after many 
 disputes, it was settled by lot, which "causeth contentions 
 to cease;" and the youngest of the three gained the prize. 
 
 But medical men are also sometimes selected in the same 
 way. One person tells the afflicted individual such a doc- 
 tor has far more skill than the rest : another says, " He ! 
 what is he but a cow-doctor 1 how many has he killed ! 
 Send for such a person, he will soon cure you." A third 
 says, " I know the man for you ; he had his knowledge 
 from the gods ; send for him." The poor patient at last 
 says, " Select me one by lot ;" and as is the name, so is the 
 doctor. But another thing has to be settled ; the medical 
 gentleman intimates that there are two kinds of medicine 
 which appear to him to be equally good, and therefore the 
 lot is again to decide which is best. " The lot causeth ccm- 
 tentions to cease." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. A brother offended is harder to be won 
 than a strong city ; and their contentions are 
 like the bars of a castle. 
 
 See on Acts 12. 10. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 12. The king's wrath is as the roaring of a 
 lion : but his favour is as dew upon the grass. 
 
 " The favour of my friend is as the refreshing dew." 
 " The favours of that good man are continually DROPPwa 
 upon us." " He bathes me with his favours." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. The contentions of a wife are a continual ' 
 dropping. 
 
 See on ch. 21. 9. 
 
 The allusion in this passage is generally thought to be to 
 an old and decayed house, through which the rain con- 
 tinually drops, rendering it highly disagreeable to inhabit. 
 Durell supposes that the allusion is to the " dropping of the 
 eaves of a house, or any continued gentle falling of water, 
 than which nothing is more apt to be tiresome and distract- 
 ing." Mr. Harmer thinks tnat it refers to the arbours 
 made of the boughs of trees upon the house-tops, in which 
 the inhabitants of those suUry regions were accustomed to ' 
 sleep in summer. " Egmont and Hevman tell us that ac| 
 Caipha, at the foot of Mount Carmel,the houses are smallj 
 and flat-roofed, where, during the summer, the inhabitants] 
 sleep in arbours made of the boughs of trees." Again,] 
 " Dr. Pococke tells us, in like manner, that when he was! 
 at Tiberias, in Galilee, he was entertained by the sheik's! 
 steward, and that they supped upon the top of the house for] 
 coolness, according to their custom, and lodged there like-] 
 wise in a son of closet, about eight feet square, of a wicker-^ 
 work, plastered round towards the bottom, but without any i 
 door." " However pleasant," says Mr. Harmer, " these ' 
 arbours and these wicker-work closets may be in the dry ' 
 part of the year, they must be very disagreeable in the wet 
 and they that should then lodge in them would be exposed taa > 
 
 I 
 
Chap. 19—21. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 42i7* 
 
 continual dropping. To such circumstances probably it is 
 .Aat Solomon alludes, when he says, ' It is belter to dwell 
 in the corner of the house-top, than with a brawling woman 
 ! in a wide house.' A corner covered with boughs or rushes, 
 j and made into a little arbour, in which they used to sleep 
 \ in summer, but which must have been a very incommo- 
 dious place to have made an entire dwelling. To the same 
 I allusion belong those other expressions that speak of the 
 j contentions of a wife being like a continual dropping. Put 
 I together they amount to this, that it is better to have no 
 other habitation than an arbour on. the house-top, and be 
 there exposed to the wet of winter, which is oftentimes of 
 several days' continuance, than to dwell in a wide house 
 with a brawling woman, for her contentions are a contin- 
 ual dropping, and, wide as the house may be, you will not 
 be able to avoid them or get out of their reach." — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 24. A slothful man hideth his hand in his 
 bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his 
 mouth again. 
 
 Many of the Arabs, and other eastern people, use no 
 spoon in eating their victuals ; they dip their hands into the 
 milk, which is placed before them in a wooden bowl, and 
 lift it to their mouth in their palm. Le Bruin observed 
 five or six Arabs eating milk together, on the side of the 
 Nile, as he was going up that river to Cairo; and D'Ar- 
 vieux says they eat their pottage in the same way. Is it 
 not reasonable to suppose, says Harmer, that the same usage 
 obtained anciently among the Jews ; and that Solomon re- 
 fers to it when he says, " A slothful man hides his hand in 
 the dish, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth 
 again 1" Our translators render it the bosom ; but the word 
 every where signifies a pot or dish. The meaning, there- 
 fore, according to Harmer, is, " the slothful man having 
 lifted up his hand full of milk or pottage to his mouth, will 
 not do it a second time; no, though it be actually dipped 
 into the milk or pottage, he will n-ot submit to the fatigue 
 of lifting it again from thence to his mouth." But as it is 
 rather a caricature to represent the sluggard as so exces- 
 sively indolent or lazy, that he will rather let his hand lie 
 in the dish among the milk or pottage", than lift it to his 
 mouth a second time, the explanation of Dr. Russel is to be 
 preferred : " The Arabs, in eating, do not thrust their 
 whole hand into the dish, but only their thumb and two 
 first fingers, with which they take up the morsel, and that 
 in a moderate quantity at a time. I take, therefore, the 
 sense to be, that the slothful man, instead of taking up a 
 moderate mouthful, thrusts his hand into the pillaw,orsuch 
 like, and takes a handful at a time, in order to avoid the 
 trouble of returning frequently to the dish." According to 
 this view, the slothful man encleavours by one eflfort to save 
 himself the trouble of continued exertion. It seems to have 
 been adopted by the Arabs, as much for the sake of de- 
 .spatch as from necessity; for D'Arvieux says, a man would 
 eat upon very unequal terms with a spoon, among those that, 
 instead of them, use the palms of their hands. This mode 
 of drinking was used by three hundred men of Gideon's 
 army : " And the number of them that lapped, putting their 
 hands to their mouth, were three hundred men ; but all the 
 rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink 
 water." Three hundred men, immediately on their coming 
 to the water, drank of it in the quickest manner they could, 
 by lifting it in their palms, and lapping it like a dog, that 
 they might be ready, without delay, to follow their leader 
 to the battle : the rest took up water in pitchers, or some 
 kind of vessel, and bending down upon their heels and 
 knees, or with their knees placed upright before them, 
 either of which might be called bowing their knees to 
 drink, they handed these drinking-vessels slowly from one 
 to another, as at an ordinary meal ; an act which procured 
 their dismission. The Hottentot manner of drinking water 
 from a pool, or stream, seems exactly to coincide with the 
 mode adopted by the three hundred, and gives a very clear 
 idea of it: They throw it up with their right hand into 
 their mouth, seldom bringing the hand nearer than the dis- 
 tance of a foot from the mouth, and so quickly, that however 
 thirsty, they are soon satisfied. Mr. Campbell, who had an 
 opportunity of seeing this operation, when travelling among 
 that people, frequently tried to imitate it, but without suc- 
 cess,— ^P a xtqn. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 4. The sluggard will not plough by reason 
 of the cold : therefoo-e shall he beg in harvest, 
 and have nothing. 
 
 Margin, winter. " They begin to plough about the lat- 
 ter end of September, and sow their earliest wheat about 
 the middle of October. The frosts are never severe enough 
 to prevent their ploughing all the winter."— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. Divers weights, and divers measures, 
 both of them are alike abomination to the Lord. 
 
 Here we have a true view of the way in which nearly all 
 travelling merchants deal with their customers. See that 
 Mohammedan pedler with his bags over his shoulder: the 
 one contains his merchandise, the other his deceitful 
 WEIGHTS. He comes to your door, throws his bags on the 
 ground, and is willing either to buy or to sell. Have yoa 
 any old silver, gold, jewels, precious stones, iron, or lead, 
 he is ready to be your customer; but he only buys with his 
 own weights, which are much heavier than the standard. 
 Should YOU, however, require to purchase any articles, then 
 he has other weights by which he sells ; and you may 
 often see him fumbling for a considerable time in the bag 
 before he can find those which are less in weight than the 
 regular standard.— Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 29. The glory of voung men is their strength ; 
 and the beauty of old men is the gray head. 
 
 Should a youth despise the advice of a gray-headed man, 
 the latter will point to his hairs. When young men pre- 
 sume to give advice to the aged, they say, " Look at our 
 gray hairs." Do old people commit things unworthy of 
 their years, the young ask, " Why have you these gray 
 hairs 1" intimating they ought to be the emblem of wisdom. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 1. The king's heart is in the hand of the 
 Lord, as the rivers of water; he turneth it 
 whithersoever he will. 
 
 See on Ps. 1. 3. 
 
 Ver. 4. A high look, and a proud heart, and the 
 ploughing of the wicked, is sin. 
 
 The margin has, instead oi ploughing, light : " The light 
 of the wicked." The Tamul translation has, the lamp of the 
 wicked. In eastern language, as well as in the scriptures, the 
 word lamp is often used to denote the life of man : but in this 
 passage it means the prosperity of the wicked. " Look at 
 Valen, how brightly does his lamp burn in these days!" — 
 "Yes, his lamp has now a thousand faces." Thus the 
 haughty eyes, the proud hearts, and the prosperity of the 
 wicked, were alike sinful before God. The lamp (i. e. pros- 
 perity) of the wicked is sin. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. The way of man is froward and strange : 
 but as for the pure, his work is right. 
 
 This passage, according to the common interpretation, is 
 very obscure. The original Hebrew words are used to 
 signify a man ladenviiih. guilt and crimes, and that his way 
 is (not froward and strange, as in our translation, but) un- 
 steady, or continually varying ; in which expression there is 
 a most beautiful allusion to a beast which is so overburden^ 
 ed that he cannot keep in the straight road, but is continu- 
 ally tottering and staggering, first to the right hand, and 
 then to the left. — Parkhurst, 
 
 Ver. 9. It is better to dwell in a corner of the 
 house-top, than with a brawling woman in a 
 wide house. 
 
 See on ch. 19. 13. 
 
 How pleasant soever the arbour, or wicker-closet, upon 
 the roof, may be during the burning heats of summer, it 
 must be very disagreeable in the rainy season. They whq 
 
428 
 
 PROVERBS, 
 
 Chap. 22, 23. 
 
 lodge in either at that time, must be exposed continually to 
 the storm beating in upon them from ev^ery quarter. In al- 
 lusion, perhaps, to this uncomfortable situation, Solomon 
 observes : " It is better to dwell in a corner of the house-top, 
 than with a brawling woman in a wide house :" in a cor- 
 ner formed with boughs or rushes into a little arbour, 
 which, although cool and pleasant in the dry and sultry 
 months of summer, is a cold and cheerless lodge when the 
 earth is drenched with rain, or covered with snow. The 
 royal preacher, in another proverb, compares the conten- 
 tions of a wife to the continual dropping of an arbour, 
 placed upon the house-top, in the rainy season, than which 
 it is not easy to conceive any thing more disagreeable : 
 " The contentions of a wife are a continual dropping;" an 
 incessant and unavoidable cause of uneasiness or vexation. 
 Instructed probably by his own feelings, harassed and goad- 
 ed, as was meet, by the daily quarrels of his seraglio, he 
 returns in a succeeding apothegm to the subject : " A 
 continual dropping in a very rainy day, and a contentious 
 woman, are alike." It appears from these proverbs, that the 
 booths were generally constructed in the corner, where two 
 walls met, for greater safely ; for, on the middle of the roof, 
 they had been too much exposed to the storm. This is con- 
 firmed by Dr. Russel, who remarks, in a ijaanuscript note, 
 that these booths in Syria are often placed near the walls ; 
 so minutely correct are even the most incidental observa- 
 tions of the inspired writers. — Paxton. 
 
 The termagants of the East are certainly not inferior to 
 those of their own sex in any part of the worl4 : in some 
 respects, the females are perhaps more timid and retired 
 than those of Europe ; but let them once go beyond the pre- 
 scribed bounds, and let their powers be brought fairly into 
 action, and they are complete furies. Has any one caused 
 a woman's child to cry, does a neighbour intimate that she 
 is not what she ought to be, or that some of her friends are 
 no better than they should be, the whoop is immediately 
 sounded, and the brawl begins. She commences her abuse 
 in her best and highest tone of voice : vociferates all the 
 scandal she can think of, and all she can invent. Some- 
 times she runs up to her antagonist, as if about to knock her 
 down : again she retires, apparently to go home ; but, no ! 
 she thinks of something more which ought not to be lost, 
 and again returns to the contest. At intervals (merely to 
 vary the scene) she throws up dust in the air, and curses 
 ner opponent, her husband, and her children. Should the 
 poor woman not have been blessed with a progeny, that 
 will not be overlooked, and a thousand highly provoking 
 and indecent allusions will be made. See her tiery eyes, 
 her dishevelled hair, her uplifted hand, and she is more 
 like a fury from another region, than a human being. 
 
 An eastern sage says, " Should one woman scold, the whole 
 earth will shake ; should two commence, the sign Pisces 
 will fall ; if three join in the brawl, the sea will dry up ; but 
 if four try their powers, what will become of the world 1" In 
 the Scanda Purana it is said, " It is better for any one to fall 
 into hell, than to perform the duties of a householder with a 
 woman who will not respect her husband's word. Is there 
 any other disease, any other Yamd, than spending life with 
 such a woman 1" 
 
 One of their philosophers describes some of the defects in 
 young females which ought to deter any man from marrying 
 them. " Those who love to be at the house of other people, 
 who are great sleepers, who love dancing and other sports, 
 who are wounded by the arrows of Cama, (Cupid,) who 
 love before their fathers betroth them, who have voices like 
 thunder, who have tender, or rolling, or cat eves, who have 
 coarse hair, who are older than yourself, who are full of 
 smiles, who are very athletic, who are caught in the hell 
 of useless and straiige religions, who despise the gooroo, 
 and call the gods' statues ; have nothing to do with them." 
 Solomon says, in another place, " The contentions of a wife 
 are a continual dropping;" and the Tamul proverb has it, 
 " She is like the thunder of the rain, and is ever dropping." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 This expression the LXX render cv oikm koivw. The Vul- 
 gate, " in domo communi," in a common house ; that is, in 
 a house common or shared out to several families. Dr. 
 Shaw says, that " the general method of building, both in 
 Barbary and the Levant, seems to have continued the same 
 from the earliest ages down to this time, without the least 
 alteration or improvement : large doors, spacious chambers, 
 &c. The court is for the most part surrounded with a 
 
 cloister, over which, w^ien the house has on^ or more sto- 
 ries, there is a gallery erected. From the cloisters or galle- 
 ries we are conducted into large spacious chambers of the 
 same length v/ith the court, but seldom or nevei communi- 
 cating with one another. One of them frequently serves 
 a whole family; particularly when a father indulges hi? 
 married children to live with him ; or when several po, 
 sons join in the rent of the same house." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 13. The slothful man saith, There is a lion 
 without, I shall be slain in the streets. 
 
 The sluggard is fond of sleep ; and, to excuse his sloth 
 fulness, he makes use of the pretence, when he is to go oul 
 of his house in the morning dawn, and to follow his busi- 
 ness, that he might fall a prey to one of the wild beasts 
 which prowl about during the night. When it bec^ mes 
 dark, the people of the East shut themselves up in their 
 houses for fear of the wild beasts. Thus Alvarez, in his 
 account of Ethiopia, says, that " in Abyssinia, as soon as 
 night sets in, nobody is to be seen abroad for fear o{ wild 
 beasts, of which the country is full." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 14. The mouth of strang-e women is p deep 
 pit: he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fal' 
 therein. 
 
 Maundrell, describing the passage out of the jurisdiction 
 of the Bashaw of Aleppo into that of him of Tripoli, tells 
 us, the road was rocky and uneven, but attended with va- 
 riety. " Sometimes it led us under the cool shade of thick 
 trees: sometimes through narrow valleys, watered with 
 fresh murmuring torrents: and then for a good while to- 
 gether upon the brink of a precipice. And in all places it 
 treated us with the prospect of plants and flowers of divers 
 kinds : as myrtles, oleanders, cyclamens, &c. Having 
 spent about two hours in this manner, we descended into a 
 low valley; at the bottom of which is a fissure vnto the 
 earth, of a great depth ; but withal so narrow, that it is not 
 discernible to the eye till you arrive just upon it, though to 
 the ear a notice of it is given at a great distance, by reason 
 of the noise of a stream running down into it from the hills. 
 We could not guess it to be less than thirty yards deep. 
 But it is so narrow, that a small arch, not four yarr^s over, 
 lands you on its other side. They call it the sheik's wifi ; 
 a name given to it from a woman of that quality, who fell 
 into it, and, I need not add, perished." May not Solomon 
 refer to some such dangerous place as this, when he says, 
 " The mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit : he that is 
 abhorred of the Lord s^hall fall therein," Prov. xxvii. 14 ; 
 and, ** A whore is a deep ditch ; and a strange woman is a 
 narrow pit," Prov. xxiii. 27. The flowery pleasures of the 
 place, where this fatal pit was, make the allusion still more 
 striking. How agreeable to sense the path that led to this 
 chamber of death ! — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 26. Be not thou one of them that strike hands, 
 or of them that are sureties for debts. 
 
 See on ch. 6. 1. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Ver. 3. Be not desirous of his dainties ; for they 
 are deceitful meat. 
 
 See on Gen. 27. 4. 
 
 Ver. 5. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which 
 is not? for riches certainly make themselves 
 wings; they fly away, as an eagle towards 
 heaven. 
 
 A husband who complains of the extravagance of his 
 family, says, " How is it that wings grow on all my proper- 
 ty 1 not ma»iy days ago I purchased a large quantity of pad- 
 dy, but it has taken the wing and flown away. The nexv 
 time I buy any thing, I will look well al>er the Avings." 
 " You ask me to give you money, and I would, if I pos- 
 sessed anv.'.'—" Possessed anv! why! have wings grown 
 on your silver and gold 1" ""^las! alas! I no sooner get 
 
Chap. 23—25. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 429 
 
 things into the house, than wings grow on hem, and they 
 fly away. Last week I began to clip wings ; but they have 
 soon grown again." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath 
 an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty 
 / meats : 7. For as he thinketh in his heart, so 
 is he : Eat and drink, saith he to thee ; but his 
 heart is not with thee. 8. The morsel ivhich 
 thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose 
 thy sweet words. 
 
 Whether the same ideas are to be attached to the expres- 
 sion " evil eye," as used by Solomon, and as understood by 
 the Egyptians, may not be easily ascertained, though per- 
 haps worthy of consideration. Pococke says of the Egyp- 
 tians, that " they have a great notion of the magic art, have 
 books about it, and think there is much virtue in talismans 
 and charms ; but particularly are strongly possessed with an 
 opinioQ of the evil eye. When a child is commended, ex- 
 cept you give it some blessing, if they are not very well as- 
 sured of your good will, they use charms against the evil 
 eye ; and particularly whenthey think any ill success at- 
 tends them on account of an evil eye, they throw salt into the 
 fire."-7-BuRDER. 
 
 Many references are made, in the scriptures to an evil 
 EYE. Sometimes they mean anger or envy; but in the pas- 
 sage cited an allusion appears to be made to the malignant 
 influence of an evil eye : " The morsel which thou hast 
 eaten shalt thou vomit up." The kan-nuru, evil-eye, of 
 some people is believed to have a most baneful effect upon 
 whatsoever it shall be fixed. Those who are reputed to 
 have such eyes are always avoided, and none but near rela- 
 tions will invite them to a feast. " Your cattle, your wives, 
 your children, your orchards, your fields, are all in danger 
 from that fellow's eyes. The other day he passed my gar- 
 den, cast his eye upon my lime-tree, arid the fruit has since 
 fallen to the ground. Ay, and worse than that, he caught 
 a look at my child's face, and a large abscess has since 
 appeared." 
 
 To prevent such eyes from doing any injury to their 
 children, man;^ parents (both Mohammedan and Hindoo) 
 adorn them with numerous jewels and jackets of varied 
 colours, to attract the eye from the person to the ornaments. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. Be not among wine-bibbers ; among riot- 
 ous eaters of flesh. 
 
 I The Arabs are described by Shaw, as very abstemious. 
 
 i They rarely diminish their flocks by using them for food, 
 
 : but live chiefly upon bread, milk, butter, dates, or what 
 
 i they receive in exchange for their wool. Their frugality 
 
 i is in many instances the effect of narrow circumstances ; 
 
 : and shows with what propriety Solomon describes an ex- 
 pensive way of living by (heir frequent eati7ig of flesh. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 1 Ver. 27. For a whore is a deep ditch; and a 
 strange woman is a narrow pit. 
 See on ch. 23. 14. 
 
 ^ A^er. 30. They that tarry long at the wine, they 
 that go to seek mixed wine. 
 
 j Dandini informs us that it was the practice of tipplers not 
 
 i merely to tarry long over the bottle, but over the wine cask, 
 
 \ " The goodness of the wine of Candia renders the Candiots 
 
 I ^reat drinkers, and it often happens, that two or three great 
 
 j drinkers will sit down together at the foot of a cask, from 
 
 ! whence they will not depart till they have emptied it," See 
 
 i also Isaiah v. 11, — Burder, 
 
 Ver. 31. Lo^k not thou upon the wine when it is 
 red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when 
 it moveth itself aright. 
 
 ■ Red wines were most esteemed in the East. So much 
 I was -the red colour admired, that when it was too white 
 
 they gave it a deeper tmge by mixing it with saffron or 
 Brazil wood. By extracting the colouring matter of such 
 ingredients, the wine may be said to make itself redder ; 
 a circumstance which, in Mr. Harmer's opinion, Solomon 
 means to express in that proverb, " Look not on the wine 
 when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when 
 it moveth itself aright." The verb is in the Hebrew Mid- 
 dle Voice, or Hithpahel conjugation, which denotes an ac- 
 tion that turns upon the agent itself, and in this instance im- 
 parts great energy to the warning. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 11. If thou forbear to deliver them that are 
 dra\\Ti unto death, and those that are ready to 
 be slain. 
 
 It was allowed among the Jews, that if any person could 
 offe^ any thing in favour of a prisoner after sentence was 
 passed, he might be heard before execution was done : and 
 therefore it was usual, as the Mishna shows, that when a 
 man was led to execution, a crier went before him and pro- 
 claimed, " This man is now going to be executed for such 
 a crime, and such and such are witnesses against him ; 
 whoever knows him to be innocent, let him come forth, and 
 make it appear." — Doddridge. 
 
 Ver. 26. Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth 
 a right answer. 
 
 The rescripts of authority used to be kissed whether they 
 were believed to be just or not; and the letters of people of 
 figure were treated in this manner ; but it is possible these 
 words may refer to another custom, which D'Arvieux gives 
 an account of in his description of the Arabs of Mount 
 Carmel, who, when they present any petition to their emir 
 for a favour, offer their billets to him with their right hand?, 
 after having first kissed the papers. The Hebrew manner 
 of expression is short ; every lip shall kiss, one maketh to re- 
 turn a right ansicer, that is, every one shall be ready to pre- 
 sent the state of his case, kissing it as he delivers it, when 
 there is a judge whose decisions are celebrated for being 
 equitable. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 31. And lo, it was all grown over with 
 thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, 
 and the stone wall thereof was broken down. 
 
 Stone walls were frequently used for the preservation of 
 vineyards, as well as living fences. Van Egmont and Hey- 
 man, describing the country about Saphet, a celebrated city 
 of Galilee, tell us, " the country round it is finely improved, 
 the declivity being covered with vines supported by low 
 walls." — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Ver. 7. For better it is that it be said unto thee, 
 Come up hither, than that thou shouldst be put 
 lower in the presence of the prince whom thine 
 eyes have seen. 
 
 In an eastern feast or ceremony, nothing can exceed the 
 particularity which is observed in reference to the rank 
 and consequent precedence of the guests. Excepting where 
 kings or members of the royal family are present, the floor 
 and seats are always of an equal height; but the upper pari 
 of a room is most respectable, and there the most dignified 
 individual will be placed. Should, however, an inferior 
 presume to occupy that situation, he will soon be told to go 
 to a lower station. There are also rooms assigned to dif- 
 ferent guests, in reference to their rank or caste, and none 
 but their peers can remain in the place, I was once 
 present at the marriage feast of a person of high caste : the 
 ceremonies were finished, and the festivities had com- 
 menced; but just before the supper was announced, it was 
 discovered that one of the guests was not quite equal in 
 rank to those in the same apartment. A hint was therefore 
 given to him, but he refused to leave the place : the host 
 was then called ; but, as the guest was scarcely a grade 
 lower than the rest, he felt unwilling to put hirn out. The 
 remainder, therefore, consisting of the first men in the town, 
 immediately arose and left the house — Roberts. 
 
430 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 Chap. 26. 
 
 Ver. 11. A word fitly spoken is like apples of 
 gold in pictures of silver. 
 
 Some suppose ihis alludes to fruit served up in filigree- 
 work : but I believe it does not refer to real fruit, but to 
 representations and ornaments in solid gold. The Vulgate 
 has, instead of pictures, "in lectis argenieis" "in silver 
 beds." The Tamul translation has, in place of pictures of 
 silver, velle-lattam, i. e. salvers or trays of silver. The Rev. 
 T. H. Home, " Apples of gold in net-work of silver." In 
 Ihe 6th and Tth verses, directions are given as to the way a 
 person ought to conduct himself in the presence of a king: 
 and words fitly spoken are compared, in their effect on the 
 mind, to apples of gold, in salvers of silver, when presented 
 as tributes or presents to the mighty. When eastern 
 princes visit each other, or when men of rank have to go 
 into their presence, they often send silver trays, on which 
 are gold ornaments, as presents to the king, to propitiate 
 him in their favour. Thus, when the governor-general, 
 and the native sovereigns, visit each other, it is said, they 
 distributed so many trays of jewels, or other articles of 
 great value. Golden ornaments, whether in the shape of 
 fruit or any other thing, when placed on highly-polished 
 silver salvers, or in net-work of the same metal, have a 
 very beautiful appearance to the eye, and are highly ac- 
 ceptable and gratifying to him who receives them. As, 
 then, apples or jewels of gold are in "salvers," or "beds," 
 or " net-work" of silver, to the feelings of the receiver, so 
 are words fitly spoken, when addressed to the mind of him 
 who is prepared to receive them. To confirm this expla- 
 nation, the next verse is very apposite : " As an ear-ring of 
 gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover 
 upon an obedient ear." The effect, then, of a wise re- 
 proof on an obedient ear, is equal to that produced by the 
 presents of ear-rings of gold, or ornaments of fine gold. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. As the cold of snow in the time of har- 
 vest, so is a faithful messeng-er to them that send 
 him ; for he refresheth the soul of his masters. 
 
 The custom of cooling wines with snow, was usual 
 among the eastern nations, and was derived from the 
 Asiatics and Greeks to the Romans. The snow of Leb- 
 anon was celebrated, in the time of D'Vitriaco, for its 
 refrigerating power in tempering their wine : " All sum- 
 mer, and especially in the sultry dog-days, and the month 
 of August, snow of an extreme cold nature, is carried from 
 Mount Libanus, two or three days' journey, that, being 
 mixed with wine, it may make it cold as ice. The snow 
 is kept from melting by the heat of the sun, or the warmth 
 of the air, by being covered up with straw." To this cus- 
 tom, the wise man seems to allnde in that proverb : " As 
 the cold of snow in the time of harvest; so is a faithful 
 servant to them that send him, for he refreshes the soul of 
 his masters." The royal preacher could not speak of a fall 
 of snow in the time of harvest, as pleasant and refreshing; 
 it must, on the contrary, have been very incommoding, as . 
 we actually find it in this country ; he must therefore be 
 understood to mean liquids cooled by snow. The sense 
 then will be : As the mixing of snow with wine, in the 
 5ultry time of harvest, is pleasing and refreshing; so a suc- 
 cessful messenger revives the spirit of his master who sent 
 nim, and who was greatly depressed from an apprehension 
 of his failure. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift, is 
 like clouds and wind without rain, 
 r^ee on 2 Kings 3. 16, 17. 
 
 ^ Ver. 17. Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour s 
 •=^ house, lest he be weary of thee, and so hate 
 thee. 
 
 " The premises are in grief through him who so often 
 visits them." — Tamul Proverb. " The man, who though 
 lost in the dark, and yet refuses to go to the house of him 
 who will not treat him with respect, is worth ten millions 
 of pieces of gold." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. Confidence in an unfaithful man in time 
 
 of trouble, is like a broken tooth, and a foot out 
 of joint. 
 
 The eastern saying, " To put confidence in an unfaithful 
 man, is like trying to cross a river on a horse made ol 
 clay," is quoted for the same purpose. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. The north wind driveth away rain ; so < 
 doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue. 
 
 Our translators were at a loss how to render Prov. xxv. 
 23 : they could not tell whether Solomon spoke of the north 
 wind as driving away rain, or bringing it forth, and there- 
 fore put one sense in the text, and the "other in ihe margin. 
 I have observed nothing decisive as to this point in the 
 books of travels which I have perused, and indeed very 
 little more relating to the winds, excepting the violent heat 
 they sometimes bring with them in these countries. At 
 Aleppo, " the coldest winds in the winter are those that 
 blow from between the northwest and the east, and the 
 nearer they approach to the last-mentioned point, the colder 
 they are during the winter, and part of the spring. But 
 from the beginning of May to the end of September, the 
 winds blowing from the very same points, bring with them 
 a degree and kind of heat which one would imagine came 
 out of an oven, and which, when it blows hard, will aflfect 
 metals within the houses, such as locks of room-doors, 
 nearly as much as if they had been exposed to the rays oi 
 the sun ; yet it is remarkable that water kept in jars is 
 much cooler at this lime than when a cool westerly wind 
 blows. In these seasons, the only remedy is to shut all 
 the doors and windows, for though these winds do not kill 
 as the sammiel, which are much of the same nature, do in 
 the desert, yet they are extremely troublesome, causing a 
 languor and difliculty of respiration to most people," &c.— 
 Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 27. It is not good to eat much honey ; so for 
 men to search their own glory is not glory. 
 
 Delicious as honey is to an eastern palate, it has been 
 thought sometimes to have produced terrible efl^ects. So 
 Sanutus tells us, that the English that attended Edward I. 
 into the Holy Land, died in great numbers, as they 
 marched, in June, to demolish a place, which he ascribes 
 to the excessive heat, and their intemperate eating of fruit;? 
 and honey. This, perhaps, may give us the thought of 
 Solomon when he says, " It is not good to eat much honey." 
 He had before, in the same chapter, mentioned that an ex- 
 cess in eating honey occasioned sickness and vomiting ; 
 but, if it was thought sometimes to produce deadly effects, 
 there is a greater energy in the instruction. — HLarmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Ver. 3. A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, 
 and a rod for the fool's back. 
 
 According to our notions, we should rather say, " A 
 bridle for the horse, and a whip for the ass." But it should 
 be remembered that the eastern asses, particularly those of 
 the Arabian breed, are much larger, more beautiful, and 
 better goers, than those in our cold northerly countries. 
 " In Arabia," says Nicholson, " we meet with two kinds of 
 asses. The small and sluggish kind are as little esteemed 
 in the Ea.st as in Europe. But there are some of a species 
 large and spirited, which appeared to me more convenient 
 for travelling than the horses, and which are very dear." 
 Such, no doubt, there are evidently in Palestine, and as the 
 modern Arabs take pains in training them to a pleasant 
 pace, there is the highest probability that something of the 
 kind was practised among the ancient Israelites; since 
 from numerous passages of the Old Testament it appears 
 that asses were the beasts on which that people, and even 
 their great men, usually rode. Their asses, therefore, 
 being active and well broke, would need only a bridle to 
 guide them ; whereas their horses, being scarce, and prob- 
 ably often caught wild, and badly broke, would be much 
 less manageable, and frequently require the correction of 
 the whip.^' — Parkhurst. 
 
 In the East, the horse was taught only two motions, to 
 walk in state, or to push forward in full career ; a bridle 
 was therefore uD»iecessary, and seldom used, except for 
 
Ghap. 27. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 431 
 
 mere ornament; the voice, or the hand of his master, was 
 sufficient to direct his way, or to stop his course. While 
 the ass reluctantly submits to the control of the bridle, he 
 presents his back with stupid insensibility to the rod. This 
 instrument of correction is, therefore, reserved for the fool, 
 and is necessary to subdue the vicious propensities of his 
 heart, awd turn him from the error of his way. The an- 
 cient Israelites preferred the young ass for the saddle. It 
 is on this account the sacred writers so frequently mention 
 riding on young asses and on ass colts. They must have 
 found them, from experience, like the young of all animals, 
 more tractable, lively, and active, than their parents, and, 
 by consequence, better adapted to this employment. Buffon 
 remarked particularly of the young ass, that it is a gay, 
 nimble, and gentle animal, "and therefore to be preferred 
 for riding to the same animal when become lazy and stub- 
 born through age." " indeed, the Hebrew name of the 
 young ass, -^v," from a root which signifies to rouse or 
 excite, " is expressive of its character for sprightliness and 
 activity." On public and solemn occasions, they adorned 
 the asses which they rode, with rich and splendid trappings. 
 "In this manner," says an excellent writer of Essays on 
 Sacred Zoology, "the magistrates, in the time of the Juc^es, 
 appear to have rode in state. They proceeded to the gate 
 of their city, where they sat to hear causes, in slow proces- 
 sion, mounted on asses superbly caparisoned with white 
 cloth, which covered the greater part of the animal's body. 
 It is thus that we must interpret the words of Deborah : 
 ' Speak, ye that ride on white asses,' on asses caparisoned 
 with coverings made of white woollen cloth, 'ye that sit in 
 judgment, and walk,' or march in state, ' by the way.' 
 The colour is not that of the animal, but of his hiran, or 
 covering, for the ass is commonly dun, and not white." 
 
 No doubt can be entertained in relation to the existence 
 of the custom alluded to in this quotation. It prevails 
 among the Arabs to the present day ; but it appears rather 
 unnatural to ascribe the colour of a covering to the crea- 
 ture that wears it. We do not call a man white or black, 
 because he happens to be dressed in vestments of white or 
 black cloth ; neither did the Hebrews. The expression 
 naturally suggests the colour of the animal itself, not of its 
 trappings; and the only point to be ascertained is, whether 
 the ass is found of a while colour. Buffon informs us, that 
 the colour of the ass is not dun, but flaxen, and the belly of 
 a silvery white. In many instances, the silvery white pre- 
 dominates ; for Cartwright, -w^ho travelled into the East, 
 affirms, that he beheld, on the banks of the Euphrates, great 
 droves of wild beasts, among which were many wild asses, 
 ail white. Oppian describes the wild ass, as having a coat 
 of silvery white ; and the one which Professor Gmelin 
 brought from Tartary, was of the same colour. White 
 asses, according to Morier, come from Arabia ; their 
 scarcity makes them valuable, and gives them conse- 
 quence. The men of the law count it a dignity, and suited 
 to their character, to ride on asses of this colour. As the 
 Hebrews always appeared in white garments at their pub- 
 lic festivals, and on days of rejoicing, or when the courts of 
 justice were held ; so they naturally preferred white asses, 
 because the colour suited the occasion, and because asses 
 of this colour being more rare and costly, were more covet- 
 ed by the great and the wealthy. The same view is taken of 
 this question by Lewis, who says, the asses in Judea " were 
 commonly of a red colour ; and therefore white asses were 
 highly valued, and used by persons of superior note and 
 quality." In this passage he clearly speaks of the colour of 
 the animals themselves, not of their coverings. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. As a dog returneth to his vomit; so a 
 fool returneth to his folly. 
 
 " See the fellow," it is said, " he has repeatedly suffered 
 for his folly ; how often has he been corrected ! and yet, 
 like the dog, he eats up the food he has vomited." " Yes, 
 he is ever washing his legs, and ever running into the 
 mud." " You fool ; because you fell nine times, must you 
 ifall again 1" — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 1 4. As the door turneth upon his hinges, so 
 doth the slothful upon his bed. 
 
 _ The doors of the ancients did not turn on hinges, but on 
 .pivots thus constructed : the upright of the moveable door 
 
 next the wall had, at each extremity, a copper case sunk 
 into it, with a projecting point on the inside, to take the 
 better hold of the wood- work. This case was generally of 
 a cylindric form; but there have been found some square 
 ones, from which ihere sprang on each side iron straps, 
 serving to bind tigether and strengthen the boards with 
 which the door was constructed hollow. (Winckelman's 
 Herculaneum.") — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 1 7. He that passeth by, and meddleth with 
 strife belo7iging not to him, is like one that taketh 
 a dog by the ears. 
 
 " Why meddle with that matter 1" " Will a rat seize a 
 cat by the ears 7" " I will break thy bones, thou low caste." 
 — " No doubt about that ; I suppose in the same way as the 
 rat which seized my cat last night: begone, or I will give 
 thee a bite." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2.5. When he speaketh fair, believe him not : 
 for tJ),ere are seven abominations in his heart. 
 
 The number seven is often used to denote many. " If we 
 have rain, we shall have a crop of seven years." " My 
 friend, I came to see you seven times, but the servants 
 always said teen-tingardr," i. e. he is eating. " I will 
 never speak to that fellow again ; he has treated me with 
 contempt these seven times." " Y'ou stupid ass, I have told 
 you seven times." " The wind is fair, and the dhony is 
 ready for sea." — " I cannot believe you ; I have already 
 been on board seven times." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIl. 
 
 Ver. 6. Faithful are the wounds of a friend ; 
 the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. 
 
 but 
 
 " Begone ! wretch : you cannot deceive me, I am more 
 afraid of your smiles, than the reproaches of my friend. I 
 know the serpent — get out of my way." " Ah !" says the 
 stranger, " the trees of my own village are better to me than 
 the friends of this place." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart ; 
 so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty 
 counsel. 
 
 At the close of a visit in the East, it is common to sprinkle 
 rose, or some other sweet-scented water, on the guests, and 
 to perfume them with aloe-wood, which is brought last, and 
 serves for a sign that it is time for a stranger to take leave. 
 It is thus described by M. Savary : '" Towards the conclu- 
 sion of a visit among persons of distinction in Egypt, a 
 •slave, holding in his hand a silver plate, on which are 
 burning precious essences, approaches the face of the visit- 
 ers, each of whom in his turn perfumes his beard. They 
 then pour rose-water on his head and hands. This is the 
 last ceremony, after which it is usual to withdraw." As to 
 the method of using the aloe-wood, Maundrell says, they 
 have for this purpose a small silver chafingdish, covered 
 with a lid full of holes, and fixed upon a handsome plate. 
 In this they put some fresh coals, and upon them a piece 
 of lignum aloes, and then shutting it up, the smoke imme- 
 diately ascends with a grateful odour through the cover. 
 Probably to such a custom, so calculated to refresh and 
 exhilarate, the words of Solomon have an allusion. — 
 Burder. 
 
 Great numbers of authors take notice of this part of 
 Eastern complaisance, but some are much more particular 
 and distinct than others. Maundrell, for instance, who 
 gives a most entertaining account of the ceremony of burn- 
 ing odours under the chin, does not mention any thin^ of 
 the sprinkling sweet-scented waters ; however, many other 
 writers do, and Dr. Pococke has given us the figure of the 
 vessel they make use of upon this occasion, in his first 
 volume. They are both then used in the East, but if one 
 is spoken of more than the other, it is, I think, the per- 
 fuming persons with odoriferous smoke. The scriptures, 
 in like manner, speak of perfumes as used anciently for 
 civil purposes, as well as sacred, though they do not men 
 tion particulars. " Ointment and perfumes rejoice the 
 heart," Prov, xxvii. 9. Perhaps this word, perfume, com- 
 
432 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 Chap. 27. 
 
 prebends in its meaning, the waters distilled from roses, 
 and odoriferous flowers, whose scents in the East, at least 
 in Egypt, if Maillet may be admitted to be a judge, are 
 much "higher and more exquisitely grateful, than with us ; 
 but if those distillations should be thought not to have been 
 known so early, the burning fragrant things, and the ma- 
 king a sweet smoke with them, we are sure, they were ac- 
 quainted with, and to that way of perfuming, Solomon at 
 least refers. But a passage in Daniel makes it requisite to 
 enter more minutely into this affair, and as at the same time 
 U mentions some other eastern forms of doing honour, 
 A^hich I have already taken notice of, but to all which in 
 this case objections have been made, I will make my re- 
 marks upon it in a distinct article, which I will place im- 
 mediately after this, and show how easy that little collection 
 of oriental compliments may be accounted for, as well as 
 explain more at large this particular affair of burning 
 odours merely as a civil expression of respect, — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 15. A continual dropping in a very rainy- 
 day, and a contentious woman, are alike. 
 See on ch. 21. 9. 
 
 Ver. 19. As in water, face answereth to face; so 
 the heart of man to man. 
 
 The Hindoos do not appear to have had mirrors made of 
 silvered glass, until they became acquainted with Euro- 
 peans; but they had them of burnished metal and other ar- 
 ticles. Many even at this day pour water into a vessel 
 w^hich they use for the same purpose. " His friendship for 
 me is like my body and its shadow in the sun, which never 
 separate." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 22. Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a 
 mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not 
 his foolishness depart from him. 
 
 Pounding in a mortar is a punishment still used among 
 lie Turks. The ulemats, or body of lawyers, in Turkey, 
 are by law secured in two important privileges — they caii- 
 not lose their goods by confiscation, nor can they be put to 
 death except by the pestle and mortar. The guards of the 
 towerf . who suffered Prince Coreskie to escape from prison, 
 were, some of them, empaled, and others pounded or beaten 
 to pieces in great mortars of iron, by order of the Turkish 
 government. This dreadful punishment appears to have 
 been occasionally imposed by the Jewish rulers, for Solo- 
 mon clearly alludes to it in one of his Proverbs : " Though 
 thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with 
 a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd says, "that is, no correction, however 
 severe, will cure him." Large mortars are used in the East 
 for the purpose of separating the rice from the husk. When 
 a considerable quantity has to be prepared, the mortar is 
 pla ;ed outside the door, and two women, with each a pestle 
 of five feet long, begin the work. They strike in rotation, 
 as blacksmiths do on the anvil. 
 
 Cruel as it is, this is a punishment of the state ; the poor 
 vie tim is thrust into the mortar, and beaten with the pestle. 
 The late king of Kandy compelled one of the wives of his 
 rebellious chiefs thus to beat her own infant to death. 
 Hence the saying, " Though you beat that loose woman in 
 a mortar, she will not leave her ways ;" which means, 
 though you chastise her ever so much, she will never im- 
 prove. — Roberts. 
 
 There is a remarkable passage, Prov. xxvii. 22, " Though 
 thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with 
 a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." 
 The mode of punishment referred to in this passage, has 
 been made a subject of inquiry, by a correspondent of the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, who signs R. W., [conjectured to 
 be Richard Winter, a very respectable minister among the 
 dissenters.] In answer to his inquiries, another corre- 
 spondent assured him there were no traces of any such cusiam 
 in the East. But, besides what probability arises in the af- 
 firmative, fiom the proverbial manner of speech adopted by 
 Solomon, the allusion may be strengthened, and the existence 
 of such a punishment may be proved by positive testimony. 
 None who are well informed, can willingly allow that any 
 
 mode of expression in scripture is beyond elucidation, or 
 can consent that the full import of a simile, adopted by an 
 inspired writer, should be contracted or diminished. 
 
 " Fanaticism has enacted, in Turkey, in favour of the 
 ulemats, [or body of lawyers,] that their goods shall never 
 be confiscated, nor themselves put to death, Init by being 
 bruised in a mortar. The honour of being treated in so dis- 
 tinguished a manner, may not, perhaps, be sensibly felt by 
 every one ; examples are rare ; — yet the insolence of the 
 Mufti irritated Sultan Osman to such a degree, that he or- 
 dered the mortars to be replaced, which, having been long 
 neglected, had been thrown down, and almost covered with 
 earth. This order alone produced a surprising effect ; the 
 body of ulemats, justly terrified, submitted." (Baron De 
 Tott.) 
 
 " The Mohammedans consider this office as so important, 
 and entitled to such reverence, that the person of a pacha, 
 who acquits himself well in it, becomes inviolable, even by 
 the sultan; it is no longer permitted to shed his blood. 
 But the divan has invented a method of satisfying its ven- 
 geance on those who are protected by this privilege, without 
 departing from the literal expression of the law, by order- 
 ing them to be pounded in a mortar, of which there have 
 been various instances." (Volney.) — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 I have a drawing by a Cingalese, of the treatment re- 
 ceived by the family of Elypola, one of Raja Singha's min- 
 isters, in 1814, and which led to his dethronement. In the 
 first part of the picture the king is represented sitting in his 
 palace, with one of his queens having her face in the op- 
 posite direction. Elypola is prostrate before him, with his 
 wife and five children behind, guarded by a sentinel. In 
 the second division, one executioner is ripping open one of 
 the children, and another holding up the reeking head of 
 the next, just cut off, and ready to drop it into a mortar. 
 Next, the unhappy mother appears with the pestle lifled in 
 her hands, to bray the head of her infant. It appears from 
 the published accounts of this inhuman business, that the 
 poor woman let fall the pestle once, and fainted away. 
 Lastly, three children appear on a precipice with bound 
 hands, and fastened to a large stone, intended to sink them 
 in the pond, into which an executioner behind is about to 
 precipitate them.— Calloway. 
 
 Ver. 25. The hay appeareth, and the tender grass 
 showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are 
 gathered. 
 
 There is a gross impropriety in our version of Proverbs 
 xxvii. 25, " The hay appeareth, and the tender ^m55 show- 
 eth itself, and herbs of me mountains are gathered." Now, 
 certainly, if the tender grass is but just beginning to show 
 itself, the hay, which is grass cut and dried, after it has ar- 
 rived at maturity, ought by no means to be associated with 
 it, still less to precede it. And this leads us to notice, that 
 none of the dictionaries, &c. which we have seen, give 
 what seems to be the accurate import of this word, which 
 we apprehend means, the first shoots, the rising — just bud- 
 ding — spires of grass. So in the present passage (n^sn rhi 
 galeh chajir) the tender risings of the grass are in motion ; 
 and the buddings of grass (grass in its early state, as is the 
 peculiar import of *tv\ deshd) appear ; and the tufts of grass, 
 proceeding from the same root, collect themselves together, 
 and, by their union, begin to clothe the mountain tops with a 
 pleasing verdure." Surely, the beautiful progress of vege- 
 tation, as described in this passage, must appear to every 
 man of taste too poetical to be lost ; but what must it be to 
 an eastern beholder ! to one whose imagination is exalted 
 by a poetic spirit; one who has lately witnessed all-sur- 
 rounding sterility, a grassless waste !— ^Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 27. And thou shalt have goats' milk enough 
 for thy food, for the food of thy household, and 
 for the maintenance of thy maidens. 
 
 Milk is a great part of the diet of the eastern people. 
 Their goats furnish them with some part of it, and Russel 
 tells us are chiefly kept for that purpose ; that they yield 
 it in no inconsiderable quantity ; and that it is sweet, and 
 well-tasted. This at Aleppo is, however, chiefly from the 
 beginning of April to September; theybemg generally sup- 
 plied the other part of the year with cows' milk, sich as 
 It is : for the cows being commonly kept at the gardens. 
 
Chap. 28—30. 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 433 
 
 and fed with the refuse, the milk generally tastes so strong 
 of garlic or cabbage-leaves, as to be very disagreeable. 
 This circumstance sufficiently points out how far prefera- 
 ble the milk of goats must have been. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Ver. 3. A poor man that oppresseth the poor is 
 like a sweeping rain, which leaveth no food. 
 
 To feel the force of this passage a person should see 
 the rains which sometimes fall in the East. For many 
 months together we are occasionally without a single drop 
 of rain, and then it comes down as if the heavens were 
 breaking up, and the earth were about to be dissolved. The 
 
 f round, which had become cracked by the drought, sud- 
 enly swells ; the foundations of houses sink, or partially 
 remove from their places; men and beasts flee for shelter; 
 vegetables, trees, blossoms, fruits, are destroyed ; and when 
 the waters go off, there is scarcely any thing left for the 
 food of man or beast. The torrents which fell on the con- 
 tinent of India and North Ceylon, in May, 1827, were a 
 fearful illustration of the " sweeping rain which leaveth 
 no food." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. As a. roaring lion, and a ranging bear ; so 
 is a wicked ruler over the poor people. 
 
 The bear is occasionally found in company with the 
 lion, in the writings of the Old Testament ; and if the sav- 
 age ferocity of his disposition be duly considered, cer- 
 tainly forms a proper associate for that destroyer. " There 
 came a lion and a bear," said the son of Jesse, " and took 
 a lamb out of the flock;" and Solomon unites them, to con- 
 stitute the symbol of a wicked magistrate : " As a roaring 
 lion, and a ranging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the 
 poor people." The savage, which in these texts is asso- 
 ciated with the lion, is the brown or red bear. Natural 
 historians mention two other species, the white and black, 
 the dispositions and habits of which are entirely different. 
 The white bear differs in shape from the others, is an in- 
 habitant of the polar regions, and feeds " on the bodies of 
 seals, whales, and other monsters of the deep." It is prop- 
 erly a sea bear, and must have been totally unknown to 
 the' inspired writers, who lived so far remote from those 
 dreary and desolate shores which it frequents. The black 
 and the brown bears are considered by many as only va- 
 rieties of the same species ; but their temper and manners 
 are so different, that BufFon, and other respectable writers, 
 contend, that they ought to be regarded as specifically dif- 
 ferent. The brown or red bear is both a larger animal 
 than the black, and a beast of prey that in strength and 
 ferocity scarcely yields to the lion himself; while the black 
 bear chiefly subsists on roots, fruits, and vegetables, and is 
 never known to prey upon other animals. This species 
 uniformly flies from the presence of men, and never attacks 
 them but in self-defence ; but the red bear is a bold, and 
 extremely mischievous animal, which will attack a man 
 with equal indifference as a lamb or a fawn. The black bear 
 also confines himself to the more temperate northern lati- 
 tudes, never ascending to the arctic circle, nor descending 
 lowfer than the Alps, where it is sometimes found ; but the 
 brown bear accommodates himself to every clime, and is 
 to be found in every desert, or uncultivated country, on the 
 face of our globe. He ranges the Scythian wilds as far 
 as the shores of the frozen ocean ; he infests the boundless 
 forests of America; he traverses the burning wastes of 
 Lybia and Numidia, countries of Africa, which supplied 
 the ancient Romans with bears to be exhibited at their 
 public spectacles ; he prowls on the glowing sands of Ara- 
 Ijia ; he lounges on the banks of the Nile, and on the shores 
 ; of the Red Sea; he inhabits the wilderness adjoining to 
 ', the Holy Land. Hence, the black bear must have been 
 imknown to the inhabitants of Canaan; while the red bear 
 infested their country, prowled around their flocks, and 
 . watched near their dwellings, affording them but too many 
 i opportunities of studying his character, and too much 
 j reason to remember his manners. 
 
 I A particular description of this animal is to be found in 
 
 ; every work on natural history ; our concern is only with 
 j those traits in his character, which serve to illustrate the 
 i sacred writings. His external appearance is unusually 
 55 
 
 rugged and savage ; his limbs are strong and thick ; his 
 forefeet somewhat resemble the human hand ; his hair is 
 shaggy and coarse, and his whole aspect dull and heavy. 
 His motions are as awkward as his shape is clumsy ; but 
 under this forbidding exterior he conceals a considerable 
 degree of alertness and cunning. If hunger compel him 
 to attack a man, or one of the larger animals, he watches 
 the moment when his adversary is off his guard. In pur- 
 suit of his prey, he swims with ease the broad and rapid . 
 stream, and climbs the highest tree in the forest. Many 
 beasts of prey surpass him in running ; yet his speed is so 
 great, ihat a man on foot can seldom escape. Hence, the 
 danger to which a person is exposed from his pursuit, is 
 extreme ; he can scarcely hope to save himself by flight ; 
 the interposing river can give him no security ; and the 
 loftiest tree in the forest is commonly the chosen dwelling 
 of his pursuer, which, so far from affording a safe retreat, 
 only ensures his destruction. The danger of the victim, 
 which the bear has marked for destruction, is increased 
 by his natural sagacity, the keenness of his eye, and the 
 excellence of his other senses, particularly his sense of 
 smelling, which Bufibn conjectures, from the peculiar 
 structure of the organ, to be perhaps more exquisite than 
 that of any other animal. Nor can any hope be rationally 
 entertained from the forbearance or generosity of his tem- 
 per; to these, or any other amiable quality, his rugged 
 and savage heart is an entire stranger. His anger, which 
 is easily excited, is at once capricious and intense. A 
 dark and sullen scowl, which on his forbidding counte- 
 nance never relaxes into a look of satisfaction, indicates 
 the settled moroseness of his disposition ; and his voice, 
 which is a deep murmur, or rather growl, often accom- 
 panied with a grinding of the teeth, betrays the discontent 
 which reigns within. It is therefore with justice that the 
 inspired writers uniformly number him among the most 
 ferocious and dangerous tenants of the forest, and asso- 
 ciate his name and manner with the sorest judgments 
 which afflict mankind. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Ver. 4. Who hath ascended up into heaven, or 
 descended ? who hath gathered the wind in his 
 fists ? who hath bound the waters in a garment ? 
 who hath established all the ends of the earth ? 
 what is his name, and what is his son's name, 
 if thou canst tell ? 
 
 " Yes, you are full of confidence, you are quite sure, 
 you know all about it: have you just returned from the 
 heavens 1" " Truly, he has just finished his journey from 
 above: listen, listen, to this divine messenger." "Our 
 friend is about to do wonderful things, he has already 
 caught the wind ; he has seized it with his hand." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 10. Accuse not a servant unto his master, 
 lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty. 
 
 Whatever crimes your servants commit, no one will tell 
 you of them, except those who wish to gain your favour. 
 But let them once fall, then people in every direction come 
 to expose their villany. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. The horse-leech hath two daughters, 
 crying, Give, give. 
 
 This creature is only once mentioned in the holy scrip- 
 tures. It was known to the ancient Hebrews under the 
 name (npiVy) aluka, from the verb alak, which, in Arabic, 
 signifies to adhere, stick close, or hang fast. The reason 
 of the Hebrew name is evident ; the leech sticks fast to the 
 skin : and in several languages, its pertinacious adhesion is 
 become proverbial. Horace celebrates it in .this line — 
 
 " Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris hirudo." 
 An ancient author calls it the black reptile of the marsh, 
 because it is commonly found in marshy places. Its cru- 
 elty and thirst of blood, are noted by many writers, and, 
 indeed, are too prominent qualities in this creature to be 
 overlooked. 
 
 " jam ego me vertam in hirudinem 
 
 Atque eorum exsugebo sanguinein."— Ptew*. in Epidico, 4.ct ii. 
 
434 
 
 PROVERBS. 
 
 Chap. 31. 
 
 Long before the time of that ancient Roman, the royal 
 preacher introduced it in one of his Proverbs, to illustrate 
 the cruel and insatiable cupidity of worldly men : " The 
 horse-leech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give." Sev- 
 eral questions have been proposed in relation to this text ; 
 whether, for example, it is to be literally understood ; and 
 what the royal preacher means by its two daughters. Bo- 
 chart contends, that it cannot be literally understood, first, 
 because its introduction into that proverb would be quite 
 'improper; second, because the horse-leech has no daugh- 
 ters, being generated of putrid matter in the bottom of the 
 marsh. In answer to these reasons, it may be observed, 
 that if it be connected with the preceding verse, the intro- 
 duction is quite proper, and highly emphatical ; indeed, we 
 can scarcely conceive any thing more forcible and beautiful 
 than the comparison. To the second objection, it is suffi- 
 cient to reply, that Bochart has merely asserted the forma- 
 tion of the horse-leech from putrid mire ; but the absurdity 
 of equivocal generation has already been considered. Mer- 
 cer supposes, that the two daughters of the horse-leech are 
 the forks of her tongue, by which she inflicts the wound ; 
 but this exposition is inadmissible, because she is destitute 
 of that member, and acts merely by suction. Bochart, 
 supposing that the clause where "it is introduced, cannot 
 with propriety be connected with any part of the context, 
 considers it, of course, as independent ; and admitting the 
 derivation of aluka from alak, to hang or be appended, in- 
 'erprets the term as denoting the termination of human life, 
 appended as it were to the purpose of God, limiting the 
 term of our mortal existence ; and by consequence, that 
 her two daughters are death and the grave, or, should 
 these be thought nearly synonymous, the grave, where the 
 body returns to its dust, and thg world of spirits, where the 
 soul takes up its abode. But with all deference to such 
 high authority, this interpretation appears very forced and 
 unnatural. The common interpretation seems, in every 
 respect, entitled to the preference. Solomon, having in 
 the preceding verses mentioned those that devoured the 
 property of the poor, as the worst of all the generations he 
 had specified, proceeds in the fifteenth verse to state and 
 illustrate the insatiable cupidity with which they prose- 
 cuted their schemes of rapine and plunder. — As the horse- 
 leech hath two daughters, cruelty and thirst of blood, which 
 cannot be satisfied ; so, the oppressor of the poor has two 
 dispositions, cruelty and avarice, which never say they 
 have enough, but continually demand additional gratifica- 
 tions.— Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 17. The eye that mocketh at his father, and 
 despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the 
 valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles 
 shall eat it. 
 
 In the East, in consequence of the superstitions 6f hea- 
 thenism, numerous human bodies are exposed to become 
 the prey of birds and wild beasts; and it is worthy of being 
 recorded, that the eye is the first part selected by the former, 
 as their favourite portion. It is, however, considered to be 
 a great misfortune to be left without sepulchral rites; and 
 it is no uncommon imprecation to hear, " Ah ! the crows 
 shall one day pick out thy eyhs." " Yes, the lizards shall 
 lay their eggs in thy sockets." — Roberts. 
 
 Solomon appears to give a distinct character to some 
 of the ravens m Palestine, when he says, " The eye that 
 mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, 
 the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young 
 eagles shall eat it." The wise man, in this passage, may 
 allude to a species of raven, which prefers the valley for 
 'ner habitation to the clefts of the rock ; or he may perhaps 
 refer to some sequestered valley in the Land of Promise, 
 much frequented by these birds, which derived its name 
 from that circumstance; or, as the rocky precipice where 
 the raven loves to build her nest, often overhangs the tor- 
 rent, (which the original word, '?n: Tiahal, also signifies,) and 
 the lofty tree, which is equally acceptable, rises on its 
 banks, the royal preacher might, by that phrase, merely in- 
 tend the ravens which prefer such situations. Bochart 
 conjectures, that the valley alluded to was Tophet, in the 
 neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which the prophet Jeremiah 
 ''alts Ihe valley of the dead bodies; because the dead bodies 
 of criminals were cast into it, where they remained without 
 burial, till they were devoured by flocks of ravens, which 
 
 collected for that purpose from the circumjacent country. 
 If this conjecture be right, the meaning of Solomon will be 
 this : He who is guilty of so great a crime, shall be sub- 
 jected to an infamous punishment ; and shall be cast into 
 the valley of dead bodies, and shall find no grave, but the 
 devouring maw of the impure and voracious raven. It was 
 a common punishment in the East, (and one which the 
 Orientals dreaded above all others,) to expose in the open 
 fields the bodies of evil-doers that had suffered by the laws 
 of their offended country, to be devoured by the beasts of 
 the field, and the fowls of heaven. Hence, in Aristophanes, 
 an old man deprecates the punishment of being exposed to 
 the ridicule of women, or given as a banquet to the ravens; 
 and Horace, in his sixteenth epistle to Cluintius, repre- 
 sents it as the last degree of degradation, to be devoured by 
 these hateful birds. 
 
 " non pasces in cruce corvos." 
 
 The wise man insinuates, that the raven makes his first 
 and keenest attack on the eye ; which perfectly corresponds 
 with his habits, for he always begins his banquet with that 
 part of the body. Isidore says of him, " Primo in cadave- 
 ribus oculum petit:" and Epictetus, 'Oi hev KopaKci roiv tcte- 
 'KevrriKOTOiv rovs o<pQaXnovi \vfiaivovrai : the ravens devour the 
 eyes of the dead. Many other testimonies might be ad- 
 duced ; but these are sufficient to justify the allusion in the 
 proverb. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. The ants are a people not strong, yet 
 
 they prepare their meat in the summer. 
 See on ch. 6. 6. 
 
 Ver. 26. The conies are hui a feeble folk, yet 
 make they their houses m the rocks. 
 
 See on Ps. 104. 18. 
 
 Ver. 27. The locusts have no king, yet go they 
 
 forth all of them by bands. 
 See on 2 Chron. 7. 13. 
 
 Ver. 33. Surely the churning of milk bringeth 
 forth butter, and the wringing of the nose bring- 
 eth forth blood : so the forcing of wrath bring- 
 eth forth strife. 
 
 The ancient way of making butter in Arabia and Pales- 
 tine, was probably nearly the same as is still practised by 
 the Bedouin Arabs and Moors in Barbary, and which is 
 thus described by Dr. Shaw ; " Their method of making 
 butter is by putting the milk or cream in a goat's-skin turned 
 inside out, which they suspend from one side of the tent to 
 the other, and then pressing it to and fro in one uniform 
 direction, they quickly occasion the separation of the unc- 
 tuous and wheyey parts." So " the butter of the Moors in 
 the empire of Morocco, which is bad, is made of all the 
 milk as it comes from the cow, by putting it into a skin and 
 shaking it till the butter separates from it." (Stewart's 
 Journey to Mequinez.) And what is more to the purpose, 
 as relating to what is still practised in Palestine, Hasselquist, 
 speaking of an encampment of the Arabs, which he found not 
 far from Tiberias, at the foot of the mountain or hill where 
 Christ preached his sermon, says, " they make butter in a 
 leathern bag hung on three poles, erected for the purpose, 
 in the form of a cone, and drawn to and fro by two women." 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 The following is a description given by Thevenot of the 
 manner of making butter at Damascus, which he, however, 
 expresslv assures us, is the same all over the East. '' They 
 tie a stick with both ends to the hind-feet of a goat s-skm, 
 which serves instead of a leathern bag, that is, each end of 
 the stick to one foot, and the same with the forefeet, that 
 these sticks may serve as handles; they then put the milk 
 into this bag, close it carefullv, shake it about, holdmg by 
 the two sticks ; after a time, add some water, and then shake 
 it as before, till butter comes."— Rosenmuli^br. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. , 
 Ver. 18. She perceiveth that her merchandise is 
 good : her candle goeth not out by night. 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 ECCLESIASTES 
 
 435 
 
 To give a modern instance of a similar kind — Monsieur 
 De Guys, m his Senti mental Journey through Greece, says, 
 ** embroidery is the constant employment of the Greek wo- 
 men. Those who follow it for a living are employed in it 
 from morning to night, as are also their daughters and 
 slaves. This is a picture of the industrious wife, painted 
 after nature by Virgil, in the eighth book of his iEneid : — 
 
 ' Night was now sliding in her middle course : 
 The first repose was finish'd ; when the dame, 
 VVho by her distaff's slender art subsists, 
 Wakes the spread embers and the sleeping fire. 
 Night adding to her work : and calls her maids 
 To their long tasks, by lighted tapers urg'd.' 
 
 I have a living portrait of the same kind constantly before 
 ray eyes. The lamp of a pretty neighbour of mine, who 
 follows that trade, is always lighted before day, and her 
 young assistants are all at work betimes in the morning," — 
 
 JBUKDER. 
 
 Ver. 24. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it ; 
 and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 
 
 Herodotus, it seems, thought the Egyptian women's car- 
 
 rying on commerce was a curiosity t4iat deserved to be in- 
 serted in his history ; it (.an hardly then be thought an im- 
 propriety to take notice of this circumstance in a collection 
 of papers tending to illustrate the scriptures, and especially 
 in a country where the women indeed spin, but the men not 
 only buy and sell, but weave, and do almost every thing else 
 relating to manufactures. The commerce mentioned by 
 Herodotus is lost, according to Maillet, from among the 
 women of Egypt in general, being only retailed by the 
 Arabs of that country who live in the mountains. The 
 Arabian historians say, that the women used to deal in buy- 
 ing and selling of things woven of silk, gold, and silver, of 
 pure silk, of cotton, of cotton and thread, or simple linen 
 cloth, whether made in the country or imported ; the men 
 in wheat, barley, rice, and oiher productions of the earth. 
 Maillet, in giving an account of the alteration in this re- 
 spect in Egypt, affirms that this usage still continues among 
 tne Arabs to this day, who live in the mountains ; and con- 
 sequently he must be understood to affirm, that the things 
 that are woven among the Arabs and sold, are sold by the 
 women, who are indeed the persons that weave the men's 
 hykes in Barbary, according to Dr. Shaw, and doubtless 
 weave in Egypt. — Harmer, 
 
 ECCLESIASTES, OR THE PREACHER 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 4. I made me great works; I built me 
 houses ; I planted me vineyards ; 5. I made me 
 gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in 
 them of all kind o/ fruits; 6. I made me pools 
 of water, to water therewith the wood that 
 bringeth forth trees. 
 
 The following account of these reservoirs will evince at 
 what an immense expense and labour they were constructed. 
 Solomon's cisterns " are seated in a valley, and are three 
 in number, each occupying a different level, and placed in 
 a right line with each other, so that the waters of the one 
 may descend into the next below it. Their figures are quad- 
 rangular : the first, or southern one, being about three hun- 
 dred feet long ; the second, four hundred ; and the third, 
 five hundred ; the breadth of each being about two hundred 
 feet. They are all lined with masonry, and descended to 
 by narrow flights of steps, at one of the' corners ; the whole 
 depth, when emtpy, not exceeding twenty or thirty feet. 
 They were, at the present moment, all dry ; but though they 
 may be considered useful works in so barren and destitute 
 a country as Judea, yet they are hardly to be reckoned 
 among the splendid monuments of a luxurious sovereign's 
 wealth or power, since there are many of the Hebrew tanks 
 in Bombay, the works of private individuals, in a mere 
 commercial settlement, which are much more elegant in 
 their desi^^n, and more expensive /n their construction, than 
 any of these. Near these reservoirs there are two small 
 fountains, of whose waters we drank, and thought them 
 good. These are said to have originally supplied the cis- 
 terns through subterranean aqueducts ; but they are now 
 fallen into decay from neglect, and merely serve as a water- 
 ing-place for cattle, and a washing-stream for the females 
 of the neighbouring country." (Buckingham.") 
 
 " After a slight repast, we took leave of our ho.sts, and set 
 out in a southern direction to examine the Piscine, said to 
 have been constructed by Solomon. The royal preacher 
 has been imagined to allude to these, among other instances 
 ofhis splendour and magnificence, in the passage where he 
 is arguing for the insufficiency of worldly pursuits to pro- 
 
 cure happiness, Eccl, ii. 6. They are three in number, 
 placed nearly in a direct line above each other, like the 
 locks of a canal. By this arrangement, the surplus of the 
 first flows into the second, which is again discharged into 
 the third : from thence a constant supply of living water is 
 carried along the sides of the hill to Bethlehem and Jeru- 
 salem. The figure of these cisterns is rectangular, and 
 they are all nearly of the same width, but of considerable 
 difference in length, the third being almost half as large 
 again as the first. They are still in a certain state of preser- 
 vation, and with a slight expense might be perfectly re- 
 stored. The source from whence they are supplied is about 
 a furlong distant ; the spring rises several feet below the 
 surface, the aperture of which is secured by a door, so con- 
 trived, that it may be impenetrably closed on any sudden 
 danger of the water being contaminated." (Jolliffe's Letters.) 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 At about an hour's distance to the south of Bethlehem, 
 are the pools of Solomon. They are three in number, of 
 an oblong figure, and are supported by abutments. The 
 antiquity of their appearance entitles them. Dr. Richardson 
 thinks, to be considered as the work of the Jewish monarch : 
 " like every thing Jewish," he says, " they are more re- 
 markable for strength than for beauty." They are situated 
 at the south end of a small valley, and are so disposed on 
 the sloping ground, that the waters of the uppermost may 
 descend into the second, and those of the second into the 
 third. That on the west is nearest the source of the spring, 
 and is about 480 feet long ; the second is about 600 feet in 
 length, and the third about 660; the breadth of all three 
 being nearly the same, about 270 feet. They are lined 
 with a thick coat of plaster, and are capable of containing 
 a great quantity of water, which they discharge into a small 
 aqueduct that conveys it to Jerusalem. This aqueduct is 
 built on a foundation of stone : the water runs through 
 round earthen pipes, about ten inches in diameter, which 
 are cased with two stones, hewn out so as to fit them, and 
 they are covered over with rough stones, well cemented to- 
 gether. The whole is so much sunk into the ground on the 
 side of the hills round which it is carried, that in many 
 places nothing is to be seen of it. In time of war, however, 
 this aqueduct could be of no service to Jerusalem, as the 
 communication could be easily cut off. The fountain which 
 
436 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 Chap. 3, 4. 
 
 supplies these pools is at about the distance of 140 paces 
 from them. " This," says Maundrell, " the friars will 
 have to be that sealed fountain to which the holy spouse is 
 compared, Cant. iv. 12." And he represents it to have 
 been by no means difficult to seal up these springs, as they 
 rise uiider ground, and have no other avenue than a little 
 hole, " like to the mouth of a narrow well." " Through 
 this hole yoa descend directly down, but not without some 
 d j*^culty, for about four yards ; and then arrive in a vaulted 
 r -om fifteen paces long and eight broad. Joining to this is 
 a aother room of the same fashion, but somewhat less. Both 
 these rooms are covered with handsome stone arches, very 
 ancient, and perhaps the work of Solomon himself. You 
 find here four places at which the water rises. From these 
 separate sources it is conveyed by little rivulets into a kind 
 of basin, and from thence is. carried by a large subterraneous 
 passage down into the pools. In the way, before it arrives 
 at the pools, tliere is an aqueduct of brick pipes, which re- 
 ceives part of the stream, and carries it by many turnings 
 and windings to Jerusalem. Below the pools, here runs 
 down a narrow rocky valley, enclosed on both sides with 
 high mountains. This the friars will have to be ' the en- 
 closed garden' alluded to in the same place of the Canticles. 
 As to the pools, it is probable enough they may be the same 
 with Solomon's ; there not being the like store of excellent 
 spring-water to be met with anywhere else throughout 
 Palestine. But, for the gardens, one may safely affirm, that 
 if Solomon made them in the rocky ground which is now 
 assigned for them, he demonstrated greater power and 
 v,'ealth in finishing his design, than wisdom in choosing the 
 p.ace for it." — Modern Traveller. 
 
 It were very desirable to convey some idea, though im- 
 perfect, of the nature and arrangement of the gardens an- 
 nexed to royal palaces, in the East ; for which this would 
 be a proper place. But to bring the subject within a mode- 
 rate compass is not easy ; and every situation has peculiari- 
 ties, which do not admit of illustration by comparison, or of 
 application to our present purpose. The gardens of the 
 seraglio at Constantinople command an extensive sea view, 
 and are constructed accordingly. Dr. E. D. Clarke and 
 M. Pouqueville agree that they are far from magnificent, 
 as Europeans estimate magnificence ; and may rather be 
 thought wildernesses than gardens. They abound in fruit- 
 tress, in treillages, in fountains, and in kiosques. Their other 
 ornaments are but meager ; and their flowers, which should 
 constitute the chief distinction of a garden, especially of an 
 imperial garden, are but ordinary. In fact, those gentle- 
 men rather apologize to their readers for anticipated disap- 
 pointment. " I promise," says Dr. Clarke, "to conduct my 
 readers, not only within the retirement of the seraglio, but 
 into the harem itself, and the most secluded haunts of the 
 Turkish sovereign. Would only I could also promise a 
 degree of satisfaction, in this respect adequate to their de- 
 sire of information." 
 
 Chardin has given plates of several Persian gardens; 
 and from what he says— which is confirmed by Mr. Morier 
 — coolness and shade beneath wide-spreading trees, water, 
 and verdure, are the governing powers of a Persian para- 
 dise. It might be so, anciently, at Jerusalem ; nevertheless, 
 we are still left in uncertainty as to what might characterize 
 the ancient city of David, his palace, and his gardens. We 
 may safely infer that they were extensive, since his demesne 
 occupied the whole area of Mount Zlon: they afforded a 
 variety of heights, since the mount was far from level : it 
 rose, also, much above Mount Moriah, on which stood the 
 city of Jerusalem, and consequently commanded distinct 
 views of that city and its environs. The various heights 
 afforded situations for buildings of different descriptions ; 
 private kiosques adorned with the'utmost magnificence and 
 skill, (under Solomon,) dwellings for the inmates, the guards, 
 the attendants, the harem, and for foreign curiosities also ; 
 for specimens of natural history, birds, beasts, &c. Nor 
 was the extent of Mount Zion a rock ; for Dr. Clarke 
 states expressly, " If this be indeed Mount Zion, the pro- 
 phecy concerning it, (Micah iii. 12,) that the plough should 
 pass over it, has been fulfilled to the letter; for such labours 
 were actually going on when we arrived." Here was there- 
 fore a space (or spaces) of arable land; and this, after so 
 many revolutions of the surface, and so great intermixture 
 of unproductive ruins, derived from the buildings and forti- 
 fications upon it, and around it. In its original state, we 
 need not doubt but that it would admit, not only of the 
 
 growth of shrubs, but of trees; "the thick gloom of cypresses 
 and domes," which, as Dr. Clarke observes, of Constanti- 
 nople, distinguish the most beautiful part of that city. How 
 greatly such combinations must have contributed to the 
 general aspect of the Hebrew metropolis, surrounded by 
 barren mountains, we can be at no loss to conceive : and 
 with these royal embellishments we may connect those which 
 were " planted in the house of the Lord," Psalm xcii. 13. 
 Mr. Rich says, very justly, " We should form a very incor- 
 rect notion of the residence of an eastern monarch, if we 
 imagined it was one building which in its decay would 
 leave a single mound, or mass of ruins. Such establishments 
 always consist of a fortified enclosure, the area of which is 
 occupied by many buildings of various kinds, without sym- 
 metry or general design, and with large vacant spaces be- 
 tween them." — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 5. A time to cast away stones, aijd a time 
 to gather stones together : a time to embrace, 
 and a time to refrain from embracing. 
 
 See on 2 Kings 3. 19. 
 
 Ver. 7. A time to rend, and a time to sew ; a time 
 to keep silence, and a time to speak. 
 
 New clothes were thought very necessary for the solemni- 
 zation of a stated eastern festival. Commentators have 
 taken notice, that the rending mentioned by Solomon, Ec- 
 cles. iii. 7, refers to the oriental modes of expressing sor- 
 row ; but they seem to think, that the sewing signifies no- 
 thing more than the terminating, perhaps nothing more than 
 the abating, of affliction. Maimonides is quoted on this oc- 
 casion, as saying, He that mourns for a father, &c., let him 
 stitch up the rent of his garment at the end of thirty days, 
 but never let him sow it up well. As the other cases, how- 
 ever, are as directly opposite as possible, is it not more 
 probable, that a season of joy is here meant, in contrast to 
 a time of bitter grief, than merely of some abatement ol 
 distress '? And that by a time ofsev-ing, is meant a time of 
 making up new vestments, rather than a slight tacking to- 
 gether the places of their clothes, which were torn in the 
 paroxysm of their grief 1 
 
 Thus, when Jacob supposed he had lost his son Joseph, 
 he rent his clothes for grief. Gen. xxxvii. 34; while the 
 time of preparing for the circumcision of the son of Ishmael, 
 the bashaw of Egypt, when Maillet lived there, must have 
 been a time of great sewing; for the rejoicing on that 
 occasion lasted, it seems, " ten days, and on the first day of 
 the ceremony the whole household of the bashaw appeared 
 in new clothes, and were very richly dressed. Two vests 
 of different-coloured satin had been given to every one of 
 his domestics, one of English cloth, with breeches of the 
 same, and a lining of fur of a Moscovite fox. The meanest 
 slave was dressed after this sort with a turban, of which the 
 cap was of velvet, or English cloth, and the othef parr 
 adorned with gold. The pages had large breeches of green 
 velvet, and short vests of gold brocade. Those of higher rank 
 were more richly dressed ; and there was not one of them 
 but changed his "dress two or three times during the solem- 
 nity. Ibrahim, the young lord that was to be circumcised, 
 appeared on the morning of the ficst day, clothed in a half 
 vest of white cloth, lined with a rich fur, over a dolimanof 
 Venetian cloth of gold, and over this half vest he wore a 
 robe of fire-coloured camlet, lined with a green tabby. 
 This vest, or quiriqui, was embroidered with jDcarls of a 
 large size, and fastened before with" a clasp of large dia- 
 monds. Through all the»timethe solemnity lasted, Ibrahim 
 changed his dress three or four times a day, and never wore 
 the same thing twice, excepting the quiriqui, with its pearls, 
 which he put on three or four times." I need not go on 
 with Maillet's account ; it is sufficiently evident that the 
 time of preparing for this rejoicing was a time oi sewing. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 1 1. Again, if two lie together, then they have 
 heat : but how can one be warm alone ? 
 
 In the oriental regions the oppressive heat requires the 
 members of the same family, in general, to occupy each a 
 
Chap. 5—7. 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 437 
 
 separate bed. This, according to Maillet, is the custom 
 in Egypt; where, not only the master and the mistress of 
 the family sleep in different beds in the same apartment, 
 but also their female slaves, though several lodge in the 
 same chamber, have each a separate mattress. Yet Solo- 
 mon seems to intimate that a different custom prevailed in 
 Canaan, and one which the extreme heat of the climate 
 seems positively to forbid : " If two lie together, then they 
 have heat, but how can one be warm alone 1" Mr. Har- 
 mer endeavours to solve the difficulty, by supposing that 
 two might sometimes occupy one bed for medicinal purposes. 
 It is certain that, in the case of David, it was thought a 
 very efficacious method of recalling the vital warmth when 
 it was almost extinguished. But it is probable that the 
 royal preacher alluded rather to the nioping cold of a 
 Syrian winter, when the earth is bouna with frost and 
 covered with snow, than to the chilling rigours of extreme 
 old age. The cold winter is very severe during the night 
 in that country. Even in the daytime it is so keen, that 
 Jehoiakim* the king of Judah, had a fire burning before 
 him on the hearth, when he cut the scroll in which the 
 prophecies of Jeremiah were written, and committed it 
 to the flames. This accounts, in the most satisfactory 
 manner, for the remark of Solomon ; for nothing surely 
 can be more natural than for two to sleep under the same 
 canopy during the severe cold of a wintry night. The 
 same desire of comfort, one would think, which induces 
 them to separate in the summer, will incline them, at least 
 occasionally, to cherish the vital heat by a nearer approxi- 
 mation than sleeping in the same room. It is usual, through 
 the East, for a whole family to sleep in the same apartment, 
 especially in the lower ranks of life, laying their beds on 
 the groimd. To this custom our Lord alludes in the par- 
 able : " He from within shall answer and say, Trouble me 
 not; the door is now shut, and ray children are now with me 
 in bed ;" that is, my whole family are now a-bed in the same 
 room with me: " t cannot arise to give thee."— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 6. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh 
 to sin ; neither say thou before the angel, that 
 it was an error : wherefore should God be 
 angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of 
 thy hands ? 
 
 " Let not thy mouth weakly excuse thee to no purpose ; 
 and do not say before the messenger, (who may be sent to 
 inquire of thee what thou hast vx)wed,) it was a mistake." 
 As the priests kept a servant to levy their share out of the 
 offerings of the people, (I Sam. ii. 1^—16,) and as they 
 were greatly concerned in seeing the vows punctually paid, 
 it is probable that they kept, messengers to go and summon 
 those whom they knew to have vowed any thing, for the 
 purpose of enforcing the payment of it. An employment 
 which we find in aftertimes in the synagogues, without 
 knowing when it began, might be the same, for the most part, 
 with that which is here alluded to. The Jews, who scru- 
 pled to touch money on the sabbath-day, used to bind them- 
 selves on that day to an officer, sent by the rulers of the 
 synagogue, to give such sum for alms; and that officer re- 
 ceived it from them the next day. This conjecture is the 
 more probable, as that officer, who was the chagan or min- 
 ister of the synagogue, is sometimes styled the messenger 
 of the synagogue. (Desvaeux.)— Burdeu. 
 
 Ver. 12. The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, 
 whether he eat little or much : but the abun- 
 dance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. 
 
 In many parts of the East there are not any banks, or 
 public offices, in which the affluent can deposite their riches ; 
 consequently the property has to be kept in the house, or 
 concealed in some secret place. Under these circumstances, 
 it is no wonder that a man having great wealth should live 
 in constant dread of having it stolen. There are those who 
 have large treasures concealed in their houses, or gardens, 
 or fields, and the fact being known they are closely watched, 
 whenever they pay special attention "to any particular ob- 
 ject, or place. The late king of Kandy, after he was taken 
 prisoner, and on his voyage to Madras, was much concerned 
 about some of his concealed treasures, and yet he would 
 
 not tell where they were. So great is the anxiety of some, 
 arising from the jewels and gold they keep in their frail 
 houses, that they literally watch a great part of the night, 
 and sleep in the day, that their golden deity may not be 
 taken from them. 
 
 I knew a man who had nearly all his wealth in gold pa- 
 godas, which he kept in a large chest in his bedroom: 
 neither in body nor in mind did he ever wander far from 
 the precious treasure ; his abundance hindered him from 
 sleeping ; and for a time it seemed as if it would hinder 
 him from dying ; for when that fatal moment came, he sev- 
 eral times, when apparently gone, again opened his eyes 
 and again gave another look at the chest ; and one of the 
 LAST offices of his hands was to make an attempt to feel lor 
 the key under his pillow ! — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 7. All the labour of man is for his mouth, 
 and yet the appetite is not filled. 
 
 " My friend," says the sage, to the diligent and successful 
 merchant, " why are you so anxious to have riches 1 Know 
 you not that all this exertion is for the support of one sin- 
 gle span of the belly V " Tamby, you and your people 
 work very hard ; why do you do so 1" The man will look 
 at you for a moment, and then putting his fingers on his 
 navel, say, " It is all for the belly." — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 6. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, 
 so is the laughter of the fool. This also is 
 vanity. ^ 
 
 Cow-dung dried was the fuel commonly used for firing, 
 but this was remarkably slow in burning. On this account 
 the Arabs would frequently threaten to burn a person with 
 cow-dung, as a lingering death. When this was used it was 
 generally under their pots. This fuel is a very striking 
 contrast to thorns and furze, and things of that kind, which 
 would doubtless be speedily consumed, with the crackling 
 noise alluded to in this passage. Probably it is this con- 
 trast which gives us the energy of the comparison. — 
 Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 10. Say not thou, What is the cause that the 
 former- days were better than these 1 for thou 
 dost not inquire wisely concerning this. 
 
 The Hindoos have four ages, which nearly correspond 
 with the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages of the western 
 heathen. In the first age, called Krefha, they say the corn 
 sprang up spontaneously, and required no attention ; in the 
 second, named Treatha, the justice of kings and the bles- 
 sings of the righteous caused it to grow ; in the third, called 
 Tuvara, rain produced it; but in this, the fourth age, called 
 Kally, many works have to be done to cause it to grow. 
 " Our fathers," say they, " had three harvests in the year : 
 the trees also gave an abundance of fruit. Where is now 
 the cheapness of provisions? the abundance of fish? the 
 fruitful flocks? the rivers of milk? the plenty of water ? 
 Where the pleasures? Where the docility of animals'? 
 Where the righteousness, the truth, and affection ? Where 
 the riches, the peace, the plenty ? Where the mighty men 1 
 Where the chaste and beautiful mothers, with their fifteen 
 or sixteen children? Alas! alas! they are all fled."— Ro- 
 berts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Consider the work of God : for who can 
 make that straight which he hath made crook- 
 ed? 
 
 " My lord, it is of no use trying to reform that fellow : his 
 ways are crooked: should you by force make him a little 
 straight, he will relapse into his former state." "If you 
 make straight the tail of the dog, will it remain so ?"— Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 25. I applied my heart to know, and to 
 search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason 
 of things, and to know the wickedness of folly^ 
 even of foolishness and madness. 
 
4218 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 Chap. 7.-10. 
 
 The margin has, instead of applied, " I and my heart 
 compassed," i. e. encircled, went round it. According to 
 Dr. Adam Clarke," I made a circuit; — I circumscribed the 
 ground I was to traverse: and all within my circuit I was 
 determined to know." — In English we say, " I studied the 
 subject," but in eastern idiom, it is, " I went round it." 
 *' Have you studied grammar 1" — " Yes, suite suite" round 
 and : >und. " That man is well acquainted with magic, for 
 to r :. / knowledge he has been round and round it : nay more, 
 I aiTi. told he has compassed all the sciences." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. And I find more bitter than death the 
 woman whose heart is snares and nets, arid her 
 hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall es- 
 cape from her ; but the sinner shall be taken 
 by her. 
 
 The following insidious mode of robbery gives a very 
 lively comment upon these words of Solomon : " The most 
 cunning robbers in the world are in this country. They 
 use a certain slip with a running noose, which they cast 
 with so much sleight about a man's neck when they are 
 within reach of him, that they never fail, so that they strangle 
 him in a trice. They have another curious trick also to 
 catch travellers. They send out a handsome woman upon 
 the road, who, with her hair dishevelled, seems to be all in 
 tears, sighing and complaining of some misfortune which 
 she pretends has befallen her. Now, as she takes the same 
 way as the traveller goes, he easily falls into conversation 
 with her, and finding her beautiful, offers her his assistance, 
 which she accepts: but he hath no sooner taken her up on 
 horseback behind him, but she throws the snare about his 
 neck, and strangles him, or at least stuns him, until the 
 robbers who lie hid come running in to her assistance, and 
 pomplete what she hath begun." (Thevenot.) — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 8. Let thy garments be always white ; and 
 let thy head lack no ointment. 
 
 This comparison loses all its force in Europe, but in 
 India, where white cotton is the dress of all the inhabitants, 
 and where the beauty of garments consists, not in their 
 shape, but in their being clean and white, the exhortation 
 becomes strikingly proper. A Hindoo catechist address- 
 ing a native Christian on the necessity of correctness of 
 conduct, said. See how welcome a person is whose garments 
 are clean and white. Such let our conduct be, and then, 
 though we have lost caste, such will be our reception, 
 (Ward.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 12. For man alsoknoweth not his time: as 
 the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as 
 the birds that are caught in the snare ; so are 
 the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it 
 falleth suddenly upon them. 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! trouble has come suddenly upon me ; I am 
 caught as fishes in the net." " We are all of us to be caught 
 as fishes in the net." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 7. I have seen servants upon horses, and 
 princes walking as servants upon the earth. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 10. 8. 
 
 In all ages and nations, we read or hear of complaints 
 against those who have arisen from obscurity to respecta- 
 bility or rank in the state. It is not so modern as some 
 suppose for servants and inferiors to imitate their superiors ; 
 and though some would like to see a return of the " good 
 old times !" when a man's vest and jerkin would have to 
 be regulated by his rank, such things are doubtless best left 
 • to themselves. The Hindoos are most tenacious in their 
 adherence to caste, and should any one, through property 
 or circumstances, be elevated in society, he will always be 
 locked upon with secret contempt. Their proverb is, " He 
 who once walked on the ground, is now in his palanquin ; 
 and he who was in his palanquin, is now on the ground." 
 —Roberts. > 
 
 Persons of rank and opulence, in those countries, are now 
 
 distinguished from their inferiors, by riding on horseback 
 when they go abroad; while those of meaner station, and 
 Christians of every rank, the consuls of Christian powers 
 excepted, are obliged to content themselves with the ass or 
 the mule. A Turkish grandee, proud of his exclusive 
 privilege, moves on horseback with a very slow and state- 
 ly pace. To the honour of riding upon horses, and the 
 stately manner inw^hich the oriental nobles proceed through 
 the streets, with a number of servants walking before them, 
 the wise man seems to allude, in his account of the disor- 
 ders which occasionally prevail in society : " I have seen 
 servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon 
 the earth." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it ; 
 and whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall 
 bite him. 
 
 Other enclosures have fences of loose stones, or mud 
 walls, some of them very low, which often furnish a re- 
 treat to venomous reptiles. To this circumstance the royal 
 preacher alludes, in his observations of wisdom and folly : 
 " He that diggeth a pit, shall fall into it : and whoso break- 
 eth a hedge, a serpent shall bite him." The term w^hich 
 our translators render hedge in this passage, they might 
 with more propriety have rendered wall, as they had done 
 in another part of the writings of Solomon : " I went by 
 the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man 
 void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with 
 thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the 
 stone wall thereof was broken down." — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 11. Surely the serpent will bite without en- 
 chantment ; and a babbler is no better. 
 
 The incantation of serpents is one of the most curious 
 and interesting facts in natural history. This wonderful 
 art, which sooths the wrath, and disarms the fury of the 
 deadliest snake, and renders it obedient to the charmer's 
 voice, is not an invention of modern times; for we discover 
 manifest traces of it in the remotest antiquity. It is assert- 
 ed, that Orpheus, who probably flourished soon after letters 
 were introauced into Greece, knew how to still the hissing 
 of the approaching snake, and to extinguish the poison of 
 the creeping serpent. The Argonauts are said to have 
 subdued by the power of song the teiTible dragon that 
 guarded the golden fleece : 'B.kiri tionv QeHai npas. Ovid 
 ascribes the same effect to the soporific influence of certain 
 herbs, and magic sentences. But it seems to have been 
 the general persuasion of the ancients, that the principal 
 power of the charmer lay in the sweetness of his music. 
 Pliny says accordingly, that serpents were drawn from 
 their lurking-places by'the power of music. Serpents, says 
 Augustine, are supposed to hear and understand the words 
 of the Marsi ; so that, by their incantations, these reptiles, 
 for the most part, sally forth from their holes. 
 
 The wonderful effect which music produces on the serpent 
 tribes, is confirmed by the testimony of several respectable 
 moderns. Adders swell at the sound of a flute, raising 
 themselves upon the one half of their body, turning them- 
 selves round, beating proper time, and following the instru- 
 ment. Their head, naturally round and long like an eel, 
 becomes broad and flat like a fan. The tame serpents, 
 many of which the Orientals keep in their houses, are. 
 known to leave their holes in hot weather, at the sound of 
 a musical instrument, and run upon the performer. Dr. 
 Shaw had an opportunity of seeing#i number of serpents 
 keep exact time with the dervishes in their circulatory 
 dances, running over their heads and arms, turning when 
 they turned, and stopping when they stopped. The rattle- 
 snake acknowledges the power of music as much as any of 
 his familv ; of which the following instance is a decisive 
 proof: When Chateaubriand was in Canada, a snake ol 
 that species entered their encampment; a young Canadian, 
 one of the party, who could play on the flute, to divert his 
 associates, advanced against the serpent with his new species 
 of weapon. " On the approach of his enemy, the haughty 
 Reptile coiled himself into a spiral line, flattened hjs head, 
 inflated his cheeks, contracted his lips, displayed his en- 
 venomed fangs and his bloody throat ; his double tongue 
 glowed like two flames of Are; his eyes were burninji 
 coals ; his body, swollen with rage, rose and fell like lb*- 
 
Chap. 10. 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 439 
 
 bellows of a forge; his dilated skin assumed a dull and 
 scaly appearance; and his tail, which sounded the denun- 
 ciation of death, vibrated with so great rapidity, as to 
 resemble a light vapour. The Canadian now began to 
 play upon his flu?,e, the serpent started with surprise, and 
 drew back his hear;'. In proportion as he was struck with 
 the magic effect, hi ■; eyes lost their fierceness, the oscilla- 
 tions of his tai' became slower, and the sound which it 
 emitted became weaker, and gradually died away. Less 
 perpendicular upon their spiral line, the rings of the fasci- 
 nated serpent were by degrees expanded, and sunk one 
 after another upon the ground, in concentric circles. The 
 shades of azure, green, white, and gold, recovered their 
 brilliancy on his quivering skin, and slightly turning his 
 head, he remained motionless, in the attitude of attention 
 and pleasure. At this moment, the Canadian advanced a 
 few steps, producing with his flute sweet and simple notes. 
 The reptile, inclining his variegated neck, opened a pas- 
 sage with his head through the high grass, and began to 
 creep afte*r the musician, stopping when he stopped, and 
 beginning to follow him again, as soon as he moved for- 
 ward." In this manner he was led out of their camp, at- 
 tended by a great number of spectators, both savages and 
 Europeans, who could scarcely believe their eyes, when 
 they beheld this wonderful effect of harmony. The assem- 
 bly unanimously decreed that the serpent which had so 
 highly entertained them should be permitted to escape. 
 Many of them are carried in baskets through Hindostan, 
 and procure a maintenance for a set of people who play a 
 few simple notes on the flute, with which the snakes seem 
 much delighted, and keep time by a graceful motion of the 
 head, erecting about half their length from the ground, and 
 following the music with gentle curves, like the imdulating 
 lines of a swan's neck. 
 
 The serpent most common at Cairo, belongs to the viper 
 class, and is undoubtedly poisonous. If one of them enter 
 a house, the charmer is sent for, who uses a certain form of 
 words. By this means, Mr. Brown saw three serpents en- 
 ticed out of the cabin of a ship lying near the shore. The 
 operator handled them, and put them into a bag. At other 
 times, he saw the fascinated reptiles twist round the bodies 
 of these charmers in all directions, without having had 
 their fangs extracted, or broken, and without doing them 
 any harm. Adders and serpents will twist themselves 
 round the neck and naked bodies of young children be- 
 longing to the charmers, and suffer them to escape unhurt. 
 But if any person who is ignorant of the art happens to ap- 
 proach them, their destructive powers immediately revive. 
 At Surat, an Armenian seeing one of these charmers make 
 an adder bite him, without receiving any other injury than 
 the mere incision, boasted he could do the same ; and caus- 
 ing himself to be woimded in the hand, died in less than 
 two hours. 
 
 While the creature is under the influence of the charm, 
 they sometimes break out the tooth which conveys the poi- 
 son, and render it quite harmless : for the poison is contain- 
 ed in a bag, at the bottom of the fangs, which lie flat in the 
 mouth, and are erected only when the serpent intends to 
 bite. The bag, upon being pressed, discharges the poison 
 through a hole or groove in the fang, formed to receive it, 
 into the wound, which is at the same Instant inflicted by 
 the tooth. That all the teeth are not venomous, is evident 
 from this circumstance, that the charmers will cause their 
 serpents to bite them, till they draw blood, and yet the hand 
 will not swell. 
 
 But on some serpents, these charms seem to have no 
 power ; and it appears from scripture, that the adder some- 
 times takes precautions to prevent the fascination which he 
 sees preparing for him; "for the deaf adder shutteth her 
 ear, and will not hear the voice of the most skilful charm- 
 er." The method is said to be this : the reptile lays one 
 ear close to the ground, and with his tail covers the other, 
 that he cannot hear the sound of the music ; or he repels 
 the incantation by hissing violently. The same allusion is 
 involved in the 'words of Solomon : " Surely the serpent 
 will bite without enchantment, and a babbler is no better." 
 The threatening of the prophet Jeremiah proceeds upon 
 the same fact : " I will send serpents (cockatrices) among 
 you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you." 
 In ail these quotations, the sacred writers, while they take 
 it for granted that many serpents are disarmed by charm- 
 ing, plainly admit, that the powers of the charmer are in 
 
 vain exerted upon others. To account tor this exception, 
 it has been alleged, that, in some serpents the sense of hear-- 
 ing is very imperfect, while the power of vision is exceed- 
 ingly acute; but the most intelligent natural historians 
 maintain, that the very reverse is true. In the serpent 
 tribes, the sense of hearing is much more acute than the 
 sense of vision. Pliny observes, that the serpent is much 
 more frequently roused by the ear than by sight: "Jam 
 primum hebetes oculos huic malo dedit, eo.sque non in 
 fronte ex adversocernere sed in temporibus: itaque excita- 
 tur, sed saepius auditu quam visu." In this part of his 
 work, the ancient naturalist discourses not concerning any 
 particular species, but the whole class of serpents, asserting 
 of them all, that nature has compensated the dulness of 
 their sight, by the acuteness of their hearing. Unable to 
 resist the force of truth, others maintain, that the adder is 
 deaf, not by nature, but by design ; for the Psalmist says, 
 she shutteth her ear, and will not hear the voice of the 
 charmer. But the phrase perhaps means no more than 
 this, that some adders are of a temper so stubborn, that the 
 various arts of the charmer make no impression ; they are 
 like creatures destitute of hearing, or whose ears are so 
 completely obstructed, that no sounds can enter. The 
 same phrase is used in other parts of scripture to signify a 
 hard and obdurate heart: " Whoso stoppeth his ears at the 
 cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be 
 heard." It is used in the same sense by the prophet : " That 
 stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his 
 eyes from seeing evil." The righteous man remains as 
 unmoved by the cruel and sanguinary counsels of the 
 wicked, as if he had stopped his ears. In the same man- 
 ner, the stubborn or infuriated aspic, as little regards the 
 power of song, as if her sense of hearing were obstructed 
 or destroyed. 
 
 If the serpent repel the charm, or is deaf to the song, the 
 charmer, it is believed, exposes himself to great danger, the 
 whole force of the incantation falling upon the head of its 
 author, against whom the exasperated animal directs its 
 deadliest rage. But which of the serpent tribes have the 
 power to repel the incantations of the charmer, or inject a 
 poison which his art is unable to counteract, no ancient 
 Greek writer has been able to discover, or has thought prop- 
 er to mention, ^lian states, indeed, that the bite of an 
 aspic admits Q^no remedy, the powers of medicine, and the 
 arts of the charmer, being equally unavailing. But their 
 omission has been amply supplied by the Arabian philoso- 
 phers quoted by Bochart, our principal guide in this part of 
 the work. These clear and accurate writers divide serpents 
 into three classes. In the first, the force of the poison is so 
 intense, that the sufferer does not survive their attack long- 
 er than three hours, nor does the wound admit of any cure, 
 for they belong to the class of deaf or stridulous serpents, 
 which are either not affected by music and other charms, 
 or which, by their loud and furious hissing, defeat the pur- 
 pose of the charmer. The only remedy, in this case, is in- 
 stantaneous amputation, or searing the wound with a hot 
 iron, which extinguishes the virus, or prevents it from 
 reaching the sanguiferous system. In this class they place 
 the regulus, the basilisk, and the various kinds of asps, with 
 all those the poison of which is in the highest degree of in- 
 tensity. This doctrine seems to correspond with the view 
 which the Psalmist and the prophet give us in the passages 
 already quoted, of the adder and cockatrice, or basilisk. 
 It is certain, however, from the authentic statements of dif- 
 ferent travellers, that some of those serpents, as the aspic 
 and the basilisk, which the Arabians place on the list of 
 deaf and untameable snakes, whose bite admits of no rem- 
 edy, have been frequently subjected to the power of the 
 charmer ; nor is it necessary to refer the words of the in- 
 spired writers to this subject, for they nowhere recognise 
 the classification adopted by the Araliian philosophers. 
 The only legitimate conclusion to be drawn from their 
 words, is, that the power of the charmer often fails, whether 
 he try to fascinate the aspic, basilisk, or any other kind of 
 serpent. In order to vindicate the sacred writers, it is not 
 necessary to suppose, with the Arabians, that some species 
 of serpents exist, which the charmer endeavours in vain to 
 fascinate ; for in operating upon the same species, the suc- 
 cess of his incantations may be various. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16, Wo to thee, O land, when thy king- is a 
 child, and thy princes eat in the morning ! 
 
440 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 Chap. 11. 
 
 It is considered to be most gross, most disgraceful, and 
 ruinous, to eat early in the morning : of such a one it is 
 , s»aid, "Ah! that fellow was born with his belly." — " The 
 beast eats on his bed !" — " Before the water awakes, that 
 creature begins to take his food," which alludes to the no- 
 tion that water m the well sleeps in the night. " He only 
 eats and sleeps pandy-pole" i, e. as a pig. — " How can we 
 prosper 7 he no sooner awakes than he cries, teen! teen!" 
 food ! food !— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 6. Wo to thee, O land, when thy king is 
 a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! 
 17. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king 
 is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due 
 season, for strength, and not for drunkenness 1 
 
 Dr. Russel tells us of the eastern people, that " as soon 
 as they get up in the morning, they breakfast on fried eggs, 
 cheese, honey, leban," &c. 
 
 We are not to suppose that when Solomon says, " Wo 
 to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes 
 eat in the morning," Eccles. x. 16, that he means absolute- 
 ly all kinds of eating ; but feasting, the indulging themselves 
 such length of time in eating, and drinking proportionably 
 of wine, so as improperly to abridge the hours that should 
 be employed in affairs of government, and perhaps to dis- 
 qualify themselves for a cool and dispassionate judgment of 
 matters. 
 
 This is confirmed by the following words, " Blessed art 
 thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy 
 princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunken- 
 ness," ver. 17. They may with propriety eat in a morning, 
 bread, honey, milk, fruit, which, in summer, is a common 
 breakfast with them, but it would be wrong then to drink 
 wine as freely as in the close of the day. 
 
 Wine being forbidden the Mohammedans by their reli- 
 gion, and only drank by the more licentious among them, 
 in a more private manner, it is not to be expected to appear 
 at their breakfasts ; but it is used by others, who are not 
 under such restraints, in the morning, as well as in their 
 other repasts. 
 
 So Dr. Chandler tells us, in his Travels in Asia Minor : 
 " In this country, on account of the heat, it i's usual to rise 
 with the dawn. About daybreak we received from the 
 French consul, a Greek, with a respectable beard, a present 
 of grapes, the clusters large and rich, with other fruits, all 
 fresh gathered. We had, besides, bread and coffee for 
 breakfast, and good wines, particularly one sort, of an ex- 
 quisite flavour, called muscadel." If they drank then 
 wine at all in a morning, it ought to be, according to the 
 royal preacher, in small quantities, for strength, not for 
 drunkejiness. 
 
 The eastern people, Arabians and Turks both, are ob- 
 served to eat very fast, and, in common, without drinking ; 
 but when they feast and drink wine, they begin with fruit 
 and sweatmeats, and drinking wine, and they sit long at 
 table : Wo to the land whose princes so eat in a morning, 
 eating after this manner a great variety of things, and 
 slowly, as they do when feasting, and prolonging the time 
 with wine. So the prophet Isaiah, in like manner, says, 
 ch. V. 11, " Wo unto them that rise up early in the morn- 
 ing, that they may follow strong drink, that continue until 
 night, until wine inflame them." Such appears to be the 
 view of Solomon here. 
 
 If great men will indulge themselves in the pleasures of 
 the table and of wine, it certainly should be in the evening, 
 when public business is finished. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 20. Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought ; 
 and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber : for 
 a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that 
 which hath wings shall tell the matter. 
 
 The manner of sending advice by pigeons was this : 
 They took doves, which had a very young and unfledged 
 brood, and carried them on horseback to the place from 
 whence they wished them to return, taking care to let 
 them have a full view. When any advices were received, 
 the correspondent tied a billet to the pigeon's foot, or under 
 the wing, and let her loose. The bird, impatient to see her 
 
 young, flew off with the utmost impetuosity, and soon ar- 
 rived at the place of her destination. These pigeons have 
 been known to travel from Alexandretta to Aleppo, a dis- 
 tance of seventy miles, in six hours, and in two days from 
 Bagdad ; and when taught, they never fail, unless it be very 
 dark, in which case they usually send two, for fear of mis- 
 take. The poets of Greece and Rome, oiten aliude to 
 these winged couriers, and their surprising industiy. Ana- 
 creon's dove, which he celebrates in his ninth ode, was 
 employed to carry her master's letters ; and her fidelity and 
 despatch are eulogized in these lines : 
 
 Eyw Se A.vaKp£ovTt^ &c. 
 
 " In such things, I minister to Anacreon ; and now see 
 what letters I bring him." 
 
 It is more than probable, that to this singular custom 
 Solomon alludes in the following passage : " Curse not the 
 king, no, not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy 
 bedchamber ; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, 
 and they which have wings shall tell the matter." The 
 remote antiquity of the age in which the wise man flourish- 
 ed, is no valid objection ; for the customs and usages of 
 Orientals, are almost as permanent as the soil on which 
 they tread. Averse to change, and content, for the most 
 part, with what their fathers have taught them, they trans- 
 mit the lessons they have received, and the customs they 
 have learned, with little alteration, from one generation to 
 another. The pigeon was employed in carrying messages, 
 and bearing intelligence, long before the coming of Christ, 
 as we know from the odes of Anacreon and other classics ; 
 and the custom seems to have been very general, and quite 
 familiar. When, therefore, the character of those nations, 
 and the stability of their customs, are duly considered, it 
 will not be reckoned extravagant to say, Solomon, in this 
 text, must have had his eye on the carrier pigeon. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 1. Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thoa 
 shalt find it after many days. 
 
 I believe Dr. Adam Clarke is right in supposing that this 
 alludes to the sowing of rice. The Tamul translation has 
 it, " Cast thy food upon the waters, and the profit thereof 
 shall be found after many days." Rice fields are so made 
 as to receive and retain the rains of the wet monsoon, or to 
 be watered from the tanks or artificial lakes. The rice 
 prospers the most when the ground, at the time of sowing, 
 is in the state of mud, or covered with a little water. In 
 some lands, the water is allowed first to overflow the whole, 
 and then the roots are just stuck into the mud. leaving the 
 blades to float on the surface. In reaping-time, as the 
 water often remains, the farmer simply lops off the ears. 
 See on Job xxiv. 24. — Roberts. 
 
 The Arabs have a very similar proverb, " Do good, 
 throw bread into the water, it will one day be repaid thee." 
 The Turks have borrowed it from the Arabs, with a slight 
 alteration, according to which, it is as follows: " Do good, 
 throw bread mto the water; even if the fish does not know, 
 yet the Creator knows it." The meaning of the Hebrew, 
 as well as of the Arabic and Turkish proverb, is, " Dis- 
 tribute thy bread to all poor people, whether known or un- 
 known to thee ; throw thy bread even into the water, re- 
 gardless whether it swims, and who may derive advantage 
 from it, whether men or fish; for even this charity, te- 
 stowed at a venture, God will repay thee sooner or later." — 
 Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 9. Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and 
 let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, 
 and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the 
 sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all 
 these things God will bring thee into judgment. 
 
 Herodotus, speaking of the Egyptians, says, that " at the 
 entertainments of the rich, just as the company are about to 
 rise from the repast, a small coflin is carried round, con- 
 taining a perfect representation of a dead body; it is in size 
 sometimes of one, but never of more than two cubits, and 
 as it is shown to the guests in rotation, the bearer exclaims, 
 Cast vour eyes on this figure; after death you yourself wil) 
 resemble it ; drink, then, and be happy."— Burder. 
 
Chap. 1. 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 441 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 4. And the doors shall be shut in the streets, 
 when the sound of the grinding is low ; and he 
 shall rise up at the voice of the bird ; and all 
 the daughters of music shall be brought low. 
 
 It is to the first crowing of the house-cock in the morn- 
 ing, which is before daybreak, that Solomon probably al- 
 udes. This well describes the readiness of the restless old 
 man to quit his uneasy bed, since it was much earlier than 
 the usual time of rising. In the East, it was common to all, 
 the young and the healthy, as well as the aged, to rise with 
 the dawn. 
 
 The people in the East bake every day, and usually grind 
 their corn as they want it. The grinding is the first work 
 in the morning. This grinding with their mills makes a 
 considerable noise, or rather, as Sir John Chardin says, 
 " the songs of those who work them." May not this help 
 to explain the meaning of this passage, in which the royal 
 preacher, describing the infirmities of old age, among other 
 weaknesses, says, the doors shall be shut in the streets, when 
 the sound of the grinding is lo^a ? that is, the feeble old man 
 shall not be able to rise from his bed early in the morning 
 to attend that necessary employment of grinding corn, con- 
 
 sequently his doors shall be shut ; neither will the noise of 
 their songs, which are usual at that employment, be heard, 
 or when it is heard, it will be only in a low, feeble tone. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 5. Also when they shall be afraid oithat which 
 is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the 
 almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper 
 shall be a burden, and desire shall fail ; because 
 man goeth to his long home, and the mourners 
 go about the streets. 
 
 See on Jer. 1. 11, 12. 
 
 Ver. 1 1 . The words of the wise are as goads, and 
 as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, 
 which are given from one shepherd. 
 
 It is said, " The words of that judge are quite certain ; 
 they are like the driven nails." " I have heard all he has 
 to say, and the effect on my mind is like a nail driven home." 
 " What a speaker ! all his words are nails ; who will draw 
 them out again V — Roberts. 
 
 THE SONG OF SOLOMON 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver, 5. I am black, but comely, ye daughters 
 of Jerusalem ; as the tents of Kedar, as the cur- 
 tains of Solomon. 
 
 Entertainments are frequently given in the country under 
 tents, which, by the variety of their colours, and the pecu- 
 liar manner in which they are sometimes pitched, make a 
 very pleasant appearance. To this agreeable custom the 
 spouse probably alludes, in that description of her person: 
 " I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem ; 
 a? the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." The 
 seeming contradiction in the first clause, is easily obviated. 
 The Arabs generally make use of tents covered with black 
 hair-cloth ; the other nations around them live in booths, or 
 huts, constructed of reeds and boughs, or other materials, 
 or in tents of difierent colours. In Palestine, the Turco- 
 mans live in tents of white linen cloth ; while the Turks, 
 in their encampments, prefer green or red, which have a 
 very p' easing efiect in the eye of the traveller. It is only 
 the Arabian tents, or the tents of Kedar, which are uni- 
 formly black, or striped. This is the reason the spouse 
 compares herself, not to tents in general, which are of 
 different colours, but to those of Kedar, which are all cov- 
 ered with black hair-cloth, and have therefore a disagreea- 
 ble appearance. These tents are stretched on three or four 
 pickets, only five or six feet high, which gives them a very 
 flat appearance : at a distance, one of these camps seems 
 only like a number of black spots. 
 
 To be black, but comely, involves no contradiction; for 
 it is certain that the face may be discoloured by the sun, to 
 the influence of which the spouse positively ascribes her 
 sable hue, and yet possess an exquisite gracefulness. The 
 Arab women, whom Mr. Wood saw among the ruins of 
 Palmyra, were well shaped, and, although very swarthy, 
 yet had good features. Zenobia, the celebrated queen of 
 that renowned city, was reckoned eminently beautiful ; and 
 the description we have of her person answers to that char- 
 acter; her complexion of a dark brown, (the necessary ef- 
 56 
 
 feet of her way of life in that burning climate ;) her eyes 
 black and sparkling, and of an uncommon fire; her coun- 
 tenance animated and sprightly in a very high degree; her 
 person graceful and genteel be5'-ond imagination ; her teeth 
 white as pearl ; her voice clear and strong. Such is the 
 picture which historians have drawn of the beautiful and 
 unfortunate Zenobia; from whence it appears, that a person 
 may be both black and comely ; and by consequence, that 
 the description of Solomon, which certainly refers to the 
 moral and religious state and character of the genuine 
 worshipper of Jehovah, is neither incongruous nor exag- 
 gerated, but perfectly agreeable to nature. In this case, 
 however, the duskiness of complexion was not natural, 
 but the consequence of exposure to the rays of the sun ; for 
 the spouse anticipates the surprise which the daughters of 
 Jerusalem would feel when they beheld her countenance : 
 " Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun 
 hath looked upon me." Females of distinction in Pales- 
 tine, and even in Mesopotamia, are not only beautiful and 
 well-shaped, but, in consequence of being always kept from 
 the rays of the sun, are very fair. This fact is attested by 
 D'Arvieux, who was favoured with a sight of several Ara- 
 bian ladies of high rank. It is not unworthy of notice, that 
 the scriptu^ bears the same testimony concerning the com- 
 plexion of Sarah, of Rebecca, and of Rachel ; they were 
 *' beautiful and well-favoured." But the women in general 
 are extremely brown and swarthy in the complexion ; al- 
 though there are not a few of exquisite beauty in these 
 torrid regions, especially among those who are less exposed 
 to theheat of the sun. It is on this account that the prophet 
 Jeremiah, when he would describe a beautiful women, rep- 
 resents her as one that keeps at home : because those who 
 are desirous to preserve their beauty, go very little abroad. 
 The spouse proceeds, " As the tents of Kedar, as the cur- 
 tains of Solomon." By the last clause may be understood 
 those splendid tents, to which the great monarch, who, by 
 his own confession, denied himself no earthly pleasure, 
 retired in the heats of summer, or when he wished to enter- 
 tain his nobles and courtiers, or sought the amusement of 
 the chase. Some are of opinion, these curtains refer to th« 
 
442 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 sumptuous hangings which surrounded the bed of the Israel- 
 itish king: and their idea receives some countenance from 
 a manuscript note of Dr. Russel's, which states, that mos- 
 cheto curtains are sometimes suspended over the beds in 
 Syria and Palestine. But since it is common in Hebrew 
 poetry to express nearly the same thought in the second 
 parallel line as in the first; and since it is equally common 
 m scripture to put a part for the whole, — it is more natural 
 to suppose, that the tents of Solomon are actually meant in 
 this passage ; and as we are sure they were extremely mag- 
 nificent, they might, with great propriety, be introduced 
 here, on account of their beauty. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, 
 where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock 
 to rest at noon : for why should I be as one that 
 turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions? 
 
 Before noon, the shepherds and their flocks may be seen 
 slowly moving towards some shady banyan, or other tree, 
 where they recline during the heat of the day. The sheep 
 sleep, or lazily chew the cud; and the shepherds plat 
 pouches, mats, or baskets, or in dreamy musings while 
 away their time. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. I have compared thee, O my love, to a 
 company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots. 
 
 This appears a very coarse compliment to a mere English 
 reader, arising from the difference of our manners ; but the 
 horse is an animal in very high estimation in the East. The 
 Arabians are extravagantly fond of their horses, and caress 
 them as if they were their children. D'Arvieux gives a 
 diverting account of the affectionate caresses an Arab used 
 to give a mare which belonged to him. He had sold it to 
 a merchant at Rama, and when he came to see it, (which 
 he frequently did,) he would weep over it, kiss its eyes, and 
 when he departed, go backwards, bidding it adieu in the 
 most tender manner. The horses of Egypt are so remark- 
 able for stateliness and beauty, as to be sent as presents of 
 great value to the sublime porte ; and it appears from sacred 
 history, that they were in no less esteem formerly among 
 the kings of Syria, and of the Hittites, as well as feolomon 
 himself, who bought his horses at 150 shekels, which (at 
 pean Prideaux's calculation of three shillings the shekel) 
 is £23. 10s. each, a very considerable price at which to 
 purchase twelve thousand horses together. The qualities 
 which form the beauty of these horses, are tallness, propor- 
 tionable corpulency, and stateliness of manner ; the same 
 qualities which they admire in their women, particularly 
 corpulency, which is known to be one of the most esteemed 
 characters of beauty in the East. Niebuhr says, " as plump- 
 ness is thought a beauty in the East, the women, in order to 
 obtain this beauty, swallow, every morning and every even- 
 ing, three of these insects, (a species of tenebriones,) fried 
 in butter." Upon this principle is founded the compliment 
 of Solomon ; and it is remarkable that the elegant Theoc- 
 ritus, in his epithalamium for the celebrated queen Helen, 
 whom he described as ^ump and large, uses exactly the 
 same image, comparing her to the horse in the chariots of 
 Thessaly. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. Thy cheeks are comely with rows of 
 jewels, thy neck with chains of gol^. 
 
 Olearius observes, in his description of the dress of the 
 Persian women, "around the cheeks and chin they have 
 one or two rows of pearls or jewels, so that the whole face 
 is adorned with pearls or jewels. I am aware that this is a 
 very ancient eastern custom ; for already in Solomon's song 
 it is said, " thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels," &c. 
 All these Persian court ladies had over their curled locks, 
 instead of pearls, two long and thick cords of woven and 
 beaten gold, hanging down from the crown of the head over 
 the face on both sides ; this ornament, because it is worn at 
 court, is quite usual among the Persian women, and does 
 not become them ill, in their black hair." (Delia Valla.) 
 Rauwolf gives a similar description of the head-dress of 
 the Arabian women in the desert of Mesopotamia : " When 
 they wish to adorn themselves, they have their trinkets, 
 such as ball? gf marble, and yellow agate, glass beads of 
 
 divers colours, longish pieces of metal strung upon a thread, 
 hanging pendent upon their temples, nearly a span in 
 
 length." — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver, 12. While the King sitteth at his table, my 
 
 spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof 
 See on Mark 14. 3, 5. 
 
 Ver. 13. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved 
 unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my 
 breasts. 
 
 The eastern women, among other ornaments, used little 
 perfume-boxes, or vessels filled with perfumes, to smell at. 
 These were worn suspended from the neck, and hanging 
 down on the breast. This circumstance is alluded to in 
 the bundle of myrrh. These olfactoriola, or smelling-boxes, 
 (as the Vulgate rightly denominates them,) are still in use 
 among the Persian women, to whose necklaces, which fall 
 below the bosom, is fastened a large box of sweets ; some 
 of these boxes are as big as one's hand ; tbe common ones 
 are of gold, the others are covered with jewels. They are 
 all bored through, and filled with a black paste very light, 
 made of musk and amber, but of very strong smell. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of 
 camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. 
 
 " A cluster of camphire." This is the al-hennah, or Cy- 
 prus. It is here mentioned as a perfume, and its clusters 
 are noticed. This beautiful odoriferous plant, if it is not 
 annually cut and kept low, grows ten or twelve feet high, 
 putting out its little flowers in clusters, which yield a most 
 grateful smell, like camphire, and may, therefore, be alluded 
 to. Cant. i. 14. Its plants after they are dried and powdered, 
 are disposed of to good advantage in all the markets of this 
 kingdom, of Tunis. For with this all the African ladies, 
 that can purchase it, tinge their lips, hair, hands, and feet; 
 rendering them thereby of a tawny, saffron colour, which, 
 with them, is reckoned a great beauty. Russel mentions 
 the same practice of dying their feet and hands with hen- 
 nah, as general among all sects and conditions at Aleppo. 
 Hasselquist assures us he saw the nails of some mummies 
 tinged with the al-hennah, which proves the antiquity of 
 the practice. And as this plant does not appear to be a native 
 of Palestine, but of India and Egypt, and seems mentioned. 
 Cant. i. 14, as a curiosity growing in the vineyards of En- 
 gedi, it is probable that the Jews might be acquainted with 
 its use as a die or tinge before they had experienced its 
 odoriferous quality, and might, fr»iQ the former circum- 
 stance, give it its name. See more concerning the hennah, 
 or al-hennah, in Harmer's Outlines of a New Commentary 
 on Solomon's Song, p. 218, &c. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. I. I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of 
 the valleys. 
 
 In the East this flower is extremely fragrant, and has al- 
 ways been much admired. In what esteem it was held by 
 the ancient Greeks, may be seen in the Odes of Anacreon, 
 and the comparisons iri Ecclus. 24. 14. 18. L. 8, show that 
 the Jews were likewise much delighted with it. " In no 
 conntrv of the world does the rose grow in such perfection 
 as in Persia ; in no country is it so cultivated and prized 
 by the natives. Their gardens and courts are crowded 
 with its plants, their rooms ornamented with vases, filled 
 with its gathered bunches, and every bath strewn with the 
 full-blown flowers, plucked from the ever-replenished stems. 
 Even the humblest individual, who pays a piece of copper 
 money for a few whifs of a kelioun, feels a double enjoy- 
 ment when he finds it stuck with a bud from his dear native 
 tree." (Sir R. K. Porter.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 3. As the apple-tree among the trees of the 
 wood, so is my iDeloved among the sons. I sat 
 down under his shadow with great delight, and 
 his fruit was sweet to my taste. 
 
 In Canaan, and the circumjacent regions, the apple-treo 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 443 
 
 is of no value ; and, therefore, seems by no means entitled 
 to the praise with which it is honoured by the spirit of in- 
 spiration. The inhabitants of Palestine and Egypt import 
 their apples from Damascus, the produce of their own orch- 
 ards being almost unfit for use. The tree then, to which 
 the spouse compares her Lord in the Song of Solomon, 
 whose shade was so refreshing, and whose fruit was so de- 
 licious, so comforting, so restorative, could not be the apple- 
 tree, whose fruit can hardly be eaten; nor could the apple- 
 tree, which the prophet mentions with the vine, the tig, the 
 palm, andthe pomegranate, which furnished the hungry with 
 a gra.eful repast, the failure of which was considered as a 
 pubK" ,alamity,bereally of that species: '" The vine is dried 
 up, tho fig-tree languisheth, the pomegranate-tree, the palm- 
 tree, also the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are 
 withered > because joy is withered away from the sons of 
 men." M.Forskall says, the apple-tree is extremely rare, and 
 is named tyffah by the inhabitants of Palestine. In deference 
 to his authority, the editor of Calmet, with every disposition 
 to render the original term by the citron, is inclined to revert 
 again to the apple. But if, as Forskall admits, the apple- 
 tree is extremely rare, it cannot, with propriety, be classed 
 with the vine, and other fruit-bearing trees, that are ex- 
 remely common in Palestine and Syria. And if it grow 
 * with difficulty in hot countries," and required even the 
 ■ assiduous attention" of such a monarch as Solomon, be- 
 fore it could be raised and propagated, an inspired writer 
 certainly would not number it among the " trees of the 
 field," which, as the phrase clearly implies, can live and 
 thrive without the fostering care of man. 
 
 The citron is a large and beautiful tree, always green, 
 perfuming the air with its exquisite odour, and extending 
 a deep and refreshing shade over the panting inhabitants of 
 the torrid regions. Well, then, might the spouse exclaim : 
 *' As the citron-tree among the trees of the wood ; so is my 
 beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow 
 with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste." A 
 more beautiful object can hardly be conceived, than a large 
 and spreading citron, loaded with gold-colonred apples, and 
 clothed with leaves of the richest green. Maundrell prefer- 
 red the orange garden, or citron grove, at Beroot, the palace 
 of the Emir Facardine, on the coast of Syria, to every thing 
 else he met with there, although it was only a large quad- 
 rangular plot of ground, divided in to sixteen smaller squares: 
 but the walks were so shaded with orange-trees, of a large 
 spr6ading size, and so richly adorned with fruit, that he 
 thought nothing could be more perfect in its kind, or, had 
 it been duly cultivated, could have been more delightful. 
 When it is recollected that the difference between citron and 
 orange-trees is not very discernible, excepting by the fruit, 
 both of which, however, have the same golden colour, this 
 passage of Maundrell's may serve as a comment on the words 
 of Solomon, quoted in the beginning of the section.— Paxton. 
 
 Shade, according to Mr. Wood, in his description of the 
 ruins of Balbec, is an essential article in oriental luxury. 
 The greatest people seek these refreshments, as well as the 
 meaner. So Dr. Pococke found the patriarch of the Ma- 
 ronites, (who was one of their greatest families,) and a 
 bishop, sitting under a tree. Any tree that is thick and 
 spreading doth for them; but it must certainly be an addi- 
 tion to their enjoying of themselves, when the tree is of a 
 fragrant nature, as well as shady, which the citron-tree is. 
 Travellers there, we find in their accounts, have made use 
 of plane-trees, walnut-trees, &c., and Egmont and Heyman 
 Were entertained with coffee at Mount Sinai, under the 
 orange-trees of the garden of that place. 
 
 The people of those countries not only frequently sit un- 
 der shady trees, and take collations under them, but some- 
 times the fruit of those trees under which they sit, is shaken 
 down upon them, as an agreeableness. So Dr. Pocoke tells 
 us, when he was at Sidon, he was entertained in a garden, 
 In the shade of some apricot-tree^s, and the fruit of them was 
 shaken upon him. He speaks of it indeed as if it was done 
 as a great proof of their abundance, but it seems rather to 
 have been designed as an agreeable addition to the entertain- 
 ment. — Harmer. 
 
 ^'er. 5. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with 
 appies ; for I am sick of love. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd : — " Support me with cordials; support me 
 with citrons: for still I languish with love." Dr. A. Clarke: 
 
 — " The versions in general understand some kind of oint- 
 ments or perfumes by the first term," i. e. flagons. " Com- 
 fort me with apples :" they had not apples, as we in Eng- 
 land; jt is, therefore, probable that the citron or the orange 
 (both of which are believed to be good for the complaint al- 
 luded to) is the fruit meant. " I am sick of love." Is it 
 not amusing to see parents and physicians treating this af- 
 fection as a DISEASE of a very serious nature % It is called 
 the Ccima-Cdchal, i. e. Cupid's fever, which is said to be 
 produced by a wound inflicted by one of his five arrows. 
 When a young man or woman becomes languid, looks thin, 
 refuses food, seeks retirement, and neglects duties, the 
 father and mother hold grave consultations ; they apply to 
 the medical man, and he furnishes them with medicines, 
 which are forthwith to be administered, to relieve the poor 
 patient. • 
 
 I believe the " versions in general" are right in supposing 
 " ointments or perfumes" are meant, instead of flagons, be- 
 cause they are still considered to be most efficacious in re- 
 moving the COMPLAINT. Thus, when the fever is most dis- 
 tressing, the sufferer is washed with rose-water, rubbed 
 with perfumed oils, and the dust of sandal wood. The 
 margin has, instead of comfort, " straw me with apples ;" 
 which probably means the citrons were to be put near to 
 him, as ii is believed they imbibe the heat, and consequently 
 lessen the fever. It is also thought to be highly beneficial 
 for the young sufferer to sleep on the tender leaves of the 
 plantain-tree, {banana,) or the lotus flowers ; and if, in ad- 
 dition, strings of pearls are tied to different parts of the 
 body, there is reason to hope the patient will do well. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. I charge you, O ye daugnters of Jerusa- 
 lem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
 that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he 
 please. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 2. 18. 
 
 Here again the custom illustrates the passage ; it would 
 be considered barbarous in the extreme to awake a person 
 out of his sleep. How often, in going to the bouse of a 
 native, you are saluted with " Nittera-JcuUa-kardr," i. e. " He 
 sleeps." Ask them to arouse him : the reply is, " Koodaiha''' 
 i. e. " I cannot." Indeed, to request such a thing shows at 
 once that you are griffin, or new-comer. " Only think of 
 that ignorant Englishman : he went to the house of our 
 chief, and being told he was asleep, he said he must see 
 him, and actually made such a noise as to awake him ; 
 and then laughed at what he had done." — Roberts. 
 
 The antelope, like the hind, with which it is so fre- 
 quently associated in scripture, is a timid creature, ex- 
 tremely jealous and watchful, sleeps little, is easily dis- 
 turbed, takes alarm on the slightest occasion ; and the mo- 
 ment its fears are aAvakened, it flies, or seems rather to dis- 
 appear, from the sight of the intruder. Soft and cautious is 
 the step which interrupts not the light slumbers of this gentle 
 and suspicious creature. It is probable, from some hints in 
 the sacred volume, that the shepherd in the eastern desert, 
 sometimes wished to beguile the tedious moments, by con- 
 templating the beautiful form of the sleeping antelope. But 
 this was a gratification he could not hope to enjoy, unless 
 he approached it with the utmost care, and maintained a 
 profound silence. When, therefore, an Oriental charged 
 his companion by the antelope, not to disturb the repose of 
 another, he intimated, by a most expressive and beautiful 
 allusion, the necessity of using the greatest circumspection. 
 This statement imparts a great degree of clearness and 
 energy, to the solemn adjuration which the spouse twice 
 addresses to the daughters of Jerusalem, when she charged 
 them not to disturb the repose of her beloved : " I charge 
 you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, (the ante- 
 lopes,) and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor 
 awake my love, till he please." In this language, which is 
 pastoral, and equally beautiful and significant, the spouse 
 delicately intimates her anxiety to detain her Lord, that she 
 may enjoy the happiness of contemplating his glory; her 
 deep sense of the evil nature and bitter consequences of sin ; 
 her apprehension, lest her companions, the members of her 
 family, should by some rash and unholy deed provoke him 
 to depart ; and how reasonable it was, that they who coveted 
 the society of That beautiful creature, and were accustomed 
 to watch over its slumbers in guarded silence, should be 
 
444 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 equally cautious not to disturb the communion which she 
 then enjoyed with her Saviour. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. The voice of my beloved! behold, he 
 Cometh leaping- upon the mountains, skipping 
 upon the hills. 
 
 See on Ps. 18. 33. 
 
 Ver. 8. The voice of my beloved ! behold, he 
 Cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping 
 upon the hills. 9. My beloved is like a roe, or 
 a young hart : behold, he standeth behind our 
 wall, he looketh forth at the window, showing 
 himself through the lattice. 
 
 Mr. Harmer thinks this means the green wall, as it were, 
 of a kiosque, or eastern arbour, which is thus described by 
 Lady M. W. Montague : " In the midst of the garden is the 
 kiosque, that is, a large room, commonly beautified with a 
 fine fountain in the midst of it. It is raised nine or ten 
 steps, and enclosed with gilded lattices, round which vines, 
 jessamines, and honeysuckles, make a sort of green wall ; 
 large trees are planted round this place, which is the scene 
 of their greatest pleasures." — Burder. 
 
 •In the Song of Solomon, the spouse more than once com- 
 pares her beloved to the antelope, particularly alluding to 
 the wonderful elasticity of its limbs, and the velocity with 
 which, by a few leaps, it scales the loftiest precipice, or 
 bounds from one cliff to another. Waiting with eager ex- 
 pectation his promised coming, she hears him at last speak- 
 ing peace and comfort to her soul ; and instantly describes 
 him as hastening, in the ardour of his love, to her relief, and 
 surmounting with ease every obstruction in his way. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Dr. Rus.sel observes, that the two species of antelopes 
 about Aleppo, in Syria, " are so extremely fleet, that the 
 greyhounds, though* very good, can seldom take them, with- 
 out the assistance of a falcon, unless in soft, deep ground." 
 The following occurrence proves the strong attachment 
 which some of the Arabs cnerish for these animals : " A 
 little Arab girl brought a young antelope to sell, which was 
 bought by a Greek merchant, whose tent was next to me, 
 for half a piaster. She had bored both ears, into each of 
 which she had inserted two small pieces of red silk riband. 
 She told' the purchaser, that as it could run about and lap 
 milk, hediiight be able to rear it up; and that she should 
 not have sold it, but that she wanted money to buy a riband, 
 which her mother could not afford her : then almost smoth- 
 ering the little animal with kisses, she delivered it, with 
 tears in her eyes, and ran away. The merchant ordered it 
 to be killed and dressed for supper. In the close of the 
 evening, the girl came to take her last farewell of her little 
 pet, knowing that we were to decamp at daybreak. When 
 she was told that it was killed, she seemed much surprised, 
 saying that it was impossible that anybody could be so cruel 
 as to kill such a pretty creature. On its being shown to 
 her, with its throat cut, she burst into tears, threw the 
 money in the man's face, and ran away crying." (Parson's 
 Travels.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. My beloved spake, and said unto me, 
 Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. 
 11. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over 
 and gone. 
 
 The Orientals distinguish their winter into two parts, or 
 rather the depth of winter, from the commencement and 
 termination of the season, by the severity of the cold. This, 
 which lasts about forty days, tfTey call Murbania. To this 
 rigorous part of the season, the wise man seems to refer, in 
 that beautiful passage of the Song: " Ris*». up, my love, my 
 fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the 
 rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear on the earth : 
 the time of the singing of birds is come ; and the voice of 
 the turtle is heard in our land." If we explain this text by 
 the natural phenomena, these words, "the rain is over and 
 gone," cannot be considered as an exposition of the prece- 
 ding clause, *' for, lo, the winter is past;" and as denoting, 
 Ihat the moist part of the year was entiFely gone, along with 
 
 which, Dr. Russel assures us, all rural delights abandon 
 the plains of Syria : but the meaning is, that the Murbania, 
 the depth of winter, is past and over, and the weather be- 
 come agreeably warm ; the rain has just ceased, and con- 
 sequently, has left the sure and agreeable prospect of un- 
 disturbed and pleasant serenity, for several days. It had 
 been no inducement to the spouse to quit her apartments 
 with the view of enjoying the pleasures of the country, to 
 be told, that the rainy season had completely terminated, 
 and the intense heats of summer, under which almost any 
 plant and flower sickens and fades away, had commenced. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 12. The flowers appear on the earth ; the 
 time of the singing of birds is come, and the 
 voice of the turtle is heard in our land". 
 
 The inhabitants of the great towns of Syria, during the 
 pleasant weather an winter, frequently leave their homes, 
 and give entertainments to their friends under tents, pitched 
 in the country for that purpose. In April, and part of May, 
 they retire to the gardens; and in the heat of summer, re- 
 ceive their guests in the summer-houses, or under the shade 
 of the trees. The same custom seems, from the invitation of 
 the bridegroom, to have prevailed in the land of Canaan 
 in the time of Solomon, The inhabitants of Aleppo make 
 their excursion very early in the season; and the cold 
 weather is not supposed by Solomon to have ceased long 
 before, since it is distinctly mentioned. In Syria, the nar- 
 cissus flowers during the whole of the Murbania; hyacinths 
 and violets, at latest, before it is quite over. Therefore, 
 when Solomon says the flowers appear on the earth, he does 
 not mean the time when the earliest flowers disclose their 
 bloom, but when the verdant turf is thickly studded with 
 all the rich, the gay, and the diversified profusion of an 
 oriental spring. This delightful season is ushered in at 
 Aleppo about the middle of February, by the appearance 
 of a small cranes-bill on the bank of the river, which mean- 
 ders through its extensive gardens ; and a few days after, 
 so rapid is the progress of vegetation, all the beauty of spring 
 is displayed : about the same time, the birds renew their 
 songs. When Thevenot visited Jordan, on the sixteenth of 
 April, he found the little woods on the marginof the river, 
 filled with nightingales in full chorus. This is rather 
 earlier than at Aleppo, where they do not appear till nearly 
 the end of the month. These facts illustrate the strict pro- 
 priety of Solomon's description, every circumstance of 
 which is accurately copied from nature. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the 
 rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me 
 see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice ; for 
 sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is 
 comely. 
 
 See on Ps. 68. 13. 
 
 The Tamul translation has^ instead of " countenance," 
 " form :" " Thy form is comely." Dr. Boothroyd says, 
 " stairs" is certainly improper ; but may there not be here 
 an allusion to the ancient custom of building towers in the 
 East, for the purpose of accommodating doves 7 I have 
 seen one which had stairs inside, (probably to enable a 
 person lo ascend and watch for the approach of strangers ;) 
 on the outside were numerous holes, in regular order, 
 where the doves concealed themselves, and brought up 
 their young. It is common to call a female by the name 
 of dove, but it refers more to secrecy than beauty. The 
 mother of Ramar said it was necessary for him to go to the 
 desert, but she did not mention the reason to her husband ; 
 upon which he said, by way of persuading her to tell him, 
 " Oh ! my dove, am I a stranger T' — Roberts. 
 
 The phrase, which we render the secret places of the 
 stairs, may, with more propriety, be translated, the secret 
 crevices of the precipitous rocks ; for the original term 
 signifies a place so high and steep, that it cannot be ap- 
 proached but by ladders. So closely pursued were the 
 people of Israel, and so unable to resist the assault of their 
 enemies, that, like the timid dove, they fled to the fast- 
 nesses of the mountains, and the holes of the rocks.— 
 Paxton. 
 
Chap. 2—4. 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 445 
 
 Ver. 15. Take us the foxes, the h'ttle foxes, that 
 spoil the vines ; for our vines have tender grapes. 
 
 Foxes are observed by many authors to be fond of grapes, 
 and to make great havoc in vineyards. Aristophanes (in 
 his Equites) compares soldiers to foxes, who spoil whole 
 countries, as the others do vineyards. Galen (in his book 
 of Aliments) tells us, that hunters did not scruple to eat the 
 flesh of foxes in autumn, when they were grown fat with 
 feeding on grapes. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 5. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusa- 
 lem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, 
 that ye stir not up, nor awake my love till he 
 please. 
 
 See on ch. 2. 7. •• 
 
 Ver. 6. Who is this that cometh out of the wilder- 
 ness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with 
 myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of 
 the merchant ? 
 
 The use of perfumes at eastern marriages is common ; 
 and upon great occasions very profuse. Not only are the 
 garments scented till, in the Psalmist's language, they 
 smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia ; it is also customary for 
 virgias to meet, and lead the procession, with silver gilt 
 pots of perfumes ; and sometimes aromatics are burned in 
 the windows of all the houses in the streets through which 
 the procession is to pass, till the air becomes loaded with 
 fragrant odours. In allusion to this practice it is demand- 
 ed, " Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like 
 pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense 1" 
 So liberally were these rich perfumes burned on this occa- 
 sion, that a pillar of smoke ascended from the censers, so 
 high, that it could be seen at a considerable distance ; and 
 the perfume was so rich, as to equal in value and fragrance 
 all the powders of the merchant. The custom of burning 
 perfumes on these occasions still continues in the East; for 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montague, describing the reception of 
 a young Turkish bride at the bagnio, says, " Two virgins 
 met her at the door ; two others filled silver gilt pots with 
 perfumes, and began the procession, the rest following in 
 pairs, to the number of thirty. In this order they marched 
 round the three rooms of the bagnio." And Maillet in- 
 forms us, that when the ambassadors of an eastern mon- 
 arch, sent to propose marriage to an Egyptian queen, made 
 their entrance into the capital of that kingdom, the streets 
 through which they passed were strewed^with flowers, and 
 precious odours burning in the windows, from very early 
 in the morning, embalmed the air. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and 
 behold King Solomon with the crown where- 
 with his mother crowned him in the day of his 
 espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his 
 heart. 
 
 Such a ceremony as this was customary among the Jew-s 
 at their marriages. Maillet informs us the crowns were 
 made of different materials. Describing the custom, as 
 practised by the members of the Greek church, who now 
 live in Egypt, he says, " that the parties to be married are 
 placed opposite to a reading-desk, upon which the book of 
 the gospels is placed, and upon the book two crowns, which 
 are made of such materials as people choose, of flowers, of 
 cloth, or of tinsel. There he (the priest) continues his 
 benedictions and prayers, into which he introduces all the 
 patriarchs of the Old Testament. He after that places 
 these crowns, the one on the head of the bridegroom, the 
 other on that of the bride, and covers them both with a 
 veil." After some other ceremonies, the priest concludes 
 the whole by taking off" their crowns, and dismissing them 
 with prayers. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 9. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, 
 
 my spouse ; thou hast ravished my heart with 
 one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. 
 
 There is a singularity in this imagery, which has much 
 perplexed the critics ; and perhaps it is not possible to 
 ascertain the meaning of the poet beyond a doubt. Sup- 
 posing the royal bridegroom to have had a profile, or side 
 view of his bride, in the present instance, only one eye, or 
 one side of her necklace, would be observable ; yet this 
 charms and overpowers him. Tertullian mentions a cus- 
 tom in the East, of women unveiling only one eye in con- 
 versation, while they keep the other covered : and Niebuhr 
 mentions a like custom in some parts of Arabia. This 
 brings us to nearly the same interpretaition as the above. 
 (Williams.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 12. A garden enclosed is my sister, my 
 spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. 
 
 This morning we went to see some remarkable places 
 in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem. The first place that 
 we directed our course to, was those famous fountains, 
 pools, and gardens, about an hour and a quarter distant 
 from Bethlehem, southward, said to have been the contri- 
 vance and delight of King Solomon. To these works and 
 places of pleasure, that great prince is supposed to allude, 
 Eccl. ii. 5, 6, where, among the other instances of his 
 magnificence, he reckons up his gardens, and vineyards, 
 and pools. As for the pools, they are three in number, 
 lying in a row above each other, being so disposed that the 
 waters of the uppermost may descend into the second, and 
 those of the second into the third. Their figure is quad- 
 rangular ; the breadth is the same in all, amounting to 
 about ninety paces; in their length there is some difference 
 between them, the first being about one hundred and sixty 
 paces long, the second two hundred, the third two hundred 
 and twenty.' They are all lined with wall, and plastered, 
 and contain a great depth of water. Close by the pools is 
 a pleasant castle of a modern structure; and at about the 
 distance of one hundred and forty paces from them is a 
 fountain, from which, principally, they derive their waters. 
 This the friars will have to be that sealed fountain, to which 
 the holy spouse is compared, Cant. iv. 12, and, in confirm- 
 ation of this opinion, they pretend a tradition, that King 
 Solomon shut up these springs, and kept the door of them 
 sealed with his signet, to the end that he might preserve 
 the waters for his own drinking, in their natural freshness 
 and purity. Nor was it diflScult thus to secure them, they 
 rising under ground, and having no avenue to them but by 
 a little hole, like to the mouth of a narrow well. Through 
 this hdle you descend directly down, but not without some 
 difficulty, for about four yards, and then arrive in a vaulted 
 room, fifteen paces long, and eight broad. Joining to this 
 is another room, of the same fashion, but somewhat less. 
 Both these rooms are covered with handsome stone arches, 
 very ancient, and perhaps the work of Solomon himself. 
 Below the pools here runs down a narrow rocky valley, 
 enclosed on both sides with high mountains. This the 
 friars will have to be the enclosed garden alluded to in the 
 same place of the Canticles before cited. What truth there 
 may be in this conjecture, I cannot absolutely pronounce. 
 As to the pools, it is probable enough they maybe the same 
 with Solomon's ; there not being the like store of excellent 
 spring-water to be met with anywhere else throughout all 
 Palestine. (Maundrell.) — Burder. 
 
 Feirouz, a vizier, having divorced his wife Chemsen- 
 nissa, on suspicion of criminal conversation with the sultan, 
 the brothers of Chemsennissa applying for redress to their 
 judge, " My lord," said they, -'we had rented to Feirouz 
 a most delightful garden, a"^ terrestrial paradise ; he took 
 possession of it, encompassed with high walls, and planted 
 with the most beautiful trees, that bloomed with flowers and 
 fruit. He has broken down the walls, plucked the tender 
 flowers, devoured the finest fruit, and would noAV restore 
 to us this garden, robbed of every thing that contributed to 
 render it delicious, when we gave him admission to it." 
 Feirouz, in his defence, and the sultan in his attention to 
 Chemsennissa's innocence, still carry on the same allegory 
 of the garden, as may be seen in the aut]\or.— Border. 
 
 Ver. 16. Awake, O north wind, and come, thou 
 
446 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 south ; blow upon my garden, that the spices 
 thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come 
 into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. 
 
 The suffocating heats wafted on the wings of the south 
 wind from the glowing sands of the desert, are felt more or 
 less in all the oriental regions ; and even in Italy itself, al- 
 though far distant from the terrible wastes of the neigh- 
 bouring continents, where they produce a general languor, 
 and difficulty of respiration. A wind so fatal or injurious 
 to the people of the East, must be to them an object of alarm 
 or dismay. Yet, in the Song of Solomon, its pestilential 
 blast is invited by the spouse to come and blow upon her 
 garden, and waft its fragrance to her beloved. If the south 
 winds in Judea are as oppressive as they are in Barbary 
 and Egypt, and as the winds from the desert are at Aleppo, 
 (which, according to Russel, are of the same nature as the 
 south winds in Canaan ;) or if they are only very hot, as 
 Le Bruin certainly found them in October, would the 
 spouse have desired the north wind to depart, as Bochart 
 renders it, and the south wind to blow 1 The supposition 
 cannot be admitted. An inspired writer never departs 
 from the strictest truth and propriety in the use of figures, 
 according to the rules of oriental composition ; and there- 
 fore a meaning directly opposite must be the true one, to 
 correspond with the physical character of that wind. The 
 nature of the prayer also requires a different version ; for 
 is it to be supposed that the spouse, in the same breath, 
 would desire two directly opposite winds to blow upon her 
 garden 1 It now remains to inquire, if the original text 
 will admit of another version ; and it must be evident, that 
 the only difficulty lies in the term which we render. Come 
 thou. Now the verb bo, signifies both to come and to de- 
 part ; literally, to remove from one place to another. In 
 this sense of going or departing, it is used in the prophecies 
 of Jonah twice in one verse : " He found a ship (baa) go- 
 ing to Tarshish ; so he paid the fare thereof, and went down 
 into it (labo) to go with them." It occurs again in this 
 sense in the book of Ruth, and is so rendered in our trans- 
 lation : " He went (vayabo) to lie down at the end of the 
 heap of corn." The going down or departure of the sun, 
 is expressed by a derivative of the same verb in the book 
 of Deuteronomy : " Are they not on the other side Jordan, 
 by the way where the sun goeth dovm ?" Joshua uses it in 
 the same sense : " Unto the great sea, (Mebo,) towards the 
 goiiig down of the sun, shall be your coast." The passage, 
 then, under consideration, may be rendered in this manner, 
 putting the address to the south wind in a parenthesis : 
 Arise, O north wind, (retire, thou south,) blow upon my 
 garden, let the spices thereof flow forth, that my beloved 
 may come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. 
 
 This conclusion, were any confirmaUon necessary to es- 
 tablish so plain a truth, is verified by the testimony of Le 
 Bruin, already quoted, who, in the course of his travels in 
 Palestine, found, from experience, that it produced an op- 
 pressive heat, not the gentle and inviting warmth which 
 Sanctius supposed. No traveller, so far as the writer has 
 been able to discover, gives a favourable account of the 
 south wind ; consequently, it cannot be an object of desire; 
 the view therefore which Hermer first gave of this text, is, 
 
 in every respect, entitled to the preference: "Awake, O 
 ■sorth wind, (depart, thou south,) blow upon my garden, that 
 
 he spices thereof may flow out."— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 2. I sleep, but my heart waketh : it is the 
 voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, 
 Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my 
 undefiled : for my head is filled with dew, and 
 my locks with the drops of the night. 
 
 See on ch. 6. 9. 
 
 Ver. 4. My beloved put in his hand by the hole 
 of the doot , and my bowels were moved for 
 him. 
 
 In the capital of Egypt, also, all their locks and keys are 
 of wood ; they have iione of iron, not even for their city 
 gates, which may with ease be opened without a key. The 
 keys, or bits of timber, with little pieces of wire, lift up 
 
 other pieces of wire that are in the lock, and enter into 
 certain little holes, out of which the ends of the wires that 
 are in the key have just expelled the corresponding wires ; 
 upon which the gate is opened. But to accomplish this, 
 a key is not necessary; the Egyptian lock is so imperfectly 
 made, that one may without diflSculty open it with his fin- 
 ger, armed with a little soft paste. The locks in Canaan, 
 at one time, do not seem to have been made with greater 
 art, if Solomon allude to the ease with which they were 
 frequently opened without a key: " My beloved put in his 
 hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved 
 for him"." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. I rose up to open to my beloved : and my 
 hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with 
 sweet-smelling-myrrh, upon the handles of the 
 lock. 
 
 When the spouse rose from her bed to open to her be- 
 loved, her hand dropped niyrrh, (balsam,) and her fingers 
 sweet-smelling myrrh, on the handles of the lock. In this 
 remark, she seems to allude rather to a liquid than a pow- 
 der ; for the word rendered dropped, signifies to distil as 
 the heavens or the clouds do rain, or as the mountains are 
 said to distil new wine from the vines planted there, or as 
 the inverted cups of lilies shed their roscid or honey drops. 
 The same term is figuratively applied to words or dis- 
 course, which are said to distil as the dew, and drop as the 
 rain ; but still the allusion is to some liquid. As a noun, it 
 is the name of .stacte, or myrrh, distilling from the tree of its 
 own accord, without incision. Again, the word rendered 
 sweet-smelling signifies passing off, distilling, or trickling 
 down; and, therefore, in its present connexion, more na- 
 turally refers to a fluid than to a dry powder. If these ob- 
 servations be just, it will not be difficult to ascertain the 
 real sense of the passage. 
 
 When the spouse rose from her bed, to open the door of 
 her apartment, she hastily prepared to receive her beloved, 
 by washing herself with "myrrh and water; or, according 
 to an established custom in the East, by anointing her 
 he^d with liquid essence of balsam: a part of which, in 
 either case, might remain on her hands and fingers, and 
 from them trickle down on the handles of the lock. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. The watchmen that weyit about the city 
 found me, they smote me, they wounded me ; 
 the keepers of the walls took away my veil 
 from me. 
 
 See on Ezek. 33. 2. 
 
 They plucked off her veil, in order to discover who she 
 was. It is well known that the eunuchs, in the eastern 
 countries, are at present authorized to treat the females un- 
 der their charge in this manner. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. My beloved is whjte and ruddy, the 
 chiefest among ten thousand. 
 
 In our translation, the church represents her Saviour as 
 the standard-bearer in the armies of the living God. "My 
 beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thou- 
 sand ;" or, according to the margin, a standard-bearer 
 among ten thousand. These phrases are made synony- 
 mous, on the groundless supposition that a standard-bearer 
 is the chief of the company; for among the modern Orien- 
 tals, a standard-bearer is not the chief, more than among 
 the nations of Europe. He is, on the contrary, the lowe.st 
 commissioned officer in the corps who bears the colours. 
 This, however, seems to be merely a mistake of our trans- 
 lators, in rendering the phrase dagul meribahah. If we un- 
 derstand by the word dagul, such a flag as is carried at the 
 head of our troops, then, as the Hebrew participle is the 
 pahul, which has a passive, and not an active sense, it must 
 signify one before whom a standard is borne ; not the per- 
 son who lifts up and displays it, but him m whose honour 
 the standard is displaved. It was not a mark of superior 
 dignity in the East to displav the standard, but it was a mark 
 of dignity and honour to have the standard earned before 
 one; and the same idea seems to be entertained in other 
 parts of the -voM. The passage, ^hen, is nghtiy translate*? 
 
CttAP. 5—7. 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 447 
 
 thus : My beloved is white and ruddy, and honourable, as 
 one before whom, or around whom, ten thousand standards 
 are borne. 
 
 The compliment is returned by her Lord in these words : 
 '• Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Je- 
 rusalem, terrible as an army with banners ;" and again, 
 " Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the 
 moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners V 
 Mr. Harmer imagines that these texts refer to a marriage 
 procession, surrounded with flambeaux. But what is terri- 
 ble in a company of women, even although." dressed in 
 rich attire, surrounded with nuptial flambeaux," blazing 
 ever so fiercely 7 Besides, his view sinks the last member 
 of the comparison, and, indeed, seems to throw over it an 
 air of ridicule: Who is this that looketh forth as the morn- 
 ing, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and dazzling, like a 
 bride lighted home with flambeaux 1 The common trans- 
 lation certainly sustains much better the dignity of the last 
 clause, while it gives the genume meaning of (cn) aim, 
 which, in every passage of scripture where it occurs, signi- 
 fies either terrible, or the tumult and confusion of mind 
 which terror produce>. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 12. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the 
 rivers of water, washed with milk, and fitly set. 
 
 Hebrew, for fitly set, " sitting in fulness ;" that is, " fitly 
 placed, and set as a precious stone in the foil of a ring." 
 " See that youth, what a beautiful eye he has ! it is like a 
 sapphire set in silver ;" which means, the metal represents 
 the white and the blue, the other part of the eye. The 
 eyes of their more sacred idols are made of precious stones. 
 " Washed with milk." Though people thus wash them- 
 selves after a funeral, the custom is also spoken of by way 
 of figure, as a matter of great joy. " Oh ! yes, they are a 
 happy pair ; they wash themselves with milk." " The joy 
 is as great as being bathed in milk." But some do thus ac- 
 tually wash their bodies three or four times a month, and 
 the effect is said to be cooling and pleasing. I suppose, 
 however, it arises as much from an idea of luxury, as any 
 other cause. The residence of the god Vishnoo is said to 
 be surrounded by a sea of milk, which may also be an- 
 other reason to induce the devotee thus to bathe himself, — 
 Roberts. 
 
 The eyes of a dove, always brilliant and lovely, kindle 
 with peculiar delight by the side of a crystal brook, for this 
 is her favourite haunt ; here she loves to wash and to 
 quench her thirst. But the inspired writer seems to inti- 
 mate, that not satisfied with a single rivulet, she delights 
 especially in those places which are watered with numer- 
 ous streams, whose full flowing tide approaches the height 
 of the banks, and offers her an easy and abundant supply. 
 They seem as if they were washed with milk, from their 
 shining whiteness ; and fitly, rather fully set, like a gem 
 set in gold, neither too prominent nor too depressed, but 
 so formed as with nice adaptation to fill up the socket. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. His legs are as pillars of marble set 
 upon sockets of fine gold ; his countenance is 
 as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. 
 
 " His thighs are as pillars of marble, fixed upon pedes- 
 tals of fine gold ;" alluding to his sandals bound on his feet 
 with golden ribands ; or, perhaps, expressive of the feet 
 themselves, as being of a redder tincture than the legs and 
 thighs. The Asiatics used to die their feet of a deep red 
 colour. Thus the lover in Gitagovinda says, O damsel, 
 shall I die red with the juice of alactaca, those beautiful 
 feet, which will make the full-blown land lotos blush with 
 shame 7 (Sir W. Jones.) — Burdek. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 4. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tir- 
 zah ; comely as Jerusalem ; terrible as an army 
 with banners. 
 
 This and the next chapter give an idea of what were the 
 notions of beauty in the bride ; she was like the city of Tir- 
 zah, belonging to the tribe of Ephraim. A handsome Hin- 
 doo female is compared to the sacred city of Seedambaram. 
 The following, also, are signs of beauty in an eastern wo- 
 
 man : her skin is the colour of gold ; her hands, naiis, and 
 soles of the feet, are of a reddish hue ; her limbs must be 
 smooth, and her gait like the stately swan. Her feet are 
 small, like the beautiful lotus ; her waist is slender as the 
 lightning ; her arms are short, and her fingers resemble the 
 five petals of the kantha flower ; her breasts are like the 
 young cocoa-nut, and her neck is as the trunk of the areca- 
 tree. Her mouth is like the ambal flower, and her lips as 
 coral ; her teeth are like beautiful pearls ; her nose is high, 
 and lifted up, like that of the chameleon, (when raised to 
 snuflTthe wind ;) her eyes are like the sting of a wasp, and 
 the karungu-vally flower ; her brows are like the bow, and 
 nicely separated ;" and her hair is as the black cloud.— Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 9. My dove, my undefiled, is hut one : she 
 is the only one of her mother, she is the choice 
 one of her that bare her. 
 
 The conjugal chastity of the dove has been celebrated 
 by every writer, who has described or alluded to her char- 
 acter. She admits but of one mate ; she never forsakes 
 him till death puts an end to their union; and never aban- 
 dons of her own accord, the nest which their united labour 
 has provided. jElian, and other ancient writers, affirm, 
 that the turtle and the wood-pigeon punish adultery with 
 death. The black pigeon, when her mate dies, obstinately 
 rejects the embraces of another, and continues in a wid- 
 owed state for life. Hence, among the Egyptians, a black 
 pigeon was the symbol of a widow who declmed to enter 
 again into the marriage relation. This fact was so well 
 known, or at least so generally admitted among the an- 
 cients, that Tertullian endeavours te establish the doctrine 
 of monogamy by the example of that bird. These facts 
 have been transferred by later authors to the widowed tur- 
 tle, which, dea,f to the solicitations of another mate, con- 
 tinues, in mournful strains, to deplore her loss, till death 
 puts a period to her sorrows. These facts unfold the true 
 reason, that the church is by Solomon so frequently com- 
 pared to the dove. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. I went down into the garden of nuts, to 
 see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether 
 the vine flourished, and the pomegranates 
 budded. 
 
 See on ch. 7. 11, 12. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 1. How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O 
 prince's daughter ! the joints of thy thighs are 
 like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning 
 workman. 
 
 The word rendered joints means the concealed dress, or 
 drawers, which are still worn by the Moorish and Turkish 
 women of rank. Lady M. W. Montague, in describing her 
 Turkish dress, says, " the first part of my dress is a pair 
 of drawers, very full, that reaches down to my shoes, and 
 conceals the legs more modestly than your petticoats ; they 
 are of a thin, rose-coloured damask, brocaded with flowers." 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 3. Thy two breasts are like two young roes 
 
 that are twins. 
 See on ch. 2. 8. 
 
 Ver. 4. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory ; thine 
 eyes like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the 
 gate of Bathrabbim ; thy nose is as the tower 
 of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus. 
 
 Whatever is majestic and comely in the human coun- 
 tenance ; whatever commands the reverence, and excites 
 the love of the beholder, — Lebanon, and its towering ce- 
 dars, are employed by the sacred writers to express. In 
 the commendation of the church, the countenance of her 
 Lord is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars : while in the 
 eulogium which he pronounces on his beloved, one fea- 
 ture of her countenance is compared to the highest peak 
 of that mountain, to the Sannin, which rises, with majestic 
 
448 
 
 SOLOMON'S SONG. 
 
 Chap. & 
 
 grandeur, above the tallest cedars that adorn its summits : 
 " Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon, which looketh 
 towards Damascus." Calmet imagines, with no small degree 
 of probability, that the sacred writer alludes to an elegant 
 tower of white marble, which, m his days, crowned the 
 summit of a lofty precipice, at the foot of which the river 
 Barrady foams, about the distance of two miles from Da- 
 mascus. When Maundrell visited the place, he found a 
 small structure, like a sheik's sepulchre, erected on the 
 highest point of the precipice, where it had probably stood. 
 From this elevated station, which forms a part of Leba- 
 non, the traveller enjoyed the most perfect view of the city. 
 S: charming was the landscape, so rich and diversified the 
 scenery, that he confessedly found it no easy matter to tear 
 himself away from the paradise of delights which bloomed 
 at his feet. Nor was a very late traveller less delighted 
 with this most enchanting prospect. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 5. Thy head upon thee is like Carmel, and 
 the hair of thy head like purple ; the King is 
 held in the galleries. 
 
 The only remarkable mountain on the western border 
 of Canaan, is Carmel, which lies on the seacoast, at the 
 south end of the tribe of Asher, and is frequently men- 
 tioned in the sacred writings. On this mountain, which is 
 very rocky, and about two thousand feet in height, the 
 prophet Elijah fixed his residence : and the monks of the 
 Greek church, who have a convent upon it, show the in- 
 quisitive stranger the grotto, neatly cut out in the Solid rock, 
 where, at a distance from the tumult of the world, the ven- 
 erable seer reposed. At the distance of a league are two 
 fountains, which they^pretend the prophet, by his miracu- 
 lous powers, made to spring out of the earth ; and lower 
 down, towards the foot of the mountain, is the cave where 
 he instructed the people. It is an excavation in the rock, 
 cut very smooth, both above and below, of about twenty 
 paces in length, fifteen in breadth, and very high ; and 
 Thevenot, who paid a visit to the monks of Mount Car- 
 mel, pronounces it one of the finest grottoes that can be 
 seen. The beautiful shape and towering height of Carmel, 
 furnish Solomon with a striking simile, expressive of the 
 loveliness and majesty of the church in the eyes of her 
 Redeemer: " Thy head upon thee is like Carmel, and the 
 hair of thy head like purple; the King is held in the gal- 
 leries." The mountain itself is nothing but rock. The 
 monks, however, have with great labour covered some parts 
 of it with soil, on which they cultivate flowers and fruits 
 of various kinds ; but the fields around have been celebra- 
 ted in all ages for the extent of their pastures, and the rich- 
 ness of their verdure. So great was the fertility of this 
 region, that, in the language of the sacred writers, the name, 
 Carmel, is often equivalent to a fruitful field. This was 
 undoubtedly the reason that the covetous and churlish Na- 
 bal chose it for the range of his numerous flocks and herds. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. I said, I will go up to the palm-tree, I 
 will take hold of the boughs thereof; now also 
 thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and 
 the smell of thy nose like apples. 
 
 See on ch. 2. 3. 
 
 Ver. 1 1 . Come, my beloved, let us go forth into 
 the field; let us lodge in the village. 12. Let 
 ug get up early to the vineyards ; let us see if 
 the vine flourish, whether the tender grape ap- 
 pear, and the pomegranates bud forth : there 
 will I give thee my loves. 
 
 In the gardens around Aleppo, commodious villas are 
 built, for the use of the inhabitants, to which they retire 
 during the oppressive heats of summer. Here, amid the 
 wild and almost impervious thickets of pomegranate, and 
 other fruit-bearing trees, the languid native and exhaust- 
 ed traveller find a delightful retreat from the scorching 
 beams of the sun. A similar custom of retiring into the 
 country, and taking shelter in the gardens, at that season, 
 appears to have been followed in Palestine, in ages very 
 remote. 
 
 The exquisite pleasure which an Oriental feels, while he 
 reclines under the deep shade of the pomegranate, the apple, 
 and other fruitful trees, in the Syrian gardens, which, uni- 
 ting their branches over his head, defend him from the 
 glowing firmament, is well described by Russel. " Revived 
 by the freshening breeze, the purling of the brooks, and the 
 verdure of the groves, his ear will catch the melody of the 
 nightingale, delightful beyond what is heard in England ; 
 with conscious gratitude to heaven, he will recline on the 
 simple mat, and bless the hospitable shelter. Beyond the 
 limits of the gardens, hardly a vestige of verdure remains > 
 the fields are turned into a parched and naked waste." Iii 
 Persia, Mr. Martyn found the heat of the external air quite 
 intolerable. In spite of every precaution, the moisture of 
 the body being soon quite exhausted, he grew restless, and 
 thought he should have lost his senses, and concluded, thai 
 though he might hold out a day or two, death was inevita- 
 ble. Not only the actual enjoyment of shade and water 
 diflTuses the sweetest pleasure through the panting bosom 
 of an Oriental, but what is almost inconceivable to the na- 
 tive of a northern clime, even the very idea, the simple re- 
 currence of these gratifications to the mind, conveys a lively 
 satisfaction, and a renovating energy to his heart, when 
 ready to fail him in the midst of the burning desert. " He 
 who smiles at the pleasure we received," says Lichtenstein, 
 " from only being reminded of shade, or thinks this ob- 
 servation trivial, must feel the force of an African sun, to 
 have an idea of the value of shade and water." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 2. I would lead thee, and bring thee into 
 my mother's house, who would instruct me : I 
 would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the 
 juice of my pomegranate. 
 
 The fragrant odour of the wines produced in the vine- 
 yards of Lebanon, seems chiefly to have attracted the no- 
 tice of our translators. This quality is either factitious or 
 natural. The Orientals, not satisfied with the fragrance 
 emitted by the essential oil of the grape, frequently put 
 spices into their wines, to increase their flavour. To this 
 practice Solomon alludes in these words : " I would cause 
 thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegra- 
 nate." But Savary, in his Letters on Greece, affirms, that 
 various kinds of naturally perfumed wines, are produced 
 in Crete and some of the neighbouring islands : and the 
 wine of Lebanon, to which the sacred writer alludes, was 
 probably of the same species. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal 
 upon thine arm : for love is strong as death ; 
 jealousy is cruel as the grave : the coals thereof 
 are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement 
 flame. 
 
 When a husband is going to a distant country, the wife 
 says to him, " Ah ! place me as a seal upon thy heart," i. e. 
 let me be impressed on thy affections, as the seal leaves its 
 impression upon the wax. " Let not your arms embrace 
 another ; let me only be sealed there :" " for love is strong 
 as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave." — Roberts. 
 
 This alludes to jewels, having the name or portrait of 
 the beloved person engraved on it, and worn next the heart, 
 or on the arm. In the pictures of the eastern princesses 
 and heroines, there is sometimes a large square jewel on 
 the forepart of the arm, a little below the shoulder. " When 
 all the persons had assembled in the divan, every one re- 
 mained sitting or standing in his place without moving, till 
 in about half an hour came two kapudschis, one of whom 
 carried the imperial signet-ring, and presented it to the 
 grand vizier, who arose from his sofa, and received the 
 signet-ring with a kind of bow, kissed it, put it on his 
 hand, took it off" again, and put it in the bag in which it 
 had been before, and placed both in a pocket at the left 
 side of his kaftan, as it were upon his heart." (Schultz.) 
 
 — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. Make haste, my beloved, and be thou 
 like to a roe, or to a young hart, upon the 
 mountains of spices. 
 
 See on ch. 2. 8. 9. 
 
ISAIAH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 3. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass 
 his master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my 
 people doth not consider. 
 
 " Ah ! my children, my cows and my sheep know me 
 well; but you cease to acknowledge me." "Alas! alas! my 
 cattle know me better than my wife ; I will go and live with 
 them, for their love is sincere to me. I will not remain 
 any longer in such a family ; henceforth the affectionate 
 cattle shall be my companions, they shall be my children." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cot- 
 tage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of 
 cucumbers, as a besieged city. 
 
 This was a little temporary hut, covered with boughs, 
 straw, turf, or the like materials, for a shelter from the 
 heat by day, and the cold and dews by night, for the watch- 
 man that kept the garden, or vineyard, during the short 
 season while the fruit was ripening, (Job xxvii. 18.) and 
 presently removed when it had served that purpose. ' The 
 eastern people were probably obliged to have such a con- 
 stant watch to defend the fruit from the jackals. " The 
 jackal," says Hasselquist, " is a species of mustela, which is 
 very common in Palestine, especially during the vintage, 
 and often destroys whole vineyards, and gardens of cucum- 
 bers." — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 9. Except the Lord of hosts had left unto 
 us a very small remnant, we should have been 
 as Sodom, and we should have been like unto 
 Gomorrah. 
 
 See on Job 4. 9. 
 
 Ver. 18. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
 be as white as snow ; though they be red like 
 crimson, they shall be as wool. 
 
 This, by many, is believed to refer to the strength ofcthe 
 colour, and to the difficulty of discharging it : and though I 
 do not presume to contradict that opinion, it may perhaps 
 be suggested to have an additional meaning. Dr. Adam 
 Clarke says, " Some copies have (tD^jars) ke-shanim, like 
 crimson garments." 
 
 The iniquities of Israel had become very great. In the 
 10th verse the rulers are addressed as if of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah ; and in the 21st, it is said the faithful city had 
 become a harlot. In the 29th, " They shall be ashamed 
 of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be con- 
 founded for the gardens that ye have chosen." Is it not 
 certain that these references to Sodom, to a harlot, and the 
 gardens, allude to the wickedness, the idolatry, and the 
 union which Israel had formed with the heathen 1 For 
 what purposes were the gardens or groves used, of which 
 the frequenters were to be ashamed 1 No doubt, for the 
 same as those in the East at the present day. The courte- 
 sans of the temples receive those in the groves, who are 
 ashamed to go to their houses. Those wretched females 
 are called Soli-Jcillikal, i. e. parrots of the grove. " The 
 wicked youth is always gathering flowers in the grove." 
 " Thou hideous wretch! no one will marry thee; thou art 
 not fit for the grove." (See on chap. Ixvi. 17.) 
 
 Scarlet, or crimson, was the favourite colour of the an- 
 cient heathen prostitutes. (Jer. iv. 30.) " And when thou 
 art spoiled, what wilt thou do 1 Though thou clothest thy- 
 self with CRIMSON, though thou deckest thee with orna- 
 57 
 
 ments of gold, thougn thou rentest thy face with painting, 
 in vain shalt thou make thyself fair ; thy lovers will de- 
 spise thee." This is an exact description of the dress, and 
 other modes of alliirement, used by a female of the same 
 character, at this day. (Rev. xvii. 4.) " The woman was 
 arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with 
 gold and precious stones and pearls ; having a golden cup 
 in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her for- 
 nication: And upon her forehead was a name written, 
 Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots 
 and Abominations of the Earth." In that most vivid 
 description of Ezekiel (chap, xxii.) of the idolatries of Sa- 
 maria and Jerusalem, they are represented as two harlots, 
 and there such disclosures are made as convey a most 
 frightful picture of the depravity of the people. " She in- 
 creased her whoredoms : for when she saw men portray- 
 ed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed 
 with vermilion." Her paramours, also, were " exceeding 
 in DIED attire upon their heads." The sacred prostitutes 
 of the temple always have their garments of scarlet, crim- 
 son, or vermilion. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 22. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine 
 mixed with water. 
 
 This is an image used for the adulteration of wine with 
 more propriety than may at first appear, if what Thevenot 
 says of the peopie of the Levant of late times, were true of 
 them formerly. " They never mingle water with their 
 wine to drink, but drink by itself what water they think 
 proper for abating the strength of the wine." It is remark- 
 able, that whereas the Greeks and Latins, by mixed wine, 
 always understood wine diluted and lowered with water, 
 the Hebrews, on the contrary, generally mean by it, wine 
 made stronger and more inebriating, by the addition of 
 higher and more powerful ingredients, such as honey, 
 spices, defrutum, (or wine inspissated by boiling it down 
 to two thirds, or one half of the quantity,) myrrh, man- 
 dragora, opiates, and other strong drugs. Such were the 
 exhilarating, or rather stupifying ingredients, which Helen 
 mixed in the bowl, together with the wine, for her guests 
 oppressed with grief, to raise their spirits, the composition 
 of which she had learned in Egypt. Such was the spiced 
 wine mentioned Solomon's Song viii. 2 ; and how much 
 the eastern people, to this day, deal in artificial liquors of 
 prodigious strength, the use of wine being forbidden, may 
 be seen in a curious chapter of Kempfer, upon that subject. 
 — Lowth. 
 
 Ver. 25. And I will turn my hand upon thee, 
 and purely purge away thy dross, and take 
 away all thy tin. 
 
 The propriety of the denunciation will appear from the 
 following circumstance : " Silver, of all the metals, suf- 
 fers' most from an admixture of tin, a very small quantity 
 serving to make that metal as brittle as glass ; and, what 
 is worse, being with difficulty separated from it again. The 
 very vapour of tin has the same effect as the metal itself, on 
 silver, gold, and copper, rendering them brittle." (New and 
 Complete Dictionary of Arts, art. Tin.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 29. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks 
 which ye have desired, and ye shall be con- 
 founded for the gardens that ye have chosen. 
 
 In the language of the Hebrews, every place where plants 
 and trees were cultivated with greater care than in the open 
 field, was called a garden. The idea of such an enclosure 
 was certainly borrowed from the garden of Eden, which 
 the bountiful Creator planted for the reception of his fa- 
 
450 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 1—3. 
 
 vourite creature. The garden of Hesperides, in eastern 
 fables, was protected by an enormous serpent; and the 
 gardens of Adonis, among the Greeks, may be traced to 
 the same origin ; for the terms " horti Adonides," the gar- 
 dens of Adonis, were used by the ancients to signify gar- 
 dens of pleasure, which corresponds with the name of 
 Paradise, or the garden of Eden, as horti Adonis answers 
 to the garden of the Lord. Besides, the gardens of primi- 
 tive nations were commonly, if not in every instance, de- 
 voted to religious purposes. In these shady retreats were 
 celebrated, for a long succession of ages, the rites of pagan 
 superstition. Thus, Jehovah calls the apostate Jews, '' a 
 |(eople that provoked me continually to anger to my face, 
 that sacrificeth in gardens." And in a preceding chapter, 
 the prophet threatens them in the name of the Lord : " They 
 shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and 
 ye shall be confounded for the gardens which ye have 
 chosen." The inspired writer not only mentions these gar- 
 dens, but also makes a clear allusion to the tree of life, or 
 rather of knowledge, both of which were placed in the 
 midst of Paradise. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 30. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf 
 fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water. 
 
 See on Ps. \. 3. 
 
 In the hotter parts of the eastern countries, a constant 
 supply of water is so absolutely necessary for the cultiva- 
 tion, and even for the preservation and existence of a gar- 
 den, that should it want water but for a few days, every 
 thing in it would be burnt up with the heat, and totally de- 
 stroyed. There is ther.efore no garden whatever in those 
 countries, but what has such a certain supply, either from 
 some neighbouring river, or from a reservoir of water 
 collected from springs, or filled with rain-water in the pro- 
 per season, in sufficient quantity to afford ample provision 
 for the rest of the year. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 Ver. 4. Ana he shall judge among the nations, 
 and shall rebuke many people; and they shall 
 beat their swords into ploughshares, and their 
 spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift 
 up sword against nation, neither shall ihey 
 learn war any more. 
 
 See on Joel 3. 10. 
 
 Ver. 8. Their land also is full of idols ; they wor- 
 ship the w^ork of their own hands, that which 
 their own fingers have made. 
 
 This is a true and literal description of India: the travel- 
 ler cannot proceed a mh^e, through an inhabited country, 
 without seeing idols and vestiges of idolatry in every direc- 
 tion. See their vessels, their implements of husbandry, 
 their houses, their furniture, their ornaments, their sacred 
 trees, their domestic and public temples ; and they all de- 
 clare that the land is full of idols. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, 
 that are high and lifted up, and upon all the 
 oaks of Bashan. 
 
 See on Deut. 3. 25. 
 
 Ver. 20. In that day a man shall cast his idols of 
 silver, and his idols of gold, which they made 
 each one for himself to worship, to the moles, 
 and to the bats. 
 
 This, no doubt, refers to the total destruction of idolatry. 
 " To the bats," ( Vivals^) those of the smaller species ; as the 
 larger are eaten by the Hindoos, and were also used as an 
 article of food by the Assyrians. The East maybe termed 
 the country of bats; they hang by hundreds and thousands 
 \n caves, ruins, and under the roofs of large buildings. To 
 enter such places, especially afier rain, is most offensive. 
 I have lived in rooms where it was Sickening to remain, on 
 accQunt of the smell produced by those creatures, and 
 Avhence it was almost impo.ssible to expel them. What 
 liom the appearance of the creature, its sunken diminutive 
 
 eye, its short legs, (with which it cannot walk,) its leather- 
 like wings, its half-hairy, oily skin, its offensive ordure ever 
 and anon dropping on the ground, its time for food and 
 sport, darkness, " when evil spirits also range abroad," 
 makes it one of the most disgusting creatures to the people 
 of the East. No wonder, then, that its name is used by th'^ 
 Hindoos (as by the prophet) tor an epithet of contempt 
 When a house ceases to please the inhabitants, on account 
 of being haunted, they say, (and also do,) give it to the bats. 
 " Alas ! alas ! my wife and children are dead ; my houses, 
 my buildings, are all given to the bats." " The bats are 
 now the possessors of the once splendid mar.sions of royal- 
 ty." People ask, when passing a tenantless house, " Why 
 is this habitation given to the bats 1" " Go, miscreant, go, 
 or I will give thee to the bats." " The old magician has 
 been swearing we shall all be given to the bats."— Roberts. 
 The bat is a winged quadruped, the link which connects 
 the four-footed animal and the bird. It is a most deformed 
 and hideous creature, which uniformly endeavours to shun 
 the light of day, as if conscious of its disgusting aspect, and 
 fixes its abode m the horrid cavern, or the ruined habitation. 
 The great, or Ternat bat, belongs to the East, and was not 
 altogether unknown to the ancients. It is noted for its cru- 
 elty, voracity, and filthiness. It is more mischievous tha.n 
 any other species of bat; but it carries on the work of de- 
 struction by open force, both during the night and day. It 
 kills poultry and small birds ; attacks men, and often wounds 
 them in the face. This unsightly animal, says Forbes, 
 fixes its dwelling among owls and noxious reptiles in the 
 desolate to"wer, or lonely, unfrequented mausoleum, which 
 it seldom or never leaves, except in the dusk of evening. 
 In the East, where they grow to an enormous size, their 
 stench is so intolerable that it is impossible to remain many 
 seconds to examine the place. Into the vault or trench o'f 
 the mole, and those dismal abodes frequented by the Ter- 
 nat bats, which man can scarcely endure to visit, the idola- 
 ter, terrified by the destructive judgments of a just and 
 righteous God, shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols oi" 
 gold, which he made for himself to worship; regardless of 
 their intrinsic value, ashamed of the trust he reposed in 
 them, and distracted by the terrors of the Almighty, he 
 shall cast them in desperation and scorn out of his sight, 
 that, freed from the useless encumbrance, he may escape for 
 his life. " In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, 
 and his idols of gold, which they made each one for him- 
 self to worship, to the moles, arid to the bats." Instead of 
 building magnificent temples for their reception, where no- 
 thing to offend the senses is permitted to enl'er ; instead of 
 watching over them with scrupulous care, devoting their 
 days, their riches, and all they possess, to their service, in- 
 stead of adoring them with insensate prostrations and of- 
 ferings, they shall cast them to creatures so vile or danger- 
 ous, into places so dismal and loathsome, as to preclude the 
 possibility of returning to their idolatrous practices. Or to 
 cast their idols to the moles and the bats, may signify the 
 utter destruction of these objects of worship. When the 
 Greeks said, ]ia'\\'' es KopuKas, cast him to the ravens, the 
 meaning was, cast him to destruction : and this prophecy 
 may refer to a proverbial expression among the Jews of 
 similar import. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 15. What mean ye that ye beat my people 
 to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith 
 the Lord God of hosts. 
 
 " Ah ! my lord, do not thus crush my face: alas! alas! 
 my nose and other features will soon be rubbed away. Is 
 my face to be made quite flat with grinding? My h^art is 
 squeezed, my heart is squeezed. That head man has been 
 grinding the faces of all his people." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. Moreover, the Lord saith, Because the 
 daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with 
 stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking, 
 and mincing asihcjgo, and making a tinkling 
 with their feet. 
 
 In this, and the next eight verses, we have an accurate 
 description of the ornaments and manners of a Hindoo 
 dancing girl. These females are given by their parents, 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 451 
 
 when they are about seven years of age, to the temples, for 
 the purposes of being taught to sing the praises of the gods ; 
 of dancing before them, during some of their services, or 
 when taken out in procession ; and to be given to the em- 
 braces of the priests and people. Near the temples and the 
 topes, i. e. groves, are houses built for their accommodation, 
 and there they are allowed to receive their paramours. 
 When they become too old for the duties of their profession, 
 their business is »o train the young ones for their diabolical 
 services and pleasures. 
 
 '• Walk with stretched-forth necks." When the females 
 dance, they stretch forth their necks, and hold them awry, 
 as W their heads were about to fall off their shoulders. 
 " Aud wanton eyes." The margin, " deceiving with their 
 eyes." As the votaries glide along, they roll their eyes, 
 (which are painted,) and cast wanton glances on those 
 around. " Walking and mincing ;" margin, " tripping 
 nicely." Some parts of the dance consist of a tripping or 
 mincing step, which they call tatte-tatte. The left foot is 
 put first, and the inside of the right keeps following the 
 heel of the former. " Making a tinkling with their feet." 
 This sound is made by the ornaments which are worn 
 round their ankles. The first is a large silver curb, like 
 that which is attached to a bridle; the second is of the 
 same kind, but surrounded by a great number of small 
 BELi-s ; the third resembles a bracelet; and the fourth is a 
 convex hoo^, about two inches deep, — Roberts. 
 
 Ver, 18. In that day the Lord will take away the 
 bravery of ^Aeir tinkling ornaments about their 
 feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like 
 the moon. 
 
 After the hair is platted and perfumed, the eastern ladies 
 proceed to dress their heads, by tying above the lock into 
 which they collect it, a triangular piece of linen, adorned 
 with various figures in needle-work. This, among persons 
 of better fashion, is covered with a sarmah, as they call it, 
 which is made in the same triangular shape, of thin flexi- 
 ble plates of gold or silver, carefully cut through, and en- 
 graven in imitation of lace, and might therefore answer to 
 (oinncn) kashekarnim, the moon-like ornament mentioned 
 by the prophet in his description of the toilet of a Jewish 
 lady. A handkerchief of crape, gauze, silk, or painted 
 linen, bound close over the sarmah, and falling afterward 
 carelessly upon the favourite lock of hair, completes the 
 head-dress of the Moorish ladies.^ The kerchief is adjust- 
 ed in the morning, and worn through the whole of the day : 
 in this respect it differs from the veil, which is assumed as 
 often as they go abroad, and laid aside when they return 
 home. So elegant is this part of dress in the esteem of the 
 Orientals, that it is worn by females of every age, to height- 
 en their personal charms. In Persia, the prophet Ezekiel 
 informs us, the kerchief was used by women of loose char- 
 acter, for the purpose of seduction"; for so we understand 
 that passage in his writings, " Wo to the women that sew 
 pillows to all arm-holes, and make kerchiefs upon the head 
 of every stature to hunt souls." The oriental ladies delight- 
 ed in ornamenting their dress with devices of embroidery 
 and needle-M^ork ; but it was chiefly about the neck they 
 displayed their taste and ingenuity. To such decorations 
 the sacred writers often allude, which clearly shows how 
 greatly they were valued, and how much they were used. 
 Nor were they confined to the female sex ; they seem to 
 have been equally coveted by the males; and a garment of 
 needle- work was frequently reserved, as the most accepta- 
 ble part of the spoil, for the stern and ruthless warrior. The 
 mother of Sisera, in the fondness of her heart, allotted to 
 her jon the robe curiously wrought with vivid colours on 
 the neck : " To Sisera, a prey of divers colours, a prey of 
 divers colours of needle- work, of divers colours of needle- 
 work on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the 
 spoil." — Paxton. 
 
 " Tinkling ornaments," i. e. those which have been de- 
 scribed. "Cauls;" margin, *' net-works." The caul is a 
 strap, or girdle, about four inches long, which is placed on 
 llie top of the head, and which extends to the brow in a line 
 with the nose. The one I have examined is made of gold, 
 and has many joints ; it contains forty-five rubies, and nine 
 pearls, which give it a net- work appearance. 
 
 " Round tires like the moon." The shape of an orna- 
 ment like the crescent moou is a great favourite in all 
 
 parts of the East. In Judges viii, 21, it is said that Gideon 
 " took away the ornamenis that were on the camels' necks ••' 
 but in the Septuagint, the word ornamenis, is rendered. 
 like Ike moon; so also in the margin of the English Bible. 
 The crescent is worn by Parvati and Siva, from whom pro- 
 ceed the UNGAM, and the principal impurities of the system. 
 No dancing girl is in full dress without her round tires 
 like the moon, — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. The chains, and the bracelets, and the 
 mufflers. 
 
 These consist, first, of one most beautifully worked, with 
 a pendent ornament for the neck; there is also a profusiv-)n 
 of others, which go round the same part, ana rest on the 
 bosom. In making curious chains, the goldsmiths of Eng- 
 land do not surpass those of the East. The Trichinopoly 
 chains are greatly valued by the fair of our own country. 
 The " bracelets" are large ornaments for the wrists, in 
 which are sometimes enclosed small eells. The mufflers 
 are, so far as I can judge, not for the face, but for the 
 breasts . — R oberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. The bonnets, and the ornaments of the 
 legs, and the head-bands, and the tablets, and 
 the ear-rings. 
 
 Besides ornamental rings in the nose and the ears, they 
 wore others round the legs, which made a tinkling as they 
 went. This custom has also descended to the present 
 times ; for Rauwolf met with a number of Arabian women 
 on the Euphrates, whose ankles and wrists were adorned 
 with rings, sometimes a good many together, which moving 
 up and down as they walked, made a great noise. Chardin 
 attests the existence of the same custom in Persia, in Arabia, 
 and in very hot countries, where they commonly go without 
 stockings, but ascribes the tinkling sound to little bells fas- 
 tened to those rings. In the East Indies, golden bells 
 adorned the feet and ankles of the ladies from the earliest 
 tivnes; they placed them in the flowing tresses of their hair ; 
 they suspenaed them round their necks, and to the goldei. 
 rings which they wore on their fingers, to announce their 
 superior rank, and exact the homage which they had a right 
 to expect from the lower orders ; and from the banks of the 
 Indus, it is probable the custom was introduced into the 
 other countries of Asia. The Arabian females in Paie^- 
 tine and Syria, delight in the same ornaments, and, accord- 
 ing to the statements of Dr, Clarke, seem to claim the 
 honour of leading the fashion. " Their bodies are covered 
 with a long blue shift; upon their heads they wear two 
 handkerchiefs; one as a hood, and the other bound over it, 
 as a fillet across the temples. Just above the right nostril, 
 they place a small button, sometimes studded with pearl, a 
 piece of glass, or any other glittering substance ; this is fast- 
 ened by a plug, thrust through the cartilage of the nose. 
 Sometimes they have the cartilaginous separation between 
 the nostrils bored for a ring, as large as those ordinarily 
 used in Europe for hanging curtains ; and this pendant in 
 the upper lip covers the mouth ; so that, in order to eat, it 
 is necessary to raise it. Their faces, hands, and arms, are 
 tattooed, and covered with hideous scars ; their eyelashes 
 and eyes being always painted, or rather dirtied, with some 
 dingy black or blue powder. Their lips are died of a deep 
 and dusky blue, as if they had been eating blackberries. 
 Their teeth are jet black; theirnails and fingers brick red; 
 their wrists, as well as their ankles, are laden with large 
 metal cinctures, studded with sharp pyramidical knobs and 
 bits of glass. Very ponderous rings are also placed in their 
 ears." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 22. The changeable suits of apparel, and the 
 mantles, and the wimples, and the Crispin g- 
 pins. 
 
 The eastern ladies take great pride in having many 
 changes of apparel, because their fashions neves alter 
 Thus, the rich brocades worn by their grandmothers, are 
 equally fashionable for themselves. " The mantles." A 
 loose robe, which is gracefully crossed on the bosom. 
 " Wimples." Probably the fine muslin which is sometimof- 
 thrown over the head and body. " Crisping-pins." This 
 has been translated, the " little pi^rses," or clasps ! Whec 
 
455i 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 the dancing girl is in full dress, hall her long hair is folded 
 in a knot on tne top of the head, ani the other half hangs 
 down her back in three tails. To keep these from unbraid- 
 ing, a small clasp, or gold hoop, curiously worked, is placed 
 at the end of each tail. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. And it shall come to pass, that instead 
 of sweet smell; there shall be stink ; and instead 
 of a g'irdle, a rent ; and instead of well-set hair, 
 baldness ; and instead of a stomacher, a girding 
 of sackcloth ; and burning instead of beauty. 
 
 " Sweet smell." No one ever enters a company without 
 being well perfumed; and in addition to various scents and 
 oils, they are adorned with numerous garlands, made of the 
 most odoriferous flowers. " A girdle." Probably that which 
 goes round the waist, which serves to keep the garments from 
 falling, while the girls are dancing. It is sometimes made 
 of silver. " Well-set hair," No ladies pay more attention 
 to the dressing of the hair than do these ; for as they never 
 wear caps, they take great delight in this, their natural or- 
 nament. " Baldness," in a woman, makes her most con- 
 temptible ; and formerly, to shave their head was a most 
 degrading punishment. " Stomacher." I once saw a dress 
 beautifully plaited and stiffened for the front, but I do not 
 think it common. Here, then, we have a strong proof of 
 the accurate observations of Isaiah in reference to the 
 Jewish ladies ; he had seen their motions, and enumerated 
 their ornaments ; and here we have a most melancholy 
 nicture of the fallen state of " the daughters of Zion." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 The persons of the Assyrian ladies are elegantly clothed 
 and scented with the richest oils and perfumes; and it ap- 
 pears from the sacred scriptures, that the Jewish females 
 did not yield to them in the elegance of their dress, the 
 bfeauty of their ornaments, and the fragrance of their 
 essences. So pleasing to the Redeemer is the exercise of 
 divine grace in the heart and conduct of a true believer : 
 " How much better is thy love ;han wine, and the smell of 
 thine ointments than all spices ? The smell of thy garments 
 is like the smell of Lebanon." When a queen was to be 
 chosen by the king of Persia instead of Vashti, the virgins 
 collected at Susana, the capital, underwent a purification of 
 twelve months' duration, to wit, " six months with oil of 
 myrrh, and six months with sweet odours." The general 
 use of such precious oils and fragrant perfumes among the 
 ancient Romans, particularly among ladies of rank and 
 fashion, may be inferred from these words of Virgil : — 
 
 " Ambrosiseque comae divinum vertice odorem 
 
 Spiravere : pedes vestis fluxit ad imos."— ^w. lib. i. 1. 403. 
 
 *' From her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fra- 
 grance ; her robe hung waving down to the ground." In 
 the remote age of Homer, the Greeks had already learnt 
 the lavish use of such perfumes ; for, in describing Juno's 
 dress, he represents her pouring ambrosia and other per- 
 fumes all over her body. Hence, to an eastern lady, no 
 punishment could be more severe, none more mortifying 
 to her delicacy, than a diseased and loathsome habit of 
 body, instead of a beautiful skin, softened and made agree- 
 able with all that art could devise, and all that nature, so 
 prodigal in those countries of rich perfumes, could supply. 
 Such was the punishment which God threatened to send 
 upon the haughty daughters of Zion, in the days of Isaiah : 
 " And it shall come to pass, that instead of perfume there 
 shall be ill savour; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and in- 
 stead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, 
 a girding of sackcloth; and a sun-burnt skin instead of 
 beauty." 
 
 The description which Pietro della Valle gives of his 
 own wife, an Assyrian lady, born in Mesopotamia, and 
 educated at Bagdad, whom he married in that country, will 
 enable the reader to form a pretty distinct idea of the ap- 
 pearance and ornaments of an oriental lady in full dress. 
 " Her eyelashes, which are long, and according to the 
 custom of the East, dressed with stibulum, (as we often 
 read in the holy scriptures of the Hebrew women of old, 
 and in Xenophon of Astyages, the grandfather of Cyrus, 
 and the Medes of that line,) give a dark, and, at': the same 
 time, a majestic shade to the eyes. The ornaments of 
 gold and of jewels for the head, for the neck, for the arms, 
 for the legs, and for the feet, (for they wear rings even on 
 
 their toes,) are, indeed, unlike those of the Turks, carried to 
 great excess, but not of great value : for in Bagdad, jewels 
 of high price either are not to be had, or are not used ; and 
 they wear such only as are of little value, as turquoises, 
 small rubies, emeralds, carbuncles, garnets, pearls, and the 
 like. My spouse dresses herself with all of them, according 
 to their fashion ; with exception, however, of certain ugly 
 rings, of very large size, set with jewels, which, in truth 
 very absurdly, it is the custom to wear fastened to one ot 
 their nostrils, like buffaloes ; an ancient custom, however, 
 in the East, which, as we find in the holy scriptures, pre- 
 vailed among the Hebrew ladies, even in the time of Sol- 
 omon. These nose-rings, in compliance to me, she has left 
 off; but I have not yet been able to prevail with her cousin, 
 and her sisters, to do the same; so fond are they of an old 
 custom, be it ever so absurd, who have been long habituated 
 to it." — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 26. And her gates shall lament and mourn : 
 and she^ being desolate, shall sit upon the 
 ground. 
 
 Sitting on the ground was a posture that denoted mourn- 
 ing and deep distress. Lam. ii. 10. " We find Judea on 
 several coins of Vespasian and Titus in a posture that 
 denotes sorrow and captivity — sitting on the ground. The 
 Romans might have an eye on the customs of the Jewish 
 nation, as well as those of their own country, in the several 
 marks of sorrow they have set on this figure. The Psalm- 
 ist describes the Jews lamenting their captivit}^ in the same 
 pensive posture : ' By the waters of Babylon we sat down, 
 and wept when we remembered thee, O Zion.' But what 
 is more remarkable, we find Judea represented as a woman 
 in sorrow sitting on the ground, in a passage of the prophet 
 that foretels the very captivity recorded on this medal." 
 (Addison.) — Bijrder. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 1. Now will I sing to my well-beloved a 
 song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My 
 well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful 
 hill : 2. And he fenced it, and gathered out the 
 stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest 
 vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and 
 also made a wine-press therein : and he looked 
 that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought 
 forth wild grapes. 
 
 The wine-press, constructed for expressing the juice of 
 the grapes, does not seem to be a moveable implement in 
 the East; and our Lord, in the parable of the vineyard, 
 says expressly, that it was formed by digging. Chardin 
 found the wirie-press in Persia was made after the same 
 manner; as it was a hollow place dug in the ground, and 
 lined with mason-work. Besides this, they had what the 
 Romans called locus, the lake, a large open place or vessel, 
 which, by a conduit or spout, received the must from the 
 wine-press. In very hot countries it was perhaps necessary, 
 or at least convenient, to have the lake under ground, or in 
 a cave hewed out of the rock for coolness, that the heat 
 might not cause too great a fermentation, and sour the 
 must. To these circumstances the prophet Isaiah dis- 
 tinctly refers, in the beginning of the fifth chapter: "My 
 well-beloved has a vineyard in a very fruitful hill : and he 
 fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted 
 it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of 
 it, and also made a wine-press therein : and he looked that 
 it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild 
 grapes," The tower which the prophet mentions, and 
 which our Lord also introduces into one of his parables, is 
 generally explained by commentators, as designed for the 
 keepers of the vineyard to watch and defend the fruits. But 
 for this purpose it was usual to make a little temporary hut, 
 called in the first chapter, not a tower, but a cottage, which 
 might answer for the short season while the grapes were 
 ripening, and was afterward removed. The tower, there- 
 fore, according to Lowth, means a building of a more per- 
 manent nature and use ; the farm of the vineyard, as we 
 may call it, containing all the offices and implements, and 
 the whole apparatus necessary for cultivating the vineyard 
 
Chap. 6. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 453 
 
 and making the wine. To this image m the allegory, the 
 situation, the manner of building, the use, and the whole 
 service of the temple, exactly answered. They have still 
 such towers for pleasure or use, in their gardens, in the 
 oriental regions ; for Marcus Sanutus, as quoted by Har- 
 mer, informs us, that in the thirteenth century the inhabit- 
 ants of Ptolemais beat down the towers of their gardens to 
 the ground, and removed the stones of them, together with 
 those of their burying-places, on the approach of the Tar- 
 tars. The gardens of Damascus are furnished with the 
 same kind of edifices. In most of the gardens near Aleppo, 
 summer-houses are built for the reception of the public. In 
 others, at a greater distance, are tolerable commodious vil- 
 las, to which the Franks resort in the spring, as the natives 
 do in the summer. " To a tower, or building of this kind, 
 it is to be supposed," says Russel, " our Lord refers in the 
 parable ; for it is scarcely to be imagined that he is speak- 
 ing of the slight and unexpensive buildings in a vineyard, 
 which, indeed, are sometimes so slight as to consist only of 
 four poles, with a floor on the top of them, to which they 
 ascend by a ladder : but rather of those elegant turrets 
 erected in gardens, where the eastern people of fortune 
 spend some considerable part of their lime." But this ex- 
 cellent writer expressly admits that in all the orchards near 
 Aleppo, a small square watch-house is built for the accom- 
 modation of the watchmen in the fruit season, or, in their 
 stead, temporary bowers are constructed of wood, and 
 thatched with green reeds and branches. Small and de- 
 tached square towers for the accommodation of the watch- 
 men appointed to guard the vineyards, are still to be met 
 with in Judea. It is more probably to the substantial 
 Avatch-tower that the Saviour alludes, than either to the 
 offices of the vineyard, or the commodious summer-house. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 2. And built a tower in the midst of it, and 
 made a wine-press therein. 
 
 See on 2 Kings 4. 39. 
 
 Lowth, " And he hewed out also a lake therein." By 
 this expression we are to understand, not the wine-press 
 itself, but what t^e Romans called lacus, the lake, the large 
 open place, or vessel, which by a conduit or spout received 
 the must from the wine-press. In very hot countries it 
 was perhaps necessary, or at least very convenient, to have 
 the lake under ground, or in a cave hewn out of the side of 
 a rock, for coolness, that the heat might not cause too great 
 a fermentation, and sour the wine. The wine-presses in 
 Persia, Chardin says, are formed by making hollow places 
 in the ground, lined with mason's work. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 11. Wo unto them that rise up early in the 
 morning, that they may follow strong drink ; 
 that continue until night, till wine inflame 
 them ! 
 
 The Persians, when they commit a debauch, arise be- 
 times, and esteem the morning a5 the best time for begin- 
 ning to drink wine, by which means they carry on their 
 excess till night. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 18. Wo unto them that draw iniquity with 
 cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart- 
 rope! 
 
 See on Isa. 66. 20. 
 
 Ver. 26. And he will lift up an ensign to the na- 
 tions from far, and will hiss unto them from the 
 end of the earth : and, behold, they shall come 
 with speed swiftly. 
 
 The metaphor is taken from the practice of those that 
 keep bees, who draw them out of their hives into the fields, 
 and lead them back again, by a hiss or a whistle. — Lowth. 
 
 Ver. 28. Whose arrows are sharp, and all their 
 bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted 
 like flint, and their wheels like whirlwind. 
 
 The shoeing of horses with iron plates nailed to the 
 
 hoof, is quite a modern practice, and was unknown to the 
 ancients, as appears from the silence of the Greek and Ro- 
 man writers, especially those that treat of horse-medicine, 
 who could not have passed over a matter so obvious, and of 
 such importance, that now the whole science takes its name 
 from it, being called by us farriery. The horse-shoes of 
 leather and of iron, which are mentioned ; the silver and 
 the gold shoes, with which Nero and Poppea shod their 
 mules, used occasionally to preserve the hoofs of delicate 
 cattle, or for vanity, were of a very different kind ; they en- 
 closed the whole hoof, as in a case, or as a shoe does a man's 
 foot, and were bound, or tied on. For this reason the 
 strength, firmness, and solidity ofa horse's hoof, wasofmuch 
 greater importance with them than with us, and was es- 
 teemed one of the first praises of a fine horse. For want of 
 this artificial defence to the foot, which our horses have, 
 Amos, vi. 12, speaks of it as a thing as much impracticable 
 to make horses run upon a hard rock, as to plough up the 
 .same rock with oxen. These circumstances must be taken 
 into consideration, in order to give us a full notion of the 
 propriety and force of the image by which the prophet sets 
 forth the strength and excellence of the Babylonish cavalry, 
 which made a great part of the strength of the Assyrian 
 army. — Lowth. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 11. Then said I, Lord, how long? And 
 he answered. Until the cities be wasted without 
 inhabitant, and the houses without man, and 
 the land be utterly desolate. 
 
 A public edict of the Emperor Adrian rendered it a capi- 
 tal crime for a Jew to set a foot in Jerusalem, and prohib- 
 ited them from viewing it even at a distance. Heathens. 
 Christians, and Mohammedans, have alternately possessed 
 Judea ; it has been the prey of the Saracens ; the descend- 
 ants of Ishmael have often overrun it ; the children of Israel 
 have alone been denied the possession of it, though thither 
 they ever wish to return ; and though it forms the only spot 
 on earth where the ordinances of their religion can be ob- 
 served. And, amid all the revolutions of states, and the 
 extinction of many nations, in so long a period, the Jews 
 alone have not only ever been aliens in the land of their 
 fathers, but whenever any of them have been permitted, at 
 any period since the time of their dispersion, to sojourn 
 there, they have experienced even more contumelious treat- 
 ment than elsewhere. Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled 
 in the twelfth century through great part of Europe and of 
 Asia, found the Jews everywhere oppressed, particularly in 
 the Holy Land. And to this day (while the Jews who reside 
 in Palestine, or who resort thither in old age, that their bones 
 may not be laid in a foreign land, are alike ill-treated and 
 abused by Greeks, Armenians, and Europeans) the haughty 
 deportment of the despotic Turkish soldier, and the abject 
 state of the poor and helpless Jews, are painted to the life 
 by the prophet, — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 13. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and 27 shall 
 return, and shall be eaten : as a teil-tree, and 
 as an oak, whose substance is in them when 
 they cast their leaves, so the holy seed shall he 
 the substance thereof 
 
 Though the cities be waste, and the land be desolate, it is 
 not from the poverty of the soil that the fieks are abandoned 
 by the plough, nor from any diminution of its ancient and 
 natural fertility, that the land has rested for so many gene- 
 rations. Judea was not forced only by artificial means, or 
 from local and temporary causes, into a luxuriant cultiva- 
 tion, such as a barren country might have been, concerning 
 which it would not have needed a prophet to tell, that if 
 once devastated and abandoned it would ultimately and per- 
 manently revert into its original sterility. Phenicia at all 
 times held a far different rank among the richest countries 
 of the world: and it was not a bleak and steril portion of 
 the earth, nor a land which even many ages of desolation 
 and neglect could empoverish, that God gave in possession 
 and by covenant to the seed of Abraham. No longer cul- 
 tivated as a garden, but left like a wilderness, Judea is 
 indeed greatly changed from what it was ; all that human 
 ingenuity and labour did devise, erect, or cultivate, men 
 
454 
 
 ISAIAH 
 
 Chap. 7, 8. 
 
 have laid waste and desolate ; all the " plenteous goods" 
 with which it was enriched, adorned, and blessed, have 
 fallen like seared and withered leaves, when their green- 
 ness is gone ; and, stripped of its "ancient splendour," it is 
 left as an oak whose leaffadeth : — but its inherent sources of 
 fertility are not dried up; the natural richness of the soil is 
 unblighted: t/ie substance is in it, strong as that of the teil- 
 tree or the solid oak, which retain their substance when 
 jey cast their leaves. And as the leafless oak waits through- 
 out winter for the genial warmth of returning spring, to be 
 clothed with renewed foliage, so the once glorious land of 
 Judea is yet full of latent vigour, or of vegetative power 
 strong as ever, ready to shoot forth, even " belter than at the 
 beginning," whenever the sun of heaven shall shine on it 
 again, and the " holy seed" be prepared for being finally 
 '■ the substance thereof" The svbstance that is in it — which 
 alone has here to be proved — is, in few words, thus de- 
 scribed by an enemy : " The land in the plains is fat and 
 loamy, and exhibits every sign of the greatest fecundity. 
 Were nature assisted by art, the fruits of the most distant 
 countries might be produced within the distance of twenty 
 leagues." " Galilee," says Malte Brun, " would be a para- 
 dise, were it inhabited by an industrious people, under an 
 enlightened government. Vine stocks are to be seen here 
 a foot and a half in diameter." — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 18. And it shall come to pass in that day, 
 that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in 
 the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and 
 for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. 
 
 Some writers have contended that bees are destitute of 
 the sense of hearing ; but their opinion is entirely without 
 foundation. This will appear, if any proof were necessary, 
 from the following prediction: " And it shall come to pass 
 in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the 
 uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt ; and for the bee that 
 is in the landof Assyria." The allusion which this text in- 
 volves, is the practice of calling out the bees from their 
 hives, by a hissing, or whistling sound, to their labour in 
 the fields, and summoning them again to return, when the 
 heavens begin to lower, or the shadows of evening to fall. 
 In this manner, Jehovah threatens to rouse the enemies of 
 Judah, and lead them to the prey. However widely scat- 
 tered, or far remote from the scene of action, they should 
 hear his voice, and with as much promptitude as the bee, 
 that has been taught to recognise the signal of its owner, 
 and obey his call, they should assemble their forces ; and 
 although weak and insignificant as a swarm of bees in the 
 estimation of a proud and infatuated people, they should 
 come, with irresistible might, and take possession of the rich 
 and beautiful region which had been abandoned by its ter- 
 rified inhabitants. — Paxton. 
 
 This insect is called Zimb ; it has not been described by 
 any naturalist. It is, in size, very little larger than a bee, 
 of a thicker proportion, and his wings, which are broader 
 than those of a bee, placed separate, like those of a fly : they 
 are of pure gauze, without colour or spot upon them ; the 
 head is large, the upper jaw or lip is sharp, and has at the 
 end of it a strong pointed hair, of about a quarter of an inch 
 long; the lower jaw has two of these pointed hairs; and 
 this pencil of hairs, when joined together, makes a resist- 
 ance to the finger, nearly equal to that of a strong hog's 
 bristle ; its legs are serrated in the inside, and the whole 
 covered with brown hair or down. As soon as this plague 
 appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake 
 their food, and run wildly about the plain, till they die, 
 worn out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy re- 
 mains, but to leave the black earth, and hasten down to the 
 sands of Atbara; and there they remain, while the rains 
 last, this cruel enemy never daring to pursue them farther. 
 Though his size be immense, as is his strength, and his 
 body covered with a thick skin, defended with strong hair, 
 yet," even the camel. is not capable to sustain the violent 
 punctures the fly makes with his pointed proboscis. He 
 must lose no time in removing to the sands of Atbara; for, 
 when once attacked by this fly, his body, head, and legs, 
 break out into large bosses, which swell, break, and putre- 
 fv, to the certain destruction of the creature. Even the el- 
 ephant and rhinoceros, who, by reason of their enormous 
 bulk, and the vast quantity of food and water they daily 
 
 need, cannot shift to desert and dry places, as the season 
 may require, are obliged to roll themselves in mud and 
 mire, which, when dry, coats them over like armour, and 
 enables them to stand their ground against this winged as- 
 sassin: yet I have found some of these tubercles upon al- 
 most every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and 
 attribute them to this cause. All the inhabitants of the sea- 
 coast of Melinda, down to CapeGardefan, to Saba, and the 
 south coast of the Red Sea, are obliged to put themselves in 
 motion^ and remove to the next sand, in the beginning of 
 the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from 
 being destroyed. This is not a partial emigration ; the in- 
 habitants of all the countries, from the mountains of Abys- 
 sinia northward, to the confluence of the Nile, and Astabo- 
 ras, are once a-year obliged to change their abode, and seek 
 protection on the sands of Beja ; nor is there any alterna- 
 tive, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile.band were 
 in their way, capable of spoiling them of half their sub- 
 stance. This fly has no sling, though he seems to me to be 
 rather of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and 
 sudden than that of the bee, and resembles that of the gad- 
 fly in England. There is something particular in the sound 
 or buzzing of this insect ; it is a jarring noise, together with 
 a humming, which induces me to believe it proceeds, at 
 least in part, from a vibration made with the three hairs at 
 his snout. (Bruce.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 20. In the same day shall the Lord shave 
 with a razor that is hired, najnehj, by them 
 beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the 
 head, and the hair of the feet : and it shall also 
 consume the beard. 
 
 By reading what is written on 2 Kings ii. 23, a better 
 view will be gained of the contempt attached to those who 
 were bald, and of the term, as being expressive of the most 
 complete weakness and destitution. To tell a man you will 
 SHAVE him, is as much as to say you will ruin him — entirel) 
 overthroAV him. " Our king has shaved all his enemies," 
 means, he has punished ihem ; reduced them to the most 
 abject condition ; so that they have not a/ing;le vestige of 
 power in their possession. " What, fellow ! didst thou say 
 thou wouldst SHAVE me '?" " I will give thy bones to the 
 crows and the jackals. Begone, bald-head, get out of my 
 way." The punishment to be inflicted on the Jews was 
 very great : tney were to be shaved on the head, the beard, 
 and " the hair of the feet." The latter expression alludes 
 to a most disgusting practice, common in all parts of the 
 East. Calmet says, " The Hebrews modestly express by 
 feet those parts which decency forbids to name : ' the 
 water of the feet;' ' to cover the feet ;' 'the hair of the feel.'" 
 Thus the Lord was about to shave the Jews by a razor 
 which they themselves had hired ! — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 6. Forasmuch as this people refuseth fhe 
 waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in 
 Rezin and Remaliah's son ; 7. Now therefore, 
 behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the 
 waters of the river, strong and many, even the 
 king of Assyria, and all his glory : and he shall 
 come up over all his channels, and go over all 
 his banks. 
 
 The gentle waters of Shiloah, a small fountain and brook 
 just without Jerusalem, which supplied a pool within the 
 city for the use of the inhabitants, are an apt emblem of the 
 state of the kingdom and house of David, much reduced in 
 its apparent strength, yet supported by the blessing of God ; 
 and are finely contrasted with the waters of the Euphrates, 
 great, rapid, and impetuous; the image of the Babylonian 
 empire, which God threatens to bring down like a mighty 
 flood upon all these apostates of both kingdoms, as a pun- 
 ishment for their manifold iniquities. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but 
 for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of of 
 fence, to both houses of Israel : for a gin and 
 for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 
 
Chap. 9, iO. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 455 
 
 The idea appears to be taken from a stone, or a block of 
 wood, being thrown in the path of travellers, over which 
 ihey fail. " Well, friend, did the king grant you your re- 
 quest T" — " No, no; there was a Udaru-Katti, (from the verb 
 tfdarukutku, tf, stumble, and katti, a block,) a stumbling- 
 block in the way." " Just as Valen was attaining the object 
 of his wishes, that old stumbling-block, the Modeliar, laid 
 dcwn in the way, and the poor fellow stumbled, and fell." 
 " Why are you so dejected this morning 1" — " Because I 
 have had a severe fall over that stumbling-block, my pro- 
 fligate son." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 3. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not 
 increased the joy : they joy before thee accord- 
 ing to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice 
 when they divide the spoil. 
 
 " Kandan's wife has at length borne her husband a son, 
 and all the relations are rejoicing together, like unto the joy 
 of harvest." " Are you happy in your new situation 1" — 
 " Yes; my santosham, my happiness, is greater than that of 
 the time of harvest." " Listen to the birds, how merry they 
 are ; can they be taking in their harvest 1" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. For unto us a Child is born, unto us a 
 Son is given ; and the government shall be upon 
 his shoulder: and his name shall be called 
 Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The 
 everlasting Father, The Princd of Peace. 
 
 It is common in the East to describe any quality of a 
 person by calling him t/ie father of the quality. D'Herbe- 
 lot, speaking of a very eminent physician, says, he did such 
 admirable cures, that he was surnamed Aboul Berekiat, the 
 father of benedictions. The original words of this title of 
 Christ, maybe rendeTed, the father of that which is everlast- 
 ing: Christ, therefore, as the head and introducer of an 
 everlasting dispensation, never to give place to another, 
 was very naturally, in the eastern style, called the father of 
 eternity. — Harmer. 
 
 The phrase, " shall be called," refers not so much to the 
 appellation by which the promised child should be known, 
 as to the nature by which he should be distinguished. It is 
 remarkable that the original word, (pela,) here rendered 
 " wonderful," is elsewhere rendered " secret." Thus Judg. 
 xiii. 17, 18, " And Manoah said unto the angel of the 
 Lord, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to 
 pass, we may do thee honour 1 And the angel of the Lord 
 said unto him, Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing 
 it is secret, (palal") Here the angel evidently appropri- 
 ates one of the distinguishing titles of the promised Messiah, 
 thus identifying his real character, and while ostensibly 
 refusing to make known his name, does in fact impart one 
 of the most significant and sublime of all his designations. 
 — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 10. The bricks are fallen down, but we will 
 build with hewn stones ; the sycamores are cut 
 down, but we will change them into cedars. 
 
 The houses of the lower orders in Eg5rpt are in like 
 manner constructed of unburnt bricks, or square pieces of 
 clay, baked in the sun, and only one story high ; but those 
 of the higher classes, of stone, are generally two, and 
 sometimes three stories high. These facts are at once a 
 short and lively comment on the words of the prophet : 
 " All the people shall know, even Ephraim, and the inhab- 
 itants of Samaria, that say, in the pride and stoutness of 
 heart, The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with 
 hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will 
 change them into cedars," Bricks dried in the sun, are 
 poor materials for building, compared with hewn stone, 
 which, in Egypt, is almost equal to marble, and forms a 
 strong contrast between the splendid palace and mud- 
 walled cabin. And if, as is probable, the houses of the 
 higher orders in Israel were built with the same species 
 of costly and beautiful stone, the contrast stated by the 
 prophet places the vaunting of his wealthier countrymen 
 
 in a very strong light. The boastful extravagance of that 
 people is still further displayed by the next figure : " The 
 sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into ce- 
 dars ;" the forests of sycamore, the wood of which we have 
 been accustomed to employ in building, are cut down by 
 the enemy, but instead of them we will import cedars, of 
 whose fragrant and beautiful wood we will construct and 
 adorn our habitations. The sycamore grew in abundance 
 in the low country of Judea, and was not much esteemed ; 
 but the cedar was highly valued ; it was brought at a great 
 expense, and with much labour, from the distant and rugged 
 summits of Lebanon, to beautify the dwellings of the great, 
 the palaces of kings, and the temple of Jehovah. It was 
 therefore an extravagant boast, which betrayed the pride 
 and vanity of their depraved hearts, that all the warnings, 
 threatenings, and judgments of the living God, were in- 
 sufficient to subdue or restrain, — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 1. Wo unto them that decree unrighteous 
 decrees, and that write grievousness which they 
 have prescribed. 
 
 The manner of making eastern decrees differs from ours : 
 they are first written, and then the magistrate authenticates 
 them, or annuls them. This, I remember, is the Arab 
 manner, according to D'Arvieux. When an Arab wanted 
 a favour of the emir, the way was to apply to the secretary, 
 who drew up a decree according to the request of the party ; 
 if the emir granted the favour, he printed his seal upon it ; 
 if not, he returned it torn to the petitioner. Sir J. Chardin 
 confirms this account, and applies it, with great propriety, 
 to the illustration of a passage which I never thought of 
 when I read over D'Arvieux. After citing Is. x. 1, Wo 
 unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers 
 that write grievousness, for so our translators have rendered 
 the latter part of the verse in the margin, much more agree- 
 ably than in the body of the version. Sir John goes on, 
 " The manner of making the royal acts and ordinances hath 
 a relation to this : they are always drawn up according to 
 the request ; the first minister, or he whose office it is, writes 
 on the side of it, * according to the king's will,' and from 
 thence it is sent to the secretary of state, who draws up 
 the order in form." 
 
 They that consult Vitringa upon the passage, will find 
 that commentators have been perplexed about the latter 
 part of this wo : every one sees the propriety of denoun- 
 cing evil on those that decree unrighteous judgments ; but 
 it is not very clear why they are threatened that write them ; 
 it certainly would be wrong to punish the clerks of our 
 courts, that have no other concern in unjust decrees, than 
 barely writing them down, according to the duty of their 
 place, as mere amanuenses. But according to the eastern 
 mode, we find he that writes or draws up the order at first, 
 is deeply concerned in the injustice, since he expresses 
 matters as he pleases, and is the source of the mischief; 
 the superior only passes or rejects it. He indeed is guilty 
 if he passes an unjust order, because he ought to have re- 
 jected it ; but a great deal of the guilt unquestionably comes 
 upon him who first draws the order, and who makes it more 
 or less oppressive to others, just as he pleases, or rather, 
 according to the present that is made him by the party that 
 solicits the order. For it appears from D'Arvieux, that 
 the secretary of the emir drew up no order without a pres- 
 ent, which was wont to be proportionate to the favour 
 asked ; and that he was very oppressive in his demands. 
 
 In this view of things the words of the prophet are very 
 clear, and easy to be understood ; and Sir John Chardin, by 
 his acquaintance with the East, proves a much better inter- 
 preter than the most learned western commentators, even 
 celebrated rabbies themselves : for according to Vitringa, 
 Rabbi David Kimchi supposes the judges themselves were 
 the writers the prophet meant, and so called, because they 
 caused others to write unjust determinations : though Vi- 
 tringa admits, that such an interpretation does not well 
 agree with the conjugation of the Hebrew word.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 13. For he saith, By the strength of my 
 hand I have done it, and by my wisdom ; for 
 I am prudent : and I have removed the bounds 
 of the people, and have robbed their treasures, 
 
456 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 10—13. 
 
 and I have put down the inhabitants like a val- 
 iant man : 1 4. And my hand hath found, as a 
 nest, the riches of the people : and as one gath-er- 
 eth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the 
 earth ; and there was none that moved the wing, 
 or opened the mouth, or peeped. 
 
 These are the sentiments and boastings of Sennacherib, 
 a proud Assyrian monarch, who viewed and treated cities 
 just as we in Africa viewed and treated ostrich nests, when 
 they fell in our way : we seized the eggs as if they had 
 been our own, because we had found them, and because 
 there was no power that could prevent us. So did Senna- 
 cherib seize and plunder cities with as little compunction 
 as we seized the eggs of the absent ostrich; never thinking 
 of the misery for life which he thereby brought on many 
 peaceable families, who had done nothing to injure or of- 
 fend him. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 19. And the rest of the trees of his forest 
 shall be few, that a child may write them. 
 
 Volney remarks, in a note, that there are but four or five 
 of those trees, which deserve any notice ; and in a note, it 
 may be added, from the words of Isaiah, " the rest of the 
 trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them," 
 ch. X. 19. Could not the infidel write a brief note, or state 
 a minute fact, without illustrating a prophecy 7 Maundrell, 
 who visited Lebanon in the end of the seventeenth century, 
 and to whose accuracy in other matters all subsequent trav- 
 ellers who refer to him bear witness, describes some of the 
 cedars near the top of the mountain as " very old, and of a 
 prodigious bulk, and others younger, of a smaller size." 
 Of the former he could reckon up only sixteen. He meas- 
 ured the largest, and found it above twelve yards in girth. 
 Such trees, however few in number, show that the cedars of 
 Lebanon had once been no vain boast. But after the lapse 
 of more than a century, not a single tree of such dimen- 
 sions is now to be seen. Of those which now remain, as 
 visited by Captains Irby and Mangles, there are about fifty 
 in the whole, on a single small eminence, from which spot 
 the cedars are the only trees to be seen in Lebanon. — Keith. 
 
 Ver, 32. As yet shall he remain at Nob that day : 
 he shall shake his hand against the mount of 
 the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. 
 
 This is a part of the description of the march of Senna- 
 cherib against Jerusalem. When he arrives near the city, 
 he lifts up his hand and shakes it, to denote that he will 
 soon inflict signal punishment upon it. How often may 
 this significant motion of the hand be seen ; it is done by 
 lifting it up to the height of the head, and then moving it 
 backward and forward in a cutting direction. Thus, when 
 men are at so great a distance as to be scarcely able to hear 
 each other's voice, they have this convenient way of making 
 known their threatenings. Sometimes, when brawlers have 
 separated, and apparently finished their quarrel, one of them 
 will turn round and bawl out with all his might, and then 
 shake his hand in token of what he will still do. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Ver. 4. But with righteousness shall he judge the 
 poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of 
 the earth : and he shall smite the earth with 
 the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his 
 lips shall he slay the wicked. 
 
 The application of this figure in the East refers rather 
 to angry expressions, than to a judicial sentence. " The 
 mouth of that man burns up his neighbours and friends." 
 " His mouth ! it has set on fire all the people." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, 
 and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; 
 and the calf, and the youns" lion, and the fatling 
 together; and a little child shall lead them. 
 7. And the cow and the bear shall feed ; their 
 
 young ones shall lie down together : and the 
 lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8. And the 
 suckling child shall play on the hole of the 
 asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand 
 on the cockatrice-den. 9. They shall not hurt 
 nor destroy in all my holy mountain : for the 
 earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord, as the waters cover the sea. 
 See on Job 20. 14. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 7. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and 
 every man's heart shall melt. 
 
 This figure appears to be taken from the melting of wax, 
 or metals. " My heart, my mind, melts for him ; I am 
 dissolved by his love." "Alas! alas! my bowels are melt- 
 ing within me." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And they shall be afraid : pangs and sor- 
 rows shall take hold of them ; they shall be in 
 pain as a woman that travaileth ; they shall be 
 amazed one at another ; their faces shall be as 
 flames. 
 
 Great pains are often spoken of as the anguish of par- 
 turition. " Ah ! my lord, I am very ill ; my pains are like 
 those of a wom^ when bringing forth her first-born." 
 " Has it come to this 1 am I to bring forth like a woman 1" 
 " He cries like the woman in her agony." " Yes, my 
 friend; as the pains of a female in child-bearing are pro- 
 duced by sin ; so your present sufferings are produced by 
 the sins of a former birth." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. And it shall be as the chased roe, (ante- 
 lope,) and as a sheep that no man taketh up : 
 they shall every man turn to his own people, 
 and flee every one into his own land. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 2. 10. 
 
 To hunt the antelope is a favourite amusement in the 
 East ; but which, from its extraordinary swiftness, is at- 
 tended with great difficulty. On the first alarm, it flies like 
 an arrow from the bow, and leaves the best mounted hunt- 
 er, and the fleetest dog, far behind. The sportsman is 
 obliged to call in the aid of the falcon, trained to the work, 
 to seize on the animal, and impede its motions, to give the 
 dogs time to overtake it. Dr. Russel thus describes the 
 chase of the antelope : " They permit horsemen, without 
 dogs, if they advance gently, to approach near, and do not 
 seem much to regard a caravan that passes within a little 
 distance ; but the moment they take the alarm, they bound 
 away, casting from time to time a look behind: and if 
 they" find themselves pursued, they lay their horns back- 
 ward, almost close on the shoulders, and flee with incredi- 
 ble swiftness. "When dogs appear, they instantly take 
 alarm; for which reason the sportsmen endeavour to steal 
 upon the antelope unawares, to get as near as possible before 
 slipping the dogs ; and then, pushing on at full speed, they 
 throw off the falcon, which, being taught to strike or fix 
 upon the cheek of the game, retards its course by repeated 
 attacks, till the greyhounds have time to get up." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 18. Their bows also shall dash the yourg 
 men to pieces ; and they shall have no pity on 
 the fruit of the womb ; their eye shall not spare 
 children. 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 22. 35. 
 
 Both Herodotus and Xenophon mention that the Per- 
 sians used large bows; and the latter says particularly, 
 that their bows were three cubits long. They were cele- 
 brated for their archers, Jer. xlix. 35. Probably their 
 neighbours and allies, the Medes, dealt much in the same 
 sort of arms. In Psalm xviii. 34, and Job xx. 24, mention 
 is made of a bow of brass. If the Persian bows were of 
 metal, we may easily conceive that with a metalline bow 
 
Chap. 13. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 457 
 
 of three cubits' length, and proportionably strong, the soldiers 
 might dash and slay the young men, the weaker and un- 
 resisting part of the inhabitants, in the general carnage on 
 taking the city. — Lowth. 
 
 Ver. 19. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, 
 the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be 
 as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 20. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it 
 be dwelt in from generation to generation ; 
 neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, 
 neither shall the shepherds make their fold 
 there. 
 
 From Rauwolf s testimony it appears that in the sixteenth 
 century, "there was not a house to be seen." And now 
 the eye wanders over abarren desert, in which the ruins are 
 nearly the only indication that it had ever been inhabited." 
 " It is impossible," adds Major Keppel, " to behold this scene, 
 and not to be reminded how exactly the predictions of 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the ap- 
 pearance Babylon was doomed to present, that she should 
 never be inhabited ; that 'the Arabian should not pitch his 
 tent there ;' that she should ' become heaps ;' that her cities 
 should be a ' desolation, a dry wilderness.'" " Babylon is 
 spurned alike by the heel of the Ottomans, the Israelites, 
 and the sons of Ishmael. It is a tenantless and desolate me- 
 tropolis." — (Mignan.) 
 
 Neither shall the Arabian pilch his tent there, neither shall 
 the shepherds make their fold there. It was prophesied of 
 Ammon, that it should be a stable for camels and a couching- 
 place for flocks ; and of Philistia, that it should be cottages 
 for shepherds, and a pasture for flocks. But Babylon was 
 to be visited with a far greater desolation, and to become 
 unfit or unsuiting even for such a purpose. And that 
 neither a tent would be pitched there, even by an Arab, 
 nor a fold made by a shepherd, implies the last degree of 
 solitude and desolation. " It is common in these parts for 
 shepherds to make use of ruined edifices to shelter their 
 flocks in." (Mignan.) But Babylon is an exception. In- 
 stead of taking the bricks from thence, the shepherd might 
 with facility erect a defence from wild beasts, and make a 
 fold for his flock amid the heaps of Babylon : and the Arab, 
 vi^ho fearlessly traverses it by day, might pitch his tent by 
 night. But neither the one nor the other could now be per- 
 suaded to remain a single night among the ruins. The 
 superstitious dread of evil spirits, far more- than the natural 
 terror of the wild beasts, eflfectually prevents them. Cap- 
 tain Mignan was accompanied by six Arabs, completely 
 armed, but he " could not induce them to remain towards 
 night, from the apprehension of evil spirits. It is impossi- 
 ble to eradicate this idea from the minds of these people, 
 who are very deeply imbued with superstition." And 
 when the sun sunk behind the Mujelibe, and the moon 
 would have still lighted his way among the ruins, it was 
 with infinite regret that he obeyed ''the summons of his 
 guides.''^ " All the people of the country assert that it is ex- 
 tremely dangerous to approach this mound after nightfall, 
 on account of the multitude of evil spirits by which it is 
 haunted."— Keith. 
 
 The scriptures, in describing the ruined state into which 
 some celebrated cities were to be reduced, represent them 
 not unfrequently, (Jer. xlix. 18,) as to be so desolated, that 
 no shepherds with flocks should haunt them ; which sup- 
 poses they were to be foimd on the remains of others. 
 
 This is a proper representation of complete destruction. 
 For in the East it is common for shepherds to make use of 
 remaining ruins to shelter their flocks from the heat of the 
 middle of the day, and from the dangers of the night. So 
 Dr. Chandler, after mentioning the exquisite remains of a 
 temple of Apollo, in Asia Minor, which were such as that 
 it was impossible, perhaps, to conceive greater beauty and 
 majesty of ruin, goes on, '* At evening a large flock of goats, 
 returning to the fold, their bells tinkling, spread over the 
 heap, climbing to browse on the shrubs and trees growing 
 between the huge stones." Another passage of the same 
 writer, shows that they make use of ruins also to guard 
 their flocks from the rioon-tide heat. Speaking of Aiasa- 
 luck, generally understood to be the ancient Ephesus, and 
 certainly near the site of that old city, and at least its suc- 
 cessor, he says, " A herd of goats was driven to it for shel- 
 58 
 
 ter from the sun at noon ; and a noisy flight of crows from 
 the quarries seemed to insult its silence. We heard the 
 partridge call in the area of the theatre and of the stadium. 
 The glorious pomp of its heathen worship is no longer re- 
 membered; and Christianity, which was there nursed by- 
 apostles, and fostered by general councils, until it increased 
 to fulness of stature, barely lingers on in an existence hard- 
 ly visible." 
 
 This description is very gloomy and melancholy ; how- 
 ever, the usefulness of these ruins is such, for the habitation 
 of those that tend flocks, that it often prevents a place from 
 being quite desolate, and continues it among inhabited 
 places, though miserably ruinated. Such is the state ol 
 Ephesus : it is described by Chandler, as making a very 
 gloomy and melancholy appearance, but as not absolutely 
 without people. "Our horses," says he, "were disposed 
 among the walls and rubbish, with their saddles on; and 
 a mat was spread for us on the ground. We sat here, iai 
 the open air, while supper was preparing ; when, suddenly^ 
 fires began to blaze up among the bushes, and we saw the 
 villagers collected about them in savage groups, or passing; 
 to and fro with lighted brands for torches. The flames,, 
 with the stars and a pale moon, afforded us a dim prospect 
 of ruin and desolation. A shrill owl, called cucuvaia^from; 
 its note, with a nighthawk, flitted near us; and a jaekat 
 cried mournfully, as if forsaken by his companions on th& 
 mounta in . " — Burder . 
 
 Ver, 21. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie- 
 there ; and their houses shall be full of doleful 
 creatures ; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs^ 
 shall dance there. 
 
 See on ch. 34. 13. 
 
 " Yes ; the wretch is now punished for his crimes, and 
 those of his father ; dogs and devils are now dwelling in; 
 his habitation," The owl, whose native name is anthi, is 
 one of the most ominous birds of the East. Let him only 
 alight upon the house of a Hindoo, and begin his dismal 
 screech, and all the inmates will be seized with great con- 
 sternation. Some one will instantly run out and make a 
 noise with his areca-nut cutter, or some other instrument,, 
 to aflfright it away. I recollect one of these creatures once 
 flew into the house of a lady when she was in the pains ot 
 parturition : the native servants became greatly alarmed,, 
 and run to me, lamenting the fearful omen. I had it driven 
 from the house; and notwithstanding the malignant in- 
 fluence of the feathered visiter, and the qualms of the do- 
 mestics, all things went on well. On another occasion, 1 
 shot one of them which had troubled us on the roof, night 
 by night : but as he was only wounded in the wing, I took 
 him into the house, with the intention of keeping him : but 
 the servants were so uncomfortable, and complained so 
 much at having such a " beast" in the house, I was obliged 
 to send him away. From these statements it will be seen 
 what ideas would be attached to the owls dwelling in the 
 houses of Babylon. — Roberts. 
 
 " There are many dens of wild beasts in various parts. 
 There are quantities of porcupine quills, (kephud.) And 
 while the lower excavations are often pools of water, in 
 most of the cavities are numbers of bats and owls. These 
 souterrains, (caverns,) over which the chambers of majesty 
 may have been spread, are now the refuge of jackals and 
 other savage animals. The mouths of their entrances are 
 strewed with the bones of sheep and goats ; and the loath- 
 some smell that issues from most of them is sufficient warn- 
 ing not to proceed into the den." (Buckingham.) The 
 king of the forest now ranges over the site of that Babvlon 
 which Nebuchadnezzar built for his own glory. And the 
 temple of Belus, the greatest work of man, is now like unto 
 a natural den of lions. " Two or three majestic lions" were 
 seen upon its heights, by Sir Robert Ker Porter, as he was 
 approaching it ; and "the broad prints of their feet were 
 left plain in the clayey soil." Major Keppel saw there a 
 similar foot-print of a lion. It is also the unmohisted re- 
 treat of jackals, hyenas, and other noxious animals. Wild 
 beasts are " numerous" at the Mujelibe, as well as on Birs 
 Nimrood. " The mound was full of large holes ; we en- 
 tered some of them, and found them strewed with carcasses 
 and skeletons of animals recently killed. The ordure of 
 wild beasts was so strong, that prudence got the better of 
 curiosity, for we had no doubt as to the savage nature of the 
 
45^ 
 
 ISAIAH 
 
 Chap. 14 
 
 inhabitants. Our guides, indeed, told us that all the ruins 
 abounded in lions and other wild beasts ; so literally has 
 the divine prediction been fulfilled, that wild beasts of the 
 desert should lie there, and their houses be full of doleful 
 creatures ; that the wild beasts of the island should cry in 
 their desolate houses." (Keppel.) — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 22. And the wild beasts of the island shall 
 cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in 
 their pleasant palaces ; and her time is near to 
 come, and her days shall not be prolonged. 
 
 Europeans are often astonished, in walking through a 
 town or village, to see so many desolate houses, and fre- 
 quently come to improper conclusions, from an idea that the 
 place had once a greater number of inhabitants. At half 
 an hour's notice, families may be seen to leave their dwell- 
 ings, never to enter them more. Hence, in almost every di- 
 rection, may be seen buildings wiih roofs half fallen in ; 
 with timbers hanging in various positions; shutters and 
 doors flapping in the wind, or walls half-levelled to the 
 ground. Various are the reasons for which the supersti- 
 tious idolater will leave his dwelling: should one of the 
 family die on the fifth day of the new or wanmg moon, the 
 place must be forsaken for six months ; or should the Cobra 
 Capella (serpent) enter the house at the times alluded to, 
 the people must forthwith leave the house. Does an owl 
 alight on the roof for two successive nights, the inmates 
 ml\ take their departure ; but if for one only, then, by the 
 performance of certain ceremonies, the evils may be averted. 
 Are evil spirits believed to visit the dwelling 1 are the chil- 
 dren often sick 1 are the former as well as the present oc- 
 cupiers unfortunate 1 then will they never rest till they have 
 gained another habitation. Sometimes, however, they call 
 for the sdstre, i. e. magician, to inquire if he can find out 
 the cause of their troubles ; when perhaps he says, the walls 
 are too high, or too much in this or that direction ; and 
 then may be seen master, servants, children, carpenters, 
 and masons, all busily employed in making the prescribed 
 alterations. But another reason for the desolation in houses 
 is, that a father sometimes leaves the dwelling to two or 
 three of his sons; and then, when the necessary repairs 
 have to be made, one will not do this, another will not do 
 that, till the whole tumbles to the ground. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 8. Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the 
 cedars of Lebanon, sayirig, Since thou art laid 
 down, no feller is come up against us. 
 
 As we passed through the extensive forest of fir-trees .sit- 
 uated between Deir el Kamr and Ainep, we had already 
 heard, at some distance, the stroke of one solitary axe, re- 
 sounding from hill to hill. On reaching the spot, we found 
 a peasant, whose labour had been so far successful, that he 
 had felled his tree and lopped the branches. He was now 
 hewing it in the middle, so as to balance the two halves 
 upon his camel, which stood patiently by him, waiting for 
 his load. In the days of Hiram, king of Tyre, and subse- 
 quently under the kings of Babylon, this romantic solitude 
 was not so peaceful: that most poetic image in Isaiah, who 
 makes these very trees vocal, exulting in the downfall of 
 the destroyer of nations, seems now to be almost realized 
 anew — Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Leb- 
 anon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up 
 against us. — Jowett. 
 
 Ver. 9. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to 
 meet thee at thy coming : it stirreth up the 
 dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the 
 earth ; it hath raised up from their thrones all 
 the kings of the nations. 
 
 The sepulchres of the Hebrews, at least those of respect- 
 able persons, and those which hereditarily belonged to the 
 principal families, were extensive caves, or vaults, excava- 
 ted from the native rock by art and manual labour. The 
 roofs of them in general weVe arched : and some were so 
 «»pacious as to be supported by colonnades. All round the 
 •ides were cells for the reception of the sarcophagi ; these 
 
 were properly ornamented with sculpture, and each wa5 
 placed in its proper cell. The cave or sepulchre admitted 
 no light, being closed by a great stone, which was rolled 
 to the mouth of the narrow passage or entrance. Many of 
 these receptacles are still extant m Judea; two in particular 
 are more magnificent than all the rest, and are supposed to 
 be the sepulchres of the kings. One of these is in Jerus» 
 lem, and contains twenty-four cells ; the other, containing 
 twice that number, is in a place without the city. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 16. They that see thee shall narrowly look 
 upon thee, and consider thee, saying; Is this 
 the man that made the earth to tremble, that 
 did shake kingdoms ? 
 
 Narrowly to look on and to consider even the view of the 
 Mujelibe, is to see what the palace of Babylon, in which" 
 kings, proud as " Lucifer," boasted of exalting themselves 
 above the stars of God, has now become, and how, cut 
 down to the ground, it is brokenin pieces. " On pacing over 
 the loose stones, and fragments of brick-work which lay 
 scattered through the immense fabric, and surveying the 
 sublimity of the ruins," says Captain Mignan, " I naturally 
 recurred to the iime when these walls stood proudly in their 
 original splendour, — when the halls were the scenes of fes- 
 tive magnificence, and when they resounded to the voices 
 of those whom death has long since swept from the earth. 
 This very pile was once the seat of luxury and vice ; now 
 abandoned to decay, and exhibiting a melancholy instance 
 of the reiribution of Heaven. It stands alone; — the soli- 
 tary habitation of the goatherd marks not the forsaken site." 
 — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 19. But thou art cast out of thy grave like 
 an abominable branch, and as the raiment of 
 those that are slain, thrust through with a 
 sword, that go down to the stones of the pit ; 
 as a carcass trodden under feet. 
 
 Rather like the abominable tree, meaning that on which 
 criminals were executed. This, in the Roman law, is de- 
 nominated infelix arbor; and Maimonides tells us, that the 
 Jews used to bury it with the criminal who suffered on it, 
 as involved equally with him in the malediction of their 
 law. — Burder. 
 
 " Several deep excavations have been made in diflferent 
 places into the sides of the Mujelibe ; some probably by the 
 wearing of the seasons ; but iriany others have been dug by 
 the rapacity of the Turks, tearing up its bowels in search 
 of hidden treasure," — as if the palace of Bahjlonii-ere cast 
 mU of its grave. " Several penetrate very far into the body 
 of the structure," till it has become as the raiment of these 
 that are slain, thrust through with a sword. " And some, it 
 is likely, have never yet been explored, the wild beasts of 
 the desert literally keeping guard over them." (Keppel.) 
 " The mound was full of large holes" — thrust thro^igh. 
 Near to the Mujelibe, on the supjjosed site of the hanging 
 gardens which were situated within the walls of the palace, 
 " the ruins are so perforated in consequence of the digging 
 for bricks, that the original design is entirely lost. All that 
 could favour any conjecture of gardens built on terraces 
 are two subterranean passages. There can be no doubt that 
 both passages are of vast extent : they are lined with bricks 
 laid in with bitumen, and covered over with large masses of 
 stone. This is nearly the only place where stone is ob- 
 servable." Arches built upon arches raised the hanging- 
 gardens from terrace to terrace, till the highest w^as on a 
 level with the top of the city walls. Now they are cast outi 
 like an abominable branch — ^and subtcrraneo.n passages arej 
 disclosed — down to the stones of the pit. " As a carcass trod-i 
 den under feet." The streets of Babylon were parallel,] 
 crossed by others at right angles, and abounded wiih house 
 three and four stories high ; and none can now traverse the 
 site of Babylon, or find any other path, without treadin^ 
 them under foot. The traveller directs his course to tb« 
 highest mounds; and there are none, whether temples ol 
 palaces, that are not trodden on. The Mujelibe " rises iir 
 a steep ascent, over which the passengers can only go up bj 
 the winding paths worn by frequent visits to the ruined edi« 
 fice." — KErrH. 
 
Chap. 14—17. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 459 
 
 Ver. 23. I will also make it a possession for the 
 bittern, and pools of water : and I will sweep it 
 with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord 
 of hosts. 
 
 "What was he going to sweeps The devoted cit)'- of 
 Babylon. The word besom is often used, as a figure, to 
 denote the way in which people are swept from the earth. 
 Thus, when the cholera morbus began to rage, it was said, 
 "Alas! alas! it is sweeping us away as with a besom." 
 " How is the cholera in your village 1" — " It has come like 
 besoms." When the people made offerings and sacrifices 
 to the demons who were believed to produce the disease, 
 the magician, who was believed to be the devil's agent, 
 sometimes said, " Make such and such offerings, or I will 
 sweep you away with a besom." In the Hindoo calendar, 
 or almanac, where predictions are given respecting cer- 
 tain months of the year, it is often said, ** The year is not 
 good, it brings a besom." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, be- 
 cause the rod of him that smote thee is broken : 
 for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a 
 cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying 
 serpent. 
 
 In Egypt and other oriental countries, a serpent was the 
 common symbol of a powerful monarch ; it was embroider- 
 ed on the robes of princes, and blazoned on their diadem, 
 to signify their absolute power and invincible might, and 
 that, as the wound inflicted by the basilisk is incurable, so 
 the fatal effects of their displeasure were neither to be avoid- 
 ed nor endured. These are the allusions involved in the 
 address of the prophet, to the irreconcilable enemies of his 
 nation. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 3 1 . Howl, O gate : cry, O city : thou, whole 
 Palestina, art dissolved : for there shall come 
 from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone 
 in his appointed times. 
 
 This may be in allusion to smoke arising from distant 
 conflagrations, caused by an advancing desolating army, 
 ►he sight of which would greatly alarm the inhabitants of 
 Palestina. I have seen the smoke from mountains, whose 
 grass and, bushes were on fire, at the distance of forty or 
 fifty miles. Or it may refer to clouds of sand or dust raised 
 by troops rapidly advancing to attack them. By this means 
 I have observed the advance of travelling parties, long be- 
 fore they reached us, from the cloud of sand raised by the 
 movement of the oxen. Game is also frequently discovered 
 by the same means. — Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 1. The burden of Moab. Because in the 
 night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought 
 to silence ; because in the night Kir of Moab 
 is laid waste, and brought to silence. 
 See on Jer. 49. 1—28. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Ver. 2. For it shall be, that as a wandering bird 
 cast out of the nest, so the daughters of Moab 
 shall be at the fords of Arnon. 
 
 The figure appears to be taken from a young bird being 
 
 thrown out of the nest before it is able to fly, and which 
 
 consequently wanders about for a place of refuge. " Well, 
 
 Tamban, what has become of your profligate snn 1" — " I 
 
 knov/ not, my friend, because I have turned him out of the 
 
 nest." " Why, my boy, have you come to this distant coun- 
 
 i try?" — " Because my relations turned me out of the nest." 
 
 j "Alas forme! alas for me!" says the bereaved mother; 
 
 *' my young one has taken to the wing; it has flown from 
 
 ; the nest." "I have only one left in the nest ; shall I not 
 
 I take care of it ?" " I should like to get into that nest ;" says 
 
 the young man who wishes to marry into a high and rich 
 
 family, " Ah ! my lord, dismiss me not from your service. 
 
 to whom shall I go for employment? I have many chil- 
 dren, who will be suflerers ii I leave you: who will throw 
 a stone at the nesilings 1 who will put fire to the lair ot the 
 young cubs of the jungle 1 Ah! my lord, turn me not 
 away ; I shall be like a bird wandering from its nest." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 6. Yet gleaning-grapes shall be left in it, as 
 the shaking of an olive-tree, two or three ber- 
 ries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or 
 five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, 
 saith the Lord God of Israel. 
 
 The vintager cuts down the grapes from the vine with 
 a sharp hook or sickle ; but the olive was sometimes beaten 
 off the tree, and sometimes shaken. The former method 
 is mentioned by Moses, in one of his precepts: "When 
 thou beate>.t thine olive-tree, thou shalt not go over the 
 boughs again ; it shall be for the stranger, for the father- 
 less, and for the widow." The latter is marked by the 
 prophet Isaiah : "Yet gleaning grapes shall be left "in it, 
 as the shaking of an olive-tree ; two or three berries in the 
 top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost 
 fruitful branches thereof, saiih the Lord God of Israel." It 
 occurs again in a denunciation of divine judgments, by the 
 same prophet : " When thus it shall be in the midst of the 
 land among the people, there shall be as the shaking of an 
 olive-tree, and as the gleaning grapes, when the vintage is 
 done." The conjecture of Harmer, on these quotations, in 
 which the shaking of the olive-tree is connected with the 
 gleaning of grapes, is not improbable, " that the shaking 
 of the olive-tree does not indicate an improvement made 
 in after times on the original mode of gathering them ; or 
 different methods of procedure by different people, in the 
 same age and country, who possessed olive-yards; but 
 rather expressed the difference between the gathering of 
 the main crop by the owners, and the way in which the 
 poor collected the few olive-berries that were left, and 
 which, by the law of Moses, they were permitted to take." 
 
 The custom of beating the olive with long poles, to make 
 the fruit fall, is still followed in some parts of Italy. This 
 foolish method, besides hurting the plant, and spoiling many 
 branches that would bear the year following, makes the 
 ripe and unripe fruit fall indiscriminately, and bruises a 
 great deal of both kinds, by which they become rancid in the 
 heaps, and give an ill-flavoured oil. Such is the statement 
 of the Abbot Fortis, in his account of Dalmatia ; we are 
 not then to wonder, that in the time of Moses, when the 
 art of cultivation was in so simple and unimproved a state, 
 beating should have been the common way of gathering 
 olives by the owners, who were disposed to leave, we may 
 suppose, as few as possible, and were forbidden by their 
 law to go over the branches a second time. But shaking 
 them appears to have been sufficient, when they had hung 
 till they were fully ripe ; and was therefore practised by 
 the poor, or by strangers, who were either not provided 
 with such long poles as the owners possessed, or did not 
 find them necessary. Indeed, it is not improbable, that the 
 owners were well aware of the injury done to the olive- 
 trees by beating, although they practised it, because it was 
 the most effectual way of gathering the fruit with which 
 they were acquainted ; and might therefore prohibit the 
 poor and the stranger to collect the gleanings in that man- 
 ner: they were on that account reduced to the necessity 
 of shakirig the olive-berries from the tree, how ineffectual 
 soever might be the method, or remain without them. The 
 main crop, then, seems to have been taken from the olive by 
 beating, and the gleanings uniformly by shaking. Under 
 this conviction. Dr. Lowth has, with great judgment, trans- 
 lated the sixth verse of the seventeenth chapter of Isaiah: 
 A gleaning shall be left in it, as in the shaking of the olive- 
 tree. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Ver. 2. That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even 
 in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying. 
 Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered 
 and peeled, to a people terrible from their be* 
 ginning hitherto ; a nation meted out and 
 
460 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 21. 
 
 trodden down, whose land the rivers have 
 spoiled ! 
 
 " In order to pass along the Nile, the inhabitants have 
 recourse to the contrivance of a float, made of large earthen 
 pitchers, tied closely together, and covered with leaves of 
 palm-trees. The man that conducts it, has commonly in 
 his mouth a cord, with which he fishes, as he passes on." 
 (Norden.") Egmont and Heyman saw some small floats, 
 used by the Egyptian fishermen, consisting of bundles of 
 reeds, floated by calabashes. " My palanquin bearers now 
 found no difficulty in fording the stream of the Dahder ; 
 the last time I crossed, it Avas with some danger on a raft 
 placed over earthen pots, a contrivance well known in 
 modern Egypt, where they make a float of earthen pots, 
 tied together, covered with a platform of palm-leaves, 
 which will bear a considerable weight, and is conducted 
 without difiiculty." (Forbes.) — BaROER. 
 
 Ver. 6. They shall be left together unto the fowls 
 
 of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth : 
 
 and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all 
 
 the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them. 
 
 See on 1 Sam. 13. 18. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 5. Prepare the table, watch in the watch- 
 tower, eat, drink : arise, ye princes, and anoint 
 the shield. 
 
 The ancient warrior did not yield to the moderns in 
 seeping his armour in good order. The inspired writer 
 often speaks of furbishing the spear, and making bright 
 the arrows^ and the manner in which he expresses himself 
 in relation to this part of the soldier's duty, proves that 
 it was generally and carefully performed. But they were 
 particularly attentive to their shields, which they took care 
 frequently* to scour, polish, and anoint with oil. The ori- 
 ental soldier seems to have gloried in the dazzling lustre 
 of his shield, which he so highly valued, and upon which 
 he engraved his name and warlike exploits. To produce 
 the desired brightness, and preserve it undiminished, he 
 had recourse to frequent unction ; which is the reason of 
 the prophet's invitation : " Arise, ye princes, and anoint 
 the shield." As this was done to improve its polish and 
 brightness, so it was covered with a case, when it was not 
 ]a use, to preserve it from becoming rusty. This is the 
 reason the prophet says, " Kir uncovered the shield." The 
 words of David, already quoted, from his lamentation over 
 Saul and Jonathan, may refer to this practice of anoint- 
 ing the shield, rather than anointing the king : " The shield 
 of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as 
 though it had n jt been anointed with oil :" the word he 
 being a supplement, the version now given is perfectly 
 agreeable to the original text. — Paxton. 
 
 Strange as it may appear, the Hindoos make ofl!erings 
 to their weapons of war, and to those used in hunting. 
 Fishermen offer incense to the bag in which they carry 
 their fish, and also to the net; thus, while the incense is 
 burning, they hold the different implements in the smoke. 
 They also, when able, sacrifice a sheep or a fowl, which 
 is said to make the ceremony more acceptable to Varuna, 
 the god of tne sea. Should the tackle thus consecrated not 
 prove successful, they conclude some part of the ceremony 
 has not been properly performed, and therefore must be 
 repeated. But in addition to this, they often call for their 
 magicians to bless the waters, and to intercede for prosper- 
 ity. Nor is this sacrificing to implements and weapons 
 confined to fishermen, hunters, and warriors, for even 
 artisans do the same thing to their tools ; as also do students 
 and scholars to their books. Thus, at the feast called nava- 
 rdtere, i. e. the nine nights, carpenters, masons, goldsmiths, 
 weavers, and all other tradesmen, may be seen offering to 
 their tools. Ask them a reason, and they say the incense 
 and ceremonies are acceptable to Sarusa-patki, the beauti- 
 ful goddess of Brama, — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. And, behold, here cometh a chariot of 
 men, with a couple of horsemen. And he an- 
 swered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen ; 
 
 and all the graven images of her gods he hath 
 broken unto the ground. 
 
 This is a prophecy, and yet speaks as if the event to 
 which it relates had been already accomplished. In Jere- 
 miah, also, li. 8, it is said, " Babylon is suddenly fallen 
 and destroyed." David says, " Thou hast smitten all mine 
 enemies." Dr. A. Clarke says, " That is, thou wilt smite !" 
 He speaks in full confidence of God's interference, and 
 knows that he shall as surely have the victory, as if he had 
 it already. In these selections the past tense is used instead 
 of the FUTURE. He who came from Edom, with died gar- 
 ments from Bozrah, is made to say, " I will stain all my rai- 
 ment." Dr. A. Clarke has, " And I have stained." In this 
 instance, therefore, the future is used for the past, Ps. 
 Ixix : — "Let their table become a snare before them; 
 and that which should have been for their welfare, let it 
 become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened, that they see 
 not ; and make their loins continually to shake; Pour oat 
 thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger 
 take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate ; and 
 let none dwell in their tents." Dr. Boothroyd renders these 
 imprecations in the future, because he believes the whole 
 to refer to judgments that should fall on the enemy. Dr. 
 A. Clarke says, " The execrations here, and in the fol- 
 lowing verses, should be read in the future tense, because 
 they are predictive, and not in the imperative mood, as if 
 they were the offspring of the Psalmist's resentment." It 
 is common in eastern speech, in order to show the cer- 
 tainty of any thing which shall be done, to speak of it as 
 having been already accomplis.hed. Thus the Psalmist, 
 in speaking of the iniquities of bad men as having already 
 received their reward, evidently alludes to the certainty 
 of future punishment. It is therefore of the first impor- 
 tance to know in what tense the verb is meant, as that alone 
 will give a true view of the intention of the writer. In the 
 Tamul language the past tense is often elegantly used for 
 the future : thus, in the Nan-nool (the Native Grammar) 
 this distinction is beautifully illustrated. Does a note re- 
 quire to be taken to another place in a very short time, the 
 messenger, on being charged not to loiter on the way, re- 
 plies, " Nail vanihu vuUain," i. e. " I have alread'y re- 
 turned:" whereas he has not taken a single step of his 
 journey. "My friend," asks the priest, "when do you 
 intend to go to the sacred place and perform your vows?" 
 " Nan pm/e van-thain" i. e. "I have been and returned," 
 which means he is going immediately. "Carpenter, if 
 you are not quick in finishing that car, the gods will be 
 angry with you." — "My lord, the work is already done;" 
 when perhaps some months will have to elapse before the 
 work can be finished. But they also use the past for the 
 future, to denote certanty as well as speed. Do the ants 
 begin to run about with their eggs in their mouth, it is said, 
 " mally~pmj-yattu,^^ it has rained, though a single drop has 
 not fallen on the ground. The meaning is, the sign is so 
 certain, that all doubt is removed. " Why does that man 
 go to the village 1 Does he not know the cholera is sweeping 
 as a besom 1 Alas ! alas ! avvon-chetu pondn ; he is already 
 dead ;" which means, he will certainly die. Should the 
 friends of a young man inquire whether he may go to sea, 
 the soothsayer says, (if the signs are unfavourable,) " He 
 is already drowned." But the future is also used instead 
 of the past, as in the case of the deliverer from Bozrah : 
 " I will stain," for " I have stained." Should a man re- 
 fuse to obey an officer, and inquire, " "Where is the order 
 of the king 1" the reply is, " He will command," which 
 strongly intimates it has been done, and that other conse- 
 quences will follow. (1 Sam. iii. 13.) See margin, 1 Kings 
 iii. 13; also vi. 1; and xv. 25. 2 Kings viii. 16. Dan. 
 ii. 28 ; also iii. 29 ; for all of which see marginal readings. 
 See Dr. A. Clarke on Matt. iii. 17 ; also xxvi. 28, blood 
 is shed, for will be shed* — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. The burden of Dumah. He calleth to 
 me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night ? 
 watchman, what of the night? 
 
 The Orientals emploved watchmen to patrol the city 
 during the night, to suppress any disorders in the streets, 
 or to guard the walls against the attempts of a foreign ene- 
 my. To this custom Solomon refers in these words : " The 
 
Chap. 22. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 461 
 
 watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote 
 me, they wounded me ; the keepers of the wall took away 
 my veil from me." This custom may be traced to a very- 
 remote antiquity ; so early as the departure of Israel from 
 the land of Egypt, the morning watch is mentioned, cer- 
 tainly indicating the time when the watchmen were com- 
 munly relieved. In Persia, the watchmen were obliged to 
 indemnify those who were robbed in the streets ; which ac- 
 counts for the vigilance and severity which they display in 
 the discharge of their office, and illustrates the character of 
 watchman given to Ezekiel, who lived in that country, and 
 the duties he was required to perform. If the wicked per- 
 ished in his iniquities without warning, the prophet was to 
 be accountable for his blood ; but if he duly pointed out his 
 danger, he delivered his own soul. These terms, there- 
 fore, were neither harsh nor severe ; they were the com- 
 mon appointments of watchmen in Persia. They were 
 also charged to announce the progress of the night to the 
 slumbering city : " The burden of Dumah : he calls to me 
 out of Sei'r, Watchman, what of the night *? watchman, 
 what of the night 1 The watchman said, The morning com- 
 eth, and also the night." This is confirmed by an observa- 
 tion of Chardin, upon these words of Moses: " For a thou- 
 sand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, 
 and as a watch in the night;" that as the people of the East 
 have no clocks, the several parts of the day and of the night, 
 which are eight in all, are announced. In the Indies, the 
 parts of the night are made known, as well by instruments 
 of music, in great cities, as by the rounds of the watchmen, 
 who, with cries and small drums, give them notice that a 
 fourth part of the night is past. Now, as these cries awa- 
 ked those who had slept all that quarter part of the night, 
 it appeared to them but as a moment. There are sixty of 
 these people in the Indies by day, and as many by night ; 
 that is, fifteen for each division. It is evident the ancient 
 Jews knew, by means of some public notice, how the night- 
 watches passed away ; but, whether they simply announced 
 the termination of the watch, or made use of trumpets, or 
 other sonorous instruments, in making the proclamation, it 
 may not be easy to determine ; and still less what kind of 
 chronometers the watchmen used. The probability is, that 
 the watches were announced with the sound of a trumpet ; 
 for the prophet Ezekiel makes it a part of the watchman's 
 duty, at least in time of war, to blow the trumpet, and warn 
 the people. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 1. Theburdenof the valley of vision. What 
 aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up 
 to the house-tops ? 
 
 The houses in the East were in ancient times as they are 
 still, generally, built.in one and the same uniform manner. 
 The roof or top of the house is always flat, covered with 
 broad stones, or a strong plaster of terrace, and guarded on 
 every side with a low parapet-wall. The terrace is fre- 
 quented as much as any part of the house. On this, as the 
 season favours, they walk, they eat, they sleep, they trans- 
 act business, they perform their devotions. The house is 
 built with a court within, into which chiefly the windows 
 open ; those that open to the street are so obstructed with 
 lattice-work, that no one either without or within can see 
 through them. Whenever, therefore, any thing is to be 
 seen or heard in the streets, everyone immediately goes up 
 to the house-top to satisfy his curiosity. In the same man- 
 ner, when any one had occasion to make any thing public, 
 the readiest and most effectual way of doing it, was to 
 proclaim it from the house-tops to the people in the streets. 
 
 — LOWTH. 
 
 Ver. 8. And he discovered the covering- of Judah, 
 and thou didst look in that day to the armour 
 of the house of the forest. 
 
 The editor of the Fragments subjoined to Calmet's Dic- 
 tionary of the Bible, thus renders and explains this passage: 
 He rolled up, turned back, the covering of Judah, as the 
 covering veils, hanging at the door of a house or tent, are 
 rolled up, for more convenient passage, and did look, in- 
 spect carefully, the arms and weapons of the house of the 
 forest. The ideas contained in this iiiterpretation are apt- 
 
 ly expressed in the following e^^ract from Frazer's Histo- 
 ry of Kouli Khan: " Nadir Shah, having taken Delhi, or- 
 dered SirbuUind Khan to attend the Towpehi Bashi, the 
 master of the ordnance; and the Nissikchi Bachi, head 
 regulator, commissary of seizures, who had each two hun- 
 dred horse, to seize all the king's and the omra's ordnance, 
 the treasury, jewels, toishik-khanna, (the arsenal,) and all 
 the other implements and arms that belonged to the empe- 
 ror, and the deceased omras ; and to send to Mahommed 
 Shall, the captive emperor, his son, Sultan Ahmed, and 
 Malika al Zumani, (the queen of the times,) the emperess. 
 Nadir Shah took away the ordnance, effects, and treasure," 
 May not such a conduct in a conqueror justify the allu- 
 sion supposed to be intended in this representation of the 
 prophet ; for what is this but rolling back what covered the 
 privacy of the conquered state, and prying into the house 
 of its armoury. — BunDEu, 
 
 Ver. 16. What hast thou here, and whom hast 
 thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a 
 sepulchre here, as he that hewed him out a 
 sepulchre on high, a7id that graveth a habita- 
 tion for himself in a rock ? 
 
 The Orientals bury without the walls of their cities, 
 unless when they wish to bestow a distinguishing mark t f 
 honour upon the deceased. For this reason, the sepulchres 
 of David and his family, and the tomb of Huldah the 
 prophetess, were within the city of Jerusalem ; and perhaps 
 the only ones to be found there. The sepulchres of the 
 Hebrews, that were able to afford the necessary expense, 
 were extensive caves or vauhs, excavated in the native 
 rock, by the art and exertions of man. The roofs were 
 generally arched; and some were so spacious as to be 
 supported by colonnades. All round the sides were cells 
 for the reception of the sarcophagi ; these were ornament- 
 ed with appropriate sculpture, and each was placed in its 
 proper cell. The cave or sepulchre admitted no light, be- 
 ing closed by a great stone which was rolled to the mouth, 
 by the narrow passage or entrance. Many of these recep- 
 tacles are still extant in Judea ; two in particular are more 
 magnificent than all the rest, and for that reason supposed 
 to be the sepulchres of the kings. One of these is in Jeru- 
 salem, and contains twenty-four cells; the other, containing 
 twice that number, is without the city. " You are to form 
 to yourself," says Lowth, speaking of these sepulchres, "an 
 idea of an immense subterraneous vault, a vast gloomy 
 cavern, all round the sides of which are cells to receive the 
 dead bodies ; here the deceased monarchs lie jn a distin- 
 guished sort of state, suitable to their former rank, each on 
 his own couch, with his arms beside him, his sword at his 
 head, and the bodies of his chiefs and companions round 
 about him." 
 
 " Whoever," says Maundrell, " was buried there, this is 
 certain, that the place itself discovers so great an expense, 
 both of labour and of treasure, that we may well suppose it 
 to have been the work of kings. You approach it at the 
 east side through an entrance cut out of t'he natural rock, 
 which admits you into an open court of about forty paces 
 square, cut down into the rock, with which it is encom- 
 passed instead of walls. On the south side of the court, is 
 a portico, nine paces long, and four broad, hewn likewise 
 out of the rock. This has a kind of architrave running 
 along its front, adorned with sculpture of fruits and flowers, 
 still discernible, but by time much defaced. At the end of 
 the portico on the left hand, you descend to the passage into 
 the sepulchres. Passing through it, you arrive in a large 
 apartment about seven or eight yards square, cut out of the 
 natural rock. Its sides and ceiling are so exactly square, 
 and its angles so just, that no architect with levels and 
 plummets cculd build a room more regular; and the whole 
 is so firm and entire, that it may be called a chamber hol- 
 lowed out of one piece of marble. From this room you 
 pass into six more, one within another, all of the same 
 fabric as the first. Of these the two innermost are deeper 
 than the rest, having a second descent of about six or seven 
 steps into them. In every one of these rooms, except the 
 first, were coffins of stone placed in niches in the sides of 
 the chambers. They had been at first covered with hand- 
 some lids, and carved with garlands ; but now most of them 
 are broken to pieces by sacrilegious hands. The sides and 
 ceilings of the rooms were also drooping with the moist 
 
462 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 22. 
 
 damps condensed upon th6m ; to remedy which nuisance, 
 and to preserve ihese chambers of the dead polite and 
 clean, there was in each room a small channel cut in the 
 floor, which served to drain the drops that fell constantly 
 into it. 
 
 To these sepulchres, and their interior chambers, one 
 v/ithin another, the wise man, by a bold and striking figure, 
 compares the dwelling of a lewd woman : " Her house is 
 the way to hades i^ her first or outer chamber is like the 
 open court that leads to the tomb, " going down to the 
 chambers of death;" her private apartments, like the sepa- 
 rate recesses of a sepulchre, are the receptacles of loath- 
 some corruption ; and he calls them, in allusion to the 
 solidity of the rock in which they are hewn, the " long 
 home," (o^^j? n^a) beth olam, the house of ages. The higher 
 such sepulchres were cut in the rock, or the more conspic- 
 uously they were situated, the greater was supposed to be 
 the honour of reposing there. " Hezekiah was buried in 
 the chiefest," says our translation ; rather, in the highest 
 part " of the sepulchres of the sons of David," to do him 
 the more honour. The vanity of Shebna, which so much 
 displeased the Lord, was discovered in preparing for him- 
 self a sepulchre in the face of some lofty rock : " What 
 hast thou here, and v/hom hast thou here, that thou hast 
 hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him 
 out a sepulchre on high, and that graveth a habitation for 
 him in a rock." Several modern travellers mention some 
 monuments still remaining in Persia of great antiquity, 
 which gave them a clear idea of Shebna's pompous design 
 for his sepulchre. They consist of several tombs, each of 
 Ihem hewn in a high rock near the top ; the front of the 
 rock to the valley below, being the outside of the sepulchre, 
 is adorned udth carved work in relief. Some of these 
 sepulchres are about thirty feet in the perpendicular from 
 the valley. Diodorus Siculus mentions these ancient 
 monuments, and calls them the sepulchres of the kings of 
 Persia. The tombs of Tel missus, in the island of Rhodes, 
 which Dr. Clarke visited, furnish a still more remarkable 
 commentary on this text. They " are of two kinds ; the 
 first are sepulchres hewn in the face of perpendicular 
 rocks. Wherever the side of a mountain presented an 
 almost inaccessible steep, there the ancient workmen seem 
 to have bestowed their prin3ipal labour. In such situations 
 are seen excavated chambers, worked with such marvel- 
 lous art, as to exhibit open fa9ades, porticoes with Ionic 
 columns, gates and doors beautifully sculptured, in which 
 are carved the repiesentation of an embossed iron work, 
 bolts and hinges of one stone. 
 
 " The other kind of tomb is the true Grecian soros, the 
 sarcophagus of the Romans. Of this sort there are several, 
 but of a size and grandeur far exceeding any thing of the 
 kind elsewhere, standing in some instances upon the crag- 
 gy pinnacles of lofty precipitous rocks. Each consists of 
 a single stone, others of still larger size, of more than one 
 stone. Some consist of two masses of stone, one for the 
 body, or chest of the soros, and the other for its operculum ; 
 and to increase the wonder excited by the skill and labour 
 manifested in their construction, they have been almost 
 miraculously raised to the surrounding heights, and there 
 left standing upon the projections and crags of the rocks, 
 which the casualties of nature presented for their reception. 
 At Macri, the tombs are cut out of the solid rock, in the 
 precipices towards the sea. Some of them have a kind of 
 portico, with pillars in front. In these they were almost 
 plain. The hewn stone was as smooth as if the artist had 
 been employed upon wood, or any other soft substance. 
 They most nearly resemble book-cases, with glass doors. 
 A small rectangular opening, scarcely large enough to pass 
 through, admits a stranger to the interior of these tombs ; 
 where is found a square chamber, with one or more recep- 
 tacles for dead bodies, shaped like baths, upon the sides of 
 the apartment, and neatly chiselled in the body of the rock. 
 The mouths of these sepulchres had been originally closed 
 by square slabs of stone, exactly adapted to grooves cut for 
 their reception; and so nicely adjusted, that when the work 
 was finished, the place of entrance might not be observed. 
 Of similar construction were the sepulchres of the Jews 
 in Palestme, and particularly that in which our Lord was 
 buried. Many of these have the appearance of being in- 
 accessible ; but by dint of climbing from rock to rock, at 
 the risk of a dangerous fall, it is possible to ascend even to 
 the highest. They are fronted with rude pillats, which 
 
 are integral parts of the solid rock. Some of them are 
 twenty feet high. The mouths of these sepulchres are 
 closed with beautiful sculptured imitations of brazec cr 
 iron doors, with hinges, knobs, and bars." 
 
 This intelligent traveller visited a range of tombs of tne 
 same kind on the borders of the lake of Tiberias, hewn by 
 the earliest inhabitants of Galilee, in the rocks which face 
 the water. They were deserted in the time of our Saviour, 
 and had become the resort of wretched men, afflicted by 
 diseases, and made outcasts of society ; for these tombs are 
 particularly alluded to in the account of a cure performed 
 upon a maniac in the country of the Gadarenes. The 
 tombs at Naplose, the ancient Sichem, where Joseph, Josh- 
 ua, and others, were buried, are also hewn out of the solid 
 rock, and durable as the hills in which they are excavated. 
 Constituting integral parts of mountains, and chiselled with 
 a degree of labour not to be conceived from mere descrip- 
 tion, these monuments suffer no change from the lapse of 
 ages; they have defied, and will defy, the attacks of time, 
 and continue as perfect at thi^ hour, as they were in the 
 first moment of their completion, — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 17. Behold, the Lord will carry thee away 
 with a mighty captivity, and will surely cover 
 thee. 
 
 To be covered is a sign of mourning, of degradation, and 
 inferiority. People in great sorrow cover their faces with 
 their robes ; thus may be seen the weeping mother and 
 sorrow-struck father: they cover themselves from the sight 
 of others, to conceal their dejection and tears. But when 
 people are ashamed, also, they cover their heads and faces. 
 For a man to say he will cover another, intimates supe- 
 riority, and shows that he will put him to confusion. " Yes, 
 the man who was brought up and nourished by the Mode- 
 liar, is now greater than his benefactor, for he covers him." 
 " L ok at that parasitical banyan tree ; when it first began 
 to grow on the other tree, it was a very small plant, but it 
 has been allowed to flourish, and now it covers the parent 
 stock," Thus, those who were to be carried into captivity, 
 were to be covered, in token of their sorrow, degradation, 
 and inferiority. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 22. And the key of the house of David will 
 I lay upon his shoulder : so he shall open, and 
 none shall shut ; and he shall shut, and none 
 shall open. 
 
 How much was I delighted when I first saw the people, 
 especially the Moors, going along the streets with each his 
 key on his shoulder. The handle is generally made of brass, 
 (though sometimes of silver,) and is often nicely worked in 
 a device of filigree. The way it is carried, is to have the 
 corner of a kerchief tied to the ring; the key is then placed 
 on the shoulder, and the kerchief hangs down in front. At 
 other times they have a bunch of large keys, and then they 
 have half on one side of the shoudler, and half on the other. 
 For a man thus to march along with a large key on his 
 shoulder, shows at once that he is a person of consequence. 
 " Raman is in great favour with the Modeliar, for he now. 
 carries the key." " Whose key have you got on your 
 shoulder'?" " I shall carry my key on my own shoulder.'* 
 The key of the house of David was to be on the shoulder 
 of Eliakim, who was a type of him who had the "govern- 
 ment" "upon his shoulder;" "the mighty God, the ever- 
 lasting Father, the Prince of Peace," — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure 
 place ; and he shall be for a glorious throne to 
 his father's house. 
 
 When a man in power has given a situation to another, 
 it is said of the favoured individual, " He is fastened as a 
 nail." " Yes, his situation is fixed, he will not be moved.'* 
 "What! has Tamban lost his glory? I thought he had 
 been fastened as a nail."— Roberts. 
 
 The Orientals, in fitting up their houses, were by no 
 means inattentive to the comfort and satisfaction ansmff 
 from order and method. Their furniture was scanty and 
 plain ; but they were careful to arrange the few househola 
 utensils they needed, so as not to encumber the apartmenu 
 
Chap. 24 
 
 ISAIAH 
 
 463 
 
 to which they belonged. Their devices for this purpose, 
 which, like every part of the structure, bore the character 
 of remarkable simplicity, may not correspond with our 
 ideas of neatness and propriety ; but they accorded with 
 their taste, and sufficiently answered their design. One of 
 these consisted in a set of spikes, nails, or large pegs, fixed 
 in the walls of the house, upon which they hung up the 
 moveables and utensils in common use, that belonged to 
 the room. These nails they do not drive into the walls 
 with a hammer or mallet, but fix them there when the 
 house is building; for if the walls are of brick, they are too 
 hard, or if they consist of clay, too soft and mouldering, to 
 admit the action of the hammer. The spikes, which are 
 so contrived as to strengthen the walls, by binding the parts 
 together, as well as to serve for convenience, are large, 
 with square heads like dice, and bent at the ends so as to 
 make them cramp-irons. They commonly place them at 
 the windows and doors, in order to hang upon them, when 
 they choose, veils and curtains, although they place them 
 in other parts of the room, to hang up other things of vari- 
 ous kinds. The care witn which they fixed these nails, 
 may be inferred, as well from the important purposes they 
 were meant to serve, as from the promise of the Lord to 
 Eliakim : " And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place." 
 Pins and nails. Dr. Russel observes, in a manuscript note, 
 are se'ldom used (at Aleppo) for hanging clothes or other 
 articles upon, which are usually laid one over the other, 
 on a chest, or particular kind of chair. This intelligent 
 writer does not refuse that they are occasionally used in 
 modern times ; and it is evident from the words of the 
 prophet, that it was common in his time to suspend upon 
 them the utensils belonging to the apartment : " Will men 
 take a pin of it to hang any Vessel thereon 1" The word 
 used in Isaiah for a nail of this sort, is the same which de- 
 notes the stake, or large pin of iron, which fastened down 
 to the ground the cords of their tents. These nails, there- 
 fore, were of necessary and common use, and of no small 
 importance in all their apartments ; and if they seem to us 
 mean and insignificant, it is because they are unknown to 
 US, and inconsistent with our notions of propriety, and be- 
 cause we have no name for them but what conveys to our ■ 
 ear a low and contemptible idea. It is evident "from the 
 frequent allusions in scripture to these instruments, that 
 they were not regarded with contempt or indifference by 
 the natives of Palestine. " Grace has been showed from 
 the Lord our God," said Ezra, *' to leave us a remnant to 
 escape, and to give us a nail in his holy place;" or, as ex- 
 plained in the margin, a constant and sure abode. The 
 dignity and propriety of the metaphor appears from the use 
 which the prophet Zechariah makes of it : " Out of him 
 Cometh forth the corner, out of him the nail, out of him the 
 battle bow, out of him every oppressor together." The 
 whole frame of government, both in church and state, 
 which the chosen people of God enjoyed, was the contri- 
 vance of his wisdom, and the gift of his bounty : the foun- 
 dations upon which it rested; the bonds which kept the 
 several parts together ; its means of defence ; its officers 
 and executors, were all the fruits of distinguishing good- 
 ness ; even the oppressors of his people were a rod of cor- 
 rection in the hand of Jehovah, to convince them of sin, 
 and restore them to his service. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 5. The earth also is defiled under the inhab- 
 itants thereof, because they have transgressed 
 the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the 
 everlasting covenant. 
 
 These expressive words, while they declare the cause of 
 the judgments and desolation, denote also the great de- 
 pravity of those who were to inhabit the land of Judea, 
 during the time of its desolation, and while its ancient 
 inhabitants were to be " scattered abroad." And althou.gh 
 the ignorance of those who dwell therein may be pitied, 
 their degeneracy will not be denied. The ferocity of the 
 Turks, the predatory habits of the Arabs, the abject state 
 of the few poor Jews who are suffered to dwell in the land 
 c.f their fathers, the base superstitions of the different Chris- 
 tian sects; the frequent contentions that subsist among such 
 a mingled and diversified people, and the gross ignorance 
 and great depravity that prevail throughout the whole, have 
 
 all sadly changed and stained the moral aspect of that coun- 
 try, which, from sacred remembrances, is denominated the 
 Holy Land; have converted that region, where alone in all 
 the world, and during many ages, the only living and true 
 God was worshipped ; and where alone the pattern of per- 
 fect virtue was ever exhibited to human view, or in the 
 human form, into one of the most degraded countries of 
 the globe, and in appropriate terms, may well be said to 
 have dejiled the land. And it has been defiled throughout 
 many an age. The Father of mercies afflicteth not will- 
 ingly, nor grieves the children of men. Sin is ever the 
 precursor of the actual judgments of Heaven. It was on 
 account of their idolatry and wickedness that the ten tribes 
 were earliest plucked from off the land of Israel. The 
 blood of Jesus, according to their prayer, and the full 
 measure of their iniquity, according to their doings, was 
 upon the Jews and upon their children. Before they were 
 extirpated from that land which their iniquities had defiled, 
 it was drenched with the blood of more than a million qi 
 their race. Judea afterward had a partial and temporary 
 respite from desolation, when Christian churches were 
 established there. But in that land, the nursery of Chris- 
 tianity, the seeds of its corruption, or perversion, began 
 soon to appear. The moral power of religion decayed, the 
 worship of images prevailed, and the nominal disciples of 
 a pure faith "broke the everlasting covenant." The doc- 
 trine of Mohammed, the Koran, or the sword, was the 
 scourge and the cure of idolatry; but all the native impu- 
 rities of the Mohammedan creed succeeded to a grossly 
 corrupted form of Christianity. Since that period, hordes 
 of Saracens, Egyptians, Fatimites, Tartars, Mamelukes, 
 Turks, (a combination of names of unmatched barbarism, 
 at least in modem times,) have, fqr the space of twelve hun- 
 dred years, defiled the land of the chilaren of Israel with 
 iniquity and with blood. And in very truth the prophecy 
 savours not in the least of hyperbole : the worst of the heathen 
 shall possess their houses, aiid the holy places shall be defiled. 
 Omer, on the first conquest of Jerusalem by the Moham- 
 medans, erected a mosque on the site of the temple of Solr 
 omon ; and, jealous as the God of Israel is, that his glory 
 be not given to another, the unseemly, and violent, and 
 bloody conteniions among Christian sects, around the very 
 sepulchre of the Author of the faith which they dishonour, 
 bear not a feebler testimony in the present day, than the 
 preceding fact bore, at so remote a period, to the truth of this 
 prediction. The phrensied zeal of crusading Christians 
 could not expel the heathen from Judea, though Europe 
 then poured like a torrent upon Asia. But the defilement 
 of the land, no less than that of the holy places, is not yet 
 cleansed away. And Judea is still defiled to this hour, not 
 only by oppressive rulers, but by an unprincipled and a 
 lawless people. " The barbarism of Syria," says Volney, 
 " is complete." " I have often reflected," says Burckhardt, 
 in describing the dishonest conduct of a Greek priest in the 
 hauran, (but in words that admit of too general an applica- 
 tion,) " that if the English penal laws were suddenly pro- 
 mulgated in this country, there is scarcely any man in 
 business, or who has money-dealings with others, who 
 would not be liable to transportation before the end of the 
 first six months. Under the name of Christianity, every 
 degrading superstition and profane rite, equally remote 
 from the enlightened tenets of the gospel, and the dignity 
 of human nature, are professed and tolerated. The pure 
 gospel of Christ, everywhere the herald of civilization and 
 of science, is almost as little known in the Holy Land, as 
 in California or New Holland. A series of legendary 
 traditions, mingled with remains of Judaism, and the 
 wretched fantasies of illiterate ascetics, may now and 
 then exhibit a glimmering of heavenly light ; but if we 
 seek for the effects of Christianity in the Land of Canaan, 
 we must look for that period when the desert shall blossom 
 as the rose, and the wilderness become a fruitful field."- 
 Keith. 
 
 Ver. 6. Therefore hath the curse devoured the 
 earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate : 
 therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burn- 
 ed, and few men left. 
 
 " The government of the Turks in Syria is a pure mili- 
 tary despotism, that is, the bulk of the inhabitants are 
 subject to the caprices of a faction of armed men, who dia- 
 
464 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 24—27. 
 
 pose of every thing accc rding to their interest and fancy. 
 In each government the pacha is an absolute despot. In 
 the villages, the inhabitants, limited to the mere necessaries 
 of life, have no arts but those without which they cannot 
 subsist. There is no safety without the towns, nor security 
 within their precincts." (Voiney.) "Few men left," While 
 their character is thus depraved, and their condition mis- 
 erable, their number is also small indeed, as the inhabitants 
 of so extensiA^e and fertile a region. After estimating the 
 number of inhabitants in Syria in general, Voiney remarks, 
 " So feeble a population in so excellent a country, may well 
 excite our astonishment ; but this will be increased, if we 
 compare the present number of inhabitants with that of 
 ancient times. We are informed by the philosophical 
 geographer, Strabo, that the territories of Yanmia and Yop- 
 pa, in Palestine alone, were formerly so populous as to 
 bring forty thousand armed men into the field. At present 
 they could scarcely furnfsh three thousand. From the ac- 
 counts we have of Judea, in the time of Titus, which are 
 to be esteemed tolerably accurate, that country must have 
 contained four millions of inhabitants. If we go still fur- 
 ther back into antiquity, we shall find the san>e populous- 
 ness among the Philistines, the Phenicians, and in the 
 kingdoms of Samaria and Damascus." Though the ancient 
 population of the land of Israel be estimated at the lowest 
 computation, and the existing population be rated at the 
 highest, yet that country does not now contain a tenth part 
 of the number of inhabitants which it plentifully supported, 
 exclusively i'rom their industry, and from the rich resources 
 of its own luxuriant soil, for many successive centuries ; 
 and how could it possibly have been imagined that this 
 identical land would ever yield so scanty a subsistence to 
 he desolate dwellers therein, and that there would be so 
 fevj men left 7 — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 13. When thus it shall be in the midst of 
 the land among- the people, there shall be as 
 the shaking of an olive-tree, and as the glean- 
 ing-grapes when the vintage is done. 
 See on eh. 17. 6. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Ver. 6. And in this mountain shall the Lord of 
 hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, 
 a feast of wines on the lees ; of fat things full 
 of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. 
 
 See on ch. 51. 17. 
 
 In the East they keep their wine in jugs, from which they 
 have no method of drawing it off fine: it is therefore com- 
 monly somewhat thick and turbid, by the lees with which 
 it is mixed : to remedy this inconvenience they filtrate or 
 strain it through a cloth, and to this custom, as prevailing 
 in his time, the prophet here plainly alludes. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. For in this mountain shall the hand of 
 the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down 
 under him, even as straw is trodden down for 
 the dunghill. 
 
 See on ch. 28. 26—28. 
 
 Dr. A. Clarke has, " for the dunghill," " under the 
 wheels of the car." This may allude to their ancient cars 
 of war, under which Moab was to be crushed, or under her 
 own heathen cars, in which the gods were taken out in 
 procession. To spread forth the hands, as a person when 
 swimming, may refer to the involuntary stretching forth of 
 the limbs, when the body was crushed with the weight of 
 the car ; or to the custom of those who, when they go before 
 the car in procession, prostrate themselves on the ground, 
 and spread out their hands and legs as if swimming; till 
 they have measured the full distance the car has to go, by 
 throwing themselves on the earth at the length of every six 
 feet, and by motions as if in the act of swimming. The 
 whole of this is done as a penance for sin, or in compliance 
 ■^VJa a vow made in sickness or despair. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Ver. 19. Thy dead men shall li\T, together with 
 
 my dead body shall they arise. Awake and 
 sing, ye that dwell in dust : for thy dew is as 
 the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out 
 the dead. 
 
 As they sometimes plant herbs and flowers aboi the 
 graves of the dead, so Dr. Addison observed, that the jews 
 of Barbary adorned the graves of their dead in a less last- 
 ing manner, with green boughs brought thither from time 
 to time ; might not this practice originate from the doctrine 
 of the resurrection 1 perhaps from that well known passage 
 of a prophet: " Thy dead men shall live, together with 
 my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that 
 dwell in dust : for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and 
 the earth shall cast out the dead." Is. xxvi. 19. Or if it 
 was practised still earlier, might not this passage have re- 
 ference to that custom '? It is admitted, that the practice ob- 
 tained among those that entertained no expectation of a resur- 
 rection, but in the language of St. Paul sorrowed as peo- 
 ple that had no such hope. The ancient Greeks practised 
 this decking the graves of their dead, but it might notwith- 
 standing originate from that doctrine, and be adopted by 
 those of a different belief, as having something in it softening 
 the horrors of viewing their relatives immersed in the dust; 
 and might be thought to be agreeable by those that entered 
 into medical considerations, as correcting those ill-scented 
 and noxious exhalations that might arise in those burial 
 places, to which their women, more especially, were fre- 
 quently induced to go, to express their attachment to the 
 departed. Maillet supposes the modern Egyptians lay 
 leaves and herbs on the gra^i^es of their friends, from a no- 
 tion that this was a consolation to the dead, and believed to 
 be refreshing to them from their shade. The women there, 
 according to him, go, " at least tAvo days in the week, to 
 pray and weep at the sepulchres of the dead ; and the cus- 
 tom then is to throw upon the tombs a sort of herb which 
 the Arabs call rihan, and which is our sweet basil. They 
 cover them also with the leaves of the palm-tree." If they 
 use any other plants for this purpose in Egypt, he has neg- 
 lected to mention them.— Harmer. "^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Ver. 10. Yet the defenced city shall he desolate, 
 and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wil- 
 derness: there shall the calf feed, and there 
 shall he lie down, and consume the branches 
 thereof. 
 
 Josephus describes Galilee, of which he was the governor, 
 as " full of plantations of trees of all sorts, the soil univer- 
 sally rich and fruitful, and all, without the exception of a 
 single part, cultivated by the inhabitants. Moreover," he 
 adds, " the cities lie here very thick, and there are very 
 many villages, which are so full of people, by the richness 
 of their soil, that the very least of them contained above fif- 
 teen thousand inhabitants." Such was Galilee, at the com- 
 mencement of the Christian era, several centuries after the 
 prophecy was delivered ; but now " the plain of Esdraelon, 
 and all the other parts of Galilee which afford pasture, are 
 occupied by Arab tribes, around whose brown tents the 
 sheep and lambs gambol to the sound of the reed, which at 
 nightfall calls them home." The calf feeds and lies down 
 amid the ruins of the cities, and consumes, without hinder- 
 ance, the branches of the trees ; and, however changed may 
 be the condition of the inhabitants, the lambs feed after ilieir 
 manner^ and, while the land mourns, and the merry-hearted 
 sigh, they gambol to the sound of the reed. The precise 
 and comple contrast between the ancient and existing state 
 of Palestine, as separately described by Jewish and Roman 
 historians and by modern travellers, is so strikingly exem- 
 plified in their opposite descriptions, that, in reference to 
 whatever constituted the beauty and the glory of the country, 
 or the happiness of the people, an entire change is manifest, 
 even in minute circumstances. The universal richness 
 and fruitfulness of the soil of Galilee, together with its 
 being " full of plantations of all sorts of trees," are repre- 
 sented by Josephus as " inviting the most slothful to lake 
 pains in its cultivation." And the other provinces of the 
 Holy Land are also described by him as " having abundance 
 of trees, full of autumnal fruit, both that which grows wild, 
 
Chap. 28. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 465 
 
 and that which is the effect of cultivation." Tacitus re- 
 lates, that, besides all the fruits of Italy, the palm and bal- 
 sam-tree flourished in the fertile soil of Judea. And he 
 records the great carefulness with which, when the circu- 
 lation of the juices seemed to call for it, they gently made 
 an incision in the branches of the balsam, with a shell, or 
 pointed stone, not venturing to apply a knife. No sign of 
 such art or care is now to be seen throughout the land. The 
 balm-tree has disappeared where long it flourisljed ; and 
 hardier plants have perished from other causes than the 
 want of due care in their cultivation. And instead of re- 
 lating how the growth of a delicate tree is promoted, and 
 the medicinal liquor at the same time extracted from its 
 branches, by a nicety or perfectibility of art worthy of the 
 notice of a Tacitus, a different task has fallen to the lot of 
 the traveller from a far land, who describes the customs of 
 those who now dwell where such arts were practised. " The 
 olive-trees (near Arimathea) are daily perishing through 
 age, the ravages of contending factions, and even from secret 
 mischief. The Mamelukes having cut down all the olive- 
 trees, tor the pleasure they take in destroying, or to make 
 Hres, Yafahas has lost its greatest convenience." Instead 
 of " abundance of trees" being still the effect of cultivation, 
 such, on the other hand, has been the effect of these ravages, 
 that many places in Palestine are now " absolutely destitute 
 of fuel." Yet in this devastation, and in all its progress, 
 may be read the literal fulfilment of the prophecy, which 
 not only described the desolate cities of Judea as a pasture 
 of flocks, and as places for the calf to feed and lie down, 
 and consume the branches thereof; but which, with equal 
 truth, also declared, *' when the boughs thereof are wither- 
 ed, they shall be broken off; the women come and set them 
 on fire."— Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Ver. 1. Wo to the crown of pride, to the drunk- 
 ards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a 
 fading- flower, which are on the head of the 
 fat valleys of them that are overcome with 
 wine! 
 
 The city of Sebaste, the ancient Samaria, beautifully 
 situated on the top of a round hill, and surrounded imme- 
 diately with a rich valley and a circle of other hills beyond 
 it, suggested the idea of a chaplet, or wreath of flowers, 
 worn upon their heads on occasions of festivity; expressed 
 by the proud crown and the fading flower of the drunkards. 
 That this custom of wearing chaplets in their banquets 
 prevailed among the Jews, as well as among the Greeks and 
 Romans, appears from Wisdom ii. 7, 8. — Lowth, 
 
 Ver. 15. Because ye have said, We have made a 
 covenant with death, and with hell are we at 
 agreement ; when the overflowing scourge 
 shall pass through, it shall not come unto us ; 
 for we have made lies our refuge, and under 
 falsehood have we hid ourselves. 
 
 Of those who have often had a narrow escape from death, 
 it is said, " Those fellows have entered into an agreement 
 with death." " They have made a friendship ; death in- 
 jure ihem ! chee, chee, they understand each other." — 
 R( 
 
 Ver. 25. When he hath made plain the face there- 
 of, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and 
 scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal 
 wheat, and the appointed barley, and the rye, 
 in their place ? 
 
 See on ch. 32. 20. 
 
 Ver. 26. For his God doth instruct him to dis- 
 cretion, and doth teach him. 27. For the 
 fitches are not thrashed with a thrashing in- 
 strument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about 
 upon the cummin ; but the fitches are beaten 
 out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. 
 59 
 
 28. Bread-coni is bruised ; because he will not 
 ever be thrashing it, nor break it with the wheel 
 of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. 
 
 The method of thrashing out the grain, varied according | 
 to the species. Isaiah mentions four different instruments, 
 the flail, the drag, the wain, and the feet of the ox. The 
 staff, or flail, was used for the smaller seeds, which were 
 too tender to be treated in the other methods. The drag 
 consisted of a sort of strong planks, made rough at the bot- 
 tom with hard stones or iron ; it was drawn by oxen, or 
 horses, over the corn sheaves spread on the floor, the driver 
 sitting upon it. The wain, or cart, was much like the for- 
 mer, but had wheels, with iron teeth or edges like a saw. 
 From the statement of different authors, it would seem that 
 the axle was armed with iron teeth, or serrated wheels 
 throughout. Niebuhr gives a description and printrof such 
 a machine, used at present in Egypt for the same purpose; 
 it moves upon three rollers, armed, with ironteeih or wheels 
 to cut the straw. In Syria, they make use of the drag, con- 
 structed in the very same manner as before described. 
 This not only forcea out the grain, but also cut the straw 
 in pieces, which is used in this state over all the East as 
 fodder for the cattle, Virgil also mentions the slow rolling 
 wains of the Eleusinian mother, the planks and sleds for 
 pressing out the corn, and harrows of unwieldy weight. 
 The Israelitish farmer, endowed with discretion from 
 above, made use of all these instruments in separating from 
 the chaff the various produce of his fields: "For his God 
 doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. For 
 the fitches are not thrashed with a thrashing instrument, 
 neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin ; but 
 the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with 
 a rod. Bread-corn is bruised : because he will not ever be 
 thrashing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor 
 bruise it with his horsemen. This also cometh forth from 
 the Lord of hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excel- 
 lent in working." In the early periods of the Jewish com- 
 monwealth, however, these various methods, adapted to the 
 different kinds of grain, were unknown ; the husbandman 
 employed the staff, or flail, in thrashing all his crop. When 
 the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he found him 
 thrashing wheat by the wine-press with a staff, for so the 
 original term (untn) signifies ; and after Ruth had gleaned 
 in the field till the evening, she beat out with a staff (trnnn-') 
 what she had gleaned. The Seventy render the verb in 
 both passages, by the Greek word paPStvetv, to beat with a 
 rod ; but the natural sagacity of the human mind, directed 
 by the finger of God, at last invented the other more eflfica- 
 cious implements, to which Isaiah so frequently refers in 
 the course of his writings. He compares Moab, in the day 
 of their overthrow, to straw which is trodden down under 
 the wain : and he promises to furnish his oppressed people 
 with the same powerful instrument, which we translate a 
 new sharp thrashing instrument having teeth, that they may 
 thrash the mountains, and beat them small, and make the 
 hills as chaff; or droppingthe metaphor, he promises them 
 complete victory over their numerous and powerful ene- 
 mies, who should be given by the Lord of hosts as driven 
 stubble to their bow, and swept away before the armies of 
 Israel as chaff before the whirlwinds of the south. — Paxton. 
 
 As in different parts of the holy scriptures there are fre- 
 quent allusions to the sowivg of rice, watering the grounds, 
 thrashing, or what the prophet Isaiah, xxviii. 28, terms, 
 breaking it with the wheel of the cart ; or, bringing the wheel 
 over it, Prov. xx. 26, it may not be improper to conclude 
 these remarks with a short account of the sowing, cultivation , 
 thrashing, and preservation of rice, taken from the travels 
 of Mr. Sonnini, a writer worthy of the utmost credit in 
 every thing that concerns the natural history and antiqui- 
 ties of Egypt. 
 
 " Rice is sown in Lower Egypt from the month of March 
 to that of May. During the inundation of the Nile, the 
 fields are covered by its waters; and in order to detain 
 them there as long as possible, small dikes, or a sort of 
 raised embankments, are thrown up, round each field, to 
 prevent them from running off. Trenches serve to convey 
 thither a fresh supply; for, in order to make the plant 
 thrive, its roots must be constantly watered. The ground 
 is so moistened, that in some places a person sinks in half 
 way up to his chin. Rice is nearly six months before it 
 comes to maturity ; and it is generally cut down by the mid- 
 
406 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap 29. 
 
 die of November. In Egypt the use o[ the Jlail is unknown. 
 To separate the grain from the straw, the inhabitants pre- 
 pare with a mixture of earth and pigeon's dung, spacious 
 floors, well beat, and very clean. The rice is spread there- 
 I on in thick layers. They then have a sort of cart, formed 
 ' of two pieces of wood joined together by iwo cross-pieces: 
 it is almost in the shape of sledges which serve for the con- 
 veyance of burdens in the streets of our cities. Between 
 the longer sides of this sledge are fixed transversely three 
 rows of small wheels, made of solid iron, and narrowed off 
 towards their circumference. On the forepart, a very high 
 and very wide seat is clumsily constructed, A man sitting 
 there drives two oxen, which are harnessed to the machine, 
 and the whole moves on slowly, and always in a circular 
 direction, over every part of the heap of rice, until there 
 remains no more grain in the straw. When it is thus beat, 
 it is spread in the air to be dried. In order to turn it over, 
 several men walk abreast, and each of them, with his foot, 
 makes a furrow in the layer of grain, so that in a few mo- 
 ments the whole mass is moved, and that part which was 
 underneath is again exposed to the air, 
 
 " The dried rice is carried to the mill, where it is strip- 
 ped of its chaff or husk. This mill consists of a wheel 
 turned by oxen, and which sets several levers in motion : 
 at their extremity is an iron cylinder, near a foot long, and 
 hollowed out underneath. They beat in troughs which 
 contain the grain. At the side of each trough there con- 
 stantly stands a man, whose business is to place the rice 
 under the cylinders, He'must not suffer his attention to be 
 diverted; for he would run a risk of having his hand 
 crushed. After this operation, the rice is taken out of the 
 mill, and sifted in the open air ; which is done by filling a 
 small sieve with as much grain as a man can lift; this he 
 raises above his head, and gently spills the rice, turning 
 his face to the wind, which blows away the small chaff or 
 dust. This cleaned rice is put a second time in the mill, 
 in order to bleach it. It is afterward mixed up in troughs 
 with some salt, which contributes very much to its white- 
 ness, and principally to its preservation ; it has then under- 
 gone its whole preparatory process, and in this state it is 
 sold."— Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 Ver. 1. Wo to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where Da- 
 vid dwelt ! add ye year to year ; let them kill 
 sacrifices. 
 
 The numbers that assembled at Jerusalem must of course 
 consume great quantities of provision. The consumption 
 of flesh also must there have been much larger, in propor- 
 tion to the number of the people, than elsewhere ; because 
 in the East they live in common very much on vegetables, 
 farinacious food, oil, honey, &c, ; but at Jerusalem vast 
 quantities of flesh were consumed in the sacred feasts, as 
 well as burnt upon the altar. Perhaps this circumstance 
 will best explain the holy city's being called Ariel, or the 
 JLionof God, Isaiah xxix. 1; an appellation which has oc- 
 casioned a variety of speculation among the learned. Vi- 
 tringa, in his celebrated commentary onlsaiah, supposes that 
 David, according to the eastern custom, was called the Lion 
 of God, and so this city was called by this name from him ; a 
 resolution by no means natural. The Arabs, indeed, in later 
 ages, have often called their great men by this honourable 
 term; D'Herbelot, I think, somewhere tells us, that Ali, 
 Mohammed's son-in-law, was so called ; and I am sure he 
 aflirras, that Mohammed gave this title to Hamzah, his 
 uncle. It will be readily allowed that this was comform- 
 able to the taste of much more ancient times. " The mo- 
 dern Persians will have it," says D'Herbelot, in his account 
 of Shiraz, a city of that country, " that this name was given 
 to it, because this city consumes and devours like a lion, 
 which is called Sheey- in Persian, all that is brought to it, by 
 which they express the multitude, and it may be the good 
 appetite, of its inhabitants." 
 
 The prophet then pronounces wo to Zion, perhaps as too 
 ready to trust to the number of its inhabitants and sojourn- 
 ers, wliich may be insinuated by this term which he uses, 
 Ariel. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver 3. And I will camp ag-ainst thee round about, 
 and will lay sie(]fe against thee with a mount, 
 and I w411 raise forts asfamst thee. 
 
 Moveable towers of wood were usually placed upon the 
 mount, which were driven on wheels fixed within the bottom 
 planks, to secure them from the enemy. Their size was 
 not always the same, but proportioned to the towers of the 
 city they besieged: the front was usually covered with 
 tiles ; and in later times the sides were likewise guarded 
 with the same materials ; their tops were covered with raw 
 hides, and other things, to preserve them from fire balls 
 and missive weapons; they were formed into several stories, 
 which were able to carry "both soldiers and several kinds oi 
 engines." All these modes of attack were practised in the 
 days of Isaiah, who threatens Jerusalem with a siege con- 
 ducted according to this method : " And I will encamp 
 against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee 
 with a mount ; and I will raise forts against thee." The 
 prophet Ezekiel repeats th^ prediction in almost the same 
 words, adding only the name of the engine which was to 
 be employed in battering down the walls : " Thou also, son 
 of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and por- 
 tray upon it the city, even Jerusalem ; and lay siege against 
 it, and cast a mount against it ; set the camp also against 
 it ; and set battering rams against it round about," — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver, 8. It shall even be as when a hungry man 
 dreameth, and, behold, he eateth ; but he awa- 
 keth, and his soul is empty: or as when a 
 thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh ; 
 but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and 
 his soul hath appetite : so shall the multitude 
 of all the nations be that fight against Mount 
 Zion. 
 
 As the simile of the prophet is drawn from nature, an 
 extract which describes the actual occurrence of such a 
 circumstance will be agreeable. " The scarcity of water 
 was greater here at Bubaker than at Benown. Day and 
 night the wells were crowded with cattle lowing, and fight- 
 ing with each other to come at the trough. Excessive thirst 
 made many of them furious : others being too weak to con- 
 tend for the water, endeavoured to quench their thirst by 
 devouring the black mud from the gutters near the wells ; 
 which they did with great avidity, though it was commonly 
 fatal to them. This great scarcity of water was felt by all 
 the people of the camp; and by none more than myself, I 
 begged water from the negro slaves that attended the camp, 
 but with very indifferent success : for though I let no op- 
 portunity slip, and was very urgent in my solicitations both 
 to the Moors and to the negroes, I was but ill supplied, and 
 frequently passed the night in the situation of Tantalus. No 
 sooner had I shut my eyes, than fancy would convey me to 
 the streams and rivers of my native land ; there, as I wan- 
 dered along the verdant bank, I surveyed the clear stream 
 with transport, and hastened to swallow the delightful 
 draught; but, alas! disappointment awakened me, and I 
 found myself a lonely captive, perishing of thirst amid the 
 wilds of Africa." (Park.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 17. Is it not yet a very little while, and Leb- 
 anon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and 
 the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest ? 
 
 The storms and tempests which, gathering on the highest 
 peak of Lebanon, burst on the plains and valleys below, 
 are often very severe. When De la Valle was travelling 
 in the neighbourhood of that mountain, in the end of April, 
 a wind blew from its summits so vehement and cold, with 
 so great a profusion of snow, that though he and his com- 
 pany " were in a manner buried in their quilted coverlets, 
 yet it was sensibly felt, and proved very disagreeable." _ It 
 is not therefore without reason that Lebanon, or the white 
 mountain, as the term signifies, is the name by which that 
 lofty chain is distinguished ; and that the sacred writers so 
 frequently refer to the snow and the gelid waters of Leba- 
 non. They sometimes allude to it as a wild and desolate 
 region ; and certainly no part of the earth is more dreary 
 and barren than the Sannin, the region of perpetual snow. 
 On that naked summit, the seat of storm and tempest, where 
 the principles of vegetation are extinguished, the art and 
 industrv of man can make no impression ; nothing but the 
 creating power of God himself, can ; reduce a favourable 
 
Chap. 30—32. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 467 
 
 alteration. Thus, predicting a w jaderful change, such as 
 results from the signal manifestations of the divine favour 
 to individuals or the church, the prophet demands, " Is it 
 not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned 
 into a fruitful field 1" The contrast in this promise, be- 
 tween the naked, snowy, and tempestuous summits of Le- 
 banon, and a field beautiful and enriched with the fairest 
 and most useful productions of nature, expresses, with gre'at 
 force, the difference which the smiles of Heaven produce 
 in the most wretched and hopeless circumslances of an indi- 
 vidual or a nation. — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Ver. 14. And he shall break it as the breaking 
 of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces ; 
 he shall not spare : so that there shall not be 
 found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire 
 from the hearth, or to take water withal out of 
 the pit. 
 
 This solemn thr>,atening refers to the Jews for their wicked 
 reliance " in the shadow of Egypt :" they were to be reduced 
 10 the greatest straits for thus trusting in the heathen. It is 
 proverbial to say of those who have been robbed, and left 
 '^ destitute circumstances, " They have not even a potsherd, 
 not a broken chatty in their possession." To appreciate 
 this idea, it must he remembered that nearly all their cook- 
 ing utensils, all their domestic vessels, are made of earthen- 
 ware ; so that not to have a potsherd, a fragment left, shows 
 the greatest misery. Even Job, in all his poverty and wretch- 
 edness, was not so destitute, for he had " a potsherd to scrape 
 himself withal." — " A sherd to take fire from the hearth." 
 This allusion may be seen illustrated every morning in the 
 East. Should the good woman's fire have been extinguish- 
 ed in the night, she takes a potsherd in the morning, and 
 goes to her neighbour for a little fire to rekindle her own ; 
 and as she goes along, she may be seen every now and 
 then blowing the burning ember, lest it should go out. They 
 were not to have a sherd, out of which they could drink a 
 little water. Not having pumps, they are obliged to have 
 something to take water from the well or tank. Of a 
 very poor country, it is said, " In those parts there is not a 
 sherd out of which you can drink a little water." " The 
 wretchedness of the people is so great, they have not a 
 sherd with which to take water from the tank." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. The oxen likewise, and the young asses 
 that ear the ground, shall eat clean provender 
 which hath been winnowed with the shovel and 
 with the fan. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 4. 24. 
 
 Those who form their opinion of the latter article bv an 
 English FAN, will entertain a very erroneous notion. That 
 of the East is made of the fibrous part of the palmirah or 
 cocoa-tree leaves, and measures about a yard each way. 
 Thus may be seen the farmer wafting away the chaff" from 
 the corn, having the round part of the fan in his hand : and 
 thus may be seen the females in the morning, tossing in 
 the husk from their rice. (See on Jer. xv. 7.) — Roberts. 
 
 In these words, the prophet foretels a season of great plenty, 
 when the cattle shall be fed with corn better in quality, 
 separated from the chaff", and (as the term rendered clean in 
 our version, properly signifies) acidulated, in order to ren- 
 der it more grateful to their taste. The evangelist clearly 
 refers to the practice, which was common in every part of 
 Syria, of ploughing with the ass, when he calls him, v-ko^v- 
 yiov, a creature subject to the yoke. In rice-grounds, which 
 require to be flooded, the ass was employed to prepare them 
 for the seed, by treading them with his feet. It is to this 
 method of preparing the ground, that Chardin supposes the 
 prophet to allude when he says, " Blessed are ye that sow 
 beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox 
 and the ass." They shall be blessed under the future reign 
 of the promised Messiah. In times anterior to his appear- 
 ing, their country was to be made a desolation ; briers and 
 '' rns were to encumber their fields; their sumptuous 
 ellmgs were to be cast down ; their cities and strongholds 
 levelled with the dust. But when Messiah commences his 
 reign, times of unequalled prosp?rity shall begin their ca- 
 
 reer. The goodness of Jehovah shall descend in fertilizing 
 showers, to irrigate their fields, and to swell the streams 
 which the skill and industry of the husbandman conducts 
 among his plantations, or with which he covers his rice- 
 grounds. Secure from the ruinous incursions of aliens, 
 and in the sure hope of an abundant harvest, he shall scatter 
 his rice on the face of the superincumbent water, and tread 
 it into the miry soil with " the feet of the ox and the asy." 
 Prosperous and happy himself, he will consider it his duty, 
 and feel it his delight, " to do good and to communicate," — 
 to succour the widow and the fatherless, to open his doors 
 to the stranger, to diffuse around him the light of truth, 
 and to swell, by the diligent and prudent use of all the 
 means that Providence has brought within his reach, the 
 sum of human enjoyment. —Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 29. Ye shall have a song, as in the night 
 when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of 
 heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come 
 into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty 
 One of Israel. 
 
 Music is considered far more enchanting at night than at 
 any other period ; "it gives cheerfulness to darkness, and 
 pleasure to the heart." Their favourite proverb is, " the day 
 SONG is like the flower of the gourd," i. e. devoid of smell. 
 Nothing is more common than for adults to sing themselves 
 to sleep : thus, as they recline, they beat a tabret and chant 
 the praises of their gods, till through heaviness they can 
 scarcely articulate a word. At other times the mother or 
 wife gently taps the instrument, and in soft tones lulls the in- 
 dividual to repose. In the night, should they not be able to 
 sleep, they have again recourse to the same charm, and not 
 until they shall have fairly gone off" in fresh slumbers, will 
 their companions have any rest. Hence, in passing through 
 a village or town at midnight, may be heard people at their 
 nightly song, to grace the festive scene, to beguile away their 
 time, to charm their fears, or to procure refreshing sleep. 
 The Jews then were to be delivered from the proud A^ 
 Syrian's yoke, and again to have their pleasant song in the 
 night.— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 Ver. 2. And a man shall be as a hiding-place 
 from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; 
 as rivers of water in a dry place ; as the shadow 
 of a great rock in a weary land. 
 
 " Ah ! that benevolent man, he has long been my shel- 
 ter from the wind ; he is a river to the dry country." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Well does the traveller remember a day in the wilds of 
 Africa, where the country was chiefly covered with burn- 
 ing sand ; when scorched with the powerful rays of an 
 almost vertical sun, the thermometer in the shade stand- 
 ing at 100°. — He remembers long looking hither and 
 thither for something that would afl^ord protection from the 
 almost insupportable heat, and where the least motion of 
 air felt like flame coming against the face. At length he 
 espied a huge loose rock leaning against the front of a 
 small cliff" which faced the sun. At once he fled for refuge 
 underneath its inviting shade. The coolness emitted from 
 this rocky canopy he found exquisitely exhilarating. The 
 wald beasts of the desert were all fled to their dens, and the 
 feathered songsters were all roosting among the thickest 
 foliage they could find of the evergreen-trees. The whole 
 creation around seemed to groan, as if their vigour had 
 been entirely exhausted. A small river was providentially 
 at hand, to the side of which, after a while, he ventured, 
 and sipped a little of its cooling water, which tasted better 
 than the best burgundy, or the finest old hock, in the world. 
 During all this enjoyment, the above apropos text was the 
 interesting subject of the traveller's meditation ; though the 
 allusion, as a figure, must fall infinitely short of that which 
 is meant to be prefigured by it.— Campbell. 
 
 The shadow of a great projecting rock is the most re- 
 freshing thai is possible in a hot country, not only as most 
 perfectly excludmg the rays of the sun, but also having in 
 itself a natural coolness, which it reflects and communicates 
 to every thing about it.— Lowth. 
 
468 
 
 ISAIAH 
 
 Chap. 32—34 
 
 Ver. 13. Upon the land of my people shall come 
 up thorns and. briers, yea, upon all the houses 
 of joy in the joyous city: 14. Because the 
 palaces shall be forsaken ; the multitude of the 
 city shall be left ; the forts and towers shall be 
 for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture 
 of flocks. 
 
 See on Job 39. 5. 
 
 Ver. 20. Blessed are ye that sow beside all wa- 
 ters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox 
 and the ass. 
 
 See on ch. 30. 24. 
 
 The various kinds of grain, which they commonly sow 
 in the Holy Land, are frequently mentioned in the sacred 
 volume ; and the correctness of the statement is attested by 
 modern historians. Oats are not cultivated near Aleppo ; 
 but Dr. Russel observed some fields of them about Antioch, 
 and on the seacoast. The horses are fed universally with 
 barley ; but lucern is also cultivated for their use, in the 
 spring. The earliest wheat is sown about the middle of 
 October ; other grain, among which are barley, rye, and 
 Indian millet, continue to be sown till the end'of January ; 
 and barley, even so late as the end of February. The 
 Persian harrow consists of a large rake, which is fastened to 
 a pole, and drawn by oxen. In Hindostan, it is like an or- 
 dinary rake with three or four teeth, and is drawn by two 
 oxen. Similar to this was probably the Syrian harrow. 
 But in Palestine, the harroM' is seldom used, the grain be- 
 ing covered by repassing the plough along the edge of the 
 furrow ; and in places where the soil is sandy, they first 
 sow, and then plough the seed into the ground. It appears, 
 from the prophecies of Isaiah, that besides the more valua- 
 ble kinds of grain, several aromatic seeds were sown; as 
 the sesamum, coriander, and cummin. These the Orientals 
 sprinkled upon their bread, to give it a more agreeable 
 flavour. Rice is trodden into the ground by the feet of 
 oxen ; a practice seemingly alluded to by the prophet, in 
 these words: " Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, 
 that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass." This, 
 according to Chardin, answers exactly the manner of plant- 
 ing rice : for they sow it upon the waters; and before sow- 
 ing, while the earth is covered with water, they cause the 
 ground to be trodden by oxen, horses, and asses, to prepare 
 it for receiving the seed. As they sow the rice on the water, 
 so they transplant in the water ; for the roots of this plant 
 must be kept continually moist, to bring the rice to matu- 
 rity. 
 
 Two bushels and a half of wheat or barley are sufficient 
 to sow as much ground as a pair of beeves will plough in 
 one day; which is, a little more or less, equal to one of our 
 .acres. Dr. Shaw could never learn that Barbary afforded 
 yearly more than one crop ; one bushel yielding ordinarily 
 from eight to twelve, though some districts may perhaps 
 afford a much greater increase, for it is common to see one 
 grain produce ten or fifteen stalks. Even some grains of 
 the Murwany wheat, which he brought with him to Oxford, 
 and sowed in the physic garden, threw out each of them 
 fifty. Bitt Muzeratty, one of the kaleefas, or viceroys of 
 the province of Tlemsan, brought once with him to Algiers, 
 a root that yielded fourscore, telling Dr. Shaw and his 
 party, that in consequence of a dispute concerning the re- 
 t^pective fruitfulness of Egypt and Barbary, the Emir Hadge, 
 or prince of the western pilgrims, sent once to the bashaw 
 of Cairo, one that yielded sixscore. Pliny mentions some 
 that bore three or four hundred. It likewise happens, that 
 one of these stalks will sometimes bear two ears, while each 
 of these ears will as often shoot out into a number of lesser 
 ones, affording by that means a most plentiful increase. 
 And may not these large prolific ears, when seven are said 
 to come up upon one stalk, explain what is nientioned of 
 the seven fruitful years in Egypt, that the earth brought 
 them forth by handfuls 1 — Paxton, 
 
 The emigrants that went from England some years ago 
 to the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, were chiefly lo- 
 cated in a district called Albany, on the confines of Caffra- 
 ria. Many of them were ruined by not literally attending 
 to the contents of ihis text. They were not sufficiently 
 aware of the indispensable necessit;^ of water, or at least 
 
 moisture under ground, to render fields at all productive 
 in a hot and dry climate. They ploughed land, and dug a 
 deep ditch round each field, as they were accustomed to dc 
 in England; with the mould dug from it they fox med a 
 mud wall, which made all look very pretty and farmer-like. 
 Dutch boors from a distance came to see what they were 
 qbout. They told them their fields were too far from the 
 river; that unless they could lead water upon them, they 
 must not expect to have any harvest. Looking at the neat 
 ditch that surrounded the 'field, they inquired what this 
 was for 1 For defence, was the reply. " Yes," said the 
 boors, " it will defend your field from receiving any moist- 
 ure from the surrounding ground;" and, shaking their 
 heads, said " That is a bad defence." From the high ideas 
 they had of their own superior knowledge of agriculture, 
 they only smiled at the remarks made by the African far- 
 mers. The rainy season came, when the grain sprang up, 
 and made rapid progress while that season lasted; but lo. 
 the sun returned from its northern circuit, dispelled the 
 clouds, and darted forth its unimpeded fiery rays, which 
 soon caused the surface of the ground to become as hard 
 as a brick, consequently the grain withered and died, and 
 cleanness of teeth, for want of bread, was in all their ham- 
 lets that season ! But had there been plenty of water to 
 lead over their fields, the crops would probably have been 
 most abundant. The expression, " sending forth the feet 
 of the ox and the ass," seems to refer to the practice said 
 still to prevail in the East, where these animals are em- 
 ployed to tread the thin mud when saturated with water, 
 to fit it for receiving the seed. Should there be a river 
 there, a fountain here, and a pool elsewhere, it is far wiser 
 to have the fields near, than at a distance from any of these. 
 Sometimes God gives peculiarly happy spiritual seasons ' o 
 countries, or districts in countries, causing the river of 
 life abundantly to flow, and streams from it extensivelj to 
 spread its influence : then the wise husbandman will hasten 
 to scatter his seed, in cities, towns, villages, hamlets, and 
 among individual families, in expectation of a rich har- 
 vest, from the well watering of the garden of plants.— 
 Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 Ver. 11. Ye shall conceive chaff; ye shall bring 
 forth stubble : your breath as fire shall devour 
 you. 
 
 When married females quarrel, they often say, "Yes, 
 thy womb shall give children, but they shall all be as 
 chaff." " Yes, barren one, you may have a child, but it 
 will be blind and dumb." " True, true, you will bring 
 forth a 'pambvrvethe^'' i. e. a generation of serpents. — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 21. But there the glorious Lord will he 
 unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; 
 wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither 
 shall gallant ship pass thereby. 
 
 In such a highly cultivated country as England, and 
 where great drought is almost unknown, we have not an 
 opportunity to observe the fertilizing influence of a broad 
 river ; but in South Africa, where almost no human means 
 are employed fof improving the land, the benign influence 
 of rivers is most evident. The Great, or Orange River, 
 is a remarkable instance of this. I travelled on its banks, 
 at one time, for five or six weeks; when, for several hun- 
 .dred miles, I found both sides of it delightfully covered 
 ' with trees of various kinds, all in health and vigour, and 
 abundance of the richest verdure; but all the country be- 
 yond the reach of its influence was complete desert. Every 
 thing appeared struggling for mere existence; so that we 
 might be said to have had the wilderness on one side, and 
 a kind of paradise on the other. — Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Ver. 7. And the unicorns shall come down with 
 them, and the bullocks with the bulls ; and their 
 land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust 
 made fat with fatness. 
 
 See on Ps. 22. 12, 15. 
 
Chap. 35—38. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 469 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 Ver. 6. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, 
 and the tongue of the dumb shall sing: for 
 in the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
 streams in the desert. 
 
 See on Ps. 18. 33. 
 
 Lameness and dumbness are the uniform effects of long 
 walking in a desert ; the sand and gravel produce the for- 
 mer, fatigue the latter. In such cases some of us have 
 walked hours togesher without uttering a sentence; and 
 all walked as if crippled, from the sand and gravel getting 
 into the shoes ; but the sight of water, especially if Unex- 
 
 {)ected, unloosed every tongue, and gave agility to every 
 imb; men, oxen, goats, sheep, and dogs, ran with speed 
 and expressions of joy to the refreshing element.— Camp- 
 bell. 
 
 Ver. 7. And the parched ground shall become a 
 pool, and the thirsty land springs of water : in 
 the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall 
 be grass, with reeds and rushes. 
 
 Instead of the parched ground, Bp. Lowth translates it, 
 the glowing sand shall become a pool, and says in a note, 
 that the word is Arabic as well as Hebrew, expressing in 
 both languages the same thing, the glowing sandy plain, 
 which in the hot countries at a distance has the appearance 
 of water. It occurs in the Koran, (cap. xxiv.) " But as to 
 the unbelievers, their works are like a vapour in a plain 
 which the thirsty traveller thinketh to be water, until, 
 when he cometh thereto, he findelh it to be nothing." Mr. 
 Sale's note on this place is, the Arabic word serab signifies 
 that false appearance, which in the eastern countries is 
 often seen in sandy plains about noon, resembling a large 
 lake of water in motion, and is occasioned by the reverber- 
 ation of the sunbeams. It sometimes tempts thirsty travel- 
 lers out of their way, but deceives them when they come 
 near, either going forward, (for it always appears at the 
 same distance,) or quite vanishes. — Burder. 
 
 < CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Ver. 24. By thy servants hast thou reproached 
 the Lord, and hast said, By the multitude of 
 my chariots am I come up to the height of the 
 mountains, to the sides of Lebanon ; and I will 
 cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice 
 fir-trees thereof : and I will enter into th^ height 
 of his border, and the forest of his Carmel. 
 
 At six o'clock we again set forward, and passing near 
 the church, the priest, a venerable old man, with a flow- 
 ing beard, was standing on the threshold, and courteously 
 saluted us. Our road, somewhat better than yesterday, 
 continued gradually to rise, and we were now fairly within 
 that long elevated chain which has borne, from the earliest 
 ages, the name of Lebanon. We had felt a great anxiety 
 to see the celebrated cedars, whidh are supposed to be the 
 remains of the ancient forests that once entirely clothed 
 these heights. Hitherto we had been allured forward by 
 our guides, with the promise of soon reaching them, but 
 we now discovered that we had been purposely deceived, 
 mid ought to have taken another road, in which case the 
 village of Eden, in their immediate vicinity, would have 
 afforded us a more commodious halting-place. After 
 leaving Balbec, and approaching Lebanon, towering wal- 
 1* nut-trees, either singly or in groups, and a rich carpet 
 of verdure, the offspring of numerous streams, give to 
 this charming district the air of an English park, majesti- 
 cally bounded with snow-tipped mountains. At Deir el 
 Akmaar the ascent begins — winding among dwarf oaks, 
 hawthorns, and a great variety of shrubs and flowers. 
 After some hours of laborious toil, a loaded horse slipped 
 near the edge of a precipice, and must inevitably have 
 perished, if a servant, with great presence of mind, had 
 not cut the girths, and saved the animal, at the expense of 
 most of the stores, and the whole of the crockery. Vain 
 were the lamentations over fragments of plates and glasses, 
 broken bottles, and spilt brandy and wine, in an impover- 
 
 ished country, where nothing that contributes to comfort 
 can be replaced. Seven hours were spent in attaining the 
 summit of the mountain after leaving the village. The 
 view on both sides was splendid. — A deep bed of snow had 
 now to be crossed, and the horses sunk or slipped at every 
 moment. To ride was impracticable, and to walk danger- 
 ous, for the melting snow penetrated our boots, and our feet 
 were nearly frozen. An hour and a half brought us to the 
 cedars. Seven of the most ancient still remain. They are 
 considered to be coeval with Solomon, and therefore held 
 sacred. Rude altars have been erected near them, and an 
 annual Christian festival is held, when worship is per- 
 formed beneath their venerable branches. Other cedars, 
 varying in age and size, form around them a protecting 
 grove. We reckoned every tree with scrupulous care. 
 Many, indeed, have sprung up from ancient roots, but enu- 
 merating all that present independent trunks, including the 
 patriarchal trees, they amount to three hundred Vmd forty- 
 three. At a quarter of an hour from the cedars is the vil- 
 lage of Beesharry, a lovely, romantic spot, on the brink of 
 a deep glen. — Hogg. 
 
 Ver. 27. Therefore their inhabitants were of small 
 power, they were dismayed and confounded : 
 they were as the grass of the field, and as the 
 green herb : as the grass on the house-tops, 
 and as corn blasted before it be grown up. 
 
 See on Ruth 2. 4. 
 
 Ver. 29. Because thy rage against me, and thy 
 tumult, is come up into mine ears ; therefore 
 will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle 
 in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the 
 way by which thou camest. 
 
 . It is usual in the East to fasten an iron ring in the nose of ^ 
 their camels and buffaloes, to which they tie a rope, by 
 means of which they manage these beasts. God is here 
 speaking of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, under the image 
 of a furious refractory beast, and accordingly, in allu- 
 sion to this circumstance, says, / will put my hook in thy 
 nose. — Border. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 Ver. 12. Mine age is departed, and is removed 
 from me as a shepherd's tent : I have cut off 
 like a weaver my life: he will cut me off* with 
 pining sickness : from day even to night wiit 
 thou make an end of me. 
 
 Hezekiah makes use of a simile, in that hymn of his 
 which Isaiah has preserved, that appeared, ij^any years ago, 
 very perplexing to a gentleman of good sense and learning, 
 who resided in one of the most noted towns of the kingdom 
 for weaving. He could not conceive, why the cutting short 
 the life of that prince, should be compared to a weaver's 
 cutting off a piece from his loom when he had finished it, 
 and he and everybody that saw it in that state expected it 
 as a thing of course. He consulted those that were ac- 
 quainted with the manufactory, but could gain no satisfac- 
 tion. Perhaps it may appear more easy to the mind, if the 
 simile is understood to refer to the weaving of a carpet, 
 filled with flowers and other ingenious devices : just as a 
 weaver, after having wrought many decorations into apiece 
 of carpeting, suddenly cuts it off, while the figures were 
 rising into view as fresh and as beautiful as ever, and the 
 spectator is expecting the weaver would proceed in his 
 work; so, after a variety of pleasing and amusing transac- 
 tions in the course of my life, suddenly and unexpectedly it 
 seemed to me that it was come to its' period, and was just 
 going to be cut off. Unexpectedness must certainly be in- 
 tended here. — Harmer. 
 
 The shepherds of the East are often obliged to remove 
 their flocks to distant places to find pasturage ; hence their 
 habitations are exceedingly light, in order to be the more 
 easily removed. The " lodge in a garden of cucumbers," 
 and the frail resting-place of the shepherd, greatly resemb].- 
 each other, — Roberts. 
 
470 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 40. 
 
 Ver. 14. Like a crane or a. swallow, so did I chat- 
 ter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail 
 with looking upward : O Lord, I am oppress- 
 ed ; undertake for me. 
 
 No bird is more noisy than the crane ; and none utters a 
 harsher note. The prophet, however, applies the verb (fics) 
 tsaphtsaph, which signifies to chatter, to the loud and scream- 
 ing cry of this bird ; for which Mr. Harmer professes him- 
 seU unable to account. "The word tsaphtsaph," says he, 
 " translated chatter, appears to signify the low, melancholy, 
 interrupted voice of the complaining sick, rather than a 
 chattering noise, if we consult the other places in which it 
 is used : as for the chattering of the crane, it seems quite 
 inexplicable." But the difficulty had not, perhaps, appear- 
 ed so great, if this respectable writer had observed that the 
 connective vau is wanting in the original text, which may 
 be thus considered : " As a crane, a swallow, so did I chat- 
 ter." The two nouns are not, therefore, necessarily con- 
 nected with the verb tsaphtsaph, but admit the insertion of 
 another verb suitable to the nature of the first nominative. 
 The ellipsis maybe supplied in this manner : "As a crane, 
 so did I scream," as a swallow, so did I chatter." Such a 
 supplement is not, in this instance, forced and unnatural ; 
 for it is evidently the design of Hezekiah to say, that he 
 expressed his grief after the manner of these two birds, and 
 therefore suitably to each ; and he uses the verb tsaphtsaph, 
 which properly corresponds only with the last noun, to in- 
 dicate this design, leaving the reader to supply the verb 
 M^hich corresponds with the other. It is also perfectly 
 agreeable to the manners of the East, where sorrow is ex- 
 pressed sometimes in a low interrupted voice, and anon in 
 loud continued exclamations. The afflicted monarch, 
 therefore, expressed his extreme grief after the manner of 
 the Orientals, iii loud screams like the crane, or in low in- 
 terrupted murmurings like the swallow. According to 
 some writers, the verb under consideration signifies the note 
 of any bird, and by consequence may with equal propriety 
 be emploved to denote the loud scream of the crane, or the 
 melancholy twitter of the swallow; if this be so, the difficulty 
 admits of an easy solution. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness : 
 but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it 
 from the pit of corruption : for thou hast cast 
 all my sins behind thy back. 
 
 Jeroboam preferred " molten images" to the true God, 
 and therefore the Lord said unto him by Ahijah, thou "hast 
 cast me behind thy back." The Levites said of the children 
 of Israel, they " rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind 
 their backs." The Lord said of the wicked cities of Samaria 
 ' and Jerusalem, " Thou hast forgotten me, and cast me 
 behind thy back." This metaphor, to cast behind the back, 
 is in cominon uSt, and has sometimes a very oflfensive sig- 
 nification. The expression is used to denote the most com- 
 plete and contemptuous rejection of a person or thing. " The 
 king has cast his minister behind his back," i. e. fully re- 
 moved him, treated him with sovereign contempt. " Alas ! 
 alas! he has thrown my petition behind his back; all my 
 effiarts are defeated." " Yes, man, I have forgiven you ; all 
 your 'irimes are behind my back ; but take care not to offend 
 me a^ain." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 . Ver. 3. The voice of him that crieth in the wil- 
 derness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, 
 make straio^ht in the desert a highway for our 
 God. 4. Every valley shall be exalted, and 
 every mountain and hill shall be made low : 
 and the crooked shall be made straight, and 
 the rough places plain. 
 
 When a great prince in the East sets out on a journey, it 
 is usual to send a party of men before him, to clear the way. 
 The state of those countries in every age, where roads are 
 almost unknown, and from the want of cultivation in many 
 parts overgrown with brambles, and other thorny plants, 
 which renders travelling, especially with a large retinue, 
 
 very incommodious, requires this precaution. The empe- 
 ror of Hindostan, in his progress through his dominions, as 
 described in the narrative of Sir Thomas Roe's embassy to 
 the court of Delhi, was preceded by a very great company, 
 sent before him to cut up the trees and huj^hes, lo level and 
 smooth the road, and prepare their place of encampment. 
 Balin, who swayed the imperial sceptre of India, had five 
 hundred chosen men, in rich livery, with their drawn sabres, 
 who ran before him, proclaiming his approach, and clear- 
 ing the way. Nor was this honour reserved exclusively 
 for the reigning emperor : it was often shown to persons of 
 royal birth. When an Indian princess made a visit to her 
 father, the roads were directed to be repaired, and made 
 clear for her journey ; fruit-trees were planted, water-ves- 
 sels placed in the road-side, and great illuminations pre- 
 pared for the occasion. Mr. Bruce gives nearly the sa-me 
 account of a journey, which the king of Abyssinia made 
 through a part of his dominions. The chief magistrate of 
 every district through which he had to pass, was, by his 
 office, obliged to have the roads cleared, levelled, and 
 smoothed ; and he mentions, that a magistrate of one of the 
 districts having failed in this part of his duty, was, together 
 with his son, immediately put to death on the spot, where a 
 thorn happened to catch the garment, and interrupt for a 
 moment the progress of his majesty. This custom is easily 
 recognised in that beautiful prediction : " The voice of him 
 that crieth in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the 
 Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.^ 
 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hilL 
 shall be brought low ; and the crooked shall be made straight, 
 and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord 
 shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the 
 mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." "We shall be able, 
 perhaps, to form a more clear and precise idea, from the 
 account which Diodorus gives of the marches of Semiramis, 
 the celebrated queen of Babylon, into Media and Persia. 
 In her march to Ecbatane, says the historian, she came to 
 the Zarcean mountain, whicK extending many furlongs, 
 and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could 
 not be passed without taking a great compass. Being there- 
 fore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, 
 as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices 
 to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up ; and at 
 a great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious 
 road ; which to this day is called from her, the road of 
 Semiramis. Aiterwardshe went into Persia, and all the 
 other countries of Asia subjected to her dominion; and 
 wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and the 
 precipices to be levelled, raised causeys in the plain coun- 
 try, and at a great expense made the ways passable. 
 Whatev^ may be in this story, the following statement 
 is entitled to the fullest credit : " All eastern potentates 
 have their precursors and a number of pioneers to clear 
 the road, by removing obstacles, and filling up the ravines, 
 and the hollow ways in their route. In the days of Mogul 
 splendour, the emperor caused the hills and mountains to 
 be levelled, and the valleys to be filled up for his con- 
 venience. This beautifully illustrates the figurative lan- 
 guage in the approach of the Prince of Peace, when every 
 valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall 
 be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and 
 the rough places plain." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: 
 he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and 
 carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead 
 those that are with young. 
 
 See on Ezek. 25. 5. 
 
 One of the great delights in travelling through a pastoral 
 country, is to see and feel the force of the beautiful imagery 
 in the scriptures, borrowed from pastoral life. All day long 
 the shepherd attends his flock, leading them into green 
 pastures" near fountains of water, and chooses a convenient 
 place for them to " rest at noon." At night he drives them 
 near his tent, and if there is danger, encloses tbem m the 
 fold. They know his voice and follow him. When travel- 
 ling, he tenderly watches over them, and carries jfitck as are 
 exhausted in his arms. Such a shepherd is the Lord JesUs 
 Christ. See John x.— Rev. R. Anderson's 1 our through 
 Grekce. 
 
 The shepherds of antiquity were " an abomination unto 
 
Chap. 40. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 471 
 
 the Egyptians," and so they are among the Hindoos ; and 
 as the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews, so nei- 
 ther will the various castes of India eat with their shep- 
 herds. The pastoral office in the East is far more respon- 
 sible than in England, and it is only by looking at it in its 
 various relations and peculiarities, as it exists there, that 
 we gain a correct view of many passages of scripture. 
 Flocks at home are generally in fine fields, surrounded by 
 hedges or fences; but there they are generally in the wil- 
 derness, and were it not for the "shepherds, would go astray, 
 and be exposed to the wild beasts. As the sons of Jacob 
 had to go to a great distance to feed their flocks, so still 
 they are often absent for one and two months together, in 
 the place where there is plenty of pasturage. In their re- 
 movals, it is an interesting sight to see the shepherds car- 
 rying the lambs in their bosoms, and also to witness how 
 gently they " lead those that are with young." Another 
 interesting fact is the relationship which exists betwixt the 
 pastor and his flock ; for being so much together, they ac- 
 quire a friendly feeling : hence the sheep " know his voice, 
 and a stranger will they not follow." Does he wish to re- 
 move to another place, he goes to such a distance as that 
 they can hear his voice, and then he imitates the noise 
 made by a sheep, and immediately they may be seen bound- 
 ing along to the spot where he is. Thus " he goeth before 
 them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." 
 But anothef way of leading a flock, especially where there 
 are goats, is to take the branch of a tree, and keep showing 
 it to them, which causes Ihem to run along more cheerful- 
 ly. He also calleth " his own sheep by name," and it is in- 
 teresting to notice how appropriate the names are to the 
 animals. Thus, should a sheep or a cow have a bad tem- 
 per, (or any other failing,) it will be called the angry one, 
 the malicious, or sulky, or wandering one; the killer of 
 her young, the fiend; the mad one, the jumper, the limper, 
 the dwarf, the barren, the fruitful, the short, the fat, the 
 long, the tricky one. The cows also are named after some 
 of their goddesses, particularly after the wives of Siva, 
 Vishnoo, and Scandan; thus Lechymy, Parvati, and Val- 
 le, may be heard in every herd. To bulls are given the 
 names of men and devils ; as, Vyraven, Pulliar, Mathan, 
 &c. Before the sun shall have gained his meridian, the 
 shepherds seek out a shady place, where they may make 
 their flocks " to rest at noon." As the shepherd who mount- 
 ed the throne of Israel carried his sling and his stone, so 
 these generally have the same missiles by which they cor- 
 rect the wanderers, and keep off" their foes : hence the dog 
 is scarcely ever used in the tending or guiding of flocks. 
 As was Jacob, so here the shepherds are often remunerated 
 in kind, and therefore have not any other wages, (except 
 now and then a little cloth or rice ;) hence, often, a certain 
 number of the rams are given as pay, and to this also the 
 patriarch may allude : " The rams of thy flocks have I not 
 eaten," In most of these particulars we see illustrations of 
 Him who "is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel," who laid 
 prostrate the " roaring lion" of hell, and who keeps us in 
 safety, so that the foe cannot pluck us out of his hand. — 
 Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 12. Who hath measured the waters in the 
 hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with 
 the span, and comprehended the dust of the 
 earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains 
 in scales, and the hills in a balance ? 
 
 Here we have a vivid illustration of the dignified and 
 gorgeous imagery of the East. " What man can take up 
 the waters of the unknown dark ocean in his hands'?" 
 " Whose fingers are long enough to span the arch of heav- 
 en V " Who can bring together all the dust of the earth 
 in a measure V " Who can weigh the hills and mountains 
 in scales V These figures largely show the insignificance 
 of man. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, 
 nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt-of- 
 fering. 
 
 The stupendous size, the extensive range, and great ele- 
 vation of Libanus: its towering summits, capped wiih per- 
 petual snow, or crowned with fragrant cedars; its olive 
 
 plantations ; its vineyards, producing the most delicious 
 wines ; its clear fountains and cold-flowing brooks ; its fer- 
 tile vales and odoriferous shrubberies, — combine to form in 
 Scripture language, " the glory of Lebanon." But that 
 glory, liable to change, has, by the unanimous consent of 
 modern travellers, suffered a sensible decline. The exten- 
 sive forests o|" cedar, which adorned and perfumed the 
 summits and declivities of those mountains, have almost 
 disappeared. Only a small number of these " trees of God, 
 planted by his almighty hand," which, according to the 
 usual import of the phrase, signally displayed the divine 
 power, wisdom, and goodness, now remain. Their count- 
 less number in the days of Solomon, and their prodigious 
 bulk, must be recollected, in order to feel the force of tnat 
 sublime declaration of the prophet: " Lebanon is not suffi- 
 cient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt- 
 offering." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. Yea, they shall not be planted : yea, 
 they shall not be sown : yea, their stock shall 
 not take root in the earth: and he shall also 
 blow upon them, and they shall wither, and 
 the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. 
 
 Whirlwinds occasionally sweep along the country in an 
 extremely frightful manner, carrying away in their vortex, 
 sand, branches, and stubble, and raising them to an im- 
 mense height in the air. Very striking is the allusion 
 which the prophet makes to this phenomenon : " He shall 
 also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirl- 
 wind shall take them away as stubble." With equal force 
 and beauty, the Psalmist refers to the rotatory action of the 
 whirlwind, which frequently impels a bit of straw, over 
 the waste, like a wheel set in rapid motion : "O my God, 
 make them like a wheel, as the stubble before the wind." 
 Sometimes it comes from no particular point, but moves 
 about in every direction. Mr. Bruce, in his journey through 
 the desert of Senaar, had the singular felicity to contem- 
 plate this wonderful phenomenon in all its terrific majesty, 
 without injury, although with considerable danger and 
 alarm. In that vast expanse of desert, from west and to 
 northwest of him, he saw a number of prodigious pillars of 
 sand at different distances, moving at times with great ce- 
 lerity, at others, stalking on with majestic slowness ; at 
 intervals he thought they were coming in a very few min- 
 utes to overwhelm him and his companions. Again they 
 would retreat so as to be almost out of sight, their tops 
 reaching to the very clouds. There the tops often sepa- 
 rated from the bodies; and these, once disjoined, dispersed 
 in the air, and appeared no more. Sometimes they were 
 broken near the middle, as if struck with a large cannon- 
 shot. About noon they began to advance with considerable 
 swiftness upon them, the wind being very strong at north. 
 Eleven of these awful visiters ranged alongside of them 
 about the distance of three miles. The greatest diameter 
 of the largest appeared to him, at that distance, as if it 
 would measure ten feet. They retired from them with a 
 wind at southeast, leaving an impression upon the mind ot 
 our intrepid traveller to which he could give no name, 
 though he candidly admits that one ingredient in it was 
 fear, with a considerable deal of wonder and astonishment. 
 He declares it was in vain to think of flying ; the swiftest 
 horse, or fastest sailing ship, could be of no use to carry 
 them out of this danger ; and the full persuasion of this 
 riveted him to the spot where he stood. Next day they 
 were gratified with a similar display of moving pillars, iii 
 form and disposition like those already described, only 
 they seemed to be more in number and less in size. They 
 came several times in a direction close upon them ; that is, 
 according to Mr. Bruce's computation, within less than two 
 miles. They became, immediately after sunrise, like a 
 thick wood, and almost darkened the sun ; his rays shining 
 through them for near an hour, gave them an appearaifce 
 of pillars of fire. At another time they were terrified bv 
 an army (as it seemed) of these sand pillars, whose march 
 was constantly south ; a number of which seemed once to 
 be coming directly upon them ; and though they were 
 little nearer than two miles, a considerable qnantit" ,f sand 
 fell around them. On the twenty-first of November, about 
 eight in the morning, he had a view of the desert ro the 
 westward as before, and the sands had already begun to 
 rise in immense twisted pillars, which darkened the heav* 
 
472 
 
 ISAIAH, 
 
 Chap. 41, 42. 
 
 ens, ai\-.l moved over the desert with more magnificence 
 than ever. The Sun shining through the pillars, which 
 were thicker, and contained more sand apparently than 
 any of the preceding days, seemed to give those nearest 
 them an appearance as if spotted with stars of gold. A 
 little before twelve, the wind at north ceased, and a con- 
 siderable quantity of fine sand rained upon them for an 
 hour afterward. To this species of rain, "Moses was no 
 stranger ; he had seen it, and felt its efi'ects in the sandy 
 deserts of Arabia, and he places it among the curses that 
 were, in future ages, to punish the rebellion of his people ; 
 " The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and 
 dust : from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until 
 thou be destroyed." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 Ver. 15. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp 
 thrashing instrument having teeth: thou shalt 
 thrash the mountains, and beat them small, and 
 shalt make the hills as chaff. 
 
 The manner of thrashing corn in the East diflfers essen- 
 tially from the method practised in western countries. It 
 has been fully described by travellers, from whose writings 
 such extracts are here made, and connected together, as 
 will convey a tolerable idea of this subject. In Isaiah 
 xxviii. 27, 28, four methods of thrashing are mentioned, 
 as effected by different instruments : the flail, the drag, the 
 ^ain, and the treading of the cattle. The staff, or flail, was 
 used for the injirmiora semina, says Hieron, the grain that 
 M^as too tender to be treated in the other methods. The drag 
 consisted of a sort of frame of strong planks, made rough at 
 the bottom with hard stones or iron ; it was drawn by horses 
 or oxen over the corn-sheaves spread on the floor, the driver 
 sitting upon it. The wain was much like the former, but 
 had wheels with iron teeth, or edges like a saw. The axle 
 was armed with iron teeth, or serrated wheels throughout : 
 it moves upon three rollers, armed with iron teeth or 
 wheels, to cut the straw. In Syria they make use of the 
 drag, constructed in the very same manner as above de- 
 scribed. This not only forced out the grain, but cut the 
 straw in pieces for fodder for the cattle, for in the eastern 
 countries they have no hay. The last method is well 
 known from the law of Moses, which forbids the ox to be 
 muzzled when he treadeth out the corn. Deut. xxv. 4. 
 (Lowth.) " In thrashing their corn, the Arabians lay the 
 sheaves, down in a certain order, and then lead over them 
 two oxen, dragging a large stone. This mode of separa- 
 ting the ears from the straw is not unlike that of Egypt." 
 (Niebuhr.) "They use oxen, as the ancients did, to beat 
 out their corn, by trampling upon the sheaves, and drag- 
 ging after them a clumsy machine. This machine is not, 
 as in Arabia, a stone cylinder, nor a plank with sharp 
 stones, as in Syria, but a sort of sledge, consisting of three 
 rollers, fitted with irons, which turn upon axles. A farmer 
 chooses out a level spot in his fields, and has his corn car- 
 ried thither in sheave*, upon asses or dromedaries. Two 
 oxen are then yoke-^ in a sledge, a driver gets upon it, and 
 drives them backwards and forwards (rather in a circle) 
 upon the sheaves, and fresh oxen succeed in the yoke from 
 time to time. By this operation the chaff is very much cut 
 down ; the whole is then winr owed, and the pure grain 
 thus separated. This mt^de of 'hrashing out the corn is 
 tedious and inconvcni°at ; it destroys the chaff, and injures 
 the quality :)f the gi am." (Ibid.) In another place, Niebuhr 
 tells us tha, "two parcels or layers of corn are thrashed out 
 in a day; and they move each of them as many as eight 
 times with a wooden fork of five prongs, which they call twc^Z- 
 dre. Afterward they throw the straw into the middle of the 
 ring, where it forms a heap, which grows bigger and bigger ; 
 when the first layer is thrashed, they replace the straw in 
 the-ring, and thrash it as before. Thus the straw becomes 
 every time smaller, till at last it resembles chopped straw. 
 After this, with the fork just described, they cast the whole 
 some yards ffom thence, and against the wind, which driv- 
 ing ^ck tne straw, the corn and the ears not thrashed out 
 fall apart from it, and make another heap. A man col- 
 lects the clods of dirt, and other impurities, to which any 
 corn adheres, and throws them into a sieve. They after- 
 ward place in a ring the heaps, in which a good many 
 entire ears are still found, and drive over them for four or 
 
 five hours together a dozen couple of oxen , joined two and 
 two, till by absolute trampling they have separated the 
 grains, which they throw into the air with a shovel to cleanse 
 them." 
 
 " The Moors and Arabs continue to tread out thei: corn 
 after the primitive custom of the East. Instead of beeves, 
 they frequently make use of mules and horses, by tying in 
 the like manner by the neck three or four of them together, 
 and whipping them afterward round about the nedders, 
 (as they call the thrashing floors, the LybiccB arece of Ho- 
 race,) where the sheaves lie open and expanded in the 
 same manner as they are placed and prepared with us for 
 thrashing. This, indeed, is a much quicker way than 
 ours, but less cleanly ; for, as it is performed in the open 
 air, (Hos. xiii. 3,) upon any round level plat of ground, 
 daubed over with cow's dung, to prevent as much as pos- 
 sible the earth, sand, or gravel, from rising, a great quan- 
 tity of them all, notwithstanding this precaution, must una- 
 voidably be taken up with the grain ; at the same time the 
 straw, which is their only fodder, is hereby shattered to 
 pieces, a circumstance very pertinently alluded to 2 Kings 
 xiii. 7, where the king of feyria is said to have made the 
 Israelites like dust by thrashing." (Shaw.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 18. I will open rivers in high places, and 
 fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will 
 make the wilderness a pool of water, and the 
 dry land springs of water. 
 
 A most important pastoral duty in the eastern regions, is 
 to provide water for the flock. The living fountain and the 
 flowing stream, generally furnish a sure and abundant sup- 
 ply ; but these are seldom to be found in the burning desert, 
 where the oriental shepherd is often compelled to feed his 
 cattle. In such circumstances, happy is he who finds a 
 pool where his flocks may quench their thirst. Often, as he 
 pursues his journey, a broad expanse of water, clear as 
 crystal, seems to open to his view ; and faint and weary 
 under the fierce sunbeam, he gazes on the unexpected re- 
 lief with ineffable delight, and fondlv anticipates a speedy 
 termination to his present distress. He sees the foremost 
 camels enter the lake, and the water dashed about by their 
 feet. He quickens his pace, and hastens to the spot ; but 
 to his utter disappointment the vision disappears, and no- 
 thing remains but the dry and thirsty wilderness. To such 
 deceitful appearances, the prophet opposes, with admirable 
 eflfect, the real pool, the overflowing f<)untain, and the run- 
 ning stream ; the appropriate symbols of those substantial 
 blessings of grace and mercy, that were laid up in store for 
 the church of Christ in the last days : " And the parched 
 ground (or the scorching heat) shall become a pool, and 
 the thirsty land springs of water." " I will open rivers in 
 high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys ; I 
 will make the wilderness a pool of water." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, 
 the shittah-tree, and the myrtle, and the oil- 
 tree ; I will set in the desert the fir-tree, and 
 the pine, and the 'box-tree together. 
 
 See on Ex. 25. 10. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 Ver. 2. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause 
 his voice to be heard in the street. 
 
 When two or more people go along the streets, they speak 
 in such a loud voice, that all who pass may hear. Has a 
 person gained or lost a cause in a court of justice, he vocif- 
 erates his story again and again to his companions, as he 
 goes along the road. This practice may have arisen from 
 the custom of the superior walking the" first, which makes 
 it necessary for him to speak in a loud voice, that those 
 who are in the rear may hear his observations. Men of a 
 boisterous temper, who wish to raise a clamour, or those 
 who are leaders in any exploit, always bawl aloud when 
 they talk to their companions, as they go along the road.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. Let the Avilderness and the cities thereof 
 lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar dotK 
 
Chap. 43—44. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 473 
 
 inhabit : let the inhabitants of the rock sing, 
 let them shout from the top of the mountains. 
 
 *' By desert, or wilderness, the reader is not always to un- 
 derstand a country altogether barren and unfruitful, but 
 such only as is rarely or never sown or cultivated ; which, 
 though it yields no crops of corn or fruit, yet afTords herb- 
 age, more or less, for the grazing of cattle, with fountains 
 or rills of water, though more sparingly interspersed than 
 in other places." (Shaw.) Agreeable to this account, we 
 find that Nabal, who was possessed of three thousand sheep, 
 and a thousand goats, dwelt in the wilderness, 1 Sam. xxv. 2. 
 This it would have been impossible for him to have done, had 
 there not been sufficient pasturage for his flocks and herds. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Not satisfied with cuUivating the rich plains and fertile 
 valleys of his native land, the Jewish farmer reduced the 
 barren rocks and rugged mountains under his domain, 
 and compelled them to minister to his necessities. For this 
 purpose he covered them with earth ; or, where this was 
 impracticable, he constructed walls of loose stones, in paral- 
 lel rows along their sides, to support the mould, and pre- 
 vent *it from being washed down by the rains. On these 
 circular plots of excellent soil, which gradually rose one 
 above another, from the base to the very summits of the 
 mountains, he raised abundant crops of corn and other escu- 
 lent vegetables; or, where the decUvity was too rocky, he 
 planted the vine and the olive, which dehght in such situa- 
 tions, and which rewarded his toil with the most picturesque 
 scenery, and the richest products. Thus, the places where 
 only the wild goat wandered and the eagle screamed, which 
 appeared to be doomed to perpetual nakedness and ster- 
 ility, were converted by the bold and persevering industry 
 of the Syrian husbandman into corn-fields and gardens, vine- 
 yards and olive plantations, the manifest traces of which, in 
 all the mountains of Palestine, remain to this day. The in- 
 habhants of that " good land," hterally sang from the top of 
 the rock when it flowed with the blood of the grape, and poured 
 them out "rivers of oil." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 14. I have long time holden my peace ; I 
 have been still, a/it/ refrained myself: now will 
 I cry like a travaihng woman ; I will destroy 
 and devour at once. 
 
 The words devour, swallow, or sup, as used by Isaiah, 
 •and Habakkuk, evidently allude to the same thing. Jeho- 
 vah had refrained himself, but now he was about to come 
 ■'brth and utterly destroy his enemies. When a king 
 wishes to convey an idea that he will completely destroy 
 ftisfoes, he says, I will mullunga-vain, i. e., " swallow them 
 up." Habakkuk says of the Chaldeans, " Their faces shall 
 sup up, as the East wind." Of a man who has a savage 
 face, it is said, " He has a Mullungera-muggam, a devour- 
 ing face." " Look at that fellow's face, you may see he 
 could swallow you." But the Chaldeans are compared to 
 the destructive east wind ; and it is a fact, that the same 
 wind is spoken of in similar terms in all parts of the East. 
 Its name is allikkera-kattu, i. e., the destroying wind, and 
 BO sure as it shall blow for any length of time, will vegeta- 
 tion be destroyed. How this is produced is, perhaps, 
 among the inexplicable mysteries of nature. Its destruc- 
 tive qualities on vegetable nature in England are well 
 known, and yet it would appear that not one time in a 
 thousand can it blow in an uninterrupted current from the 
 distant East, because there are always, so far as I have been 
 able to observe, counter currents. Another fact is, that, 
 however far east you may travel, it is still the same wind 
 which brings destruction. The allusion, therefore, in Genesis, 
 (and other places,) is illustrated by the continued malignity 
 of that wind. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. Who is bhnd, but my servant ; or deaf, 
 as my messenger that I sent ? who is bhnd as 
 he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord's 
 servant ? 
 
 I think we are to understand this as alluding to the 
 AGENT employed by the Lord, i. e., he was so absorbed with 
 his message as to be blind and deaf to all other attractions. 
 When the Yogee affects to deliver a message from the gods, 
 or. when he speaks of futurity, he is as one who is bhnd 
 60 
 
 and deaf; and so insensible is he to external things, that 
 whatever sights may pass before his vision, and whatever 
 sounds may fall upon his ear, he appears to be altogether 
 insensible to their power. The people say he is so full 
 of the deity as to be unconscious of passing scenes. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIH. 
 
 Ver. 19. Behold, I will do a new thing : now it 
 shall spring forth ; shall ye not know it ? I 
 will even make a way in the wilderness, and 
 rivers in the desert. 
 
 From Lattakoo to Kurree-chane, which is about three 
 hundred miles, might, when I travelled it, be justly called 
 a wilderness, for there was not a single mile of any visible 
 path or road. The ruts made by the wheels of my wagons 
 on going up the country, were so visible, that on returning 
 I was deliglited to find natives travelling with loaded oxen 
 along those ruts : and as other natives would probably do 
 the same, it would soon become a beaten visible highway, 
 which most likely was the manner of the formation of all 
 original roads. 
 
 A visible road in a wilderness saves much trouble and 
 anxiety to travellers, even when they have travelled over 
 the same ground before. In general they must be guided 
 by landmarks such as hill, clumps of trees, fords, &.c. ; 
 but in plains or across forests, where no hills can be seen, 
 they must often be puzzled what course to follow. But 
 where there is a visible path, however bad, travellers are 
 relieved from all this trouble, anxiety, and uncertainty, as if 
 they constantly heard a voice behind them saying, '• This is 
 the way, walk ye in it." 
 
 In a heathen land the inhabitants are ignorant of the way 
 to true happiness either here or hereafter ; but when gospel 
 light enters, publishing what the Son of God has done and 
 suflered for sinners, then a highway may be said to be in that 
 land, which, by the blessing of God, will greatly increase the 
 comfort of the population. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 24. Thou hast brought me no sweet cane 
 with money, neither hast thou filled me with 
 the fat of thy sacrifices ; but thou hast made 
 me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied 
 me with thine iniquities. 
 
 See on Jer. 6, 20. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd has " sweet reed." Tamal, " sweet bark !" 
 This probably means cinnamon, as we know that "sweet 
 bark" was used by Moses in the service of the sanctuary : ani . 
 it is in connexion with the sacrifices of the Most High that il| 
 is here mentioned by the prophet. — Roberts. => 
 
 On approaching and entering first the city of Mashow, 
 and afterward that of Kurree-chane, the two highest up 
 towns which I visited in Africa, various -of the inhabitants 
 who, like all the rest of their countrymen, had never seen 
 wagons or white men before, were charmed wuh the 
 sight, and, as a proof of it, they presented me with pieces 
 of sugar, or sweet cane, about a foot in length, and in such 
 numbers, that the bottom of that part of the wagon where I 
 sat was covered with sweet cane. It was an act of kind- 
 ness. This occurrence explained to me this passage in 
 Isaiah, where God is evidently charging his ancient people 
 with want of afl^ection, or unkindness: which expression 
 they would understand, having probably the same custom 
 which I found in Africa, which the Hebrews may have 
 learned while they resided in Africa, viz., in Egypt. — 
 Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 Ver. 3. For I will pour water upon him that is 
 thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground ; I will 
 pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my bless- 
 ing upon thine offspring. 
 
 This probably alludes to the way in which people bathe. 
 They do not in general, as in England, plunge into a 
 stream or river, but go near a well or tank : and then, 
 with a little vessel, pour water on their heads and bodies. 
 
4^' 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 45. 
 
 See the man who is weary, he calls for his neighbour, or 
 servant, or wife, to accompany him to the well ; he then 
 takes off his clothes, (except a small strip round his loins,) 
 sits on his hams, and the individual who assists begins to 
 " POUR water" upon him, till he be retreshed, and exclaims, 
 POTHAM, i. e. sufficient. In this way his body is invigo- 
 rated, his thirst queriched, and he is made ready for his food. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. And they shall spring up as among the 
 grass, as willows by the water-courses. 
 
 In many parts of South Africa, no trees are to be found 
 but near rivers. The trees are of various kinds; the most 
 plentiful was the lovely mimosa ; but willows, when there 
 v/ere any, always stood in front of the others, on the very 
 margin of the water, which was truly a river of life to them. 
 Like those in Isaiah's days, they required much water — 
 ?ould not prosper without it, therefore near it they were 
 alone found; — a loud call, by a silent example, to Chris- 
 tians to live near the throne of grace, word of grace, and 
 ordinances of grace, if they wish to grow in wisdom, knowl- 
 edge, faith, and holiness. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 5. One shall say, I am the Lord's ; and 
 another shall call himself by the name of Ja- 
 cob: and another shall subscribe m/A his hand 
 unto the Lord, and surname himself by the 
 name of Israel. 
 
 This is an allusion to the marks which were made by 
 punctures, rendered indelible by fire or by staining, upon 
 the hand, or some other part of the body, signifying the 
 state or character of the person, and to whom he belonged. 
 The slave was marked with the name of his master; the 
 soldier of his commander; the idolater with the name or 
 ensign of his god ; and the Christians seem to have imitated 
 this practice by what Procopius says upon this place of 
 Isaiah. " Many marked their wrists or their arms with 
 the sign of the cross, or with the name of Christ." (Lowth.) 
 To this explanation I shall subjoin the following extract 
 from Dr. boddridge's Sermons to Young People, p. 79, 
 both as it corroborates and still further elucidates this trans- 
 action. " Some very celebrated translators and critics un- 
 derstand the words which we render, svhscribe with his hand 
 unto the Lord, in a sense a little different from that which 
 v>ur English version has given them. They would rather 
 *ender them, another shall write upon his hand, I am the 
 Lord's ; and they suppose it refers to a custom which for- 
 merly prevailed in the East, of stamping the name of the 
 .general on the soldier, or that of the master on the slave. 
 As this name was sometimes borne on the forehead, so at 
 other times on the hand; and it is certain that several 
 scriptures, which may easily be recollected, are to be ex- 
 plained as alluding to this : Rev. iii. 12. vii. 2, 3. xiii. 16, 17. 
 Now from hence it seems to have grown into a custom 
 among some idolatrous nations, when solemnly devoting 
 themselves to the service of any dei.ty, to be initiated into it 
 by receiving some marks in their flesh, which might never 
 wear out. This interpretation the original will certainly 
 bear ; and it here makes a very strong and beautiful sense, 
 since every true Christian has a sacred and indelible char- 
 acter upon him, which shall never be erased. But if we 
 retain our own version it will come to nearly the same, and 
 evidently refers to a practice which was sometimes used 
 among the Jews, (Nehem. ix. 38. x. 29,) and which is in- 
 deed exceedingly natural, of obliging themselves to the ser- 
 vice of God, by setting their hands to some written articles, 
 emphatically expressing such a resolution." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 18. They have not known nor understood: 
 for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot 
 see; and their hearts, that they cannot under- 
 stand. 
 
 The Orientals, in some cases, deprive the criminal of the 
 light of day, by sealing up his eyes. A son of the great 
 Mogul was actually suffering this punishment when Sir 
 Thomas Roe visited the court of Delhi. The hapless youth 
 Was cast into prison, and deprived of the light by some ad- 
 nesive plaster put upon his eyes, for the space of three 
 
 years ; after which the seal was taken away, that he might 
 with freedom enjoy the light ; but he was still detained in 
 prison. Other princes have been treated in a different 
 manner, to prevent them from conspiring against the reign- 
 ing monarch, or meddling with affairs of state : they have 
 been compelled to swallow opium, and other stupifying 
 drugs, to weaken or benumb their -faculties, and render 
 them unfit for business. Influenced by such absurd and 
 cruel policy, Shah Abbas, the celebrated Persian monarch, 
 who died in 1629, ordered a certain quantity of opium to 
 be given every day to his grandson, who was to be his suc- 
 cessor, to stupify him, and prevent him from disturbing his 
 government. Such are probably the circumstances alluded 
 to by the prophet : " They have not known, nor understood ; 
 for he hath shut their eyes that they cannot see ; and their 
 hearts that they cannot understand." The verb (ric) tah, 
 rendered in our version, to shut, signifies to overlay, to 
 cover over the surface ; thus the king of Israel prepared 
 three thousand talents of gold, and seven thousand talents 
 of refined silver (nc) to overlay the walls of the temple. 
 But it generally signifies to overspread, or daub over, as 
 with mortar or plaster, of which Parkhurst quotes a num- 
 ber of examples ; a sense which entirely corresponds with 
 the manner in which the eyes of a criminal are sealed up 
 in some parts of the East. The practice of sealing up the 
 eyes, and stupifying a criminal with drugs, seems to have 
 been contemplated by the same prophet in another passage 
 of his book : " Make the heart of this people fat, and make 
 their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their 
 eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their 
 heart, and convert and be healed."— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 20. He feedeth on ashes : a deceived heart 
 hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver 
 his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right 
 hand? 
 
 " That wicked fellow has now to eat dust or a-c^lics." 
 " Begone, wretch! for soon wilt thou have to feed on iast." 
 The man who is accused of a great crime, takes d'tst, or 
 ashes, in his mouth, and thus swears that he is inn''>cent. 
 The idea seems to be, if I am guilty, may my moutn soon 
 be tilled with earth as in death. " A lie in my right hand." 
 " The right hand is the abode of truth." The idols are 
 often made with the right hand lifted up, to show that they 
 are truth ; and men thus swear, by lifting up the right 
 hand. In the ninth and twentieth verses ("inclusive) of this 
 chapter, we have an admirable disquisition on the absurdity 
 of idolatry ; and neither can the maker of idols nor their 
 worshippers say, there is " not a lie in my right hand" — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 Yer. 2. I will go before thee, and make the crook- 
 ed places straight ; I will break in pieces the 
 gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of 
 iron. 
 
 See on Acts 12. 10. 
 
 Ver. 3. And I will give thee the treasures of 
 darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, 
 that thou mayest know thgt I the Lord whk> 
 call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. 
 
 As treasures are frequently hidden under ground in the 
 East, by those that are apprehensive of revolutions; so the 
 finding them is one great object, in their apprehension, of 
 sorcery. We are told by travellers into the East, that they 
 have met with great difficulties very often, from a notion 
 universally disseminated among them, that all Europeans 
 are magicians, and that their visits to those eastern countries 
 are not to satisfy curiosity, but to find out, and get possession 
 of those vast treasures they believe to be buried therein 
 great quantities. These representations are very common ; 
 but Sir J. Chardin gives us a more particular and amusing 
 account of affairs of fhis kind. " It is common m the Indies, 
 for those sorcerers that accompany conquerors, everywhere 
 to point out the place where treasures are hid. Thu§ at 
 Surat, when Siragi came thither, there were people who, 
 
Ghap. 45—49. 
 
 ISAIAH, 
 
 475 
 
 with a stick striking on the ground, or against walls, found 
 oEt those that had been hollowed or dug up, and ordered 
 such places to be opened," He then intimates, that some- 
 thing of this nature had happened to him in Mingrelia. 
 
 Among the various contradictions that agitate the human 
 breast, this appears to be a remarkable one : they firmly 
 believe the power of magicians to discover hidden trea- 
 sures, and yet they continue to hide them. Dr. Perry has 
 given us an account of some mighty treasures hidden in the 
 ground by some of the principal people^of the Turkish 
 empire, which upon a revolution were discovered by do- 
 mestics, privy to the secret, D'Herbelot has given us ac- 
 counts of treasures concealed in the same manner, some of 
 them of great princes, discovered by accidents extremely 
 remarkable; but this account of Chardin's, of conquerors 
 pretending to find out hidden treasures by means of sorcer- 
 ers, is very extraordinary. As, however, people of this cast 
 have made great pretences to mighty things in all ages, and 
 were not unfrequently confided in by princes, there is reason 
 to believe they pretended sometimes, by their art, to discover 
 treasures anciently to princes, of which they had gained 
 intelligence by other methods; and as God opposed his 
 prophets, at various times, to pretended sorcerer^^, it is noi 
 unlikely that the prophet Isaiah points at some such pro- 
 phetic discoveries in those remarkable words, Is. xlv. 3 : 
 " And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hid- 
 den riches of secret places, that thou mayest know, that I 
 'he Lord which call thee by thy name, am the God of 
 Israel," I will give them, by enabling some prophet of 
 mine to tell thee where they are concealed. Such a sup- 
 position throws a great energy into those words, — Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 10, Wo unto him that saith unto his flither, 
 What begettest thou 1 or to the woman, What 
 hast thou brought forth ? 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd has, "to a mother, what dost thou bring 
 forth T' Unnatural as is this language, yet children often 
 use it to their parents. Listen to a son who has been chided 
 by his father for bad conduct — " Why did you beget me 1 
 Did I ask you'? Why reprove me for eviH Whose fault is 
 it 1 Had you not begotten me, should I have been here T' 
 The father replies, " Alas ! for the day in which I became 
 thy parent," The mother says, ' ' Why did I bear this dog % 
 Have I given birth to a monkey *? Yes ! I am the mother 
 of this ass." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI, 
 Ver. 3. Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and 
 all the remnant of the house of Israel, which 
 are borne hy me from the belly, which are car- 
 ried from the womb, ■ 
 
 " True, this fiendish son was borne from my belly. Ten 
 long moons did I carry him in my womb." " Is it for this 
 I have carried him so long in my womb '? My fate ! my 
 fate ! alas ! my fate !" — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 Ver. 1. Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin 
 daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground ; there 
 is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans : 
 for thou sbalt no more be called tender and del- 
 icate. 7. And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for 
 ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to 
 t thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end 
 ofit. 
 
 See on Ezek. 13, 18, 
 
 Ver. 2. Take the millstones, and grind meal : un- 
 cover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the 
 thigh, pass over the rivers. 
 
 To grind flour in the East is the work of servants or 
 slaves, and to make it by pounding with a pestle and mor- 
 tar is the office of female servants or slaves. There being 
 but few bridges, those who are in a low condition are 
 obliged to ford the rivers ; hence may be seen large compa- 
 
 nies going to the opposite banks, who have been obliged to 
 " make bare the leg" and to " uncover the thigh," Thus 
 were the " tender and delicate" daughters of Babylon, Avho 
 had been nurtured on a throne, to be reduced to the condi- 
 tion of menials, and to cross the rivers as people of the 
 lowest degree, — Roberts, 
 
 Ver, 14. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the 
 fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver 
 themselves from the power of the flame: there 
 shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit 
 before it. 
 
 It is very usual in the East to burn the stubble and the 
 grass, in order to destroy the vermin. Thus Hanway, 
 speaking of the inhabitants of the deserts of Tartary, says, 
 " that they arrived in the desert in the first winter month, 
 and that the inhabitants who live nearest to it, often manure 
 tracts of land by burning the grass, uhich grows very 
 high," The words of our Saviour also allude to this, when 
 he says, " Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, 
 which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven." 
 
 Matt. Vi, 30. — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 Ver. 9. That thou mayest say to the prisoners, 
 Go forth ; to them that are in darkness, Show 
 yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and 
 their pastures shall be in all high places. 
 
 10. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither 
 shall the heat nor sun smite them : for he that 
 hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by 
 the springs of water shall he guide them. 
 
 1 1 . And I will make all my mountains a way, 
 and my highways shall be exalted. 
 
 See on Ps. 23, 1—3. 
 
 Ver, 15, Can a woman forget her sucking child, 
 that she should not have compassion on the son 
 of her womb ? yea, they may forgot, yet will 
 I not forget thee. 
 
 This question is asked when a person doubts of finding 
 mercy, where there is every reason to expect it. Does an 
 individual express surprise at seeing a mother pay attention 
 to an infant which is deformed, or supposed to be possessed 
 by a devil ; it is asked. Can a woman forget her sucking 
 child *? Is a woman in great haste to return home, it is in- 
 quired, " What, have you a sucking child in the house'? 
 The cub of the monkey is as dear to its dam, as gold is to 
 us." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 16. Behold, I have graven thee upon the 
 palms of my hands ; thy walls are continually 
 before me. 
 
 It is common to make punctures on the arms and wrists, 
 in memory of visiting any holy place, or to represent the 
 deity to whom the individual is consecrated: thus, a god, 
 a temple, a peacock, or some indecent object, is described; 
 but I never saw or heard of any thing of the kind being en- 
 graved on the PALMS of the hands. The palms of the hands 
 are, however, believed to have written on them the fate oi 
 the individual ; and, from this, it is common to say, in re- 
 ference to men or things, they are written on the palms of 
 his hands. " I wonder why Raman has taken Seethe for 
 his wife V " Why wonder'? She was written on the palms 
 of his hands." " Fear not," says the old soothsayer, look- 
 ing into the hands of the anxious youth, " she is written 
 here, thou shalt have her," "Alas! alas! the old deceiver 
 told me her name was written on my palms, but she has 
 gone, and the writing is erased." " Give up that pursuit 1 
 Never ! it is written on the palms of my hands." " Ah I 
 my friend, you have long since forgotten me." " Forgotten 
 you! Never, for your walls are ever before me." "Ah! 
 my father, I am now in the distant country, but your walls 
 are always in my sight," " Ah ! when shall I again visit 
 
476 
 
 ISAIAH, 
 
 Chap. 49. 
 
 ray favourite temple; the walls are continually before me." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 This is an allusion to the eastern custom of tracing out 
 on their hands, not the names, but the sketches of certain 
 eminent cities or places, and then rubbing them with the 
 powder of the hennah or cypress, and thereby making the 
 marks perpetual. This custom Maundrell thus describes : 
 " The next morning nothing extraordinary passed, which 
 gave many of the pilgrims leisure to have their arms mark- 
 ed with the usual ensigns of Jerusalem. The artists, who 
 undertake the operation, do it in this manner : they have 
 stamps in wood of any figure that you desire, which they 
 first print off upon your arm, with powder or charcoal ; then 
 taking two very fine needles tied close together, and dip- 
 ping them often, like a pen, in certain ink, compounded, 
 as I was informed, of gunpowder and ox gall, they make 
 with them small punctures all along the lines of the figure 
 which they have printed, and then washing the part in wine, 
 conclude the work. These punctures they make with 
 great quickness and dexterity, and with scarce any smart, 
 seldom piercing so deep as to draw blood. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 22. Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I 
 will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up 
 my standard to the people: and they shall 
 bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daugh- 
 ters shall be carried upon their shoulders. 
 
 It is a custom, in many parts of the East, to carry their 
 <:hitdren astride upon the hip, with the arm around the 
 6od)\ In the kingdom of Algiers, when the slaves take the 
 children out, the boys ride upon their shoulders ; and in a 
 religious procession, which Symes had an opportunity of 
 seeing at Ava, the capital of the Burman empire, the first 
 personages of rank that passed by, were three children borne 
 astride on men's shoulders. It is evident from these facts, 
 rhat the oriental children are carried sometimes the one 
 way, sometimes the other. Nor was the custom in reality 
 different in Judea, though the prophet expresses himself in 
 these terms : " They shall bring thy sons in their arms, and 
 thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders ; for 
 according to Dr. Russel, the children able to support them- 
 selves, are usually carried astride on the shoulder ; but in 
 infancy they are carried in the arms, or awkwardly on one 
 haunch. Dandini tells us, that on horseback the Asiatics 
 *' carry their young children upon their shoulders with great 
 dexterity. These children hold by the head of him who 
 carries them, whether he be on horseback or on foot, and 
 do not hinder him from walking, nor doing what he pleases." 
 *' This augments the import of the passage in Isaiah, who 
 speaks of the Gentiles bringing children thus ; so that dis- 
 tance is no objection to this mode of conveyance, since they 
 may thus be brought on horseback from ' among the peo- 
 ples,' however remote." — Paxton. 
 
 Children of both sexes are carried on the shoulders. 
 Thus may be seen the father carrying his son, the little 
 fellow being astride on the shoulder, having, with his 
 hands, hold of his father's head. Girls, however, sit on the 
 shoulder, as if on a chair, their legs hanging in front, while 
 they also with their hands lay hold of the head. In going 
 to, or returning from, heathen festivals, thousands of parents 
 and their children may be thus seen marching along with 
 joy. In this way shall the Gentiles bring their sons and 
 their daughters to Jehovah : kings shall then be " nursing 
 fathers," and queens " nursing mothers." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, 
 and their queens thy nursing mothers: they 
 shall bow down to thee with their face towards 
 the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet ; and 
 thou shalt know that I am the Lord: for they 
 shall not be ashamed that wait for me. 
 
 Ttie accomplishment of this prediction is often the sub- 
 ject of the prayers of Christians. They regard it as one of 
 the illustrious features o/'the times of the millennium, that 
 kings and potentates shal!, as foster-fathers, take the church 
 under their special protection and patronage, and instead 
 of opposing and oppressing it, exercise towards it all the 
 kind and tutelary offices of a devoted nurse or mother 
 
 towards the children of her care. In this view of the pas- 
 sage, it has perhaps been forgotten that the prophetic scrip- 
 tures are not lacking in intimations, that in that bright and 
 blissful period, the ancient institutions of the world will be 
 so modified, and the difierent fabrics of government, civil 
 and ecclesiastical, so revolutionized, that it is, to say the 
 least, doubtful whether there will then be any such rulers 
 as kings and queens to bestow their regal regards upon the 
 spouse of Christ. At any rate, it is certain that the text 
 will not then be npplied, as it now is, as authorizing a re- 
 ligious establishment subject to the control of a civil power ^ 
 or in other words, as sanctioning the union of church and 
 state. To the abetters of this pernicious alliance, the pres- 
 ent passage has ever been a " pillar of strength" in the 
 way of proof Let us endeavour, then, to collect the true 
 sense of the prediction from its various connexions. It 
 may be remarked, that the prophecy of which it forms a 
 part, abounds with metaphor ; as for instance, v. 22, " the 
 lifting up of the Lord's hand ;" " the setting up of his stand- 
 ard to the Gentiles and people;" "their bringing Zion's 
 sons in their arms, and carrying her daughters updn their 
 shoulders :" and v. 23, " the kings and queens of the Gen- 
 tiles bowing down to the church, with their faces towards 
 the earth, and licking up the dust of her feet." Here is 
 scarce an expression but is highly figurative, and shall we 
 suppose that in the phrase " kings nursing fathers" there 
 is nothing of the same character 1 For what is the office 
 of the nurse'? Is it not to nourish the child 1 But do kings, 
 as human rulers, in the true sense, nourish the church 1 
 Do they afford to it that spiritual pabulum on which it lives 
 and thrives'? Do they administer the word and sacra- 
 ments '? Is not this the peculiar and distinguishing office of 
 the ministry of the gospel, set apart to this very work, and 
 acting as the only pastors, i.e. feeders, of the flock of Christ "? 
 Is not this the office which they claim as their privilege, 
 which the New Testament gives them, and with whicu 
 neither kings nor magistrates are to intermeddle '? It is 
 easy enough to understand how kings are nursing fathers 
 to the subjects of the nations over which they rule ; and as 
 it is the duty of their subjects to regard them in this char- 
 acter, so it is their duty to act towards their subjects con- 
 sistently with this designation, especially in protecting them 
 in the peaceful enjoyment of their natural and civil rights. 
 But it IS not so easy to perceive how kings and queens, as 
 such, are nurses to any but their people, in the capacity of 
 subjects. If indeed the nations of Christendom be churches, 
 then the king of the nation is the king of the church, and 
 so is the nurse of •the church. But this is not the kind of, 
 church spoken of in the New Testament, nor does the pro- 
 phetical promise in question speak of any such church. It 
 is evident then, that it is at best only in a metaphorical 
 sense that the words of the promise legitimately hold good. 
 What that sense is precisely, when stripped of its figura- 
 tive dress, we shall endeavour to show in the sequel. 
 
 At present, we call attention to the immediate connexion 
 of the words under review. They are introduced as an 
 answer to the question, v. 21, (following the promise of a 
 numerous church upon the rejection of the Jews, v. 19, 20.) 
 " Then shalt thou say in thy heart. Who hath begotten 
 me these, seeing I lost my children, and am desolate, a 
 captive, and removing to and fro '? And who hath brought 
 up these 1 Behold, I was left alone ; these, where had 
 they been *?" Upon the rejection of the Jews, it is supposed 
 to be matter of wonder, from whence so many children 
 should still be found clustering about this bereaved and 
 desolate mother. From the New Testament narrative, we 
 learn the difficulty there was in regard to this, in the minds 
 of fhe Apostles, and the early Jewish believers, and hoAV 
 astonishing it was to them, when it came to pass. The pro- 
 phecy may be considered as expressing, in a striking man- 
 ner, the perplexed ruminations of the church in regard to 
 an event so strange and mysterious. It was a problem she 
 knew not how to solve. " Who brought up these *? Where 
 had they been '?" This is her anxious interrogatory, and the 
 Lord answers, " The kings of the Gentiles shall be thy nur- 
 sing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers ;" i. e. 
 they shall have been such ; when this multitude is gathered 
 in, they shall have been reared and brought up as the subjects 
 and servants of worldly kings, who little thought of the 
 service they were rendering^ to the church. They were 
 unconsciously acting the part of nurses to those who were 
 destined in the purpose ot God to be the children of Zion 
 
Chap. 50,51. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 477 
 
 just as the teachers of a literary seminary are often unwit- 
 tingly employed in training their pupils for higher service 
 in the church of God, when subsequently his grace sub- 
 dues their hearts, and makes them his devoted servants. 
 In this sen.se, how large a portion of the colleges in our 
 land are morseries of the church'? In like manner, it is 
 here predicted that earthly governments shall be nurseries 
 for the spiritual dominion of Jesus Christ. Out of their 
 subjects shall his subjects be gathered. The agency of 
 kings and queens and all worldly potentates in nursing the 
 people of their rule shall be so controlled by a directing 
 providence, as to be made subservient to the measureless 
 enlargement of his kingdom. This is the grand drift of 
 the prophecy before us. It speaks not of the defence or up- 
 holding of the church by the powers of the earth, or the 
 bestowing of worldly possessions and distinctions upon it. 
 Rich and satisfied in the covenant, favour, and spiritua 1 glory 
 of her Head and Husband, what can she ask or expect at 
 the hands of earthly princes 1 What can they do for her 
 sublime interest, of whom it is said, " They shall bow down 
 to thee with their faces towards the earth, and lick up the 
 dust oP thy feet." The Zion of our God has boons to be- 
 stow upon worldly sovereigns, but none to ask of them. 
 Thus interpreted, the passage is throughout consistent. 
 The answer is suitable to the question, and both, to the 
 scope of the prophecy, which is, to pre-intimate the calling 
 of the Gentiles, and the increase of the church, upon the 
 casting away of the Jews, by the bringing of the elect of 
 all nations into that new Jerusalem which is from above, 
 and is the mother of them all.— Bush. 
 
 Thus were those who had been enemies to Jehovah to 
 bow down and acknowledge his majesty. They were to 
 " lick up the dust," which is a figurative expression to de- 
 note submission and adoration. " Boasting vain fellow ! 
 the king your friend ! he your companion ! You will 
 not have even the dust of liis feet given you for food." 
 " The minister give you that oflice ! he will not give you 
 the dust of his feet." " Alas ! alas ! for me, I expected his 
 favour ; I depended on his word ; but I have not gained 
 the dust of his feet." " I will not remain longer in this 
 country; I will leave you, and go to reside with the king." 
 "With the king! Why, the dust of his feet will not be 
 given you for a reward." *' Could I but see that holy man ! 
 I would eat the dust of his feet." So great then is to be 
 the humility and veneration of kings and queens, in ref- 
 erence to the Most High, that thev will bow down before 
 him, and lick up the dust of his feet. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 Ver. 2. Wherefore, when I came, was there no 
 man? when I called, was there none to an- 
 swer ? Is my hand shortened at all, that it can- 
 not redeem ? or have I no power to deliver ? 
 behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make 
 the rivers a wilderness : their fish stinketh, be- 
 cause there is no water, and dieth for thirst. 
 
 The Krooman (or Koorooman) river, in Africa, which 
 is a considerable stream, used to run in an oblique direc- 
 tion across the great southern Zahara desert, till it emptied 
 itself into the Great Orange -River. Now it sinks out of 
 sight into the sand almost immediately on entering the des- 
 ert, only a few miles after the junction of the Macklareen 
 river with its waters. As a proof that it had once run in 
 the desert, I travelled ten or fifteen miles on its hard dry 
 channel along which it had run after entering the desert, 
 having a steep bank on both side^, beyond which there was 
 nothing but deep sand. The aged natives told me that in 
 their young days there was a considerable river in that 
 channel, and sometimes rose so high that it could not be 
 crossed for a long time. They first blamed the Matslaroo 
 people for drying it up by means of witchcraft, but after- 
 ward acknowledged it rhust have been done by the hand 
 of God. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 6. I gave my back to the smiters, and my 
 cheeks to them that plucked off the hair : I hid 
 not my face from shame and spitting. 
 
 • Mr. Hanway has recorded a scene differing little, if at 
 
 all, from that alluded t^ by the prophet, " A prisoner was 
 brought, who had two large logs of wood fitted to the small 
 of his leg, and riveted together ; there was also a heavy 
 triangular collar of wood about his neck. The general 
 asked me, if that man had taken my goods. I told him, I 
 did not remember to have seen him before. He was ques- 
 tioned some time, and at length ordered to be beaten with 
 sticks, which was performed by two soldiers with such sever- 
 ity as if they meant to kill him. The soldiers were then 
 ordered to spit in his face, an indignity of great antiquity 
 in the East. This, and the cutting ofi" beards, which I shall 
 have occasion to mention, brought to m.y mind the suffer- 
 ings recorded in the prophetical history of our Saviour. 
 Isaiah 1. 6. " Sadoc Aga sent prisoner to Astrabad — his 
 beard was cut off; his face was rubbed with dirt, and his 
 eyes cut out. Upon his speaking in pathetic terms with 
 that emotion natural to a daring spirit, the general ordered 
 him to be struck across the mouth to silence him ; M'hich 
 was done with such violence that the blood issued forth." 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 Ver. 6. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and 
 look upon the earth beneath ; for the heavens 
 shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth 
 shall wax old like a garment, and they that 
 dwell therein shall die in like manner : but my 
 salvation shall be for ever, and my righteous- 
 ness shall not be abolished. 7. Hearken unto 
 me, ye that know righteousness, the people in 
 whose heart is my law ; fear ye not the reproach 
 of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings. 
 
 See on Job 4. 9. 
 
 Ver. 8. For the moth shall eat them up like a 
 garment, and the worm shall eat them like 
 wool : but my righteousness shall be for ever, 
 and my salvation from generation to genera- 
 tion. 
 
 As the fashions of the garments of the Orientals never 
 change, they have large stores of them ; but they have no 
 little difficulty in preserving them from moths : which cir- 
 cumstance may have occasioned their profuse use of per- 
 fumes. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. Therefore the redeemed of the Lord 
 shall return, and come with singing unto Zion ; 
 and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: 
 they shall obtain gladness and joy ; a.nd sor- 
 row and mourning shall flee away. 
 
 Is there not here an allusion to the custom so common 
 in the East, of singing upon a journey, particularly with a 
 view to quicken the pace of the camels'? " We should not 
 have i)assed this plain so rapidly, but for the common cus- 
 tom of the Arabs of urging on their camels by singing: 
 the effect is very extraordinary : this musical excitement 
 increases their pace at least one fourth. First one camel- 
 driver sings a verse, then the others answer in chorus. It 
 reminded me somewhat of the Venetian gondoliers. I 
 often asked the camel-drivers to sing, not only to hasten 
 our progress, but also for the pleasure of hearing their sim- 
 ple melodies. Some of their best songs possess a plaintive 
 sweetness that is almost as touching as the most exquisite 
 European airs. The words are often beautiful, generally 
 simple and natural, being improvisatory effusions. The 
 following is a very imperfect specimen. One takes up the 
 song : — ' Ah, when shall I see my family again 1 the rain 
 has fallen and made a canal between me and my home. 
 Oh, shall I never see it more V The reply to this and 
 similar verses was always made by the chorus, in words 
 such as these: — 'Oh, what pleasure, what delight, to see 
 my family again; when I see my father, mother, brothers, 
 sisters, I will hoist a flag on the head of my camel for joy.' " 
 (Hoskins' Trav. in Ethiopia, p. 26.)— Bush. 
 
 In describing the order of the caravans, Pitts informs us, 
 " that some of the camels have bells about their necks, and 
 
478 
 
 some about their legs, like those which our carriers put 
 about their fore-horses' necks, which, together with the 
 servants (who belong to the camels and travel on loot) 
 singing all night, make a pleasant noise, and the journey 
 passes away delightfully." This circumstance is explana- 
 tory of the singing of the Israelites in their return to Jeru- 
 salem. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. The captive exile hasteneth that he may- 
 be loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, 
 nor that his bread should fail. 
 
 See on Job 33. 18, 24. 
 
 Ver. 17. Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, 
 which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the 
 cup of his fury ; thou hast drunken the dregs 
 of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out. 
 
 Artificial liquors, or mixed wines, were very common in 
 ancient Italy, and the Levant. The Romans lined their 
 vessels with odorous gums, to give their wines a warm 
 bitter flavour ; and it is said, that several nations of mod- 
 ern times communicate to their wines a favourite relish 
 by similar means. In Greece this is accomplished by in- 
 fusing the cones of the pine in the wine vats. Hasselquist 
 says they use the sweet-scented violet in their sherbet, 
 which they make of violet sugar dissolved in water; the 
 grandees sometimes add ambergris, as the highest lux- 
 ury and indulgence of their appetite. The prophet Isaiah 
 mentions a mixture of wine and water; but it is evident 
 from the context, that he means to express by that phrase 
 the degenerate state of his nation ; and consequently, we 
 cannot infer from it, the use of diluted wine in those coun- 
 tries. It is observed by Thevenot, that the people of the 
 Levant never mingle water with their wine at meals, but 
 drink by itself what water thev think proper, for abating 
 the strength of the wine. While the Greeks and Romans 
 by mixed wine always understood wine diluted and low- 
 ered with water, the Hebrews, on the contrary, meant by 
 it wine made stronger, and more inebriating, by the addi- 
 tion of powerful ingredients, as honey, spices, defrutum, 
 or wine inspissated, by boiling it down 'to two thirds or one 
 half of the quantity, myrrh, opiates, and other strong drugs. 
 The Greeks were no strangers to perfumed and medicated 
 wines ; for in Homer, the far-famed Helen mixed a num- 
 ber of stupifying ingredients in the bowl, to exhilarate the 
 spirits of her guests that were oppressed with grief; the 
 composition of which, the poet says, she learnt in Egypt. 
 Of the same kind was the spiced wine mentioned in "the 
 Song of Solomon ; and to this day, such wines are eagerly 
 sought by the people of Syria and Palestine. The drunk- 
 ards in Israel preferred these medicated wines to all others : 
 "Who hath wo '?" said the wise man, ".who hath conten- 
 tions % who hath sorrow 1 who hath babbling 1 who hath 
 wounds without cause 1 who hath redness of eyes % They 
 that tarry long at the wine ; they that go to seek mixed 
 wine." Nor were the manners of that people more correct 
 in the days of Isaiah ; for he was directed to pronounce a 
 " wo unto them that rose up early in the morning, that they 
 might M\ov; strong drink ; that continued until night, till 
 wine inflamed them." This ancient custom furnished the 
 holy Psalmist with a highly poetical and sublime image of 
 divine wrath : " For in the hand of the Lord ... a cup ; 
 and the wine is red; it is full of mixture." The prophet 
 Isaiah uses the same figure in one of his exhortations : 
 " Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk 
 at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury ; thou hast 
 drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung 
 them out." The worshippers of the beast and his image, 
 are threatened with the same fearful punishment : " The 
 same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, w^hich 
 is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indigna- 
 tion." The Jews sometimes acidulated their wine with 
 the juice of the pomegranate ; a custom to which the spouse 
 thus alludes: " I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine, 
 of the juice of my pomegranate ;" or of wine mixed with 
 the juice of that fruit. Prepared in this way, it proves a 
 cooling and refreshing draught in the heat of summer, and 
 by consequence, highly acceptable to an Oriental. — Paxton. 
 
 I- Ver. 20. Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the 
 
 ISAIAH. Chap. 52. 
 
 head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net : 
 they are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke 
 of thy God. 
 
 What a graphic picture we have here of an eastern city 
 or town in time of famine ! See the squalid objects: in 
 their despair, they rush forth, throw themselves down in 
 the streets, and there remain till they die. or are relieved. 
 They have scarcely a rag left to defend them from the 
 heat of the sun, or the dew of the night ; and they court 
 death as a blessing. Ask them why they lie there, they 
 reply, to die : tell them to get out of the way, and they 
 answer not again; and so great is their indifference, that 
 many of them would literally be crushed to death, rather 
 than make the least effort to preserve life. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 Ver. 1. Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O 
 Zion ; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jeru- 
 salem, the holy city : for henceforth ther^ shall 
 no more come unto thee the uncircumcised and 
 the unclean. 
 
 Jerusalem had long been afflicted by her foes, but the 
 time of her deliverance was at hand, and in token of ihat 
 she was to deck herself in her glorious attire. At the time 
 of famine, sickness, or sorrow, the people clothe themselves 
 in their meanest apparel, and their ornaments are laid 
 aside : but on the return of prosperity, they array them- 
 selves in their most " beautiful garments."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2. Shake thyself from the dust ; arise, and 
 sit down, O Jerusalem : loose thj^self from the 
 bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. 
 
 See the poor prisoners; see mothers bereft of their chil- 
 dren, or wives of their husbands ; they roll themselves m 
 the dust, and there make their bitter lamentations. The 
 holy city had figuratively been in the dust, but she was now 
 to arise, to take the shackles from her neck, and to sit 
 down in the place prepared for her. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2. Shake thyself from the dust : arise, and 
 sit down, O Jerusalem : loose thyself from the 
 bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. 
 10. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm 
 in the eyes of all the nations ; and all the ends 
 of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. 
 
 The use of the oriental dress, which I now wear, brings 
 to the mind various scriptural illustrations, of which I will 
 only mention two. The figure in Isaiah lii. 10, " The 
 Lord hath made bare his holy arm," is most lively : for the 
 loose sleeve of the Arab shirt, as well as that of the outer 
 garment, leaves the arm so completely free, that, in an 
 instant, the left hand passing up the right arm, makes it 
 bare ; and this is done when a person, a soldier, for exam- 
 ple^, about to strike with the sword, intends to give his right 
 arm full play. The image represents Jehovah as suddenly 
 prepared to inflict some tremendous, vet righteous judg- 
 ment, so effectual, " that all the ends of the world shall see 
 the salvation of God." 
 
 The other point illustrated occurs in the second verse of 
 the same chapter, where the sense of the last expression is, 
 to an Oriental, extremely natural : " Shake thyself from 
 the dust, arise, sit down, O Jerusalem." It is no uncommon 
 thing to see an individual, or a group of persons, even when 
 very well-dressed, sitting with their feet drawn under them, 
 upon the bare earth, passing whole hours in idle conversa- 
 tion. Europeans would require a chair; but the natives 
 here prefer the ground. In the heat of summer and autumn, 
 it is pleasant to them to while away their time in this man- 
 ner, under the shade of a tree. Richly-adorned females, a? 
 well as men, may often be seen thus amusing themselves. 
 As may naturallv be expected, with whatever care they 
 may, at first sitting down, choose their place, yet the flow- 
 ing dress by degrees gathers up the dust; as this occurs, 
 they, from time to time, arise, adjust themselves, shake off 
 the dust, and then sit down again. The captive daughter 
 
Ghap. 53. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 479 
 
 of Zion, therefore, brought down to the dust of suffering 
 and oppression, is commanded to arise and shake herself 
 from tiiat dust ; and then, with grace, and dignity, and 
 composure, and security, to sit down; to take, as it were, 
 again, her seat and her rank, amid the company of the 
 nations of the earth, which had before afflicted her, and 
 trampled her to the earth. 
 
 It may be proper to notice, that Bishop Lowth gives 
 another "rendering, " Arise, ascend thy lofty seat," and 
 quotes eastern customs, to justify the version : but I see no 
 necessity for the alteration, although to English ears it may 
 sound more appropriate. A person of rank in the East 
 often sits down upon the ground, with his attendants about 
 
 him. — JOWETT. 
 
 Ver. 7. How beautiful upon the mountains are 
 the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that 
 publisheth peace ; that bringeth good tidings of 
 good, that publisheth salvation ; that saith unto 
 Zion, Thy God reigneth ! 
 
 Small feet are considered beautiful in all parts of the 
 East. The feet of kings and holy people are spoken of in 
 preference to the other parts of the body. His majesty of 
 the Burmese empire is always mentioned as the " golden 
 feel." " My messenger will soon return, he will bring me 
 good tidings ; his feet will be glorious." " Ah ! when will 
 the feet of my priest return this way ; how glorious is their 
 place!" " Are you in health 1" asks the holv man. "Yes; 
 by the glory of 'your feet," is the reply, " Ah ! Swamy, it 
 is a happy circumstance for me that your feet have entered 
 mv house." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 8. Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice ; 
 with the voice together shall they sing: for 
 they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall 
 bring again Zion. 
 
 The phrase, " see eye to eye," is that which we propose 
 to explain, and the preceding verse should be read in ordier to 
 show more clearly the connexion. The whole passage is a 
 pr-odiction of gospel times; it points to the proclamation of 
 the joyful and welcome tidings which constituted the burden 
 of our Saviour's preaching, and that of his apostles. In the 
 poetical style of the East, the watchmen are represented as 
 standing upon their \\^atch-tower, or post of observation, 
 and stretching their vision to the utmost point of the hori- 
 zon, as if in eager expectation of the appearance of a news- 
 bearing messenger. On a sudden the wished-for object 
 appears in sight, on the summit of the distant mountain, 
 speeding his rapid way to the city, while the watchmen, 
 anticipating the tenor of his tidings, burst forth in a shout 
 of gratulation and triumph. " Thy watchmen shall lift up 
 the voice ; Avith the voice together shall they sing." The 
 imagery strikingly represents the expectant attitude and 
 heedful vigilance of the believing part of the teachers and 
 pastors of the nation of Israel on the eve of the Messiah's 
 manifeslation. The reason of the outbreak of their holy 
 joy is immediately given : " For they shall see eye to eye, 
 when the Lord shall bring again Zion," 1. e. they shall 
 have a clear and unclouded discernment of the actual exe- 
 cution of the divine purposes. As faithful watchmen, 
 intent upon their duty, and earnestly looking out for the 
 signs of promise, they shall be favoured with a clear, dis- 
 tinct, luminous perception of the objects of their gaze, in 
 which they shall be honourably distinguished from a class 
 of watchmen spoken of by the same prophet, ch. Ivi, 10, of 
 whom it is said, " His watchmen are blind ;" instead of 
 seeing clearly, they see nothing. That this is the genuine 
 force of the expression, " they shall see eye to eye," is to be 
 inferred from the parallel usage, Num. xiv. 14, "For they 
 nave heard that thou. Lord, art among this people, that thou. 
 Lord, art seen face to face,^^ (Heb. eye to eye;) i. e. in the 
 1" )st open, evident manner. Of equivalent import are the 
 oppressions, Ex. xxx. 11, " And the Lord spake unto Mo- 
 ses/ace to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Num. 
 xii. 8, " With him will I speak viouth to mouth, even appa- 
 rently, and not in dark speeches;" where the latter part af 
 the verse is exegetical of the former. We conclude, there- 
 fore, that the words do not in their primary and most legit- 
 "imate sense imply a perfect unanimity of religious or 
 
 doctrinal belief in the watchmen, or spiritual guides, of the 
 Christian church. At the same time, though not expressly 
 taught in this passage, it is but reasonable to expect, that in 
 proportion as the prosperity of the church advances, truth 
 will be more clearly discerned, and there will be a constant 
 approximation among the pious, to a uniform standard of 
 theological faith. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 10. The Lord hath made bare his holy 
 arm in the eyes of all the nations. 
 
 The right arm or shoulder is always alluded to as the 
 place of strength : with that the warrior wields his sword, 
 and slays his foes. The njetaphor appears to allude to a 
 man who is preparing for the battle : he takes the robe from 
 his right arm, that being thus uncovered, " made bare," 
 it may the more easily perform its office, " Tell your 
 boasting master to get ready his army, for our king has 
 shown lus shoulder," i. e. uncovered it. " Alas ! I have 
 heard that the mighty sovereign of the neighbouring king- 
 dom has pointed to his shoulder," i. e. he is ready to come 
 against us. See two men disputing ; should one of them 
 point to his right arm and shoulder, the other will imme- 
 diately fall into a rage, as he knows it amounts to a chal- 
 lenge, and says, in effect, " I am thy superior." Thus may 
 be seen men at a distance, when defymg each other, slap- 
 ping each his right hand or shoulder. Jehovah, in refer- 
 ence to the nations of the earth, " hath made bare his holy 
 arm." " And all the ends of the earth shall see the salva- 
 tion of our God." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. So shall he sprinkle many nations ; the 
 kings shall shut their mouths at him ; for that 
 which had not been told them shall they see, 
 and that which they had not heard shall they 
 consider. 
 
 At an eastern feast a person stands near the entrance 
 with a silver vessel, which is full of rose-wate-r, or some 
 other perfumed liquid, with which he sprinkles the guests 
 as they approach, as if from a watering-pan. The object 
 is to show they are now the king's, or the great man's 
 guests : they are in his favour and under his protection. 
 So shall the eternal Son of God sprinkle many nations, and 
 admit them into his presence in token of their purification, 
 and of his protection and favour. The kingM of the earth 
 shall no longer rebel against him ; but " shall shut their 
 mouths" to denote their submission and respect. — Robert.^. 
 
 When the company were ready to separate, a servant 
 entered and sprinkled them profusely with rose-water, as a 
 valedictory mark of his master's regard. In some places, 
 this was done at the beginning of the entertainment, and 
 was considered as a cordial welcome. Mr. Bruce informs 
 us, that when he rose to take his leave of an eastern family, 
 he "was presently wet to the skin, by deluges of orange- 
 flower water." " The first time," says Niebuhr, " we were 
 received with all the eastern ceremonies, (it was at Ro- 
 setta, at a Greek merchant's house,) there was one of our 
 company who was excessively surprised, when a domestic 
 placed himself before him, and threw water over him, as 
 well on his face, as over his clothes." It appears from the 
 testimony of both these authors, that this is the customary 
 mode of showing respect and kindness to a guest in the 
 East. The prophet Isaiah seems to refer to this custom, in 
 a passage where he describes the character and functions 
 of. the Messiah : " So shall he sprinkle many nations, the 
 kings shall shut their mouths at him." — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER Lin. 
 Ver. 1, Who hath believed our report ; and to 
 whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? 
 
 In these parts of the world, the fashion is in a state of 
 almost daily fluctuation, and different fashions are not tm- 
 frequently seen contending for the superiority ; but in the 
 East, where the people are by no means given to change, 
 the form of their garments continues nearly the same from 
 one age to another. The greater part of their clothes are 
 long and flowing, loosely cast about the body, consisting 
 only of a large piece of cloth, in the cutting and sewing Qt 
 which, very little art or industry is employed. They hav« 
 
480 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 53—54, 
 
 more dignity and gracefulness than ours, and are better 
 adapted to the burning climates of Asia. 'From the sim- 
 plicity of their foim, and their loose adaptation to the body, 
 tlie same clothes might be worn with equal ease and con- 
 venience by many different persons. The clothes of those 
 Philistines whom Samson slew at Ashkelon, required no 
 altering to fit his companions ; nor the robe of Jonathan 
 to answer his friend. The arts of weaving and fulling 
 seemed to have been distinct occupations in Israel, from a 
 very remote period, in consequence of the various and 
 skilful operations which were necessary to bring their stuffs 
 to a suitable degree of perfection ; but when the weaver 
 and the fuller had finished their part, the labour was 
 nearly at an end ; no distinct artisan was necessary to 
 make them into clothes; every family seems to have naade 
 their own. Sometimes, however, this part of the work was 
 performed in the loom ; for they had the art of weaving 
 robes, with sleeves all of one piece : of this kind was the 
 coat which our Saviour wore during his abode ^ith men. 
 These loose dresses, when the arm is lifted up, expose its 
 whole length. To this circumstance the prophet Isaiah 
 refers. " To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed" — ^un- 
 covered — Who observes that he is about to exert the arm 
 of his power 1 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted ; 
 yet he opened not his mouth : he is brought 
 as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep be- 
 fore her shearers is dumb, so he opened not 
 his mouth. 
 
 This image was designed by the prophet to represent the 
 meek, uncomplaining manner in which Christ stood before 
 his judge, and submitted even to death for the salvation of 
 mankind. Philo-Judaeus, a philosopher and a Jew, born 
 and bred in Egypt, and well acquainted with their customs, 
 has a passage, by which it appears that the figurative lan- 
 guage of Isaiah was founded upon the practice of the east- 
 ern shepherds. " Woolly rams, laden with thick fleeces, 
 in spring season, being ordered by their shepherd, stand 
 without moving, and silently stooping a little, put them- 
 selves into his hand, to have their wool shorn ; being 
 accustomed, as cities are, to pay their yearly tribute to 
 man, their king by nature." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 Ver. 2. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let 
 them stretch forth the curtains of thy habita- 
 tion : spare not, lengthen thy cords, and 
 strengthen thy stakes. 
 
 In Africa, when we expected an increase of hearers, the 
 ^lottentots moved the pins all round, a yard or a yard and 
 a half, farther from the tent, towards which they stretched 
 the canvass, and fastened it, which considerably increased 
 the room inside. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 11. Othou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and 
 not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with 
 fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sap- 
 phires. 12. And I will make thy windows of 
 agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy 
 borders of pleasant stones. 
 
 This figurative way of speaking is in exact keeping with 
 the eastern notions of magnificence : thus the abodes of the 
 gods, or distant kings, are described as having pillars of 
 re».i coral ; rooms made of crystal ; ruby doors ; thrones of 
 the nine precious stones; walls of gold, surrounded by 
 emerald rivers. Such passages, therefore, are not to be 
 received literally, but as being indicative of great splendour 
 and unrivalled prosperity. — Roberts. 
 
 Many of the oriental buildings, however, have displayed 
 unrivalled magnificence and splendour. The walls, col- 
 umns, floors, and minarets of the mosques, were of the 
 choicest marble, granite, and porphyry, inlaid with agates 
 and precious stones. The ornamental parts were of gold 
 and jsilve-r, or consisted of the most elegant borders, with 
 festoons of fruit and flowers, in their natural colours, com- 
 posed entirely of agates, cornelians, turquoises, lapis-lazuli, 
 
 and other valuable gems. The hangings and carpets were 
 of the richest manufacture : and the splendid edifice Avas 
 illumined with chandeliers of massive gold. " How forci- 
 bly," says ForbeSj " do these remind us of the truth and 
 beauty of the metaphorical language in the sacred page, 
 promising sublime and spiritual joys, in allusion to these 
 subjects in eastern palaces !"— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 Ver. 12. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led 
 forth with peace : the mountains and the hills 
 shall break forth before you into singing, and 
 » all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 
 13. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir- 
 tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the 
 myrtle-tree : and it shall be to the Lord for a 
 name, and for an everlasting sign, that shall 
 not be cut off. 
 
 Here we have another specimen of the fervid and splen- 
 did imagery of eastern language. Some people affect to 
 despise the hyperboles, the parables, and high-toned allu- 
 sions of such "a style; but they ought to recollect they arise 
 as much from the climate, the genius, and customs of the 
 people, as do our more plain and sober effusions from op- 
 posite circumstances. When the god Ramar was going to 
 the desert, it was said to him, " The trees will watch for 
 you ; they will say, He is come, he is come; and the white 
 flowers will clap their hands. The leaves, as they shake, 
 will say, Come, come ; and the thorny places will be 
 changed into gardens of flowers." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 Ver. 3. Neither let the son of the stranger, tha\ 
 hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, say 
 ing. The Lord hath utterly separated me from 
 his people : neither let the eunuch say. Behold, 
 I am a. dry tree. 
 
 People without posterity, of both sexes, are called dry 
 trees ; which, strictly speaking, means they are dead, hav- 
 ing neither sap, nor leaves, nor fruit. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 Ver. 6. Among the smooth stones of the stream 
 is thy portion ; they, they are thy lot ; even to 
 them hast thou poured a drink-offering, thou 
 hast offered a meat-offering. Should I receive 
 comfort in these ? 
 
 This refers to stones made smooth by oil poured on them, 
 as was frequently done by the heathen. Theophrastus has 
 marked this as one strong feature in the character of the 
 superstitious man : " Passing by the anointed stones in the 
 streets, he takes out his vial of oil, and pours it on them ; 
 and having fallen on his knees, and made his adorations, 
 he departs." — Lowth. 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 Ver. 5. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a 
 day for a man to afflict his soul ? is it to bow 
 down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sack- 
 cloth and ashes under him ? wilt thou call this 
 a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord ? 
 
 The eastern people spread mats or small carpets under 
 them when they pray, and even suppose it unlawful to 
 
 J ray on the bare ground ; is it not natural to suppose the 
 ews had something under them when they prayed, and that 
 this was a piece of sackcloth in times of peculiar humilia- 
 tion 1 When they wore sackcloth in the day, it is not 
 perhaps natural to suppose they slept in fine linen ; but I 
 should suppose some passages of scripture, which, in our 
 translation, speak of lying "in sackcloth, are rather to be 
 understood of lying prostrate before God on sackcloth, than 
 caking their repose on that coarse and harsh kind of stuff. 
 The learned and exact Vitringa makes no remark ol 
 
Chap. 59. 
 
 ISAIAH 
 
 481 
 
 this kind on that passage of Isaiah, " Is it such a fast that I 
 have chosen 7 a day for a man to afflict his souH is it to bow 
 down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and 
 ashes under him 1" He only quotes what is said of Ahab, 
 1 Kings xxi. 27, and the Jews in Shushan, Esther iy. 2, 
 as of a similar nature, and seems to understand this piece 
 of humiliation before God of lodging on sackcloth. But, 
 surely, it must be much more natural to understand the 
 solemnity of prostration on sackcloth before God, which 
 follows the mention of hanging down the head, used in 
 kneeling, or in standing as suppliants before him, rather 
 than of sleeping in sackcloth, the night before or the night 
 after the day ox" fasting. It seems to me, in like manner, 
 to express the humiliation of Ahab with more energy, than 
 as commonly und^ersiood : " And it came to pass, when 
 Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and put 
 sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and prostrated himself 
 on sackcloth," &c. The like may be said of the lying of 
 the Jews in Shushan in sackcloth. 
 
 A passage in Joseph us strongly confirms this, in which he 
 describes the deep concern of the Jews for the danger of 
 Herod Agrippa, after having been stricken suddenly with 
 a violent disorder in the theatre of Cesarea. Upon the 
 news of his danger, " immediately the multitude, with their 
 wives and children, sitting upon sackcloth, according to 
 their country rites, prayed for the king: all places were 
 filled with wailing and lamentation : while the king, who 
 lay in an upper room, beholding the people thus below fall- 
 ing prostrate on the ground, could not himself refrain from 
 tears." Antiq. lib. xix. cap. 8, § 2, p. 951. Here we see 
 the sitting on sackcloth, resting on their hams, in prayer, 
 and falling prostrate at times on the sackcloth, was a 
 Jewish observance in times of humiliation and distress. — 
 — Harmer, 
 
 Ver. 9. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall 
 answer : thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here 
 I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee 
 the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and 
 speaking vanity. 
 
 This chapter commences with, "Cry aloud, spare not, 
 lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their 
 transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." After 
 this, the people are severely reproved for their hypocrisy, 
 " ye fast for strife and debate, and smite with the fist of 
 wickedness;" and then they are exhorted to cease from 
 their oppressions, " to undo the heavy burdens, and to let 
 the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke." It 
 appears they were tyrants under the garb of sanctity, and 
 in contempt for the injured, they took delight in "putting 
 forth of the finger, and speaking vanity." See that boast- 
 ing tyrant, when addressing his humbled antagonist, he 
 scowls and storms "like the raging sea," and then lifts up 
 the fore-finger of the right hand to the height of his head, 
 and moves it up and down, to show that punishment of a 
 still higher nature shall be the award of the victim of his 
 wrath.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. And if thou draw out thy soul to the 
 hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then 
 shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy dark- 
 ness be as the noonday. 
 
 Has a person in reference to temporal circumstances been' 
 in great difficulty, has he been delivered, then is he com- 
 pared to a man in a dark place who suddenly finds a light, 
 which enables him to walk with pleasure and safety in 
 nis appointed way. " True, true, I was in darkness, but 
 the light has come ; it shines around me ; there is no 
 shade." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. And the Lord shall guide thee continu- 
 ally, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make 
 fat thy bones : and thou shalt be like a watered 
 garden, and like a spring of water, whose wa- 
 ters fail not. 
 
 In a hot climate where showers seldom fall, except in what 
 Is called the rainy season, the difference between a well 
 and ill watered garden is most striking. I remgmber some 
 61 
 
 gardens in Africa where they could lead no water upon 
 them ; the plants were all srunted. sickly, or others com- 
 pletely gone, only the hole left where the faded plant had 
 been. The sight was unpleasant, and caused gloom to 
 appear in every countenance : they were pictures of deso- 
 lation. But in other gardens, to which the owners could 
 bring daily supplies of water from an everflowing fountain, 
 causing it to traverse the garden, every plant had a green, 
 healthy appearance, loaded with fruit, in diffierent stages 
 towards maturity, with fragrant scent proceeding from beds 
 of lovely flowers ; and all this produced by the virtue God 
 hath put into the single article of water. — Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 Ver. 4. None calleth for justice, nor any plead- 
 eth for truth : they trust in vanity, and speak 
 lies ; they conceive mischief, and bring forth 
 iniquity. 
 See on Ps. 14. 29. 
 
 Ver. 5. They hatch cockatrices' eggs, and weave 
 the spider's web : he that eateth of their eggs 
 dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out 
 into a viper. 
 
 See onch. 11. 8. 
 
 The margin has, instead of cockatrice, " or adders." So 
 far as the strength of the poison is concerned, I believe 
 there is scarely any difference betwixt the oviparous and 
 the viviparous serpents. The eggs of the former are gene- 
 rally deposited in heaps of stones, in old walls, or holes in 
 dry places; and undersome circumstances, (like those of the 
 large lizard,) are soft and yielding to the touch. T,he plia- 
 bility of the shell may be the result of being newly laid, as I 
 have seen some shells as hard as those of other eggs. It is 
 said of the plans of a decidedly wicked and talented man, 
 " That wretch ! he hatches serpents' eggs." " Beware of the 
 fellow, his eggs are nearly hatched." " Ah ! my friend, 
 touch not that affair, meddle not With that matter ; there is 
 a serpent in the shell." " Interfere not, interfere not, 
 young serpents are coming forth." " I have been long ab- 
 sent from my home, and on my return I thought that I 
 should have much enjoyment, but on opening a basket to 
 procure some cakes, I found they were all serpents," mean- 
 ing, instead of pleasure, he had found pain on his return. 
 " I touch it ! No, no ; the last time I did so the shell broke, 
 and a young serpent gave me a bite, which has poisoned my 
 whole frame." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. We roar all like bears, and mourn sore 
 like doves : we look for judgment, but there is 
 none ; for salvation, but it is far off from us. 
 
 In parturition those animals are said to make a tremendous 
 noise : hence people in poignant sorrow say, " "We roar 
 like bears." " Heard you not the widow's cry last nigh* 1 
 the noise was like that of a she-bear." "What is the 
 fellow roaring about ? he is like a she-bear." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. Yea, truth faileth; and he that depart- 
 eth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the 
 Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there 
 ivas no judgment. 
 
 In the preceding verses, the wickedness of the abandoned 
 Jews is strongly portrayed ; and when they began to con- 
 fess their sins and repent, as in the ninth and fourteenth 
 verses inclusive, they were by some, as in the margin, " ac- 
 counted mad," in consequence of their change of views and 
 conduct. It is an amusing fact, that when the heathen be- 
 come very attentive to the directions of their own religion • 
 when they rigidly perform the prescribed austerities; 
 " when they sell themselves to the gods, and appear like 
 men of another world," they are " accounted mad" by their 
 neighbours. On the other hand, should a man begin to 
 deride the national faith ; should he never go near the tem- 
 ples, and laugh at idols and outward ceremonies, the people 
 again exclaim, " The fellow is mad !" But, above all, should 
 a person embrace Christianity, the general story is, 'he poor 
 fellow has gone mad. " Have you heard Supplyan has be* 
 
482 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Chap. 60, 61. 
 
 come a Christian 1"—" No ; but I have heard he has be- 
 come a madman." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 Ver. 6. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, 
 the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah ; all they 
 from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold 
 and incense; and they shall show forth the 
 praises of the Lord. 
 
 That species of camel called the dromedary, is chiefly 
 remarkable for its prodigious swiftness ; the Arabs affirm- 
 ing, that it will run over as much ground in one day, as 
 one of their best horses will perform in eight or ten. If 
 this be true, the prophet had reason to call it the " swift 
 dromedary ;" and the messengers of Esther acted wisely, 
 in choosing this animal to carry their important despatches 
 to the distant provinces of that immense empire. Dr. Shaw 
 had frequent opportunities, in his travels, of verifying the 
 wonderful accounts of the Arabs in relation to the swift- 
 ness of this creature. The sheik who conducted the party 
 to Mount Sinai, rode a camel of this kind, and would fre- 
 quently divert them with a display of its abilities ; he would 
 depart from their caravan, reconnoitre another just in 
 view, and return to them again in less than a quarter of an 
 hour. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 7. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered 
 together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall 
 minister unto thee : they shall come up with 
 acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the 
 house of my glory 
 
 Here we have unquestionably another metaphor, to illus- 
 trate the prosperity and influence of the church among the 
 heathen. I think, therefore, it is trifling with the text, to 
 suppose it alludes to a literal possession of the " rams of 
 Nebaioth," " the flocks of Kedar," or the " dromedaries of 
 Midian." I believe it refers to the people of those countries, 
 who are spoken of in the passage, under the names of the 
 animals for which their localities were most famous. This 
 mode of speech is perfectly oriental, and may often be heard 
 in common conversation. Thus, for instance, the district 
 of Mulliteevo is famous for its numerous buffaloes; hence 
 the people of that place, when they go to another town, are 
 often, by way of pleasantry, called buffaloes. The district 
 of Poonareen abounds with the wild hog ; and it excites a 
 smile to call one of its inhabitants the pandy, i. e. pig of 
 Poonareen. The islands opposite North Ceylon are noted 
 for shells, and when the islanders come to the towns, it is 
 asked, should a person wish to have a little merriment at 
 their expense, " Why do these shells of the islands come 
 hither ?" Batticotta is celebrated fcJr having numerous men 
 who are expert in digging tanks : hence all the people, as 
 sircumslances may require, are humorously called ottar, 
 i. e. diggers. I think, therefore, the figure is descriptive 
 of the glory of the church in the acquisition of the people 
 of Midian, Ephah ; of Sheba, of Kedar, and Nebaioth. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. Who are these that fly as a cloud, and 
 as the doves to their windows. 
 
 In this passage, he beheld in vision the captive Israelites, 
 liberated by the decree, and encouraged by the invitation 
 of Cyrus, returning with the greatest alacrity to the land of 
 their fathers ; and exulting at the sight, he cries out with 
 surprise and pleasure, " Who are these that fly as doves to 
 their windows V The prophet apparently supposes, that 
 in his time, buildings for the reception of doves were very 
 common. And this is by no means improbable ; for, when 
 Maundrell visited Palestine, dove-cots were numerous in 
 some parts of the country. In the neighbourhood of Is- 
 pahan are many pigeon-houses built for the sole purpose of 
 collecting pigeons' dung for manure. The extraordinary 
 flights of pigeons which alight upon one of those buildings, 
 furnish a good illustration of the prophet's vision. Their 
 great numbers and the compactness of their mass, literally 
 look like a cloud at a distance, and obscure the sun in their 
 passage. In some parts of Egypt are numerous whitened 
 
 dove-cots on the tops of the houses. The dove flies more 
 swiftly when she returns to the windows of these cots, 
 than when she leaves them ; because she hastens to revisit 
 her young which she had left, and to distribute among them 
 the food which she had collected. A similar passage oc- 
 curs in Hosea : " They shall tremble as a dove out of 
 Egypt ; and as a dove out of the land of Assyria ; and I 
 will place them in their houses, saith the Lord." They 
 shall fly with trepidation ; or, like a dove trembling for 
 its young, or alarmed for its own safety, which puts forth 
 its utmost speed. Phrases of this kind are not uncommon 
 in the sacred writings; thus, when Samuel came to Beth- 
 lehem, the elders of the town trembled at hjs coming ; that 
 is, they ran out with trepidation to meet him. A similar 
 phrase occurs in the third chapter of Hosea : " They shall 
 tear to the Lord and his goodness ;" that is, they shall run 
 with trepidation to the Lord and his goodness in the 'atter 
 days. These verbs (t^h) harad and (ins) phahad, which 
 are nearly synonymous, according to some Jewish writers, 
 mean only to return with haste. Thus, Aben Ezra, on the 
 last quotation from the prophecies of Hosea : " They shall 
 return with haste to the Lord and his goodness."— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. Therefore thy gates shall be open con- 
 tinually ; they shall not be shut day nor night ; 
 that men may bring unto thee the forces of the 
 Gentiles, and that their kings may he brought. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd says, " That they may bring to thee the 
 wealth of the nations," Of a wealthy man who is continu- 
 ally adding to his stores, it is said, " His gates neither day 
 nor night, ako-rat-tiram, are closed." Also it is said of a 
 charitable king, " His gates are always open." So in those 
 days of glorious accession to the church, " Her doors shall 
 be open continually, and day and night shall the Gentiles 
 be gathered into her pale." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. The sons also of them that afflicted thee 
 shall come bending unto thee; and all they 
 that despised thee shall bow themselves down 
 at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call 
 thee, The city of the Lord, The Zion of the 
 Holy One of Israel. 
 
 " Come bending unto thee." Who in the East has not 
 seen the humble suppliant come bending to ask forgiveness 
 or to entreat a favour 1 See him go stooping along, with 
 his hands spread out, till he come near his superior, and 
 then, as in the next words, he bows himself down at his 
 feet. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 Ver. 3. To appoint unto them that mourn in 
 Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes,.the oil 
 of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for 
 the spirit of heaviness : that they might be call- 
 ed Trees of Righteousness, The Planting of 
 the Lord, that he might be glorified. 
 
 Perfumed oils are very expensive, and are believed to 
 possess MANY virtues. Except for medicinal purposes, they 
 are used only on joyous occasions. " My friend, why are 
 you so dejected 1 the gods shall give you pare-malatiyalum," 
 i. e. precious or odoriferous ointment, — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 10, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my 
 soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath 
 clothed me with the garments of salvation, he 
 hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, 
 as a bridegroom decketh himself with orna- 
 ments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her 
 jewels. 
 
 It would be considered unfortunate in the extreme for a 
 bride to be married without having on numerous jewels : 
 hence the poorest females, those who have not a farthing in 
 the world, may be seen on such occasions literally covered 
 with jewels. The plan is this :— the neigl bours and friends 
 of the poor girl lend their ornaments ir order to make a 
 
Chap. 62, 63. 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 483 
 
 splendid show ; and I have not known an instance (except 
 when lost) of their not being returned ; which may be con- 
 sidered a remarkable fact among people who are not very 
 famed for honest}^. But the bridegroom also has numerous 
 ear-rings, neck-rings, chains, breastplates, and finger-rings. 
 
 " I will greatly rejoice as a bridegroom." " You 
 
 ar'^^ar lo be very happy, Chinnan 1" — " Indeed I am happy ; 
 a»,;Q it is like the joy of a kalle-ydnum," i. e. marriage. 
 " Ah I my heart has a wedding to-day," says the man who 
 is in great pleasure. " Have you heard of the joy of old 
 Kandani" "No, why; is he so happy 1" "Because his 
 daughter has kdlmare-poUdl,"i. e. literally, changed her legs; 
 meaning, she has got married. " Happy man should I 
 have been if my daughter had not changed her legs," says 
 the father whose daughter has been unfortunately married. 
 —Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LXII. 
 
 Ver. 4. Thou shall no more be termed Forsaken : 
 neither shall thy land any more be termed 
 Desolate : but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, 
 and thy land Beulah : for the Lord delighteth 
 in thee, and thy land shall be married. 
 
 The margin has for Beulah, married. A sovereign is 
 spoken of as being married to his dominions : they mutually 
 depend upon each other. When a king takes possessions 
 from another, he is said to be married to them. Thus in 
 that day shall God's people, and their inheritance, be mar- 
 ried to the Lord. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5. For as a young- man marrieth a virgin, 
 50 shall thy sons marry thee : and as the bride- 
 groom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy 
 God rejoice over thee. 
 
 In general, no youth marries a widow : such a thing I 
 scarcely ever heard of, nor will it ever be, except under some 
 extraordinary circumstance, as in the case of a queen, 
 princess, or great heiress. Even widowers also, if possible, 
 always marry virgins. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O 
 Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace 
 day nor night : ye that make mention of the 
 Lord, keep not silence. 
 
 The image in this place is taken from the temple service, 
 in which there was appointed a constant watch day and 
 night by the Levites. Now the watches in the East, even 
 to this day, are performed by a loud cry from time to time 
 by the watchmen, to mark the time, and that very frequent- 
 ly, and in order to show that they themselves are constantly 
 attentive to their duty. " The watchmen in the camp of 
 the caravans go their rounds, crying one after another, God 
 is 07te, he is merciful ; and often add, take heed to yourselves" 
 (Tavernier.) The reader will observe in this extract how 
 mention is made of the name of God by the watchmen. — 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 10. Go through, go through the gates; pre-, 
 pare ye the way of the people ; cast up, cast 
 up the highway ; gather out the stones ; lift up 
 a standard for the people. 
 
 The situation of Babylcm, on the river Euphrates, must 
 have made causeways necessary to those that had occasion 
 to go thither or come from thence, as marks set up must 
 have been very requisite to those that had to pass through 
 the deserts, that lay between Chaldea and Palestine : to both 
 which conveniences Isaiah seems to refer, as well as to some 
 other circumstances attending eastern travelling, in that 
 passage in which he prophetically describes the return of 
 Israel from Babylon. The passage I mean is in the close 
 of (he 62d chapter : " Go through, go through the gates ; 
 prepare ye the way of the people, cast up, cast up the high- 
 way ; gather out the stones ; lift up a standard for the peo- 
 ple. Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the 
 world. Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salva- 
 tion Cometh." 
 
 Irwin, speaking of his passing through the deserts on the 
 eastern side of the Nile, in his going from Upper Egj^pt to 
 Cairo, tells us, " that after leaving a certain valley which 
 he mentions, their road lay over level ground. As it would 
 be next to an impossibility to find the way over these stony 
 flats, where the heavy foot of a camel leaves no impression, 
 the different bands of robbers, wild Arabs he means, who 
 frequent that desert, have heaped up stones at unequal dis- 
 tances, for their direction through this desert. We have 
 derived great assistance from the robbers in this respect, 
 who are our guides when the marks either fail, or are un- 
 intelligible to us." After which he remarks, that if it be 
 considered, that this road to Cairo is seldom trodden, it is 
 no wonder that those persons they had with them, as con- 
 ductors, were frequently at a loss to determine their way 
 through this desert. The learned know very well, that 
 there are many great deserts in various parts of the East. 
 and in particular a great desert between Babylon and Judea • 
 and as Judea was, in the time of the captivity, an abandoned 
 country, at least as to a great part of it, and the road through 
 that desert might have been much neglected, is it not rea- 
 sonable to suppose, that the piling up heaps of stones might 
 actually be of considerable importance, to facilitate the re- 
 turn of Israel into their own country 1 And if not, is it not 
 natural to suppose the difficulties in the way of their return 
 might be represented by want of such works 1 And conse- 
 quently, that that clause should be rendered, not gather out 
 the stones, but throw ye up heaps of stones, that you may b^ 
 directed in your march through the most difficult and dan- 
 gerous places where you are to pass. It is certain the word 
 "iVpD sakkeloo, tha.i is used here is, confessedly, in every other 
 place but one, Is. v. 2, used to signify the throwing stones 
 at a person, after which they were wont to cover them with 
 a heap of them, as a memorial of what was done; see par- 
 ticularly the account of the punishment of Achan, Josh. vii. 
 25, 26; now it must appear somewhat strange, that the 
 same word should signify gathering stones up in order to 
 take them away, and also, on the contrary, to cover over a 
 person or a spot with them, thrown up on a heap. And 
 especially when the stoning the ways, that is, pouring down 
 heaps of stone, at proper distances, to direct travellers in 
 danger of mistaking their way, is so natural a thought in 
 this passage ; while we find few or no traces of the gather- 
 ing stones out of an eastern road, to make journeying more 
 pleasant to the traveller. — Harmer, 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 Ver. I. Who is this thatcometh from Edom, with \ 
 died garments from Bozrah? this that is glori- 
 ous in his apparel, travelling in the greatness 
 of his strength ? I that speak in righteousness, 
 mighty to save. 2. Wherefore art thou red in 
 thine apparel, and thy garments like him that 
 treadeth in the wine-fat? 3. I have trodden 
 the wine-press alone ; and of the people, there 
 was none with me : for I will tread them in 
 mine anger, and trample them in my fury ; and 
 their blood shall be sprinkled upon my gar- 
 ments, and I will stain all my raiment. 
 
 The treading of grapes and olives is a custom to which 
 frequent reference is made by the inspired writers. The 
 glorious Redeemer of the church appeared in a vision to 
 the prophet, in the garb and mien of a mighty conqueror 
 returning in triumph from the field of battle, and drew 
 from him this admiring interrogation: "Who is this that 
 Cometh from Edom, with died garments from Bozrah 1 
 this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the great- 
 ness of his strength 1" To which the Saviour answers : 
 "I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." The 
 prophet resumes: "Wherefore art thou red in thine ap- 
 parel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine- 
 fat V And Jehovah Jesus replies : " I have trodden the 
 wine-press alone ; and of the people, there was none with 
 me ; for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample 
 them in my fury ; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon 
 my garments, and I will stain all my raiment." As the 
 raiment of the treader was sprinkled with the blood of the 
 grapes, so were the garments of the Redeemer, with the 
 
484 
 
 ISAIAH. 
 
 Ohap. 63—65. 
 
 blood of his enemies, that were as effectually and easily 
 crushed by his almighty power, as are the clusters of the 
 vine when fully ripe," beneath the feet of the treader. 
 The same figure is employed in the book of Revelation, to 
 express ihe decisive and tearful destruction which awaits 
 the man of sin and his coadjutors, that refuse to turn 
 from the error of their way : " And another angel came 
 out from the altar, which had power over fire ; and cried 
 with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying. 
 Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the 
 vine of the earth, and cast it into the great wine-press of 
 the wrath of God. And the wine-press was trodden with- 
 out the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even 
 unto the horses' bridles, by the space of a thousand and 
 six hundred furlongs." The new wines in some places, 
 are always poured into casks that had been kept for ages, 
 and after remaining on the old lees of former years, are 
 drawn off for use, which adds greatly to the quality of 
 the wine. To this practice the words of the prophet evi- 
 dently refer ; " And in this mountain shall the Lord of 
 liosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast 
 of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines 
 on the lees well refined." — Paxton. 
 
 The manner of pressing grapes is as follows : having 
 placed them in a hogshead, a man with naked feet gets in 
 and treads the grapes : in about half an hour's time, the 
 juice is forced out: he then turns the lowest grapes up- 
 
 f)ermost, and treads them for about a quarter of an hour 
 onger : this is sufficient to squeeze the good juice out of 
 them, for an additional pressure would even crush the 
 unripe grapes, and give the whole a disagreeable flavour. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 13. That led them through the deep, as a 
 horse in the wilderness, tkat they should not 
 stumble? 14. As a beast goeth down into the 
 valley, the Spirit of the Lord causeth him to 
 rest ; so didst thou lead thy people, to make thy- 
 self a glorious name. 
 
 The prophet Isaiah makes an allusion to the horse, 
 which is apt, from the difference of our manners and feel- 
 ings, to leave an unfavourable impression upon the mind ; 
 it occurs in the sixty-third chapter, and runs in these 
 terms : " That led them through the deep, as a horse in 
 the wilderness, that they should not stumble. As a beast 
 f goeth down into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord caused 
 him to rest : so didst thou lead thy people, to make thyself 
 a glorious name." If these wordsbe understood as merely 
 referring to the unobstructed course of a single horse in the 
 plain, and the descent of a beast into the valley to repose, — 
 the allusion, more especially considering the general beauty 
 and sublimity which characterize the style of Isaiah, seems 
 rather flat and mean ; and this is the more surprising, 
 when it is considered, that the prophet is here describing a 
 scene by which the Lord acquired to himself a glorious 
 name, and which, by consequence, demanded no common 
 strength or magnificence of thought. Nor does it appear 
 for what reason^ in order to rest, a herd should descend 
 into a valley ; for the hills must be equally pleasing and 
 comfortable places of repose as the vales. We shall find 
 it in the manners of the Arabian, to which the simile refers ; 
 and a very little attention is necessary to convince a dis- 
 passionate inquirer, that the image is most lively and mag- 
 nificent. 
 
 The original Hebrew term (did) sous, in the singular 
 number, denotes both a single horse, and a body of cavalry. 
 In the same manner we use the word horse, "to express a 
 single animal of that species, and at other times, the horse- 
 men of an army. In the book of Exodus, sous denotes the 
 horsemen of Pharaoh's army who pursued after the tribes 
 of Israel. But if it denote the horse of an Egyptian army, 
 it may, with equal propriety, denote the horse or cavalry of 
 an Arabian tribe. Now, Arabian horses are remarkable 
 for the surprising swiftness with which they escape the hot- 
 test pursuit of their enemies. In two hours after an alarm 
 is given, the Arabs strike their tents, and with their fami- 
 lies, and their whole property, plunge into the deepest re- 
 ' cesses of their sandy deserts, which the boldest and most 
 
 exasperated enemy dares not invade. In the time of De la 
 * Roque, the great emir of Mount Carmel had a mare which 
 
 he valued at more than five thousand crowns. The Arabi- 
 ans, it seems, prefer the female to the male because it is 
 more gentle, silent, and able to endure fatigue, hunger, and 
 thirst ; qualities in which, they have found from experience, 
 the former excels the latter. The mare which the emir or 
 prince of Carmel rode, had carried him three days and three 
 nights together, without eating or drinking, and by this 
 means effectually saved him from the pursuit of his ene- 
 mies. This account entirely removes the apparent mean* 
 ness of the prophetic representation, and imparts a liveli- 
 ness and dignity to the description. At the moment when 
 Pharaoh and his army thought the people of Israel were 
 completely in their power, shut in by the sea and the mount- 
 ains, that they could not escape, — like the Arab horsemen, 
 they decamped, and through the sea marched into the des- 
 ert, whither their enemies were unable to follow. If the 
 Arabian horses are not so sure-footed as the mule, which 
 Dr. Shaw afiirms, it will account for the next clause in the 
 same verse : " As a horse in the wilderness, they should 
 not stumble." The departure of Israel from the land of 
 Egypt was sudden, and their movements were rapid, like 
 those of an Arab, whom his enemy has surprised in his 
 camp : yet no misfortune befell them in their retreat, as at 
 times overtakes the swiftest and surest-footed horses. The 
 next verse may be explained by the same custom : " As a 
 beast or herd goeth down into the valley, so the Spirit of 
 the Lord caused him to rest." The Arab, decamping at 
 the first alarm, marches off with his flocks and herds, his 
 wife and children, into the burning deserts. This he does, 
 not from choice, but for safety ; and by consequence, how 
 proper and agreeable soever the hills maybe for pasturage, 
 in times of alarm or danger, the deep sequestered valley 
 must be far more desirable. The custom of the Arabs in 
 Barbary, stated by Dr. Shaw, finely illustrates this figure. 
 About the middle of the afternoon, his party began to look 
 out for the encampment of some Arabian horde, who, to 
 prevent such numerous parties as his from living at free 
 charges upon them, take care to pitch in woods, valleys, or 
 places the least conspicuous. And he confesses, that if they 
 nad not discovered their flocks, the smoke of their tents, or 
 heard the barking of their dogs, they had either not found 
 the encampment at all, or with extreme diniculty. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 Ver. 5. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and 
 worketh righteousness : those that remember 
 thee in thy ways : behold, thou art wroth : for 
 we have sinned : in those is continuance, and 
 we shall be saved. 
 
 Does a man expect a guest for whom he has a great 
 regard, he goes forth to meet him. Not to do so would 
 show a great deficiency in affection and etiquette. — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 CHAPTER LXV. 
 Ver. 3. A people that provoketh me to anger con- 
 tinually to my face ; that sacrificeth in gardens, 
 and burneth incense upon altars of brick. 
 See on ch, 1. 29. 
 
 Ver. 4. Which remain among the graves, and 
 lodge in the monuments ; which eat swine's 
 flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their 
 vessels ; 5. Which say. Stand by thyself, come 
 not near to me; for I am holier than thou. 
 These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that 
 burneth all the day. 
 
 " Come not near to me, for I am holier than thou," 
 Here we have another instance of the glaring wickedness 
 of the Jews, in their imitation of the heathen devot« es, who 
 resembled the Hindoo Yogees. Those men are so isolated 
 by their superstition and penances, that they hold but little 
 intercourse with the rest of mankind. They wander about 
 in the dark in the place of burning the dead, or " among 
 the graves;" there they affect to hold converse with evil 
 and other spirits ; and there they pretend to receive inti- 
 mations respecting .he destinies of others. They will eat 
 things which are religiously clean or unclean ; they neither 
 
Chap. 66. 
 
 ISAIAH. 485 
 
 wash their bodies, nor comb their haic, nor cut their nails. 
 nor wear clothes. They are counted to be most holy, among 
 the people, and are looked upon as beings of another world. 
 —Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 22. For as the days of the tree are the days 
 of my people. 
 
 The people of the East have a particular desire for long 
 life ; hence one of their best and most acceptable wishes is, 
 " May you live a thousand years." " May you live as long 
 as the oaM-tree," i. e. the banyan or ficus indica. I never 
 saw a tree of that description dead, except when struck by 
 lightning. And to cut one down would, in the estimation 
 of a Hindoo, be almost as great a sm as the taking of life. 
 I do not think this tree will die of itself, because it con- 
 tinues to let fall its own supporters, and will march over 
 acres of land if not interrupted. Under its gigantic branches 
 the beasts of the forests screen themselves from the heat of 
 the sun ; and under its sacred shade may be seen the most 
 valued temples of the Hindoos. — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI. 
 Ver. 12. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will 
 extend peace to her like a river, and the glory 
 of the Gentiles like a flowing stream : then 
 shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon Agr sides, 
 and be dandled upon her knees. 13. As one 
 whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort 
 you ; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. 
 
 The native females of South Africa, when at home, 
 literally carry about their children on their side, putting 
 one leg of the child behind, and the other before her, and 
 resting on the upper part of the hip. The child clings to 
 her side, and from the prolongation of her breasts, the 
 mother can conveniently suckle it, without moving it from 
 its place. When I saw this done, it had always a very 
 affectionate appearance. When they travel, or are fleeing 
 from an enemy, they carry their children on their back, 
 under their cloak, their heads only being visible. The fe- 
 males in the South Sea Islands have the same custom. 
 Whether that part of the passage has an allusion to a sim- 
 I ilar practice existing among Jewish females, I know not ; 
 i tut this I know, tliat on witnessing the African custom, I 
 I thought of the above text, which refers to a peaceful and 
 j prosperous period, when God should act in the kindest 
 I manner towards his ransomed people. To me, when I saw 
 I it, it had the appearance of peace, security, and affection. — 
 Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 17. They that sanctify themselves, and purify 
 themselves in the gardens, behind one tree in 
 the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomina- 
 tion, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, 
 saith the Lord. 
 
 Not only sacred groves in general, but the centres of 
 such groves in special, were, as the Abbe Banier has ob- 
 served, made use of for temples by the first and most 
 ancient heathens. Some one tree in the centre of each 
 such grove was usually had in more eminent and special 
 veneration, being made the penetrale or more sacred place, 
 which, doubtless, they intended as the anti-symbol of the 
 tree of life, and of the knowledge of good and evil, in the 
 midst of the garden of Eden. To this strange abuse alludes 
 that prophetic censure of some, who sanctified and purified 
 themselves with the waters of their sacred fountains and 
 rivers in the gardens or groves, behind one tree in the 
 
 midst. — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 20. And they shall bring all your brethren 
 
 for an offering unto the Lord, out of all na- 
 tions, upon horses, and in chariots, and in lit- 
 ters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to 
 my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, 
 as the children of Israel bring an offering in a 
 clean vessel into the house of the Lord. 
 
 The editor of the Ruins of Palmyra tells us, that the 
 caravran they formed, to go to that place, consisted of about 
 two hundred persons, and about the same number of beasts 
 of carriage, which were an odd mixture of horses, camels, 
 mules, and asses ; but there is no account of any vehicle 
 drawn on wheels in that expedition -, nor do we find an ac- 
 count of such things in other eastern journeys. There are, 
 however, some vehicles among them used for the sick, or 
 for persons of high distinction. So Pitts observes, in his 
 account of his return from Mecca, that at the head of each 
 division some great gentleman or officer was carried in a 
 thmg like a horse-litter, borne by two camels, one before and 
 another behind, which was covered all over with searcloth, 
 and over that again with green broadcloth, and set forth 
 very handsomely. If he had a wife attending him, she was 
 carried in another. This is apparently a mark of distinc- 
 tion. There is another eastern vehicle used in their jour- 
 neys, which Thevenot calls a coune. He tells us, the 
 counes are hampers, like cradles, carried upon camels* 
 backs, one on each side, having a back, head, and sides, 
 like the great chairs sick people sit in. A man rides in 
 each of these counes, and over them they lay a covering, 
 which keeps them both from the rain and sun, leaving, as it 
 were, a window before and behind upon the camel's back. 
 The riding in these is also, according to Maillet, a mark of 
 distinction; for, speaking of the pilgrimage to Mecca, he 
 says ladies of any figure have litters ; others are carried sit- 
 ting in chairs, made like covered cages, hanging on both sides 
 of a camel ; and as for ordinary women, they are mounted 
 on camels without such conveniences, after the manner of 
 the Arab women, and cover themselves from sight, and the 
 heat of the sun, as well as they can, with their veils. These 
 are the vehicles which are in present use in the Levant. 
 Coaches, on the other hand. Dr. Russel assures us, are not 
 in use at Aleppo ; nor do we meet with any account of their 
 commonly using them in any other part of the East: but 
 one would imagine, that if ever such conveniences as 
 coaches had been in use, they would not have been laid 
 aside in countries where ease and elegance are so much 
 consulted. 
 
 As the caravans of the returning Israelites are described 
 by the prophet, as composed, like Mr. Dawkin's to Palmyra, 
 of horses and mules, and swift beasts ; so are we to under- 
 stand, I imagine, the other terms of the litters and counes, 
 rather than of coaches, which the margin mentions ; or of 
 covered wagons, which some Dutch commentators suppose 
 one of the words may signify, unluckily transferring the 
 customs of their own country to the East; or of chariots, in 
 our common sense of the word. For though our translators 
 have given us the word chariot, in many passages of scrip- 
 ture, those wheel-vehicles which those writers speak of, and 
 which our version renders chariots, seem to have been mere 
 warlike machines ; nor do we ever read of ladies riding in 
 them. On the other hand, a word derived from the same 
 original is made use of for a seat any how moved, such as 
 the mercy-seat, 1 Chron. xxxviii. 18, where our translators 
 have used the word chariot, but which was no more of a 
 chariot, in the common sense of the word, than a litter is ; 
 it is made use of also for that sort of seat mentioned Lev. 
 XV. 9, which they have rendered saddle, but which seems 
 to mean a litter, or a coune. In these vehicles many of the 
 Israelites were to be conducted, according to the prophet, 
 not on the account of sickness, but to mark out the emi- 
 nence of those Jews, and to express the great respect their 
 conductors should have for them. — Harmer. 
 
JEREMIAH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 11. Moreover, the word of the Lord came 
 unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou ? 
 And I said, I see a rod of an almond-tree. 
 12. Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast 
 well seen : for I will hasten my word to per- 
 form it. 
 
 The almond-tree, so irequently mentioned in the sacred 
 writings, was called by the Hebrew's skakad, from a verb 
 which signifies to awake, or watch ; because it is the first 
 tree which feels the genial influences of the sun, after the 
 withering rigours of winter. It flowers in the month of 
 January, and in the warm southern latitudes brings its 
 fruit to" maturity in March. To the forwardness of the al- 
 mond, the Lord *jeems to refer in the vision with which he 
 favoured his servant Jeremiah : " The word of the Lord 
 came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou 1 And I 
 said, I see a rod of an almond-tree. Then said the Lord 
 unto me, Thou hast well seen ; for I will hasten my word 
 to perform it;" or rather. "I am hastening, or watching 
 over my word to fulfil it." In this manner it is rendered 
 by the Seventy, eypriynpn eyo) ETTi : and by the Vulgate, Vi- 
 gilabo ego super verbum meum. This is the first vision 
 with which the prophet was honoured ; and his attention is 
 roused by a very significant emblem of that severe correc- 
 tion with which the Most High was hastening to visit his 
 people for their iniquity ; and from the species of tree to 
 which the rod belonged, he is warned of its near approach. 
 The idea which the appearance of the almond rod suggest- 
 ed to his mind, is confirmed by the exposition of God him- 
 .self : " I am watching over, or on account of my word, to 
 fulfil it ;" and this double mode of instruction, first by em- 
 blem, and then by exposition, was certainly intended to 
 make a deeper impression on the mind, both of Jeremiah 
 and the people to whom he was sent. It is probable, that 
 the rods which the princes of Israel bore, were scions of the 
 almond-tree, at once the ensign of their ofl^ce, and the em- 
 blem of their vigilance. Such, we know from the testimo- 
 ny of scripture, was the rod of Aaron ; which renders it 
 exceedingly probable that the rods of the other chiefs were 
 from the same tree : " And Moses spake unto the children 
 jf Israel, and every one of their princes gave him a rod 
 apiece, for each prince, according to their fathers' houses, 
 twelve rods ; and the rod of Aaron was among their rods 
 . . . and behold the rod of Aaron, for the house of Levi, was 
 budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and 
 yielded almonds." The almond rod of Aaron, in the opin- 
 ion of Parkhurst, which was withered and dead, and by the 
 miraculous power of God made to bud and blossom, and 
 bring forth almonds, was a very proper emblem of him 
 who first arose from the grave; and as the light and 
 warmth of the vernal sun seems first to affect the same 
 .symbolical tree, it was with great propriety that the bowls 
 of the golden candlestick were shaped like almonds. The 
 hoary head is beautifully compared by Solomon to the al- 
 mond-tree, covered in the earliest days of spring with its 
 snow-white flowers, before a single leaf has budded : " The 
 almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a 
 burden, and desire shall fail." Man has existed in this 
 world but a few days, when old age begins to appear; 
 sheds its snows upon his head ; prematurely nips his hopes, 
 darkens his earthly prospscts, and hurries him into the 
 grave. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 13. And the word of the Lord came unto 
 me the second time, saying. What seest thou ? 
 And I said, I see a seething-pot, and the face 
 thereof is towards the north. 14. Then the 
 
 Lord said unto me, Out of the north an evil 
 shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the 
 land. 
 
 To compensate in some measure for the scarcity of fue., 
 the Orientals endeavour to consume as little as possible in 
 preparing their victuals. For this purpose they make a 
 hole in their dwellings, about a foot and a half deep, in 
 which they put their earthen pots, with the meat m them, 
 closed up, about the half above the middle; three fourth 
 parts they lay about with stones, and the fourth part is left 
 open, through which they fling in their dried dung, and 
 any other combustible substances they can procure, which 
 burn immediately, and produce so great a heat, that the pot 
 becomes as hot as if it stood over a strong fire of coals ; so 
 that they boil their meat with greater expedition and much 
 less fuel, than it can be done upon the hearth. The hole 
 in which the pot is set, has an aperture on one side, for the 
 purpose of receiving the fuel, which seems to be what Jer- 
 emiah calls the face of the pot : " I see," said the prophet, 
 " a pot, and the face thereof is towards the north;" intima- 
 ting that the fuel to heat it was to be brought from that quar- 
 ter. This emblematical prediction was fulfilled when Neb- 
 uchadnezzar, whose dominions lay to the north of Palestine, 
 led his armies against Jerusalem, and overturned the thrones 
 of the house of David. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 6. Neither said they, Where is the Lord 
 that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, 
 that led us through the wilderness ; through a 
 land of deserts, and of pits ; through a land of 
 drought, and of the shadow of death ; through 
 a land that no man passed through, and where 
 no man dwelt ? 
 
 The account that Mr. Irwin has given of that part of this 
 wilderness which lies on the western side of the Red Sea, 
 through the northern part of which Israel actually passed, 
 very much corresponds with this description, and may 
 serve to illustrate it. When it is described as a land with- 
 out water, we are not to suppose it is absolutely without 
 springs, but only that water is very scarce there. Irwin 
 accordingly found it so. On the first day after his setting 
 out, having onlv travelled five miles, they filled thirty wa- 
 ter-skins from the river Nile, but which he thought might 
 prove little enough for their wants, before they reached the 
 next watering-place They travelled, according to their 
 computation, fifty-four miles farther, before they found, 
 three days after, a spring, at which they could procure a; 
 fresh supply ; and this was a new discovery to their guides, 
 and for which they w^ere indebted to a very particular ac- 
 cident. It was not till the following day, that they arrived 
 at the valley where their guides expected to water their 
 camels, and where accordingly they replenished the few 
 skins that were then empty: the spring was seventy -nine i 
 miles from the place from whence they set out. The next 
 spring of water which they met with was, according to their 
 reckoning, one hundred and seventy-four miles distant 
 from the last, and not met with till the seventh day after, 
 and was, therefore, viewed with extreme pleasure. "At, 
 nine o'clock we came suddenlv upon a well, which is situ- 
 ated among some broken ground. The sight of a spring 
 of water was inexpressibly agreeable to our eyes, which 
 had so long been strangers to so refreshing an object. The 
 next day they found another, which " gushed trom a rock, 
 and threw itself with some violence into a basm, which it 
 had hollowed for itself below. We had no occasion for a 
 fresh supply ; but could not help lingering a few minutes 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 487 
 
 10 admire a sight, so pretty in itself, and so bewitching to 
 our eyes, which had of late been strangers to bubbling 
 founts and limpid streams." 
 
 We must here mention the smallness of the quantity of 
 water one of these four springs afforded, which Irwin met 
 witli in the desert, or at least the difficulty of watering their 
 beants at it. " We lost," says this writer, " the greatest 
 part of the day at this spring. Though our skins were 
 presently filled, the camels were yet to drink. As the 
 camels could not go to the well, a hole was sunk in the 
 earth below the surface of the spring, over which a skin 
 was spread, to retain the water which flowed into it. At 
 this but two camels could drink at a time ; and it was six 
 hours before our camels, which amounted to forty-eight in 
 all, were watered. Each camel, therefore, by this calcula- 
 tion, takes a quarter of an hour to quench "his enormous 
 thirst ; and to water a common caravan of four hundred 
 ' amels, at such a place as this, would require two days and 
 two nights. A most unforeseen and inconceivable delay to 
 an uninformed traveller !" If we are to give this part of 
 the prophet's description of that wilderness a popular ex- 
 planatic n, and not take it in the most rigorous sense, we 
 uught, undoubtedly, to put the same kind of construction 
 on the two last clauses of it. A land thai no man passed 
 through, and where no rrurn dwelt: a land, that is not usually 
 passed, and where hardly any man dwelt. So Irwin de- 
 scribes the desert of Thebais as " unknown even to the in- 
 habitants of the country ; and which, except in the instances 
 I have recited, has not been traversed for this century past 
 by any but the outcasts of humankind." Such a wilder- 
 ness might very well be said not to be passed through, 
 when only two or three companies travelled in it in the 
 compass of a hundred years, and that on account of extreme 
 danger, at that particular time, attending the common route. 
 He actually calls it, "a road seldom or never trodden." As 
 to its being inhabited, Irwin travelled, by his estimation, 
 above 300 miles in this desert, from Ghinnah to the towns 
 on the Nile, without meeting with a single town, village, or 
 house. They were even extremely alarmed at seeing the 
 fresh tracks of a camel's feet, which made a strong impres- 
 sion on a soft soil, and which the Arabs with them thought 
 were not more than a day old ; and they could not compre- 
 hend what business could bring any but Arab freebooters 
 into that waste. 
 
 When the prophet describes this wilderness, according 
 to our version, as the land of the shadow of death, his 
 meaning has been differently understood by different peo- 
 ple. Some have supposed it to mean a place where there 
 were no comforts or conveniences of life ; but this seems 
 too general, and to explain it as a particular and distinct 
 member of the description, pointing out some quality dif- 
 ferent from the other circumstances mentioned by Jeremiah, 
 seems to be a more just, as it is undoubtedly a more lively 
 way of interpreting the prophet. Others have accordingly 
 understood this clause as signifying, it was the habitation of 
 venomous serpents, or destroying beasts; some as endanger- 
 ing those that passed through it, as being surrounded by the 
 hostile tribes of Arabs ; some as being overshadowed by 
 trees of a deleterious quality. They might better have in- 
 troduced the whirlwinds of those southern deserts than the 
 last particular, which winds, taking up the sand in great 
 quantities, darken the air, and prove fatal to the traveller. 
 This last would be giving great beauty and energy to the 
 expression, (the shadow of death,) since these clouds of 
 dust, literally speaking, overshadow those that have the 
 misfortune to be then passing through those deserts, and 
 must at the same time give men the utmost terror of being 
 overwhelmed by them, and not unfrequently do in fact 
 prove deadly. 
 
 Another clause, a land of pits, is also a part of the pro- 
 phet's description. Irwin affords a good comment on this 
 part of our translation: m one place he says, "The path 
 winded round the side of the mountain, and to our left, a 
 horrid chasm, some hundred fathoms deep, presented itself 
 to cur view. It is surprising no accident befell the loaded 
 camels." In another, " On each side of us were perpen- 
 dicular steeps some hundred fathoms de^p. On every part 
 is such a wild confusion of hanging precipices, disjointed 
 rocks, and hideous chasms, that we might well cry out with 
 the poet, * Chaos is come again.' Omnipotent Father! to 
 thee we trust for our deliverance from the perils that sur- 
 round us. It was through this wilderness that thou didst lead 
 
 thy chosen people. It was here thou didst manifest thy signa. 
 protection, in snatching them from the jaws of destruction 
 which opened upon every side." And in the next page, " At 
 two o'clock we came suddenly upon a dreadful chasm in the 
 road, which appears to have been the effect of an earthquake. 
 It is about three hundred yards long, one hundred yards 
 wide, and as many deep; and what is a curiosity, in the 
 middle of ihe gulf, a single column of stone raises its head 
 to the surface of the earth. The rudeness of the work, and 
 the astonishing length of the stone, announce it to be a lusus 
 naturae, though the robbers declared to us, that beneath the 
 column there lies a prodigious sum of money ; and added, 
 with a grave face, they have a tradition, that none but a 
 Christian's hand can remove the stone to come at it. We 
 rounded the gulf, which was called Somah, and leaving it 
 behind us, we entered a valley where we found a very 
 craggy road." The first clause in this passage, through a 
 land of deserts, is the most obscure and difficult to ascertain . 
 Instead of travelling in the night, as he had proposed, to 
 avoid the burning heat of the sun, he says, " At seven o'clock 
 we halted for the night. The Arabs tell us, that the roads 
 are too rugged and dangerous lo travel over in the dark." 
 Under the next day, " we reached the foot of a prodigious 
 high mountain, which we cannot ascend in the dark." The 
 following day he tells us, " by six o'clock we had accoutred 
 our camels, and leading them in our hands, began to ascend 
 the mountain on foot ; as we mounted the steep, we fre- 
 quently blessed ourselves that we were not riding, as the 
 path was so narrow, the least false step must have sent the 
 Deast down the bordering precipice." Under another day 
 he remarks, that the greatest part of that day's journey was 
 " over a succession of hills and dales, where the road was 
 so intricate and broken, that nothing but a camel could get 
 over it. The appearance of the road is so frightful in many 
 places, that we do not wonder why our people have hith- 
 erto laid by in the night." (Harmer.) 
 
 " After we had passed the salt desert, we came to the 
 Malek-el-moat-dereh, or the valley of the an^el of death. 
 This extraordinary appellaticn, and the peculiar nature of 
 the whole of this tract of land, broken into deep ravines, 
 without water, of a dreariness without example, will, per- 
 haps, be found forcibly to illustrate Jer. ii. 6." (Morier.)— 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 13. For my people have committed two 
 evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of 
 living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, 
 broken cisterns, that can hold no water. 
 
 In eastern language, " living water" signifies springing 
 water, that which bubbles up. The people had forsaken Je- 
 hovah, the never-failing spring, for the small quantity which 
 could be contained in a cistern; nay, in broken cisterns, 
 which would let out the water as fast as they received it. 
 When people forsake a good situation for that which is bad, 
 it is said, " Yes ; the stork which lived on the borders of the 
 lake, where there was a never-failing supply of water, and 
 constant food, has gone to dwell on the brink of a well," i. e. 
 where there is no fish, and where the water cannot be had. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 8. And now, what hast thou to do in the way 
 of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or 
 what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to 
 drink the waters of the river 1 
 
 The Euphrates is always muddy, and the water, conse- 
 quently, not good lo drink, unless it has stood an hour or 
 two in earthen vessels, for the sand and impurities to settle, 
 which at times lie half a finger thick at the bottom of the 
 vessel. Hence it was not without reason that the Lord 
 said to the Israelites, by the prophet Jeremiah, " What hast 
 thou *o flo in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the 
 ri^er {" (Euphrates.) For this reason we find in the houses 
 of the city and villages, particularly those lying on the 
 Great River, many large earthen vessels holding a pailful 
 or two, which they fill from the Euphrates, and do not use 
 till the impurities have settled at the bottom, unless they 
 are very thirsty, and then they drink through their pocket- 
 handkerchiefs." (RaUWOlf) — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 25. Withhold thy foot from being unshod, 
 
488 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 Chap. 2—4. 
 
 and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, 
 There is no hope : no ; for I have loved stran- 
 gers, and after them will I go. 
 See on Ruth 4. 7. 
 
 Ver. 37. Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and 
 thy hands upon thy head: for the Lord hath 
 rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not 
 prosper in them. 
 
 See on Matt. 11. 21. 
 
 Impenitent Jerusalem was to be punished for revolting 
 against God ; and, as a token of her misery, she was to go 
 forth with her "hands on her head." Tamar " laid her 
 hand on her head," as a sign of her degradation and sor- 
 row. When people are in great distress, they put their 
 hands on their head, the fingers being clasped on the top of 
 the crown. Should a man who is plunged into wretched- 
 ness meet a friend, he immediately puts his hands on his 
 head, to illustrate his circumstances. When a person hears 
 of the death of a relation or friend, he forthwith clasps his 
 hands on his head. When boys have been punished at 
 school, they run home with their hands on the same place. 
 Parents are much displeased and alarmed, when they see 
 their children with their hands in that position ; because 
 they look upon it not merely as a sign of grief, but as an 
 emblem of bad fortune. Thus of those who had trusted in 
 Egypt and Assyria, it was said, " Thou shalt be ashamed" 
 of them : and they were to go forth with their hands on 
 their head, in token of their degradation and misery. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 2. Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, 
 and see where thou hast not been lain with : in 
 the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian 
 in the wilderness ; and thou hast polluted the 
 land with thy whoredoms, and with thy wick- 
 edness. 
 
 Every one knows the general intention of the prophet, 
 out Chardin has given so strong and lively a description of 
 \he eagerness that attends their looking out for prey, that I 
 am persuaded my readers will be pleased with it. '" Thus 
 the Arabs wait for caravans with the most violent avidity, 
 looking about them on all sides, raising themselves up on 
 their horses, running here and there to see if they cannot 
 perceive any smoke, or dust, or tracks on the ground, or 
 any other marks of people passing along." — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 13. Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and 
 his chariots shall he as a whirlwind : his horses 
 are swifter than eagles. Wo unto us ! for we 
 are spoiled. 
 See on Isa. &&. 20. 
 
 Ver. 17. As keepers of a field are they against 
 her round about; because she hath been re- 
 bellious against me, saith the Lord. 
 
 In Arabia, and probably in other parts of the East, in- 
 stead of a solitary watchman in the middle of the plantation, 
 they place guards at certain distances round the whole field, 
 increasing or diminishing their numbers according to the 
 supposed danger. This custom furnishes a clear and easy 
 explanation of a passage in the prophecies of Jeremiah, 
 where he solemnly warns his people of their approaching 
 calamities : " As keepers of a field, are they against her 
 round about ; because she hath been robellious against me, 
 saith the Lord."— Paxton. 
 
 Fields in the East have not fences to keep off cattle and 
 other marauders, but only low embankments; hence, were 
 there not keepers, they would be exposed to all kinds of 
 depredations. These men wander about the ridges, or 
 spend their time in platting baskets or pouches forareca-nuts 
 and betel l*>af ; or tend a few sheep. At night they sleep 
 in a small stall, about six feel by four, which stands on four 
 
 legs, and is thatched with leaves. The whole affair is so 
 light, that it can be removed in its complete state to any 
 other part, by two men ; or be taken to pieces in a few 
 minutes, and removed and put together, by one man. The 
 frail fabric illustrates the " lodge in a garden of cucumbers." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 30. And when thou art spoiled, what wilt 
 thou do ? Though thou clothest thyself with 
 crimson, though thou deckest thee with orna- 
 ments of gold, though thou rendest thy face 
 with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself 
 fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will 
 seek thy life. 
 
 The Hebrew has, instead of face, " eyes." This is a 
 minute description of an eastern courtesan. In Ezekiel 
 xxiii. 40, similar language is used : " For whom thou didst 
 wash thyself, paintedst thine eyes, and deckedst thyself with 
 ornaments, and satest upon a stately bed." Jezebel also 
 "painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a 
 window." She was the patroness of a most impure system, 
 and the term " whoredoms," as applied to her, may be 
 safely used in the most obvious sense. The females allu- 
 ded to adorn themselves with those ornaments which have 
 been described in the 3d chapter of Isaiah ; and having 
 bathed, they rub their bodies with saffron, to make them- 
 selves fair ; and then put on their crimson robes. One 
 kind of paint with which they teint their eyelids is made of 
 a nut called kaduki, which is first burned to a powder, then 
 mixed with castor-oil ; after which it is set on fire, and that 
 which drops from it is the paint referred to. Another kind 
 is made of the juice of limes, indigo, and saffron. In these 
 allusions we see again the hateful and loathsome state of 
 Jerusalem. — Roberts. 
 
 Several authors, and Lady M. W. Montague in particu- 
 lar, have taken notice of the custom that has obtained from 
 time immemorial among the eastern women, of tinging the 
 eyes with a powder, which, at a distance, or by candle-light, 
 adds very much to the blackness of them. The ancients 
 call the mineral substance, with which this was done, 
 stibium, that is, antimony ; but Dr. Shaw tells us, it is a rich 
 lead ore, which, according to the description of naturalists, 
 looks very much like antimony. Those that are unac- 
 quainted with that substance may form a tolerable idea of 
 it, by being told it is not very unlike the black-lead of which 
 pencils are made, that are in everybody's hands. Pietro 
 Delia Valle, giving a description of his wife, an Assyrian 
 lady, born in Mesopotamia, and educated at Bagdad, whom 
 he married in that country, says, " her eyelashes, which 
 are long, and, according to the custom of the East, dressed 
 with stibium, as we often read in the holy scriptures of the 
 Hebrew women of old, and in Xenophon,of Astyages, the 
 grandfather of Cyrus, and of the Medes of that time, give 
 a dark and at the same time majestic shade to the eyes." 
 " Great eyes," says Sandys, speaking of the Turkish women, 
 " they have in principal repute ; and of those the blacker 
 they be the more amiable ; insomuch that they put between 
 the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder, with a fine 
 long pencil, made of a mineral brought from the kingdom 
 of Fez, and called alchole, which by the not disagreeable 
 staining of the lids doth better set forth the whiteness of the 
 eye; and though it be troublesome for a time, yet it com- 
 forteth the sight, and repelleth ill humours." Dr. Shaw 
 furnishes us with the following remarks on this subject. 
 " But none of these ladies take themselves to be completely 
 dressed, till they have tinged the hair and edges of their 
 eyelids with the powder of lead-ore. Now as this opera- 
 tion is performed by dipping first into the poAvder a small 
 woodei^ bodkin of the thickness of a quill, and then draw- 
 ing it afterward through the eyelids, over the bail of the 
 eye, we shall have a lively image of what the prophet (Jer. 
 iv. 30) may be supposed to mean by rending the eyes with 
 fainting. The sooty colour, M^hich is in this manner com- 
 municated to the eyes, is thought to add a wonderful grace- 
 fulness to persons of all complexions. The practice of it, 
 no doubt, is of ^reat antiquity; for besides the instance 
 already taken notice of, we find that when Jezebel is said, 
 (2 Kings ix. 30,) to have painted her face, ihe original word*; 
 are, she adjusted her eyes with the poicder of lead-ore." — 
 
 BORDER. 
 
Chap. 5, 6. 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 489 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 6. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall 
 slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall 
 spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their 
 cities : every one that goeth out thence shall be 
 torn in pieces ; because their transgressions are 
 many, and their backslidings are increased. 
 
 The lion prowls about in the day, which I have often 
 witnessed in Africa ; but the habits of the wolf are differ- 
 ent, as it seldom makes its appearance before sunset, after 
 which it comes forth, like other thieves of the night, in 
 search of prey. I never, when moving about in Africa, 
 saw more than one wolf stalking about in daylight, and that 
 was in a most forsaken part, where, to a great extent, the 
 land was absolutely paved with flag-stones, the same as the 
 side pavements in our streets ; but when night came, they 
 were constantly howling and hovering around our encamp- 
 ment. The habit of the leopard, also, is to be slumbering 
 in concealment during the day ; but the darkness rouses 
 him, and he comes forth seeking what he may devour. It 
 is of the tiger species, and rather smaller. The wolves and 
 leopards should have the boldness to prowl about their cities, 
 as the wild beasts did about our wagons in the wilderness, 
 so that it should be most hazardous for man or beast to ven- 
 ture outside their walls. — Campbell. 
 
 The rapacious character of the wolf was familiarly 
 known to the ancients, for both the Greek and Latin poets 
 frequently mention it. In the first book of the Georgics, 
 Virgil says, this office was given to the wolf by Jupiter, to 
 hunt the prey. The rapacious wolf, is a phrase which often 
 occurs in the odes of Horace ; and Ovid, in one of his 
 Elegies, sings, how the wolf, rapacious and greedy of blood, 
 when pressed by famine, plunders the unguarded fold : his 
 ravenous temper prompts him to destructive and sanguin- 
 ary depredations. He issues forth in the night, traverses 
 ihe country, and not only kills what is sufficient to satisfy 
 his hunger, but, everywhere, unless deterred by the bark- 
 ing of dogs or the vociferation of the shepherds, destroys a 
 whole flock; he roams about the cottages, kills all the ani- 
 mals which have been left without, digs the earth under the 
 doors, enters with a dreadful ferocity,, and puts every living 
 creature to death, before he chooses to depart, and carry off 
 his prey. When these inroads happen lo be fruitless, he 
 returns to the woods, searches about with avidity, follows 
 the track of wild beasts, and pursues them in the hope that 
 they may be stopped and seized by some other wolf, and 
 that he may be a partaker of the spoil. " To appease hun- 
 ger," says Buffon, " he swallows indiscriminately every 
 thing he can find, corrupted flesh, bones, hair, skins half 
 tanned and covered with lime ;" and Pliny avers, that he 
 devours the earth on which he treads, to satisfy his vora- 
 cious appetite. When his hunger is extreme, he loses the 
 idea of fear ; he attacks women and children, and even 
 sometimes darts upon men ; till, becoming perfectly furious 
 by excessive exertions, he generally falls asacrifice to pure 
 rage and distraction. He has been accordingly joined with 
 the lion in executing punishment upon wicked men ; and 
 it is evident from his character and habits, that he is well 
 adapted to the work of judgment : " The great men," said 
 Jeremiah, " have altogether broken the yoke, and burst the 
 bonds; wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, 
 and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them." The rapa- 
 cious and cruel conduct of the princes of Israel, is compared 
 by Ezekiel to the mischievous inroads of the same animal : 
 " Her princes in the midst thereof, are like wolves ravening 
 the prey, to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest 
 gain." The disposition of the wolf to attack the weaker 
 animals, especially those which are under the protection of 
 man, is alluded to by our Lord in the parable of the hire- 
 ling shepherd : " The wolf catches them and scatters the 
 flock;" and the apostle Paul, in hL» address to the elders of 
 Ephesus, gives the name of this insidious and cruel animal, 
 to the false teachers who disturbed the peace, and perverted 
 the faith of their people : " I know this, that after my de- 
 parting, shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not 
 sparing the flock." Ovid gives him the same character in 
 his fable of Lycaon. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. They were as fed horses in the morning : 
 every one neighed after his neighbour's wife, j 
 
 The same term is used in the East to denote a similar 
 thing. It is said, " Listen to that evil man, he is always 
 neighing." " O that wicked one, he is like the horse in his 
 phrensy?' " The men of that family are all neighers." 
 Heathenism is ever true to itself; impurity is its inseparable 
 companion. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 Ver. 1. O ye children of Benjamin, gather your- 
 selves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and 
 blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign 
 of fire in Beth-haccerem : for evil appeareth out 
 of the north, and great destruction. 
 
 The methods by which the besieged in time of war en- 
 deavoured to defend themselves and their families were 
 various. When the enemy approached, they gave notice 
 to their confederates to hasten their assistance. In the day, 
 this was done by raising a great smoke ; in the night, by 
 fires or lighted torches. If the flaming torch was intended 
 to announce the arrival of friends, it was held still ; but on 
 the approach of an enemy, it was waved backwards and 
 forwards, an apt emblem of the destructive tumults of war. 
 In allusion to this practice, the prophet Jeremiah calls to the 
 people of Benjamin and Judah ; " Gather yourselves to flee 
 out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in 
 Tekoah, and set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem; for 
 evil approaches out of the north, and great destruction." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 In Beth-haccerem there might possibly be a very high 
 tower. Kimchi observes that the word signifies a high 
 tower, for the keepers of the vines to watch in. If it were 
 so, it was a very proper place to set up the sign of fire in, 
 to give notice to all the surrounding country. It was usual 
 with the Persians, Grecians, and Romans, to signify in the 
 night by signs of fire, and by burning torches, either the 
 approach of an enemy, or succour from friends. The for- 
 mer was done by shaking and moving their torches ; the 
 latter by holding them still.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 2. I have likened the daughter of Zion to a 
 comely and delicate woman. 
 
 A passage of DArvieux will account for that surprise, 
 which he supposes the daughters of Jerusalem would not- 
 withstanding feel, upon seeing the swarthiness of the per- 
 son which Solomon had chosen for his spouse, as it shows 
 the attention usually paid by the great men of the East to 
 the complexion of their wives, as well as the great tanning 
 power of the sun in Palestine.' " The princesses, and the 
 other Arab ladies, whom they showed me from a private 
 place of the tent, appeared to me beautiful and well-shaped ; 
 one may judge by these, and by what they told me of them, 
 that the rest are no less so ; they are very fair, because they 
 are always kept from the sun. The women in common 
 are extremely sunburnt, besides the brown and swarthy 
 colour which they naturally have," &g. Naturally, he says, 
 though this most permaneiat swarthiness must arise from 
 the same cause with that temporary tanning he speaks of, 
 or otherwise the Arab princesses would have been swarthy, 
 though not sunburnt, being natives of the country, which 
 yet, he aflirms, they were not. 
 
 It is on this account, without doubt, that the prophet 
 Jeremiah, when he would describe a comely woman, de- 
 scribes her by the character of one that dwelleth at home. 
 The delicate, and those that are solicitous to preserve their 
 beauty, go very little abroad : it seems it was so anciently, 
 and therefore the prophet uses a term to express a woman 
 of beauty, which would not be very applicable to many 
 British fine ladies. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 20. To wha|. purpose cometh there to me in- 
 cense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a 
 far country ? your burnt-offerings are not ac- 
 ceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me. 
 
 The sweet-smelling reed grows in the deserts of Arabia. 
 It is gathered near Jambo, a port town of Arabia Petrea, 
 from whence it is brought into Egvpt. Pliny says it is 
 common to India and Syria, This plant was probably 
 
490 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 Chap. 6—8. 
 
 among the number of those which the queen of Sheba 
 presented to Solomon; and what seems to confirm the 
 opinion is, that it is still very much esteemed by the Arabs 
 on account of its fragrance. 
 
 It is likely the sweet cane of Jeremiah, who calls it 
 prim«, or excellent^ and associates it with incense from 
 Sheba. " To what purpose cometh there to me incense 
 from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country'?" 
 And, in allusion to the same plant, Isaiah complains in the 
 name of Jehovah, " Thou hast bought me no sweet cane 
 with money." Ii^ the book of Exodus, it is called " sweet 
 calamus," and is said to come " from a far country ;" which 
 agrees with the declaration of ancient writers, that the best 
 is brought from India. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 24. We have heard the fame thereof; our 
 hands wax feeble : anguish hath taken hold of 
 us, and pain as of a woman in travail. 
 
 When a person is hungry, or weary, or when he hears 
 bad news, it is said, " His hands have become weak." 
 " His hands have turned cold." — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 34. Then will I cause to cease from the 
 cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusa- 
 lem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of glad- 
 ness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice 
 of the bride ; for the land shall be desolate. 
 
 It was the custom in the East, even in modern times, to 
 conduct the bride and bridegroom through the streets, with 
 the loudest demonstrations of joy. Rauwolf found this 
 custom also prevalent in Aleppo. " When a Turkish 
 woman is going to be married, and the bridegroom is con- 
 iucted to her house, their relations and friends, who are 
 invited to the weddmg, as they go along through the streets 
 cry with such a loud voice, which they gradually raise as 
 they advance, that they can be heard from one street to the 
 other." When the prophet paints a period of public distress, 
 he says among other things, " The voice of the bride and the 
 bridegroom shall no longer be heard." Thus, in Persia, 
 no marriages are celebrated during Lent, (the month of 
 Ramadan,) and the solemnities of mourning in memory of 
 Hossein ; because every thing must then be still and mourn- 
 ful. (Olearius.) — Rosenmuller. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 7. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth 
 her appointed times; and the turtle, and the 
 crane, and the swallow, observe the time of 
 their coming: but my people know not the 
 judgment of the Lord. 
 
 See on Ps. 104. 17. 
 
 Some interpreters imagine, that by the phrase, "the 
 stork in the heaven," the prophet means to distinguish be- 
 tween the manner of her departure, and that of other 
 migrating birds. The storks collect in immense numbers, 
 and darken the air with their wide-extended squadrons, as 
 they wing their flight to other climes ; while many other 
 birds of passage come and go in a more private and con- 
 cealed manner. But, if this was the prophet's design, he 
 ought not to have introduced the crane, or our translators 
 should have found another sense for the term which he 
 uses; for the crane is seen pursuing her annual journey 
 through the heavens equally as the stork, and in numbers 
 sufficient to engage the public attention. When Dr. Chandler 
 was in Asia, about the end of August, he saw cranes flying 
 in vast caravans, passing high in tie air, from Thrace as 
 he supposed, on their way to Eg>'pt. But, in the end of 
 March, he saw them in the Lesser Asia, busily engaged 
 in picking up reptiles, or building their nests. Some of 
 them, he assures us, built their nests in the ruins of an old 
 fortress ; and that the return of the crane, and the begin- 
 ning of the bees to work, are considered there as a sure 
 sign that the winter is past. 
 
 The first clause of that verse then, equally suits the stork 
 and the crane; and by consequence, the conjecture of these 
 
 interpreters is unfounded. It is more natural to suppose, 
 that the prophet alludes to the impression which the atmo- 
 sphere makes upon these birds, and the hint which instiiict 
 immediately suggests, that the time of their migration is 
 come. As soon as they feel the cold season approaching, 
 or tepid airs beginning to soften the rigours of winter, in 
 the open firmament of heaven, where they love to range, 
 they perceive the necessity of making preparations for 
 their departure, or their return. The state of the v/eather 
 is the only monitor they need to prepare for their journey, 
 — their own feelings, the only guides to direct their long 
 and adventurous wanderings. 
 
 But it is most probable that the prophet by these words, 
 " in the heaven," which by the structure of the clause he 
 seems to apply exclusively to the stork, as a peculiar trait 
 in her character, intends to express both the astonishing 
 rapidity of her flight, when she starts for distant regions, 
 and the amazing height to which she soars. She is beyond 
 almost any other, a bird " in the heaven," journeying on 
 the very inargin of ether, far above the range of the hu- 
 man eye. 
 
 From the union of the stork and the crane in the same 
 passage, from the similarity of their form and habits of 
 life, Harmer thinks it by no means improbable, that the 
 Hebrew word Msida signifies both these, and, in one word, 
 the whole class of birds that come under the prophet's de- 
 scriolion. But that respectable writer has no foundation 
 for nis opinion ; the stork and the crane, although they 
 resemble each other in severial particulars, belong to dif- 
 ferent families, and are distinguished in Hebrew by diffe- 
 rent names. 
 
 The return of these birds to the south, marked the 
 approach of winter, and the time for the mariner to lay up 
 his frail bark ; for the ancients never ventured to sea dur- 
 ing that stormy season. Stillingfleet has given a quotation 
 from Aristophanes, Avhich is quite appropriate. The crane 
 points out the time for sowing, when she flies with her 
 warning notes to Egypt ; she bids the sailor hang up his 
 rudder and take his rest, and every prudent man provid© 
 himself with winter garments. On the other hand, the 
 flight of these birds towards the north, proclaimed the ap 
 proach of spring. The prophet accordingly mentions tha 
 times appointed for the stork in the plural number, which 
 is probably used to express both the time of her coming and 
 of her departure. 
 
 No doubt is entertained about the meaning of the second 
 term ; it is universally allowed to denote the turtle; and as 
 the voice of the turtle and the song of the nightingale are 
 coincident, it seems to be' the prophet's intention to mark 
 out the coming of a bird later in the spring than the hasida, 
 for, according to Chardin, the nightingale begins to be 
 heard some days later than the appearance of the stork, and 
 marks out the beginning of spring, as the stork indicates 
 the termination of winter.— Paxton. 
 
 Should a husband be fond of roving from his house, and 
 remaining in other places, his wife says, " The storks 
 know their time and place, but my husband does not know." 
 " In the rain neither the Koku nor other birds will depart 
 from their nestlings : but my husband is always leaving us." 
 " Ah! my wicked son ! would that he, as the stork, knew 
 his appointed time and place !" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. For behold, I will send serpents, cocka- 
 trices, among you, which will not be charmed, 
 and they shall bite you, saith the Lord. 
 
 See on Eccl. 10. 11. Ps. 58. 5, 6. and Is. 11. 8. 
 
 The East Indian jugglers ascribe it to the power of a 
 certain root that they touch venomous serpents without 
 danger, and are able to do with them whatever they please. 
 This is confirmed by one of the best-informed and rnost 
 judicious observers, Mr. Kaempfer, a German physician, 
 who practised his profession from the year 1682, for twelve 
 years, in several countries in Asia. In his instructive 
 work, written in Latin, in which he has recorded the great- 
 er part of his observations, a separate chapter is dedicated 
 to the arts of the East India charmers of serpents, the sub- 
 stance of which we will add here. 
 
 " Among the arts of the Indian jugglers and mounte- 
 banks, the most remarkable is, that they make one of the 
 most venomous serpents, the Naja, called by the Portuguese < 
 Cobra de Cabello, dance. This serpent, so dangerous to 
 
Chap. 9. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 491 
 
 man, infuses, by its bite, a most deadly poison into the 
 wound. Those who are bit by it are immediately seized 
 with fits and oppression, and expire in convulsions, unless 
 speedy assistance is given ; at least they hardly escape 
 monification, in the injur«^d part, and the cure of which is 
 difficult, if antidotes are applied too late. This serpent, 
 which belongs to the class of vipers, is fromlhree to four 
 fuet long, and of a middling thickness ; its skin is scaly, 
 and beautifully striped, rough, dark brown, and belly 
 white. When provoked, this viper has the peculiar prop- 
 erty of puthng up the skin on both sides of the neck, and 
 e ctending it like a fillet, which, on the reverse side, shows 
 liife a pair of spectacles, distinctly marked with a white 
 colour, the circles of which are visible in the skin, which 
 is spread round the head : thus, with its body raised, and 
 extended jaws, displaying two rows of sharp teeth, it darts 
 upon the enemy with surprising swiftness. That this for- 
 midable animal should be brought, by singing, to make, 
 before spectators, movements resembling a dance, is incred- 
 ible to those who hear it, and an agreeable and astonishing 
 sight to those that witness it. But if we examine this ser- 
 pent dance more closely, and learn how these animals are 
 taught, we shall find every thing very natural : I will first 
 describe the dance, as it is called. 
 
 " A charmer of serpents, who intends to display his art, 
 before he does any thing, takes a piece of a certain root, of 
 which he always carries some in the scarf which he wears 
 round his waist, in his right hand, which he closes firmly ; 
 this root, according to his declaration, defends him against 
 all attacks from serpents, so that he can do any thing with 
 Ihem without being endangered : upon this, he throws the 
 serpent upon the ground out of the vessel in which he car- 
 ries it about, and gently irritates it with a stick, or with the 
 clinched fist in which he holds this root. The provoked 
 animal, resting on the point of its tail, raises up its whole 
 body, and darts upon the fist, which he holds out to him, 
 with extended jaws, from which the hissing tongue is pro- 
 truded, and with flaming eyes. The charmer now begins 
 his song, at the same time moving his fist backward and 
 forward, up and down, according to the time. The ser- 
 pent, with its eyes constantly directed towards the fist, 
 imitates its movements with its head and whole body, so 
 that without quitting its place, and resting on its tail, it ex- 
 tends its head two spans long, and moves to and fro, to- 
 gether with the body, in beautiful undulations, which is 
 called dancing : this, however, does not last longer than 
 half a quarter of an hour; for, exhausted by the erect posi- 
 tion, and movements to the time, the serpent throws itself 
 upon the ground and escapes : to avoid this, the charmer 
 breaks off his song a little before, when the serpent lays 
 itself quietly uponlhe ground, and suffers itself to be brought 
 back to its receptacle, 
 
 " The question now is, how it is effected, that the serpent 
 follows the motion of the hand which is held before it 1 
 whether by the secret power of the root held in it 1 or by 
 the song of the charmer 1 These people, indeed, affirm 
 that this effect is produced by both. The root, say they, 
 causes the serpent to do no harm, and the song makes "it 
 dance. They, therefore, bring this root to the spectators to 
 purchase, and do not much like to let any one approach a 
 dancing serpent without having previously secured himself 
 with it; but that others may not be able to discov^er what 
 root it is, they cut them only in very small pieces, which 
 in taste and external appearance resemble the sarsaparilla, 
 but are only a little stronger. But we must not believe that 
 the root makes the serpent harmless, and that the song 
 makes it dance. I threw two pieces of the root, which I 
 had purchased for a trifle from a charmer, to a serpent 
 which was quietly lying on the ground after the dance was 
 finished ; but it did not cause it to move, nor did it show 
 any sign of aversion. But no person of sense in our days, 
 probably, can believe that serpents are so charmed by the 
 song, that they dance ; and David, in the well-known pas- 
 sage in the Psalms, does not appear to say this. In short, 
 according to my conviction, it is only fear, by which this 
 ppecies of serpents, which is more docile than any other, 
 is taught to follow the motions of its master's hand, which 
 *s held before it, and so makes movements with its body 
 resembling a dance. I myself saw how a Hindoo of the 
 Bramin tribe, who lived in a suburb of Nagapatam, in- 
 ftructed such a serpent to dance in a few days, by means of 
 a 5 tick and a basin, which he held before it: they are ren- 
 
 dered harmless by employing the poison-bags at the root of 
 the canine teeth of the upper jaw, which is done by provok- 
 ing them, and making them bite a cloth, or some other soft 
 and warm body, and repeating this for some days succes- 
 sively." — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 20. The harvest is past, the summer is end- 
 ed, and we are not saved. 
 
 Has a man lost a good situation, it is said, " His harvest 
 is past." Is a person amassing much money, it is said, 
 " He is gathering in his harvest."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 1. Oh that my head were waters, and mine 
 eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day 
 and night for the slain of the daughter of my 
 people ! 
 
 The marginal reading intimates the head was exhausted, 
 the fountain was dry. People in prospect of great misery, 
 ask, " Have we waters in our heads for that grief "?" •• That 
 my sorrows may not dry up, these eyes are always weep- 
 ing." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodg- 
 ing-place of wayfaring men, that I might leave 
 my people, and go from them ! for they be all 
 adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. 
 
 People in the East, on their journeys to other towns or 
 countries, are obliged to travel through the most lonely 
 wilds. Hence the native sovereigns, or opulent men, erect 
 what are called rest-houses, or choultries, where the trav- 
 ellers or pilgrims reside for the night. It is in the wilder- 
 ness where the devotees and ascetics live retired from 
 men : there, either for life, or for a short period, they per- 
 form their austerities, and live in cynical contempt of man. 
 When a father is angry with his family, he often exclaims, 
 " If I had but a shade in the wilderness, then should I be 
 happy : I will become a pilgrim, and leave you." Nor is 
 this mere empty declamation to alarm his family ; for num- 
 bers in every town and village thus leave their homes, and 
 are never heard of more. There are, however, many who 
 remain absent for a few months or years, and then return. 
 Under these circumstances, it is no wonder, when a father 
 or husband threatens his family he will retire to the kdtu, 
 i. e. wilderness, that they become greatly alarmed. But 
 men who have been reduced in their circumstances become 
 so mortified, that they also retire from their homes, and 
 wander about all their future lives as pilgrims. " Alas ! 
 alas ! I will retire to the jungle, and live with wild beasts," 
 says the broken-hearted widow. 
 
 " Oh for a lotJge in some vast wilderness, 
 
 Some boundless contiguity of shade." (Cowper.) — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. Their tongue is as an arrow shot out ; it 
 speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his 
 neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he lay- 
 eth his wait. 
 
 The circumstance related by Mr. Mungo Park, in the 
 following extract, might possibly have its parallel in the 
 conduct of the ancients ; and if it had, clearly accounts 
 for such figures as that used by the prophet: " Each of the 
 negroes took from his quiver a handful of arrows, and 
 putting two between his teeth, and one in his bow, waved 
 to us with his hand to keep at a distance," (Travels in 
 Africa.) — Border, 
 
 Ver. 17. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider 
 ye and call for the mourning women, that they 
 may come ; and send for cunning women, that 
 they may come: 18. And let them make haste, 
 and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may 
 run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out 
 with waters. 
 
 The custom of hiring women to weep at funerals, who 
 
492 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 9. 
 
 were called by the Romans prseficae, has been preserved in 
 the East to this day. J. H, Mayer, one of the latest trav- 
 ellers who visited Egypt and Syria in 1812 and 1813, makes 
 the following observations. " I here found the mourning 
 women, who are several times spoken of in the Bible, and 
 of whom I could not form a proper notion. This ancient 
 custom has been retained here to this day. I have often seen 
 the ceremony, but most clearly and nearest here, in Medini, 
 an Egyptian village. Fifteen or twenty women, dressed 
 in dark, with a black or dark-blue handkerchief round 
 their heads, assemble before the house of the deceased ; 
 one of them beats a talourine, the others move in a cir- 
 cle, keeping time to the instrument, singing at the same 
 time the praises of the deceased ; in the space of a minute 
 they clasp their hands twenty or thirty times together be- 
 fore their face, and then let them drop to the knee. The 
 constant violent motion changes the ceremony into a dance ; 
 every moment a piercing cry, almost like a whistle, is 
 heard from one of the attendants. The mourning continues 
 seven days, during which the nearest female relation, ac- 
 companied by mourning women, visit the grave of the de- 
 ceased, and as they march along, alternately utter this shrill 
 and piercing cry." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Immediately after death the people of the house begin to 
 make a great lamentation : they speak of the virtues of the 
 deceased, and address the body in very touching language. 
 The female relations come together, and beat their breasts. 
 Their long hair is soon disheveJled : they sit down on 
 the floor around the corpse, put their arms on each others' 
 shoulders, and in a kind of mournful recitative bewail the 
 loss of their friend. 
 
 I have sometimes been not a little affected to hear their 
 exclamations. See the wife bending over the dead body 
 of her husband ; listen to her lamentations : — " Ah, how 
 many years have we been married, and lived happily to- 
 gether 1 never were we separated, but now ! Alas, my 
 king, my kingdom, my master, my wealth, my eyes, my 
 body, my soul, my god. Shall I make an offering to 
 Brama, because thou art taken awayl Now will your 
 •enemies rejoice, because your are gone. Did the gods 
 ■call for you 1 are you in Siva's mount 1 Though I saw 
 you die, I am still alive. When shall I again see the 
 light of your beautiful countenance 1 O when again shall I 
 behold his noble mien 1 how can I look upon that face 
 which was once like the full-blown lotus, but now withered 
 and dry. "When shall I again see his graceful bearing in 
 the palanquin. Alas ! my name is now the widow. When 
 will my aged father again say to you, son-in-law 1 Do the 
 eyes which saw the splendour of my bridal day witness this 
 deadly scene 'i In future, by whom will these children be 
 defended 1 When I am sick, who will go for the far-famed 
 doctor 1 When my children cry, to whom shall I complain 1 
 When they are hungry, to whom will they sav, father'? 
 Ah ! my children, my children, you must now forget that 
 pleasant word." 
 
 Hear the daughter over her father. — " My father, had I 
 not my existence from you 1 Who had me constantly in 
 his arms, lest I should fall 1 Who would not eat except I 
 was with him 1 Who fed me with rice and milk 1 When 
 I was dejected, who purchased me bracelets^ Who pur- 
 chased the beautiful jewel for my forehead 1 O ! my 
 god, you never could bear to look in my withered face. 
 Who will now train my brothers 1 Who "procured me the 
 talil (husband.^ To whom shall I go when my husband 
 is angry 1 Under whose shade shall my husband and chil- 
 dren now go 1 To whom will my children now say, grand- 
 father 1 In whose face will my mother now look 1 Alas ! 
 my father, my father, you have left us alone." 
 
 Listen to the son over his father :— " From infancy to 
 manhood you have tenderly nursed me. Who has given 
 me learning 1 Who has taught me to conduct myself with 
 discretion'? Who caused me to be selected by many'? 
 Who would not eat if I had the headache "? Who would not 
 allow me to be fatigued by walking "? Who gave me the 
 beautiful palanquin 1 Who loved to see his son happy 1 
 Whose eyes shone like diamonds on his soni Who 
 taught me to prepare the fields ? who taught me agricul- 
 ture 1 Ah ! my father, I thought you would have lived 
 to partake of the fruits of the trees I had planted. Alas ! 
 alas ! I shall now be called the fatherless son." 
 
 Hear the aged father over ihe body of his son : — " Mv 
 son, my son, art thou gone 1 What ! am I left in my old 
 
 age '? My lion, my arrow, my blood, my body, my soul, 
 my third eye ! gone, gone, gone. Ah ! who was so near to 
 his mother 1 To whom will she now say, son '? What ! 
 gone without assisting us in our old age 1 Ah ! what will 
 thy betrothed do'i 1 hoped thou wouldst have lived to see 
 our death. Who will now perform the funeral rites for us % 
 Who will light up the pile 1 Who will perform the annual 
 ceremonies'? To the bats, to the bats, my house is now given." 
 
 The daughter over the body of her mother says, " Alas ! 
 what shall I do in future '? We are like chickens, whose 
 mother is killed. Motherless children are beaten on the 
 head. We are like the honeycomb hanging on the trees, 
 at which a stone has been thrown : all, all are scattered." 
 She says to the females who are coming to mourn over 
 her mother, " I am the worm which has to eat a dead body. 
 Though you should give me a large vessel full of water, it 
 will not quench my thirst so well as a few drops from the 
 hand of my mother ! My mother has gone, and left us for 
 the streets. Who lulled me to repose '? Who bathed me near 
 the well '? Who fed me with milk 1 Ah ! my father also 
 is dead. Why have you gone without seeing the splendour 
 of my bridal day '? Did you not promise to deck me for 
 the festive scene '? What ! am 1 to be alone that day '? Ah ! 
 my mother, how shall I know how to conduct myself? 
 When I am married, should my husband use me ill, to 
 whom shall I go "? Who will now teach me to manage 
 household affairs 1 Ah ! there is nothing like a mother ! 
 How many pains, how many difficulties, have you had 
 with me '? What have I done for you 1 Alas ! alas ! had 
 you been long sick, I might have done something for you. 
 Ah ! you told me disobedience would be m^ ruin. You are 
 gone : why did I not obey you '? My fate, my fate ! my 
 mother, my mother ! will you not look at me 1 Are you 
 asleep 1 You told us you should die before our father. 
 My mother, will you not again let me hear your voice '? 
 When I am in pain, who will say, fear not, fear not 1 I 
 thought you would have lived to see the marriage of my 
 daughter. Come hither, my infant, look at your grand- 
 mother.. Was I not nursed at those breasts '? You said to 
 my father, when you were dying, 'Love my children.' 
 You said to my husband, ' Cherish my daughter.' Ah ! 
 did you not bless us all ? My mother, my mother, that 
 name I will not repeat again." 
 
 The son says to the mourning women, " Ah ! was she 
 not the best of mothers ? Did she not conceal my faults 1 
 Can I forget her joy when she put the bracelets on my 
 wrists. O ! how she did kiss and praise me, when I had 
 learned the alphabet. She was always restless while I was 
 at school, and when I had to return, she was always look- 
 ing out for me. How often she used to say, ' My son, my 
 son, come and eat;' but now, who will call me'?" Then, 
 taking the hand of his deceased mother into his own, he 
 asks, " and are the worms to feed on this hand which has 
 fed me'?" Then, embracing her feet, "AhE these will 
 never more move about this house. When my great days 
 are come, in whose face shall I look "? Who will rejoice 
 in my joy '? When I go to the distant country, who will 
 be constantly saying, ' Return, return '?' Ah ! how did she 
 rejoice on my wedding day. Who will now help and com- 
 fort my wife '? If she did not see me every moment, she 
 was continually saying, ' My son, my son,' Must I now 
 apply the torch to her funeral pile 1 Alas ! alas ! I am too 
 youiig for that. What! have the servants of the funeral 
 house been anxious to get their money '? Could they not 
 have waited a few years '? What do those bearers want 1 
 Have you come to take away my mother V Then, lying 
 on the bier by her side, he says, " Take me also. Alas ! 
 alas! is the hour come'? I must now forget you. Your 
 name must never again be in my mouth. I must now 
 perform the annual ceremony. O life, life ! the bubble, the 
 bubble !" 
 
 Listen to the affectionate brother over the body of h.s 
 sister :—" Were we not a pair'? why are we separated.l 
 Of what use am I alone 1 Where i's now my shade '? I 
 will now be a wanderer. How often did I bring you the 
 fragrant lotus'? but your face was more beautiful than that 
 flower. Did I not procure you jewels '? Who gained you 
 the bridegroom 1 Have I not been preparing to make a 
 splendid show on your nuptia. day 1 Alas ! all is vanity. 
 How fatal is this for your betrothed. For whose sins have 
 you been taken away 1 You nave vanished like tht? god- 
 dess Lechimy, In what birtn shall we again see you 7 
 
Chap. 10—12. 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 4dS 
 
 How many suiters waited for you 1 You have poured fire 
 into my bov;els : my senses have gone, and I wander about 
 like an evil spirit. Instead of the marriage ceremonies, 
 we are now attending to those of your funeral. I may get 
 another mother, for my father can marry again: I may 
 acquire children ; but a sister, never, never. Ah ! give 
 me one look: let your lotus-like face open once — one smile. 
 Is this your marriage ceremony '? I thought one thing, but 
 fate thought another. You have escaped like lightning : 
 the house is now full of darkness. When I go to the dis- 
 tant town, who will give me her commissions 1 To whom 
 shall we give your clothes and jewels'] My sister, I have 
 to put the torch to your funeral pile. You said, ' Brother, 
 we will never part; we will live together in one house :' 
 but you are gone. I refused to give you to the youth in 
 the far country; but now whither have you gone'? To 
 whom shall I now say, I am hungry'? Alas! alas! my 
 father planted cocoa, mango, and jack trees in your name, 
 but you have not lived to eat the fruit thereof. I have been 
 to tell them you are gone. Alas ! I see her clothes : take 
 them away. Of what use is that palanquin now '? Who 
 used to come jumping on the road to meet me '? If I have 
 so much sorrow, what must have been that of your mother 
 for ten long moons "? Whose evil eye has been upon you 1 
 Who aimed the blow*? Will there ever again be sorrow 
 like this '? My belly smokes. Ah, my sister, your gait, 
 your speech, your beauty, all gone : the Aower is withered — 
 the flower is withered. Call for the bier ; call for the musi- 
 cians." 
 
 Husbands who love their wives are exceedingly pathetic 
 in their exclamations : they review the scenes of their 
 youth, and speak of their tried and sincere affection. The 
 children she has borne are also alluded to ; and, to use an 
 orientalism, the man is plunged into a sea of grief. 
 " What, the apple of my eye gone 7 My swan, my parrot, 
 my deer, my Lechimy'? Her colour was like gold, her 
 gait like the stately swan, her waist was like lightning, 
 her teeth were like pearls, her eyes like the kiyal fish, 
 (oval,) her eyebrows like the bow, and her countenance 
 like the full-grown lotus. Yes, she has gone, the mother 
 of my children. No more welcome, no more smiles in 
 the evening when I return. All the world to me is now 
 as the place of burning. Get ready the wood for my pile, 
 O ! my wife, my wife, listen to the voice of thy husband.." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 5. They are upright as the palm-tree, but 
 speak not ; they must needs be borne, because 
 they cannot go. Be not afraid of them ; for 
 they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them 
 to do good. 
 
 From the first clause, it is evident that he alluded also 
 to the shape of their gods. Before the art of carving was 
 carried to perfection, the ancients made their images all 
 of a thickness, straight, having their hands hanging down 
 and close to their sides, the legs joined together, the eyes 
 shut, with a very perpendicular attitude, and not unlike to 
 the body of a palm-tree ; such are the figures of those an- 
 tique Egyptian statues that still remain. The famous 
 Greek architect and sculptor Doedalus, set thdr legs at lib- 
 erty, opened their eyes, and gave them a freer and easier 
 attitude. But according to some interpreters, and particu- 
 larly Mr. Parkhurst, the inspired writer sometimes gives 
 it a more honourable application; selecting it to be the 
 symbol of our blessed Redeemer, who himself bore our 
 sins in his own body on the tree. The voice of antiquity 
 ascribes to the palm, the singular quality of resisting a 
 very great weight hung upon it, and of even bending in 
 the contrary direction, to counterbalance the pressure. Of 
 this circumstance, Xenophon takes notice in his Cyrope- 
 
 dia ; Km 5t) ■i:iel,o}itvoi hi ibntviKcg vrro (iapov; av(o KXiprovvrat ; " and 
 
 indeed, palm-trees when loaded with any weight, rise 
 upward, and bend the contrary way." The same obser- 
 vation was made by Plutarch. It has heen already obser- 
 ved, that the Hebrew name of the palm-tree is Thamar ; 
 and in the Old Testament, we meet with a place in Canaan 
 called Baalthamar, in honour, it is probable, of Baal or 
 the sun, for many ages the object of universal veneration 
 among the Orientals ; and who had been worshipped there 
 
 by the Canaanifes under this attribute, as supporting the 
 immense pressure of the celestial fluid on all sides, and 
 sustaining the various parts and operations of universal 
 nature in their respective situations and courses. The 
 symbol of this support, stolen and perverted as usual from 
 the sacred ritual, appears to have been a palm-tree, which 
 was also the symbol of support among the Greeks and 
 Egyptians. With how much greater propriety is it the 
 appointed symbol of him who sustained the inconceivable 
 pressure of divine wrath for his people, and was so far " 
 from being utterly depressed under such a load of sin and 
 punishment, that he successfully endured all that the law 
 and justice of his Father demanded, rose victorious over 
 death and the grave ; and shall for ever, as these interpre- 
 ters suppose, " flourish like the palm-tree, and grow or 
 spread abroad like the cedar in Lebanon !" Hence in the 
 outer temple, (the symbol of Jehovah incarnate,) palm- 
 trees were engraved on the walls and doors between the 
 coupled cherulDS. And for this reason, the prophetess 
 Deborah is supposed to have fixed her dwelling under a 
 palm-tree, emblematically to express her trust, not in the 
 idolatrous Ashtaroth or Blessers, at that time the abomina- 
 tion of Israel, but in the promised Messiah, who was to be 
 made perfect through sufferings. At the feast of taberna- 
 cles, the people of Israel were to take branches of palm- 
 trees; at once to typify Jehovah's dwelling in our nature, 
 and the spiritual support which, by this means, all true be- 
 lievers derive from him ; and also, to ascribe to him as 
 the Creator and Preserver of all things, in opposition to 
 Baal or the sun, the honour of sustaining the operations 
 of nature in producing and ripening the fruits of the earth. 
 The feast of tabernacles was also the feast of ingathering; 
 and every person in the least acquainted with the customs 
 of oriental nations knows, that the palm was among idol- 
 aters the chosen symbol of the sun, and consecrated to 
 that luminary ; and that the temples erected to his honour 
 through all the regions of the East, were surrounded with 
 groves of palm-trees, whose leaf, resembling in shape the 
 solar beam, and maintaining a perpetual verdure, might 
 continually remind the adoring suppliants of the quick- 
 ening influence and sustaining energy of their favourite 
 deity. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 2. Thou hast planted them ; yea, they have 
 taken root : they grow ; yea, they bring forth 
 fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far 
 from their reins. 
 
 Does a man who has been elevated in society by another, 
 cease to respect his patron; it is said, " Ah, my lord, the 
 tree which you planted has taken root :— in his mouth you 
 are near ; but in his heart you are afar off." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. My heritage is unto me as a lion in the 
 forest ; it crieth out against me : therefore have 
 I hated it. 9. My heritage is unto me as a 
 speckled bird ; the birds round about are against 
 her ; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the 
 field, come to devour. 
 
 See on 1 Sam. 13. 18. 
 
 Ver. 9. My heritage is unto me as a speckled 
 bird, the birds round about are against her; 
 come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, 
 come to devour. 
 
 Dr. Boothroyd, " Ravenous birds." The context con- 
 firms this rendering, and also the marginal reading, " ta- 
 lons." Considering the numerous birds of prey in the 
 East, it is no wonder that there are so many allusions in 
 the scriptures to their ravenous propensities. Of a fero- 
 cious man it is said, " That fellow is in every place with 
 his talons." " What ! wretch, have you come hither to 
 snatch with your talons 1" " Alas ! alas ! how many hai 
 this disease snatched away in its talons?" "True, true 
 even my own children have now got talons." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 0. Many pastors have destroyed my vine- 
 
494 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 CHA.P. 12—14. 
 
 yard, they have trodden my portion under foot, 
 they have made my pleasant portion a desolate 
 wilderness. 
 
 Besides successive invasions by foreign nations, and the 
 systematic spoliation exercised by a despotic government, 
 other causes have conspired to perpetuate the desolation of 
 Judea, and to render abortive the substance that is in it. 
 Amonj;, hese has chiefly to be numbered its being literally 
 trodden under foot by many pastors. Volney devotes a chap- 
 ter, fifty pages in length, to a description, as he entitles it, 
 " Of the pastoral, or wandering tribes of Syria," chiefly 
 of the Bedouin Arabs, by whom especially Judea is in- 
 cessantly traversed. " Tlie pachalics of Aleppo and Da- 
 mascus may be computed to contain about thirty thousand 
 wandering Turkmen, (Turcomans.) All their property 
 consists in cattle," In the same pachalics, the number of 
 the Curds " exceed twenty thousand tents and huts," or 
 an equal number of armed men. " The Curds are almost 
 everywhere looked upon as robbers. Like the Turkmen, 
 these Curds are pastors and wanderers. A third wander- 
 ing people in Syria are the Bedouin Arabs." " It often 
 happens that even individuals turn robbers, in order to with- 
 draw themselves from the laws, or from tyranny, unite 
 and form a little camp, which maintain themselves by 
 arms, and, increasing, become new hordes and new tribes. 
 We may pronounce, that in cultivable countries the wan- 
 dering life originates in the injustice or want of policy of 
 the government; and that the sedentary and the cultivating 
 state is that to which mankind is most naturally inclined." 
 " It is evident that agriculture must be very precarious in 
 such a country, and that, under a government like that 
 of the Turks, it is safer to lead a wandering life than to 
 choose a settled habitation, and rely for subsistence on ag- 
 riculture." " The Turkmen, the Curds, and the Bedou- 
 ins, have no fixed habitations, but keep perpetually icander- 
 ing with their tents and herds, in limited districts of which 
 they look upon themselves as the proprietors. The Arabs 
 spread over the whole frontier of Syria, and even the 
 plains of Palestine." — Thus, contrary to their natural in- 
 clination, the peasants, often forced to abandon a settled 
 life, and pastoral tribes in great numbers, or many, and 
 without fixed habitations, divide the country, as it were, 
 by mutual consent, and apportion it in limited districts 
 among themselves by an assumed right of property, and 
 the Arabs, subdivided also into different tribes, spread over 
 the plains of Palestine, " wandering perpetually," as if on 
 very purpose to tread it down. — What could be more un- 
 likely or unnatural in such a land ! yet what more striking- 
 ly and strictly true ! or how else could the effect of the 
 vision have been seen ! Many pastors have destroyed my 
 vineyard; they have troddxn my portion under foot.— 
 Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 4. Take the girdle that thou hast got, which 
 is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, 
 and hide it there in a hole of the rock. 
 
 The girdle of the Orientals is sometimes made of silver 
 or gold; or embroidered silk, or highly died muslin. Its 
 uses are, to keep the lower garments fast to the loins, to 
 strengthen the body, and to command respect. Chiefs have 
 numerous folds of muslin round that part, and they march 
 along with great pomp, thus enlarged in their size. That, 
 therefore, which was of so much use, and which indicated 
 the dignity pf the wearer, was to be marred, typifying the 
 degradation of the Jews in their approaching captivity. 
 The Hindoos have a custom of burying certain articles 
 bv the side of a tank or river, in order to inflict or pre- 
 tigure evil in reference to certain obnoxious individuals 
 who are thus placed under the ban. Thus eggs, human 
 hair, thread, a ball of saffron, or a little of the earth on 
 which the devoted person has had his feet, are buried in 
 the situations alluded to. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. Take the girdle that thou hast got, which 
 is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, 
 and hide it there in a hole of the rock. 5. So 
 I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the Lord 
 
 commanded me. 6. And it came to pass aftei 
 many days, that the Lord said unto me, Arise, 
 go to Euphrates, and take the girdle frcrn 
 thence, which I commanded thee to hide there. 
 7. Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and 
 took the girdle from the place where I had hid 
 it ; and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was 
 profitable for nothing. 
 See on eh. 32. 13, 14. 
 
 Ver. 18. Say unto the king and to the queen, 
 Humble yourselves, sit down ; for your princi- 
 palities shall come down, even the crown of 
 your glory. 
 
 The margin has instead of "principalities," "or head 
 tires." This again alludes to the threatened judgments 
 which were to befall the people and their rulers. Dr. 
 Boothroyd has, instead of "principalities," " the diadem 
 of your glory." Of a proud' man who treats another with 
 contempt it is said, " Ah ! his turban will soon fall." " Yes, 
 imperious upstart ! thy head-dress will soon come down." 
 " Have you heard of the proud wife of Kandan V — " No." 
 "Her head ornaments have fallen; she is humbled." 
 " Ah," says the bereaved father, over the dead body of his 
 son, " my crown is fallen ! my crown is fallen." When 
 men quarrel, it is common for the one to say to the other, 
 " I will beat thee till thy turban fall." When they fight, 
 the great object of the combatants is to pull off" each others 
 turban or head-dress ; because it shows that the individ- 
 ual is then disgraced and humbled. The feelings of a 
 man who has his turban knocked off" his head, are proba- 
 bly .something like those which are produced by the knock- 
 ing off" of a man's wig. For the turban to pall oflf the 
 head by accident is considered to be a very bad omen. Je- 
 hoiakim and his queen were to have their "head tires" 
 brought down; they were to be humbled on account of their 
 sins. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or 
 the leopard his spots? then may ye also do 
 good, that are accustomed to do evil. 
 
 See on ch. 5. 6. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 2. Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof 
 languish ; they are black unto the ground: and 
 the cry of Jerusalem is gone up. 
 
 " Have you heard that the wife of Muttoo and all the 
 children have died of the cholera 1 Alas, the poor old man 
 is left alone, and the gates are in sorrow — even they pity 
 him." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 3. And their nobles have sent their little 
 ones to the waters : they came to the pits, and 
 found no water ; they returned with their ves- 
 sels empty ; they were ashamed and confound- 
 ed, and covered their heads. 4. Because the 
 ground is chapt, for there was no rain in the 
 earth, the ploughmen were ashamed, they cov- 
 ered their heads. 
 
 See on Matt. 11, 21. 
 
 Ver. 4. Because the ground is chapt, for there 
 was no rain in the earth, the ploughmen were 
 ashamed, they covered their heads. 
 
 The description that Sir J. Chardin gives us of the state 
 of these countries, with respect to the cracking of the earth, 
 before the autumnal rains fell, is so lively a comment on 
 Jer. xiv. 4, that I beg leave to introduce it here as a distinct 
 observation. The lands of the East, he says, which the great 
 dryness there causes to crack, are the ground of this figure, 
 which is certainly extremely beautiful ; for these dry lands 
 
Chap. 15. 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 49§ 
 
 have chinks too deep for a person to see to the bottom of: 
 this may be observed in the Indies more than anywhere, a 
 little before the rains fall, and wherever the lands are rich 
 and hard. The prophet's speaking of ploughmen, shows 
 that he is speaking of the autumnal state of those countries; 
 and if the cracks are so deep from the common dryness of 
 their summers, what must they be when the rains are with- 
 held beyond the usual time, which is the case Jeremiah is 
 referring to. — Harmer. 
 
 This refers to a drought which was to take place in 
 Judah. At such times, in the East, the ground is " chapt ;" 
 large fissures meet your eye in every direction, and the 
 husbandmen are then ashamed and put to confusion : they 
 know not what to do : to plough the land under such cir- 
 cumstances is of no use ; and, therefore, they are obliged 
 to wait till it shall rain. Thus, should the rains be later 
 than usual, the people are daily looking for them, and after 
 one night's fall, the farmers may be seen in every direction 
 working in their fields with the greatest glee, in the full 
 hope of soon casting in the seed. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 5. Yea, the hind also calved in the field, 
 and forsook it, because there was no grass. 
 
 Some ancient writers allege, that the hind bestows much 
 
 Eains in rearing and instructing her young. She carefully 
 ides her fawn in the thicket, or among the long grass, and 
 corrects it with her foot, when it discovers an inclination 
 prematurely to leave its covert. When it has acquired 
 sufficient strength, she teaches it to run, and^to bound from 
 one rock to another ; till, conscious of its ability to provide 
 for itself, it bends its rapid course into the boundless waste, 
 and from that moment, loses the recollection of its parent 
 and her tender care. But affectionate as is the hind to her 
 young one, and attentive to its safety and instruction, cir- 
 cumstances occur at times, which diminish, which even 
 extinguish the benignity of her nature, and render her in- 
 sensible to the sufferings of her own offspring. The slight- 
 ness of her connexion with guilty man, and her distance 
 from his dwelling, do not prevent her from sharing in the 
 calamities to which all sublunary natures are subjected on 
 account of his sin. The grievous famine which dims the 
 fine eye of the wild ass, and compels her to take refuge on 
 the summits of the mountains, where, sucking in the cool- 
 ing breeze instead of water, which is no longer to be found, 
 she lingers out a few miserable days, hardens the gentle 
 and affectionate heart of the hind, so that she forsakes her 
 fawn in the open field, because there is no grass, without 
 making a single effort to preserve its existence. She for- 
 sakes it when it is newly calved, when her natural affection 
 is commonly strongest, and when it needs most her foster- 
 ing care ; she forsakes it in the desert, where it must soon 
 perish of hunger: deaf to its cries, and indifferent to its 
 sufferings, she leaves it in search of somewhat to prolong 
 her own wretched existence. At such a failure of the 
 Kindest affections in the heart of a loving hind, we shall 
 not be surprised, when the dreadful effects of severe famine 
 on the human mind are considered. The prediction of 
 Moses was completely fulfilled : " Thou shalt eat the fruit 
 of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons, and of thy daugh- 
 ters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, 
 and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall dis- 
 tress thee." — "The tender and delicate woman among you, 
 which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon 
 the ground, for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall 
 be evil towards the husband of her bosom, and towards her 
 son, and towards her daughter, and towards the young one 
 that Cometh out from between her feet, and towards her 
 children which she shall bear ; for she shall eat them for 
 want of all things, secretly, in the siege and straitness." — 
 Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 16. And the people to whom they prophesy 
 shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem, be- 
 cause of the famine and the sword ; and they 
 shall have none to bury them, their wives, nor 
 their sons, nor their daughters ; for I will pour 
 their wickedness upon them. 
 
 See on Job 39. 5. 
 
 Ver. 22. Are there any among the vanities of the 
 
 Gentiles that can cause rain ? or can the heav- 
 ens give showers 1 Art not thou he, O Lord 
 our God : therefore we will wait upon thee ; 
 for thou hast made all these things. 
 
 There are persons among the South African nations who 
 pretend to have power to bring rain in time of drought, 
 and who are called rain-makers. A nation seldom em- 
 ploys their own rain-maker, but generally thinks those at 
 a distance have more power to produce it than those at 
 home. A rain-maker, from high up the cpuntry, once 
 travelled with my party for a few weeks. I asked him se- 
 riously, if he really believed that he had power to bring 
 rain when he pleased 1 His reply was, that " he could not 
 say he had, but he used means to bring it ;" such as rolling 
 great stones down the sides of mountains, to draw down 
 the clouds. A rain-maker at Latlakoo who was unsuccess- 
 ful, first said it was because he had not got sufficient pres- 
 ents of cattle. He then desired them first to bring him a 
 live baboon ; hundreds tried but could not catch one. He 
 next demanded a live owl, but they could not find One. N» 
 rain coming they called him rogue, impostor, &c. and or- 
 dered him away.— Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 3. And I will appoint over them four kinds, 
 saith the Lord ; the sword to slay, and the dogs 
 to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the 
 beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy. 
 
 An oriental enemy, as in former ages, cuts down the 
 trees of the country which he invades, destroys the villages, 
 and burns all the corn and provender which he cannot carry 
 off: the surrounding plain, deprived of its verdure, is cov- 
 ered with putrid carcasses and burning ashes; the hot -wind 
 wafting its fetid odours, and dispersing the ashes among 
 the tents, renders his encampment extremely disagreeable. 
 During the night the hyenas, jackals, and wild beasts of 
 various kinds, allured by the scent, prowl over the field 
 with a horrid noise ; and as soon as the morning dawns, a 
 multitude of vultures, kites, and birds of prey, are seen 
 asserting their claim to a share of the dead. Such was the 
 scene which Forbes contemplated on the plains of Hin- 
 dostan ; " and it was to me," says that writer, " a scene 
 replete with horrid novelty, realizing the prophet's denun- 
 ciation : ' I will appoint over them four kinds^ saith tHe 
 Lord; the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the 
 fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour 
 and destroy.' " — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 7. And I will fan them with a fan in the 
 gates of the land ; I will bereave them of chil- 
 dren, I will destroy my people, since they re- 
 turn not from their ways, 8. Their widows 
 are increased to me above the sand of the seas : 
 I have brought upon them, against the mother 
 of the young men, a spoiler at noonday; I 
 have caused him to fall upon it suddenly, and 
 terrors upon the city. 
 
 When the cholera or any other pestilence rages, it is 
 said, " Alas ! this sickness has fanned the people away." 
 " Truly they have been suddenly fanned from the earth." 
 See on Isa. xxx. 24. — Roberts, • 
 
 Ver. 9. She that hath borne seven languisheth ; 
 she hath given up the ghost ; her sun is gone 
 down while it was yet day; she hath been 
 ashamed and confounded : and the residue of 
 them will I deliver to the sword before their 
 enemies, saith the Lord, 
 
 Of a person who is dead, it is said, " He is set," and of 
 one dying, " He is setting." Should a beautiful young man 
 or woman be reduced by sickness, it is said, " He is like 
 the evening, which is occupying the place of the monk 
 ing !"— Roberts. 
 
496 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chxp. 16. 
 
 Ver. 18. Why is my pain perpetual, and my 
 wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed ? 
 wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and 
 as waters that fail ? 
 
 " Waters that fail." Heb. " Waters that are not to be 
 trusted," L e. such as are delusive, such as disappoint ex- 
 pectation. That which Mr. Harmer proposes simplv as a 
 query, may be stated as a very probable suggestion, viz. 
 that in these words the prophet alludes to the phenomenon 
 of the mirage, so frequently mentioned by eastern travel- 
 lers. " There is," says Chardin, " a vapour or splendour, 
 in the plains of the desert, formed by the repercussion of 
 the rays from the sand, that appears like a vast lake. 
 Travellers afflicted with thirst a^e drawn on by such ap- 
 pearances, but coming near find themselves mistaken ; it 
 seems to draw back as they advance, or quite vanishes." — 
 " To the southeast, at a distance of four or five miles, we 
 noticed on the yellow sands two black masses, but whether 
 they were the bodies of dead camels, the temporary liair- 
 tents of wandering Bedouins, or any other objects, magni- 
 fied by the refraction which is so strongly produced in the 
 horizon of the desert, ^e had no means of ascertaining. 
 With the exception of these masses, all the eastern range 
 of vision presented only one unbroken waste of sand, till its 
 visible horizon ended in the illusive appearance of a lake, 
 thus formed by the heat of a midday sun on a nitrous soil, 
 giving to the parched desert the semblance of water, and 
 reflecting its scanty shrubs upon the view, like a line of 
 extensive forests ; but in no direction was either a natural 
 hill, a mountain, or other interruption to the level line of 
 the plain, to be seen." (Buckingham's Travels in Meso- 
 potamia.) " We have suffered very much from the fatigue 
 of this day's journey, and have still five days' march through 
 this waterless desert. The only object to interest us, and 
 relieve the weariness of mind and body, has been the 
 mirage, so often described. Some travellers state that this 
 phenomenon has deceived them repeatedly. This I am 
 surprised at, since its peculiar appearance, joined to its 
 occurrence in a desert where the traveller is too forcibly 
 impressed with the recollection that no lakes or standing 
 pools exist, would appear to me to prevent the possibility, 
 that he who has once seen it, can be a second time de- 
 ceived. Still, this dofs not diminish the beauty of the phe- 
 nomenon :— to see amid burning sands and barren hills, an 
 apparently beautiful lake, perfectly calm and unruffled by 
 any breeze, reflecting in its bosom the surrounding rocks, 
 is, indeed, an interesting and wonderfuJ spectacle; but it is 
 a tantalizing sight, traversing the desert on foot, always 
 with a scanty supply of water, and often, owing to their 
 great imprudence, wholly destitute of it." (Hoskins' Travels 
 in Ethiopia.) — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 5. For thus saith the Lord, Enter not into 
 the house of mourning, neither go to lament 
 nor bemoan them : for I have taken away my 
 peace from this people, saith the Lord, even 
 loving-kindness and mercies. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 18. 28. 
 
 Ver. 6. Both the great and the small shall die in 
 this land : they shall not be buried, neither shall 
 men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor 
 make themselves bald for them. 
 
 The cutting off the hair in mourning for the dead, is an 
 eastern, as well as a Grecian custom ; and appears to have 
 obtained in the East in the prophetic times, as weH as in 
 later ages. That it was practised among the Arabs, in 
 the seventh century, appears by a passage of D'Herbelot. 
 Khaled ben Valid ben Mogairah, who was one of the 
 bravest of the Arabs in the time of Mohammed, and sur- 
 named by him, after Khaled had embraced the new religion 
 he introduced into the world, the " sword of God," died un- 
 der the califate of Omar, in the city of Emessa, in Syria ; 
 and he adds, that there was not a female of the house of 
 Mogairah, who was his grandfather, either matron or 
 
 maiden, who caused not her hair to be cut off' at his burial. 
 How the hair that was cut oflT was disposed of, does not 
 appear in D'Herbelot. Among the ancient Greeks, it was 
 sometimes laid upon the dead body; sometimes cast into 
 the funeral pile; sometimes placed upon the grave. Under 
 this variation of management among the Greeks, it would 
 have been an agreeable additional circumstance to have 
 been told, how the females of the house of Mogairah dis- 
 posed of their hair. We are equally ignorant of the man- 
 ner in which the ancient Jews disposed of theirs, when 
 they cut it off" in bewailing the dead. But that they cut it 
 off", upon such occasions, is evident from a passage of the 
 prophet Jeremiah, ch. xvi. 6. " Both the great and the 
 small shall die in this land : they shall not be buried, nei- 
 ther shall men lamen for them", nor cut themselves, nor 
 make themselves bald for them." The words do not seem 
 determinately to mean, that those of the male sex only 
 were wont to cut themselves, or make themselves bald for 
 the dead ; but that there should be no cutting of the flesh 
 made at all for them, no baldness, leaving it uncertain 
 which sex had been wont to make use of these rites of 
 mourning, who should then omit them. So the interiineary 
 translation of Montanus understands the words. 
 
 __Both practices seem to have been forbidden by the law 
 o" Moses; the soft and impressible temper of the female 
 se might, it may be imagined, engage them sooner to de- 
 vii e from the precept, than the firmer disposition of the 
 other. So here we see they were Xhe females of the family 
 of Mogairah that cut oflf their hair at the burial of Khaled ; 
 not a word of the men. And accordingly we find among 
 the modern Mohammedans, the outward expressions at 
 least of mourning are much stronger among the women 
 than the men : the nearest male relations, Dr. Russel tells 
 us, describing their way of carrying a corpse to be buried, 
 immediately follow it, " and the women close the proces 
 sion, with dreadful shrieks, while the men all the way are 
 singing prayers out of the Koran. The women go to the 
 tomb every Monday or Thursday, and carry some flowers 
 or green leaves to dress it with. They make a show of 
 grief, often expostulating heavily with the dead person, 
 ' Why he should leave them, when they had done every 
 thing in their power to make life agreeable to him.' This 
 however, by the men, is looked upon as a kind of impiety ; 
 and, if overheard, they are chid severely for it: and, I must .' 
 say, the men generally set them a good example in this re-, 
 spect, by a patient acquiescence in the loss of their nearest 
 relation's, and indeed show a firm and steady fortitude imder 
 every kind of misfortune." — HjlRMer. 
 
 Ver. 7. Neither shall men tear themselves for 
 them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead ; 
 neither shall men giv.e them the cup of conso- 
 lation to drink for their father or for their 
 mother. 8. Thou shalt not also go into the 
 house of feasting, to sit with them to eat and to 
 drink. 
 
 The making a kind of funeral feast was also a method 
 of honouring the dead, used anciently in these countries, 
 and is continued down to these times. The references of 
 commentators here have been, in common, to the Greek 
 and Roman usages ; but as it must be more pleasing to learn 
 easterri customs of this kind, I will set down what Sir J. 
 Chardin has given us an account of in one of his manu- 
 scripts; and the rather, as some particulars are new to me. 
 
 " The oriental Christians still make banquets cf this 
 kind, (speaking of the ancient Jewish feasts of mourning, 
 mentioned Jer. xvi. 6, 7, and elsewhere,) by a custom de- 
 rived from the Jews ; and I have been many times present 
 at them, among the Armenians in Persia. The 7th verse 
 speaks of those provisions which are wont to be sent to the 
 house of the deceased, and of those healths that are drunk 
 to the survivers of the family, wishing that the dead may 
 have been the victim for the sins of the family. The same, 
 with respect to eating, is practised among the Moors. 
 Where we find the word comforting made use of, we are to 
 understand it as signifying "the performing these offices," 
 lu like manner he explains the bread of men, mentioned 
 Ezek. xxiv. 17, as signifying, " the bread of others ; the 
 bread sent to mourners; the bread that the neighbours, re- 
 lations, and friends sent." — Hakmer. 
 
Chap 17—20. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 491 
 
 D'Oyley and Mant say, " Friends were wont to come, 
 after the funeral was over, to comfort those who had buried 
 the dead, and send in provisions to make a feast, it being 
 supposed that they themselves were so sorrowful as not to 
 be able to think of their necessary food." After the corpse 
 has been consumed on the funeral pile or buried, the rela- 
 tions of the deceased prepare and send a iine kind of gruel 
 (made of the Palmirah killunga) to the funeral house. At 
 the anniversary of a funeral, the relations of the deceased 
 meet to eat together, and give food to the poor. Hence 
 great numbers on these occasions get plenty of provisions. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 6. For he shall be like the heath in the 
 desert, and shall not see when good cometh ; 
 but shall inhabit the parched places in the wil- 
 derness, in a salt land, and not inhabited. 
 
 Nothing can be more desolate and solitary than the salt 
 plains of the East. Not a shrub, not a tree, to cheer the 
 eye ; even birds and beasts seehi affrighted at the scene. 
 What with the silence of these solitudes, the absence of 
 shade, of water, of vegetable and animal life, the traveller 
 moves on with renewed speed to escape from such dreary 
 wastes. Idolatrous Judah had trusted in idols : her sin was 
 written " with a pen of iron ;" it could not be erased ; and 
 for thus trusting in them, and in man, she was to dwell in 
 " the parched places," the " salt land," which was "not in- 
 habited." — Roberts. • 
 
 Ver. 8. For he shall be as a tree planted by the 
 waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the 
 river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but 
 her leaf shall be green ; and shall not be care- 
 ful in the year of drought, neither shall cease 
 from yielding fruit. 
 
 See on Ps. 1. 3. 
 
 To appreciate the beauty of this allusion, it is necessary 
 to think of a parched desert, where there is scarcely a green 
 leaf to relieve the eye. In the midst of that waste is per- 
 haps a tank, a well, or a stream, and near to the water's 
 edge will be seen plants, and shrubs, and trees covered with 
 the most beautiful foliage. So shall be the man who puts 
 his trust in Jehovah.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. tIs the partridge sitteth on eggs, and 
 hatcheih them not; so he that getteth riches, 
 and not by right, shall leave them in the midst 
 of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. 
 
 See on 1 Sam. 26. 20. 
 
 Ver. 13. O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that for- 
 sake thee shall be ashamed, and they that de- 
 part from me shall be written in the earth, be- 
 cause they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain 
 of living waters. 
 
 Dr. Pococke represents the Coptis, who are used by the 
 great men of Egypt for keeping their accounts, &c. as 
 makmg use of a sort of pasteboard for that purpose, from 
 which the writing is wiped off from time to time with a wet 
 sponge, the pieces of pasteboard being used as slate. Peter 
 Delia Valle observed a more inartificial way still of writing 
 short-lived memorandums in India, where he beheld chil- 
 dren writing their lessons with their fingers on the ground 
 the pavement being for that purpose strewed all over with 
 very fine sand. When the pavement was full, they put the 
 writings out: and, if need were, strewed new sand, from a 
 little heap they had before them wherewith to write farther. 
 One would be tempted to think the prophet Jeremiah had 
 this way of writing in view, when he says of them that de- 
 part from God, " they shall be written in the earth," ch. xvii. 
 13. Certainly it means in general, " soon be blotted out and 
 lorgotten," as is apparent from Psalm Ixix. 28, Ezek. xiii. 9. 
 iJr. Bell's plan of teaching a number of pupils to read at 
 the same time, was taken from what he saw practised in 
 63 
 
 the East ; and this is the plan which Mi \ ancaster has 
 since greatly improved and extended. The plan of writing 
 on sarod is still in use in the East. — Clarke in Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 3. Then I went down to the potter's house 
 and behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 
 
 The original word means stoTies rather than wheels. Dr. 
 Blayney, in a note on this passage, says, " the appellation 
 will appear very proper, if we consider this machine as 
 consisting of a pair of circular stones, placed one upon an- 
 other like millstones, of which the lower was immoveable, 
 but the upper one turned upon the foot of a spindle, or axis, 
 and had motion communicated to it by the feet of the potter 
 sitting at his work, as may be learned from Ecclus. xxxviii. 
 29. Upon the top of this upper stone, which was flat, the 
 clay was placed, which the potter, having given the stone 
 the due velocity, formed into shape with his hands," — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 6. O house of Israel, cannot I do with you 
 as this potter ? saith the Lord. Behold, as the 
 clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my 
 hand, O house of Israel. 
 
 It is said of an obedient son, " He is like wax ; you may 
 shape him any way you please ; you may send him hither 
 and thither, this way or that way, all will be right."— Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 14. Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon 
 which cometh from the rock of the field? or 
 shall the cold flowing waters that come from 
 another place be forsaken ? 
 
 Tacitus, Hist. lib. v. cap. 6. Praecipuum montium Liba- 
 num erigit, mirum dictu, tantos inter ardores opacum 
 fidumque nivibus. " Of the mountains of Judea, Libanus 
 is the chief; and, what is surprising, notwithstanding the 
 extreme heat of the climate, is shaded with trees, and per- 
 petually covered with snow." Whether this of Tacitus be 
 strictly true may be doubted. The author of the Universal 
 History informs us, that '* Rauwolf, who visited the cedars 
 of Libanus, about mid-summer, complains of the rigour of 
 the cold and snows here, Radzeville, who was here in 
 June, about five years after him, talks of the snow that never 
 melts away from the mountains. Other travellers speak to 
 the same purpose ; among whom our Maundrell represents 
 the cedars as growing among the snow ; but he was there 
 in the month of May. From all this he might have formed 
 a judgment that the cedars stand always in the midst of the 
 snow : but we are assured of the contrary by another trav- 
 eller, (La Roque,) according to whom the snows here begin 
 to melt in April, and are no more to be seen after July ; 
 nor is, says he, any at all left but in such clifts of the moun- 
 tains as the sun cannot come at ; that the snow begins not 
 to fall again till December ; and that he himself, when he 
 was there, saw no snow at all; and it is probable bespeaks 
 nothing but the truth." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 17. I will scatter them as with an east wind 
 before the enemy ; I will show them the back, 
 and not the face, in the day of their calamity. 
 
 Nothing exasperates a person more, when he goes to Gee 
 another, than for the individual thus visited to arise and 
 turn his back to the visiter. To see a man thus erect with 
 his back towards another has a striking effect on the mind. 
 In the face of the man thus insulted is chagrin and confu- 
 sion ; in the other, contempt and triumph. After a pause, 
 the figure who shows his back moves forward, leaving tne 
 other to indulge in spleen and imprecations. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 15. Cursed be the man who brought tidings 
 to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto 
 thee ; making him very glad. 
 
 I have already noticed the great anxiety of the people of 
 
498 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 22—26, 
 
 the East to have male children. At the time of parturition 
 the husband awaits in an adjoining room or the garden ; 
 and so soon as the affair shall be over, should the little 
 stranger be a son, the midwife rushes outside, and beats 
 the thatch on the roof three times, and exclaims aloud, " A 
 male child! a male child ! a male child is born !" Should 
 the infant be a female, not a word is said, and the father 
 knows what is the state of the case. When a person con- 
 ducts himself in an unmanly way, the people ask, " Did 
 they beat the roof for you 1 Was it not said to your father, 
 A male child is born V — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Ver. 13. Wo unto him that buildeth his house by- 
 unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; 
 that useth his neighbour's service without wa- 
 ges, and giveth him not for his work. 
 
 Upper chambers. The principal rooms anciently in Ju- 
 dea were those above, as they are to this day at Aleppo ; 
 the ground-floor being chiefly made use of for their horses 
 and servants. Busbequius, speaking of the house he had 
 hired at Constantinople, says, " Pars superior, sola habita- 
 tur ; pars inferior equorum stabulationi destinata est. The 
 upper part is alone inhabited ; the lower is allotted for the 
 horses' stabling." " At Prevesa the houses are all of wood, 
 for the most part with only aground-floor, and where there 
 is one story, the communication to it is by a ladder or 
 wooden steps on the outside, sheltered, however, by the 
 overhanging eaves of the roof. In this case the horses and 
 cattle occupy ihe lower chamber, or it is converted into a 
 warehouse, and the family live on the floor above, in which 
 there are seldom more than two rooms." (Hobhouse.) " In 
 Greece, the wealthiest among them, the papas, have houses 
 with two rooms raised on a second floor, the lower part 
 being divided into a stable, cowhouse, and cellar (Dod- 
 
 Well.)— BCJRDER. 
 
 Ver. 24. As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah 
 the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the 
 signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck 
 thee thence. 
 
 The SIGNET is always worn on the little finger of the right 
 hand. Things which are dear are spoken of as that orna- 
 ment. " O my child, you are as my signet." " We are 
 like the ring-seal, and the impression;" meaning, the child 
 resembles the father, " Never will I see him more ; were 
 he my signet, I would throw him away." "I do that! 
 rather would I throw away my ring-seal."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Ver. 25. I have heard what the prophets said, 
 that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have 
 dreamed, I have dreamed. 
 
 Exactly in the same way do the heathen priests and de- 
 votees impose on the people at this day. Have they some 
 profitable speculation which requires the sanction of the 
 gods, they affect to have had a visit from them, and they 
 generally manage to relate some secret transaction (as a 
 proof) which the individual concerned supposed was only 
 known to himself.— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 6. For I will set mine eyes upon them for 
 good, and I will bring them again to this land : 
 and I will build them, and not pull them down ; 
 and I will plant them, and not pluck them up. 
 
 The eye is spoken of as the source, and also as the cause, 
 of a blessing. Thus, has a person been sick, and is he 
 asked, how did you recover 1 he replies, " The gods fixed 
 iheir eyes upon me." Does a man promise a favour, he 
 says, " I will place my eyes upon you." Does he refuse, 
 h« says, '* I will not put my eyes on you." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Ver. 10. Moreover, I will take from them the 
 voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the 
 
 voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the 
 bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light 
 of the candle. 
 
 " In the East they grind their corn at break of day. 
 When one goes out in a morning, he hears everywhere 
 the noise of the mill, and this noise often awakens people." 
 (Chardin.) He supposes also that songs are made use ot 
 when they are grinding. It is very possible then, that when 
 the sacred writers speak of the no'ise of the millstones, they 
 may mean the noise of the songs of those who worked 
 them. This earliness of grinding makes the going ol 
 Rechab and Baanah to fetch wheat the day before from the 
 palace, to be distributed to the soldiers under them, verv 
 natural. (2 Sam. iv. 2—7.) They are female slaves who 
 are generally employed at these handmills. It is extremely 
 laborious, and esteemed the lowest employment in the 
 house. (Harmer.) Mr. Park observed this custom in the 
 interior parts of Africa, when he was invited into a hut by 
 some female natives, in order to shelter him from the in- 
 clemency of a very rainy night. While thus employed, 
 one of the females sung a song, the rest joining in a sort of 
 chorus. 
 
 The houses of Egypt are never without lights. Maillet 
 assures us, (Lett. ix. p. 10,) they burn lamps not only all 
 the night long, but in all the inhabited apartments of a 
 house ; and that the custom is so well established, that the 
 poorest people would rather retrench part of their food than 
 neglect it. This remark will elucidate several passages of 
 scripture. In the words above referred to, Jeremiah makes 
 the taking away of the light of the candle and total destruc- 
 tion the same thing. Job describes the destruction of a 
 family among the Arabs, and the rendering one of their 
 habitations desolate, after the same manner: "How oft is 
 the candle of the wicked put out, and how oft cometh their 
 destruction upon them !" Job xviii. 5. xxi. 17. On the other 
 hand, when God promises to give David a lamp always in 
 Jerusalem, (1 Kings xi. 36,) considered in this point of 
 view, it is an assurance that his house should never become 
 desolate. — Burder. 
 
 The people of the East who can afford it, have always a 
 lamp burning in their room the whole of the night. It is 
 one of their greatest comforts ; because, shomj^ they not be 
 able to sleep, they can then look about them, and amuse 
 themselves. " Evil spirits are kept away, as they do not 
 like the light !" Lechemy, the beautiful goddess, also takes 
 pleasure in seeing the rooms lighted up. But that which is 
 of the MOST importance is, the light keeps off the serpents 
 and other poisonous reptiles. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel 
 unto me, Take the wine-cup of this fury at my 
 hand, and cause all the nations to whom I send 
 thee, to drink it. 16. And they shall drink, 
 and be moved, and be mad, because of the 
 sword that I will send among them. 
 
 See on Mark 15. 2, 3. 
 
 Ver. 16. And they shall drink, and be moved, 
 and be mad, because of the sword that I will 
 send among them. 
 
 " This is an allusion to those intoxicating draughts 
 which used to be given- to malefactors just before their 
 execution, to take away their senses. Immediately before 
 the execution began, says the Talmud, they gave the con- 
 demned a quantity of frankincense in a cup of wine, to 
 stupify him, and render him insensible of his pain. The 
 compassionate ladies of Jerusalem generally provided this 
 draught at their own cost. The foundation of this custom 
 was the command of Solomon, Prov. xxxi. 6. "Give strong 
 drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that 
 be of heavy hearts." — Lewis. 
 
 Ver.*38. He hath forsaken his covert, as the lion : 
 for their land is desolate, becatise of the fierce- 
 ness of the oppressor, and because of his fierce 
 anger. 
 
 See on Isa. 38. 14. 
 
Chap. 26—32. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 499 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Ver. 18. Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the 
 days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to 
 all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the 
 Lord of hosts, Zion shall be ploughed like a 
 field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and 
 the mountain of the house as the high places 
 of the forest. 
 
 See on Mic. 3. 12. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 Ver. 15. Thus saith the Lord, A voice was heard 
 in Ramah, a lamentation, and bitter weeping ; 
 Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be 
 comforted for her children, because they were 
 not. 
 
 From Le Bruyn's Voyage in Syria we learn, that " the 
 women go in companies, on certain days, out of the towns 
 to the tombs of their relations, in order to weep there; and 
 when they nre arrived, they display very deep expressions 
 of grief. While I was at Ramah, I saw a very great com- 
 pany of these weeping women, who went out of the town. 
 I followed them, and after having observed the place they 
 visited adjacent to their sepulchres, in order to make their 
 usual lamentations, I seated myself on an elevated spot. 
 They first went and placed themselves on their sepulchres, 
 and wept there ; where, after having remained about half 
 an hour, some of them rose up, and formed a ring, holding 
 each other by the hand, as is done in some country-dances. 
 Uuickly two of them quitted the others, and placed them- 
 selves in the centre of the ring ; where they made so much 
 noise in screaming, and in clapping their hands, as, to- 
 gether with their various contortions, might have subjected 
 them to the suspicion of madness. After that they returned, 
 and seated themselves to weep again, till they gradually 
 withdrew to their homes. The dresses they wore were 
 such as they generally used, white, or any other colour; 
 but when they rose up to form a circle together, they put on 
 a black veil over the upper parts of their persons." — Border. 
 
 Ver. 18. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoan- 
 ing himself thus : Thou hast chastised me, and 
 I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to 
 the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; 
 for thou art the Lord my God. 
 
 The simile is a most apt one. I had frequent opportuni- 
 ties of witnessing the conduct of oxen when for the first 
 time put into the yoke to assist in dragging the wagons. 
 On observing an ox that had been in the yoke for seven or 
 eight hundred miles beginning to get weak, or his hoofs to 
 be worn down to the quick, by treading on the sharp gravel, 
 a fresh ox was put into the yoke in his place. When the 
 selection fell on an ox I had received as a present from 
 some African king, of course one completely unaccustom- 
 ed to the yoke, such generally made a strenuous struggle 
 for liberty, — repeatedly breaking the yoke, and attempting 
 to make its escape. At other times such bullocks lay down 
 upon their sides or backs, and remained so in defiance of 
 the Hottentots, though two or three of them would be lash- 
 ing them with their ponderous whips. Sometimes, from 
 pity to the animal, I would interfere, and beg them to be less 
 cruel. " Cruel !" they would say, " it is mercy ^ for if we do 
 not conquer him now, he will require to be so beaten all 
 his life." Some oxen would seem convinced of the folly 
 of opposing the will of ^the Hottentots by the end of the first 
 day ; some about the middle of the second ; while some 
 would continue the struggle to the third ; after which they 
 would go on as willingly and quietly as any of their neigh- 
 bour oxen. They seemed convinced that their resisting 
 was fruitless as kicking against the pricks, or sharp pointed 
 iron, which they could not injure, but that every kick they 
 gave only injured themselves.— Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 19. Surely after that I was turned, I repent- 
 ed; and after that I was instructed, I smote 
 
 upon wz?/ thigh : I was ashamed, yea, even con- 
 founded, because I did bear the reproach of my 
 youth. 
 
 It appears to have been the custom, when a person was 
 in sorrow, to smite his thigh. Is it not interesting to know 
 that the people of the East, when in similar circumstances, 
 do the same thing at this day ] See the bereaved father; 
 he smites his right thigh, and cries aloud, ''lyol lyol'^ 
 alas ! alas! — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 28. And it shall come to pass, that like as I 
 have watched over them, to pluck up, and to 
 break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, 
 and to afflict ; so will I watch over them, to 
 build, and to plant, saith the Lord. 
 
 See on ch. 5. 6. 
 
 Ver. 29. In those days they shall say no more. 
 The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the 
 children's teeth are set on edge, 30. But every 
 one shall die for his own iniquity: every man 
 that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set 
 on edge. 
 See on Gen. 49. 11. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Ver. 11. So I took the evidence of the purchase, 
 both that which was sealed according to the 
 law and custom, and that which was open. 
 
 The double evidences of Jeremiah's purchase, which 
 are mentioned ch. xxxii. 11, seems a strange management 
 in their civil concerns ; yet something of the like kind ob- 
 tains still among them. Both the writings were in the 
 hands of Jeremiah, and at his disposal, verse 14; for what 
 purpose then were duplicates made'? To those that are 
 unacquainted with the eastern usages, it must appear a 
 question of some difficulty. 
 
 " The open or unsealed writing," says an eminent com- 
 mentator, " was either a copy of the sealed deed, or else 
 a certificate of the witnesses, in whose presence the deed of 
 purchase was signed and sealed."— (Lowth.) But it still 
 recurs, of what use was a copy that was to be buried in 
 the same earthen vessel, and run exactly the same risks 
 with the original 7 If by a certificate is meant a deed of 
 the witnesses, by which they attested the contract of Jere- 
 miah and Hananeel, and the original deed of purchase had 
 no witnesses at all, then it is natural to ask, whv were they 
 made separate writings ? and much more, why was one 
 sealed, and not the other 7 
 
 Sir J. Chardin's account of modern managements, which 
 he thinks illustrates this ancient story, is, " that after a con- 
 tract is made, it is kept by the party himself, not the notary ; 
 and they cause a copy to be made, signed by the notary 
 alone, which is shown upon proper occasions, and never 
 exhibit the other." According to this account, the two 
 books were the same, the one sealed up with solemnity, and 
 not to be used on common occasions; that which was open, 
 the same writing, to be perused at pleasure, and made use 
 of upon all occasions. The sealed one answered to a record 
 with us ; the other a writing for common use. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 13. Arid I charged Baruch before them, 
 saying, 14. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the 
 God of Israel, Take these evidences, this evi- 
 dence of the purchase, both which is sealed, 
 and this evidence which is open, and put them 
 in an earthen vessel, that they may continue 
 many days. 
 
 Whatever materials the ancient Jews wrote upon, they 
 were liable to be easily destroyed by the dampness when hid- 
 den in the earth. It was therefore thought requisite to en- 
 close them in something that might keep them from the damp, 
 lest they should decay and be rendered useless. In those 
 days of roughness, when war knew not the softenings of 
 
500 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 33 — 36. 
 
 later times, men were wont to bury in the earth every part 
 of their property that could be concealed after that manner, 
 not only silver and gold, but wheat, barley, oil, and honey ; 
 vestments and writings too. For that I apprehend was the 
 occasion of Jeremiah's ordering, that the writings he de- 
 livered to Baruch, mentioned in his thirty-second chapter, 
 should be put into an earthen vessel. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 Ver. 13. In the cities of the mountains, in the 
 cities of the vale, and in the cities of the south, 
 and in the land of Benjamin, and in the places 
 about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, shall 
 the flocks pass again under the hands of him 
 that telleth them, saith the Lord. 
 
 See on Ps. 23. 4. 
 
 It was the custom of more accurate or severe masters, to 
 number their jlocks in the morning when they went out to 
 pasture, and again in the evening when they returned to 
 the fold. But the most indulgent masters seem to have 
 always numbered their flocks in the evening ; a fact clearly 
 attested by Virgil in the close of his sixth Eclogue : 
 " Cogere donee oves stabulis numerumque referre 
 Jussit, et invito processit vesper Olympo." 
 
 " Till vesper warned the shepherds to pen their sheep 
 in the folds and recount their number; and advanced on 
 the sky, full loth to lose the song." Agreeably to this cus- 
 tom, the prophet Jeremiah is directed hy the Spirit of God 
 to promise, " The flocks shall pass again under the hands 
 of him that telleth them, saith the Lord." The reference 
 of these words to the rod of the shepherd numbering his 
 flock, when they return from the pasture, appears from the 
 verse immediately preceding : " Thus saith the Lord of 
 hosts, again in this place, which is desolate, without man 
 and without beast, and in all the cities thereof, shall be an 
 habitation of shepherds, causing their flocks to lie down." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 Ver. 3. And thou shalt not escape out of his hand, 
 but shalt surely be taken, and delivered into 
 his hand ; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes 
 of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak with 
 thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Baby- 
 lon. 
 
 To say, your eyes shall see the eyes of another, implies 
 pleasure or pain. Thu.s, to comfort one who greatly de- 
 sires to see another, but who fears he shall not have that 
 pleasure, it is said, " Fear not, your eyes shall see his 
 eyes." But, should a person have committed some crime, 
 it is said to him, in order to make him afraid, " Yes ; your 
 eyes shall see his eyes," i. e. of the person who has been 
 injured, and who has power to inflict punishment. — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 Ver. 22, Now the king sat in the winter-house in 
 the ninth month : and there was a fire on the 
 hearth burning before him. 
 
 In Palestine, and the surrounding regions, the coldness 
 of the night in all the seasons of the year, is ofl;en very in- 
 con venient. The king of Judah is described by the prophet, 
 as sitting in his winter-house in the ninth month, corre- 
 sponding to the latter end of November and part of Decem- 
 ber, with a fire burning on the hearth before him. This 
 answers to the state of the weather at Aleppo, where, as 
 Russel informs us, the most delicate people make no fires 
 till the end of November. The Europeans, resident in 
 Syria, he observes in a note, continue them till March ; the 
 people of the country, seldom longer than February ; but 
 fires are occasionally made in the wet seasons, not only in 
 March, but in April also, and would be acceptable, at the 
 gardens, sometimes even in May. Dr. Pocoke, in his jour- 
 ney to Jerusalem, being conducted by an Arab to his tent, 
 Ibund his wife and family warming themselves by the fire 
 on the seventeenth of March ; and on the eighth of May, 
 he was treated with a fire to warm him, by the governor of 
 
 Galilee, The nights in that. season are often very cold; 
 and of this the inhabitants are rendered more sensible by 
 the heats of the day. In May and June, and even in July, 
 travellers very often put on fires in the evening. This 
 statement clearly discovers the reason, that the people who 
 went to Gethsemane to apprehend our Lord, kindled a fire 
 of coals, to warm themselves at the time of the passover, 
 which happened in the spring. But it is not only in ele- 
 vated situations, as that on which the city of Jerusalem 
 stands, that the cold of the night is so piercing ; the trav- 
 eller has to encounter its severity on the low-lying plains, 
 by the seaside, and in the sandy deserts, where, during the 
 day, beneath the scorching sunbeam, he could scarcely 
 breathe. The severe cold of the morning compelled Mr. 
 Doubdan to remain some hours at Joppa, in a poor Greek 
 hovel, before he could set out for Rama. At ancient Tyre 
 his condition was still more distressing. On the sixteentt 
 of May, he found the heat near that once-renowned mai 
 of nations so great, that though he and his party took their 
 repast on the grass, under a large tree, by the side of a 
 small river, yet he complains, " they were burnt up alive." 
 After attempting in vain to prosecute their voyage, night 
 overtook them at the ruins of Tyre. Near those ruins, 
 they were obliged to pass a considerable part of the night, 
 not without suffering greatly from the cold, which was as 
 violent and sharp as the heat of the day had been intense. 
 Our traveller acknowledges, that he shook, as in the depth 
 of winter, more than two or three full hours. — Paxton.* 
 
 The " hearth" here mentioned was in all probability the 
 tandoor of the East, of which so full an account is given in 
 Smith and Dwight's Travels in Armenia.—" What attract- 
 ed our attention most this stormy day, was the apparatus 
 for warming us. It was the species of oven called ta7inoor, 
 common throughout Armenia, and also in Syria, but con- 
 verted here for purposes of warmth into what is called a 
 tandoor. A cylindrical hole is sunk about three feet in the 
 ground in some part of the room, with a flue entering it at 
 the bottom to convey a current of air to the fire which heats 
 it. For the emission of smoke no other provision is made 
 than the open sky-light in the terrace. When used for 
 baking bread, the "dough, being flattened to the thickness of 
 common pasteboard, perhaps a foot and a half long by a foot 
 broad, is stuck to its smooth sides by means of a cushion 
 upon which it is first .spread. It indicates, by cleaving off, 
 when it is done, and being then packed down in the family 
 chest, it lasts at least a month in the winter and ten days in 
 the summer. Such is the only bread known in the villages 
 of Armenia; and even the cities of Erivan and Tebriz offer 
 no other variety than a species perhaps only twice as thick, 
 and so long that it might almost be sold by the yard. To 
 bake it, the bottom of a large oven is covered with pebbles, 
 (except one corner where a fire is kept constantly burning,) 
 and upon them, when heated, the sheets of dough are spread. 
 The convenience of such thin bread, where knives and 
 forks are not used, and spoons are rare, is that a piece of it 
 doubled enables you to take hold of a mouthful of meat 
 more delicately than with your bare fingers; or, when prop- 
 erly folded, helps you to convey a spoonful safely to your 
 mouth to be eaten with the spoon itself When needed for 
 purposes of warmth, the tannoor is easily transformed into 
 a tandoor, A round stone is laid upon the mouth of the 
 oven, when well heated, to stop the draught; a square 
 frame about a foot in height is then placed above it ; and a 
 thick coverlet, spread over the whole, lies upon the ground 
 around it, to confine the warmth. The family squat upon 
 the floor, and warm themselves by extending their legs and 
 hands into the heated air beneath it, while the frame holds, 
 as occasion requires, their lamp or their food. Its etonomy 
 is evidently great. So full of crevices are the houses, that 
 an open fireplace must consume a great quantity of fuel, 
 and then almost fail of warming even the air in its imme- 
 diate vicinity. The tandoor, heated once, or at the most 
 twice, in twenty-four hours by a small quantity of fuel, 
 keeps one spot continually warm for the relief of all numb 
 fingers and frozen toes." — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 30. Therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoi- 
 akim king of Judah : He shall have none to sit: 
 upon the throne of David: and his dead body 
 shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in 
 the night to the frbst. 
 
Chap. 37. 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 501 
 
 It may not be improper here to remark upon the wisdom 
 and goodness of God displayed in the temperature of an 
 oriental sky. The excessive heats of the day, which are 
 sometimes incommodious, even in the depth of winter, are 
 compensated and rendered consistent with animal and 
 vegetable life, by a corresponding degree of coolness in the 
 night. The patriarch Jacob takes notice of this fact, in his 
 expostulation with Laban: " By day the heat consumed me, 
 and the frost by night." Mr. "Bruce, in like manner, fre- 
 quently remarks in his journey through the deserts of Se- 
 ^:aar, where the heat of the day was almost insupportable, 
 that the coldness of the night was very great. When Rau- 
 wolf travelled on the Euphrates, he was wont to wrap him- 
 self up in a frieze coat in the nighttime, to defend him- 
 self from the frost and dew, which, he observes, are very 
 frequent and violent there. Thevenot traversed the very 
 fields where Jacob tended the flocks of Laban ; and he 
 found the heats of the day so intense, that although he wore 
 upon his head a large black handkerchief after the manner 
 of the Orientals when they travel, yet, his forehead was 
 frequently so scorched, as to swell exceedingly, and ac- 
 tually to suffer excoriation ; his hands being more exposed 
 to the burning sun, were continually parched; and he 
 learned from experience, to sympathize with the toil-worn 
 shepherd of the East. In Europe, the days and nights re- 
 semble each other, with respect to the qualities of heat and 
 cold ; but if credit be due to the representations of Chardin, 
 it is quite otherwise in oriental climates. In the Lower 
 Asia, particularly, the day is always hot ; and as soon as the 
 .sun is fifteen degrees above the horizon, no cold is felt in 
 the depth of winter itself: on the contrary, the nights are 
 as cold as at Paris in the month of March. It is for this 
 reason, that in Turkey and Persia they always used furred 
 habits in the country, such only being sufficient to resist 
 the cold of the night. Chardin travelled in Arabia and 
 Mesopotamia, the scene of Jacob's adventures, both in win- 
 ter and in summer, and attested on his return the truth of 
 what the patriarch asserted, that he was scorched with heat 
 in the day, and stiffened with cold in the night. This dif- 
 ference in the state of the air in twenty-four hours, is in 
 some places extremely great, and according to that respect- 
 able traveller, not conceivable by those who have not seen 
 it ; one would imagine, they had passed in a moment from 
 the violent heats of summer to the depth of winter. Thus 
 it has pleased a beneficent Deity to temper the heat of the 
 day by the coolness of the night, without which, the great- 
 est part of the East would be a parched and steril desert, 
 equally destitute of vegetable and animal life. This ac- 
 count is confirmed by a modern traveller. When Camp- 
 bell was passing through Mesopotamia, he sometimes lay 
 at night out in the open air, rather than enter a town ; on 
 which occasions, he says, " I found the weather as piercing 
 cold, as it was distressfully hot in the daytime." The same 
 difference between the days and nights, has been observed 
 on the Syrian bank of the Euphrates ; the mornings are 
 cold, and the days intensely hot. This difference is dis- 
 tinctly marked in these words of the prophet : " Therefore, 
 thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, king of Judah : he shall 
 have none to sit upon the throne of David ; and his dead body 
 shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to 
 the frost." So just and accurate are the numerous allusions 
 of scripture to the natural state of the oriental regions; and 
 so necessary it is to study with care the natural history of 
 those celebrated and interesting countries, to enable us to 
 ascertain with clearness and precision, the meaning, or to 
 discern the beauty and force of numerous passages of the 
 «acred volume. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVn. 
 
 Ver. 15. Wherefore the princes were wroth with 
 Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison 
 in the house of Jonathan the scribe : for they 
 had made that the prison. 
 
 The treatment of those that are shut up in the eastern 
 prisons differs from our usages, but serves to illustrate sev- 
 eral passages of scripture. Chardin relates several circum- 
 stances concerning their prisons, which are curious, and 
 should not be omitted. In the first place, he tells us that 
 the eastern prisons are not public buildings erected for that 
 purpose ; but a part of the house in which their criminal 
 
 judges dwell. As the governor and provost of a town, or 
 the captain of the watch, imprisoned such as are accused in 
 their own houses, they set apart a canton of it for that pur- 
 pose, when they are put into these offices, and choose for 
 the jailer the most proper person they can find of their 
 domestics. 
 
 Sir John supposes the prison in which Joseph, together with 
 the chief butler and chief baker of Pharaoh, was put, was 
 in Potiphar's own house. But I would apply this account 
 to the illustration of another passage of scripture : "Where- 
 fore," it is said, Jer. xxxvii. 15, "the princes were wroth 
 with Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison in 
 the house of Jonathan the scribe ; for they had made that 
 the prison." Here we see a dwelling-house was made a 
 prison ; and the house of an eminent person, for it was the 
 house of a scribe, which title marks out a person of qual- 
 ity : it is certain it does so in some places of Jeremiah, 
 particularly ch. xxxvi. 12, " Then he went down into the 
 king's house into the scribe's chamber, and lo, all the 
 princes sat there, even Elishama the scribe, and Delaiah," 
 &c. The making the house of Jonathan the prison, would 
 not now, in the East, be doing him any dishonour, or occa- 
 sion the looking upon him in a mean light ; it would j:ather 
 mark out the placing him in an office of importance. It is 
 probable it was so anciently, and that his house became a 
 prison, when Jonathan was made the royal scribe, and be- 
 came, like the chamber of Elishama, one of the prisons of 
 the people, — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 21. Then Zedekiah the king commanded 
 that they should commit Jeremiah into the 
 court of the prison, and that they should give 
 him daily a piece of bread out of the bakers' 
 street, until all the bread in the city were spent. 
 Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the 
 prison. 
 
 In primitive times, an oven was designed only to serve 
 a single family, and to bake for them no more than the 
 bread of one day ; a custom which still continues in some 
 places of the East; but the increase of population in the 
 cities, higher degrees of refinement, or other causes in the 
 progress of time, suggested the establishment of public 
 bakehouses. They seem to have been introduced into Ju- 
 dea long before the captivity ; for the prophet Jeremiah 
 speaks of " the bakers' street," in the most familiar manner, 
 as a place well known. This, however, might be only a 
 temporary establishment, to supply the wants of the sol- 
 diers assembled from other places, to defend Jerusalem. 
 If they received a daily allowance of bread, as is the prac- 
 tice still in some eastern countries, from the royal bake- 
 houses, the order of the king to give the prophet daily a 
 piece of bread, out of the street where they were erected, 
 m the same manner as the defenders of the city, was per- 
 fectly natural. The custom alluded to still maintains its 
 ground at Algiers, where the unmarried soldiers receive 
 every day from the public bakehouses a certain number of 
 loaves. Pitts indeed asserts, that the Algerines have pub- 
 lic bakehouses for the accommodation of the whole city. 
 The women prepare their dough at home, and the bakers 
 send their boys about the streets, to give notice of their 
 being ready to receive and carry it to the bakehouses. 
 They bake their cakes every day, or every other day, and 
 give the boy who brings the bread home, a piece or little 
 cake for the' baking, which is sold by the baker. Small as 
 the eastern loaves are, it appears from this account, that 
 they give a piece of one only to the baker, as a reward for 
 his trouble. This will perhaps illustrate Ezekiel's account 
 of the false prophets receiving pieces of bread by way 
 of gratuities : " And will ye pollute me among my people, 
 for handfuls of barley, and pieces of bread V These are 
 compensations still used in the East, but of the meanest 
 kind, and for services of the lowest sort. — Paxton. 
 
 The bazars at Ispahan are very extensive, and it is 
 possible to walk under cover in them for two or three miles 
 together. The trades are here collected in separate bodies 
 which make it very convenient to purchasers ; and, indeed 
 we may from analogy suppose the same to have been the 
 case from the most ancient times, when we consider the 
 command of Zedekiah to feed Jeremiah from the bakers' 
 street. — Morier. 
 
602 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 38—43 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Ver. 6. Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him 
 into the dungeon of Malchiah the son of Ham- 
 melech, that was in the court of the prison : 
 and they let down Jeremiah with cords. And 
 in the dungeon there was no water, but mire : 
 so Jeremiah sunk in the mire. 
 
 There were two prisons in Jerusalem; of which one 
 was called the king's prison, which had a lofty tower that 
 overlooked the royal palace, with a spacious court before 
 it, where state prisoners were confined. The other was 
 designed to secure debtors and other inferior offenders : 
 and in both these the prisoners were supported by the pub- 
 lic, on bread and water. Suspected persons were some- 
 times confined under the custody of state ofiicers, in their 
 own houses; or rather a part of the house which was oc- 
 cupied by the great officers of state, was occasionally con- 
 verted into a prison. This seems to be a natural conclusion 
 from the statement of the prophet Jeremiah, in which he 
 gives an account of his imprisonment: "Wherefore, the 
 
 !)rinces were wroth with Jeremiah, and smote him, and put 
 lim in prison, in the house of Jonathan the scribe ; for 
 they had made that the prison." This custom, so different 
 from the manners of our country, has descended to mod- 
 ern times ; for when Chardin visited the East, their pris- 
 ons were not public buildings erected for that purpose, but, 
 as in the days of the prophet, a part of the house in which 
 their criminal judges reside. " As the governor, or provost 
 of a town," says our traveller, " or the captain of the watch, 
 imprison such as are accused, in their own houses, they 
 set apart a canton of them for that purpose, when they are 
 put into these offices, and choose for the jailer, the most 
 proper person they can find of their domestics." The royal 
 prison in Jerusalem, and especially the dungeon, into which 
 the prisoner was let down naked, seems to have been a 
 most dreadful place. The latter cannot be better described, 
 than in the words of Jeremiah himself, who for his faith- 
 fulness to God and his country, in a most degenerate age, 
 had to encounter all its horrors: "Then took they Jere- 
 miah, and cast him into the dungeon that was in the court 
 of the prison ; and they let him down with cords ; and in 
 the dungeon there was no water, but mire ; and his feet 
 sunk in the mire." A discretionary power was given to 
 the keeper, to treat his prisoners as he pleased ; all that was 
 expected of him being only to produce them when required. 
 If he kept them in safe custody, he might treat them well 
 or ill as he chose ; he might put them in irons or not ; shut 
 them up close, or indulge them with greater liberty ; admit 
 their friends and acquaintances to visit them, or suffer no 
 person to see them. The most worthless characters, the 
 most atrocious criminals, if they can bribe the jailer and 
 his servants with large fees, shall be lodged in his own 
 apartment, and have the best accommodation it can affcrd ; 
 but if he be the enemy of those committed to his charge, 
 or have received larger presents from their persecutors, he 
 will treat them in the most barbarous manner. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. Now when Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, 
 one of the eunuchs which was in the king's 
 house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the 
 dungeon : the king then sitting in the gate of 
 Benjamin. 
 
 The possession of black eunuchs is not very common in 
 the Levant; they are hardly anywhere to be found, ex- 
 cept in the palaces of the sovereign or of the branches of 
 the royal family. When the Baron De Tott's wife and 
 mother-in-law were permitted to visit Asma Sultana, daugh- 
 ter of the Emperor Achmet, and sister of the reigning 
 prince, he tells us, that " at the opening of the third gate 
 of her palace, several black eunuchs presented themselves, 
 who, with each a white staff in his hand, preceded the 
 visiters, leading them to a spacious apartment, called the 
 chamber of strangers." He adds, that to have such atten- 
 dants is a piece of great state, as the richest people have 
 not more than one or two of them. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 Ver. 6. Then the king of Babylon slew the sons 
 
 of Zedekiah in Riblah before his eyes : also 
 the king of Babylon slew all the nobles of 
 Judah. 7. Moreover, he put out Zedekiah's 
 eyes, and bound him with chains, to carry him 
 to Babylon. 
 
 By an inhuman custom, which is still retained in the 
 East, the eyes of captives taken in war are not only put out 
 but sometimes literally scooped or dug out of their sockets. 
 This dreadful calamity Samson had to endure, from the 
 unrelenting vengeance of his enemies. In a posterior age, 
 Zedekiah, the last king of Judah and Benjamin, after be- 
 ing compelled to behold the violent death of his sons and 
 nobility, had his eyes put out, and was carried in chains to 
 Babylon. The barbarous custom long survived the decline 
 and fall of the Babylonian empire, for by the testimony of 
 Mr. Maurice, in his History of Hindostan, the captive 
 princes of that country were often treated in this manner, 
 by their more fortunate rivals; a led-hot iron was passed 
 over their eyes, which effectually deprived them of sight, 
 and at the same time of their title and ability to reign. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 Ver. 5. That there came certain from Shechem, 
 from Shiloh, and from Samaria, even fourscore 
 men, having their beards shaven, and their 
 clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with 
 offerings and incense in their hand, to bring 
 them to the house of the Lord. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 18. 28. 
 
 Ver. 8. But ten men were found among them 
 that said unto Ishmael, Slay us not: for we 
 have treasures in the field, of wheat, and of bar- 
 ley, and of oil, and of honey. So he forbare, 
 and slew them not among their brethren. 
 
 See on Job 27. 18. 
 
 This refers to stores they had concealed, as is clear from 
 the mentioning of " the oil and honey." During the time 
 of the Kandian war many prisoners received lenient treat- 
 ment, because of the assurance that they had treasures 
 hid in the field, and that they should be the property of 
 their keepers. In some cases there can be no doubt there 
 were large sums thus acquired by certain individuals.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 Ver. 2. And said unto Jeremiah the prophet, Let, 
 we beseech thee, our supplication be accepted 
 before thee, and pray for us unto the Lord thy 
 God, even for all this remnant ; (for we are left 
 but a few of many, as thine eyes do behold us.) 
 
 The margin has this, " Let our supplication fall before 
 thee." " O my lord," says the suppliant, " let my prayers be 
 prostrate at your feet." " O forget not my requests, "but let 
 them ever surround your feet." " Allow my supplications 
 to lie before you." " Ah ! give but a small place for my 
 prayers." " At your feet, my lord, at your feet, my lord, 
 are all my requests." — Robert.s. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 Ver. 9. Take great stones in thy hand, and hide 
 them in the clay in the brick-kiln, which is at 
 the entry of Pharaoh's house in Tahpanhes, in 
 the sight of the men of Judah. 
 
 If their bricks, in those hot and dry countries, are in 
 general only dried in the sun, not burnt, there is some 
 rea^son to be doubtful whether the Hebrew word pSrs w^/Sen 
 signifies a brick-kiln, as multitudes besides our translators 
 have supposed. The bricks used in the construction of 
 the Egyptian canals, must have been well burnt ; those 
 
Chap. 43—46. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 50o 
 
 i-iried in the sun could have lasted no time. But bricks for 
 this use could not have been often wanted. They were 
 not necessary for the building those treasure cities which 
 are mer'joned Exod. i. 11. One of the pyramids is built 
 with sun-dried bricks, which Sir J. Chardin tells us are du- 
 rable, as well as accommodated to the temperature of the air 
 there ; which last circumstance is, I presume, the reason 
 they are in such common use in these very hot countries. 
 There must then be many places used in the East for the 
 making bricks, where there are no kilns at all; and such 
 a place, I apprehend, the word p'?d malben signifies ; and 
 it should seem to be the perpetual association of a kiln, and 
 of the places where bricks are made, with us in the West, 
 that has occasioned the word to be translated brick-kiln. 
 The interpretation I have given best suits Jer. xliii. 9. 
 The smoke of the brick-kiln, in the neighbourhood of a 
 royal Egyptian palace, would not have agreed very well 
 with the eastern cleanliness and perfumes. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 12. And I will kindle a fire in the houses 
 of the gods of Egypt ; and he shall burn them, 
 and carry them aw^ay captives : and he shall 
 array himself with the land of Egypt, as a 
 shepherd putteth on his garment : and he shall 
 go forth from thence in peace. 
 
 The deserts that lie between Egypt and Syria are at this 
 day terribly infested by the wild Arabs. " In travelling 
 along the seacoast of Syria, and from Suez to Mount Sinai," 
 says Dr. Shaw, " we were in little or no danger of being 
 robbed or insulted ; in the Holy Land, and upon the isth- 
 mus between Egypt and the Red Sea, our conductors 
 cannot be too numerous." He then goes on to inform us, 
 that when he went from Ramah to Jerusalem, though the 
 pilgrims themselves were more than six thousand, and 
 were escorted by four bands of Turkish infantry, exclusive 
 of three or four hundred spahees, (cavalry,) yet were they 
 most barbarously insulted and beaten by the Arabs. 
 
 This may lead us, perhaps, to the true sense of the pre- 
 ceding words, " And he shall array himself with the land 
 of Egypt, as a shepherd putteth on his garment." It sig- 
 nifies, that just as a person appearing to be a shepherd, 
 passed unmolested in common by the wild Arabs ;" so Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, by his subduing Egypt, shall induce the Arab 
 tribes to sufter him to go out of that country unmolested, 
 the possession of Egypt being to him what a shepherd's 
 garment was to a single person : for though, upon occasion, 
 the Arabs are not afraid to aflfront the most powerful prin- 
 ces, it is not to be imagined that conquest and power have 
 no effect upon them. Tkey that dwell in the wilderness, (says 
 the Psalmist, referring to these Arabs,) shall bow before him, 
 whom he has described immediately before, he having do- 
 minion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the 
 earth, and which he unquestionably supposes was the great 
 inducement to that submission. 
 
 Thus the Arab that was charged with the care of con- 
 ducting Dr. Pococke to Jerusalem, after secreting him for 
 some time in his tent, when he took him out into the fields, 
 to walk there, put on him his striped garment; apparently 
 for his security, and that he might pass for an Arab. So 
 D'Arvieux. when he was sent by the consul of Sidon to 
 the camp of the grand emir, equipped himself for the great- 
 er security exactly like an Arab, and accordingly passed 
 unmolested, and imquestioned. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 Ver. 17. But we will certainly do whatsoever 
 thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn 
 incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour 
 out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, 
 we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, 
 in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jeru- 
 salem : for then had we plenty of victuals, and 
 were well, and saw no evil. 
 
 "When the new moon is first seen, the people present their 
 hands in the same form of adoration, and take oiTthe tur- 
 ban, as they do to other gods. If a person have a favourite 
 
 son or wife, or any friend with whom he thinks himself 
 fortunate, he will call for one of them on that night, and, 
 after looking at the new moon, will steadfastly look at the 
 face of the individual. But if there be no person of that 
 description present, he will look at his white cloth, or a 
 piece of gold. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 Ver. 4. Harness the horses ; and get up, ye horse- 
 men, and stand forth with your helmets; fur- 
 bish the spears, a7id put on the brigandines. 
 
 A piece of defensive armour used in early times, was 
 the breastplate or corslet : with this Goliath was accoutred ; 
 but in our version the original term is rendered a coat of 
 mail ; and in the inspired account of the Jewish armour, 
 it is translated habergeon. It was between the joints of this 
 harness (for so we render it in that passage) that Ahab re- 
 ceived his mortal wound by an arrow shot at a venture. 
 To this species of armour the prophet Isaiah alludes, where 
 the same Hebrew word is used as in the preceding texts, 
 but is here rendered breastplate ; and in the prophecies of 
 Jeremiah it is translated brigandine. From the use of these 
 various terms, in translating the Hebrew term (r'^v) shirion, 
 it seems to have covered both the back and breast of the 
 warrior, but was probably intended chiefly for the defence 
 of the latter, and, by consequence, took its name from that 
 circumstance. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. Go up into Gilead and take balm, O vir* 
 gin, the daughter of Eg3^pt: in vain shalt thou 
 use many medicines ; for thou shalt not be 
 cured. 
 
 Physicians in England would be perfectly astonished at 
 the numerous kinds of medicine which are administered 
 to a patient. The people themselves are unwilling to take 
 one kind for long together, and I have known a sick 
 woman swallow ten different sorts in one day. Should a 
 patient, when about to take his medicine, scatter or spill 
 the least quantity, nothing will induce him to take the rest ; 
 it is a bad omen ; he must have the nostrum changed. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. "25. The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 
 saith, Behold, I will punish the multitude of 
 No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods, 
 and their kings ; even Pharaoh, and all them 
 that trust in him. 
 
 No, or No-Amon, or Amon of No, (Jer. xlvi. 25, margi- 
 nal reading.) was the metropolis of Upper Egypt, by the 
 Greek geographers termed Thebes, a city eminently dis- 
 tinguished for the worship of Jupiter, who by the Egyptians 
 was called Amon or Ammon; hence the city received the 
 appellation of Diospolis, or the city of Jupiter. The gran- 
 deur of ancient Thebes must now be traced in the four 
 small towns or hamlets of Luxor, Karnak, Medinet-Abou, 
 and Gournou. Karnak is regarded by the most accurate 
 modern travellers as the principal site of Diospolis ; and 
 the Egyptians seem to have called forth all the resources of 
 wealth, and all the efforts of art, in order to render it wor- 
 thy of their supreme divinity. 
 
 The great temple at Karnak has twelve principal en- 
 trances; each of which is composed of several propyla 
 and colossal gateways, besides other buildings attached to 
 them, in themselves larger than most other temples. One 
 of the propyla is entirely of granite, adorned with the most 
 finished hieroglyphics. On each side of many of them 
 there have been colossal statues of basalt and granite, from 
 twenty to thirty feet in height, some of which are in the 
 attitude of sitting, while others are standing erect. A 
 double range of colossal sphinxes extends across the plain 
 from the temple at Luxor, (a distance of nearly two miles,) 
 which terminates at Karnak in a most magnificent gate- 
 way, fifty feet in height, which still remains unimpaired. 
 From this gateway the great temple was approached by an 
 avenue of fifty lofty colu mns, one of which only now remains, 
 leading to a vast propylon m front of the portico. The 
 interior of this portico presents a coup d'mil, which sur- 
 
504 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 47. 
 
 passes any other that is to be found among the remains of 
 Egyptian architecture. Twelve columns, sixty feet high, 
 and of a beautiful order, form an avenue through the centre 
 of the building, like the nave of a Gothic cathedral, and 
 they are flanked on each side by sixty smaller ones, ranged 
 in six rows, which are seen through the intervals in end- 
 less perspective. The walls are covered with bas-reliefs 
 of a similar character with those found in the other ancient 
 Egyptian temples. 
 
 In an open space beyond the portico there were four 
 obelisks, two only of which are now standing. One of 
 these, according to Capt. C. F. Head, has a base of eight 
 feet square, and rises to a height of eighty feet, and is form- 
 ed of a single block of granite. The hieroglyphics, which 
 are beautifully wrought, are supposed to record the succes- 
 sion of Pharaohs who reigned over Egypt. From the most 
 ancient rulers of the land to the Ptolemies, almost every 
 king, except the Persian, has his name recorded in this 
 temple. But it was said, " the sceptre of Egypt shall depart 
 away," (Zech. x. 11 ;) and, as if in direct fulfilment of 
 the prophecy, the portion of the rocky tables that was to 
 have been occupied by the names of others of its royal line, 
 has been shattered, and (it has been conjectured) by no 
 human hand. 
 
 The most interesting of the sculptured ornaments in this 
 temple, Capt. Head states, are on the northwest, where 
 there are battle scenes, with innumerable figures of milita- 
 ry combatants using bows and arrows, spears and bucklers, 
 of prostrate enemies, of war chariots and horses. The fiery 
 action and elegant shape of the steeds are remarkable. On 
 the exterior walls of the southwest corner of the portico, 
 are depicted other victories, which are conjectured to be 
 those of the Egyptians over the Jews. 
 
 The field of ruins at Karnak is about a mile in diame- 
 ter. Dr. Richardson conjectures that the whole of this space 
 was once, in the prouder days of Thebes, consecrated en- 
 tirely to the use of the temple. There are evidences of 
 walls considerably beyond this, which probably enlarged 
 the city in its greatest extent ; but, after the seat of govern- 
 ment had been withdrawn, the capital removed to another 
 spot, and the trade transferred to another mart, the inhab- 
 itants narrowed the circuit of their walls, and placed their 
 houses within the lines of the sacred confines. 
 
 Such is the mass of disjointed fragments collected to- 
 gether in these magnificent relics of ancient art, that 
 more than human power would appear to have caused the 
 overthrow of the strongholds of superstition. Some have 
 imagined that the ruin was caused by the instantaneous 
 concussion of an earthquake. Whether this conjecture be 
 well founded or erroneous, the divine predictions against 
 Egypt have been literally accomplished. " The land of 
 Egypt" has been made " desolate and waste ;" "judgments" 
 have been executed " in No," whose " multitude" has been 
 " cut oflf;" and No is rent ascinder. (Ezek, xxix. 9. xxx. 
 14, 15, 16.)— HoRNE. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 Ver. 5. Baldness is come upon Gaza : Ashkelon 
 is cut off with the remnant of their valley : how 
 long wilt thou cut thyself? 
 
 See on 1 Kings 18. 28. 
 
 The land of the Philistines was to be destroyed. It par- 
 takes of the general desolation common to it with Judea, 
 and other neighbouring states. While ruins are to be 
 found in all Syria, they are particularly abundant along 
 the seacoast, which formed, on the south, the realm of the 
 Philistines. But its aspect presents some existing pecu- 
 liarities, which travellers fail not to particularize, and 
 which, in reference both to the state of the country, and the 
 fate of its different cities, the prophets failed not to discrimi- 
 nate as justly as if their description had been drawn both 
 with all the accuracy which ocular observation and all the 
 certainly which authenticated history could give. And the 
 authority so often quoted may here be again appealed to. 
 Volney, (though, like one who m ancient times was instru- 
 mental to the fulfilment of a special prediction, " he meant 
 not so, neither did his heart think so, ) from the manner in 
 which hegene:alizes his observations, and marks the pecu- 
 liar features of the different districts of Syria, with greater 
 acuteness and perspicuity than any other traveller whatever, 
 
 is the ever-ready purveyor of evidence in all the cases which 
 came within the range of his topographical description of 
 the wide field of prophecy— while, at the same lime, from his 
 known, open and zealotis hostility to the Christian cause, 
 his testimony is alike decisive and unquestionable : and the 
 vindication of the truth of the following predictions may 
 safely be committed to this redoubted champion of infidelity, 
 
 " The seacoasts shall be dwellings and cottages for shep- 
 herds, and folds for flocks. The remnant of the Philistines 
 shall perish. Baldness is come upon Gaza ; it shall be for- 
 saken. The king shall perish Irom Gaza. I will cut off 
 the inhabitants from Ashdod. Ashkelon shall be a desola- 
 tion, it shall be cut off with the remnant of the valley ; it 
 shall not be inhabited." " In the plain between Ramla and 
 Gaza" (the very plain of the Philistines along the seacoast) 
 " we met with a number of villages badly built, of dried 
 mud, and which, like the inhabitants, exhibit every mark 
 of poverty and wretchedness. The houses, on a nearer 
 view, are only so many huts (cottages) sometimes detached, 
 at others ranged in the form of cells round a courtyard, 
 enclosed by a mud wall. In winter, they and their cattle 
 may be said to live together, the part of the dwelling allotted 
 to themselves being only raised two feet above that in which 
 they lodge their beasts" — {dwellings and cottages for shep- 
 herds, and folds for flocks.) " Except the environs of these 
 villages, all the rest of the country is a desert, and aban- 
 doned to the Bedouin Arabs, who feed their flocks on it." 
 The remnant shall perish ; the land of the Philistines shall 
 be destroyed, that there shall be no inhabitant, and the sea- 
 coasts shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and 
 folds for flocks. 
 
 " The ruins of white marble sometimes found at Gaza 
 prove that it was formerly the abode of luxury and opu- 
 lence. It has shared in the general destruction ; and, not- 
 withstanding its proud title of the capital of Palestine, it is 
 now no more than a defenceless village," {baldness has come 
 upon it,) " peopled by, at most, only two thousar.d inhabit- 
 ants." It is forsaken and bereaved of its king. " The sea- 
 coast, by which it was lormerly washed, is every day re- 
 moving farther from the deserted ruins of Ashkelon." It 
 shall be a desolation. Ashkelon shall not be inhabited. "Amid 
 the various successive ruins, those of Edzoud, (Ashdod,) so 
 powerful under the Philistines, are now remarkable for 
 their scorpions." The inhabitants shall be cut off from Ash- 
 dod. Although the Christian traveller must yield the palm 
 to Volney, as the topographer of prophecy, and although 
 supplementary evidence be not requisite, yet a place is here 
 willingly given to the following just observations. 
 
 " Ashkelon was one of the proudest satrapies of the lords 
 of the Philistines; now there is not an inhabitant within its 
 walls; and the prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled. 'The 
 king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be in- 
 habited.' When the prophecy was uttered, both cities were 
 in an equally flourishing condition ; and nothing but the 
 prescience of Heaven could pronounce on which of the 
 two, and in what manner, the vial of its wrath should be 
 poured out. Gaza is truly without a king. The lofly towers 
 of Ashkelon lie scattered on the ground, and the ruins 
 within its walls do not shelter a human being. How is the 
 wrath of man made to praise his Creator ! Hath he not 
 said, and shall he not do if? The oracle was delivered by 
 the mouth of the prophet more than five hundred years be- 
 fore the Christian era, and we beheld its accomplishment 
 eighteen hundred years after that event." Cogent and just 
 as the reasoning is, the facts stated by Volney give wider 
 scope for an irresistible argument. The fate of one city is 
 not only distinguished from that of another ; but tlie varied 
 aspect of the country itself, the dwellings and cottages for 
 shepherds in one part, and that very region named, the rest 
 of the land destroyed and uninhabited, a desert, and aban- 
 doned to the flocks "of the wandering Arabs ; Gaza, bereaved 
 of a king, a defenceless village, destitute of all its fortifica- 
 tions; Ashkelon, a desolation, and without an inhabitant; 
 the inhabitants also cut off from Ashdod, as reptiles tenant- 
 ed it instead of men— form in each instance a specific pre- 
 diction, and a recorded fact, and present such a view of the 
 existing state of Philistia as renders it difficult to determine, 
 from the strictest accordance that prevails between both, 
 whether the inspired penman or the defamer of scripture 
 give the more vivid description. Nor is there any obscu- 
 rity whatever in anv one of the circumstances, or in any 
 part of the proof. The coincidence is too glaring, even for 
 
Chap. 48. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 505 
 
 wilful blindness not to discern; and to all the least versed 
 in general history the priority of the predictions to the 
 events is equally obvious. And such was the natural fertility 
 of the country, and such was the strength and celebrity of 
 the cities, that no conjecture possessing the least shadow of 
 plausibility can be formed in what manner any of these 
 events coiild possibly have been thought of, even for many 
 centuries after the "vision and prophecy" were sealed. After 
 that period Gaza defied the power of Alexander the Great, 
 and withstood for two months a hard-pressed siege. The 
 army with which he soon afterward overthrew the Persian 
 empire having there, as well as at Tyre, been checked or 
 delayed in the first flush of conquest, and he himself having 
 been twice wounded in desperate attempts to storm the city, 
 the proud and enraged kmg of Macedon, with all the 
 cruelty of a brutish heart, and boasting of himself as a 
 second Achilles, dragged at his chariot-wheels the intrepid 
 general who had defended it, twice around the walls of 
 Gaza, Ashkelon was no less celebrated for the excellence 
 of its wines than for the strength of its fortifications. And 
 of Ashdod it is related by an eminent ancient historian, not 
 only that it was a great citv, but that it withstood the longest 
 siege recorded in history, (it may also be said either of prior 
 or of later date,) having been besieged for the space of 
 twenty-nine years by Psymatticus, king of Egypt. Strabo, 
 after the commencement of the Christian era, classes its 
 citizens among the chief inhabitants of Syria. Each of 
 these cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, was the See of 
 a Bishop from the days of Constantine to the invasion of 
 the Saracens. And, as a decisive proof of their existence 
 as cities long subsequent to the delivery of the predictions, 
 it may further be remarked, that different coins of each of 
 these very cities are extant, and are copied and described 
 in several accounts of ancient coins. The once princely 
 magnificence of Gaza is still attested by the " ruins of white 
 marble ;" and the house of the present aga is composed of 
 fragments of ancient columns, cornices, &c. ; ana in the 
 courtyard, and immured in the wall, are shafts and capitals 
 of granite columns. 
 
 In short, cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks, par- 
 tially scattered along the seacoast, are now truly the nest 
 substitutes for populous cities that the once powerful realm 
 of Philistia can produce ; and the remnant of that land 
 which gave titles and grandeur to the lords of the Philis- 
 tines is destroyed. Gaza, the chief of its satrapies, " the 
 abode of luxury and opulence," now bereaved of its king, 
 and bald of all its fortifications, is the defenceless residence 
 of a subsidiary ruler of a devastated province ; and, in kin- 
 dred degradation, ornaments of its once splendid edifices 
 are now l>edded in a wall that forms an enclosure for beasts. 
 A handful of men could now take unobstructed possession 
 of that place, where a strong city opposed the entrance, and 
 defied, for a time, the power of the conqueror of the world. 
 The walls, the dwellings, and the people of Ashkelon, have 
 all perished : and though its name was in the time of the 
 crusades shouted in triumph throughout every land in Eu- 
 rope, it is now literally without an inhabitayib. And Ashdod, 
 which withstood a siege treble the duration of that of Troy, 
 and thus outrivalled far the boast of Alexander at Gaza, 
 has, in verification of " the word of God, which is sharper 
 than any two-edged sword," been cut off, and has fallen be- 
 fore it to nothing. 
 
 There is yet another city which was noted by the pro- 
 phets, the very want of any information respecting which, 
 and the absence of its name from several modern maps of 
 Palestine, while the sites of other ruined cities are marked, 
 are really the best confirmation of the truth of the prophecy 
 that could possibly be given. Ekron shall be rooted tip. It 
 is rooted up. It was one of the chief cities of the Philis- 
 tines; but though Gaza still subsists, and while Ashkelon 
 and Ashdod retain their names in their ruins, the very 
 name of Ekron is missing. The wonderful contrast in 
 each particular, whether in respect to the land or to the 
 cities of the Philistines, is the exact counterpart of the literal 
 prediction ; and having the testimony of Volney to all the 
 facts, and also indisputable evidence of the great priority 
 of the predictions to the events, what more complete or 
 clearer proof could there be that each and all of them 
 emanated from the prescience of Heaven 1 — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 Ver, 1, Against Moab thus saith the Lord of 
 64 
 
 hosts, the God of Israel, Wo unto Nebo ! for it 
 is spoiled; Kiriath-Aim is confounded and 
 taken; Misgab is confounded and dismayed. 
 2. There shall be no more praise of Moab : in 
 Heshbon they have devised evil against it; 
 come, and let us cut it off from being du nation : 
 also thou shalt be cut down, O Madmen ; the 
 sword shall pursue thee. 
 
 The land of Moab lay to the east and southeast of Judea, 
 and bordered on the east, northeast, and partly on the 
 south, by the Dead Sea. Its early history is neaily analo- 
 gous to that of Ammon ; and the soil, though perhaps more 
 diversified, is, in many places where the desert and plains 
 of salt have not encroached on its borders, of equal fertili- 
 ty. There are manifest and abundant vestiges of its an- 
 cient greatness. " The whole of the plains are covered with 
 the sites of towns, on every eminence or spot convenient for 
 the construction of one. And as the land is capable of rich 
 cultivation, there can be no doubt that the country now so 
 deserted once presented a continued picture of plenty and 
 fertility." The form of fields is still visible ; and there 
 are the remains of Roman highways, which in some places 
 are completely paved, and on which there are milestones of 
 the times of Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Severus, with 
 the number of the miles legible upon them. Wherever 
 any spot is cultivated, the corn is luxuriant : and the riches 
 of the soil cannot perhaps be more clearly illu.strated than 
 by the fact, that one grain of Heshbon wheat exceeds in 
 dimensions two of the ordinary sort, and more than double 
 the number of grains grow on the stalk. The frequency, 
 and almost, in many instances, the close vicinity of the 
 sites of the ancient towns, "prove that the population of 
 the country was formerly proportioned to its natural fertili- 
 ty." Such evidence may surely suflice to prove, that the 
 country was well cultivated and peopled at a period .so long 
 posterior to the date of the predictions, that no cause less 
 than supernatural could have existed at the time when they 
 were delivered, which could have authorized the assertion, 
 with the least probability or apparent possibility of its truth, 
 that Moab would ever have been reduced to that state oi 
 great and permanent desolation in which it has continued 
 for so many ages, and which vindicates and ratifies to this 
 hour the truth of the scriptural prophecies. 
 
 And the cities of Moab have all disappeared. Their 
 place, together with the adjoining part of Idumea, is cha- 
 racterized, in the map of Volney's Travels, by the ridns of 
 towns. His information respecting these ruins was derived 
 from some of the wandering Arabs; and- its accuracy has 
 been fully corroborated by the testimony of diflferent Euro- 
 pean travellers of high respectability and undoubted veracity, 
 who have since visited this devastated region. The whole 
 country abounds with ruins. And Burckhardt, who en- 
 countered many difficulties in so desolate and dangerous a 
 land, thus records the brief history of a few of them : " The 
 ruins of Eleale, Heshbon, Meon, Medaba, Dibon, Aroer, 
 still subsist to illustrate the history of the Beni Israel." 
 And it might with equal truth have been added, that they 
 still subsist to confirm the inspiration of the Jewish scrip- 
 ture, or to prove that the seers of Israel were the prophets 
 of God, for the desolation of each of these very cities was 
 the theme of a prediction. Every thin g worthy of observa- 
 tion respecting them has been detailed, not only in Burck- 
 hardt's Travels in Syria, but also by Seetzen, and, more 
 recently, by Captains Irby and Mangles, who, along with 
 Mr. Banks and Mr. Legh, visited this deserted district. 
 The predicted judgment has fallen with such truth upon 
 these cities, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab far 
 and near, and they are so yxXXevly broken dovm, that even the 
 prying curiosity of such indefatigable travellers could dis- 
 cover among a multiplicity of ruins only a few remains so 
 entire as to be worthy of particular notice. The subjoined 
 description is drawn from their united testimony. — Among 
 the ruins of El Aal (Eleale) are a number of large cisterns, 
 fragments of buildings, and foundations of houses. At 
 Heshban (Heshbon) are the ruins of a large ancient town, 
 together with the remains of a temple, and some edifices. A 
 few broken shafts of columns are still standing; and there 
 are a number of deep wells cut in the rock. The ruins of 
 Medaba are about two miles in circumference. There are 
 
506 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 48. 
 
 many remains of the walls of private houses constructed 
 with blocks of silex, but not a single edifice is standing. 
 The chief object of interest is an immense tank or cistern 
 - of hewn stones, " which, as there is no stream at Medaba," 
 Burckhardt remarks, " might still be of use to the Bedouins, 
 were the surrounding ground cleared of the rubbish to al- 
 low the water to flow into it ; but such an undertaking is far 
 beyond the views of the wandering Arabs." There is also 
 the foundation of a temple built with large stones, and appa- 
 rently of great antiquity, with two columns near it. The 
 ruins of Diban (Dibon) situated in the midst of a fine plain, 
 are of considerable extent, but present nothing of interest. 
 The neighbouring hot wells, and the similarity of the name, 
 identify the ruins of Myoun with Meon, or Beth Meon of 
 scripture. Of this ancient city, as well as of Araayr 
 (Aroer,) nothing is now remarkable but what is common 
 to them with all the cities of Moab — their entire desolation. 
 The extent of the ruins of Rabba (Rabbath Moab,) former- 
 ly the residence of the kings of Moab, sufficiently proves 
 its ancient importance, though no other object can be par- 
 ticularized among the ruins except the remains of a palace 
 or temple, some of the walls of which are still standing ; a 
 gate belonging to another building ; and an insulated altar. 
 There are many remains of private buildings, but none en- 
 tire. There being no springs on the spot, the town had 
 two birkets, the largest of which is cut entirely out of the 
 rocky ground, together with many cisterns. Mount Nebo 
 was completely barren when Burckhardt passed over it, 
 and the site of the ancient city had not been ascertained. 
 Nebo is spoiled. 
 
 While the ruins of all these cities still retain their an- 
 cient names, and are the most conspicuous amid the wide 
 scene of general desolation, and while each of them was in 
 like manner particularized in the visions of the prophet, 
 they yet formed but a small number of the cities of Moab: 
 and. the rest are also, in similar verification of the prophe- 
 cies, desolate, without any to dwell therein. None of the an- 
 cient cities of Moab now exist as tenanted by men. Kerek, 
 which neither bears any resemblance in name to any of 
 the cities of Moab which are mentioned as existing in the 
 time of the Israelites, nor possesses any monuments which 
 '.enote a very remote antiquity, is the only nominal town 
 m the whole country, and in the words of Seetzen, who 
 visited it, " in its present ruined state it can only be called 
 a hamlet :" " and the houses have only one floor." But the 
 most populous and fertile province in Europe (especially 
 any situated in thfe interior of a country like Moab) is not 
 covered so thickly with towns as Moab is plentiful in ruins, 
 deserted and desolate though now it be. Burckhardt enumer- 
 ates about fifty ruined sites within its boundaries, many 
 of them extensive. In general they are a broken down and 
 indistinguishable mass of ruins ; and many of them have 
 not been closely inspected. But, in some instances, there 
 are the remains of temples, sepulchral monuments, the 
 ruins of edifices constructed of very large stones, in one of 
 which buildings "some of the stones are twenty feet in 
 length, and so broad that one constitutes the thickness of 
 the wall;" traces of hanging gardens; entire columns 
 lying on the ground, three feet in diameter, and fragments 
 of smaller columns ; and many cisterns cut of the rock. — 
 When the towns of Moab existed in their prime, and were 
 at ease,— when arrogance, and haughtiness, and pride 
 prevailed among them— the desolation and total desertion 
 and abandonment of them all must have utterly surpassed 
 all human conception. And that such numerous cities — 
 which subsisted for many ages — which were diversified in 
 their sites, some of them bein^ built on eminences, and 
 naturally strong ; others on plains, and surrounded by the 
 richest soil ; some situated in valleys by the side of a plen- 
 tiful stream ; and others where art supplied the deficien- 
 cies of nature, and where immense cisterns were excavated 
 out of the rock — and which exhibit in their ruins many 
 monuments of ancient prosperity, and many remains easily 
 convertible into present utility— should have all fled away, 
 — all met the same indiscriminate fate — and be all desolate, 
 vnthout any to dwell therein, notwithstanding all these an- 
 cient assurances of their permanent durability, and their 
 existing facilities and inducements for being the habitations 
 of men— is a matter of just wonder in the present day, — 
 and had any other people been the possessors of Moab, the 
 fact would either have been totally impossible orunaccount- 
 able. Trying as this test of the truth of prophecy is— that 
 
 is the word of God, and not of erring man, which can so 
 well and so triumphantly abide it. They shall cry of Moab, 
 How is it broken doion ! — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 8. And the spoiler shall come upon every 
 city, and no city shall escape ; the valley also 
 shall perish, and the plain shall be destroyed, 
 as the Lord hath spoken. 
 
 Moab has often been a field of contest between the Arabs 
 and Turks; and although the former have retained pos- 
 session of it, both have mutually reduced it to desolation. 
 The different tribes of Arabs who traverse it. not only bear a 
 permanent and habitual hostility to Christians and to '^urks, 
 but one tribe is often at variance and at war with another; 
 and the regular cultivation of the soil, or the improvement 
 of those natural advantages of which the country is so full, 
 is a matter either never thought of, or that cannot be real- 
 ized. Property is there the creature of power, and not of 
 law ; and possession forms no security when plunder is the 
 preferable right. Hence the extensive plains, where they 
 are not partially covered with wood, present a barren as- 
 pect, which is only relieved at intervals by a few clusters 
 of wild fig-trees, that show how the richest gifts of nature 
 degenerate when unaided by the industry of man. And 
 instead of the profusion which the plains must have exhibit- 
 ed in every quarter, nothing but "patches of the best soil 
 in the territory are now cultivated by the Arabs ;" and these 
 only "whenever they have the prospect of being able to 
 secure the harvest against the incursions of enemies." 
 The Arab herds now roam at freedom over the valleys and 
 the plains; and "the many vestiges of field en closures" form 
 not any obstruction ; they wander undisturbed around the 
 tents of their masters, over the face of the country ; and 
 while the valley is perished, and the plain destroyed, the cities 
 also of Aroer are forsaken ; they are for the flocks lohich lie 
 dow7i, and none make them afraid. The strong contrast be- 
 tween the ancient and the actual state of Moab is exempli- 
 fied in the condition of the inhabitants as well as of the 
 land ; and the coincidence between the prediction and the 
 fact is as strikmg in the one case as in the other. — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 11. Moab hath been at ease from his youth, 
 and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not 
 been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath 
 he gone into captivity : therefore his taste re- 
 mained in him, and his scent is not changed. 
 
 They frequently pour wine from vessel to vessel in the 
 East : for when they begin one, they are obliged imme- 
 diately to empty it into smaller vessels, or into bottles, or 
 it would grow sour. From the jars, says Dr. Russel, in 
 which the wine ferments, it is drawn off into demyans, 
 which contain perhaps twenty quart bottles ; and from those 
 into bottles for use : but as these bottles are generally not 
 well washed, the wine is often sour. The more careful 
 use pint bottles, or half-pint bottles, and cover the surface 
 with a little sweet oil.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 12. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith 
 the Lord, that I will send unto him wanderers, 
 that shall cause him to wander, and shall empty 
 his vessels, and break their bottles. 
 
 The Bedouin (wandering) Arabs are now the chief and 
 almost the only inhabitants of a country once studded with 
 cities. Traversing the country, and fixing their tents for 
 a short time in one place, and then decamping to another, 
 depasturing every part successively, and despoiling the 
 whole land of its natural produce, they are wanderers who 
 have come up against it, and who keep it in a state of perpetual 
 desolation. They lead a wandering life ; and the only reg- 
 ularity they know or practice is to act upon a systematic 
 schenie of spoliation. They prevent any from forming a 
 fixed settlement who are inclined to attenipt it; for although 
 the fruitfulness of the soil would abundantly repay the la- 
 bour of settlers, and render migration wholly unnecessary, 
 even if the population were increased more than tenfold, 
 yet the Bedouins forcibly deprive them of the means of 
 subsistence, compel them to search for it elsewhere, and, 
 
Chap. 49. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 507 
 
 ill the words of the prediction, literally cause them to wan- 
 der. " It may be remarked generally of the Bedouins," 
 says Burckhardt, in describing their extortions in this very- 
 country, " that wherever they are the masters of the culti- 
 vators, the latter are soon reduced to beggary by their un- 
 ceasing demands." — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 27. For was not Israel a derision unto thee ? 
 was he found among thieves? for since thou 
 spakest of him, thou skippedst for joy. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 18. 28. 
 
 Ver. 28. O ye that dwell in Moab, leave the 
 cities, and dwell in the rock, and be like the 
 dove that maketh her nest in the sides of the 
 hole's mouth. 
 
 "Where art intervenes not, pigeons build in those hollow 
 places nature provides for them. A certain city in Africa 
 is called Hamam-et, from the wild pigeons that copiously 
 breed in the adjoining cliffs ; and in a curious paper rela- 
 ting to Mount MtnsL, (Phil. Trans, vol. Ix.) which men- 
 tions a number of subterraneous caverns there, one is no- 
 ticed as being called by the peasants, La Spelonca della Pa- 
 lomba, from the wild pigeons building their nests therein. 
 (Sol. Song ii. 14.) Though Mina. is a burning mountain, 
 yet the cold in these caverns is excessive : this shows that 
 pigeons delight in cool retreats, and explains the reason 
 why they resort to mountains which are known to be very 
 cold even in those hot countries. The words of the Psalm- 
 ist, Jlee as a bird to your mountain, without doubt refer to 
 the flying of doves thither wherl frightened by the fowler. 
 Dove-houses, however, are very common in the East, Of 
 Kefteen, a large village, Maundrell says, there are more 
 dove-cots than other houses. In the southern part of 
 Egypt, the tops of their habitations are always terminated 
 by a pigeon-house. Isaiah Ix. 8. — Harmer. 
 
 In a general description of the condition of the inhabi- 
 tants of that extensive desert which now occupies the place 
 of these ancient flourishing states, Volney, in plain but 
 unmeant illustration of this prediction, remarks, that the 
 " wretched peasants live in perpetual dread of losing the 
 fruit of their labours: and no sooner have they gathered in 
 their harvest, than they hasten to secrete it in private places, 
 and retire among the rocks which border on the Dead 
 Sea." Towards the opposite extremity of the land of 
 Moab, and at a little distance from its borders, Seetzen re- 
 lates, that " there are many families living in caverns ;" 
 and he actually designates them " the inhabitants of the 
 rocks." And at the distance of a few miles from the ruined 
 site of Heshbon, there are many artificial caves in a large 
 range of perpendicular cliffs — in some of which are cham- 
 bers and small sleeping apartments. While the cities are 
 desolate, without any to dwell therein, the rocks are ten- 
 anted. But whether flocks lie down in the former without 
 any to make them afraid, or whether men are to be found 
 dwelling in the latter, and are like the dove that maketh 
 her nest in the sides of the hole's mouth — the wonderful 
 transition, in either case, and the close accordance, in both, 
 of the fact to the prediction, assuredly mark it in charac- 
 ters that may be visible to the purblind mind, as the word 
 of that God before whom the darkness of futurity is as light, 
 and without whom a sparrow cannot fall unto the ground. 
 And although chargeable with the impropriety of being 
 somewhat out of place, it may not be here altogether im- 
 proper to remark, that, demonstrative as all these clear 
 predictions and coincident facts are of the inspiration of 
 the scriptures, it cannot but be gratifying to every lover 
 of his kind, when he contemplates that desolation caused 
 by many sins and fraught with many miseries, which the 
 wickedness of man has wrought, and which the prescience 
 of God revealed, to know that all these prophecies, while 
 they mingle the voice of wailing with that of denuncia- 
 tion, are the word of that God who, although he suffers 
 not iniquity to pass unpunished, overrules evil for good, 
 and makes the wrath of man to praise him, and who in 
 the midst of judgment can remember mercy. And rea- 
 soning merely from the " uniform experience" (to borrow 
 a term and draw an argument from Hume) of the truth 
 of the prophecies already fulfilled, the unprejudiced mind 
 
 will at once perceive the full force of the proof derived 
 from experience, and acknowledge that it would be a re- 
 jection of the authority of reason as well as of revela- 
 tion to mistrust the truth of that prophetic affirmation of 
 resuscitating and redeeming import, respecting Ammon ' 
 and Moab, which is the last of the series, and which alone 
 now awaits futurity to stamp it with the brilliant and 
 crowning zeal of its testimony. "I will bring again the 
 captivity of Moab in the latter days, saith the Lord. I will 
 bring again the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith 
 the Lord. The remnant of my people shall possess them. 
 They shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the 
 former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, 
 the desolations of many generations." — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 37. For every head shall be bald, and every 
 beard clipped : upon all the hands shall be cut- 
 tings, and upon the loins sackcloth. 
 
 The relations of the deceased often testify their sorrow- 
 in a more serious and affecting manner, by cutting and 
 slashing their naked arms with daggers. To this absurd 
 and barbarous custom, the prophet thus alludes :^' For 
 every head shall be bald, and every beard clipped ; upon 
 all hands shall be cuttings, and upon the loins sackcloth." 
 And again, " Both the great and the small shall die in the 
 land ; they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament 
 for them, nor cut themselves." It seems to have been 
 very common in Egypt, and among the people of Israel, 
 before the age of Moses, else he had not forbidden it by an 
 express law : " Ye are the children of the Lord your God ; 
 ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between 
 your eyes for the dead." Mr. Harmer refers to this cus- 
 tom, the " wounds in the hands" of the prophet, which he 
 had given himself, in token of affection to a person. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 " We find Arabs," La Roque tells us from D'Arvieux, 
 " who have their arms scarred by the gashes of a knife, 
 which they sometimes give themselves, to mark out to 
 their mistresses what their rigour and the violence of love 
 make them suffer." From this extract we learn what par- 
 ticular part of the body received these cuttings. The scrip- 
 ture frequently speaks of them in a more general manner. 
 — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 40. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, he 
 shall fly as an eagle, and shall spread his wings 
 over Moab. 
 
 See on Ezek. 17. 8. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 Ver. 3. Howl, O Heshbon: for Ai is spoiled: 
 cry, ye daughters of Rabbah, gird ye with 
 sackcloth ; lament, and run to and fro by the 
 hedges : for their king shall go into captivity, 
 and his priests and his princes together. 
 
 The places of burial in the East are without their cities, 
 as well as their gardens, and consequently their going to 
 them must often be by their garden walls, (not hedges.) 
 The ancient warriors of distinction, who were slain in 
 battle, were carried to the sepulchres of their fathers ; and 
 the people often went to weep over the graves of those 
 whom they would honoiir. These observations put togethei 
 sufficiently account for this passage. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 7. Concernitig Edom, thus saith the Lord 
 of hosts, Is wisdom no more in Teman? is 
 counsel perished from the prudent? is their 
 wisdom vanished ? 
 
 Compare with this Obad. v. 8, " shall I not in that day, 
 saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men' out of Edom, 
 and understanding out of the Mount of Esau V Fallen 
 and despised as now it is, Edom, did not the prescription 
 of many ages abrogate its right, might lay claim to the 
 title of having been the first seat of learning, as well as 
 the centre of commerce. Sir Isaac Newton, who was no 
 mean master in chronology, and no incompetent judge to 
 
SOS 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 Chap. 49 
 
 give a decision in regard to the rise and first progress of 
 literature, considers Edom as the nursery of the arts and 
 sciences, and adduces evidence to that etfect from pro- 
 fane as well as from sacred history. " The Egyptians," 
 he remarks, ^^ having learned the skill of the Edomites, 
 began now to observe the position of the stars, and the 
 length of the solar year, for enabling them to know the 
 position of the stars at any time, and to sail by them at all 
 times without sight of the shore, and this gave a begin- 
 ning to astronomy and navigation." It seems that letters, 
 and astronomy, and the trade of carpenters, were invented 
 by the merchants of the Red Sea, and that they were pro- 
 pagated from Arabia Petraea into Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, 
 Asia Minor, and Europe. While the philosopher may 
 thus think of Edom with respect, neither the admirer of 
 genius, the man of feeling, nor the child of devotion will, 
 even to this day, seek from any land a richer treasure of 
 plaintive poetry, of impassioned eloquence, and of fervid 
 piety, than Edom has bequeathed to the world in the book 
 oi Job. It exhibits to us, in language the most pathetic 
 and sublime, all that a man could feel, in the outward 
 pangs of his body and the inner writhings of his mind, of 
 the %ailties of his frame, and of the dissolution of his 
 earthly comforts and endearments; all that mortal can 
 discern, by meditating on the ways and contemplating the 
 works of God, of the omniscience and omnipotence of the 
 Most High, and of the inscrutable dispensations of his 
 providence ; all that knowledge which could first tell, in 
 written word, of Arcturus, and Orion, and the Pleiades ; 
 and all that devotedness of soul, and immortality of hope, 
 which, with patience that faltered not even when the heart 
 was bruised and almost broken, and the body covered over 
 with distress, could say, "Though he slay me, yet will I 
 trust in him." But if the question now be asked. Is under- 
 standing perished out of Edom 1 the answer, like every 
 response of the prophetic word, may be briefly given : It is. 
 The minds of the Bedouins are as uncultivated as the des- 
 erts they traverse. Practical wisdom is, in general, the 
 first that man learns, and the last that he retains. And the 
 simple but significant fact, already alluded to, that the clear- 
 ing away of a little rubbish, merely " to allow the water to 
 flow" into an ancient cistern, in order to render it useful 
 to themselves, "is an undertaking far beyond the views of 
 the wandering Arabs," shows that understanding is indeed 
 perished from among them. They view the indestructible 
 works of former ages, not only with wonder, but with su- 
 perstitious regard, and consider them as the work of genii. 
 They look upon a European traveller as a magician and 
 believe that, having seen any spot where they imagine that 
 treasures are deposited, he can afterward command the 
 guardian of the treasure to set the whole before him. In 
 Teman, which yet maintains a precarious existence, the 
 inhabitants possess the desire without the means of knowl- 
 edge. The Koran is their only studv, and contains the 
 sum of their wisdom. And, although he was but a " mis- 
 erable comforter," and was overmastered in argument by 
 a kinsman stricken with affliction, yet no Temanite can now 
 discourse with either the wisdom or the pathos of Eliphaz 
 of old. Wisdom is no more in Teman, and understanding 
 has perished out of the Mount of Esau. 
 
 While there is thus subsisting evidence and proof that 
 the ancient inhabitants of Edom were renowned for wis- 
 dom as well as for power, and while desolation has spread 
 so widely over it, that it can scarcely be said to be inhabi- 
 ted by man, there still are tenants who hold possession of 
 it, to whom it was abandoned by man, and to whom it was 
 decreed by a voice more than mortal. And insignificant 
 and minute as it may possiblv appear to those who reject 
 the light of revelation, or to the unreflecting mind, (that 
 will use no measuring-line of truth which stretches beyond 
 that which inches out its own shallow thoughts, and where- 
 with, rejecting all other aid, it tries, by the superficial 
 touch of ridicule alone, to sound the unfathomable depths 
 of infinite wisdom,) yet the following scripture, mingled 
 with other words already verified as the voice of inspira- 
 lion, and voluntarily involving its title to credibility in the 
 appended appeal to fact and challenge to investigation, may, 
 in conjunction with kindred proofs, yet tell to man — if hear- 
 ing he will hear, and show him, if seeing he will see — 
 the verity of the divine word, and the infallibility of the 
 divine judgments ; and, not without the aid of the rightful 
 and unbiased exercise of reason, may give understanding 
 
 to the skeptic, that he may be converted, and that he may 
 be healed by Him whose word is ever truth. 
 
 " But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it, (Idu- 
 mea ;) the owl also, and the raven shall dwell in it. It shall 
 be a habitation for dragons, and a court for owls : the wild 
 beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of 
 the island, and the satyr (the hairy or rough creature) shall 
 cry to his fellow ; the screech owl also shall rest there, and 
 find for herself a place of rest ; there shall the great owl 
 make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her 
 shadow ; there shall the vultures also be gathered every 
 one with her mate. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord 
 and read ; no one of these shall fail, none shall want her 
 mate ; for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it 
 hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, 
 and his hand hath divided it unto them by line : they shall 
 possess it for ever; from generation to generation shall 
 they dwell therein." Isa. xxxiv. 11, 13—17. " I laid the 
 mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons 
 of the wilderness." Mai. i. 3. 
 
 Such is the precision of the prophecies, so remote are 
 they from all ambiguity of meaning, and so distinct are the 
 events which they detail, that it is almost unnecessary to 
 remark, that the different animals here enumerated were 
 not all in the same manner, or in the same degree, to be 
 possessors of Edom. Some of them were to rest, to meet, 
 to be gathered there : the owl and the raven were to dwell 
 in it, and it was to be a habitation for dragons ; while of the 
 cormorant and bittern, it is emphatically said, that they 
 were to possess it. And is it not somewhat beyond a mere 
 fortuitous coincidence, imperfect as the information is re- 
 specting Edom, that, in " seeking out" proof concerning 
 these animals and whether none of them do fail, the most 
 decisive evidence should,* in the first instance, be uncon- 
 sciously communicated from the boundaries of Edom, ol 
 the one which is first noted in the prediction, and which 
 was to possess the land 1 It will at once be conceded, that 
 in whatever country any particular animal is unknown, 
 no proper translation of its name can there be given ; and 
 that for the purpose of designating or identifying it, refer- 
 ence must be had to the original name, and to the natural 
 history of the country in which it is known. And, without 
 any ambiguity or perplexity arising from the translation ol 
 the word, or any need of tracing it through any other lan- 
 guages to ascertain its import, the identical word of ihe 
 original, with scarcely the slightest variation (and that only 
 the want of the final vowel in the Hebrew word, vowels 
 in that language being often supplied in the enunciation, 
 or by points,) is, from the affinity of the Hebrew and Ara- 
 bic, used on the very spot by the Arabs, to denote the very 
 bird which may literally be said to possess the land. While 
 in the last inhabited village of Moab, and close upon the 
 borders of Edom, Burckhardt noted the animals which 
 frequented the neighbouring territory, in which he dis- 
 tinctly specifies Shera, the land of the Edoraites ; and he 
 relates that the bird katta is "met with in immense num- 
 bers. They fly in such large flocks that the Arab boys 
 often kill two or three of them at a time, merely by throw- 
 ing a stick among them." If any objector be here inclined 
 to say, that it is not to be wondered at that any particular 
 bird should be found in any given country, that it might 
 continue to remain for a term of ages, and that such a sur- 
 mise would not exceed the natural probabilities of the case, 
 the fact may be freely admitted as applicable, perhaps, to 
 most countries of the globe. But whoever, elsewhere, saw 
 any wild bird in any country, in flocks so immensely nu- 
 merous, that two or three of them could be killed by the 
 single throw of a stick from the hand of a boy ; and that 
 this could be stated, not as a forcible, and perhaps false, 
 illustration to denote their number, nor as a wonderful 
 chance or unusual incident, but as a fact of frequent oc- 
 currence 1 Whoever, elsewhere, heard of such a fact, not 
 as happening merely on a sea rock, the resort of myriads 
 of birds, on their temporary resting-place, when exhausted 
 in their flight, but in an extensive country, their permanent 
 abode"? Or if, among the manifold discoveries of travel- 
 lers in modern times, it were really related that such oc- 
 cupants of a country are to be found, or that a correspond- 
 ing fact exists in any other region of the earth which was 
 once tenanted bv man, who can also "find" in the records 
 of a high antiquity the prediction that declared it *? Of 
 what country now inhabited could 'he same fact be now 
 
Chap. 49. 
 
 JEREMIAH 
 
 509 
 
 with certainty foretold ; and where is the seer who can dis- 
 cern the vision, fix on the spot over the world's surface, 
 and select, from the whole winged tribe, the name of the 
 first in order and the greatest in number of the future and 
 chief possessors of the land'? 
 
 Of the bittern (kephud) as a joint possessor with the 
 katta of Idumea, evidence has not been given, or ascer- 
 tained ; — but numerous as the facts have been which mod- 
 ern discoveries have consigned over to the service of 
 revelation, that word of truth which fears no investigation 
 can appeal to other facts, unknown to history and still un- 
 discovered — but registered in prophecy, and there long 
 since revealed. 
 
 T'ke owl also and the raven {or crow) shall dwell in it. — 
 The owl and raven do dwell in it. Captain Mangles re- 
 lates, that while he and his fellow-travellers were examin- 
 ing the ruins and contemplating the sublime scenery of 
 Petra, " the screaming of the eagles, hawks, and owls, 
 who were soaring above their heads in considerable num- 
 bers, seemingly annoyed at any one approaching their lonely 
 habitation, added much to the singularity of the scene." 
 The fields of Tafyle, situated in the immediate vicinity 
 of Edom, are, according to the observation of Burckhardt, 
 frequented by an immense number of crows. " I expect- 
 ed," says Seetzen, (alluding to his purposed tour through 
 Idumea, and to the information he had received from the 
 Arabs,) " to make several discoveries in mineralogy, as 
 well as in the animals and vegetables of the country, on 
 the manna of the desert, the ravens," &c. 
 
 It shall be a habitation for dragons, {serpents.) I laid 
 his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. — The 
 evidence, though derived from testimony, and not from per- 
 sonal observation, of two travellers of so contrary characters 
 and views as Shaw and Volney, is so accordant and apposite, 
 that it may well be sustained in lieu of more direct proof. 
 The former represents the land of Edom, and the wilder- 
 ness of which it now forms part, as abounding with a 
 variety of lizards and vipers, which are very dangerous 
 and troublesome. And the narrative given by Volney, 
 already quoted, is equally decisive as to the fact. The 
 Arabs, in general, avoid the ruins of the cities of Idumea, 
 *' on account of the enormoits scorpionswith which they sioarm." 
 Its cities, thus deserted by man, and abandoned to their 
 undisturbed and hereditary possession, Edom may justly be 
 called the inheritance of dragons. 
 
 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild 
 beasts of the island, (or of the borders of the sea.) Instead 
 of these words of the English version, Parkhurst renders 
 the former the ravenous birds hunting the uiilderness. 
 This interpretation was given long before the fact to 
 which it refers was made known. But it has now been 
 ascertained (and without any allusion, on the other hand, 
 to the prediction) that eagles, hawks, and ravens, all 
 ravenous birds, are common in Edom, and do not fail to 
 illustrate the prediction as thus translated. But when 
 animals from different regions are said to meet, the prophe- 
 cy, thus implying that some of them at least did not proper- 
 ly pertain to the country, would seem to require some 
 further verification. And of all the wonderful circum- 
 stances attached to the history, or pertaining to the fate, of 
 Edom, there is one which is not to be ranked among the 
 least in singularity, that bears no remote application to the 
 prefixed prophecy, and that ought not, perhaps, to pass here 
 unnoted. It is recorded in an ancient chronicle, that the 
 Emperor Decius caused fierce lions and lionesses to be 
 transported from (the deserts of) Africa to the borders of 
 Palestine and Arabia, in order that, propagating there, they 
 might act as an annoyance and a barrier to the barbarous 
 Saracens : between Arabia and Palestine lies the doomed 
 execrated land of Edom. And may it not thus be added, 
 that a cause so unnatural and unforeseen would greatly 
 lend to the destruction of the flocks, and to the desolatioii 
 of all the adjoining territory, — and seem to be as if the king 
 of the forest was to take possession of it for his subjects'? 
 And may it not be even literally said that the toild beasts of the 
 desert meet there with the wild beasts of the borders of the sea 7 
 
 The satyr shall dwell there. — The satyr is enti^ly a fabu- 
 lous animal. The word (soir) literally means a rovgh, 
 hairy one ; and, like a synonymous word in both the Greek 
 and Latin languages which has the same signification, has 
 been translated bot'n ov •exicog'-aphers and commentators 
 i/V- ^Siu. Fafif fiufst savs. chat in this sense he would under- 
 
 stand this very passage; and Lowth distinctly asserts, with- 
 out assigning to it any other meaning, that " the word 
 originally signifies goat." Such respectable and well- 
 known authorities have been cited, because their decision 
 must have rested on criticism alone, as it was irripossible that 
 their minds could have been biased by any knowledge of 
 the fact in reference to Edom. It was their province, and 
 that of others, to illustrate its meaning — it was Burckhardt's, 
 however unconsciously, to bear, from ocular observation, 
 witness to its truth. " In all the Wadys south of the 
 Modjel and El Asha," (pointing to Edom,) " large herds of 
 mountain goats are met with. They pasture in flocks of 
 forty and fifty together." — They dwell there. 
 
 But the evidence respecting all the animals specified in 
 the prophecy, as the future possessors of Edom, is not yet 
 complete, and is difficult to be ascertained. And, in wordr 
 that seem to indicate this very difficulty, it is still reserved 
 for future travellers, — perhaps some unconscious Volney. 
 — to disclose the facts ; and for future inquirers, whethet 
 Christian or infidel, to seek out of the book of the Lord 
 and read ; and to " find that no one of these do fail." Yet, 
 recent as the disclosure of any information respecting them 
 has been, and offered, as it now for tb£ first time is, for the 
 consideration of every candid mind. The positive terms and 
 singleness of object of the prophecies themselves, and the 
 undesigned and decisive evidence, are surely enough to 
 show how greatly these several specific predictions and 
 their respective facts exceed all possibility of their being the 
 word or the work of man ; and how clearly there may be 
 discovered in them all, if sight itself be conviction, the 
 credentials of inspiration, and the operation of His hands, 
 — to whose prescience futurity is open, — to whose power 
 all nature is subservient, — and " whose mouth it hath com- 
 manded, and whose spirit it hath gathered them." 
 
 Noted as Edom was for its terribleness, and possessed of 
 a capital city, from which even a feeble people could not 
 easily have been dislodged, there scarcely could have been 
 a question, even among its enemies, to what people that 
 country would eventually belong. And it never could have 
 been thought of by any native of another land, as the Jew- 
 ish prophets were, nor by any uninspired mortal whatever, 
 that a kingdom which had previously subsisted so long, 
 (and in which princes ceased not to reign, commerce to 
 flourish, and " a people of great opulence" to dwell for 
 more than six hundred years thereafter,) would be finally 
 extinct, that all its cities would be for ever desolate, and 
 though it could have boasted more than any other land ot 
 indestructible habitations for men, that their habitations 
 would be desolate ; and that certain wild animals, mention- 
 ed by name, would in different manners and degrees pos- 
 sess the country from generation to generation. 
 
 TTiere shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau. 
 Edom shall be cut off for ever. The aliens of Judah ever 
 look with wistful eyes to the land of their fathers; but no 
 Edomite is now to be found to dispute the right of any 
 animal to the possession of it, or to banish the owl from the 
 temples and palaces of Edom. But the house of Esau did 
 remain, and existed in great power, till after the com- 
 mencement of the Christian era, a period far too remote 
 from the date of the prediction for their subsequent history 
 to have been foreseen by man. The Idumeans were soon 
 after mingled with the Nabatheans. And in the third cen- 
 tury their language was disused, and their very name, as 
 designating any people, had utterly perished; and their 
 country itself, having become an outcast from Syria, 
 among whose kingdoms it had long been numbered, was 
 united to Arabia Petrsea. Though the descendants of the 
 twin-born Esau and Jacob have met a diametrically oppo- 
 site fate, the fact is no less marvellous and undisputed, 
 than the prediction in each case is alike obvious and true. 
 While the posterity of Jacob have been " dispersed in every 
 country under heaven," and are " scattered among all na- 
 tions," and have ever remained distinct from them all, and 
 while it is also declared that "a full end will never be 
 made of them," the Edomites, though they existed as a na- 
 tion for more than seventeen hundred years, have, as a 
 period of nearly equal duration has proved, been cut off for 
 ever ; and while Jews are in every land, there is not any 
 remmning on any spot of earth of the house of Esau. 
 
 Idumea, in aid of a neighbouring state, did send forth, on 
 a sudden, an army of twenty thousand armed men,— it 
 contained at least eighteen towns, for centuries after the 
 
510 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 49. 
 
 Christian era, — successive kings and princes reigned in 
 Petra, — and magnificent palaces and temples, whose empty 
 chambers and naked walls of wonderful architecture still 
 fetrike the traveller with amazement, were constructed there, 
 at a period unquestionably far remote from the time when 
 it was given to the prophets of Israel to tell, that the house 
 of Esau was to be cut off for ever, that there would be no 
 kingdom there, and that wild animals would possess Edom 
 for a heritage. And so despised is Edom, and the memory 
 of its greatness lost, that there is no record of antiquity that 
 can so clearly show us what once it was in the days of its 
 power, as we can now read in the page of prophecy its 
 existing desolation. But in that place where kings kept 
 their court, and where nobles assembled, where manifest 
 proofs of ancient opulence are concentrated, where prince- 
 ly habitations, retaining their external grandeur, but be- 
 reft of all their splendour, still look as if "fresh from the 
 chisel," — even there no man dwells; it is given by lot to 
 birds, and beasts, and reptiles ; it is a " court for owls," and 
 scarcely are they ever frayed from their " lonely habita- 
 tion" by the tread of a solitary traveller from a far distant 
 land, among deserted dwellings and desolated ruins. 
 
 Hidden as the histqry and state of Edom has been for 
 ages, every recent disclosure, being an echo of the prophe- 
 cies, amply corroborates the truth, that the word of the 
 Lord does not return unto him void, but ever fulfils the 
 purpose for which he hath sent it. But the whole of its 
 work is not yet wrought in Edom, which has further testi- 
 mony in store : and while the evidence is not yet complete, 
 so neither is the time of the final judgments on the land yet 
 fully come. Judea, Ammon, and Moab, according to the 
 word of prophecy, shall revive from their desolation, and 
 the wild animals who have conjoined their depredations 
 with those of barbarous men, in perpetuating the desolation 
 of these countries, shall find a refuge and undisturbed pos- 
 session in Edom, when, the year of recompenses for the 
 controversy of Zion being past, it shall be divided unto 
 them by line, when they shall possess it for ever, and from 
 generation to generation shall dwell therein. But without 
 looking into futurity, a retrospect may here warrant, before 
 leaving the subject, a concluding clause. 
 
 That man is a bold believer, and must with whatever 
 reluctance forego the name of skeptic, who possesses such 
 redundant credulity as to think that all the predictions re- 
 specting Edom, and all others recorded in Scripture, and 
 realized by facts, were the mere haphazard results of for- 
 tuitous conjectures. And he who thus, without reflecting 
 how incongruous it is to " strain at a gnat and swallow a 
 camel," can deliberately, and with an unruflled mind, place 
 such an opinion among the articles of his faith, may indeed 
 be pitied by those who know in whom they have believed, 
 but, if he forfeit not thereby all right of ever appealing to 
 reason, must at least renounce all title to stigmatize, in 
 others, even the most preposterous belief. Or if such, after 
 all, must needs be his philosophical creed, and his rational 
 conviction ! what can hinder him from believing also that 
 other chance words — such as truly marked the fate of 
 Edorn, but more numerous and clear, and which, were he 
 to "seek out and read," he would find in the selfsame 
 " book of the Lord" — may also prove equally true to the 
 spirit, if not to the letter, against all the enemies of the 
 gospel, whether hypocrites or unbelievers'? May not his 
 belief in the latter instance be strengthened by the experi- 
 ence that man^ averments of Scripture, in respect to times 
 then future, and to facts then unknown, have already 
 proved true 1 And may he not here find some analogy, at 
 least, on which to rest his faith, whereas the conviction 
 which, in the former case, he so readily cherishes is totally 
 destitute of any resemblance whatever to warrant the possi- 
 bility of its truth 1 Or is this indeed the sum of his boasted 
 wisdom, to hold to the conviction of the fallacy of all the 
 coming judgments denounced in Scripture, till " experience," 
 personal though it should be, prove them to be as true as 
 the past, and a compulsory and unchangeable but unre- 
 deeming faith be grafted on despair '? Or if less proof can 
 possibly suflice, let him timely read, and examine, and dis- 
 prove also, all the credentials of revelation, before he ac- 
 count the believer credulous, or the unbeliever wise ; or 
 else let him abandon the thought that the unrepentant 
 iniquity and wilful perversity of man and an evil heart of 
 iinbelier(all proof derided, all offered mercy rejected, all 
 lueetness for an inheritance among them that are sanctified 
 
 unattained, and all warning lost) shall not finally forbid 
 that Edom stand alone — the seared and blasted monument 
 of the judgments of Heaven. 
 
 A word may here be spoken even to the wise. Were 
 any of the sons of men to be uninstructed in the fear of the 
 Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and in the know- 
 ledge of his word, which maketh wise unto salvation, and 
 to be thus ignorant of the truths and precepts of the gospel, 
 which should all tell upon every deed done in the body ; 
 what in such a case — if all their superior knowledge w^ere 
 unaccompanied by religious principles — would all mechan- 
 ical and physical sciences eventually prove but the same, 
 in kiiid, as the wisdom of the wise men of Edom 7 And 
 were they to perfect in astronomy, navigation, and mechanics 
 what, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Edomites began, 
 what would the moulding of matter to their will avail them, 
 as moral and accountable beings, if their own hearts were 
 not conformed to the Divine wilH and what would all their 
 labour be at last but strength spent for naught 1 For were 
 they to raise column above column, and again to hew a city 
 out of the cliffs of the rock, let but such another word of 
 that God whom they seek not to know go forth against it, 
 and all their mechanical ingenuity and labour would just 
 end in forming — that which Petra is, and which Rome 
 itself is destined to be — " a cage of every unclean and hate- 
 ful bird." The experiment has already been made ; it may 
 well and wisely be trusted to as much as those which mor- 
 tals make ; and it is set before us that, instead of provoking 
 the Lord to far worse than its repetition in personal judg- 
 ments against ourselves, we may be warned by the spirit 
 of prophecy, which is the testimony of Jesus, to hear and 
 obey the words of Him — " even of Jesus, who delivereth 
 from the wrath to come." For how much greater than any 
 degradation to which hewn but unfeeling rocks can be re- 
 duced, is that of a soul, which while in the body might have 
 been formed anew after the image of an all holy God, 
 and made meet for beholding His face in glory, passing 
 from spiritual darkness into a spiritual stale, where all 
 knowledge of earthly things shall cease to be power — where 
 all the riches of this world shall cease to be gain — where 
 the want of religious principles and of Christian virtues 
 shall leave the soul naked, as the bare and empty dwellings 
 in the clefts of the rocks — where the thoughts of worldly 
 wisdom, to which it was inured before, shall haunt it stil), 
 and be more unworthy and hateful occupants of the immor- 
 tal spirit than are the owls amid the palaces of Edom — and 
 where all those sinful passions which rested on the things 
 that were seen shall be like unto the scorpions which hold 
 Edom as their heritage for ever, and which none can now 
 scare away from among the wild vines that are there in- 
 twined around the broken altars where false gods were wor- 
 shipped ! — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 8. Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O inhab- 
 itants of Dedan ; for I will bring the calamity 
 of Esau upon him, the time that I will visit 
 him. 
 
 When the Arabs have drawn upon themselves the resent- 
 ment of the more fixed inhabitants of those countries, and 
 think themselves unable to stand against them, they with- 
 draw into the depths of the great wilderness, where none 
 can follow them. Thus also very expressly M. Savary, 
 (tom. ii. p. 8,) "always on their guard against tyranny, 
 on the least discontent that is given them, they pack up their 
 tents, load their camels with them, ravage the flat country, 
 and, loaded with plunder, plunge into the burning sands, 
 whither none can pursue them, and where they alone can 
 dwell." Is it not then most probable that the dioelling deep, 
 mentioned in these words, means their plunging far into 
 the deserts, rather than going into deep caves and dens, as 
 has been most commonly supposed 1 This explanation is 
 also strongly confirmed by verse 30. Flee, get yo^^, far off, 
 dwell deep. — Harmer. 
 
 The phrase to " dwell deep," in relation to the fixed in- 
 habitants of that city, and the kingdom of which it was the 
 capital, must therefore refer to the caverns in Galilee and 
 the neighbourhood, in whose capacious recesses they were 
 accustomed to take refuge in time of war. Or, if it signify- 
 to dwell far remote from the threatened danger, the many 
 other caverns beyond Damascus, towards Arabia, which 
 
i!:a|"fi!|ji"W|ii= 
 
 =.1 
 
Chap. 49. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 511 
 
 Ine prophet might allude to, were at a sufficient distance to 
 justify his language. Nor is it inconsistent with the man- 
 ners of the Arabians, as Harmer supposes, to retire into 
 caves and dens of the earth for shelter ; for the Bedouins 
 in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, who encamp near the 
 gates in the spring, inhabit grottoes in the winter. And 
 Mohammed mentions an Arabian tribe, that hewed houses 
 out of the mountains for their security. To these caverns, 
 both the wandering Arabs and the fixed inhabitants, cer- 
 tainly retreated in time of danger ; although the more com- 
 mon practice of the former, was to retire into the depth of 
 their terrible deserts, where no enemy could disturb their 
 repose.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and 
 the pride of thy heart, O thou that dwellest in 
 the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of 
 the hill : though thou shouldst make thy nest 
 as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down 
 from thence, saith the Lord. 
 
 In this beautiful passage, the prophet strictly adheres to 
 I'te truth of history. Esau subdued the original inhabit- 
 ants of Mount Hor, and seized on its savage and romantic 
 precipices. His descendants covered the sides of their 
 mountains " with an endless variety of excavated tombs 
 and private dwellings, worked out in all the symmetry and 
 regularity of art, with colonnades and pediments, and ranges 
 of corridors, adhering to the perpendicular surface." On 
 the inaccessible cliffs which, in some places, rise to the 
 height of seven hundred feet, and the barren and craggy 
 precipices which enclose the ruins of Petra, the capital of 
 the Nebataei, a once powerful but now forgotten people, the 
 eagle builds his nest, and screams for the safety of his 
 young, when the unwelcome traveller approaches his lonely 
 habitation. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 17. Also Edom shall be a desolation ; every 
 one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and 
 shall hiss at all the plagues thereof 18. As in 
 the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and 
 the neighbour cities thereof, saith the Lord, no 
 man shall abide there, neither shall a son of 
 man dwell in it. 
 
 Judea, Ammon, and Moab exhibit so abundantly the re- 
 mains and the means of an exuberant fertility, that the won- 
 der arises in the reflecting mind, how the barbarity of man 
 could have so effectually counteracted for so " many gen- 
 erations" the prodigality of nature. But such is Edom's 
 desolation, that the first sentiment of astonishment on the 
 contemplation of it is, how a wide-ext^ided region, now 
 diversified by the strongest features ot desert wildness, 
 could ever have been adorned witn cities, or tenanted for 
 ages by a powerful and opulent people. Its present aspect 
 would belie its ancient history, were not that history cor- 
 roborated by " the many vestiges of former cultivation," by 
 the remains of walls and paved roads, and by the ruins of 
 cities still existing in this ruined country. The total cessa- 
 tion of its commerce — the artificial irrigation of its valleys 
 wholly neglected — the destruction of all the cities, and the 
 continued spoliation of the country by the Arabs while 
 aught remained that they could destroy — the permanent 
 exposure, for ages, of the soil, unsheltered by its ancient 
 groves, and unprotected by any covering from the scorch- 
 ing rays of the sun — the unobstructed encroachments of 
 the desert, and of the drifted sands from the borders of the 
 Red Sea, the consequent absorption of the water of the 
 springs and streamlets during summer, are causes which 
 have all combined their baneful operation in rendering 
 Edom most desolate, the desolation of desolations. Volney's 
 account is sufficiently descriptive of the desolation which 
 now reigns over Idumea ; and the information which Seet- 
 zen derived at Jerusalem respecting it is of similar import. 
 He was told, that " at the distance of two days' journey and 
 a half from Hebron, he would find considerable ruins of 
 the ancient city of Abde, and that for all the rest of the 
 journey he would see no place of habitation ; he would meet 
 only with a few tribes of wandering Arabs." From the 
 borders of Edom, Captains Irby and Mangles beheld a 
 
 boundless extent of desert view, which they had hardly 
 ever seen equalled for singularity and grandeur. And the 
 following extract, descriptive of what Burckhardt actually 
 witnessed in the different parts of Edom, cannot be more 
 graphically abbreviated than in the words of the prophet. 
 Of its eastern boundary, and of the adjoining part of Arabia 
 Petraea, strictly so called, Burckhardt writes—" It might 
 with truth be called Petraea, not only on account of its 
 rocky mountains, but also of the elevated plain already de- 
 scribed, which is so much covered with stones, especially 
 flints, that it may with great propriety be called a stony 
 desert, although susceptible of culture : in many places it is 
 overgrown with wild herbs, and must once have been thick- 
 ly inhabited ; for the traces of many towns and villages are 
 met with on both sides of the Hadj road, betv/een Maan 
 and Akaba, as well as between Maan and the Plains of 
 Hauran, in which direction are also many springs. At 
 present all this country is a desert, and Maan (Teman) is 
 the only inhabited place in it." I will stretch out my hand 
 against thee, O Mount Seir, and will make thee most desolate. 
 I will stretch out my hand upon Edom, and will make it deso- 
 late from, Teman. 
 
 In the interior of Idumea, where the ruins of some of its 
 ancient cities are still visible, and in the extensive valley 
 which reaches from the Red to the Dead Sea — the appear- 
 ance of which must now be totally and sadly changed from 
 what it was — " the whole plain presented to the view an ex- 
 panse of shifting sands, whose surface was broken by in- 
 numerable undulations and low hills. The same appears 
 to have been brought from the shores of the Red Sea by the 
 southern winds ; and the Arabs told me that the valleys con- 
 tinue to present the same appearance beyond the latitude of 
 Wady Mousa. In some parts of the valley the sand is 
 very deep, and there is not the slightest appearance of a 
 road, or of any work of human art. A few trees grow 
 among the sand-hills, but the depth of sand precludes «//! 
 vegetation of herbage." If grape-gatherers come to thee, 
 would they not leave some gleaning grapes 7 if thieves by night, 
 they 7vill destroy till they have enough ; but I have made Esau 
 BARE. Edom shall be a desolate loilderness. " On ascending 
 the western plain, on a higher level than that of Arabia, we 
 had before us an immense expanse of dreary country, en- 
 tirely covered with black flints, with here and there some 
 hilly chain rising from the plain." I will stretch out upo7i 
 Idumea the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness. 
 
 Of the remains of ancient cities still exposed to view in 
 different places throughout Idumea, Burckhardt describes 
 " the ruins of a large town, of which nothing remains but 
 broken walls and heaps of stones ; the ruins of an ancient 
 city, consisting of large heaj)s of hewn blocks of silicious 
 stone ; the extensive ruins of Gherandel, Arindela, an an- 
 cient town of Palestina Tertia." " The following ruined 
 places are situated in Djebel Shera (Mount Seir) to the S. 
 and S. W. of Wady Mousa,— Kalaab, Djirba, Basta, Eyl, 
 Ferdakh, Anyk, Bir el Beytar, Shemakh, and Syk. Of the 
 towns laid down in DAnville's map, Thoana excepted, no 
 traces remain." Ivnll lay thy cities waste, and thou shall be 
 desolate. O Mount Seir, I will make thee perpetual desola- 
 tions ; and, thy cities shall not return. 
 
 While the cities of Idumea, in general, are thus most 
 desolate; and while the ruins themselves areas indiscrimi- 
 nate as they are undefined in the prediction, (there being 
 nothing discoverable, as there was nothing foretold, but their 
 excessive desolation, and that they shall not return,) there 
 is one striking exception to this promiscuous desolation, 
 which is alike singled out by the inspired prophet and by 
 the scientific traveller. 
 
 Burckhardt gives a description, of no ordinary interest, 
 of the site of an ancient city which he visited, the ruins of 
 which, not only attest its ancient splendour, but they "are 
 entitled to rank among the most curious remains of ancient 
 art." Though the city be desolate, the monuments of its 
 opulence and power are durable. These are — a channel 
 on each side of the river for conveying the water to the 
 city — numerous tombs — above two hundred and fifty sepul- 
 chres, or excavations — many mausoleums, one in particu- 
 lar, of colossaldimensions in perfect preservation, and a 
 work of immens( labour, containing a chamber sixteen 
 pace square and above twenty-five feet in height, with a 
 colonnade in front thirty-five feet high, crowned with a 
 pediment highly ornamented, &c.; two large truncated 
 pyramids, and a theatre with all its benches capable of con- 
 
512 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Cha^. 49. 
 
 taining about three thousand spectators, all aid out of the 
 rock. In some places these sepulchres are excavated one 
 over the other, and the side of the mountain is so perpen- 
 dicular, that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost, 
 no path whatever being visible. " The ground is covered 
 with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, frag- 
 ments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets, all clearly 
 indicating that a large city once existed here. On the left 
 bank of the river is a rising ground, extending westward 
 for nearly three quarters of a mile, entirely covered with 
 similar remains. On the right bank, where the ground is 
 more elevated, ruins of the same description are to be seen. 
 There are also the remains of a palace and of several tem- 
 ples. In the eastern cliff there are upwards of fifty separate 
 sepulchres close to each other." These are not the symbols 
 of a feeble race, nor of a people that were to perish utterly. 
 Bin a judgment was denounced against the strongholds of 
 Edom. The prophetic threatening has not proved an enipty 
 boast, and could not have been the word of an uninspired 
 mortal. " 1 will make thee small among the heathen; thy 
 terribleness hath deceived thee and the pride of thy heart, 
 O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that boldest 
 the height of the hill ; though thou shouldst make thy nest 
 as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, 
 saith the Lord : also Edom shall be a desolation." 
 
 These descriptions, given by the prophet and by the ob- 
 serv^er, are so analogous, and the precise locality of the 
 scene, from its peculiar and characteristic features, so 
 identified — and yet the application of the prophecy to the 
 fact so remote from the thoughts or view of Burckhardt as 
 to be altogether overlooked — that his single delineation of 
 the ruins of the chief (and assuredly the stronges-t and best- 
 fortified) city of Edom was deemed in the first edition of 
 this treatise, and in the terms of the preceding pa<ragraph, 
 an illustration of the prophecy alike adequate and legitimate. 
 And though deprecating any allusion whatever of a per- 
 sonal nature, and earnest for the elucidation of the truth, 
 the author yet trusts that he may here be permitted to dis- 
 claim the credit of having been the first to assign to the 
 prediction its wonder/ul and appropriate fulfilment ; and 
 it Ls with no slight gratification that he is now enabled to 
 adduce higher evidence than any opinion of his own, and 
 to state, that the selfsame prophecy has been applied by 
 others— with the Bible in their hands, and with the very 
 scene before them — to the selfsame spot. Yet it may be 
 added, that this coincident application of the prophecy, 
 'without any collusion, and without the possibility, at the 
 time, of any interchange of sentiment, aflfbrds, at least, a 
 strong presumptive evidence of the accuracy of the ap- 
 plication, and of the truth of the prophecy ; and it may 
 well lead to some reflection in the mind of any reader, 
 if skepticism has not barred every avenue against convic- 
 tion. 
 
 On entering the pass which conducts to the theatre of Pe- 
 tra, Captains Irby and Mangles remark : — " The ruins of the 
 city here burst on the view in their full grandeur, shut in on 
 the opposite side by barren craggy precipices, from which 
 numerous ravines and valleys branch out in all directions; 
 the sides of the mountains covered with an endless variety of 
 excavated tombs and private dwellings, ( O thou that dwellest 
 in the clefts of the rock, &c. Jer. xlix. 16,) presented al- 
 together the most singular scene we ever beheld." In still 
 further confirmation of the identity of the site, and the ac- 
 curacy of the application, it may be added, in the words of 
 Dr. Vincent, that " the name of this capital, in all the vari- 
 ous languages in which it occurs, implies a rock, and as 
 such it is described in the scriptures, in Strabo, and Al 
 Edrissi." And in a note he enumerates among the various 
 names having all the same signification — Sela, a rock, (the 
 very word here used in the original,) Petra, a rock, the 
 Greek name, and The Rock, pre-eminently — expressly re- 
 ferring to this passage of scripture. 
 
 Captains Irby and Mangles having, together with Mr. 
 Bankes and Mr. Legh, spent two days in diligently ex- 
 amining them, give a more particular detail of the ruins of 
 Petra than Burckhardt's account supplied ; and the more 
 full the description, the more precise and wonderful does 
 the prophecy appear. Near the snot where they awaited 
 the decision of the Arabs, " the nigh land was covered 
 upon both its sides, and on its summits, with lines and 
 iolid masses of dry wall. The former appeared to be 
 traces of ancient cultivation, the solid ruin seemed to be 
 
 only the remains of towers for watching in harvest and 
 vintage time. The whole neighbourhood of the spot bears 
 similar traces of former industry, all which seem to indi- 
 cate the vicinity of a great metropolis." A narrow and 
 circuitous defile, surrounded on each side by precipitous or 
 perpendicular rocks, varying from four hundred to' seven 
 hundred feet in altitude, and forming, for two miles, " a 
 sort of subterranean passage," opens on the east the way to 
 the ruins of Petra. The rocks or rather hills, then diverge 
 on either side, and leave an oblong space, where once stood 
 the metropolis of Edom, deceived by its terribleness, where 
 now lies a waste of ruins, encircled on every side, save on 
 the northeast alone, by stupendous cliffs, which still show 
 how the pride and labour of art tried there to vie with the 
 sublimity of nature. Along the borders of these cliffs, de- 
 tached masses of rock, numerous and lofty, have been 
 wrought into sepulchres, the interior of which is excavated 
 into chambers, while the exterior has been cut from the 
 live rock into the forms of towers, with pilasters, and suc- 
 cessive bands of frieze and entablature, wings, recesses, 
 figures of animals, and columns. 
 
 Yet, numerous as these are, they form but a part of " the 
 vast necroplis of Petra." " Tombs present themselves, not 
 only in every avenue to the city, and upon every precipice 
 that surrounds it, but even intermixed almost promiscuously 
 with its public and domestic edifices ; the natural features 
 of the defile grew more and more imposing at every step, 
 and the excavations and sculpture more frequent on both 
 sides, till it presented at last a continued street of tombs." 
 The base of the cliflfs wrought out in all the symmetry and 
 regularity of art, with colonnades, and pedestals, and ranges 
 of corridors adhering to the perpendicular surface ; flights 
 of steps chiselled out of the rock ; grottoes in great numbers, 
 " which are certainly not sepulchral ;" some excavated 
 residences of large dimensions, (in one of which is a single 
 chamber sixty feet in length, and of a breadth proportioned ;) 
 many other dwellings of inferior note, particularly abundant 
 in one defile leading to the city, the steep sides of which 
 contain a sort of excavated suburb, accessible by flights of 
 steps ; niches, sometimes thirty feet in excavated height, 
 with altars for votive oflferings, or with pyramids, columns, 
 or obelisks ; a bridge across a chasm now apparently inac- 
 cessible ; some small pyramids hewn out of the rock on the 
 summit of the heights; horizontal grooves, for the convey- 
 ance of water, cut in the face of the rock, and even across the 
 architectural fronts of some of the excavations ; and, in short, 
 " the rocks hollowed out into innumerable chambers of 
 different dimensions, whose entrances are variously, richly, 
 and often fantastically decorated with every imaginable or- 
 der of architecture" — all united, not only form one of the 
 most singular scenes that the eye of man ever looked upon, 
 or the imagination painted — a group of wonders perhaps 
 unparalleled in their kind— but also give indubitable proof, 
 both that in the land of Edom there was a city where hu- 
 man inoenuity, ant? energy, and power must have been ex- 
 erted for many ages, and to so great a degree as to have 
 well entitled it to be noted for its strength or terribleness, 
 and that the description given of it by the prophets of Israel 
 was as strictly literal as the prediction respecting it is true. 
 " The barren state of the country, together with the desolate 
 condition of the city, without a "single human being living 
 near it, seem," in the words of those who were spectators 
 of the scene, " strongly to verify the judgment denounced 
 against it." " O thou who dwellest in the clefts of the rock, 
 &c. — also Edom shall be a desolation," &c. 
 
 Of all the ruins of Petra, the mausoleums and sepulchres 
 are among the most remarkable, and they give the clearest 
 indication of ancient and long-continued royalty, and of 
 courtly grandeur. Their immense number corroborates 
 the accounts given of their successive kings and princes 
 by Moses and Strabo; though a period of eighteen hundred • 
 years intervened between the dates of their respective rec- 
 ords concerning them. The structure of the sepulchres 
 also shows that many of them are of a more recent date. 
 " Great," says Burckhardt, "must have been the opulence 
 of a city which could dedicate such monuments to the 
 memory of its rulers." But the long line of the kings and 
 of the nobles of Idumea has for ages been cut off"; they are 
 without any representative now, without any memorial but 
 the multitude and the magnificence of their nnvisited sepul- 
 chres. " They shall call the nobles thereof to the kirgdom, 
 (or rather, they shall call, or summon, the nobles thereof,) S 
 
• 
 
Chap. 49—51. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 513 
 
 but there shall be no kingdom there, and all her princes 
 shall be nothing." 
 
 Amid the mausoleums and sepulchres, the remains of 
 temples or palaces, and the multiplicity of tombs, which all 
 form, as it were, the grave of Idumea, where its ancient 
 splendcwr is interred, there are edifices, the Roman and 
 Grecian architecture of which decides that they were buUt 
 long posterior to the era of the prophets. — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 19. Behold, he shall come up like a lion 
 from the swelling of Jordan against the habita- 
 tion of the strong: but I will suddenly make 
 him ran away from her ; and who is a chosen 
 man, that I may appoint over her ? for who is 
 like me? and who will appoint me the time? and 
 who is that shepherd that will stand before me? 
 See on Josh. 3. 15. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 Ver. 2. Declare ye among the nations, and pub- 
 lish, and set up a standard ; publish, and con- 
 ceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is con- 
 founded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her 
 idols are confounded, her images are broken in 
 pieces. 
 
 As it was generally believed that the divinity abandoned 
 any figure or imp.ge which was mutilated or broken, this 
 prophetic declaration may be considered as asserting the 
 destruction of the idols. Such a sentiment still prevails 
 among the heathen. Dr. Buchanan, who visited many In- 
 dian provinces at the commencement of the seventeenth 
 century, mentions that a Polygar chief, about two hundred 
 and fifty years before, had been directed by the god Ganesa 
 to search for treasures imder a certain image, and to erect 
 temples and reservoirs with whatever money he should find. 
 " The treasures were accordingly found, and applied as 
 directed ; the image from under which the treasures hp.d 
 been taken was shown to me, and I was surprised at find- 
 ing it lying at one of the gates quite neglected. On asking 
 the reason why the people allowed their benefactor to re- 
 main in such a plight, he informed me, that the finger of 
 the image having been broken, the divinity had deserted it : 
 for no mutilated image is considered as habitable by a god." 
 
 -BURDER. 
 
 Merodach was a name, or a title, common to the princes 
 and kings of Babylon, of which, in the brief scriptural ref- 
 erences to their history, two instances are recorded, viz. 
 Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, King of Babylon, 
 who exercised the office of government, and Evil-Merodach, 
 who lived in the days of Jeremiah. From Merodach being 
 here associated with Bel, or the temple of Belus, and from 
 the similarity of their judgments — the one howed down and 
 confounded, and the other broken in pieces — it may reasona- 
 bly be inferred that some other famous Babylonian building 
 is here also denoted ; while, at the same time, from the ex- 
 press identity of the name with that of the kings of Baby- 
 lon, and even with Evil-Merodach, then residing there, it 
 may with equal reason be inferred Xhat, imder the name of 
 Merodach, the palace is spoken of by the prophet. And next 
 to the idolatrous temple, as the seat of false worship which 
 corrupted and destroyed the nations, it may well be imagined 
 that the royal residence of the despot who made the earth 
 to tremble and oppressed the people of Israel, would be 
 selected as the marked object of the righteous judgments of 
 God. And secondary only to the Birs Nimrood in the great- 
 ness of its ruins is the Mujelibe, or Makloube, generally 
 understood and described by travellers as the remains of 
 the chief palace of Babylon. 
 
 The palace of the King of Babylon almost vied with the 
 great temple of their god. And there is now some contro- 
 versy, in which of the principal mountainous heaps the one 
 or the other lies buried. But the utter desolation of both 
 .eaves no room for any debate on the question, — which of 
 the twain is bonded down and confounded, and which of them 
 is broken in pieces. The two palaces, or castles, of Babylon 
 were strongly fortified. And the larger was surrounded 
 by three walls of great extent. When the city was sud- 
 denly taken by Demetrius, he seized on one of the castles by 
 65 
 
 surprise, and displaced its garrison by seven thousand of 
 his own troops, whom he stationed within it. Of the other 
 he could not make himself master. Their extent and 
 strength, at a period of three hundred years after the deliv- 
 ery of the prophecy, are thus sufficiently demonstrated. 
 The solidity of the structure of the greater as well as of 
 the lesser palace, might have warranted the belief of its un- 
 broken durability for ages. — And never was there a build- 
 ing whose splendour and magnificence were in greater con- 
 trast to its present desolation. The vestiges of the walls 
 which surrounded it are still to be seen, and serve with 
 other circumstances to identify it with the Mujelibe, as the 
 name Merodach is identified with the palace. It is broken 
 in pieces, and hence its name Mujelibe, signifying over- 
 turned, or turned upside down. Its circumference is about 
 half a mile ; its height one hundred and forty feet. But it 
 is " a mass of confusion, none of its members being distin- 
 guishable." The existence of chambers, passages, and cel- 
 lars, of different forms and sizes, and built of different ma- 
 terials, has been fully ascertained. It is the receptacle of 
 wild beasts, and full of doleful creatures; wild beasts cry 
 in the desolate houses, and dragons in the pleasant palaces — 
 " venomous reptiles being very numerous throughout the 
 ruins." "All the sides are worn into furrows by the 
 weather, and in some places where several channels of rain 
 have united together, these furrows are of great depth, and 
 penetrate a considerable way into the mound." " The sides 
 of the ruin exhibit hollows worn partly by the weather." It 
 is brought down to the grave, to the sides of the pit. — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 8. Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and 
 go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and 
 be as the he-goats before the flocks. 
 
 From this passage it appears that it was customary with 
 the ancient Israelites to have he-goats among their flocks of 
 sheep, and that in travelling the goats went foremost. The 
 same judicious custom exists in South Africa to this day 
 The goat possesses much more fortitude than the sheep, and 
 is more forM'ard in advancing through difficulties, espe- 
 cially in crossing rivers; and the sheep, who are not fond 
 of such exploits, implicitly follow them. While travelling 
 in Africa, I was obliged to have a small flock of sheep, to 
 secure food when game was scarce; and as instigators to 
 bold and rapid travelling, I was necessitated always to have 
 a few goats in the flock. They always took the lead, espe- 
 cially in crossing rivers, one of which, the Great Orange 
 River, was about a quarter of a mile across, and there the 
 goats behaved nobly. Had they been rational creatures I 
 should have returned them public thanks. The goats, 
 always taking the lead among the sbeeji, seem as if sensible 
 of possessing superior mental powers. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 38. A drought i/upon her waters ; and they 
 shall be dried up : for it is the land of graven 
 images, and they are mad upon their idols. 
 
 Fully to understand this passage, a person must see the 
 phrensy of the heathen when they get a sight of their idols., 
 Thus, when the gods are taken out in procession, the mul- 
 titudes shout, and the priests mutter and rave. The ges- 
 tures are all distorted, -and the devotees are afl^ected with 
 alternate sorrow or joy.— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 Ver. 13. O thou that dwellest upon many waters, 
 abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and 
 the measure of thy covetousness. 
 
 On taking Babylon suddenly and by surprise, Cyrus be- 
 came immediately possessed of the treasures of darkness, 
 and hidden riches of secret places. On his first publicly ap- 
 pearing in Babylon, all the officers of his army, both of the 
 Persians and allies, according to his command, wore very 
 splendid robes, those belonging to the .'superior officers 
 being of various colours, all of the finest and brightest die, 
 and richly embroidered with gold and silver ; and thus the 
 hidde^i riches of secret places were openly displayed. And 
 when the treasures of Babylon became the spoil of another 
 great king, Alexander gave six mina; {about 151.) to each 
 Macedonian horseman, to each Macedonian solaier and 
 
514 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 51. 
 
 foreign horseman two mincB, (61.) and to every other man 
 in his army a donation equal to two months' pay. Deme- 
 trius ordered his soldiers to plunder the land of Babylon 
 for their own use. — But it is not in these instances alons 
 that Chaldea has been a spoil, and that all who spoil her 
 have been satisfied. It was the abundance of her treasures 
 which brought successive spoliators. Many nations came 
 from afar, and though they returned to their own country, 
 (as in formerly besieging Babylon, so in continuing to de- 
 spoil the land of Chaldea,) none returned in vain. From 
 the ri( hness of the country, new treasures were speedily 
 stored up, fill again the sword came upon thevi, and they were 
 robbed. The prey of the Persians and of the Greeks for 
 nearly two centuries after the death of Alexander, Chaldea 
 became afterward the prey chiefly of the Parthians, from 
 the north, for an equal period, till a greater nation, the Ro- 
 mans, came from the coasts of the earth to pillage it. To be 
 restrained from dominion and from plunder was the exci- 
 ting cause, and often the shameless plea, of the anger and 
 fierce wrath of these famed, but cruel, conquerors of the 
 world. Yet, within the provinces of their empire, it was 
 their practice, on the submission, of the inhabitants, to pro- 
 tect and not to destroy. But Chaldea, from its extreme dis- 
 tance, never having yielded permanently to their yoke, and 
 the limits of their empire having been fixed by Hadrian on 
 the western side of the Euphrates, or on the very borders of 
 Chaldea, that hapless country obtained not their protection, 
 though repeatedly the scene of ruthless spoliation by the 
 Romans. The authority of Gibbon, in elucidation of 
 Scripture, cannot be here distrusted, any more than that of 
 heathen historians. To use his words, " a hundred thou- 
 sand captives, and a rich booty, rewarded the fatigues of the 
 Roman soldiers," when Ctesiphon was taken, in the second 
 century, by the generals of Marcus. Even Julian, who, in 
 the fourth century, was forced to raise the siege of Ctesi- 
 phon, came not in vain to Chaldea, and failed not to take of 
 it a spoil ; nor, though an apostate, did he fail to verify by 
 his acts the truth which he denied. After having given 
 Perisador to the flames, " the plentiful magazines of corn, 
 of arms, and of splendid furniture, were partly distributed 
 among the troops, and partly reserved for the public service ; 
 the useless stores were destroyed bv fire, or thrown into the 
 stream of the Euphrates." (Gibbon.) Having also re- 
 warded his army with a hundred pieces of silver to each 
 soldier, he thus stimulated them (when still dissatisfied) to 
 fig^t for greater spoil—" Riches are the object of your de- 
 sires 1 those riches are in the hands of the Persians, and 
 the spoils of this fruitful country are proposed as the prize 
 of your valour and discipline." The enemy being defeated 
 after an arduous conflict, " the spoil was such as might be 
 expected from the riches and luxury of an oriental camp ; 
 large quantities of silver and gold, splendid arms and trap- 
 pings, and beds and tables of massy silver." (Il?id^ 
 
 When the Romans under Heraclius ravaged Chaldea, 
 " though much of the treasure had been removed from De- 
 stagered, and much had been expended, the remaining 
 wealth appears to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have 
 SATIATED their avarice." While the deeds of Julian and 
 the words of Gibbon show how Chaldea was spoiled — how 
 a sword continued to be on her treasures— axiA how, year 
 after year, and age after age, there was rumour on rumour 
 and violence in her land— more full, illustrations remain to 
 be given of the truth of the same prophetic word. And as 
 a painter of great power may cope with another by drawing 
 as closely to the life as he, though the features be different, 
 so Gibbon's description of the sack of Ctesiphon, as pre- 
 viously he had described the sack and conflagration of Se- 
 leucia, (cities each of which may aptly be called " the 
 daughter of Babylon," having been, like it, the capital of 
 Chaldea,) is written as if, by the most graphic representa- 
 tion of facts, he had been aspiring to rival Volney as an 
 illustrator of scripture prophecy. "The capital was taken 
 by assault ; and the disorderly resistance of the people gave 
 a keener edge to the sabres of the Moslems, who shouted 
 with religious transport, ' This is the white palace of 
 Chosroes ; this is the promise of the apostle of God.' The 
 naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond 
 the measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber 
 revealed a new treasure, accreted with art, or ostentatiously 
 displayed; the gold and silver, the various waidrobes an^ 
 precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda^ the estimate 
 of faficy or numbers; and another historian defines the un- 
 
 told and almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation 
 of three thousand of thousands of thousands of pieces of 
 gold. One of the apartments of the palace was decorated 
 with a carpet of silk sixty cubits in length and as many in 
 breadth, (90 feet ;) a paradise, or garden, was depicted on 
 the ground ; the flowers, fruits, and shrubs, were imitated 
 by the figures of the gold embroidery, and the colours of the 
 precious stones : and the ample square was encircled by a 
 variegated and verdant border. The rigid Omar divided 
 the prize among his brethren of Medina; the picture was 
 destroyed ; but such was the intrinsic value of the materials, 
 that the share of Ali alone was sold for 20,000 drachms. A 
 mule that carried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and 
 bracelets of Chosroes, was overtaken by the pursuers ; the 
 gorgeous trophy was presented to the commander of the 
 faithful, and the gravest of the companions condescended 
 to smile when they beheld the white beard, hairy arms, and 
 uncouth figure of the veteran, who was invested with the 
 spoil of the great king." 
 
 Recent evidence is not wanting to show that, wherever 
 a treasure is to be found, a sword, in the hand of a fierce 
 enemy, is upon it, and spoliation has not ceased in the land 
 of Chaldea. " On the west of Hilleh, there are two towns 
 which, in the eyes of the Persians and all the Shiites, are 
 rendered sacred by the memory of two of the greatest mar- 
 tyrs of that sect. These are Meshed Ali and Meshed 
 Housien, lately filled with riches, accumulated by the de- 
 votion of the Persians, but carried off by the ferocious Wa- 
 habees to the middle of their deserts." 
 
 And after the incessant spoliation of ages, now that the 
 end is come of the treasures of Chaldea, the earth itself fails 
 not to disclose its hidden treasures, so as to testify, that they 
 once were abundant. In proof of this an instance may be 
 given. At the ruins of Hoomania, near to those of Ctesi- 
 phon, pieces of silver having (on the 5th of March, 1812) 
 been accidentally discovered, edging out of the bank of the 
 Tigris ; " on examination there were found and brought 
 away," by persons sent for that purpose by the pacha of 
 Bagdad's officers, " between six and seven hundred ingots 
 of silver, each measuring from one to one and a half feet in 
 length ; and an earthen jar, containing upwards of two 
 thousand Athenian coins, all of silver. Many were pur- 
 chased at the time by the late Mr. Rich, formerly the East 
 India Company's resident at Bagdad, and are now in his 
 valuable collection, since bought by government, and depo- 
 sited in the British Museum." Amid the ruins of Ctesiphon 
 " the natives often pick up coins of gold, silver, and copper, 
 for which they always- find a ready sale in Bagdad. In- 
 deed, some of the wealthy Turks and Armenians, who are 
 collecting for several I^rench and German consuls, hire 
 people to go and search for coins, medals, and antique gems ; 
 and I am assured they never return to their employers emp- 
 ty-handed," as if all who spoil Chaldea shall be satisfied, till 
 even the ruins be spoiled mdo the uttermost. — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 25. Behold, I am against thee, O destroying 
 mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all 
 the earth ; and I will stretch out my hand upon 
 thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and 
 will make thee a burnt mountain. 
 
 On the summit of the hill are " immense fragments ol 
 brick-work of no determinate figures, tumbled together, 
 and converted into solid vitrified masses." " Some of these 
 huge fragments measured twelve feet in height, by twenty- 
 four in circumference ; and from the circumstance of the 
 standing brick- work having remained in a perfect state, the 
 change exhibited in these is only accountable from their 
 having been exposed to the fiercest, fire, or rather scathed by 
 lightning.'" " They are completely molten— a strong pre- 
 sumption that fire was used in the destruction of the tower, 
 which, in parts, resembles what the scriptures prophesied 
 it should become, ' a burnt mountain.' In the denunciation 
 respecting Babylon, fire is particularly mentioned as an 
 agent against it. To this Jeremiah evidently alludes, when 
 he says that it should be ' as when God overthrew Sodom 
 and Gomorrah,' on which cities, it is said, 'the Lord rain- 
 ed brimstone and fire.'—' Her high gates shall be burned 
 with fire, and the people shall labour in vain, and the folk 
 in the fire, and they shall be weary.' " " In many of these 
 immense unshapen masses might be traced the gradual ef« 
 
Chap. 51. 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 515 
 
 fects of the consuming power, which had produced so re- 
 markable an appearance; exhibiting parts burnt to that 
 variegated dark hue, seen in the vitrified matter lying about 
 in glass manufactories; while, through the whole of these 
 awful testimonies of the fire (whatever fire it was !) which, 
 doubtless, hurled them from their original elevation," (/ 
 ^oiU roll thee down from the rocks,) " the regular lines of the 
 cement are visible, and so hardened in common with the 
 bricks, that when the masses are struck they ring like glass. 
 On examining the base of the standing wall, contiguous to 
 these huge transmuted substances, it is found tolerably free 
 from any similar changes — in short, quite in its original 
 .state; iience," continues Sir Robert Ker Porter, " I draw 
 the conclusion, that the consuming power acted from above, 
 and that the scattered ruin fell from some higher point than 
 the summit of the present standing fragment. The heat of 
 the fire which produced such amazing effects must have 
 burned with the force of the strongest furnace ; and from 
 the general appearance of the cleft in the wall, and these 
 vitrified masses, I should be induced to attribute the catas- 
 trophe to lightning from heaven. Ruins by the explosion 
 of any combustible matter would have exhibited very dif- 
 ferent appearances." 
 
 " The falling masses bear evident proof of the operation 
 of fire having been continued on them, as well after they 
 were broken down as before, since every part of their sur- 
 face has been so equally exposed to it, that many of them 
 have acquired a rounded form, and in none can the place 
 of separation from its adjoining one be traced by any ap- 
 pearance of superior freshness, of" any exemption from the 
 influence of the destroying flame." 
 
 The high gates of the temple of Belus, which were stand- 
 ing in the time of Herodotus, have been burnt with fire ; 
 the vitrified masses which fell when Bel bowed down rest on 
 the top of its stupendous ruins. " The hand of the Lord 
 has been stretched upon it; it has been rolled down from 
 the rocks, and has been made a burnt mountain," — of which 
 it was further prophesied, '•' They shall not take of thee a 
 stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations, but thou 
 shalt be desolate for ever, saith the Lord." The old wastes 
 of Zion shall be built ; its former desolations shall be 
 raised up : and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her 
 own place, even in Jerusalem. But it shall not be with 
 Bel as with Zion, nor with Babylon as with Jerusalem. 
 For as the " heaps of rubbish impregnated with nitre" 
 which cover the site of Babylon " cannot be cultivated," so 
 the vitrified masses on the summit of Birs Nimrood cannot 
 be rebuilt. Though still they be of the hardest substance, 
 and indestructible by the elements, and though once they 
 formed the highest pinnacles of Belus, yet, incapable of be- 
 ing hewn into any regular form, they neither are nor can 
 now be taken for a corner or for foundations. And the 
 bricks on the solid fragments of wall, which rest on the 
 summit, though neither scathed nor molten, are so firmly 
 cemented, that, according to Mr. Rich, " it is nearly impos- 
 sible to detach any of them whole," or, as Captain Mignan 
 still more forcibly states, " they are so firmly cemented, 
 that it is utterly impossible to detach any of them." " My 
 most violent attempts," says Sir Robert Ker Porter, " could 
 not separate them." And Mr. Buckingham, in assigning 
 reasons for lessening the wonder at the total disappearance 
 of the walls at this distant period, and speaking of the Birs 
 Nimrood generally, observes, " that the burnt bricks (the 
 only ones sought after) which are found in the Mujelibe, 
 the Kasr, and the Birs Nimrood, the only three great mon- 
 uments in which there are any traces of their having been 
 used, are so difficult, in the two last indeed so impossible, 
 to be extracted whole, from the tenacity of the cement in 
 which they are laid, that they could never have been resort- 
 ed to while any considerable portion of the walls existed to 
 furnish an easier supply: even now, though some portion of 
 the mounds on the eastern bank of the river," (the Birs is 
 on the western side,) " are occasionally dug into for bricks, 
 they are not extracted without a comparatively great expense, 
 and very few of them whole, in proportion to the great num- 
 ber of fragments that come up with them." Around the 
 tower there is not a single whole brick to be seen. 
 
 These united testimonies, given without allusion to the 
 prediction, afl^brd a better than any conjectural commenta- 
 ry, such as previously was given without reference to these 
 facts. While of Babylon, in general, it is said, that it 
 would be taken from thence ; and while, in many places, no- 
 
 thing is left, yet of the burnt mountain, which forms an ac- 
 cumulation of ruins enough in magnitude to build a city, 
 men do not take a stone for foundations, nor a stone for a 
 corner. Having undergone the action of the fiercest fire, 
 and being completely molten, the masses on the summit of 
 Bel, on which the hand of the Lord has been stretched, 
 cannot be reduced i-.'.o any other form or substance, nor 
 built up again by the hand of man. And the tower of Ba- 
 bel, afterward the temple of Belus, which witnessed the 
 first dispersion of mankind, shall itself be witnessed by the 
 latest generation, even as now it stands, desolate for ever, — • 
 an indestructible monument of human pride and folly, and 
 of Divine judgment and truth. The greatest of the ruins, 
 as one of the edifices of Babylon, is rolled down into avast, 
 indiscriminate, cloven, confounded, useless, and blasted 
 mass, from which fragments might be hurled with as little 
 injury to the ruined heap, as from a bare and rocky mount- 
 ain's side. Such is the triumph of the word of the living 
 God over the proudest of the temples of Baal. — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 27. Set ye up a standard in the land, blow 
 the trumpet among the nations, prepare the na- 
 tions against her, call together against her the 
 kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz ; 
 appoint a captain against her ; cause the horses 
 to come up as the rough caterpillars. 
 
 Some think locusts are meant, instead of caterpillars; and 
 one reason assigned is, that they " have the appearance of 
 horses and horsemen." Others translate, " bristled locusts." 
 There are bristled caterpillars in the East, which at certain 
 seasons are extremely numerous and annoying. They creep 
 along in troops like soldiers, are covered with stiflT hairs or 
 bristles, which are so painful to the touch, and so powerful 
 in their effects, as not to be entirely removed for many day ^:. 
 Should one be swallowed, it Avill cause death : hence people, 
 at the particular season when they are numerous, are very 
 cautious in examining their water vessels, lest any should 
 have fallen in. In the year 1826, a family at Manipy had 
 to arise early in the morning to go to their work, and they 
 therefore prepared their rice the evening before. They 
 were up before daylight, and took their food: in the course 
 of a short time they were all ill, and some of them died du- 
 ring the day. The rice chatty was examined, and there 
 were found the remains of the micutty, the rough caterpil- 
 lar. Dr. Hawkesworth says, of those he saw in the West 
 Indies, "their bodies were thick set with hairs, and they 
 were ranging on the leaves side by side, like files of sol- 
 diers, to the number of twenty or thirty together. When 
 we touched them, we found their bodies had the qualities 
 of nettles." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 36. Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, 
 I will plead thy cause, and take vengeance for 
 thee ; and I will dry up her sea, and make her 
 springs dry. 37. And Babylon shall become 
 heaps, a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonish- 
 ment, and a hissing, without an inhabitant. 
 
 On the one side, near to the site 6f Opis, " the country aL 
 around appears to be one wide desert of sandy and barren 
 soil, thinly scattered over with brushwood and tufts ot 
 reedy grass." On the other, between Bussorah and Bag- 
 dad, " immediately on either bank of the Tigris, is the un- 
 trodden desert. The absence of all cultivation, — the steril, 
 arid, and wild character of the whole scene, formed a con- 
 trast to the rich and delightful accounts delineated in scrip- 
 ture. The natives, in travelling over these pathless des- 
 erts, are compelled to explore their way by the stars." 
 " The face of the country is open and flat, presenting to the 
 eye one vast level plain, where nothing is to be seen but 
 here and there a herd of half-wild camels. This immense 
 tract is very rarely diversified with any trees of moderate 
 growth, but is an immense wild, bounded only by the hori- 
 zon." In the intermediate region, " the whole extent from 
 the foot of the wall of Bagdad is a barren waste, without a 
 blade of vegetation of anydescription; on leaving the gates, 
 the traveller has before him the prospect of a bare desert, — 
 a flat and barren cc ontrv." " The whole country between 
 Bagdad and Hillah is a'perfectly flat and (with the excep- 
 
516 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 51. 
 
 tion of a few spots as you approach the latter place) uncul- 
 tivated waste. That it was at some former period in a far 
 different state, is evident from the number of canals by 
 which it is traversed, now dry and neglected ; and the 
 quantity of heaps of earth covered with fragments of brick 
 and broken tiles, which are seen in every direction,— the 
 indisputable traces of former population. At present the 
 only inhabitants of the tract are the Sobeide Arabs. Around, 
 as far as the eye can reach, is a trackless desert." " The 
 abundance of the country has vanished as clean away as if 
 the 'besom of desolation' had swept it from north to south ; 
 the whole land, from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest 
 stretch of sight, lying a melancholy waste. Not a habitable 
 spot appears for countless miles." The laiid of Babylon is 
 desolate., without an inhabitant. The Arabs traverse it ; and 
 every man met with in the desert is looked on as an enemy. 
 Wild beasts have now their home in the land of Chaldea ; 
 but the traveller is less afraid of them, — even of the lion, — 
 than of " the wilder animal, the desert Arab." The coun- 
 try is frequently " totally impassable." " Those splendid 
 accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain 
 two or three hundred-fold, compared with the modern face 
 of the country, afford a remarkable proof of the singular 
 ^ desolation to which it has been subjected. The canals at 
 present can only be traced by their decayed banks." 
 
 " The soil of this desert," says Captain Mignan, who 
 traversed it on foot, and who, in a single day, crossed forty 
 water-courses, " consists of a hard clay, mixed with sand, 
 which at noon became so heated with the sun's rays that I 
 found it too hot to walk over it with any degree of comfort. 
 Those who have crossed those desert wilds are already ac- 
 quainted with their dreary tediousness even on horseback ; 
 what it is on foot they can easily imagine." Where astron- 
 omers first calculated eclipses, the natives, as in the des- 
 erts of Africa, or as the mariner without a compass on the 
 pathless ocean, can now direct their course only by the 
 stars, over the pathless desert of Chaldea. Where cultiva- 
 tion reached its utmost height, and where two hundred-fold 
 was stated as the common produce, there is now one wide 
 and uncultivated waste ; and the sower and reaper are cut 
 off from the land of Babylon. Where abundant stores and 
 treasures were laid up, and annually renewed and increased, 
 fanners ha.ve fanned, and spoilers have spoiled them till they 
 have emptied the land. Where labourers, shaded by palm- 
 trees a hundred feet high, irrigated the fields till all was 
 plentifully watered from numerous canals, the wanderer, 
 without an object on which to fix his eye, but " stinted and 
 short-lived shrubs," can scarcely set his foot without pain, 
 after the noonday heat, on the " arid and parched ground," 
 in plodding his weary way through a desert, a dry land, 
 and a wilderness. Where there were crowded thorough- 
 fares, from city to city, there is now " silence and solitude ;" 
 for the ancient cities of Chaldea are desolations,— where 
 no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass there- 
 by. — Keith. 
 
 Ver, 42. The sea is come up upon Babylon : she 
 is covered with the multitude of the waves 
 thereof 
 
 This metaphor is in common use to show the overwhelm- 
 ing power of an enemy. " Tippoo Saib went down upon 
 his foes, like the sea he swept them all away." " True, 
 true, the British troops went like the sea upon Bhurtpore, 
 the forts have been carried away." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 58. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, The 
 broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, 
 and her high gates shall be burnt with fire; 
 and the people shall labour in vain, and the 
 folk in the fire, and they shall be weary. 
 
 They were so broad, that, as ancient historians relate, 
 six cTiariots could be driven on them abreast ; or a chariot 
 and four horses might pass and turn. Thev existed as 
 walls for more than a thousand years afler the prophecy 
 was delivered ; and long after the sentence of utter destruc- 
 tion had gone forth against them, they were numbered 
 among " the seven wonders of the world." And what can 
 be more wonderful now, or what could have been more in- 
 conceivable by man, when Babylon was in its strength and 
 
 glory, than that the broad walls of Babylon should be so 
 utterly broken that it cannot be determined with certainty 
 that even the slightest vestige of them exists. 
 
 " All accounts agree," says Mr. Rich, "in the height of 
 the walls, which was fifty cubits, having been reduced to 
 these dimensions from the prodigious height <5f three hun- 
 dred and fifty feet" (formerly stated, by the lowest compu- 
 tation of the length of the cubit, at three hundred feet,) 
 " by Darius Hystaspes, after the rebellion of the town, in 
 order to render it less defensible. 1 have not been fortunate 
 enough to discover the least trace of them in any part of the 
 ruins at Hillah ; which is rather an unaccountable circum- 
 stance, considering that they survived the final ruin of the 
 town, long after which they served as 'an enclosure for a 
 park ; in which comparatively perfect state St. Jerome in- 
 forms us they remained in his time." 
 
 In the sixteenth century they were seen for the last time 
 by any European traveller, (so far as the author has been 
 able to trace,) before they were finally so utterly broken as 
 totally to disappear. And it is interesting to mark both the 
 time and the manner in which the walls of Babylon, like 
 the city of which they were the impregnable yet unavailing 
 defence, were brought down to the grave, to be seen no 
 more. 
 
 " The meanwhile," as Rauwolf describes them, " when 
 we were lodged there, I considered and viewed this ascent, 
 and found that there were two behind one another," (He- 
 rodotus states that there was both an inner, or inferior, and 
 outer wall,) " distinguished by a ditch, and extending them- 
 selves like unto two parallel %-«Z/s a great way about, and that 
 they were open in some places, where one might go through 
 like gates ; wherefore I believe that they were the wall of 
 the old town that went about them ; and that the places 
 where they were open have been anciently the gates (where- 
 of there were one hundred) of that town. And this the rather 
 because I saw in some places under the sand (wherewith the 
 two ascents were almost covered) the old wall plainly appear." 
 
 The cities of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Destagered, Kufa, and 
 anciently many others in the vicinity, together with the 
 more modern towns of Mesched Ali, Mesched Hussein, and 
 Hillah, " with towns, villages, and caravansaries without 
 number," have, in all probability, been chiefly built out of 
 the walls of Babylon. Like the city, the walls have been 
 taken from thence, till none of them are left. The rains of 
 many hundred years, and the waters coming upon them 
 annually by the overflowing of the Euphrates, have also, 
 in all likelihood, washed down the dust and rubbish from 
 the broken and dilapidated walls into the ditch from which 
 they were originally taken, till at last the sand of the parch- 
 ed desert has smoothed them into a plain, and added the 
 place where they stood to the wilderness, so that the broad 
 walls of Babylon are utterly broken. And now, as the sub- 
 joined evidence, supplementary of what has already been 
 adduced, fully proves, — it may verily be said that the 
 loftiest walls ever built by man, as well as the " greatest 
 city on which the sun ever shone," which these walls sur- 
 rounded, and the most fertile of countries, of which Baby- 
 lon the great was the capital and the glory, — have all been 
 swept by the Lord of Hosts with the besom of destruction. 
 
 A chapter of sixty pages in length, of Mr. Buckingham's 
 Travels in Mesopotamia, is entitled, "Search after the 
 walls of Babylon." After a long and fruitless search, he 
 discovered on the eastern boundary of the ruins, on the 
 summit of an oval mound from seventy to eighty feet in 
 height, and from three to four hundred feet in circumfer- 
 ence, "a mass of solid wall, about thirty feet in length, by 
 twelve or fifteen in thickness, yet evidently once of much 
 greater dimensions each way, the work being, in its pres- 
 ent state, broken and incomplete in every part ;" and this 
 heap of ruin and fragment of wall he conjectured to be a 
 part — the only part, if such it be, that can be discovered — 
 of the walls of Babylon, so utterly are they broken. Beyond 
 this there is not even a pretension to the discovery of any 
 part of them. 
 
 Captain Frederick, of whose journey it was the "prin- 
 cipal object to search for the remains of the wall and ditch 
 that had compassed Babylon," states, that "neither of these 
 have been seen by any modern traveller. All my inquiries 
 among the Arabs," he adds, " on this subject, completely 
 failed in producing the smallest effect. Within the space 
 of twenty-one miles in length along the banks of the Eu- 
 phrates, and twelve miles across it in b'teadth, I was unable 
 
BABYLON. 
 
 Jer. Jl:58. Page 516. 
 
Chap. 51. 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 517 
 
 o perceive any thing that could admit of my imagining 
 that either a wall or a ditch had existed within this exten- 
 sive area. If any remains do exist of the walls, they must 
 have been of greater circumference than is allowed by 
 modern geographers. I may possibly have been deceived ; 
 but I spared no pains to prevent it. I never was em- 
 ployed in riding and walking less than eight hours for 
 six successive days, and upwards of twelve on the sev- 
 enth." 
 
 Major Keppel relates that he and the party who accom- 
 panied him, " in common with other travellers, had totally 
 failed in discovering any trace of the city walls ;" and 
 he adds, " the Divine predictions against Babylon have 
 been so literally fulfilled in the appearance of the ruins, 
 that I am disposed to give the fullest signification to the 
 words of Jeremiah, — the broad walls of Bahylon shall be xU- 
 terly broken." 
 
 Babylon shall be an astonishment. — Every one that goeth 
 by Babylon sh-allbe astonished. It is impossible lo think on 
 what Babylon was, and to be an eyewitness of what it is, 
 without astonishment. On first entering its ruins, Sir Rob- 
 ert Ker Porter thus expresses his feelings : " I could not but 
 feel an indescribable awe in thus passing, as it were, intt) 
 the gates of fallen Babylon." — " I cannot portray," says 
 Captain Mignan, " the overpowering^ensation of reveren- 
 tial awe that possessed my mind ^'hile contemplating 
 the extent and magnitude of ruin and devastation on every 
 side." 
 
 How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder ! 
 How is Babylon become a desolation among the nations! 
 — The following mteresiing description has lately been 
 given from the spot. After speaking of the ruined embank- 
 ment, divided and subdivided again and again, like a sort 
 of tangled network, over the apparently interminable 
 ground — of large and wide-spreading morasses — of ancient 
 Ibuudations — and of chains of undulating heaps — Sir Robert 
 Ker Porter emphatically adds: — "The whole view was 
 particularly solemn. The majestic stream of the Euphrates, 
 wandering in solitude, like a pilgrim monarch through the 
 silent ruins of his devastated kingdom, still appeared a no- 
 ble river, under all the disadvantages of its desert-tracked 
 course. Its banks were hoary with reeds ; and the gray 
 osier willows were yet there oil which the captives of Israel 
 hung up their harps, and while Jerusalem was not, refused 
 to be comforted. But how is the rest of the scene changed 
 since then ! At that time those broken hills were palaces 
 — those long undulating mounds, streets — this vast solitude 
 filled with the busy subjects of the proud daughter of 
 the East. — Now, wasted with misery, her habitations are 
 not to be found— and for herself, the worm is spread over 
 her:' 
 
 From palaces converted into broken hills ;— from streets to 
 long lines of heaps ;— from the throne of the world to sitting 
 in the dust ; from the hum of mighty Babylon to the death- 
 like silence that rests upon the grave to which it is brought 
 down ; — from the great storehouse of the M'orld, where 
 treasures were gathered from every quarter, and the prison- 
 house of the captive Jews, where, not loosed to return home- 
 wards, they served in a hard bondage, to Babylon the spoil 
 of many nations, itself taken from thence, andnothing left; 
 — from a vast metropolis, the place of palaces and the glorv 
 of kingdoms, whither multitudes ever flowed, to a dreaded 
 and shunned spot not inhabited nor dwelt in from genera- 
 tion lo generation, where even the Arabian, though the 
 son of the desert, pitches not his tent, and where the shep- 
 herds make not their folds; — from the treasures of dark- 
 ness, and hidden riches of secret places, to the taking 
 away of bricks, and to an uncovered nakedness ; — from 
 making the earth to tremble, and shaking kingdoms, to be- 
 ing cast out of the grave like an abominable branch ; — from 
 the many nations and great kings from the coasts of the 
 earth that have so often come up against Babylon, to the 
 workmen that still cast her up as heaps and add to the num- 
 ber of pools in the ruins ; — from the immense artificial 
 lake, many miles in circumference, by means of which the 
 annual rising of the Euphrates was regulated and restrain- 
 ed, to these pools of water, a few yards round, dug by the 
 workmen, and filled by the river ; — from the first and great- 
 est of temples to a burnt mountain desolate for ever ; from 
 the golden image, forty feet in height, which stood on the 
 top of the temple of Belus, to afl the graven images of her 
 gods, that are broken unto the ground and mingled with the 
 
 dust ; — from the splendid and luxuriant festivals of Baby- 
 lonian monarchs, the noise of the viols, the pomp of Bel- 
 shazzar's feast, and the godless revelry of a thousand lords 
 drinking out of the golden vessels that had been taken from 
 Zion, to the cry of wild beasts, the creeping of doleful 
 creatures of which their desolate houses and pleasant palaces 
 are full, the nestling of owls in cavities, the dancing of 
 wild goats on the ruinoue mound as on a rock, and the 
 dwelling-place of dragons and of venomous reptiles ;— 
 from arch upon arch, and terrace upon terrace, till the hang- 
 ing gardens of Babylon rose like a mountain, down to the 
 stones of the pit now disclosed to view ; — from the palaces 
 of princes who sat on the mount of the congregation, and 
 thought in the pride of their hearts to exalt themselves 
 above the stars of God, to heaps cut down to the ground, 
 perforated as the raiment of those that are slain, and as a 
 carcass trodden under feet ; — from the broad walls of Baby- 
 lon, in all their height, as Cyrus camped against them 
 round about, seeking in vain a single point where congre- 
 gated nations could scale the walls or force an opening, to 
 the untraceable spot on which thev stood, where there is 
 nothing left to turn aside, or impedie in their course, the 
 worms that cover it ; — and finally, from Babylon the great, 
 the wonder of the world, to fallen Babylon, the astonish- 
 ment of all who go by it ; — in extremes like these, whatever 
 changes they involve, and by whatever instrumentality they 
 may have been wrought out, there is not to this hour, in 
 this most marvellous history of Babylon, a single fact that 
 may not most appropriately be ranked under a prediction, 
 and that does not tally entirely with its express and precise 
 fulfilment, while at the same time they all united show, as 
 may now be seen, — reading the judgments to the very letter, 
 and. looking to the facts as they are, — the destruction which 
 • has come from the Almighty upon Babylon. 
 
 Has not every purpose of the Lord been performed 
 against Babylon "? And having so clear illustrations of the 
 facts before us, what mortal shall give a negative answer 
 to the questions, subjoined by their omniscient Author to 
 these very prophecies'? — "Who hath declared this from 
 ancient time 1 Who hath told it from that time '? Have 
 not I, the Lord 1 and there is no god beside me ; — declar- 
 ing the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the 
 things that are not yet done — saying, my counsel shall 
 stand, and I will do all my pleasure." Is it possible that 
 there can be any attestation of the truth of prophecy, if it 
 be not witnessed here 1 Is there any spot on earth which 
 has undergone a more complete transformation % " The 
 recordsof the human race," it has been said with truth, " do 
 not present a contrast more striking than that between the 
 primeval magnificence of Babylon and its long desolation." 
 Its ruins have of late been carefully and scrupulously ex- 
 amined by different natives of Britain, of unimpeached vera- 
 city, and the result of every research is a more striking 
 demonstration of the literal accom.plishment of every pre- 
 diction. How few spots are there on earth of which we 
 have so clear and faithful a picture as prophecy gave of fallen 
 Babylon, at a time when no spot on earth resembled it less 
 than its present desolate solitary site ! Or could any pro- 
 phecies respecting any single place have been more precise, 
 or wonderful, or nunierous, or true, — or more gradually 
 accomplished throughout many generations f And when 
 they look at what Babylon was, and what it is, and perceive 
 the minute realization of them all — may not nations learn 
 wisdom, may not tyrants tremble, and may not skeptics 
 think 1 — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 62. Then shalt thou say, O Lord, thou hast 
 spoken against this place, to cut it ofl^ that none 
 shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but 
 that it shall be desolate for ever. 
 
 The course of the Tigris through Babylonia, instead of 
 being adorned, as of old, with cities and towns, is marked 
 with the sites of " ancient ruins." Sitace, Sabata, Narisa, 
 Puchera, Sendia " no longer exist." A succession of Ion- | 
 gitudinal mounds, crossed at right angles by others, mark 
 the supposed site of Artemita, or Destagered. Its once 
 luxuriant gardens are covered with grass ; and a higher 
 mound distinguishes "the royal residence" from the ancient 
 streets. Extensive ridges and mounds, (near to Houmania,) 
 varying in height and extent, are seen branching in every 
 direction. A wall, with sixteen bastions, is the only me- 
 
518 
 
 JEREMIAH. 
 
 Chap. 51. 
 
 morial of Apollonia. The once magnificent Seleucia is 
 now a scene of desolation. There is not a single entire 
 building, but the country is strewed for miles with frag- 
 -xents of decayed buildings. " As far," says Major Kep- 
 1, ■' as the eye could reach, the horizon presented a bro- 
 n line of mounds ; the whole of this place was a desert 
 It." On the opposite bank of the Tigris, where Ctesiphon 
 ^ rival stood, besides fragments of walls and broken masses 
 f brick-work, and remains of vast structures encumbered 
 A'ith heaps of earth, there is one magnificent monument 
 of antiquity, " in a remarkably perfect state of preservation," 
 " a large and noble file of building, the front of which pre- 
 sents to view a wall three hundred feet in length, adorned 
 with four rows of arched recesses, with a central arch, in 
 span eighty-six feet, and above a hundred feet high, sup- 
 ported by walls sixteen feet thick, and leading to a hall 
 which extends to the depth of one hundred and fifty-six 
 feet," the width of the building. A great part of the back 
 wall, and of the roof, is broken down ; but that which re- 
 mains " still appears much larger than Westminster Ab- 
 bey." It is supposed to have been the lofty palace of Chos- 
 roes ; but there desolation now reigns. " On the site of 
 Ctesiphon, the smallest insect under" heaven would not find 
 a single blade of grass wherein to hide itself, nor one drop 
 of water to allay its thirst." In the rear of the palace, and 
 attached to it, are mounds two miles in circumference, in- 
 dicating the utter desolation of buildings formed to minis- 
 ter to luxury. But, in the words of Captain Mignan, " such 
 is the extent of the irregular mounds and hillocks that 
 overspread the site of these renowned cities, that it would 
 occupy some months to take the bearings and dimensions 
 of each with accuracy." 
 
 While the ancient cities of Chaldea are thus desolate, the 
 sites of others cannot be discovered, or have not been visit- 
 ed, as none pass thereby ; the more modern cities, which 
 flourished under the empire of califs, are "all in ruins." 
 The second Bagdad has not indeed yet shared the fate of 
 the first. And Hillah — a town of comparatively modern 
 date, near to the site of Babylon, but in the gardens of which 
 there is not the least vestige of ruins — yet exists. But the 
 former, " ransacked by massacre, devastation, and oppres- 
 sicin, during several hundred years," has been " gradually 
 reduced from being a rich and powerful city to a state of 
 comparative poverty, and the feeblest means of defence." 
 And of the inhabitants of the latter, about eight or ten 
 thousand, it is said, that " if any thing could identify the 
 modern inhabitants of Hillah as the descendants of the 
 ancient Babylonians, it would be their extreme profligacy, 
 for which they are notorious even among their immoral 
 neighbours." They give no sign of repentance and refor- 
 mation to warrant the hope that judgment, so long con- 
 tinued upon others, will cease from them ; or that they are 
 the people that shall escape. Twenty years have not passed 
 since towns in Chaldea have been ravaged and pillaged by 
 the Wahabees ; and so lately as 1823, the town of Sheere- 
 ban " was sacked and ruined by the Coords," and reduced 
 to desolation. Indications of ruined cities, whether of a 
 remote or more recent period, abound throughout the land. 
 The process of destruction is still completing. Gardens 
 which studded the banks of the Tigris have very recently 
 disappeared, and mingled with the desert, — and concerning 
 the cities also of Chaldea the word is true that they are des- 
 olations. For "the whole country is strewed over with the 
 debris of Grecian, Roman, and Arabian towns, confound- 
 ed in the same mass of rubbish." 
 
 But while these lie in indiscriminate ruins, the chief of 
 the cities of Chaldea, the first in name and in power that 
 ever existed in the world, bears many a defined mark of 
 the judgments of heaven. The progressive and predicted 
 decline of Babylon the great, till it ceased to be a city, has 
 already been briefly detailed. About the beginning of the 
 Christian era, a small portion of it was inhabited, and the 
 far greater part was cultivated. It diminished as Seleucia 
 increased, and the latter became the greater city. In the 
 I second century nothing but the walls remained. It became 
 gradually a greatdesert; and, in the fourth century, its walls, 
 repaired for that purpose, formed an enclosure for wild 
 beasts, and Babylon was converted into a field for the chase 
 — a hunting-place for the pastime of the Persian monarchs. 
 The name and the remnant were cixt off* from Babylon ; 
 and there is a blank, during the interval of many ages, in 
 the history of its mutilated remains and of its mouldering 
 
 decay. It remained long in the possession of the Saracens ; 
 and abundant evidence has since been given, that every 
 feature of its prophesied des'olation is now distinctly visi- 
 ble — for the most ancient historians bore not a clearer tes- 
 timony to facts confirmatory of the prophecies relative to 
 its first siege and capture by Cyrus, than the latest travel- 
 lers bear to the falfilment of those which refer to its final 
 and permanent ruin. The identity of its site has been com- 
 pletely established. And the truth of every general and ot 
 every particular prediction is now so clearly demonstrated, 
 that a simple exhibition of the facts precludes the possibili- 
 ty of any cavil, and supersedes the necessity of any rea- 
 soning on the subject. 
 
 It is not merely the general desolation of Babylon, — 
 however much that alone would have surpassed allhuman 
 foresight,— which the Lord declared by the mouth of his 
 prophets. In their vision, they saw not more clearly, nor 
 defined more precisely, the future history of Baby Ion, from 
 the height of its glory" to the oblivion of its name, than they 
 saw and depicted foIUn Babylon as now it lies, and as, in 
 the nineteenth century of the Christian era, it has, for the 
 first time, been fully described. And now when an end 
 has come upon Bobyloii, after a long succession of ages has 
 wrought out its utter desolation, both the pen and the pen- 
 cil of travellers, who h^ave traversed and inspected its ruins, 
 must be combined, in order to delineate what the word of 
 God, by the prophets, told from the beginning that that end 
 would be. 
 
 Truth ever scorns the discordant and encumbering aid ot 
 error: but to diverge in the least from t-h^ most precise facts 
 would here weaken and destroy tho-^ar^^ent ; for the pre- 
 dictions correspond not closely with^ac^ming, except alone 
 with the express and literal reality, 'f o swerve from it, is, 
 in the same degree, to vary from them : and any misrepre- 
 sentation would be no less hurtful than iniquitous. But the 
 actual fact renders any exaggeration impossible, and any 
 fiction poor. Fancy could not have feigned a contrast more 
 complete, nor a destruction greater, than that which has 
 come from the Almighty upon Babylon. And though the 
 greatest city on which the sun ever shone be now a deso- 
 late wilderness, there is scarcely any spot on earth more 
 clearly defined — and none could be more accurately delin- 
 eated by the hands of a draftsman — than the scene of Baby- 
 lon's desolation is set before us in the very words of the 
 prophets; and no woids could now be chosen like unto 
 these, which, for two thousand five hundred year^, have 
 been its " burden" — the burden which now it bears. 
 
 Such is the multiplicity of prophecies and the accumula- 
 tion of facts, that the very abundance of evidence increases 
 the diflUculty of arranging, in a condensed form, and thus 
 appropriating its specific fulfilment to each precise and 
 separate prediction, and many of them may be viewed con- 
 nectedly. All who have visited Babylon concur in ac- 
 knowledging or testifying that the desolation is exactly such 
 as was foretold. They, in general, apply the more promi- 
 nent predictions; and, in minute details, they sometimes 
 unconsciously adopt, without any allusion or reference, the 
 very words of inspiration. 
 
 Babylon is wholly desolate. It has become heaps— it is 
 cut down to the ground — brought doM'n to the grave — trod- 
 den on — uninhabited — its foundations fallen — its walls 
 thrown down, and utterly broken —its loftiest edifices rolled 
 down from the rocks— the golden city has ceased — the 
 worms are spread under it, and the worms cover it, &c. 
 There the Arabian pitches not his tent ; there the shep- 
 herds make not their folds; but wild beasts of the desert 
 lie there, and their houses are full of doleful creatures, and 
 owls dwell there, &c. It is a possession for the bittern, and 
 a dwelling-place for dragons ; a wilderness, a dry land, and 
 a desert ; a burnt mountain ; pools of water; spoiled, empty, 
 nothing left, utterly destroyed ; every one that goeth by is 
 astonished, &c. 
 
 BaJ/ylon shall become heaps. Babylon, the glory of king- 
 doms, is now the greatest of ruins. Immense tumuli of 
 temples, palaces, and human habitation?; of every descrip- 
 tion, are evervwhere seen, and from long and i-aried lines 
 of ruins, which, in some places, rather resemble natural 
 hills than mminds which cover the remains of great and 
 splendid edifices. Those buildings which were once (he 
 labour of slaves and the pride of kings, are now misshapen 
 heaps of rubbish. " The Avhole face of the country is cov- 
 ered with vestiges of building, in some pbces consisting o» 
 
Chap. 52. 
 
 JEREMIAH, 
 
 519 
 
 brick walls surprisingly fresh, in others, merely a vast suc- 
 cession of mounds of rubbish, of such indeterminate figures, 
 variety, and extent, as to invoJve the person who should 
 have formed any theory in inextricable confusion." Long 
 mounds, running from north to south, are crossed by others 
 from east to west; and are only distinguished by their 
 form, direction, and number, from the decayed banks of 
 canals. The greater part of the mounds are certainly the 
 remains of buildings, originally disposed in streets, and 
 crossing each other at right angles. The more distinct 
 and prominent of these " heaps" are double, or lie in par- 
 allel lines, each exceeding twenty feet in height, and are 
 intersected by cross passages, in such a manner as to place 
 beyond a doubt the fact of their being rows of houses or 
 streets fallen to decay. Such was the form of the streets 
 of Babylon, leading towards the gates ; and such are now 
 the lines of heaps — " There are also, in some places, two 
 hollow channels, and three mounds, running parallel to 
 each other for a considerable distance, the central mound 
 being, in such cases, a broader and flatter /nass than the 
 other two, as if there had been two streets going parallel 
 to each other, the central range of houses which divided 
 them being twice the size of the others, from their being 
 double residences, with a front and door of entrance to 
 face each avenue." "Irregular hillocks and mounds, 
 formed over masses of ruins, present at every step memo- 
 rials of the past." 
 
 From the temple of Belus and the two royal palaces, to 
 the streets of the city and single dwellings, all have become 
 heaps; and the only difference or gradation now is, from 
 the vast and solid masses of ruins which look like moun- 
 tains, to the slight mound that is scarcely elevated above 
 the plain. Babylon is fallen, literally fallen to such a de- 
 gree that those who stand on its site and look on numerous 
 parallel mounds, with a hollow space between, are some- 
 times at a loss to distinguish between the remains of a 
 street or a canal, or to tell where the crowds frequented or 
 where the waters flowed. Babylon is fallen, till its ruins 
 cannot fall lower than they lie. It is cut down to the ground. 
 Her foundations are fallen ; and the ruins rest not on them. 
 Its palaces, temples, streets, and houses, lie " buried in shape- 
 less heaps." And " the view of Babylon," as taken from 
 the spot, is truly a picture of utter desolation, presenting its 
 heaps to the eye, and showing how, as if literally buried 
 under them, Babylon is brought down to the grave. 
 
 Cast her up as heaps. Mr. Rich, in describing a grand 
 heap of ruins, the shape of which is nearly a square of seven 
 hundred yards in length and breadth, states that the workmen 
 pierce into it in every direction, in search of bricks, "hol- 
 lowing out deep ravines and pits, and throwing up the rub- 
 bish in heaps on the surface." " The summit of the Kasr" 
 (supposed to have been the lesser palace) is in like manner 
 " covered with heaps of rubbish." 
 
 Let nothing of her be left. Vast heaps constitute all that 
 now remains of ancient Babylon. All its grandeur is de- 
 
 parted ; all its treasures have been spoiled ; all its excel- 
 lence has utterly vanished ; the very heaps are searched 
 for bricks, when nothing else can be found ; even these are 
 not left wherever they can be taken away, and Babylon has 
 for ages been " a quarry above ground," ready to the hand 
 of every successive despoiler. Without the most remote 
 allusion to this prophecy. Captain Mignan describes a mound 
 attached to the palace ninety yards iu breath by half that in 
 height, the whole of which is deeply furrowed, in the same 
 manner as the generality of the mounds, " The ground is 
 extremely soft, and tiresome to walk over, and appears 
 completely exhausted of all its building materials : nothing 
 now is left save one towering hill, the earth of which is 
 mixed with fragments of broken brick, red varnished pot- 
 tery, tile, bitumen, mortar, glass, shells, and pieces of 
 mother-of-pearl" — worthless fragments, of no value to the 
 poorest. From, thence shall she be taken — let nothing of her 
 be left. One traveller, towards the end of the last century, 
 passed over the site of ancient Babylon, without being con- 
 scious of having traversed it. 
 
 While the workmen cast her up as heaps in piling up the 
 rubbish while excavating for brick, that they may lake them 
 from thence, and \\vdiinothing be left ; they labour more than 
 trebly in the fulfilment of prophecy, for the numerous and 
 deep excavations form pooh of water, on the overflowing of 
 the Euphrates, and, annually filled, they are not dried up 
 throughout the year. Deep cavities are also formed by the 
 Arabs, when digging for hidden treasure. The ground is 
 sometimes covered with pools of water in the hollows." Sii 
 on the dust, sit on the ground, O daughter of the Chaldeans. 
 The surface of the mounds, which form all that remains of 
 Babylon, consists of decomposed buildings reduced to dust ; 
 and over all the ancient streets and habitations there is lit- 
 erally nothing but the dust of the ground on which to sit. 
 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered. " Our path," says Cap- 
 tain Mignan, " lay through the great mass of ruined heaps 
 on the site of ' shrunken Babylon.' And I am perfectly 
 incapable of conveying an adequate idea of the dreary, 
 lonely nakedness that appeared before me." — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 Ver. 21. And concerning the pillars, the height 
 of one pillar was eighteen cubits, and a fillet of 
 twelve cubits did compass it ; and the thickness 
 thereof was four fingers : it was hollow. 
 
 In the same way do the people of the East speak of any 
 thing which is less in measure than a span. " What height 
 are your pepper vines 1"— " About two fingers." " When 
 the rice becomes five fingers in height we shall want more 
 rain." That which is less than a finger is spoken of as a 
 grain of rice; the next gradation is an ellu, i. e. gingelly 
 seed ; the next is a mustard seed; and the last an anu, i. e 
 an atom. — Roberts. 
 
 BIKS NIMitOOD— Is. 46: I. Jer. 5U: 2, and 51; 61, 62. 
 • I will roll Ihee dowu fro.u ih rocki lad make ihee a burnt mountain." 
 
LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 1. How doth the city sit solitary that was 
 full of people ! how is she become as a widow ! 
 she that was great among the nations, and 
 princess among the provinces, how is she be- 
 come tributary ! 
 
 Jerusalem had been sacked by a ruthless foe, and her 
 sons had been carried off to Babylon. "As a widow." 
 When a husband dies, the solitary widow takes off her 
 marriage jewels, and other ornaments; her head is shaved! 
 and she sits down in the dust to bewail her lamentable 
 condition. In the book Scanda Purana, it is said, after the 
 splendid city of Kupera had been plundered by the cruel 
 Assurs, " the city deprived of its riches by the pillage of the 
 Assurs, resembled the winow !" Jerusalem became as a 
 widow in her loneliness bemoaning her departed lord. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 3. Judah is gone into captivity, because of 
 affliction, and because of great servitude ; she 
 dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no 
 rest : all her persecutors overlook her between 
 the straits. 
 
 It was the practice with those who hunted wild beasts to 
 drive them, if possible, into some strait and narrow pas- 
 sage, that they might more effectually take them, as in such 
 a situation an escape could hardly be effected. It is to this 
 circumstance that the prophet alludes in these words. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 11. All her people sigh, they seek bread; 
 they have given their pleasant things for meat 
 to relieve the soul : see, O Lord, and consider; 
 for I am become vile. 
 
 What a melancholy picture have we here ! the captives, 
 it appears, had been allowed, or they had concealed, some 
 of their " pleasant things," their jewels, and were now 
 obliged to part with them for food. What a view we also 
 have here of the cruelty of the vile Babylonians! The 
 people of the East retain their little valuables, such as 
 jewels and rich robes, to the last extremity. To part with 
 that, which has, perhaps, been a kind of heir-loom in 
 the family, is like parting with life. Have they sold 
 the last wreck of their other property; are they on the 
 verge of death ; the emaciated members of the family are 
 called together, and some one undertakes the heart-rending 
 task of proposing such a bracelet, or armlet, or anklet, or 
 ear-ring, or the pendant of the forehead, to be sold. Fof a 
 moment all are silent, till the mother or daughters burst 
 into tears, and then the contending feelings of hunger, and 
 love for their " pleasant things," alternately prevail. In 
 general the conclusion is, to pledge, and not to sell, their 
 much-loved ornaments ; but such is the rapacity of those 
 • who have money, and such the extreme penury of those 
 who have once fallen, they seldom regain them. Numbers 
 give their jewels to others to keep for them, and never see 
 them more. I recollect a person came to the mission 
 house, and brought a large casket of jewels for me to keep 
 in our iron chest. The valuable gems were sho\^n to me 
 one by one; but I declined receiving them, because I had 
 heard' that the person was greatly indebted to the govern- 
 ment, and was led to suspect the object was to defraud the 
 creditor. They were then taken to another person, who 
 received them, — decamped to a distant part of the country, 
 and the whole of the property was lost, both to the individu- 
 al and the creditors. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and 
 there is none to comfort her : the Lord hath 
 commanded concerning Jacob, that his adver- 
 saries should be round about him : Jerusaldn 
 is as a menstruous woman among them. 
 
 What a graphic view we have here of a person in distress ! 
 See that poor widow looking at the dead body of her hus- 
 band, as the people take it from the house : she spreads 
 forth her hands to their utmost extent, and piteously be- 
 wails her condition. The last allusion in the verse is very 
 common. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. I. How hath 'the Lord covered the daugh- 
 ter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, a7id cast 
 down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of 
 Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the 
 day of his anger. 
 
 Those who are in favour with the king, or those who 
 obey him, are called his footstool. But the figure is also 
 used in a degrading sense. Thus, do two men quarrel, 
 one says to the other, " I will make thee my footstool." 
 " Ah ! my lord, be not angry with me, how long have I 
 been your footstool 1" " I be that fellow's footstool ! Never ! 
 Was he not footstool to my father 1"— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. All that pass by clap their hands at thee; 
 they hiss and wag their head at the daughter 
 of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men 
 call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the 
 whole earth 1 
 
 See on Job 27. 23. 
 
 The vulgar, the low triumph of a victorious party, in the 
 East, is extremely galling; there is nothing like moderation 
 or forbearance in the victors. No, they have recourse tc 
 every contemptuous and brutal method to degrade their 
 fallen foe. Has one party triumphed over another in a 
 court of law, or in some personal conflict, the conquerors 
 shout loud, " Aha ! aha ! fallen, fallen ;" and then go 
 close to the vanquished, and " clap their hands." — Roberts, 
 
 Oriental females express their respect for persons of 
 high rank, by gently applying one of their hands to their 
 mouths ; a custom which seems to have existed from time 
 immemorial. In some of the towns of Barbary, the lead- 
 ers of the sacred caravans are received with loud acclama- 
 tions, and every expression of the warmest regard. The 
 women view the parade from the tops of i he houses, and testify 
 their satisfaction by striking their four fingers on their lips 
 as fast as they can, all the while making a joyful noise, 
 The sacred writers perhaps allude to this custom, in those 
 passages where clapping the hand in the singular number 
 is mentioned. Striking one hand smartly upon the other, 
 which we call clapping the hands, was also nsed to express 
 joy, in the same manner as among ourselves; but in tho 
 East it appears to have been generally employed to denotr 
 a malignant satisfaction, a triumphant or insulting joy. 
 In this way, the enemies of Jerusalem expressed their 
 satisfaction, at the fall of that great and powerful city,— 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 7. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot 
 get out : he hath made my chain heavy. 
 
 This figure is taken from a prisoner having a heavy 
 chain to drag as he goes along. Husbands sometime* 
 
Chap. 3—5. 
 
 LAMENTATIONS. 
 
 521 
 
 speak of their wives as a chain. Thus, is a man invited 
 to a distant country ; he asks in reply, " How can I come 1 
 my wife has made my chain heavy." " My husband, my 
 husband, you shall not go ; my weeping shall make your 
 chain heavy." A man in great trouble asks, Who will 
 break this sangale? i. e. chain. "My chain, my chain, 
 who will break this chain V " Have you heard Varavar's 
 chain is broken 1 He is dead ! Who will make another 
 chain for him'?"— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. He hath filled me with bitterness, he 
 hath made me drunken with wormwood. 
 
 " Wicked, wicked son," says the disappointed mother, 
 *• I expected to have had pleasure from thee, but thou hast 
 given me kasapu," i. e. bitterness. " Shall I go to his 
 house to live on bitterness V " Who can make this bitter- 
 ness sweet ?" — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 5. They that did feed delicately are desolate 
 in the streets; they that were brought up in 
 scarlet embrace dunghills. 
 
 In preparing their victuals, the Orientals are, from the 
 extreme scarcity of wood in many countries, reduced to 
 use cow-dung for fuel. At Aleppo, the inhabitants use 
 wood and charcoal in their rooms, but heat their baths 
 with cow-dung, the parings of fruit, and other things of a 
 similar kind, which they employ people to gather for that 
 purpose. In Egypt, according to Pitts, the scarcity of wood 
 IS so great, that at Cairo they commonly heat their ovens 
 with horse or cow dung, or dirt of the streets ; what wood 
 they have being brought from the shores of the Black Sea, 
 and sold by weight. Chardin attests the same fact ; '* The 
 eastern people always use cow-dung for baking, boiling a 
 pot, and dressing all kinds of victuals that are easily cook- 
 ed, especially in countries that have but little wood ;" and 
 Dr. Russel remarks, in a note, that " the Arabs carefully 
 collect the dung of the sheep and camel, as well as that of 
 the cow ; and that the dung, offals, and other matters, used 
 in the bagnios, after having been new gathered in the streets, 
 are carried out of the city, and laid in great heaps to dry, 
 where they become very offensive. They are intolerably 
 disagreeable, while drying, in the town adjoining to the 
 bagnios ; and are so at all times when it rains, though they 
 be stacked, pressed hard together, and thatched at top." 
 These statements exhibit, in a very strong light, the extreme 
 misery of the Jews, who escaped from the devouring sword 
 of Nebuchadnezzar : " They that feed delicately, are desol- 
 ate in the streets ; they that were brought up in scarlet, 
 embrace dunghills." To embrace dunghills, is a species 
 of wretchedness, perhaps unknown to us in the history of 
 modern warfare ; but it presents a dreadful and appalling 
 image, when the circumstances to which it alludes are re- 
 collected. What can be imagined more distressing to those 
 who lived delicately, than to wander without food in the 
 streets 1 What moi e disgusting and terrible to those who 
 had been clothed in rich and splendid garments, than to be 
 forced, by the destruction of their palaces, to seek shelter 
 among stacks of dung, the filth and stench of which it is 
 almost impossible to endure. The dunghill, it appears 
 from holy writ, is one of the common retreats of the mendi- 
 cant, which imparts an exquisite force and beauty to a pas- 
 sage in the song of Hannah : " He raiseth up the poor out 
 of the dust, and lifteth the beggar from the dunghill, to set 
 them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne 
 of glory." The change in the circumstances of that excel- 
 lent woman, she reckoned as great (and it was to her not 
 less unexpected) as the elevation of a poor despised beggar, 
 from a nauseous and polluting dunghill, rendered tenfold 
 more fetid by the intense heat of an oriental sun, to one 
 of the highest and most splendid stations on earth.— Pax- 
 ton. ^ 
 
 Ver. 7. Her Nazarites were purer than snow, 
 they were whiter than milk, they were more 
 ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was 
 of sapphire : 8. Their visage is blacker than 
 a coal ; they are not known in the streets : 
 66 
 
 their skin cleaveth to their bones ; it is wither 
 ed, it is become like a stick. 
 
 I leave it to physicians and naturalists to determine, with 
 minute exactness, what effect extreme hunger produces on 
 the body, particularly as to coZowr. It is sufficient for me 
 to remark, that the modern inhabitants of the East sup- 
 
 Jose it occasions an approach to-blackness, as the ancient 
 ews also did. " Her Nazarites," says the prophet, com- 
 plaining of the dreadful want of food, just before Jerusa- 
 lem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, " her Nazarites were 
 purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were 
 more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was 
 of sapphire. Their visage is blacker than a coal : they 
 are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their 
 bones ; it is withered, it is become like a stick." Lam. iv. 
 7, 8. The like is said, ch. v. 10 : " Our skin was black like 
 an oven, because of the terrible famine." 
 
 The same representation of its effects still obtains in those 
 countries. So Sir John Chardin tells, that the common 
 people of Persia, to express the sufferings of Hossein, a 
 grandson of their prophet Mohammed, and one of their 
 most illustrious saints, who fled into the deserts before his 
 victorious enemies, that pursued him ten days together, and 
 at length overtook him, ready to die with heat, thirst, and fa- 
 tigue, and slew him with a multitude of wounds, in memory 
 of which they annually observe ten days with great solem- 
 nity ; I say, he tells us, that the common people then, to 
 express what he suffered, " appear entirely naked, except- 
 ing the parts modesty requires to be covered, and blackened 
 all over ; while others are stained with blood ; others run 
 about the streets, beating two flint-stones against each other, 
 their tongues hanging out of their mouths like people quite 
 exhausted, and behaving like persons in despair, crying 
 with all their might, Hossein, &c. Those that coloured 
 themselves black, intended to represent the extremity of thirst 
 and heat which Hossein had suffered, which was so great, 
 they say, that he turned black, and his tongue swelled out 
 of his mouth. Those that were covered with blood, intended 
 to represent his being so terribly wounded, as that all his 
 blood had issued from his veins before he died." 
 
 Here we see thirst, want of food, and fatigue, are sup- 
 posed to make a human body look black. They are now 
 supposed to do so ; as they were supposed anciently to have 
 that effect. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 4. We have drunken our water for money; 
 our wood is sold unto us. 
 
 See on Num. 20. 19. 
 
 That numbers of the Israelites had no wood growing on 
 their own lands, for their burning, must be imagined from 
 the openness of their country. It is certain, the eastern 
 villages now have oftentimes little or none on their premi- 
 ses : so Russel says, that inconsiderable as the stream that 
 runs at Aleppo, and the gardens about it, may appear, they, 
 however, contain almost the only trees that are to be met 
 with for twenty or thirty miles round, " for the villages are 
 destitute of trees," and most of them only supplied with 
 what rainwater they can save in cisterns. D'Arvieux 
 gives us to understand, that several of the present villages 
 of the Holy Land are in the same situation ; for, observing 
 that the Arabs burn cow-dung in their encampments, he 
 adds, that all the villagers, who live in places where there 
 is a scarcity of wood, take great care to provide themselves 
 with sufficient quantities of this kind of fuel. This is a 
 circumstance I have elsewhere taken notice of. The Holy 
 Land appears, by the last observations, to have been as lit- 
 tle wooded anciently as at present ; nevertheless, the Israel- 
 ites seem to have burnt wood very commonly, and without 
 buying it too, from what the prophet says. Lam. v. 4. 
 " We have drunken our water for money, our wood is sold 
 to us." Had they been wont to buy their fuel, they would 
 not have complained of it as such a hardship. 
 
 The true account of it seems to be this : The woods of 
 the land of Israel being -from very ancient times common, 
 the people of the villages, which,"like those about Aleppo, 
 had no trees growing in them, supplied themselves with 
 fuel out of these wooded places, of which there were many 
 anciently, and several that still remain. This liberty of 
 taking wood in common, the Jews suppose to have been a 
 
522 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 1. 
 
 constitution of Joshua, of which they give us ten ; the first, 
 giving liberty to an Israelite to feed his flock in the woods 
 of any tribe : the second, that it should be free to take wood . 
 in the fields any where. But though this was the ancient 
 custom in Judea, it was not so in the country into which 
 .hey were carried captives ; or if this text of Jeremiah re- 
 spects those that continued in their own country for a while 
 under Gedaliah, as the ninth verse insinuates, it signifies, 
 that their conquerors possessed themselves of these woods, 
 and would allow no fuel to be cut down without leave, and 
 that leave was not to be obtained without money. It is certain, 
 that presently after the return from the captivity, timber 
 was not to be cut without leave, Neh. ii. 8.— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 12. Princes are hanged up by their hand: 
 the faces of elders were not honoured. 
 
 No punishment is more common than this in the East, 
 
 especially for slaves and refractory children. Thus, has 
 a master an obstinate slave ; has he committed some great 
 oflfence with his hands ; several men are called, who tie 
 the offender's hands, and hoist him to the roof, till he 
 beg for forgiveness. Schoolboys, who are in the habit of 
 playing truant, are also thus punished. To tell a man you 
 will hang him by the hands, is extremely provoking. See, 
 then, the lamentable condition of the princes in Babylon, 
 they were " hanged up by their hands,'' as common slaves. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. The crown is fallen /rom our head : wo 
 unto us, that we have sinned. 
 
 Has a man lost his property, his honour, his beauty, or 
 his happiness, he says, " My crown has fallen ;" does a fa- 
 ther or grandfather reprove his sons for bad conduct, he 
 asks, " Has my crown fallen V — Roberts. • 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 1. Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, 
 in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the 
 month, as I was among the captives by the 
 river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, 
 and I saw visions of God. 
 
 The prophet Ezekiel holds a conspicuous place among 
 the writers of the Old Testament, although, from the highly 
 figurative style of his predictions, a greater degree of ob- 
 scurity has been supposed to attach to this book, than per- 
 haps to any other, except the Revelations, in the whole sa- 
 cred canon. This remark applies peculiarly to the first 
 and tenth chapters of the book, which contain the descrip- 
 tion of a remarkable emblematical vision, presented, in- 
 deed, under some variations of aspect in each, but in its 
 general features manifestly the same. These chapters, to- 
 gether with the nine last, are said to have been reckoned so 
 sacredly obscure by the ancient Jews, that they abstained 
 from reading them till they were thirty years of age. The 
 mystery appears to have been but littleabated by time, as 
 the great mass of commentators still speak of the unpene- 
 trated veil of symbolical darkness in which the prophet's 
 meaning is wrapped, and the common readers of scripture 
 reiterate the lamentation ; although doubtless every portion 
 of the inspired writings is just as luminous and intelligible 
 as infinite Wisdom saw best it should be ; and it is a fea- 
 ture of revelation worthy of that Wisdom, that it is adapted 
 to every stage of progress and attainment in spiritual knowl- 
 edge. While in some parts, and those the most important, 
 it levels itself to the capacity of a child, in others it gives 
 scope to the intellect of an angel. 
 
 Most of the earlier predictions of the book of Ezekiel, 
 have respect to the remnant of the nation left in Judea, 
 and to the further judgments impending over them, such as 
 the siege and sacking of Jerusalem— the destruction of the 
 Temple— the slaughter of a large portion of its inhabitants 
 — and the abduction of the remainder into a foreign land. 
 The date of the first chapter is about six years. prior to the 
 occurrence of these events, and the vision which it contains-^ 
 was undoubtedly designed to exhibit a visible symbol of 
 
 THE DIVINE glory WHICH DWELT AMONG THAT NATION. The 
 
 tokens of Jehovah's presence constituted the distinguishing 
 honour of Israel, and its departure from among them would 
 consequently form the essence of their national calamities, 
 and swell them indefinitely beyond all similar disasters 
 which could possibly befall any other people. Plain intima- 
 
 tions of the abandonment of the Holy City by the emblems 
 of the Lord's glory, are interspersed through several ensu- 
 ing chapters, till we come to the tenth, where the same 
 splendid image is again brought to view, and is now ex- 
 hibited in the act of forsaking its ancient dwelling-^ 
 
 de: 
 
 The first chapter describes what their treasure was; the 
 tenth, the loss of it. Together with this, the latter contains 
 several additional particulars in the description of the vision, 
 which are all-important to its explication. By keeping in 
 mind this general view of the contents of these chapters, 
 the reader will find himself assisted in giving that signifi- 
 cancy to each, which he was probably before at a loss to 
 discover. It maybe here remarked, that the symbol of the 
 Divine glory described by Ezekiel was not designed as a 
 mere temporary emblem, adapted only to that occasion, but 
 that it is a. perma,n£nt one, of which we have repeated inti- 
 mations in the scriptures. It is from this fact, chiefly, that 
 it derives its imnortance as an object of investigation. — 
 Bush. 
 
 Ver. 7. And their feet were straight feet ; and the 
 sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf s 
 foot ; and they sparkled like the colour of bur- 
 nished brass. 
 
 Heb. " their feet was a straight foot." By foot here is 
 meant the lower part of the legs, including the ankles. As 
 the human foot is formed, motion of the body in any par- 
 ticular direction requires the foot to be turned in that direc- 
 tion. The form here mentioned precludes that necessity, 
 which is doubtless the reason of its being assigned them. — 
 Bush. 
 
 Ver. 9. Their wings were joined one to another : 
 they turned not when they went ; they went 
 every one straight forward. 10. As for the 
 likeness of their faces, they four had the face of 
 a man, and the face of a lion on the right side ; 
 and they* four had the face of an ox on the left 
 side ; they four also had the face of an eagle. 
 
 The reader must imagine such a relative position of the 
 living creatures, preserving the form of a square, that to 
 the eye of a spectator the different faces would be-presented 
 as here described, for the prophet could not see the four 
 faces of each at once. Suppose two of the living ci'eatures 
 
 i 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 523 
 
 on a right line in front, and two on each side of the line, 
 equidistant from it, and the faces can be easily arranged so 
 as to conform to the description. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 12. And they went every one straight for- 
 ward : whither the spirit was to go, they went; 
 and they turned not when they went. 
 
 One design of their having four faces was, that they 
 might go directly forward towards either of the four car- 
 dinal points without turning their bodies. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 16. The appearance of the wheels and their 
 work was like unto the colour of a beryl; and 
 they four had one likeness : and their appear- 
 ance and their work was as it were a wheel in 
 the middle of a wheel. 17. When they went, 
 they went upon their four sides ; and they 
 turned not when they went. 
 
 From all that we can gather of the form of these wheels, 
 they appear to have been spherical, or each composed of 
 two of equal size, and inserted, the rim of the one into that 
 of the other at right-angles, and so consisting of four equal 
 parts or half circles. They were accordingly adapted to 
 run either forward or backward, to the right hand or the 
 left, without any lateral turning ; and by this means, their 
 motion corresponded with that of the four faces of the liv- 
 ing creatures to which they were attached. " When they 
 v/ent upon their four sides, they turned not as they went ;" 
 Heb. " When they went, they went upon the quarter-part 
 of their fourfoldness," i. e. upon, or in the direction of, one 
 of the four vertical semicircles into which they were divided, 
 and which looked towards the four points of the compass. 
 When it is said — " they turned not" — it is not to be under- 
 stood that they had not a revolving or rotary motion, but 
 that they, like the faces, never forsook a straight forward 
 course. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 19. And when the living creatures went, the 
 wheels went by them ; and when the living 
 creatures were lifted up from the earth, the 
 wheels were lifted up. 20. Whithersoever the 
 'spirit was to go, they went, thither was their 
 spirit to go ; and the wheels were lifted up over 
 against them : for the spirit of the living crea- 
 ture teas in the wheels. 
 
 These circumstances are doubtless dwelt upon with pe- 
 culiar emphasis, in order to show the intimacy of relation 
 and harmony of action subsisting between the living crea- 
 tures and the wheels, or more properly between the things 
 symbolically represented by them. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 22. And the likeness of the firmament upon 
 the heads of the living creatures ivas as the 
 colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth 
 over their heads above. 
 
 Heb. " As for the likeness upon the heads of the living 
 creatures, it was that of an expansion stretched over their 
 heads above, like the aspect of the terrible crystal." This 
 expansion was a splendid level pavement or flooring, of a 
 crystal clearness, and resting upon the heads of theliving 
 creatures, as the temple lavers rested upon the four corner- 
 stays, or " undersetters," of their bases. The resemblance 
 to the crystal was not in colour, but in transparency, for the 
 colour was like that of a sapphire stone or the cerulean 
 azure of the real firmament of heaven. This is evident 
 from V. 26, and also from Ex. xxiy. 9, 10, containing an 
 evident allusion to this vision, and perhaps the germ of it. 
 " Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 
 seventy of ihe elders of Israel ; and they saw the God of 
 Israel ; and there was under his feet as it were a paved- 
 work of a sapphire -stone, and, as it were, the body of heaven 
 In its clearness." — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 23. And under the firmament iv'ere their 
 wings straight, the one towards the other: 
 
 every one had two, which covered on this side, 
 and every one had two, which covered on that 
 side, their bodies. 
 
 The wings therefore of the whole four being in contact 
 with each other, formed a kind of curtain beneath the in- 
 cumbent pavement, and thus completed the resemblance to 
 the Temple Bases, and forming'infacta magnificent living 
 chariot. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 24. And when they went, I heard the noise 
 of their wings, like the noise of great waters, 
 as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, 
 as the noise of a host : when they stood, they 
 let down their wings. 
 
 Heb. " And there was a voice — in their standing they let 
 down their wings." The design of the prophet seems to be, 
 to show the perfect obsequiousness of the living creatures 
 to the word of command emanating from the throne above, 
 and directing their movements. When the word was given 
 to move, their wings were at once expanded, the resound- 
 ing din was heard, and the glorious vehicle, instinct with 
 life, rolled on in amazing majesty. Again, when the 
 counter mandate was heard, they in an instant stayed 
 themselves in mid career, and relaxed their wings. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 27. And I saw as the colour of amber, as 
 the appearance of fire round about within it ; 
 from the appearance of his loins even upward, 
 and from the appearance of his loins even down- 
 ward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, 
 and it had brightness round about. 
 
 There is a studied indistinctness in the image here de- 
 scribed, yet it is plain that a human form is intended to be 
 shadowed forth, and that too in connexion with the splen- 
 dour of fire — a usual accompaniment of the visible mani- 
 festations of the Deity. There is little room to doubt, 
 therefore, that in the aiigust occupant of the throne, we are 
 to recognise the Son of God, the true God of Israel, antici- 
 pating, in this emblematic manner, his manifestation in the 
 flesh, and his future exaltation as King of Zion, riding forth 
 in the chariot of the Gospel. 
 
 Such was the vision presented to the view of the prophet 
 of the captivity. A more magnificent conception can scarce- 
 ly be framed by the mind of man. Indeed if we except the 
 Apocalyptic disclosures of "the holy city, the new Jerusa- 
 lem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a 
 bride adorned for her husband," we know of nothing of 
 this nature in the whole compass of revelation to be com- 
 pared with it. Let the reader bring before his mind's eye 
 the four living creatures of majestic size — so posited, aiid 
 with their wings so expanded and in contact, as to form a 
 hollow square — the whole four raised above the earth, and 
 resting upon an equal number of spherical wheels com- 
 pounded like the equator and meridian circles of the globe 
 — their heads, with the quaternion of faces, made the sup- 
 porters of a broad lucid pavement, clear as crystal, and 
 having the hue of the ethereal vault — and this splendid 
 firmament surmounted by the visible Divine Glory, con- 
 trolling the movements of the living chariot— let him im- 
 agine this rolling throne moving onward with the noise of 
 mighty thunderings, or of many waters, even " as the voice 
 of the Almighty God when he speaketh," while fiery splen- 
 dours and a bright rainbow surround the Majesty above, 
 and the light of lamps, burning coals, and lightnings, glow 
 amid the living creatures, and he cannot but feel, that the 
 ordinary creations of human genius, whether of poets or 
 painters, present nothing worthy to be placed by the sideot 
 it. — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 6. And thou, son of man, be not afraid of 
 them, neither be afraid of their words, though 
 briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost 
 dwell among scorpions : be not afraid of their 
 words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though 
 they he a rebellious house. 
 
S24 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 The scorpion is one of the most loathsome objects in na- 
 ture. It resembles a small lobster ; its head appears to be 
 joined and continued to the breast ; it has two eyes in the 
 middle of its head, and two towards the extremity, between 
 which come, as it were, two arms, which are divided into 
 two parts, like the claws of a lobster. It has eight legs pro- 
 ceeding from its breast, every one of which is divided into 
 six parts, covered with hair, and armed with talons or claws. 
 The belly is divided into seven rings, from the last of which 
 the tail proceeds, which is divided into seven little heads, 
 of which the last is furnished with a sting. In some are 
 observed six eyes, and in others eight may be perceived. 
 The tail is long, and formed after the manner of a string 
 of beads, tied end to end, one to another ; the last bigger 
 than the others, and somewhat longer; to the end of 
 which, are sometimes two stings, which are hollow, and 
 filled with a cold poison, which it injects into the wound it 
 inflicts. It is of a blackish colour, and moves sidewise like 
 a crab. Darting with great force at the object of its fury, 
 it fixes violently with its snout, and by its feet, on the per- 
 sons which it seizes, and cannot be disengaged without dif- 
 ficulty. 
 
 [About the middle of July, the waters had risen to the 
 proper height in the basin of the Nilometer. Orders were 
 immediately sent to the sub-governor, to open the kalidge 
 with all the customary pomp which, from time immemori- 
 al, has ushered in this festival. The pacha had bad news 
 from the Morea, and did not attend, but all his court was 
 there; the defterdar flinging paras among the multitude, 
 bands of music playing all night on the banks of the canal, 
 and some pieces of artillery firing at intervals. I went 
 there at night, for the festival commences the preceding 
 evening ; the Nile was covered with decorated boats, splen- 
 didly illuminated, and all the beauty of Cairo was collect- 
 ed, either on the banks of the river or in the gaudy boats ; 
 it was altogether different from a Turkish festival, there 
 was no gravity, every body laughed and talked ; the ladies 
 enjoyed their liberty, and I fear, that night, too many of 
 them abused it. 
 
 It was impossible, however, to observe so much gayety 
 and good-humour, " in a country which mav better be call- 
 ed the grave, than the mother of her children," without 
 feeling pleasure. I was in high spirits, when suddenly I 
 perceived something biting my leg ; I put down my hand, 
 and discovered a scorpion, the first I had seen in Egypt. 
 The pain was hardly perceptible ; but I felt rather uncom- 
 fortable about the consequences, and expressed my alarm 
 to an old Arab who sat near me ; he very good-naturedly 
 led me to a coffee-house, and without asking my consent to 
 doctor me, he proceeded to boil a small quantity of olive- 
 oil, then took a bit of his own old turban, dipped it in the 
 oil, and applied it, hotter than I could well bear, to the bite. 
 I let him have his way; for, in such cases, I think the peo- 
 
 f>le of the country are better judges of remedies than a col- 
 ege of doctors. I was right in thinking so, for I suflfered 
 no inconvenience whatever from the accident. — Madden.] 
 To the northward of mount Atlas, the scorpion is not 
 very hurtful, for the sting being only attended with a slight 
 fever, the application of a little Venice treacle quickly as- 
 suages the pain. But the scorpion of Getulia, and most 
 other parts of the Sahara, as it is larger, and of a darker 
 complexion, so its venom is proportionably malignant, and 
 frequently attended with death." In Syria it does not seem 
 to be deadly, but occasions much inconvenience and suffer- 
 ing to the inhabitants. Whole companies are suddenly af- 
 fected with vomitings, which is supposed to be produced 
 by the poisonous matter which exudes from the skin of the 
 scorpion, as it crawls over their kitchen utensils or provi- 
 sions. Nor is it possible almost to avoid the danger ; it is 
 never at rest during the summer months, and so malicious 
 is its disposition, that it may be seen continually flourish- 
 ing its tail in which the sting is lodged, and striking at 
 every object within its reach. So mischievous and hateful 
 is this creature, that the sacred writers use it in a figurative 
 sense for Avicked, malicious, and crafty men. Such was 
 the house of Israel to the prophet Ezekiel : *' Thou dwell- 
 est," said Jehovah to his servant, " among scorpions," 
 No animal in the creation seems endued with a nature so 
 irascible. When taken, they exert their utmost rage against 
 the glass which contains them ; will attempt to sting a 
 Stick", when put near them; will sting: animals confined 
 with them, without provocation; are the crudest enemies 
 
 to each other. Maupertuis put a hundred together in the 
 same glass; instantly they vented their rage in mutual de- 
 struction, universal carnage ! in a few days only fourteen 
 remained, which had killed and devoured all the others. 
 It is even asserted, that when in extremity or despair, the 
 scorpion will destroy itself; he stings himself on the back 
 of the head, and instantly expires. Surely Moses with 
 great propriety mentions scorpions among the dangers of 
 the wilderness ; and no situation can be conceived more 
 hazardous than that of Ezekiel, who is said to dwell among 
 scorpions; nor could a fitter contrast be selected by our 
 Lord : " Will a father give a scorpion to his child instead 
 of an egg V Jesus invested his disciples with power to 
 tread on serpents and scorpions ; by which maybe denoted, 
 power and authority to counteract and baffle every kind of 
 agent which the devil employs to vex and injure the 
 church. The disciples of Antichrist, who, by their poison- 
 ous doctrines, injure or destroy the souls of men, are like- 
 wise compared to these dangerous animals: " And therf 
 came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth : and unto 
 them was given power as the scorpions of the earth have 
 power." — pAXTON. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 1. Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, 
 and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the 
 city, even Jerusalem. 
 
 The tile was probably an undried one. — Lord Cornwallis 
 got a good idea of Bangalore from a Bramin, who acted as 
 spy, and drew a plan of the place with great accuracy in a 
 short time in moist clay. — Callaway. 
 
 Ver. 1. Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, 
 and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the 
 city, even Jerusalem : 2. And lay siege against 
 it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount 
 against it ; set the camp also against it, and set 
 battering-rams against it round about. 
 
 See on Is. 29. 3. 
 
 When the Hebrews were besieged by their enemies, they 
 erected engines on their towers and bulwarks, to shoot ar- 
 rows and hurl stones ; and when they sat down before a 
 place with the view of besieging it, they dug trenches^, they 
 drew lines of circumvallation ; they built forts and made 
 ramparts ; they cast up mounts on every side, and planted 
 battering rams upon them, to breach the walls, and open a 
 way into the city. These engines, it is probable, bore some 
 resemblance to the balistae and catapultee of the Romans, 
 which were employed for throwing stones and arrows, and 
 were, in reality, the mortars and carcasses of antiquity. 
 Josephus asserts, that Uzziah the king of Judah taught his 
 soldiers to march in battalia, after the manner of the Ma- 
 cedonian phalanx, arming them with swords, targets, and 
 corslets of brass, with arrows and darts. He also provided 
 a great number of engines to batter cities, and to shoot 
 stones and darts, besides hooks of different forms, and othei 
 instruments of a similar kind. 
 
 Calmet describes "an engine used for throwing very 
 heavy stones, by means of a strong bow, w'hose circulai 
 arms are tightly held by two vertical beams, nearly upright; 
 the cord of the bow is drawn back by means of a windlass, 
 placed laetween two beams also, behind the former, but uni- 
 ting with them at top ; in the centre is an arm, capable of 
 swinging backward and forward ; round this arm the bow- 
 string passes ; at the bottom of this arm is placed the stone, 
 in a kind of seat. The bowstring being drawn backward, 
 by the power of the windlass drawing the moving arm, the 
 rope is suddenly let go from this arm by a kind of cock, 
 when the bowstring, recovering its natural situation, wiih 
 all its power violently swings forwards the moving arm, 
 and with it the stone, thereby projecting the stone with 
 great force and velocity." 
 
 " Another machine for throwing stones, consists of two 
 arms of a bow, which are strengthened by coils of rope, 
 sinews, or hair, ( women's hair was reckoned the best for 
 the purpose.) These arms being drawn backward as fight 
 as possible, by a windlass placed at some distance behind 
 the machine, the string of the bow is attached to a kind of 
 cock, and the stone to be discharged being placed immedi- 
 
GiiAP. 4—6. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 525 
 
 ately before it, on touching the cock, the violent effort of 
 the bow threw of the stone to a great distance." The arms 
 of this bow were of iron ; which was the same as the balis- 
 t(c of the Romans. 
 
 " Besides these kind of instruments that were extremely 
 powerful, others off smaller size, and inferior powers, were 
 constructed for the purpose of being carried about : these 
 ^vere somewhat like our ancient cross-bows ; and the bow- 
 string was drawn back by various contrivances, often mere- 
 ly by strength of arm, or by reducing the board that carried 
 the arrow to its station backwards, by pressing it against 
 the ground." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 4. Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay 
 the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it : ac- 
 cording to the number of the days that thou 
 shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. 
 
 It is more than probable something is alluded to here 
 which we cannot understand. When a person is sick, he 
 will not lie on his right side, because that would be a bad 
 omen : should he in his agony, or when asleep, turn on 
 that side, his attendants will immediately again place him 
 on the left side. After people have taken their food, they 
 generally sleep a little, but they are careful to repose on the 
 left side, " because the food digests better." It is impossi- 
 ble to say what is the origin of this practice : it may have 
 arisen from the circumstance that the right side " is of the 
 masculine gender," and the left feminine, as is the case with 
 the supreme Siva, Females are directed to recline on the 
 right side, and many curious stories are told, in reference 
 to them, which are not worth repeating. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. Take thou also unto thee wheat, and bar- 
 ley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and 
 fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make 
 thee bread thereof, according to the number of 
 the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side ; three 
 hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof. 
 
 This word (millet) occurs more than once in the sacred 
 volume : Ezekiel calls it duchan or dochan ; and Calmet 
 thinks it is probably the holcus durra, which forms a prin- 
 cipal food among the Orientals. Its Latin name, millet, is 
 supposed to be derived from mille, that is, a thousand grains, 
 in allusion to its extraordinary fruitfulncss. It requires a 
 light sandy soil; is sown late, and gathered in about the 
 middle of October; while the wheat and the barley are 
 reaped by the end of May, just before the drought of a Sy- 
 rian summer comes on. The worldly man is accustomed 
 to regard such different management as the fruit of human 
 observation and sagacity ; but the inspired prophet ascribes 
 it with equal truth and energy to the suggestion of divine 
 wisdom and goodness : " For his God doth instruct him to 
 discretion, and doth teach him." It is made into bread, 
 with camel's milk, oil, butter, and other unctuous substances, 
 and is almost the only food eaten by the common people of 
 Arabia Felix. Niebuhr found it so disagreeable, that he 
 would willingly have preferred plain barley bread. This is 
 certainly the reason that it was appointed to the prophet 
 Ezekiel, as a part of his hard fare. But Rauwolf seems to 
 have been of a different mind, or not so ditficult to please ; 
 of ihis grain, says he, they bake very well-tasted bread and 
 cakes, and some of them are rolled very thin, and laid to- 
 gether after the manner of a letter ; they are about four 
 inches broad, six long, and two thick, and of an ashen co- 
 lour. The grain, however, is greatly inferior to wheat or 
 barley, and by consequence must form a very inferior 
 f^pecies of bread. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 5. Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given 
 thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt 
 prepare thy bread therewith. 
 
 In some places, firewood being very scarce, the people 
 gather cow-dung, make it into cakes, and dry it in the sun, 
 after which it is ready for fuel. Those who are accustomed 
 to have their food prepared in this way, prefer it to any 
 Other: they tell you it is sweeter and more holy, as the fuel 
 comes from their sacred animal. The other allusion in 
 
 this verse, and in chap, iv. 12, is often made use of when 
 people are angry with each other. Has some one .stolen a 
 person's fuel, he says in his rage, " Ah ! that wretch shall 
 get ready his food" as described in iv. 12. Does a wife ask 
 her husband for firewood, he will (should he be angry) re- 
 ply to her as above. — Roberts. 
 
 In consequence of the want of wood, camel's dung is used 
 in the East for fuel. Shaw, in the preface to his Travels, 
 where he gives a detailed description of the mode of travel- 
 ling in the East, says, that in consequence of the scarcity of 
 wood, when they wanted to bake or boil any thing, the 
 camel's dung which had been left by a preceding caravan 
 was their usual fuel, which, after having been exposed to 
 the sun during three days, easily catches fire, and burns like 
 charcoal. The following quotation from D'Arvieux serves 
 still better to illustrate the text in which the prophet is com- 
 manded to bake bread, or rather thin cakes of bread, upon 
 cow-dung. " The second sort of bread is baked under 
 ashes, or between two lumps of dried and lighted cow-dung. 
 This produces a slow fire, by which the dough is baked by 
 degrees ; this bread is as thick as our cakes. The crumb is 
 good if eaten the same day, but the crust is black and burnt, 
 and has a smoky taste from the fire in which the bread is 
 baked. A person must be accustomed to the mode of life of 
 the Bedouins, and very hungry, who can have any relish for 
 it." We will also add what Niebuhr says, in his description 
 of Arabia. '* The Arabs of the desert make use of an iron 
 plate to bake their bread-cakes; or they lay around lump 
 cf dough in hot coals of wood or camel's aung, and cover 
 them entirely with it, till the bread in their opinion is quite 
 done, when they take the ashes from it, and eat it warm," 
 
 — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 16. When I shall send upon them the evil 
 arrows of famine, which shall be for their de- 
 struction, and which I will send to destroy you : 
 and I will increase the famine upon you, and 
 will break your staflT of bread. 17. So will I 
 send upon you famine, and evil beasts, and they 
 shall bereave thee ; and pestilence and blood 
 shall pass through thee; and I will bring the 
 sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it. 
 
 See on Ps. 91. 5, 6. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 14. So will I stretch out my hand upon 
 them, and make the land desolate, yea, more 
 desolate than the wilderness toicards Diblath, 
 in all their habitations ; and they shall know 
 that 1 am the Lord, 
 
 " The land shall be utterly spoiled, — I will make the land 
 more desolate than the wilderness." " The temples are 
 thrown down ; the palaces demolished ; the ports filled up ; 
 the towns destroyed ; and the earth, stripped of inhabitants, 
 seems a dreary burying-place." (Volney.) " Good God !" 
 exclaims the same writer, "from wheiice proceed such 
 melancholy revolutions 1 For what cause is the fortune of 
 these countries so strikingly changed ? Why are so many 
 cities destroyed 1 Why is not that ancient population repro- 
 duced and perpetuated T' " I wandered over the country ; 
 I traversed the provinces ; I enumerated the kingdoms ot 
 Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This 
 Syria, said / to myself, now almost depopulated, then con- 
 tained a hundred flourishing cities, and aboundf'd with 
 towns, villages, and hamlets. What are become of so many 
 productions of the hands of man 1 What are become ol 
 those ages of abundance and of life 7" &c. Seeking to be 
 wise, men become fools when they trust to their own vain 
 imaginations, and will not look to that word of God which 
 is as able to confound the wise, as to give understanding to 
 the simple. These words, from the lips of a great advocate 
 of infidelity, proclaim the certainty of the truth which he 
 was too blind or bigoted to see. For not more unintention- 
 ally or unconsciously do many illiterate Arab pastors or 
 herdsmen verify one prediction, while they literally tread 
 Falesline under foot, than Volney, the academician, himself 
 
.^26 
 
 EZEKIEJ. 
 
 Chap. 7—9 
 
 verifies another, while, speaking in nis own name, and the 
 spokesman also of others, he thus confirms the unerring 
 truth of God's holy word, by what he said^ as well as by 
 describing what he saw. 
 
 It is no " secret malediction," spoken of by Volney, which 
 God has pronounced against Judea. It is the curse of a 
 broken covenant that rests upon the land ; the consequences 
 of the iniquities of the people, not of those only who have 
 been plucked from off it and scattered throughout the world, 
 but of those also that dwell therein. The ruins of empires 
 originated, not from the regard which mortals paid to re- 
 vealed religion, but from causes diametrically the reverse. 
 The desolations are not of Divine appointment, but only as 
 they have followed the violations of the laws of God, or 
 have arisen from thence. And none other curses have come 
 upon the land than those that are written in the Book. The 
 character and condition of the people are not less definitely 
 marked than the features of the land that has been smitten 
 with a curse because of their iniquities. And when the 
 unbeliever asks. Wherefore hath the Lord done this unto 
 the land ? the same word which foretold that the question 
 would be put, supplies an answer and assigns the cause. 
 — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 10. Behold the day, behold, it is come; the 
 morniag is gone forth ; the rod hath blossomed ; 
 pride hath budded. 11. Violence is risen up 
 into a rod of wickedness : none of them shall 
 remain, nor of their multitude, nor of any of 
 theirs; neither ^Aa// there be wailing for them. 
 
 This alludes to the punishment of the children of Israel ; 
 and Jehovah, through his servant, addresses the people in 
 eastern language : " The morning is gone forth." Their 
 wickedness, their violence, had grown into a rod to punish 
 them. The idea is implied in the Tamul translation also. 
 "■ Yes, wretch, the rod has long been growing for thee, 'tis 
 now ready, they may now cut it." " True, true, the man's 
 past crimes are as so many rods for him." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. But they that escape of them shall es- 
 cape, and shall be on the mountains like doves 
 of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one 
 for his iniquity. 
 
 This is a most strikingly apt simile to all who have 
 heard the sound made by the turtle-dove. In the woods of 
 Africa I have often listened to the sound of the turtle-dove's 
 apparent mourning and lamentations, uttered incessantly 
 for hours together — indeed, without a moment's intermis- 
 .sion. In a calm, still morning, when every thing in the 
 wilderness is at rest, no sound can be more plaintive, piti- 
 ful, and melancholy. It would cause gloom to arise in the 
 most sprightly mind, — it rivets the ear to it,— the attention 
 is irresistibly arrested. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 21. And I will give it into the hands of 
 the strangers for a prey, and to the wricked of 
 the earth for a spoil ; and they shall pollute it. 
 22. My face will I turn also from them, and 
 they shall pollute my secret 'place : for the rob- 
 bers shall enter into it, and defile it. 
 
 Instead of abiding under a settled and enlightened gov- 
 ernment, Judea has been the scene of frequent invasions, 
 " which have introduced a succession of foreign nations, 
 (des peuples etrangers.") " When the Ottomans took Syria 
 from the Mamelouks, they considered it as the spoil of a 
 vanquished enemy. According to this law, the life and 
 property of the vanquished belong to the conqueror. The 
 government is far from disapproving of a system oi^ rob- 
 bery and plunder which it finds so profitable." (Volney.)— 
 Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 7. And he brought me to the door of the 
 court ; and when I looked, behold, a hole in 
 the wall. 
 
 Caves, and other similar .subterraneous recesses, conse- 
 crated to the worship of the sun, were very generally, il 
 not universally, in requesc among nations where that su- 
 perstition was practised. The mountains of Chusistan at 
 this day abound wiih stupendous excavations of this sort. 
 Allusive to this kind of cavern temple, and this species of 
 devotion, are these words of Ezekiel. The prophet in a 
 vision beholds, and in the most sublime manner stigmatizes 
 the horrible idolatrous abominations which the Israelites 
 had borrowed from their Asiatic neighbours of Chaldea, 
 Egypt, and Persia. " And he brought me, says the prophet, 
 to the door of the court ; and when I looked, behold, a hole 
 in the wall. Then said he unto me, son of man, dig now 
 in the wall ; and, when I had digged in the wall, behold a 
 door. And he said unto me, Go in, (that is, into this cav- 
 ern temple,) and behold the wicked abominations that they 
 do there. So I went in, and saw, and behold, every form 
 of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols 
 of the house of Israel, were portrayed upon the wall round 
 about," In this subterraneous temple were seventy men of 
 the ancients of the house of Israel, and their employment 
 was of a nature very nearly similar to that of the priests 
 in Salsette. "They "stood with every man his censer in 
 his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then 
 said he unto me. Son of man, hast thou seen what the an- 
 cients of Israel do in the dark, every man in the cham- 
 bers of his imagery 1" In Egypt, to the particular idolatry 
 of which country, it is plain,' from his mentioning every 
 form of creeping thing and abominable beasts, the prophet 
 in this place alludes, these dark secluded recesses were 
 called mystic cells, and in them were celebrated the secret 
 mysteries of Isis and Osiris, represented by the quadrupeds 
 sacred to those deities. (Maurice.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 17. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen 
 this, O Son of man ? Is it a light thing to the 
 house of Judah that they commit the abomina- 
 tions which they commit here ? for they have 
 filled the land with violence, and have returned 
 to provoke me to anger ; and, lo, they put the 
 branch to their nose. 
 
 This last expression undoubtedly all udes to some par- 
 ticular ceremouy belonging to their idolatrous worsnip. 
 Mr. Lowth (on the prophets) says, the words may refer to 
 a custom among the idolaters of dedicating a branch of 
 laurel, or some other tree, to the honour of the sun, and 
 carrying it in their hands at the time of their worship. 
 Lewis observes, that the most reasonable exposition is, that 
 the worshipper, with a wand in his hand, would touch the 
 idol, and then apply the stick to his nose and mouth, in 
 token of worship and adoration. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 2. And, behold, six men came from the way 
 of the higher gate, which lieth towards the 
 north, and every man a slaughter-weapon in 
 his hand ; and one man among them was clothed 
 with I^nen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side ; 
 and they Avent in, and stood beside the brazen 
 altar. 
 
 See on Matt. 10. 9. 
 
 As they use not wax in sealing up doors, but clay, so they 
 use ink, not wax, in sealing their writings in the East. So 
 D'Arvieux tells us, that " the Arabs of the desert, when 
 they want a favour of their emir, get his secretary to write 
 an order agreeable to their desire, as if the favour was grant- 
 ed : this they carry to the prince, who, after having read 
 it, sets his seal to it with ink, if he grants it ; if not, he 
 returns the petitioner his paper torn, and dismisses him." 
 In another place he informs us, that " these papers are with- 
 out date, and have only the emir's flourish or cipher at 
 the bottom, signifying. The poor, the abject Mchcmet, .vu 
 of Thirabeye." Two things appear in these passages. The 
 one, that the Arab seals have no figure engraven on them, 
 but a simple inscription, formed, with some art, into a 
 kind of cipher J the other, that when they seal, they do 
 
Chap. 12. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 sar 
 
 not make an impression on wax, but stamp letters of ink 
 on the paper. 
 
 The modern inhabitants of Egypt.appear to make use of 
 ink in their sealing, as well as the Arabs of the desert, who 
 may be supposed not to have such conveniences as those 
 that live in such a place as Egypt : for Dr. Pococke says, 
 that " they make the impression of their name with their 
 seal, generally of carnelian, which they wear on their finger, 
 and which is blacked when they have occasion to seal with 
 it." This may serve to show us, that there is a closer 
 connexion between the vision of St. John, Rev. vii. 2, and 
 that of Ezekiel, ch. ix. 2, than commentators appear to have 
 apprehended. They must be joined, I imagine, to have a 
 complete view of either. St. John saw an angel with the 
 seal of the living God, and therewith multitudes were sealed 
 in their foreheads ; but to understand what sort of a mark 
 was made there, you mu.st have recourse to the inkhorn of 
 Ezekiel. On the other hand, Ezekiel saw a person equip- 
 
 ged with an inkhorn, wjio was to mark the servants of 
 rod on their foreheads, thai, is, with ink, but how the ink 
 was to be applied is not expressed; nor was there any need 
 that it should, if in those times ink was applied with a seal 
 being in the one case plainly supposed ; as in the Apoca- 
 lypse, the mention of a seal made it needless to take any 
 notice of an inkhorn by his side. 
 
 This position of the inkhorn of Ezekiel's writer may ap- 
 pear somewhat odd to a European reader, but the custom 
 of placing it by the side continues in the East to this day. 
 Olearius, who takes notice of a way that they have of 
 thickening their ink with a sort of paste they make, or with 
 sticks of Indian ink, which is the best paste of all, a cir- 
 cumstance favourable to their sealing with ink, observes, 
 that the Persians carried about with them, by means of 
 their girdled, a dagger, a knife, a handkerchief, and their 
 money ; and those that follow the profession of writing out 
 books, their inkhorn, their penknife, their whetstone to 
 sharpen it, their letters, and every thing the Moscovites 
 were wont in his time to put in their boots, which served 
 them instead of pockets. The Persians, in carrying their 
 inkhorns after this manner, seem to have retained a cus- 
 tom as ancient as the days of Ezekiel ; while the Musco- 
 vites, whose garb was very much in the eastern taste in the 
 days of Olearius, and who had many oriental customs among 
 them, carried their inkhorns and their papers in a very 
 different manner. Whether some such variations might 
 cause the Egyptian translators of the Septuagint version to 
 render the words, " a girdle of sapphire, or embroidery, 
 on the loins," I will not take upon me to affirm ; but I do 
 not imagine our Dr. Castell would have adopted this sen- 
 timent in his Lexicon, had he been aware of this eastern 
 custom : for with great propriety is the word nop keseth 
 mentioned in this chapter three times, if it signified an 
 inkhorn, the requisite instrument for sealing those devout 
 mourners ; but no account can be given why this nrp should 
 be mentioned so often, if it only signified an " embroidered 
 girdle." As to the other point relating to the Arab seals ; 
 their having no figures upon them, only an inscription, it 
 is to be thought that those of the Jews were in like manner 
 without any images, since they were as scrupulous as the 
 Mohammedans can be ; and from hence it will appear, that 
 it was extremely natural for St. Paul to make a seal and 
 an inscription equivalent terms, in 2 Tim. ii. 19 ; " The 
 foundation of God standeth sure, having his seal," this 
 inscription, "the Lord knoweth those that are his; and let 
 every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from ini- 
 quity." — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 4. And the Lord said unto him, Go through 
 the midst of the city, through the midst of Jeru- 
 salem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the 
 men that sigh, and that cry, for all the abomina- 
 tions that be done in the midst thereof. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, speaking of the religious rites of the Hin- 
 doos, says, before they can enter the great pagoda, an " in- 
 dispensable ceremony takes place, which can only be per- 
 formed by the hand of a bramin ; and that is, the impress- 
 ing of their foreheads with the tiluk, or mark of difier- 
 ent colours, as they may belong either to the sect of 
 Veeshnu, or Seeva. If the temple be that of Veeshnu, 
 their foreheads are marked with a longitudinal line, and 
 
 the colour used is vermilion. If it be the temple of Seeva, 
 they are marked with a parallel line, and the colour used 
 is turmeric, or saflVon. But these two grand sects being 
 again subdivided into numerous classes, both the size and 
 the shape of the tihck are varied in proportion to their su- 
 perior or inferior rank. In regard to the iiluk, I must ob- 
 serve, that it was a custom of very ancient date in Asia, 
 to mark their servants in the forehead. It is alluded to in 
 these words of Ezekiel, where the Almighty commands 
 his angels to " go through the midst of the city, and set a 
 mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh for the abom- 
 inations committed in the midst thereof." The same idea 
 occurs also in Rev. vii. 3. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 Ver. 3. Therefore, thou son of man, prepare the 
 stuff for removing, and remove by day in their 
 sight; and thou shalt remove from thy place to 
 another place in their sight: it may be they 
 will consider, though they be a rebellious house. 
 4. Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff by day 
 in their sight, as stuff for removing : and thou 
 shalt go forth at even in their sight, as they that 
 go forth into captivity. 5. Dig thou through 
 the wall in their sight, and carry out thereby : 
 6. In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy 
 shoulders, and carry it forth in the twilight : 
 thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not the 
 ground ; for I have set thee /or a sign unto the 
 house of Israel. 7. And I did so as I was 
 commanded : I brought forth my stuff by day, 
 as stuff for captivity, and in the even I digged 
 through the wall with my hand ; I brought it 
 forth in the twilight, and I bare it upon my 
 shoulder in their sight. 
 
 When they travel to distant places, they are wont to send 
 off their baggage to some place of rendezvous some time 
 before they set out. The account that an ingenious com- 
 mentator, whose expositions are generally joined to Bishop 
 Patrick's, gives of a paragraph of the prophet Ezekiel, 
 ought to be taken notice of here : it is, in a few words, this, 
 " that the prophet was to get the goods together, to pack 
 them up openly, and at noonday, that all might see, and 
 take notice of it; that he was to get forth at even, as men 
 do that would go ofi'by stealth : that he was to dig through 
 the wall, to show that Zedekiah should make his escape 
 by the same means; that what the prophet was commanded 
 to carry out in the twilight, must be something difleren 
 from the goods he removed in the daytime, and therefore 
 must mean provision for his present subsistence ; and that 
 he was to cover his face, so as not to see the ground, as 
 Zedekiah should do, that he might not be discovered." 
 
 Sir John Chardin, on the contrary, supposes, there was 
 nothing unusual, nothing very particular, in the two first of 
 the abovementioned circumstances. His manuscript notes 
 on this passage of Ezekiel are to the following purport. 
 " This is as they do in the caravans : they carry out their 
 baggage in the daytime, and the caravan loads in the even- 
 ing, for in the morning it is too hot to set out on a journey 
 for that iay, and they cannot well see in the night. How- 
 ever, this depends on the length of their journeys; for when 
 they are too short to take up a whole night, they load in 
 the night, in order to arrive at their journey's end early in 
 the morning, it being a greater inconvenience to arrive at 
 an unknown place in the night, than to set out on a jour- 
 ney then. As to his digging through the wall, he says 
 Ezekiel is speaking, without doubt, of the walls of the 
 caravansary. These walls, in the East, J(eing mostly cf 
 earth, mud, or clay, they may easily be bored through." 
 
 I cannot, I own, entirely adopt either of these accounts; 
 Ezekiel's collecting together his goods, does not look like 
 a person's flying in a hurry, and by stealth ; and consequent- 
 ly his going forth in the evening, in consequence of this 
 preparation, cannot be construed as designed to signify a 
 stealing away. These managements rather mark out the 
 distance of the way the}'- were going : going into captivity 
 
528 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap, la 
 
 in a very far couiitry. The going into captivity had not 
 privacy attending it; and accordingly, the sending their 
 goods to a common rendezvous beforehand, andselimg out 
 in an evening, are known to be eastern usages. 
 
 On the other hand, I should not imagine it was the wall 
 of a caravansary, or of any place like a caravansary, but 
 the wall of the place where Ezekiel was, either of his own 
 dwelling, or of the town in which he then resided : a man- 
 agement designed to mark oat the flight of Zedekiah ; as 
 the two first circumstances were intended to shadow out 
 the carrying Israel openly, and avowedly, into captivity. 
 
 Ezekiel was, I apprehend, to do two things: to imitate the 
 going of the people into captivity, and the harrying flight 
 of the king: two very distinct things. The mournful, but 
 composed collecting together all they had for a transmi- 
 gration, and leading them perhaps on asses, being as re- 
 mote as could be from the hurrying and secret manage- 
 ment of one making a private breach in a wall, and going 
 off" precipitatelv, with a few of his most valuable effects on 
 his shoulder, which were, I should think, what Ezekiel was 
 to carry, when he squeezed through the aperture in the wall, 
 not provisions. Nor am I sure the prophet's covering his 
 face was designed for concealment : it might be to express 
 Zedekiah's distress. David, it is certain, had his head 
 covered when he fled from Absalom, at a time when he 
 intended no concealment ; and when Zedekiah fled, it was 
 in the night, and consequently such a concealment not 
 wanted ; not to say, it would "have been embarrassing to 
 him in his flight, not to be able to see the ground. The 
 prophet mentions the digging through the wall, after men- 
 tioning his preparation for removing as into captivity ; but 
 it is necessary for us to suppose these emblematical actions 
 of the prophet are ranged just as he performed them.— 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 4. O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes 
 in the deserts. 
 
 When game fails him, or when the sword has ceased to 
 supply his wants, the fox devours with equal greediness, 
 honey, fruits, and particularly grapes. In allusion to his 
 eager desire for the fruit of the vine, it is said in the Song 
 of Solomon, " Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the 
 vines, for our vines have tender grapes." In scripture, the 
 church is often compared to a vineyard ; her members to the 
 vines with which it is stored ; and by consequence, the 
 grapes may signify all the fruits of righteousness, which those 
 mystical vines produce. The foxes that spoil these vines, 
 must therefore mean false teachers, who corrupt the purity 
 of the doctrine, obscure the simplicity of worship, overturn 
 the beauty of appointed order, break the unity of believers, 
 and extinguish the life and vigour of Christian practice. 
 These words of Ezekiel may be understood in the same 
 sense : " O Jerusalem ! thy prophets, (or as the context 
 clearly proves,") thy flattering teachers, are as foxes in the 
 deserts;" and this name they receive, because, with vulpine 
 subtlety, they speak lies in hypocrisy. Such teachers the 
 apostle calls " wolves in sheep's clothins:," deceitful work- 
 ers, who, by their cunning, subvert whole houses; and 
 whose word, like the tooth of a fox upon the vine, eats as 
 a canker. — Paxton. 
 
 In this passage. Dr. Boothroyd, instead of foxes, trans- 
 lates "jackals," and I think it" by far the best rendering. 
 These animals are exceedingly numerous in the East, and 
 are remarkably cunning and vo;?acious. I suppose the 
 reason why they are called the lion's provider is, because 
 they yell so miich when they have scent of prey, that the 
 noble beast hearing the sound, goes to the spot and satisfies 
 his hunger. They often hunt in packs, and I have had 
 from twenty to thirty following me (taking care to conceal 
 themselves in the low jungle) for an hour together. Th«y 
 will not, in general, dare to attack man : but, let him be 
 helpless or dea^ and they have no hesitation. Thus our 
 graveyards aiv often disturbed by these animals; and, 
 after they have once tasted of human flesh, they (as well as 
 many other creatures) are said to prefer it to any other. 
 Their conning is proverbial : thus, a man of plots and 
 schemes is called a nareyan, i. e. a jackal. " Ah ! only 
 give that fellow a tai., and he will make a capital jackal." 
 " Begone, low caste, or I will give thee to jackals."— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. Say unto them which daub it with un- 
 tempered mortar, that it shall fall : there shall 
 be an overflowing shower ; and ye, O great 
 hailstones, shall fall ; and a stormy wind shall 
 rend it. 
 
 In countries destitute of coal, bricks are only either sun- 
 dried or very slightly burnt with bushes and branches of 
 trees, laid over them and set on fire. Such are ready to 
 moulder if exposed to moisture, and entirely to melt away 
 if exposed to heavy rain dashing against them. To prevent 
 such a catastrophe, all the houses in the Cape colony are 
 daubed or plastered over with fine mortar, made from ground 
 seashells. Should only a small hole remain unnoticed in 
 the plaster, powerful rain will get into it, and probably 
 soon be the destruction of the whole building. Well do I 
 remember one deluge of rain that turned a new house of 
 three floors absolutely into a mass of rubbish, and brought 
 down the gable of a parish church, besides injuring many 
 other buildings.— Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 18. And say, Thus saith the Lord God, Wo 
 to the women that sew pillows to all arm-holes, 
 and make kerchiefs upon the head of every 
 stature, to hunt souls ! Will ye hunt the souls 
 of my people, and will ye save the souls alive 
 that come unto you ? 
 
 The margin has, instead of " arm-holes," " elbows." 
 The marginal reading is undoubtedly the best. Rich peo- 
 ple have a great variety of pillows and botelers to sup- 
 port themselves in various positions when they wish to 
 take their ease. Some are long and round, and are stuflTed 
 till thev are quite hard ; whilst others are short and soft, to 
 suit the convenience. The verse refers to females of a 
 loose character, and Parkhurst is right when he says, 
 " These false prophetesses decoyed men into their gardens, 
 where probably some impure "rites of worship were per- 
 formed." The pillows were used for the vilest purposes, 
 and the kerchiefs were used as an aff"ectation of shame. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 In Barbary and the Levant they " always cover the 
 floors of their houses with carpets ; and along the sides of 
 the wall or floor, a range of narrow beds or mattresses is 
 often placed upon these carpets; and, for their further 
 ease and convenience, several velvet or damusk bolsters 
 are placed upon these carpets or mattresses— indulgences 
 that seem to be alluded to by the stretching of themselves 
 upon couches, and by the sewing of pillows to arm-holes." 
 (Shaw.) But Lady M. W. Montague's description of a 
 Turkish ladv's apartment throws still more light on this 
 passage. She =ays, " The rooms are all spread with Per- 
 sian carpets, and raised at one end of them, about two feet. 
 This is the sofa, which is laid with a richer sort of car- 
 pet, and all round it, a sort of couch, raised half a foot, 
 covered with rich silk, according to the fancy or magnifi- 
 cence of the owner. Round about this are placed, standing 
 against the walls, two rows of cushions, the first very large, 
 and the rest little ones. The seats are so convenient and 
 easy, that I believe I shall never endure chairs again as long 
 as I live." And in another place she thus describes the fair 
 Fatima : " On a sofa raised three steps, and covered with 
 fine Persian carpets, sat the kahya's lady, leaning on cush- 
 ions of white satin embroidered. She ordered cushions to 
 be given me, and took care to place me in the corner, which 
 is the place of honour." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. And will ye pollute me among my peo- 
 ple for handfuls of barley, and for pieces of 
 bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and 
 to save the souls alive that should not live, by 
 your lying to my people that hear your lies? 
 
 See on Jer. 37. 21. 
 
 At Algiers thev have public bakehouses for the people 
 in common, so that the women only prepare the dough at 
 home, it being the business of other persons to bake il. 
 Bovs are sent about the streets to give notice when they are 
 ready to bake bread ; " upon this the M'omen within come 
 
Chap 15—19. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 529 
 
 and knock at the inside of the door, which the boy hearing 
 makes towards the house. The women open the door a 
 very little way, and hiding their faces, deliver the cakes to 
 him, which, when baked, he brings to the door again, and 
 the women receive them in the same manner as lliey gave 
 *hem." This is done almost every day, and they give the 
 boy apiece, or Utile cake, for the baking, which the baker 
 sells. (Pitts.) This illustrates the account of the false 
 prophetesses receiving as gratuities pieces of bread : they 
 are compensations still used in the East, but are compen- 
 sations of the meanest kind, and for services of the lowest 
 sert. — Harmbr. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 3. Shall wood be taken thereof to do any 
 work ? or will men take a pin of it to hang any 
 Vessel thereon 
 See on Isa. 22. 23. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 4. And as for thy nativity, in the day thou 
 wast born, thy navel was not cut, neither wast 
 thou washed in water to supple thee : thou wast 
 not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. 
 
 It was an ancient custom to salt the bodies of new-born 
 infants. It is probable that they only sprinkled them with 
 salt, or washed them with salt-water, which they imagined 
 would dry up all superfluous humours. Galen says, 
 " Sale modico insperso, cutis infantis densior, solidiorque 
 redditur;" that is, a little salt being sprinkled upon the 
 infant, its skin is rendered more dense and solid. It is said 
 that the inhabitants of Tartary still continue the practice 
 of salting their children as soon as they are born. — Bitrder. 
 
 Ver. 10. I clothed thee also with broidered work, 
 { and shod thee with badgers' skin, and girded 
 ! thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee 
 with silk. 
 
 See on Ex. 25. 5. 
 
 • Ver. 18. And tookest thy broidered garments, 
 and coveredst them : and thou hast set mine oil 
 and mine incense before them. 19. My meat 
 also which I gave thee, fine flour, and oil, and 
 honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou hast even set 
 it before them for a sweet savour : and thus it 
 was, saith the Lord God. 
 
 The burning of perfumes is now practised in the East in 
 times of feasting and joy ; and there is reason to believe 
 that the same usage obtained anciently in those countries. 
 Niebuhr mentions a Mohammedan festival, " after which 
 every one returned home, feasted, chexved kaad, burnt fra- 
 grant substances in his house, stretched himself at length on 
 his sofa, and lighted his kiddre, or long pipe, with the 
 greatest satisfaction."— Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 3. And say, Thus saith the Lord God, A 
 great eagle with great wings, long- winged, full 
 of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto 
 Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the 
 cedar. 
 
 The eagle is the strongest, the fiercest, and the most ra- 
 pacious of the feathered race. He dwells alone in the 
 desert, and on the summits of the highest mountains ; and 
 suffers no bird to come with impunity within the range of 
 his flight. His eye is dark and piercing, his beak and 
 talons are hooked and formidable, and his cry is the 
 terror of every wing. His figure answers to his nature ; 
 ■ndependently of his arms, he has a robust and compact 
 body, and very powerful limbs and wings ; his bones are 
 hard, his flesh is firm, his feathers are coarse, his attitude 
 67 
 
 is fierce and erect, his motions are lively, and his flight is 
 extremely rapid. Such is the golden eagle, as described 
 by the most accurate observers of nature. To this noble 
 bird the prophet Ezekiel evidently refers, in his parable to 
 the house of Israel : " A great eagle, with great wings, 
 long-winged, full ot feathers, which had divers colours, 
 came unto Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the 
 cedar." In this parable, a strict regard to physical truth 
 is discovered, in another respect, for the eagle is known to 
 have a predilection for cedars, which are the loftiest trees 
 in the forest, and therefore more suited to his daring temper 
 than any other. La Roque found a number of large eagle's 
 feathers scattered on the ground beneath the lofty cedars 
 which still crown the sumnfits of Lebanon, on the highest 
 branches of which, that fierce destroyer occasionally perch- 
 es. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. There was also another great eagle with 
 great wings and many feathers ; and, behold, 
 this vine did bend her roots towards him, and 
 shot forth her branches towards him, that he 
 might water it by the furrows of her plantation. 
 
 The reason of the figure must be obvious to every reader : 
 the erect and majestic mien of the eagle, point him out as 
 the intended sovereign of the feathered race ; he is, there- 
 fore, the fit emblem of superior excellence, and of regal 
 majesty and power. Xenophon, and other ancient histo- 
 rians, inform us, that the golden eagle with extended wings, 
 was the ensign of the Persian monarchs, long before it was 
 adopted by the Romans ; and it is very probable that the 
 Persians borrowed the symbol from the ancient Assyrians, 
 in whose banners it waved, till imperial Babylon "bowed 
 her head to the yoke of Cyrus. li this conjecture be well 
 founded, it discovers the reason whv the sacred writers, in 
 describing the victorious march of the Assyrian armies, 
 allude so frequently to the expanded eagle. Referring 
 still to the Babylonian monarch, the prophet Hosea pro- 
 claimed in the ears of Israel, the measure of whose iniqui- 
 ties was nearly full : " He shall come as an eagle against 
 the house of the Lord." Jeremiah predicted a similar ca- 
 lamity to the posterity of Lot : "For thus saith the Lord, 
 Behold, he shall fly as an eagle, and shall spread his 
 wings over Moab :" and the same figure is employed to 
 denote the sudden destruction which overtook the house 
 of Esau : " Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, 
 and spread his wings over Bozrah." The words of these 
 inspired prophets were not suffered to fall to the ground ; 
 they received a full accomplishment in the irresistible im- 
 petuosity and complete success with which the Babylonian 
 monarchs, and particularly Nebuchadnezzar, pursued their 
 plans of conquest. Ezekiel denominates him with striking 
 propriety, "a great eagle with great wings;" because he 
 was the most powerful monarch of his time, and led into the 
 field more numerous and better appointed armies, (which 
 the prophet calls by a beautiful figure, his wings,) than 
 perhaps the world had ever seen. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 8. Then the nations set against him on every 
 side from the provinces, and spread their net 
 over him : he was taken in their pit. 
 
 The manner in which this is done, Xenophon describes 
 at considerable length ; They dig a large circular pit, and 
 at night introduce into it a goat, which they bind to a stake 
 or pillar of earth at the bottom, and then enclose the pit 
 with a hedge of branches, that it cannot be seen, leaving 
 no entrance. The savage beast hearing in the night the 
 voice of the goat, prowls round the hedge, and finding no 
 opening, leaps over, and is taken. When the hunter pro- 
 poses to catch him in the toils, he stretches a series of nets 
 in a semicircular form, by means of long poles fixed in the 
 ground ; three men are placed in ambush, among the nets; 
 one in the middle, and one at each extremity. The toils 
 being disposed in this manner, some wave flaming torches ; 
 others make a noise by beating their shields, knowing that 
 lions are not less terrified by loud sounds than by fire. The 
 men on foot and horseback, skilfully combining, their move- 
 ments and raising a mighty bustle and clamour, rush in 
 
$30 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 19—23. 
 
 upon, them, and impel them towards the nets, till, intimidated 
 by the shouts of the hunters and the glare of the torches, 
 they approach the snares of their own accord, and are en- 
 tangled in the folds. — Paxton, 
 
 V^er. 11. And she had strong rods for the sceptres 
 of them that bare rule, and her stature was ex- 
 alted among the thick branches, and she ap- 
 peared in her height with the multitude of her 
 branches. 
 
 The allusion here is evidently to the sceptres of the an- 
 cients, which were no other tHkn walking-sticks, cut from 
 the stems or branches of trees, and decorated with gold, or 
 Ktudded with golden nails. Thus Achilles is introduced 
 as swearing by a sceptre, which being cut from the trunk 
 of a tree on the mountains, and stripped of its bark and 
 leaves, should never more produce leaves and branches, or 
 sprout again. Such a one the Grecian judges carried in 
 neir hands. See Homer, II. i. 234, — Border. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Ver. 14. Thou, therefore, son of man, prophesy, 
 and smite thy hands together, and let the sword 
 be doubled the third time, the sword of the slain : 
 it is the sword of the great men that are slain, 
 which entereth into their privy chambers. 
 
 " Smite thy hands together." To smite the hands 
 together, in the East, amounts to an oath ! In the 17th 
 verse, the Lord says, in reference to Jerusalem, " I will 
 also smite my hands together, and I will cause my fury to 
 rest : I the Lord have said." By the solemn smiting of 
 hands it was shown the word had gone forth, and would 
 not be recalled. When a priest delivers a message to the 
 people, when he relates any thing which he professes to 
 have received from the gods, he smites his hands together, 
 and says, " true." 
 
 Does a Pandarum, or other kind of religious mendicant, 
 consider himself to be insulted, he smites his hands against 
 the individuals, and pronounces his imprecations upon them, 
 crying aloud, " True, true, it will all come upon you." 
 Should a person, when speaking of any thing which is cer- 
 tain to happen, be doubted by others, he will immediately 
 smite his hands. " Have you heard that Muttoo has been 
 killed by a tiger 1" — " No ! nor do I believe it." The re- 
 later will then (if true) smite together his hands, which at 
 once confirms the fact. " Those men cannot escape for 
 any great length of time, because the king has smitten 
 his hands ;" meaning, he has sworn to have them taken. 
 Jehovah did smite His hands together against Jerusalem. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. For the king of Babylon stood at the 
 parting of the way, at the head of the two 
 ways, to use divination : he made his arrows 
 bright, he consulted with images, he looked in 
 the liver. 
 
 Heb. " mother of the way." It is a common thing among 
 the people of the East to denominate a man ihe father of a 
 thing for which he is remarkable. It appears also that 
 both people and places may in like manner be called the 
 mother of such things for which they are particularly no- 
 ticed. Thus Niebuhr tells us, that the Arabs call a wo- 
 man that sells butter omm es siibbet, the mother of butter. 
 He also says, that there is a place between Basra and Zo- 
 bier, where an ass happened to fall down, and throw the 
 wheat with which the creature was loaded into some wa- 
 ter, on which account that place is called to this day, the 
 mother of wheat. 
 
 In like manner, in the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Her- 
 belot, omm alkelab, or the mother of books, signifies the 
 book of the divine decrees ; and at other times the first 
 chapter of the Koran. The mother of the throat is the name 
 of an imaginary being (a fairy) who is supposed to bring 
 on and cure that disorder in the throat, which we call the 
 quinsy. In the same collection we are told, that the acacia, 
 or Egyptian thorn is called by the Arabians the mother of 
 
 satyrs, because these imaginary inhabitants of the forests 
 and deserts were supposed to naunt under them. After 
 this we shall not at all wonder when we read of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's standing in the mother of the way, a remarkable 
 place in the road, where he was to determine whether he 
 would go to Jerusalem, or to some other place, one branch 
 of the road pointing to Jerusalem, the other leading to a 
 different town. 
 
 " He made his arrows bright." This was for the pur- 
 pose of divination. Jerome on this passage says, that " the 
 manner of divining by arrows was thus : They wrote on 
 sev^eral arrows the names of the cities they intended to 
 make war against, and then putting them prbmiscuously all 
 together into a quiver, they caused them to be drawn out 
 in the manner of lots, and that city whose name was on 
 the arrow first drawn out, was the first they a^aulted." A 
 njethod of this sort of divination, diiFerent from the former, 
 is worth noticing. Delia Valle says, " I saw at Aleppo a 
 Mohammedan, who caused two persons to sit upon the 
 ground, one opposite to the other, and gave them four ar- 
 rows into their hands, which both of them held with their 
 points downward, and as it were in two right lines united 
 one to the other. Then, a question being put to him about 
 any business, he fell to murmur his enchantments, and 
 thereby caused the said four arrows of their own accord to 
 unite their points together in the midst, (though he that 
 held them stirred not his hand,) and, according to the future 
 event of the matter, those of the right side were placed over 
 those of the left, or on the contrary." This practice the 
 writer refers to diabolical influence. 
 
 The method of divination practised by some of the idola- 
 trous Arabs, but which is prohibited by the Koran, is too 
 singular to be unnoticed. " The arrows used by them for 
 this purpose were like those with which they cast lots, be- 
 ing without heads or feathers, and were kept in the temple 
 of some idol, in whose presence they were consulted. 
 Seven such arrows were kept at the temple of Mecca : but 
 generally in divination they make use of three only, on one 
 of which was written, my Lord hath commanded me ; on 
 another, my Lord hath forbidden me ; and the third was 
 blank. If the first was drawn, they looked on -it as an ap- 
 probation of the enterprise in question ; if the second, they 
 made a contrary conclusion ; but if the third happened to 
 be drawn, they mixed them, and drew over again, till a 
 decisive answer was given by one of the others. These 
 divining arrows were generally consulted before any 
 thing of moment was undertaken, as when a man was 
 about to marry, or about to go a journey, or the like. ' — 
 
 BURDBR. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Ver. 12. In thee have they taken gifts to shec 
 blood ; thou hast taken usury and increase, and 
 tbou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by 
 extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord 
 God. 
 
 There is surely no part of the world worse than the East 
 for usury and extortion. A rich man will think nothing of 
 demanding twenty per cent, for his precious loan. Does a 
 person wish to buy or sell an article ; does he want to avoid 
 any office or duty, or to gain a situation, or place any per- 
 son under an obligation; he cannot think of doing the one 
 or the other, without giving himself into the hands of the 
 extortioner. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 30. And I sought for a man among them 
 that should make up the hedge, and stand in thf 
 gap before me for the land, that I should not 
 destroy it ; but I found none. 
 
 A man having lost all his children, and in complaining 
 of his forlorn condition, says, " Alas ! I have not any one 
 to stand in the gate ; my enemies can now enter when they 
 please to tear and devour me." " In the gate, in the gate, 
 no one stands." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 5. And Aholah played the harlot when she 
 was mine ; and she doted on her lovers, on the 
 
Chap. 23—25. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 63t 
 
 Assyrians her neighbours, 6. Which were 
 clothed with blue, captains and rulers, all of 
 them desirable young men, horsemen riding 
 upon horses. 
 
 Blue was a sky colour in great esteem among the Jews, 
 and other oriental nations. The robe of the ephod, in the 
 gorgeous dress of the high priest, was made all of blue ; it 
 was a prominent colour in the sumptuous hangings of the 
 tabernacle ; and the whole people of Israel were required 
 to put a fringe of blue upon the border of their garments, 
 and on the frinf^e a riband of the same colour. The pal- 
 ace of Ahasuerus, the king of Persia, was furnished with 
 curtains of this colour, on a pavement of red, and blue, and 
 white marble; a proof it was not less esteemed in Persia, 
 than on the Jordan. And from Ezekiel we learn, that the 
 Assyrian nobles were habited in robes of this colour : " She 
 doled on the Assyrians her neighbours, which were cloth- 
 ed with blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable 
 young men." It is one of the most remarkable vicissitudes in 
 the customs of the East, that this beautiful colour, for many 
 ages associated in their minds with every thing splendid, 
 elegant, and rich, should have gradually sunk in public 
 estimation, till it became connected with the ideas of mean- 
 ness and vulgarity, and confined to the dress of the poor 
 and the needy. In modern times, the whole dress of an 
 Arabian female of low station, consists of drawers, and a 
 very large shift, both of blue linen, ornamented with some 
 needle-work of a different colour. And if credit may be given 
 to Thevenot, the Arabs between Egypt and Mount Sinai, who 
 lead a most wretched life, are clothed in a long blue shirt. 
 To solve this difficulty, Mr. Harmer supposes that " the 
 art of dying blue, was discovered in countries more to the 
 east or south than Tyre ; and that the die was by no means 
 become common in the days of Ezekiel, though some that 
 were employed in the construction of the tabernacle, and 
 some of the Tyrians in the time of Solomon, seem to have 
 possessed the art of dying with blue. These blue cloths 
 were manufactured in remote countries ; and to them that 
 wore scarcely any thing but woollens and linens of the nat- 
 ural colour, these blue calicoes formed very magnificent 
 vestments. It does not appear, however, that the Jews ever 
 wore garments wholly of this colour ; and perhaps they 
 abstained from it as sacred and mysterious, than which 
 none was more used about the tabernacle and the temple, 
 in the curtains, veils, and vestments, belonging to these sa- 
 cred edifices." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. And that she increased her whoredoms : 
 for when she saw men portrayed upon the wall, 
 the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with 
 vermilion. 
 
 The nature of those images, and the practices, may be 
 seen from the context, and the portraying was of the colour 
 of VERMILION. In the Hindoo temples and vestibules, 
 figures of the most revolting descriptions are portrayed on 
 the walls : there the sexes are painted in such a wayas few 
 men of discretion would dare to describe. In some temples 
 there are stone figures in such positions as hell itself could 
 only have suggested : and, recollect, these are the places 
 where men, women, and children, assemble for woRsmp. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Ver. 3. And utter a parable unto the rebellious 
 house, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord 
 God, Set on a pot, set it on, and also pour wa- 
 ter into it : 4. Gather the pieces thereof into 
 it, even every good piece, the thigh, and the 
 shoulder ; fill it with the choice bones. 5. Take 
 the choice of the flock, and burn also the bones 
 under it, and make it boil well, and let him 
 seethe the bones of it therein. 
 
 The following account of a royal Arab camel feast, will 
 afford some illustration of the parable contained in this 
 chapter: "Before midday a carpet being spread in the 
 middle of the tent our dinner was brought in, being served 
 
 tip in large wooden bowls between two men ; and truly to 
 my apprehension load enough for them. Of these great 
 platters there were about fifty or sixty in number, perhaps 
 more, with a great many little ones; I mean, such as one 
 man was able to bring in, strewed here and there among 
 them, and placed for a border or garnish round about the 
 table. In the middle was one of a larger size than all the 
 rest, in which were the camel's bones, and a thin broth in 
 which they were boiled. The other greater ones seemed 
 all filled with one and the same sort of provision, a kind of 
 plumbbroth, made of rice and the fleshy part of the camel, 
 with currants and spices, being of a somewhat darker col- 
 our than what is made in our country." (Philosophical 
 Transactions Abridged.) The Hebrew word translated 
 burn, should have been rendered, as in the margin, heap. 
 The meaning cannot be that the bones were to be burnt 
 under the caldron, but that they were to be heaped up in it •, 
 for it is said, " let them seethe the bones of it therein." 
 With this interpretation the Septuagint translation of the 
 passage agrees : and viewed in this light, the object is as- 
 certained by the foregoing extract. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 17. Forbear to cry, make no mourning for 
 the dead, bind the tire of thy head upon thee, 
 and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover 
 not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. 
 
 The time of mourning for the dead was longer or short- 
 er, according to the dignity of the person. Among the 
 modern Jews, the usual time is seven days, during which 
 they shut themselves up in their houses ; or if some extra- 
 ordinary occasion forces them to appear in public, it is with- 
 out shoes, as a token they have lost a dear friend. This ex- 
 plains the reason that when Ezekiel was commanded to 
 abstain from the rites of mourning, he was directed to put 
 his shoes on his feet. 
 
 To cover the lips was a very ancient sign of mourning ; 
 and it continues to be practised among the Jews of Barba- 
 ry to this day. When they return from the grave to the 
 house of the deceased, the chief mourner receives them 
 with his jaws tied up with a linen cloth, in imitation of the 
 manner in which the face of the dead is covered ; and by 
 this the mourner is said to testify that he was ready to die 
 for his friend. Muffled in this way, the mourner goes for 
 seven days, during which the rest of his friends come twice 
 every twenty-four hours to pray with him. This allusion 
 is perhaps involved in the charge which Ezekiel received 
 when his wife died, to abstain from the customary forms of 
 mourning : " Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the 
 dead ; bind the tire of thy head upon thee, and put on thy 
 shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the 
 bread of men." The law of Moses required a leper to have 
 his clothes rent, his head bare, and a covering upon his up- 
 per lip, because he was considered as a dead man, " of whom 
 the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his 
 mother's womb." — Paxton. 
 
 This refers to mourning for the dead, and the prophet 
 was forbidden to use any symbol of sorrow on the deatn of 
 his wife. At a funeral ceremony the tires and turbans are 
 taken off, and the sandals are laid aside. Thus nobles, 
 who wear the most costly turbans, are seen walking with 
 their heads uncovered, and those who had on beautiful san- 
 dals are barefoot. But the prophet was to put on his tire 
 and sandals, to indicate he was not mourning for the dead. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Ver. 2. Son of man, set thy face against the Am- 
 monites, and prophesy against them. 
 
 It was prophesied concerning Ammon, " Son of man, 
 set thy face against the Ammonites, and prophesy against 
 them. I will make Rabbah of the Ammonites a stable for 
 camels and a couching-place for flocks. Behold, I will 
 stretch out my hand upon thee, and deliver thee for a spoil 
 to the heathen ; I will cut thee off from the people, and 
 cause thee to perish out of the countries ; I will destroy thee. 
 The Ammonites shall not be remembered among the na- 
 tions. Rabbah (the chief city) of the Ammonites shall be 
 a desolate heap. Ammon shall be a perpetual desolation." 
 
 " Ammon was to be delivered to be a spoil to the heathen; 
 
^2 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 25? 
 
 — ^to be destroyed, and to be a perpetual desolation." " All 
 this country, formerly so populous and flourishing, is now- 
 changed into a vast desert." Ruins are seen in every di- 
 rection. The country is divided between the Turks and the 
 Arabs, but chiefly possessed by the latter. The extortions 
 of the one and the depredations of the other, keep it in per- 
 piiual desolation, and make it a spoil io the heathen. " The 
 far greater part of the country is uninhabited, being aban- 
 doned to the wandering Arabs, and the towns and villages 
 are in a state of total ruin." " At every step are to be found 
 the vestiges of ancient cities, the remains of many temples, 
 public edifices, and Greek churches." The cities are des- 
 olate. " Many of the ruins present no object of any inter- 
 est. They consist of a few walls of dwelling-houses, heaps 
 of stones, the foundations of some public edifices, and a few 
 cisterns filled up ; there is nothing entire, but it appears 
 that the mode of building was very solid, all the remains 
 being formed of large stones. In the vicinity of Ammon 
 there is a fertile plain interspersed with Jow hills, which, 
 for the greater part, are covered with ruins." 
 
 While the country is thus despoiled and desolate, there 
 are valleys and tracts throughout it, which " are covered 
 with a fine coat of verdant pasture, and are places of resort 
 to the Bedouins, where they pasture their camels and their 
 sheep." " The whole way we traversed," says Seetzen, 
 *• we saw villages in ruins, and met numbers of Arabs with 
 their camels," &c. Mr. Buckingham describes a building 
 among the ruins of Ammon, " the masonry of which was 
 evidently constructed of materials gathered from the ruins 
 of other and older buildings on the spot. On entering it at 
 the south end," he adds, " we came to an open square court, 
 with arched recesses on each side, the sides nearly facing 
 the cardinal points. The recesses into the northern and 
 southern walls were originally open passages, and had 
 arched doorways facing each other — but the first of these 
 was found wholly closed up, and the last was partially filled 
 up, leaving only a narrow passage, just sufficient for the 
 entrance of one man and the goats, which the Arab keep- 
 ers drive in here occasionally for shelter during the night." 
 He relates that he lay down among " flocks of sheep and 
 goats," close beside the ruins of Ammon; — and particular- 
 ly remarks that, during the night, he was almost entirely 
 prevented from sleeping by the " bleating of flocks." So 
 literally true is it, although Seetzen, and Burckhardt, and 
 Buckingham, who relate the facts, make no reference or al- 
 lusion whatever to any of the prophecies, and travelled for 
 a diflferent object than the elucidation of the scriptures, — 
 that " the chief city of the Ammonites is a stable for cam- 
 els, and a couching-place for flocks." 
 
 " The Ammonites shall not be remembered among the 
 nations." While the Jews, who were long their heredita- 
 ry enemies, continue as distinct a people as ever, though 
 dispersed among all nations, no trace of the Ammonites 
 remains ; none are now designated by their name, nor do 
 any claim descent from them. They did exist, however, 
 long after the time when the eventual annihilation of their 
 race was foretold, for they retained their name, and contin- 
 ued a great multitude, until the second century of the 
 Christian era. " Yet they are cut off from the people. 
 Ammon has perished out of the countries ; it is destroyed." 
 No people is attached to its soil — none regard it as their 
 country and adopt its name ; and the Ammonites are not 
 remembered among the nations. 
 
 Rabbah (Rabbah Ammon, the chief city of Ammon) shall 
 he a desolate heap. Situated, as it was, on each side of the 
 borders of a plentiful stream ; encircled by a fruitful re- 
 gion ; strong by nature and fortified by art ; nothing could 
 have justified the suspicion, or warranted the conjecture in 
 the mind of an uninspired mortal, that the royal city of 
 Ammon, whatever disasters might possibly befall it in the 
 fate of war or change of masters, would ever undergo so 
 total a transmutation as to become a desolate heap. But 
 although, in addition to such tokens of its continuance as a 
 city, more than a thousand years had given uninterrupted 
 experience of its stability, ere the prophets of Israel de- 
 nounced its fate; yet a period of equal length has now 
 marked it out, as it exists to this day, a desolate heap — -a 
 perpetual or permanent desolation. Its ancient name is 
 still preserved by the Arabs, and its site is now " covered 
 with the ruins of private buildings ; nothing of them re- 
 maining except the foundations, and some of the doorposts. 
 The buildings, exposed to the atmosphere, are all in decay," 
 
 so that they may be said literally to form a desolate heap. 
 The public edifices, which once strengthened or adorned 
 the city, after a long resistance to decay, are now also des- 
 olate ; and the remains of the most entire among them, sub- 
 jected as they are to the abuse and spoliation "of the Muld 
 Arabs, can be adapted to no belter object than a stable for 
 camels. Yet these broken walls and ruined palaces, which 
 attest the ancient splendour of Ammon, can now be made 
 subservient, by means of a smgle act of reflection, or sim- 
 ple process of reason, to a far nobler purpose than the most 
 magnificent edifices on earth can be, when they are con- 
 templated as monuments on which the historic and pro- 
 phetic truth of scripture is blended in on^ bright inscrip- 
 tion. A minute detail of them may not therefore be unin- 
 teresting. 
 
 Seetzen (w^hose indefatigable ardour led him, in defiance 
 of danger, the first to explore the countries which lie east, 
 of the Jordan, and east and south of the Dead Sea, or the 
 territories of Ammon, Moab, and Edom) justly characteri- 
 zes Ammon as " once the residence of many kings — an an- 
 cient town, which flourished long before the Greeks and 
 Romans, and even before the Hebrews;" and he briefly 
 enumerates those remains of ancient greatness and splen- 
 dour which are most distinguishable amid its ruins. " Al- 
 though this town has been destroyed and deserted for many 
 ages, I still found there some remarkable ruins, which attest 
 its ancient splendour. Such as, 1st, A square building, 
 very highly ornamented, which has been perhaps a mauso- 
 leum. 2d, The ruins of a large palace. 3d, A magnifi- 
 cent amphitheatre of immense size, and well preserved, 
 with a peristyle of Corinthian pillars without pedestals. 
 4th, A temple with a great number of columns. 5th, The; 
 ruins of a large church, perhaps the see of a bishop in the 
 time of the Greek emperors. 6th, The remains of a temple 
 with columns set in a circular form, and which are of an 
 extraordinary size. 7th, The remains of the ancient wall, 
 with many other edifices." Burckhardt, who afterward 
 visited the spot, describes it with greater minuteness. He 
 gives a plan of the ruins ; and particularly noted the ruins 
 of many temples, of a spacious church, a curved wall, a 
 high arched bridge, the banks and bed of the river still 
 partially paved ; a large theatre, with successive tiers of 
 apartments excavated in the rocky side of a hill ; Corin- 
 thian columns fifteen feet high ; the castle, a very extensive 
 building, the walls of which are thick, and denote a re- 
 mote antiquity; many cisterns and vaults; and a plain 
 covered with the decayed ruins of private buildings;— 
 monuments of ancient splendour standing amid a desolat*. 
 Agap.— Keith. 
 
 Ver. 4. Behold, therefore, I will deliver thee to 
 the men of the East for a possession, and they 
 shall set their palaces in thee, and make their 
 dwellings in thee : they shall eat thy fruit, and 
 they shall drink thy milk. 
 
 The seed-time is attended with considerable danger to 
 the husbandmen, in Palestine and Syria ; for although the 
 more peaceful Arabs apply themselves to agriculture, to 
 supply their families with grain, many of the same wander- 
 ing race choose rather to procure the corn which they want 
 by violence, than by tillage. So precarious are the fruits 
 of the earth in Palestine, that the former is often seen sow- 
 ing, accompanied by an armed friend, to prevent his being 
 robbed of the seed. These vexations, ana often desolating 
 incursions, are described by the prophet in the following 
 remarkable terms, when he denounced the judgments of 
 God against the descendants of Ammon : " Behold, there- 
 fore, I will deliver thee to the men of the East for a posses- 
 sion, and they shall set their palaces in thee, and make their 
 dwellings in thee: they shall eat thy fruit, and they shall 
 drink thy milk." The practice of robbing the sower in the 
 field, seems to have been very ancient: and is perhaps al- 
 luded to by the Psalmist, when he encourages the righteous 
 man, to persevere in working out his salvation, in spite of 
 the dangers to which he is exposed, by the complete success, 
 which in due time shall assuredly crown his endeavours. 
 " They that sow in tears," on account of the danger from 
 the lurking and imfeeling Arabian, " shall reap in joy." He 
 that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall 
 doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves 
 
Chap. 26. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 533 
 
 with him." It is much more natural to suppose that these 
 verses refer to such acts of violence, than to imagine, with 
 all the commentators who have turned their attention to 
 this circumstance, that they allude to the anxiety of a hus- 
 bandman, who sows his corn in a time of great scarcity, 
 and is afraid his hopes may be disappointed by the failure 
 of the succeeding harvest. We nowhere read, that such 
 fearful anticipations ever produced weeping and lamenta- 
 tion, although the Orientals are very prone to violent ex- 
 pressions of grief. But, if we refer the passage to the 
 danger which the farmer in those parts of the world often 
 incurred, of losing his precious seed, the hope of his future 
 subsistence, and' even his life, in attempting to defend it, we 
 have an adequate cause for his rears and lamentations. 
 The passage contains a beautiful picture of the success 
 which, by the blessing of God, attended the efforts of his 
 chosen people, to return from their captivity to the land of 
 their fathers ; and holds out a powerful encouragement to 
 believers in Christ, to persevere in their heavenly course, 
 notwithstanding the numerous and severe trials of this pre- 
 sent life ; for in due time, they shall certainly enter into 
 the rest which remains for the people of God. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. And I Avill make Rabbah a stable for 
 camels, and the Ammonites a couching-place 
 for flocks ; and ye shall know that I am the 
 Lord. 
 
 The Syrian shepherds were exposed, with their flocks, 
 to all the vicissitudes of the seasons. It was indeed impos- 
 sible to erect buildings capacious enough to receive the 
 countless numbers of cattle, which constituted the wealth 
 of those pastoral princes. Their servants were, therefore, 
 compelled to watch the flocks night and day. The flocks 
 of Libya " often graze both night and day, and for a whole 
 month together, and repair into long deserts, without any 
 shelter, so wide the plain extends." The Mesopotamiah 
 shepherd was reduced to the same incessant labour, chilled 
 by the piercing cold of the morning, and scorched by the 
 succeeding heats of a flaming sun, the opposite action of 
 which often swells and chafes his lips and face. Jacob 
 complains, " Thus I was ; in the day, the drought consu- 
 med me, and the frost by night ; and my sleep departed 
 from mine eyes." In times long posterior to the age when 
 Jacob flourished, the angels who descended to announce the 
 birth of our Lord, found the shepherds to whom they were 
 sent, keeping watch over their flocks by night. To prevent 
 them from wandering, they shut them up in a fold formed 
 of hurdles, and took their station on the outside, to defend 
 them from the attacks of wild beasts, or bands of robbers, 
 that infested- the country, and preyed upon the property of 
 the peaceful and industrious inhabitants. 
 
 When the prophet Ezekiel threatened the Ammonites, 
 that Rabbah, their capital, should become a stable for cam- 
 els, we are not to imagine that the Arabian shepherds 
 were careful to provide such coverts for these more tender 
 animals. Chardin says, that as they feed them on the 
 ground, and do not litter them, they never think of erecting 
 such buildings for their reception. The same fact is ad- 
 mitted by Dr. Shaw, when he makes a supposition that the 
 cattle of these countries would be much more numerous 
 than they are, if they had some little shelter in winter. 
 The only shelter to which they have recourse, is the deso- 
 late ruin; and to this circumstance the prophet Ezekiel 
 most probably alluded, when he described Rabbah as about 
 to become a stable for camels, or, as the original term may 
 be rendered with equal propriety, a place of camels, where 
 they screen themselves from the rays of a burning sun, and 
 feed on the nettles, and other plants, which spring up among 
 the mouldering walls of ruined habitations. The same 
 term is rendered in the twenty-third psalm, pastures ; and 
 perhaps all that the prophet means is only this, that Rabbah 
 should be so completely destroyed, that camels should feed 
 on the place where it stood ; and if this was his meaning, 
 it has been long since realized, for the last remains of that 
 t proud city have entirely disappeared. The greatest skill 
 and vigilance, and even tender care, are required in the 
 j management of such immense flocks as wander on the Sy- 
 j rian plains. Their prodigiousnumbers compel the keepers 
 ii to remove them too frequently in search of fresh pastures, 
 f which proves very destructive to the young that have not 
 I strength to follow. This circumsta ice displays the energy 
 
 of Jacob's apology to his brother Esau, for not attending 
 him as he requested : " The flocks and herds with youjig 
 are with me ; and if men should over-drive them one day, 
 all the flocks would die." It illustrates also another passage 
 in the prophecies of Isaiah : " He shall feed his flock like 
 a shepherd ; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and 
 carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that 
 are with young:" a beautiful image, expressing with great 
 force and elegance, the tender and unceasing attention of 
 the shepherd to his flock. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Ver. 3. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Be- 
 hold, I am ag-ainst thee, O Tyrus, and will 
 cause many nations to come up against thee, as 
 the sea causeth his waves to come up. 4. And 
 they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break 
 down her towers : I wull also scrape her dust 
 from her, and make her like the top of a rock. 
 5. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets 
 in the midst of the sea : for I have spoken it, 
 saith the Lord God ; and it shall become a spoil 
 to the nations. 
 
 This history of the city is most aflfecting, and it has been 
 said with much force, that " the noble dust of Alexander, 
 traced by the imagination till found stopping a beer-barrel, 
 would scarcely aftord a stronger contrast of grandeur and 
 abasement than Tyre, at the period of being besieged by 
 that conqueror, and the modern town of Tsour erected on 
 its ashes." It was probably a colony of the Sidonians, as it 
 is called " the daughter of Sidon." ' From its present name 
 appears to have been taken the general name of Syria. Its 
 first mention is in Joshua, where it is called " the strong city 
 Tyre." At an early period it became the mistress of the 
 seas ; traded even to Britain, and planted colonies in difl^er- 
 ent parts of the Mediterranean, among which Carthage be- 
 came the most celebrated. 
 
 The history of Tyre is more especially interesting to the 
 Christian, from its connexion with prophecy, and from the 
 striking eloquence with which inspiration has described 
 the majesty of its brighter days, and the impressive circum- 
 stances of its destruction. It was also referred to by our 
 Saviour, when he pronounced wo upon the inhabitants of 
 Chorazin and Bethsaida, because they had seen his mighty 
 works and repented not. Her merchants were princes, her 
 trafiickers the honourable of the earth. She heaped up sil- 
 ver as dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. The 
 boards of her sh ips were of the fir-trees of Senir, her masts 
 of the cedars of Lebanon, her oars of the oaks of Bashan, 
 her benches of the ivory of Chittim, her sails of fine linen, 
 broidered work from Egypt, and her awnings were of pur- 
 ple. Her heart was lifted up, and she said, I am a god, I 
 sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas. Such is the 
 description given in sacred writ of the pride and magnifi- 
 cence of ancient Tyre. Now, in the language of the same 
 authority, the noise of her songs is ceased, and the voice of 
 her harps is no more heard: her walls are broken down, 
 her pleasant houses are no more, she is made like the top 
 of a rock, a place to spread nets upon : she is built no more. 
 
 The Saracens and Turks were the unconscious instru- 
 ments who carried these prophecies into their fulfilment : 
 they utterly destroyed Sidon and Tyre, that they might nor 
 afford further reiiige to the crusaders. There were two 
 harbours, formed by the island ; one towards the north, and 
 the other towards the south ; and there was a passage be- 
 tween the island and the shore from the one to the other. 
 The island is represented by Pliny as having been four 
 miles in circumference, but the peninsula upon w-hich the 
 present town is situated, is of much less extent. It would 
 therefore appear that it is built for the most part upon the 
 mole thrown up by Alexander, including a small portion of 
 the original island. There is thus enough of the rock left 
 in existence for the fishers to spread their nets upon, while 
 the principal area, once mantled with palaces and alive with 
 a busy population, has been swept into "the midst of the wa- 
 ters," and can be built no more. The disappearance of the 
 island has caused the destruction of the harbours ; and as 
 all protection to shipping 'is now taken away. Tyre can 
 never again rise to eminence as " the mart of nations." 
 
nu 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 26. 
 
 There are still two small rocks in the sea, to which the 
 island probably extended ; and as the fishermen's boats 
 can approach them in calm weather, they seem to in vile the 
 spreading of nets upon their surface. I and my compan- 
 ions sailed over the present harbour in a small boat, to ex- 
 amine the columns that may clearly be seen under the water 
 on a fine day, but the sea was too rough to allow us to dis- 
 cover many of them. The present town is walled, and is 
 of very modern date. The space inside is in a great meas- 
 ure open, and the houses are mean. The governor's res- 
 idence is the only respectable building. There are many 
 columns near the small harbour, and others on the opposite 
 side of the peninsula, but there is no ruin of ancient date, 
 the plan of which can be traced. We saw in a garden a 
 granite column of one block, that measured 30 feet in length, 
 and the diameter was in proportion. The eastern end of 
 the cathedral is still standing. We ascended to the top of 
 the ruin by a spiral staircase, and from thence had a view 
 of the town. The burial-ground is near. From this situa- 
 tion the houses had a singular appearance, as the roofs are 
 all flat, and were then verdant with a rich covering of grass. 
 Upon the plain there are the remains of an extensive aque- 
 duct. The mole appears like a mere collection of sand, 
 but beneath there may be some construction of more endur- 
 ing materials. 
 
 " Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient 
 days 1 Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre % The 
 Lord of Hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all 
 glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the 
 earth." — Isa. xxiii. 7—9. The stirring scenes of a seaport 
 exhibit a picture of more constant excitement than can ever 
 be presented by any other place. The arrival and discharge 
 of ships ; the cries of the captains as they direct their ready 
 mariners ; the songs of the boatmen, the dash of the oars, 
 and the roll of the sea; the solitary female, whose eye 
 catches every speck that appears white in the horizon, and 
 never leaves it till one after another of its inmates have 
 been carefully numbered, that perchance she may discover 
 amon°: them the father of her disconsolate children ; the 
 faltering step of the aged sailor, whose battles have been 
 fought, and whose victories have been won ; the tears of 
 those who are bidding farewell, and the rapture of those 
 who are greeting the arrival of a long-aosent friend ; the 
 anxious assemblies of the merchants, either speaking of 
 traffic, or proclaiming their good fortune, or lamenting the 
 loss of some fair ship in a destructive gale ; the reckless 
 merriment of the seamen, as they enjoy upon land a little 
 respite from their constant toils :— all these, and a thousand 
 other scenes of noise, and joyousness, and wealth, have 
 been exhibited upon these shores. They have passed away, 
 like the feverish dream of a disturbed sleep. Ships may be 
 seen, but at a distance; no merchant of the earth ever 
 enters the name of Tyre upon his books, and where thou- 
 sands once assembled in pomp and pride, and there was 
 beauty, and splendour, and dominion, I could discover only 
 a few children amusing themselves at play, and a party of 
 Turks sitting in gravity, and sipping their favourite cof- 
 fee. — Hardv. 
 
 The desolate appearance of Soor from the sea, — a strag- 
 gling, repulsive village of lowscattered dwellings, with a few 
 squalid inhabitants loitering on the beach — is in gloomy 
 contrast Avith the gorgeous descriptions of insular Tyre, 
 before Alexander eflfected its destruction by the daring" ex- 
 pedient of uniting it with the continent. 
 
 The present peninsula, once the site of this splendid city, 
 anciently estimated at three miles in circumference, but ap- 
 parently of somewhat less extent, is now a dreary waste, 
 distinguished only by hillocks and furrows; and the me- 
 morable isthmus, then so laboriously constructed, has be- 
 come less conspicuous from the augmentation of its width, 
 by the gradual accumulation of sand. Its once vaunted port 
 is now so effectually choked, that only small boats can ap- 
 proach the shore, although, amidst the waves, the founda- 
 tions are still visible of the massive walls that formed its 
 fortified boundaries, leaving only a narrow entrance secured 
 by a chain. Near the landing-place, a few tolerable houses 
 fice the sea, and similar ones are sparingly distributed in 
 other directions. An insignificant bazar offers few temp- 
 tations even to those who seek ordinary commodities, and 
 the diverging streets are Utile more than circuitous alleys, 
 capriciously windins; between high walls, as if concealment 
 alone afforded security. Here and there a low door opens 
 
 into an orchard or paddock, but more frequently into a 
 small court, surrounded wnh miserable hovels, evidently 
 the abodes of abject poverty. Occasionally an unclosed 
 door exhibits a court of larger dimensions, where a few 
 rude implements of husbandry, and the less meager looks 
 of better-clad occupants, betoken a stat-j somewhat approach- 
 ing to comfort and ease. Little cultivation, however, is 
 perceptible near the town — of commercial activity there is 
 no sign — listless groups fill every vacant space — and fisher- 
 men no longer "spread their nets" on the shore. Hence 
 it becomes diflicult to conjecture how a population, scarcely 
 removed from indigence, can here subsist', notwithstanding 
 the temperate habits of the East, which demand little more 
 than a morning and evening repast of fresh baked cakes, 
 sometimes eaten with a sort of pottage made of lentils, 
 onions, (*fec, and sometimes merely with a draught of water, 
 or a little fruit. 
 
 Relentless desolation seems to brood over this devoted re- 
 gion. Fragments of clustered columns and broken walls, 
 at the southeast extremity of the town — the only visible re- 
 mains of the structures even of the middle ages — perhaps 
 mark the site of the magnificent metropolitan church, once 
 the conspicuous ornament of Christian Tyre. In that 
 splendid edifice of rich gothic architecture, distinguished 
 by three spacious naves, and two lofty toM^ers, where coun- 
 cils were held and princes and prelates assembled, the bones 
 of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa were depasited in a 
 sumptuous sepulchre. Every trace of the mausoleum of 
 Orig-en, raised in the third century, and still existing in the 
 twelfth, has now disappeared. Broken shafts thrown into 
 a narrow creek awkwardly serve the purpose of a bridge ; 
 others piled in the sea, form a barrier against hostile ap- 
 proach. A few columns of marble, of granite, and of por- 
 phyry, lie unheeded round a small cove, now the only land- 
 ing-place, while mounds of sand, thinly strewn witharchi 
 tectural fragments, alone point out the ancient circuit ol 
 the town. And is this all that remains to tell the tale of 
 ancient Tyre — the early seat of civilization — the emperess 
 of the waves 1 Could this dreary coast have poured forth 
 dauntless navigators to explore distant regions ; — this cheer- 
 less waste, could it ever have been the patrimony of " mer- 
 chant-princes V Could this little territory have been the 
 emporium of the commerce of the world 1 — Hogg. 
 
 Ver. 4. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, 
 and break down her towers : I will also scrape 
 her dust from her, and make her like the top 
 of a rock. 12. And they shall make a spoil of 
 thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchan- 
 dise : and they shall break down thy walls, and 
 destroy thy pleasant houses : and they shall lay 
 thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust, in the 
 midst of the water. 
 
 One of the most singular events iii history was the man- 
 ner in which the siege of Tyre was conducted by Alexan- j 
 der the Great. Irritated that a single city should alone op- j 
 pose his victorious march, enraged at the murder of some of * 
 nis soldiers, and fearful for his fame, — even his army's de- 
 spairing of success could not deter him from the siege. 
 And Tyre was taken in a manner, the success of which was 
 more wonderful than the desisrn was daring: for it was 
 surrounded by a wall one hundred and fif\y feet in height, 
 and situated on an island half a mile distant from the shore. 
 A mound was formed from the continent to the island ; and 
 the ruins of old Tyre, two hundred and forty years aflerits 
 demolition, afforded ready materials for the purpose. Such 
 was the work, that the attempts at first defeated the power 
 of an Alexander. The enemy consumed^ and the storm ^ 
 destroyed it. But its remains, buried beneath the water, 
 formed a barrier which rendered successful his reneweu 
 efforts. A vast mass of additional matter was requisite 
 The soil and the very rubbish were gathered and heaped. 
 And the mighty conqueror, who after^ward failed in raising 
 again any of the ruins of Babylon, cast those of Tyre into 
 the sea, and took her very dust from off her. He lef\ not 
 the remnant of a ruin — and the site of ancient Tyre is now 
 unknown . — Keith. 
 
 Ver. 14. And I will make thee like the top of d 
 
m.muUBiIkiSIMmJt 
 
Chap. 26—30. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 535 
 
 rock; thou shalt be a place to spread nets 
 upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the 
 Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord Gc d. 
 
 Passing by Tyre from curiosity only, I came t / be a 
 mournful witness of the truth of that prophecy, " tha. Tyre, 
 the queen of nations, should be a rock for fishers to dry 
 their nets on." Two wretched fishermen, with miserable 
 nets, having just given over their occupation, with very lit- 
 tle success, I engaged them, at the expense of their nets, to 
 drag in those places where they said shellfish might be 
 caught, in hopes to have brought out one of the famous yur- 
 fk fish. I did not succeed ; but in this I was, I believe, as 
 lucky as the old fishers had ever been. The purple fish at 
 Tyre seems to have been only a concealment of their 
 knowledge of cochineal, as, if the whole city of Tyre ap- 
 plied to nothing else but fishing, they would not have col- 
 oured twenty yards of cloth in a year.— Bruce, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Ver. II. The men of Arvad, with thine army, 
 were upon thy walls round about, and the Gam- 
 madims were in thy towers : they hanged their 
 shields upon thy walls round about ; they have 
 made thy beauty perfect. 
 
 The eastern soldiers in times of peace are disposed of 
 about the walls of places, and particularly in the towers, 
 and at the gates. Niebuhr tells us, that the foot-soldiers of 
 the imam of Yemem have very little to do in times of peace, 
 any more than the cavalry : some of them mount guard at 
 the dela's, or governor's ; they are also employed at the 
 gates and upon the towers. Van Egmont and Heyman 
 give a similar account. Sandys, speaking of the decora- 
 tions of one of the gates of the imperial seraglio in Con- 
 stantinople, tells us, that it is hung with shields and cimeters. 
 Through this gate people pass to the divan, where Justice is 
 administered; and these are the ornaments of this public 
 passage. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 13. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were 
 thy merchants : they traded the persons of men 
 and vessels of brass in thy market. 
 
 The domestic utensils of the Orientals are nearly always 
 brass : and to these they often refer, as a sign of property. 
 " He is a rich man ; his house is full of brass vessels." 
 " Begone ! fellow, I have more brass ir. my house than would 
 purchase all thy property." " The miserable man has not 
 a brass dish in his house." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Ver. 14. Thou art the anointed cherub that cov- 
 ereth ; and I have set thee so : thou wast upon 
 
 * the holy mountain of God ; thou hast walked 
 up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. 
 
 1 his has been considered as a very obscure epithet to 
 apply to the prince of Tyre, and great difficulties have oc- 
 curred in explaining the meaning of the expression. It has 
 been apprehended by some critics to be an allusion to the 
 posture of the cherubic figures that were over the ark, 
 (Exod. XXV. 20,) and by others to signify the protection 
 which this prince afforded to different neighbouring states. 
 But the first of these interpretations is set aside by consider- 
 ing that the prophet evidently refers to a living cherub, not 
 the posture of the image of one made of gold, or of an olive- 
 tree. As to the other construction, it is inadmissible, be- 
 cause it does not appear from the prophecies that Tyre was 
 remarkable for defending its neighbours, but rather the 
 contrary. Mr. Harmer proposes a new, and probably a 
 just elucidation of this passage. He observes that takhtdar 
 is a Persian word, which properly signifies a precious car- 
 pet, which is'made use of for covering the throne of the 
 kmgs of Persia; and that this word is also used as an epi- 
 th3t by which the Persians describe their princes, on ac- 
 count of their being possessed of this throne. The prophet 
 Fiekiel may with the same view give this appellation to 
 re prince of Tyre. Such an application of it is certainly 
 
 no more than strictly reconcilable to the eastern taste. 
 This explanation also answers to the rest of the imagery 
 used in this passage. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 24. And there shall be no moie a pricking 
 brier unto the house of Israel, nor any grieving 
 thorn of all that are round about them, that 
 despised them ; and they shall know that 1 am 
 the Lord God. 
 
 Enemies are often compared to thorns and thistles. 
 " Ah ! how this thorn goads me," says the man of his foe. 
 When a man's adversaries are dead, he says, " This is 
 now a desert without thorns." " Ah ! as our father is dead, 
 we are to our enemies like a jungle without thorns." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 Ver. 3. Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, 
 Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of 
 Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst 
 of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine 
 own, and I have made it for myself 
 
 See on ch. 32. 2. 
 
 Ver. 18. Son of man, ISiebuchadnezzar king of 
 Bq,bylon caused his army to serve a great ser- 
 vice against Tyrus : every head was made bald, 
 and every shoulder was peeled : yet had he 
 no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the ser- 
 vice that he had served against it. 
 
 What an illustration of this passage we have in those 
 who have not been accustomed to carry the palanquin ! 
 During the first day the skin is literally peeled off. To 
 prevent the pole from galling the shoulder, the coolies have 
 cushions, or a piece of the plantain-tree, put under the pole. 
 The shoulders of those who assisted at the siege against 
 Tyre, were peeled by hard labour. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Ver. 6. Thus saith the Lord, They also that 
 uphold Egypt shall fall ; and the pride of her 
 power shall come dow^n: from the tower of 
 Syene shall they fall in it by the sword, saith 
 the Lord God. 7. And they shall be desolate 
 in the midst of the countries that are desolate, 
 and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities 
 that are wasted. 12. And I will make the 
 rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of 
 the wicked: and I will make the land waste, 
 and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers ; 
 I the Lord have spoken it. 13. Thus saith 
 the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols, 
 and I will cause their images to cease out of 
 Noph ; and there shall be no more a prince of 
 the land of Egypt : and I will put a fear in the 
 land of Egypt. 
 
 Egypt was one of the most ancient and one of the mighti- 
 est of kingdoms, and the researches of the traveller are still 
 directed to explore the unparalleled memorials of its power. 
 No nation, whether of ancient or of modern times, has ever 
 erected such great and durable monuments. While the 
 vestiges of other ancient monarchies can hardly be found 
 amid the mouldering ruins of their cities, those artificial 
 mountains, visible at the distance of thirty miles, the pyra- 
 mids of Egypt, without a record of their date, have with- 
 stood, unimpaired, all the ravages of time. The dynasty of 
 Egypt takes precedence, in antiquity, of every other. No 
 country ever produced so long a catalogue of kings. The 
 learning of the Egyptians was proverbial. The number of 
 their cities, and the population of their country, as recorded 
 by ancient historians, almost surpass credibility. Nature 
 
boo 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 32. 
 
 and an united in rendering it a most fertile region. It was 
 called the granary of the world. It was divided into several 
 kingdoms, and their power often extended over many of 
 the surrounding countries Yet the knowledge of all its 
 greatness and glory deterred not the Jewish prophets from 
 declaring, that Egypt would become " a base kingdom, and 
 never exalt itself any more among the nations." And the 
 literal fulfilment of every prophecy affords as clear a de- 
 monstration as can possibly be given, that each and all of 
 them are the dictates of inspiration. 
 
 Egypt became entirely subject to the Persians about three 
 nundred and fifty years previous to the Christian era. It 
 was afterward subdued by the Macedonians, and was gov- 
 erned by the Ptolemies for the space of two hundred and 
 ninety- four years ; until about thirty years before Christ, 
 it became a province of the Roman empire. It continued 
 long in sabjection to the Romans — tributary first to Rome, 
 and afterward to Constantinople. It was transferred, A. D. 
 641, to the dominion of the Saracens. In 1250 the Mame- 
 lukes deposed their rulers, and usurped the command of 
 Egypt. A mode of government the most singular and sur- 
 prising that ever existed on earth was established and main- 
 tained. Each successive ruler was raised to supreme au- 
 thority, from being a stranger and a slave. No son of the 
 former ruler — no native of Egypt succeeded to the sove- 
 reignty ; but a chief was chosen from among a new race of 
 imported slaves. When Es;ypt became tributary to the 
 Turks in 1517, the Mameiukes retained much of their 
 power, and every pacha was an oppressor and a stranger. 
 During all these ages, every attempt to emancipate the coun- 
 try, or to create a prince of the land of Egypt, has proved 
 abortive, and has often been fatal to the aspirant. Though 
 the facts relative to Egypt form too prominent a feature in 
 the history of the world to admit of contradiction or doubt, 
 yet the description of the fate of that country, and of the 
 form of its government, shall be left to the testimony of 
 those whose authority no infidel will question, and whom 
 no man can accuse of adapting their descriptions to the 
 predictions of the event. Gibbon and Volney are again our 
 witnesses of the facts : — 
 
 " Such is the siate of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three cen- 
 turies ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile 
 fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, 
 the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and, at 
 length, the race of Tartars, distinguished by the name of 
 Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased as slaves, 
 and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and 
 elected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular 
 event, their continuance is not less extraordinary. They 
 are replaced by slaves brought from their original country. 
 The system of oppression is methodical. Every thing the 
 traveller sees or hears reminds him he is in the country of 
 slavery and tyranny." " A more unjust and absurb consti- 
 tution cannot be devised than that which condemns the na- 
 tives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary 
 dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the 
 state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustri- 
 ous sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties were 
 themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; 
 and the four-and-twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever 
 been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants." 
 These are the words of Volney and of Gibbon : and what 
 did the ancient prophets foretel 1 "I will lay the land 
 waste, and all that is therein, by the hands of strangers. I 
 the Lord have spoken it. And there shall be no more a 
 prince of the land of Earypt. The sceptre of Egypt shall 
 depart away." The prophecy adds: — "They shall be a 
 base kingdom— it shall be the basest of kingdoms." After 
 the lapse of two thousand and four hundred years from the 
 date of this prophecy, a scoffer at religion, but an eyewitness 
 of the facts, thus describes the selfsame spot: "In Egypt 
 there is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants, 
 landholders. A universal air of misery, manifest in all the 
 traveller meets, points out to him the rapacity of oppression, 
 and the distrust attendant upon slavery. The profound ig- 
 norance of the inhabitants equally prevents them from per- 
 ceiving the causes of their evils, or applying the necessary 
 remedies. Ignorance, diffused through every class, extends 
 ifs effects to everv species of moral and physical knowledge. 
 Nothing is talked of but intestine troubles, the public misery, 
 pecuniary extortions, bastinadoes, and murders. Justice 
 berseif puts to death without formality." (Volney.) Other 
 
 travellers describe the most execrable vices as common, 
 and represent the moral character of the people as corrupt- 
 ed to the core. As a token of the desolation of the country, 
 mud-walled cottages are now the only habitations where 
 the ruins of temples and palaces abound. Egypt is sur- 
 rounded by the dominions of the Turks and of the Arabs ; 
 and the prophecy is literally true which marked it in th - 
 midst of desolation : — " They shall be desolate in the mids, 
 of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in 
 the midst of the cities that are wasted." The systematic- 
 oppression, extortion, and plunder, which have so long pre- 
 vailed, and the price paid for his authority and power by 
 every Turkish pacha, have rendered the country " desolate 
 of that whereof it was full," and still show, both how " it 
 has been wasted by the hands of strangers," and how " it 
 has been sold into the hand of the wicked." 
 
 Can any words be more free from ambiguity, or could 
 any events be more wonderful in their nature, or more un- 
 likely or impossible to have been foreseen by man, than 
 these prophecies concerning Egypt 1 The long line of its 
 kings commenced with the first ages of the world, and, 
 while it was yet unbroken, its final termination was reveal- 
 ed. The very attempt once made by infidels to show, from 
 the recorded number of its monarchs and the durations of 
 their reigns, that Egypt was a kingdom previous to the Mo- 
 saic era of the deluge, places the wonderful nature of these 
 predictions respecting it in the most striking view. And 
 the previous experience of two thousand years, during which 
 period Egypt had never been without a prince of its own, 
 seemed to preclude the possibility of those predicted events 
 which the experience of the last two thousand years has 
 amply verified. Though it had often tyrannised over Judea 
 and the neighbouring nations, the Jewish prophets foretold 
 that its own sceptre would depart away; and that that coun- 
 try of kings (for the number of its contemporary as well as 
 successive monarchs may warrant the appellation) would 
 never have a prince of its own : and that it would be laid 
 waste by the hands of strangers. They foretold that it 
 should be a base kingdom — the basest of kingdoms — that it 
 should be desolate itself and surrounded by desolation — and 
 that it should never exalt itself any more among the nations. 
 They described its ignominious subjection and unparalleled 
 baseness, notwithstanding that its past and present degen- 
 eracy bears not a more remote resemblance to the former 
 greatness and pride of its power, than the frailty of its mud- 
 walled fabric now bears to the stability of its imperishable 
 pyramids. Such prophecies, accomplished in such a man- 
 ner, prove, without a comment, that they must be the reve- 
 lation of the omniscient Ruler of the universe. — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 Ver, 2. Son of man, take up a lamentation for 
 Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, 
 Thoii art like a young lion of the nations, and 
 thou art as a whale in the seas ; and thou 
 camest forth with thy rivers, andtroubledstthe 
 waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers. 
 
 Nothing is more common, in the East, than the compar^i 
 ing princes to lions, or better known to those that are ac- 
 quainted with their writings ; but the comparing them to 
 crocodiles, if possessed of ?Mval power, or strong by a watery 
 situation, has hardly ever been mentioned. D'Herbelot, 
 however, cites an eastern poet, who, celebrating the prowess 
 of Gelaleddin, surnamed Mankberni, and Khovarezme 
 Shah, a most valiant Persian prince, said, " He was dreadful 
 as a hon in the field, and not less terrible in the water than 
 a crocodile." 
 
 The power of the ancient kings of 'E.^jpi seems to be 
 represented after the same manner, by the prophet Ezekiel, 
 ch xxix. 3, " Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of 
 Egypt, the great dragon {the great crocodile) that lieth in 
 the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine 
 own, and I have made it myself." In his 32d chapter, 2d 
 verse, the same prophet makes use of both the similes, I 
 think, of the panegyrist of Gelaleddin : " Take up a lamen- 
 tation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him. Thou 
 art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a 
 whale {a crocodile) \n the seas: and thou camest forthwith 
 (or from) ihy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, 
 and fouledst their rivers." 
 
Chap. 32—34. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 6B7 
 
 It is very odd in our translators, to render the original 
 word D>;a taneem, whale, and at the same time talk of 
 feet ; nor indeed are rivers the abode of the whale; its bulk 
 is too great to admit of that : the term dragon, which is 
 thrown into the margin, is the preferable version ; which 
 word in our language, as the Hebrew word in the original, 
 is, I think, generic, and includes the several species of 
 oviparous quadrupeds, if not those of the serpentine kind. 
 A crocodile is, without doubt, the creature the prophet 
 means ; and the comparison seems to point out the power of 
 Egyptian kings of antiquity : they were mighty by sea as 
 well as by land. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 3. Thus saith the Lord God, I will, there- 
 fore, spread out my net over thee with a com- 
 pany of many people; and they shall bring 
 thee up in my tent. 
 
 Herodotus relates that in his time they had in Egypt 
 many and various ways of taking the crocodile. Brookes 
 says, " The manner of taking the crocodile in Siam is by 
 throwing three or four nets across a river at proper distan- 
 ces from each other ; that so if he br^ak through the first, 
 he may be caught by one of the others."— Burder. 
 
 When a person has been caught by the stratagem of an- 
 other, it is said, " He is caught in his net," " He is like a 
 deer caught in the net." Has a man escaped: "The fel- 
 low has broken the net." *' Catch him in your net ! will 
 you catch the lightning 1"— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 27. And they shall not lie with the mighty 
 that are fallen of theuncircumcised, which are 
 gone down to hell with their weapons of war ; 
 and they have laid their swords under their 
 heads ; but their iniquities shall be upon their 
 bones, though they were the terror of the mighty 
 in the land of the living. 
 
 The ancients, in every part of the world, were accustom- 
 ed to inter their warriors in complete armour. We are 
 informed by Chardin, that the Mingrelian soldier sleeps 
 with his sword under his head, and his arms by his side ; 
 and he is buried in the same manner, his arms being placed 
 in the same position. The allusion of Ezekiel to this 
 ancient custom is extremely clear. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Ver. 30. Also, thou son of man, the children of 
 thy people still are talking against thee by the 
 Walls, and in the doors of the houses, and speak 
 one tq another, every one to his brother, saying, 
 Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word 
 that Cometh forth from the Lord. 
 
 In those frequent intervals of returning warmth, which 
 relieve the severity of an oriental winter, the people of the 
 East enjoy the conversation of their friends ; the poorer 
 class in the open air sauntering about, and sitting under 
 the walls of their houses; people of rank and fashion in 
 the porches or gateways, where the master of a family 
 receives visits, and transacts business — few persons, not 
 even the nearest relations, being admitted into their apart- 
 ments, except upon extraordinary occasions. 
 
 To these circumstances the prophet Ezekiel seems to 
 refer in the following passage : " Also, thou son of man, 
 the children of thy people are still talking against (or 
 rather concerning) thee by the walls, and in the doors of 
 the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his 
 brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the 
 word that cometh forth from the Lord." Our translators 
 render the original word heha, against thte ; the Septua- 
 gint, -Kcpi (T'lv, of or concerning thee. This is the more 
 singular, as the same particle is rendered in other parts of 
 scripture, of or concerning : thus, in the eighty-seventh 
 Psalm, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O tity of the 
 Lord." The following words incontestably prove they 
 were not speaking against Ezekiel, but in his favour: 
 ^' And they come unto thee as the people cometh : and they 
 sit before thee as my people ; and they hear thy words, but 
 68 
 
 they will not do them; for with their mouth they show 
 much love ; but their heart goeth after their covetousness." 
 But if "their mouth showed much love," they did not 
 speak against the prophet, but in his commendation. These 
 conversations respecting the prophet were held in winter ; 
 for it was the tenth month, answering to the latter end of 
 December, or beginning of January, when the Orientals sit 
 under the walls for the benefit of the sun, or in the porches 
 or gateways of their houses. 
 
 As the Copts in Egypt commonly spend their holydays 
 in conversing with one another under the wails of their 
 habitation, so Mr. Harmer is of opinion, that these words 
 of Ezekiel may refer to such times. And if so, he asks, 
 will they not show that the Israelites observed their sab- 
 baths in the captivity'? And that so early as the time of 
 the first destruction of Jerusalem, they used to assemble on 
 those days, to hear if the prophets had received any mes- 
 sages from the Lord in that week, and to receive those 
 advices which their calamitous circumstances made pecu- 
 liarly seasonable 1 It is very probable that the Jews in 
 those early times assembled to" hear the instructions of the 
 prophets, and for the public worship of their God, so far as 
 their painful circumstances might permit ; but the words of 
 Ezekiel under consideration, appear to be of a more general 
 character, referring as well to the public meetings of the 
 synagogue, as to the private parties and conversations of 
 tire people. — Paxton. 
 
 Severe as sometimes the cold weather is in the East, 
 Russel observes, that even in the depth of that season, when 
 the sun is out, and there is no wind, it is warm, nay, some- 
 times almost hot, in the open air ; and Pococke informs us, 
 that the people there enjoy it, for the Copts spend their 
 holydays in sauntering about, and sitting under their walls 
 in winter, and imder shady trees in summer. This doubt- 
 less is to be understood of the poorer sort, who have no 
 places more proper for conversation with their friends; 
 the better houses having porches with benches on each 
 side, where the master of the family receives visits, and 
 despatches business. These circumstances greatly illus- 
 trate the words of Ezekiel, "Also, thou son of man, the 
 children of thy people are still talking against thee, or 
 rather, concerning thee, by the walls and in the doors of 
 the houses," &c. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 32. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very 
 lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, 
 and can play well on an 'instrument : for they 
 hear thy words, but they do them not. 
 
 "Gone! gone!" says the bereaved admirer: "she was 
 indeed like a sweet voice to my ear." " I hear not the 
 sweet song." " Where is my music V " The song of the 
 night! the song of the night! has left me." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Ver. 6. My sheep wandered through all the 
 mountains, and upon every high hill : yea, my 
 flock was scattered upon all the face of the 
 earth, and none did search or seek after them. 
 
 When travelling in wilderness parts of the world, cattle 
 are, on various accounts, apt to wander or to be scattered, 
 and require attentive shepherds to watch their motions. 
 Should the grass near the encampment of the traveller not 
 suit their taste, or be scarce, they will gradually move to 
 a greater and greater distance, till bushes or clumps of trees 
 are between them and the wagons; then, perhaps, having 
 the scent of water, or that of better grass, they will move 
 oiF at great speed. The distant roar of a lion also will so 
 alarm them that they will start oflT like furious or frantic 
 animals. 
 
 I remember halting for a night about a hundred miles 
 beyond Lattakoo. Knowing that lions were numerous in 
 that part, all the oxen were made fast by ropes to the wag- 
 ons. During the night lions had roared within hearing 
 of the oxen, when all, no doubt, had through terror en- 
 deavoured to break loose from their fastenings, but only 
 three had succeeded, which having fled, were pursued by 
 two lions, and one of them caught, and almost entirely de- 
 voured by those two voracious animals. After they had 
 fairly killed the one, they pursued the other 'wo foi 
 
EZEKIEL. 
 
 Chap. 35. 
 
 Tlpwards of two miles, when the) gave up the chase, and 
 returned to feast on the one they lA^d secured. All this we 
 knew from the foot-marks they ha.i left on the ground. In 
 the morning the Hottentots were sent in search of the other 
 two, which they found feeding several miles off. 
 
 The Jewish shepherds were condemned for not search- 
 ing for the scattered sheep. When men are fatigued by 
 travelling, they become lazy and indolent, and feel indis- 
 posed to set off in search of strayed oxen many miles dis- 
 tant: yet I never noticed our Hottentots unwilling to 
 go in search of strayed oxen, however fatigued they might 
 be and rarely did they return without finding them, though, 
 in 'some instances, they had to trace their foot-marks for 
 upwards of twenty miles. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 25. And I will make with them a covenant 
 of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease 
 out of the land ; and they shall dwell safely in 
 the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. 
 
 The oriental shepherds, when unprovided with tents, 
 erect huts or booths of loose stones, covered with reeds and 
 boughs. Pococke found, in the neighbourhood of Acre, 
 some open huts, made of boughs raised about three feet 
 from the ground, inhabited by Arabs. In such booths 
 many of the people of Israel were obliged to take shelter 
 in the wilderness, from the want of a suflScient number of 
 tents, the remembrance of which they were commanded 
 to preserve by a solemn festival. But even these meaner 
 and more inconvenient habitations are not always within 
 the reach of an Arabian shepherd; he is often obliged to 
 take refuge under the projecting rock, and to sleep in the 
 open air. A grove or woodland occasionally furnishes a 
 most agreeable retreat. The description which Chandler 
 has left us of one of these stations, is so strikingly pictur- 
 esque, that it must be given in his own words : " About 
 two in the morning, our whole attention was fixed by the 
 barking of dogs, which, as we advanced, became exceed- 
 ingly furious. Deceived by the light of the moon, we now 
 fancied we could see a village ; and were much mortified to 
 find only a station of poor goatherds, without even a shed, 
 and nothing for our horses to eat. They were lying, wrap- 
 ped in their thick capotes or loose coats, by some glimmer- 
 ing embers, among the bushes in a dale, under a spreading 
 tree by the fold. They received us hospitably, heaping on 
 fresh fuel, and producmg sour curds and coarse bread, 
 which they toasted for us on the coals. We made a scanty 
 meal, sitting on the ground, lighted by the fire and by the 
 moon ; after which, sleep suddenly overpowered me. On 
 waking, I found my two companions by my side, sharing 
 in the comfortable cover of the janizary's cloak, which he 
 had carefully spread over us. I was now much struck 
 with the wild appearance of the spot. The tree was hung 
 with rustic utensils; the she-goats in a pen, sneezed, and 
 bleated, and rustled to and fro ; the shrubs by which our 
 horses stood, were leafless, and the earth bare ; a black 
 caldron with milk, was simmering over the fire; and a 
 figure, more than gaunt or savage, close by us, struggling 
 on the ground with a kid, whose ears he had slit, and was 
 endeavouring to cauterize with a red-hot iron." This de- 
 scription forms a striking comment on a passage in Eze- 
 kiel, in which God condescends to give this promise to his 
 people : "I will make with them a covenant of peace, and 
 will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land ; and they 
 shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods." 
 No reasonable doubt can be entertained that they were 
 often exposed in the same manner, while lending their 
 flocks ; and in great danger, when their country, from the 
 thinness of the population, or other causes, happened to be 
 overrun with beasts of prey. They are accordingly 
 cheered with the sure prospect of those ravenous anima's 
 being exterminated, and every woodland becoming a plac^ 
 of safety to the slumbering shepherd.— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 Ver. 1. Moreover, the word of the Lord came 
 unto me, saying, 2. Son of man, set thy face 
 against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, 
 3. And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God, 
 Behold, Mount Seir, I am against th-e, and 
 
 I will stretch out my hand against thee, and I 
 will make thee most desolate. 7. Thus will I 
 make Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off 
 from it him that passeth out, and him that re- 
 turneth. 
 
 There is a prediction which, being peculiarly remarka- 
 ble as applicable to Idumea, and bearing reference to a cir- 
 cumstance explanatory of the difficulty of access to any 
 knowledge respecting it, is entitled, in the first instance, to 
 notice, " None shall pass through it for ever and ever." 
 Isaiah xxxiv. 10. " I will cut off from Mount Seir him 
 that passeth out and him that returneth." Ezek. xxxv. 7. 
 The ancient greatness of Idumea must, in no small degree, 
 have resulted from its commerce. Bordering with Arabia 
 on the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and forming from 
 north to south the most direct and most commodious chan- 
 nel of communication between Jerusalem and her depen- 
 dencies on the Red Sea, as well as between Syria and 
 India, (through the continuous valleys of El Ghor and El 
 Arabia, which terminated on the one extremity at the 
 borders of Judea, and on the other at Elathand Esiongaber 
 on the Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea,) Idumea may be said 
 to have formed the emporium of the commerce of the 
 East. A Roman road passed directly through Idumea, 
 from Jerusalem to Akaba, and another from Akaba to 
 Moab ; and when these roads, were made, at a time long 
 posterior to the date of the predictions, the conception could 
 not have been formed, or held credible by man, that the 
 period would ever arrive when none would pass through 
 it. Above seven hundred vears after the date of the proph- 
 ecy, Strabo relates, that " inany Romans and other foreign- 
 ers" were found at Petra by his friend Athenodorus, the 
 philosopher, who visited it. The prediction is yet more 
 surprising, when viewed in conjunction with another, which 
 implies that travellers would pass by Idumea,— every one 
 that goeth by shall be astonished. And the hadj routes 
 (routes of the pilgrims) from Damascus and from Cairo 
 to Mecca, the one on the east, and the other towards the 
 south of Idumea, along the whole of its extent, go by it, 
 or touch partially on its borders, without passing through 
 it. The truth of the prophecy (though hemmed m thus by 
 apparent impossibilities and contradictions, and with ex- 
 treme probability of its fallacy in every view that could 
 have been visible to man) may yet be tried. 
 
 The words of the prediction might well be understood 
 as merely implying that Idumea would cease to be a 
 thoroughfare for the commerce of the nations which ad- 
 joined it, and that its " highly-frequented marts" would be 
 forsaken as centres of intercourse and traffic ; and easy 
 would have been the task of demonstrating its truth in this 
 limited sense, which skepticism itself ought not to be un- 
 willing to authorize. But the fact to which it refers forbids 
 that the prophecy should be limited to a general interpreta- 
 tion, and demands that it be literally understood and ap- 
 plied. The fact itself being of a negative nature, requires 
 a more minute investigation and detail than any matter 
 of observation or discovery that is proveable at once by a 
 simple description. And instead of merely citmg authori- 
 ties in affirmation of it, evidence, as remarkable as the 
 prediction, and at once the most undesigned and conclu- 
 sive, shall be largely adduced to establish its trutn. 
 
 The remark of Volney, who passed at a distance to the 
 west of Idumea, and who received his information froni 
 the Arabs in that quarter, " that it had not been visited 
 by any traveller," will not be unobserved by the attentive 
 reader. Soon after Burckhardt had entered, on the north- 
 east, the territories of the Edomites, the boundary of which 
 he distinctly marks, he says, that " he was without pro- 
 tection in the midst of a desert, where no traveller had 
 ever been oefcre seen." It was then " that lor the first time 
 he had ever felt fear during his travels in the desert, and 
 his route thither was the most dangerous he had ever trav- 
 elled." Mr. Joliffe, who visited the northern shore ot the 
 Dead Sea, in alluding to the country south of its opposite 
 extremity, describes it as " one of the wildest and most dan- 
 gerous divisions of Arabia," and says, that any re^search 
 in that quarter was impracticable. Sir Frederick Henni- 
 ker in his Notes dated from Mount Sinai on \hQ jovth 
 of idumea, unconsciously concentrates striking evidence 
 in verification of the prediction, while he stales a tact that 
 
Chap. 35. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 539 
 
 would seem, at first sight, to militate against it. " Seet- 
 zen, on a vessel of paper pasted a;eainst the wall, notifies 
 his having penetrated the country in a direct line between 
 the Dead Sea and Mount Sinai," (through Idumea,) " a 
 route never before accomplished. This was the more inter- 
 esting to me, as I had previously determined to attempt the 
 same, it being the shorUat way to Jerusalem. The Cava- 
 lier Frediani, whom I met in Egypt, would have persua- 
 ded me that it was impracticable, and that he, having had 
 the same intention himself, after having been detained in 
 hope five weeks, was compelled to relinquish his design. 
 While I was yet ruminating over this scrap of paper, the 
 superior paid me a morning visit; he also said it was im- 
 possible ; but at length promised to search for guides. I 
 had already endeavoured to persuade those who had ac- 
 companied me from Tor, but they also talked of dangers, 
 and declined." Guides were found, who, after resisting for 
 a while his entreaties and bribes, agreed to conduct him 
 by the desired route ; but, unable to overcome their fears, 
 deceived him, and led him towards the Mediterranean 
 coast, through the desert of Gaza. 
 
 There yet remains a detail of the complication of diffi- 
 culties which, in another direction still, the nearest to Ju- 
 dea, and apparently the most accessible, the traveller has 
 to encounter in reaching that desolate region which once 
 formed the kingdom of Idumea, — difficulties that it may 
 safely be said are scarcely to be met with in any other part 
 of Asia, or even in any other quarter of the world where 
 no natural obstructions intervene. " To give an idea," 
 say Captains Irby and Mangles, " of the difficulties which 
 the Turkish government supposed there would be for an 
 Englishman to go to Kerek and Wady Mouse, it is neces- 
 sary to say, that when Mr. Banks applied at Constantino- 
 ple to have these places inserted in his firman, they returned 
 for answer, " that they knew of none such within'the grand 
 seignior's dominions; but as he and Mr. Frere, the British 
 minister, pressed the affiiir very much, they at length re- 
 ferred him to the pacha of Damascus, who (equally averse 
 to have any thing to do with the business) passed him on 
 to the governor of Jerusalem." The governor of Jerusa- 
 lem, '^ having tried all he could to dissuade them from the 
 undertaking," referred him in like manner to the governor 
 of Jaffa, who not only " evaded the affair altogether," but 
 endeavoured to put a stop to their journey. Though frus- 
 trated in every attempt to obtain any protection or assist- 
 ance from the public authorities, and also warned of the 
 danger that awaited them from " Arabs of a most savage 
 and treacherous race," these adventurous travellers, intent 
 on visiting the ruins of Petra, having provided themselves 
 with horses and arms, and Arab dresses, and being eleven 
 in number, including servants and two guides, " deter- 
 mined to proceed to try their fortune with the sheikh of 
 Hebron." He at first expressed compliance with their 
 wishes, but being soon " alarmed at his own determina- 
 tion," refused them the least aid or protection. Repeated 
 offers of money to guides met a decided refusal ; and they 
 procured no means of facilitating their journey. The pe- 
 culiar difficulty, not only o{ passing through Idumea, (which 
 they never attempted,) but even of entering withm its bor- 
 ders, and the greater hazard of travelling thither than in 
 ?iny other direction, are still further illustrated by the ac- 
 quiescence of an Arab tribe afterward to accompany and 
 protect them to Kerek, at a reasonable rate, and by their 
 positive refusal, upon any terms or stipulation whatever, to 
 conduct them to a spot that lay within the boundaries of 
 Edom. " We offered five hundred piastres if they would 
 conduct us to Wady Mousa, but nothing could induce them 
 to consent. They said they would not go if we would give 
 them five thousand piastres," (forty times the sum for which 
 they had agreed to accompany them to Kerek, although 
 the distance was not nearly douJale,) " observing that money 
 was of no use to a man if he lost his life." Having after- 
 ward obtained the protection of an intrepid Arab chief, 
 with his followers, and havin2 advanced to the borders of 
 Edom, their further progress was suddenly opposed in the 
 most threatening and determined manner. And in the 
 whole course of their travels, which extended to about 
 three thousand miles, in Thrace, Asia Minof, Cyprus, the 
 desert, Egypt, and in Syria, in different lonjjitudinal and 
 lateral directions, from one extremity to the other, they 
 found nowhere such a barrier to their progress, except in 
 a previous abortive attempt to reach Petra from another 
 
 quarter ; and though they were never better prepared for 
 encountering it, they never elsewhere experienced so for- 
 midable an opposition. The sheikh of Wady Mousa and 
 his people swore that they would not suffer them to go for- 
 w^ard. and "that they should neither drink of their water, 
 7uor pass into their territory." The Arab chief who had 
 espoused their cause also took an oath, " by the faith of a 
 true Mussulman," that they should drink of the water of 
 Wady Mcusa, and go whithersoever he pleased to carry 
 them. " Thus," it is remarked, " were both the rival chiefs 
 oppositely pledged in their resolutions respecting us." 
 
 Several days were passed in entreaties, artifices, and 
 mutual menaces, which were all equally unavailing. — The 
 determination and perseverance of the one party of Arabs 
 was equalled by the resistance and obstinacy of the other. 
 Both were constantly acquiring an accession of strength, 
 and actively preparing for combat. The travellers, thus 
 finding all the dangers and difficulties of which they had 
 been forewarned fully realized, " could not but compare 
 their case to that of the Israelites under Moses, w^ew Edom, 
 refused to give them a passage through his country." " They 
 offered even to abandon their object rather than proceed to 
 extremities," and endanger the lives of many others, as 
 well as their own ; and they were told that they were for- 
 tunate in the protection of the chief who accompanied 
 them, otherwise they never would have returned. The 
 hostile Arabs, who defied them and their protectors to ap- 
 proach, having abandoned their camps, and having con- 
 centrated their forces, and possessed themselves of the 
 passes and heights, sent messengers with a renewal of oaths 
 and protestations as,ainst entering their territory ; announ- 
 ced that they were fully prepared to maintain their purpose — 
 that war " was positively determined on as the only alter- 
 native of the travellers not being permitted to see what 
 they desired :" and their sheikh vowed that " if they passed 
 through his lands, they should be shot like so many dogs." 
 Abou Raschid, the firm and fearless chief who had pledged 
 his honour and his oath in guarantee for the advance of 
 the travellers, and whose obstinate resolution nothing could 
 exceed, his arguments, artifices, and falsehoods having all 
 failed, despatched messengers to the camps under his in- 
 fluence, rejected alike all compromise with the opposing 
 Arabs, and all remonstrances on the part of his adherents 
 and dependants, (who thought that the travellers were doom- 
 ed to destruction by their rashness,) and resolved to achieve 
 by force what he had sworn to accomplish. " The camp as- 
 sumed a very warlike appearance ; the spears stuck in the 
 sand, the saddled horses before the tents, with the arms 
 hanging up within, altogether had an imposing effect. The 
 travellers, however, were at last permitted to proceed in 
 peace: but a brief space were allowed them for inspecting 
 the ruins, and they could plainly distinguish the opposing 
 party of Arabs, in great numbers, watching them from the 
 neights. Abou Raschid was then dismayed, " he was never 
 at his ease, and constantly urged them to depart." Nothing 
 could obtain an extension of the time allotted them, and 
 they returned, leaving much unexplored, and even unable 
 by any means or possibility to penetrate a little farther, in 
 order to visit a large temple which they could clearly dis- 
 cern. Through Idumea they did not pass. 
 
 Thus Volney, Burckhardt, Joliffe, Henniker, and Cap- 
 tains Irby and Mangles, not only give their personal testi- 
 mony of the truth of the fact which corroborates the pre- 
 diction, but also adduce a variety of circumstances, which 
 all conspire in giving superfluity of proof that Idumea, 
 which was long resorted to from every quarter, is so beset 
 on every side with dangers to the traveller, that none pass 
 through it. Even the Arabs of the neighbouring region^ 
 whose home is the desert, and whose occupation is wan- 
 dering, are afraid to enter it, or to conduct any within ita 
 borders.- Yet amid all this manifold testimony to its truth, 
 there is not, in any single instance, the most distant allu- 
 sion to the prediction ; and the evidence is as unsuspicious 
 and undesigned, as it is copious and complete. 
 
 " I will make thee small among the nations ; thou art 
 greatly despised." Though the border of wickedness, and 
 the retreat of a horde of thieves, who are distinguished as 
 peculiarly savage even among the wild Arabs, and thus 
 an object of dread, as well as of astonishment, to those who 
 pass thereby, yet, contrasted with what it was, or reckoned 
 among the nations, Edom is small indeed. Within almost 
 all its boundary, it may be said that none abide, or have 
 
640 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 CiiAP. 35. 
 
 any fixed permanent residence ; and instead of the superb 
 structures, the works of various ages, which long adorned 
 its cities, the huts of the Arabs, where even huts they 
 have, are mere mud-hovels, of " mean and ragged appear- 
 ance," which, in general, are deserted on the least alarm. 
 But, miserable habitations as these are, they scarcely seem 
 to exist anywhere throughout Edom, but on a single point 
 of its borders ; and wherever the Arabs otherwise wander 
 in search of spots for pasturage for their cattle, (found in 
 hollows, or near to springs after the winter rains,) tents 
 are their only covering. Those which pertain to the more 
 powerful tribes are sometimes both numerous and large ; 
 yet, though they form at least but a frail dwelling, many of 
 them are " very low and small." Near to the ruins of Petra, 
 Burckhardt passed an encampment of Bedouin tents, most 
 ^ of which were " the smallest he had ever seen, about four 
 feet high, and ten in length ;" and towards the southwest 
 border of Edom he met with* a few wanderers, who had no 
 tents with them, and whose only shelter from the burning 
 rays of the sun and the heavy detos of night was the scanty 
 branches of the talk-trees. The subsistence of the Bedou- 
 ins is often as precarious as their habitations are mean ; 
 the flocks they tend, or which they pillage from more fer- 
 tile regions, are their only possessions ; and in that land 
 where commerce long concentrated its wealth, and through 
 which the treasures of Ophir passed, the picking of gum 
 arable from thorny branches is now the poor occupation, 
 the only semblance of industry, practised by the wild and 
 wandering tenants of a desert. Edom is small among the 
 Tuitions I and how greatly is it despised, when the public 
 authorities at Constantinople deny any knowledge of it ! — 
 Keith. 
 
 Ver. 15. As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance 
 of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, 
 so will I do unto thee : thou shalt be desolate, 
 O Mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it ; 
 and they shall know that I am, the Lord. 
 
 Idumea was situated to the south of Judea and of Moab ; 
 it bordered on the east with Arabia Petrea, under which 
 name it was included in the latter part of its history, and 
 it extended southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. 
 A single extract from the Travels of Volney will be found 
 to be equally illustrative of the prophecy and of the fact. 
 " This country has not been visited by any traveller, but it 
 well merits such an attention ; for from the reports of the 
 Arabs of Bakir, and the inhabitants of Gaza, who frequent- 
 ly go to Maanand Karak, on the road of the pils^rims, there 
 are, to the southeast of the lake Asphaltites, (Dead Sea,) 
 within three day s^ journey, upwards of thirty ruined towns 
 ahsolutely deserted. Several of them have large edifices, 
 with columns that may have belonged to the ancient tem- 
 ples, or at least to Greek churches. The Arabs sometimes 
 make use of them to fold the cattle in ; but in general avoid 
 them on account of the enormous scorpions with which they 
 swarm. We cannot be surprised at these traces of ancient 
 population, when we recollect that this was the country of 
 the Nabatheans, the most powerful of the Arabs, and of the 
 Idumeans, who, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem., 
 were almost as numerous as the Jews, as appears from 
 Josephus, who informs us, that on the first rumour of the 
 march of Titus against Jerusalem, thirty thousand Idu- 
 means instantly assembled, and threw thernselves into that 
 city for its defence. It appears that, besides the advantages 
 of being under a tolerably good government, these districts 
 enjoyed a considerable share of the commerce of Arabia and 
 India, which increased their industry and population. We 
 know that as far back as the time of Solomon, the cities of As- 
 tioum Gaber (Esion Gaber) and Ailah (Eloth) were highly- 
 frequented marts. These towns were situated on the adjacent 
 gulf of the Red Sea, where we still find the latter yet retain- 
 ing its name, and perhaps the former in that of El Akaba, or 
 the end (of the sea.) These two places are in the hands of 
 the Bedouins, who, being destitute of a navy and commerce, 
 do not inhabit them. But the pilgrims report that there is 
 at El Akaba a wretched fort. The Idumeans, from whom 
 the .Tews only took their ports at intervals, must have found 
 in them a great source of wealth and population. It even 
 appears that the Idumeans rivalled the Tyrians, who also 
 possessed a town, the name of which is unknown, on the 
 
 coast of Hedjaz, in the desert of Tih, and the city of Faran, 
 and, without doubt, El-Tor, which served it by way of port. 
 From this place the caravans might reach Palestine and 
 Judea (through Idumea) in eight or ten days. This route, 
 which is longer than that from Suez to Cairo, is infinitely 
 shorter than that from Aleppo to Bassorah." Evidence 
 which must have been undesigned, which cannot be sus- 
 pected of partiality, and which no illustration can strengthen, 
 and no ingenuity pervert, is thus borne to the truth of the 
 most wonderful prophecies. That the Idumeans were a 
 populous and powerful nation long posterior to the delive- 
 ry of the prophecies'; that they possessed a tolerably good 
 government, (even in the estimation of Volney ;) that Idu- 
 mea contained many cities ; that these cities are now ab- 
 solutely deserted, and that their ruins swarms with enor- 
 mous scorpions ; that it was a commercial nation, and pos- 
 sessed highly-frequented marts; that it forms a shorter 
 route than an ordinary one to India, and yet that it had not 
 been visited by any traveller, are facts all recorded, or 
 proved to a wish, by this able but unconscious commen- 
 tator. 
 
 A greater contrast cannot be imagined than the ancient 
 and^present state of Idumea. It was a kingdom previous to 
 Israel, having been governed first by dukes or princes, af- 
 terward by eight successive kings, and again by dukes, 
 before there reigned any king over the children of Israel. 
 Its fertility and early cultivation are implied, not only in 
 the blessings of Esau, whose dwelling was to be the fatness 
 of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above, but also 
 in the condition proposed by Moses to the Edomites, when 
 he solicited a passage for the Israelites through their bor- 
 ders, " that they would not pass through the fields nor 
 through the vineyards;" and also in the great wealth, espe- 
 cially in the multitudes of flocks and herds, recorded as 
 possessed by an individual inhabitant of that countiy, at a 
 period, in all probability, even more remote. The Idu- 
 means were, without doubt, both an opulent and a power- 
 ful people. They often contended with the Israelites, and 
 entered into a league with their other enemies against them. 
 In the reign of David they were indeed subdued and great- 
 ly oppressed, and many ojthem even dispersed throughout 
 the neighbouring countries, particularly Phenicia^ and 
 Egypt. But during the decline of the kingdom of Judah, 
 and for many years previous to its extinction, they encroach- 
 ed upon the territories of the Jews, and extended their 
 dominion over the southwestern part of Judea. Though 
 no excellence whatever be now attached to its name, which 
 exists only in past history, Idumea, including perhaps Ju- 
 dea, was then not without the praise of the first of Roman 
 poets : 
 
 Primus Iduraeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas. 
 
 Virg. Georg. lib.iii. 1. 12. 
 
 And of Lucan, (Phars. lib. iii.) 
 
 Arbustis palmarum dives Idume. 
 
 But Idumea, as a kingdom, can lay claim to a higher 
 renown than either the abundance of "its flocks or the ex- 
 cellence of its palm-trees. The celebrated city of Petra (so 
 named by the Greeks, and so worthy of the name, on ac- 
 count both of its rocky vicinity and its numerous dwellings 
 excavated from the rocks) was situated within the patri- 
 monial territory of the Edomites. There is distinct and 
 positive evidence that it was a city of Edom, and the me- 
 tropolis of the Nabatheans, whom" Strabo expressly identi- 
 fies with the Idumeans — possessors of the same country, and 
 subject to the same laws. " Petra," to use the words of 
 Dr. Vincent, by whom the state of its ancient commerce 
 was described before its ruins were discovered, " is the ca- 
 pital of Edom or Seir, the Idumea or Arabia PetrtPa of the 
 Greeks, the Nabatea, considered both by geographers, his- 
 torians, and poets, as the source of all the precious commod- 
 ities of the East." " The caravans, in all ages, from 
 Minea in the interior of Arabia, and from Gerrha on the 
 Gulf of Persia, from Hadramaut on the ocean, and some 
 even from Sabea or Yemen, appear to have pointed to 
 Petra as a common centre ; and from Petra the trade seems 
 to have again branched out in every direction to Egypt, 
 Palestine, and Syria, through Arsinoe, Gaza, Tyre, Jeru- 
 salem, Damascus, and a variety of subordinate routes that 
 all terminated on the Mediterranean. There is every proof 
 that is requisite to show that the Tyrians and Sidoniang 
 were the first merchants who introduced the produce o( 
 India to all the nations which encircled the Mediterranean 
 
Chap. 37, 38. 
 
 EZEKIEL. 
 
 541 
 
 so is there the strongest evidence to prove that the Tyrians 
 obtained all their commodities from Arabia. But if Arabia 
 was the centre of this commerce, Petra was the point to 
 which all the Arabians tended from the three sides of their 
 vast peninsula." At a period subsequent to the commence- 
 ment of the Christian era, there always reigned at Petra, 
 according to Strabo, a king of the royal lineage, with whom 
 a prince was associated in the government. It was a place 
 of great strength in the time of the Romans. Pompey 
 marched against it, but desisted from the attack; and Tra- 
 jan afterward besieged it. It was a metropolitan see, to 
 which several bishopricks were attached in the time of the 
 Greek emperors, and Idumea was included in the third 
 Palestine — Palcstitm tertia sive salutaris. But the ancient 
 state of Idumea cannot in the present day be so clearly as- 
 certained from the records respecting it which can be 
 gleaned from history, whether sacred or profane, as by the 
 wonderful and imperishable remains of its capital city^ and 
 by " the traces of many towns and villages," v/hich indis- 
 putably show that it must once have been thickly inhabited. 
 It not only can admit of no dispute that the country and 
 cities of Idumea subsisted in a very different state from that 
 absolute desolation in which, long prior to the period of its 
 reality, it was represented in the prophetic vision ; but 
 there are prophecies regarding it that have yet a prospec- 
 tive view, and which refer to the time when " the children 
 of Israel shall possess their possessions," or to "the year 
 of recompenses for the controversy of Zion." But, dan- 
 gerous as it is to explore the land of Idumea and difficult 
 to ascertain those existing facts and precise circumstances 
 which form the strongest features of its desolate aspect, (and 
 Ihat ought to be the subject of scientific as well as of reli- 
 gious inquiry,) enough has been discovered to show that 
 the sentence against it, though fulfilled by the agency of 
 nature and of man, is precisely such as was first recorded 
 in the annals of inspiration. — Keith. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Ver. 16. Moreover, thou son of man, take thee 
 one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and 
 for the children of Israel his companions : then 
 take another stick, and write upon it, For Jo- 
 seph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the 
 house of Israel his companions. 
 
 The original manner of communicating ideas by letters, 
 among the ancient Britons, was by cutting the letters upon 
 sticks, which were most commonly squared, and some- 
 times formed into three sides. The squares were used for 
 general subjects, and for stanzas of four lines in poetry : 
 the trilateral ones were adapted to trides, and for a peculiar 
 kind of ancient metre, called triban, or triplet, and englyn 
 milwyr, or the warrior's verse. Several sticks with wri- 
 ting upon them were put together, forming a kind of frame, 
 which was called peithynen, or elucidator; and was so 
 constructed, that each stick might be turned for the facility 
 of reading, the end of each running out aUernately on both 
 sides of the frame. ( See engraving, at the end of the volume.') 
 
 A continuation of this mode of writing may be found in 
 the Runic or log almanacs of the northern states of Europe, 
 in which the engraving on square pieces of wood has been 
 continued to so late a period as the sixteenth century. The 
 Scythians also conveyed their ideas by marking or cutting 
 certain figures and a variety of lines, upon splinters or bil- 
 lets of wood. Aulus Gellius (lib. ii. c. 12) says, that the 
 ancient laws of Solon, preserved at Athens, were cut in 
 tablets of wood. 
 
 At Umea, in Sweden, a person whom Dr. Clarke visited, 
 " produced several ancient Runic staves, such as are known 
 in Sweden under the name of Runic almanacs, or Runic 
 calendars. They were all of wood, about three feet and a 
 half long, shaped like the straight swords represented in 
 churches upon the brazen sepulchre-plates of our Saxon 
 ancestors. The blades were on each side engraved with 
 Runic characters, and signs, like hieroglyphics, extending 
 their whole length. The signs were explained to us as 
 those of the months, and the characters denoted the weeks 
 and days. The Runic staves which had beer mven to us, 
 were afterward exhibited at Morvana, and in ihe different 
 places through which we passed, in the hope of procuring 
 more. We afterward saw others ; but they were always 
 
 rare, and considered more as curious antiquities than things 
 in actual use : although the inhabitants were we^ acquainted 
 with them, and were otten able to explain the meaning of 
 the characters upon them, and the -purpose for which these 
 instruments were made, especially in this pa^t of Sweden. 
 We saw one of more elaborate workmanship, where the 
 Runic characters had been very elegantly engraved upon 
 a stick, like a physician's cane: but this last seemed to be 
 of a more modern dale. In every instance, it was evident, 
 from some of the marks upon them, that their first owners 
 were Christians: the different lines and characters deno- 
 ting the fasts and festivals, golden numbers, donunical letter, 
 epact, &c. But the custom of thus preserving written rec- 
 ords upon rods or sticks is of the highest antiquity. There 
 is an allusion to this custom in Ezekiel, xxxvii. IG— 20, 
 where mention is made of something very similar to the 
 Runic staff." Nearly nine centuries before the age of 
 Ezekiel's prophecy, Moses used rods in the same manner. 
 Numbers xvii. 2, 3. We may now see how satisfactorily 
 the use to which these written rods were in after-ages ap'- 
 plied, is illustrated by the Runic staves, which have gene- 
 rally the form of a sword or sceptre, being the ensigns of 
 office and dignity borne in the hands by the priests, the 
 elders, and princes of the people. The recurved rods of 
 the priests among the Greeks, and the crosier of a modern 
 bishop, had the same origin. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. And thou shalt say, I will go up to the 
 land of unwalled villages ; I will go to them 
 that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them 
 dwelling without walls, and having neither bars 
 nor gates. 
 
 The Orientals were attentive to safety, not less than to 
 convenience and pleasure. To secure their dwellings from 
 the depredations of hostile tribes, that scoured their country 
 in all directions in quest of plunder, they were forced to 
 surround them with lofty walls. This mode of defence 
 seems to have been adopted at a very remote period ; for | 
 the spies whom Moses sent into Canaan to view the coun- 
 try, reported that the cities were great, and walled up to 
 heaven. The height of these walls, which by a bold ori- 
 ental figure, dictated by the pusillanimous fears of the spies, 
 are said to reach up to heaven, must have appeared to the 
 people of Israel, unaccustomed as they were to warfare of 
 that kind, and totally unprovided with the means necessary 
 for besieging fortified places, a very serious obstacle to the 
 accomplishment of their wishes. But the magnitude of it 
 may be illustrated with the greatest advantage, from the 
 accounts which modern travellers have given us of the 
 present inhabitants of those deserts, who are much in the 
 same circumstances as the people oif Israel were when they 
 came out of Egypt, whose attacks are effectually repellei 
 by the lofty walls of one or two Christian monasteries. 
 
 The great monastery of Mount Sinai, Thevenot says, is 
 well built of good freestone, with very high smooth walls; 
 on the east side there is a window, by which those that 
 were within drew up the pilgrrims into the monastery 
 with a basket, which they let down by a rope that runs by 
 a pulley, to be seen above at the window, and the pilgrims 
 went into it one by one, and so were hoisted up. These 
 walls are so high that they cannot be scaled, and without 
 cannon that place cannot be taken. 
 
 The monastery of St. Anthony, in Egypt, says Maillet, is 
 a vast enclosure, with good walls, raised sa high as to 
 secure this place from the insults of the Arabs. There is 
 no entrance into it but by a pulley, by means of which peo- 
 ple are hoisted up on high, and so conveyed into the monas- 
 tery. No warlike apparatus which the Arabian freebooters 
 possess, are sufficient for the reduction of these fortified 
 places. The Israelites, not better provided for besieging 
 sterongholds, hastily concluded that the walled cities of 
 Canaan, of which they heard such discouraging accounts, 
 must oppose an insurmountable barrier to their progress. 
 It is not to be supposed that the descendants of Canaan, 
 like the timid monks of Sinai, walled up their gates on the 
 approach of danger, and permitted none to enter the place, 
 but by means of a pulley; but if their ga^c♦; had not been 
 well secured, the precaution of raising I lir wall so high 
 had been in vain. — Paxton. 
 
542 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 Chap. 1. 
 
 CHAPTElR XXXIX. 
 Ver. 11. And it shall come to pass at that day, 
 that I will giv6 unto Gog a place there of 
 graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers 
 on the east of the sea ; and it shall stop the 
 7ioses of the passengers : and there shall they 
 bury Gog, and all his multitude ; and they shall 
 call it, The valley of Hamon-gog. 
 
 This refers to the dreadful stench which should arise 
 from the dead bodies of Gog. The Taraul translation has 
 it, " cause to stop ihe noses." The moment people smell 
 any thing offensive, they immediately press the nostrils to^ 
 gather with their lingers. They say "of a bad smell, It has 
 8T0PPED my nose ; which means the nose is so full of that, 
 it is not sensible of any other smell. The figure is much 
 used in reference to the decayed oysters at the pearl fishery. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 Ver. 2. Then said the Lord unto me. This gate 
 shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no 
 
 man shall enter in by it ; because the Lord, 
 the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, there- 
 fore it shall be shut. 
 
 Among other instances of the extreme distance, and pro- 
 found awe, with which eastern majesty is treated, one that 
 is mentioned by Sir John Chardin, in his account of Persia, 
 appears very strange to us, yet may afford a lively com- 
 ment on a passage of the prophet Ezekiel. Sir John tells 
 us, " It is a common custom in Persia, that when a great 
 man has built a palace, he treats the king and his grandees 
 in it for several days. Then the great gate of it is open : 
 but when these festivities are over, they shut it up, never 
 more to be opened." He adds, " I have heard that the same 
 thing is practised in Japan." It seems surprising to us, 
 that great and magnificent houses within should have only 
 small entrances into them, which no one would suppose 
 would lead into such beautiful edifices: but such, he observes, 
 is the common custom there : making no magnificent en- 
 trance into their houses at all ; or if they do, shutting them 
 up after a little time, and making use of some small entrance 
 near the great one, or it may be, in some very different 
 part of the building. — Harmer. 
 
 DANIEL 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 2. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of 
 Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of 
 the house of God, which he carried into the 
 land of Shinar, to the house of his god ; and he 
 brought the vessels into the treasure-house of 
 his god. 
 
 In all heathen temples there is a place for the sacred 
 jewels and other treasures. The ornaments of the idols are 
 sometimes of great value. I have seen the small crown, 
 breastplate, and necklaces of one idol, worth more than 
 400^. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 3. And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the 
 master of his eunuchs, that he should bring cer- 
 tain of the children of Israel, and of the king's 
 seed, and of the princes : 4. Children in whom 
 was no blemish, but well-favoured, and skilful 
 in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and 
 understanding science, and such as had ability 
 in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom 
 they might teach the learning and the tongue 
 of the Chaldeans. 
 
 The master of the black eunuchs is still one of the most 
 important officers at the court of the Turkish emperor, the 
 arrangement of which is, for the most part, formed after 
 'he household of the ancient Persian emperors. He is 
 called Kislar-Aga, that is, overseer of the girls, and >s the 
 chief of the black eunuchs who guard the harem or resi- 
 dence of the women. " The Kislar-Aga, by his place, en- 
 joys a powerful influence in affairs, but "particularly in 
 those of the court, for which reason the other agas bring 
 concerns before him. His consideration and influence 
 over the emperor is almost always secure." (Von Ham- 
 mer.)— RosENMULLEai. 
 
 Curtius says, that in all barbarous or uncivilized coun- 
 tries, the stateliness of the body is held in great veneration : 
 nor do they think any capable' of great services or actions, 
 to whom nature has not vouchsafed to give a beautiful form 
 and aspect. It has always been the custom of the eastern 
 nations to choose such for their principal officers, or to wait 
 on princes and great personages. Sir Paul Ricaut ob- 
 serves, " that the youths that are designed for the great of- 
 fices of the Turkish empire, must be of admirable features 
 and looks, well-shaped in their bodies, and without any de- 
 fects of nature : for it is conceived that a corrupt and sor- 
 did soul can scarce inhabit in a serene and ingenuous as- 
 pect ; and I have observed not only in the seraglio, but also 
 in the courts of great men, their personal attendants have 
 been of comely lusty youths, well habited, deporting them- 
 selves with singular modesty and respect in the presence 
 of their masters ; so that when a pacha aga spahi travels, 
 he is always attended with a comely equipage, followed by 
 flourishing youths, well clothed and mounted, in great num- 
 bers." — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 8. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he 
 would not defile himself with the portion of the 
 king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank : 
 therefore he requested of the prince of the eu- 
 nuchs that he might not defile himself 
 
 It was the custom of most? nations, before their meals, to 
 make an oblation of some part of what they ate and drank 
 to their gods, as a thankful acknowledgment that every 
 thing which they enjoyed was their gift. These oblations 
 were called libamina among the Romans, so that every en- 
 tertainment had something in it of the nature of a sacrifice. 
 This practice generally prevailing, made Daniel and his 
 friends look upon the provisions coming from the king's 
 table as no better than meats offered to idols, and, by being 
 so offered, to be accounted unclean or polluted.— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15. And at the end often days their counU- 
 nances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than 
 
Chap. 1—3. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 54$ 
 
 all the children which did eat the portion of the 
 king's meat. 
 
 It is probable that there was nothing extraordinary or out 
 of the common way in this circumstance. Sir J. Chardin 
 observes, " I have remarked this, that the countenances of 
 the Kechichs are in fact more rosy and smooth than those 
 of others, and that these people who fast much, I mean the 
 Armenians and the Greeks, are notwithstanding very beau- 
 tiful, sparkling with health, with a clear and Uvely coun- 
 tenance." — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 4. Then spake the Chaldeans to the king 
 in Syriac, O king, live for ever : tell thy ser- 
 vants the dream, and we will show the inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 These words are not addressed to the ears of royalty 
 MERELTf , Has a man been greatly favoured by another, he 
 says, " Ah ! may you never die." " So good a man ought 
 never to die." " May you live for ever." " Will death 
 come to such a man as this V " Live, live, for ever."— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 31. Thou, O king, sawest, and, hehold, a 
 great image. This great image, whose bright- 
 ness was excellent, stood before thee, and the 
 form thereof was terrible. 32. This image's 
 head teas of fine gold, his breast and his arms 
 of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass. 
 33. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and 
 part of clay. 
 
 There is usually an obvious and striking congruity in the 
 prophetic and parabolic imagery of the scriptures. In the 
 present case therl'would seem to be an exception ; for who 
 can conceive of the manner in which iron and clay could 
 be made to combine in the same mass 1 In respect to the 
 other materials, the gold, the silver, the brass, they are 
 suiticinntly homogeneous in their nature to allow of being 
 united in the manner supposed in the vision. But how a 
 soft.yielding substance like clay could form a constituent 
 part of the same image, and that too of the very base and 
 pediment upon which it rested, is by no means obvious. 
 We see not therefore why the definition given to the origi- 
 nal Chaldaic word by Cocceius, Buxtorf, Gesenius, Simo- 
 nis, Gibbs, and others, viz. patterns ware, or burnt baked clay, 
 is not decidedly to be preferred. And of the original phrase 
 subsequently occurring, " miry clay," v. 41, 42. The first 
 of these lexicographers says expressly, " Nonigitur lutum 
 vel limum notat, sed opus coctum ex limo, vel limum ex- 
 coctum," it does not therefore signify clay or mud, in its soft 
 state, but something formed by baking from clay. This in- 
 terpretation gives consistency to the whole imagery, and, 
 if needs be, can be abundantly confirmed from the frequent 
 use of the same term by the Chaldee Targums. — Bush. 
 
 ji Ver. 46. Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon 
 his face, and worshipped Daniel, and command- 
 ed that they should offer an oblation and sweet 
 oaours unto him. 
 
 Odoriferous ointments and perfumes were oflen present- 
 ed by the great as a particular mark of distinction. The 
 king of Babylon treated the prophet Daniel with the richest 
 perfumes, after he had predicted the future destinies of his 
 empire, as a distinguished proof of his esteem and admira- 
 tion: " Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, 
 and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should 
 offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him." This pas- 
 sage Mr. Harmer considers as exceedingly difliicult; and 
 he labours hard to prove that the king meant nothing more 
 than civil respect. "Nebuchadnezzar, in all this matter, 
 appeared to have considered Daniel merely as a prophet : 
 his words strongly express this. Your God is a God of gods' ; 
 and had it been otherwise, a person so zealous as Daniel, 
 ■who risked his life, rather than neglect his homage to his 
 God, and haa the courage to pray to him with his windows 
 
 open towards Jerusalem, contrary to the king 5 command, 
 would undoubtedly, like Paul and Barnabas, have reject- 
 ed these odours." This view completely vindicates the 
 prophet from the charge of conniving at the idolatry of the 
 king ; but it is not necessary to his defence. The conduct 
 of Nebuchadnezzar, it is allowed, admits of a favourable 
 construction ; but, at the same time, it is scarcely possible 
 to avoid the suspicion that he was, on tnis memorable occa- 
 sion, guilty of idolatrous veneration. The verb Sagad, he 
 worshipped, so far as the writer has been able to trace it, 
 both in Hebrew and Chaldee, expresses the homage which 
 is rendered to a god, and is, perhaps, universally applied to 
 the worship of false deities in the sacred scriptures. If 
 this remark be just, it is greatly to be suspected that Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, who had few, or no correct religious princi- 
 ples, to restrain the sudden movements of his impetuous pas- 
 sions, did intend, on that occasion, to honour Daniel as a 
 god, or, which is not materially different, to worship the 
 divinity in the prophet. But it may be demanded, how 
 then is Daniel to be vindicated *? Shall we suppose that a 
 prophet of the Lord, a man highly favoured and distin- 
 guished for his eminent holiness, would suffer idolatry to 
 be practised in his presence, more especially when he him- 
 self was the object of it, without expressing his disapproba- 
 tion^ To this objection, the following answer is offered: 
 The sacred writers, studious of extreme brevity, often pass 
 over many incidents in the scenes which they describe. 
 Daniel, therefore, might actually reject the intended hon- 
 our, although it is not mentioned in the record. This si- 
 lence of the historian will not prove that it was not done, 
 while there are certain circumstances in the narrative 
 which go far to prove that the prophet did reject the hom- 
 age of Nebuchadnezzar. In the 28th verse of the second 
 chapter, he solemnly declares before the king and the whole 
 court, that " it is the God of heaven that revealeth secrets, 
 and makes known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall 
 be in the latter days ;" and the 30th verse, " But as for me, 
 this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have 
 more than any living." When these faithful declarations 
 are considered, it is not to be supposed that Daniel neglect- 
 ed to remind the king that religious worship is due to God 
 alone ; and that such a testimony was given at the time, is 
 intimated with considerable clearness in the confession of 
 the king himself, verse 47th, which seems to refer to some- 
 thing the prophet had just said to him : '• The king an- 
 swered unto Daniel, and said. Of a truth it is, that your 
 God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a Revealer 
 of secrets, seeing thou couldst reveal this secret." The 
 character of Daniel, therefore, is not affected by the mis- 
 conduct of his sovereign, in paying him divine honours. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 6. And whoso falleth not down and wor- 
 shippeth, shall the same houi be cast into the 
 midst of a burning fiery furnace. 
 
 This mode of putting to death was not unusual in the 
 East in more modern times. Chardin, in his Travels, after 
 speaking of the most common modes of punishing with 
 death, says, " But there is still a particular way of putting 
 to death such as have transgressed in civil affairs, either 
 by causing a dearth, or by selling abovt the tax by a false 
 weight, or who have committed themselves in any other 
 manner. The cooks are put upon a spit and roasted over 
 a slow tire, bakers are thrown into a hot oven. During the 
 dearth in 1668, I saw such ovens heateti on the royal square 
 in Ispahan, to terrify the bakers, ana deter them from deri- 
 ving advantage from the general distress." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 25. He anjfw^ed and said, Lo, I see four 
 men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, ^d 
 they have no hurt ; and the form of the fourth 
 is like the Son of God. 
 
 Professor Eichorn has manifested a strong inclination to 
 expel the prophet Daniel from the sacred writings. As the 
 difficulties which attend some representations in this pro- 
 phet, [" fires which do not burn; ana an image strangely 
 disproportioned," are especially selected,] are among the 
 professor's principal reasons, we could wish, before sen- 
 
544 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 Chap. 4, 5. 
 
 uence were passed on the delinquent, that not only what 
 we have just noticed in relation to his animals, but also the 
 following hints in relation to some of his other subjects, 
 were duly weighed, and accurately understood. The story 
 of the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace would be much 
 more -within our comprehension, if we knew the true form 
 of what is denominated a. furnace ; it is usually conceived 
 of, as being somewhat like our tile-kilns, a solid, enclosed, 
 brick building, with an aperture only for entrance, or, at 
 most, with a door- way below, and a vent above for the flame, 
 smoke, &c. But the circumstances of the story do not war- 
 rant an edifice of this construction ; for it appears that 
 IN'ebuchadnezzar, still seated on his throne, saw the persons 
 in the fire. Now this he could not do, through the solid 
 wall of such a building ; neither could the flame, issuing 
 from a narrow orifice, easily slay those men who threw in 
 the Hebrews, the solid wall being between them and the 
 fire. Either, then, the opening to this furnace, if it were 
 a solid edifice, was large enough to admit of full view into 
 it ; or we must seek some other construction for it. We 
 may carry this idea somewhat further, and infer the pro- 
 priety of supposing Nebuchadnezzar to see throughout the 
 structure; by consequence, the building had no covering; 
 but was, at most, an enclosure of fire ; or, an area sur- 
 rounded by a wall, within which the fire raged. — Taylor 
 IN Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 25. That they shall drive thee from men, 
 and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the 
 field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as 
 oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of 
 heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, 
 till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the 
 kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever 
 he will. 
 
 This was one of the miseries of Nebuchadnezzar, and a 
 much greater one than the people in England imagine. 
 Think of the state of the body and pores after being twelve 
 hours in a blazing sun, and then think on such a dew falling 
 as will saturate all the clothes ; and a tolerable view is 
 gained of the great reverse, and the effect it must have on 
 the human frame. Of a wretched man it is said, " The sun 
 falls on his head by day, and the dew by night." " He is 
 scorched by the sun, and made wet by the dew." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. At the end of twelve months he walked 
 in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. 
 
 See on 1 Sam 9. 25, 26. 
 
 The custom of walking upon the roof in the cool of the 
 day, to inhale the refreshing breeze, and to survey the sur- 
 roiinding scenery, may serve to explain a scripture incident 
 of considerable interest, which does not appear to have been 
 generally understood. It is thus recorded in the prophecies 
 of Daniel : " At the end of twelve months, he (Nebuchad- 
 nezzar) walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon." 
 The true sense of the original is, " he walked upon the 
 palace;" but this interpretation our translators have placed 
 in the margin, as more doubtful than the other. If Nebu- 
 chadnezzar walked in some apartment of his palace, it is 
 not easy to account for the proud and rapturous exclama- 
 tion which suddenly burst from his mouth ; we can see no 
 proper excitement, no adequate cause ; but if we suppose 
 him walking upon the roof of his palace, which proudly 
 rose above the surrounding habitations, and surveying the 
 vast extent, the magnificence, and the splendour of that 
 great city, the mistress of the world — its walls of prodigious 
 height and thickness — its hanging gardens, reputed one of 
 ths most astonishing efforts of art and power— its glittering 
 palaces ; the Euphrates rolling his majestic flood through 
 the middle of the place, shut in on both sides by strong bul- 
 warks and doors of brass; it was quite natural for such a 
 man to feel elated with the sight, and indulge his pride and 
 arrogance in the manner described by the prophet. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 12. Forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and 
 knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of 
 
 dreams, and showing of hard sentences, anvl 
 dissolving of doubts, were found in the same 
 Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar : 
 now let Daniel be called, and he will show the 
 interpretation. 
 
 The margin (Chald.) has, instead of " doubts," " knots." 
 A very diflicult subject is called a mudiche, a knot ! Thu» 
 the explaining of a riddle is called " untying the knot." Of 
 a talented man it is said, " Ah ! he is very clever, he can 
 tie or untie any knot." Of a dream, it is asked, " Who cau 
 loose this knot V Of any mysteries, or of deep plans, it is 
 asked, " Ah ! who can untie these knots 1" " How dim- 
 cult that passage was, but he soon unravelled the knot." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 In the copy of a patent given to Sir John Chardin by the 
 king of Persia, we find it is addressed " To the lords of 
 lords, who have the presence of a lion, the aspect of Deston, 
 the princes who have the stature of Tahem-ten-ten, who 
 seem to be in the time of Ardevon, the regents who carry 
 the majesty of Ferribours, the conquerors of kingdoms, su- 
 perintendents that unloose all manner of knots, and who are 
 under the ascendant of Mercury," &c.— Border. 
 
 Ver. 21. And he was driven from the sons of 
 men ; and his heart was made like the beasts, 
 and his dwelling was with the wild asses : they 
 fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was 
 wet with the dew of heaven ; till he knew that 
 the most high God ruled in the kingdom of 
 men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever 
 he will. 
 
 See on Job 39. 5. 
 
 Ver. 27. TEKEL ; Thou art weighed in the 
 balances, and art found wanting. 
 
 This striking form of speech is much used in the East at 
 this day. Thus, should two men be disputing respecting 
 the moral character of a third person, one will say, " I know 
 the fellow well; I have weighed him, and he is found 
 wanting." "He found wanting! you are much lighter 
 than he." " What ! miscreant, do you wish to weigh 
 against me ?" " Thou art but as one part in a thousand." 
 " Begone ! fellow, or I will soon weigh thee." " Yes, yes, 
 there is no doubt about it: you have weighed me; I am 
 much lighter than you." " What kind of times are these % 
 the slaves are weighing their masters." " Yes, the low 
 castes have become very clever, they are weighing their 
 superiors." " What! woman, do you call in question the 
 authority of your husband : are you qualified to weigh 
 him 1" " The judge has been weighing the prisoners, and 
 they are all wanting." — Roberts. 
 
 From the following extract it will appear that there is an 
 allusion in these words, which will justify a literal interpre- 
 tation of them. " The first of September, (which was the 
 late mogul's birthday,) he, retaining an ancient yearly cus- 
 tom, was, in the presence of his chief grandees, weighed in 
 a balance : the ceremony was performed within his house, 
 or tent, in a fair spacious room, whereinto none were ad- 
 mitted but by special leave. The scales in which he was 
 thus weighed were plated with gold ; and so was the beam, 
 on which they hung by great chains, made likewise of that 
 most precious metal. The king sitting in one of them, was 
 weighed first against silver coin, which immediately after- 
 ward was distributed among the poor; then was he weighed 
 against gold; after that against jewels, (as they say,) but I 
 observed (being there present with my lord ambassador) 
 that he was weighed against three several things, laid in 
 silken bags on the contrary scale. When I saw him in the 
 balance, I thought on Belshazzar, who was found too light. 
 By his weight (of which his physicians yearly keep an 
 exact account) they presume to guess of the present estate 
 of his body, of which they speak flatteringly, however they 
 think it to be." (Sir Thomas Roe.)— Border. 
 
 Ver. 29. Then commanded Belshazzar, and they 
 clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of 
 gold about his neck, and made a proclamation 
 
 I 
 
Chap. 5—7. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 concerning him, that he should be the third 
 ruler in the kingdom. 
 
 This was designed to honour Daniel, and certainly was, 
 according to the custom of the East, a ceremony highly ex- 
 pressive of dignity. To come out from the presence of 
 a superior in a garment different from that in which the 
 person went in, was significant of approbation and promo- 
 tion. Whether it was the precise intention of this clothing 
 to declare Daniel's mvestiture with the dignity of the third 
 ruler of the kingdom, or whether it was an honorary dis- 
 tinction, unconnected with his advancement, cannot be ab- 
 solutely decided, because caffetans, or robes, are at this day 
 put on people with both views. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 18. Then the king went to his palace, and 
 passed the night fasting : neither were instru- 
 ments of music brought before him ; and his 
 sleep went from him. 
 
 See on Ezra 9, 3. 
 
 Ver. 23. Then was the king exceeding glad for 
 him, and commanded that they should take 
 Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was 
 taken up out of the den, and no manner of 
 hurt was found upon him, because he believed 
 in his God. 
 
 The Orientals have an idea, that in whatever a man 
 BELIEVES, whether in reference to the existence or nonexist- 
 ence of evil or danger in regard to himself, that so will 
 his condition be regulated. In walking once with a learned 
 Bramin, through a grove of cocoa-trees, I inquired, Why 
 are you not afraid of those nuts falling on your head, and 
 killing you on the spot 1 " Because I have only to believe 
 they will not fall, and all is safe," was his reply. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 2. Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision 
 by night, and, behold, the four winds of the 
 heaven strove upon the great sea. 
 
 The whirlwind, it appears from the sacred writings, 
 comes from different points of the compass. The prophet 
 Ezekiel speaks of one that came from the north ; and al- 
 though it appeared to him in vision, it was according to the 
 course of nature ; for we learn from other sources of inform- 
 ation, that it sometimes arises in that quarter. William 
 of Tyre records an instance of a violent whirlwind from 
 the north, in the time of the crusades, which enveloped 
 two hostile armies in an immense cloud of dust, and com- 
 pelled them for a while to suspend the work of destruction. 
 When that enterprising traveller, Mr. Parke, was travers- 
 ing the Sahara, or Great Desert, in his way to the Niger, 
 destitute of provisions and water, his throat pained with 
 thirst, and his strength nearly exhausted, he heard a wind 
 sounding from the east, and instinctively opened his parch- 
 ed mouth to receive the precious drops of rain which he 
 confidently expected, but it was instantly filled with sand 
 drifted from the desert. So immense 'was the quantity 
 raised into the air, and wafted upon the wings of the wind, 
 and so great the velocity with which it flew, that he was 
 compelled to turn his face to the west to prevent suffoca- 
 tion, and continue motionless till it passed. In Persia, 
 violent currents of air are sometimes seen impelling the 
 clouds in different directions, whose concussion produces 
 an awful noise, like the rushing of a great body of M'ater, 
 As the cloud approaches the earth, the sound becomes still 
 more alarming: for nothing, says Mr. Morier, can be more 
 awful. To this natural phenomenon, the strife of the four 
 winds in the vision of Daniel is perhaps allusive. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 5. And, behold, another beast, a second, like 
 to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and 
 it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the 
 teeth of it : and they said thus unto it, Arise, 
 devour much flesh. 
 
 It has been satisfactorily proved by the be.st writers on 
 the subject, that the vision refers to the four great mon- 
 archies., the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedo- 
 nian or Grecian, and the Roman ; and that the second 
 beast, which was like to a bear, symbolizes the empire of 
 the Medes and Persians. All the four monarchies are rep- 
 resented by beasts of prey, to intimate their agreement in 
 the general character of fierceness and rapacity ; and by 
 beasts of difierent species, to intimate the existence of im- 
 portant diflferences in their character and mode of opera- 
 tion. The Babylonish empire is symbolized by a lion with 
 eagle's wings, because it was the first and noblest kingdom 
 upon earth ; it was strong and fierce as a lion ; it was swift 
 and rapid in its movements, as a lion with eagle's wings ; 
 rising in a few years, under the conduct of Nebuchadnez- 
 zar, to the highest pinnacle of power and greatness. The 
 third kingdom is represented by another beast, "like a 
 leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a 
 fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was 
 given unto it." This is the Grecian monarchy ; the dis- 
 tinguishing characters of which, are great variety of dis- 
 position and manners, undaunted boldness, and rapidity of 
 conquest, never before or since exemplified in the history of 
 nations. The fourth beast was so great and horrible, that 
 no adequate name could be found for it; this nondescript 
 was the symbol of the Roman empire, which differed 
 from all others in the form of its government, in strength, 
 in power, in greatness, in length of duration, and in ex- 
 tent of dominion. The Persian monarchy, symbolized by 
 the bear, has also certain specific differences, which are to 
 be learned from the natural history of that animal. Cruel 
 and rapacious as the others, the bear is inferior in strength 
 and courage to the lion, and, although slower in its motions, 
 more uniform in its appearance, and steady in its purpose, 
 than the leopard. Such was the empire of the Medes and 
 Persians: weaker and less warlike than the Babylonian, 
 whose symbol is the lion ; but less various in its principles 
 of government, in the forms which it assumed, in the cus- 
 toms and manners of the nations which composed it, and 
 less rapid in its conquests, than the Macedonian, symboli- 
 zed by the spotted leopard, one of the most rapid and im- 
 petuous animals that traverse the desert. But if the bear 
 IS inferior to the lion and the leopard in strength, in 
 courage, and in swiftness,, it surpasses them in ferocious 
 cruelty and insatiable voracity ; it thirsts for blood and riots 
 in carnage ; and such was the empire of the Medes and 
 Persians. They are stigmatized by ancient historians as 
 the greatest robbers and spoilers that ever oppressed the 
 nations. The symbol of this all-devouring people is ac- 
 cordingly represented as having "three ribs in the mouth 
 of it, between the teeth of it," in the very act of devouring 
 three weaker animals which it has seized, that is, of op- 
 pressing the kingdoms of Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt, 
 which it conquered. And besides, to denote its rapacious- 
 ness and cruelty, it is added in the vision, " they said thus 
 unto it. Arise, devour much flesh." 
 
 The fourth empire is symbolized by " a dreadful and ter- 
 rible beast," for which the prophet found no name in the 
 kingdom of nature. It resembled the fabulous monsters, 
 which poetic imagination sometimes delights to portray ; 
 for, in the book of Revelation, John describes it as com- 
 pounded of the three which preceded it : " The beast which 
 I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet was as the 
 feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion." It 
 possessed all the qualities which render beasts of prey a 
 terror to man and other animals ; the swiftness and cun- 
 ning of the leopard, the ferocity of the bear, and the bold- 
 ness and strength of the lion. The Roman empire, which 
 it symbolized, resembled no state of society known among 
 men ; it displayed, in its character and proceedings, the 
 vigour and courage of the Babylonians, the various policy 
 and alacrity of the Greeks, and the unchanging firmness 
 of the Medes and Persians ; qualities which have been 
 equally conspicuous in the Papal state of that empire. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 15. I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the 
 midst of 1717/ body, and the visions of my head 
 troubled me. 
 
 Margin, (Chald.) "sheath;" this is a very curious ex- 
 pression, whien applied to such a subject, but it is perfectly 
 
546 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 Chap. 8, 11, 
 
 natural. When a person has swooned, the people say, 
 " His life has gone into its urI," i. e. sheath, meaning some 
 particular place into which the life is supposed to retire 
 and conceal itself from the sight. Has a man been wound- 
 ed by a serpent, and should he appear to be dead, it is 
 often said, " Fear not, his life has merely gone into its 
 SHEATH." When a person's eyes are much sunken by sick- 
 ness, the people say, " Alas ! his eyes have gone into their 
 sheath." " Well, my friend, when did you arrive'?" "I 
 came just as the sun was going into its sheath," i. e. going 
 down. " I am happy to hear that the king hath put his 
 anger and his sword into the sheath." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 5. And as I was considering-, behold, a he- 
 goat came from the west, on the face of the 
 whole earth, and touched not the ground : and 
 the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. 
 
 It is very well known that in former times Macedon, and 
 the adjacent countries, particularly Thrace, abounded with 
 goats; insomuch that they were made symbols, and are to 
 be found on many of the coins that were struck by different 
 towns in those parts of Greece. But not only many of the 
 individual towns in Macedon and Thrace employed this 
 type, but the kingdom itself of Macedon, which is the oldest 
 in Europe of which we have any regular and connected 
 history, was represented also by a goat with this particulari- 
 ty, that it had but one horn. The custom of representing the 
 type and power of a country under the form of a horned 
 animal, is not peculiar to Macedon. Persia was represented 
 by a ram. Ammianus Marcellinus acquaints us, that the 
 king of Persia, when at the head of his army, wore a ram's 
 head, made of gold and set with precious stones, instead of 
 a diadem. The relation of these emblems to Macedon and 
 Persia is strongly confirmed by the vision of Daniel record- 
 ed in this chapter, and which from these accounts receives 
 no inconsiderable share of illustration. An ancient bronze 
 figure of a goat with one horn, dug up in Asia Minor, was 
 lately inspected by the society of antiquaries in London. 
 The original use of it probably was to be aflixed to the top 
 of a military standard, in the same manner as the Roman 
 eagle. This supposition is somewhat supported by what is 
 related of Caranus, that he ordered goats to be carried be- 
 fore the standards of his army. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Ver. 2. And now will I show thee the truth. 
 Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in 
 Persia ; and the fourth shall be far richer than 
 they all : and by his strength through his riches 
 he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia. 
 3. And a mighty king shall stand up, that 
 shall rule with great dominion, and do accord- 
 ing to his will. 
 
 Soon after the death of Alexander the Great, his king- 
 dom was divided towards the four winds of heaven, but not 
 to his posterity ; four of his captains, Ptolemy, Antigonus, 
 Lysimachus, and Cassander, reigned over Egypt, Syria, 
 Thrace, and Greece. The kingdoms of Egypt and of Syria 
 became afterward the most powerful : they subsisted as in- 
 dependent monarchies for a longer period than the other 
 two; and, as they were more immediately connected with 
 the land of Judea, which was often reduced to their do- 
 minion, they form the subject of the succeeding predictions. 
 Bishop Newton gives even a more copious illustration of 
 the historical facts, which verify the whole of this prophecy, 
 than that which had previously been given by his illustrious 
 predecessor of the same name — who has rendered that name 
 immortal. He quotes or refers to authorities in every in- 
 stance : and his dissertation on that part of the prophecy 
 which relates to the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt is wound 
 up in these emphatic words : " It may be proper to stop 
 here, and reflect a little how particular and circumstantial 
 this prophecy is concerning the kingdoms of Egypt and 
 Syria, from the death of Alexander to the time of Aritiochus 
 l^iphanes. There is not so complete and regular a series 
 of tfceir kings— there is not so concise and comprehensive 
 
 an account of their affairs to be found in any author of these 
 times. The prophecy is really more perfect than any his- 
 tory. No one historian hath related so many circumstances, 
 and in such exact order of time, as the prophet hath foretold 
 them ; so that it was necessary to have recourse to several 
 authors, Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian, and to 
 collect here something from one, and to collect there some- 
 thing from another, for better explainingandillustratingthe 
 great variety of particulars contained in this prophecy." 
 So close is the coincidence between the prophetic and the 
 real history of the kings of Egypt and of Syria, that Por- 
 phyry, one of the earliest opponents of Christianity, laboured 
 to prove its extreme accuracy, and alleged from thence that 
 the events must have preceded the prediction. The same 
 argument is equally necessary at the present hour to dis- 
 prove the subsequent parts of the same prophecy— though 
 none can urge it now. The last of those facts to which it 
 refers, the accomplishment of which is already past, are un- 
 folded with equal precision and truth as the first— and the 
 fulfilment of the whole is yet incomplete. The more clearly 
 that the event corresponds to the prediction, instead of being 
 an evidence against the truth, the more conclusive is the 
 demonstration that it is the word of Him who hath the times 
 and the seasons in his own power. 
 
 The subject of the prophecy is represented in these 
 words : — " I am come to make thee understand what shall 
 befall thy people in the latter days ; for the vision is for 
 many days." And that which is noted in the scripture of 
 truth terminates not with the reign of Antiochus. At that 
 very time the Romans extended their conquests towards the 
 East. Macedonia, the seat of the empire of Alexander the 
 Great, became a province of the Roman empire. And the 
 prophecy, faithfully tracing the transition of power, ceases 
 to prolong the history of the kings of Egypt and of Syria, 
 and becomes immediately descrintive of the progress of the 
 Roman arms. The very term (shall stand up) which pre- 
 viously marked the commencement of the Persian and of 
 the Macedonian power, is here repeated, and denotes the 
 commencement of a third era, or a new power. The word 
 in the original is the same in each. And " arms (an epi- 
 thet sufficiently characteristic of the extensive military 
 power of the Romans) shall stand up, and they shall pollute 
 the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily 
 sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh 
 desolate." All these things, deeply affecting the Jewish 
 state, the Romans did — and they finally rendered the coun- 
 try of Judea " desolate of its old inhabitants." The propa- 
 gation of Christianity — the succeeding important event — 
 is thus represented : — " The people that do know their God 
 shall be strong and do exploits. And they that understand 
 among the people shall instruct many." The persecutions 
 which they suffered are as significantly described : — " Yet 
 they shall fall by the sword and by flame, by captivity and 
 by spoil many days. Now, when they shall fall, they shall 
 be holpen with a little help, and many shall cleave to them 
 with flatteries." And such was Constantine's conversion 
 and the effect which it produced. No other government 
 but that of the Romans stood up—hui the mode of that gov- 
 ernment was changed. After the days of Constantine, 
 Christianity became gradually more and more corrupted. 
 Previous to that period there had existed no system of 
 dominion analogous to that which afterward prevailed. 
 The greatest oppressors had never extended their preten- 
 sions beyond human power, nor usurped a spiritual tyranny. 
 But, in contradiction to every other, the next succeeding 
 form of government, unparalleled in its nature, in the an- 
 nals of despotism or of delusion, is thus characterized by 
 the prophet :— " And the king (the ruling power signifying 
 any government, state, or potentate) shall do according to 
 his will ; and he shall exalt himself and magnify himself 
 above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against 
 the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be ac- 
 complished." This description is suited to the history of 
 the eastern or western churches — to the government under 
 the Grecian emperors at Constantinople, or of the popes at 
 Rome. The extent of the Roman empire might justify its 
 application to the latter; but the connexion of the prophecy, 
 as referable to local events, 'ends to limit it to the former. 
 In either case it is descriptive of that mode of government 
 which prospered so long in tne East and in the West— and 
 which consisted in the impious usurpation of spiritual au- 
 thority—in the blasphemous assumption of those attributes 
 
Chap. 11. 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 547 
 
 which are exclusively divine, and in exalting itself above 
 the laws of God and "man. But instead, perhaps, of being 
 confined exclusively to either, it may have been intended to 
 represent, as it does characterize, the spiritual tyranny, and 
 the substitution of the commandments of men for the will 
 of God, which oppressed Christendom for ages, and hid 
 from men the word of God. The prevalence of supersti- 
 tion, the prohibition or discouragement of marriage, and 
 the worship of saints, as characteristic of the same period 
 and of the same power, are thus prophetically described: — 
 " Neither shall he regard the God of hisfathers, nor the de- 
 sire of women, or matrimony, neither shall he regard any 
 god. But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces — 
 Mahuzzim," protectors or guardians, a term so applicable 
 to the worship of saints, and to the confidence which was 
 reposed in them, that expressions exactly synonymous are 
 often used by many ancient writers in honour of them — of 
 which Mede gnd Sir Isaac Newton have adduced a multi- 
 plicity of instances. Mahuzzim were the tutelary saints 
 of the Greek and Romish churches. The subserviency, 
 which long existed, of spiritual power to temporal aggran- 
 dizement, is also noted in the prophecy : *' and he shall cause 
 them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain." 
 And that the principalteachers and propagators of the wor- 
 ship of Mahuzzim — " the bishops, priests, and monks, and 
 religious orders, have been honoured, and reverenced, and 
 esteemed in former ages ; that their authority and jurisdic- 
 tion have extended over the purses and consciences of 
 men ; that they have been enriched with noble buildings 
 and large endowments, and have had the choicest of the 
 lands appropriated for church-lands ; are points of such no- 
 toriety, that they require; no proof, and will admit of no 
 denial." 
 
 Having thus described the antichristian power, which 
 prospered so long and prevailed so widely, the prophecy 
 next delineates, in less obscure terms, the manner in which 
 that power was to be humbled and overthrown, and intro- 
 duces a more particular definition of the rise, extent, and 
 fall of that kingdom, which was to oppress and supplant it 
 in the latter days. " And at the time of the end shall the 
 king of the south push at him." The Saracens extentjed 
 their conquests over great part of Asia and of Europe : they 
 penetrated the dominions of the Grecian empire, and par- 
 tially subdued, though they could not entirely subvert it, 
 nor obtain possession of Constantinople, the capital city. 
 The prediction, however brief, significantly represents their 
 warfare,which was desultory, and their conquest, which was 
 incomplete. And Arabia is situated to the south of Pales- 
 tine. The Turks, the next and last invaders of the Grecian 
 empire, were of Sc3rthian extraction, and came from the 
 north. And while a single expression identifies the Sara- 
 cen invasion — the irruption of the Turks, being of a more 
 fatal character and more permanent in its eflfects, is fully 
 described. Every part of the description is most faithful 
 to the facts. Their local situation, the impetuosity of their 
 attack, the organization of their armies, and the success of 
 their arms, form the first part of the prediction respecting 
 them. " And the king of the north shall come against him 
 like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen, and 
 with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and 
 shall overflow and pass over." Although the Grecian em- 
 pire withstood the predatory warfare of the Saracens, it 
 gave way before the overwhelming forces of the Turks, 
 whose progress was tracked with destruction, and whose 
 coming was indeed like a whirlwind. Chariots and horse- 
 men were to be the distinguishing marks of their armies, 
 though armies, in general^ contain the greatest proportion 
 of foot-soldiers. And, in describing their first invasion of 
 the Grecian territory, Gibbon relates, that " the myriads of 
 Turkish horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles 
 from Tauris to Arzeroum, and the blood of one hundred 
 and thirty thousand Christians was a grateful sacrifice to 
 the Arabian prophet. The Turkish armies at first con- 
 sisted so exclusively of horsemen, that the stoutest of the 
 youths of the captive Christians were afterward taken and 
 trained as a band of infantry, and called janizaries, (yengi 
 cheri,) or new soldiers." \n apparent contradiction to the 
 nature of their army, they were also to possess many ships. 
 And Gibbon again relates, that "a fleet of two hundred 
 ships was constructed by the hands of the captive Greeks." 
 
 But no direct evidence is necessary to prove that many shirs 
 must have been requisite for the capture of so many islands, 
 and the destruction of the Venetian naval power, which was 
 once the most celebrated in Europe. " The words, shall 
 enter into the countries, and overflow and pass over, give us 
 an exacl .'dea of their overflowing the western parts of Asia, 
 and then passing over into Egypt." 
 
 " He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many 
 countries shall be overthrown." This expression, " the 
 glorious land," occurs in the previous part of the prophecy, 
 (v. 16,) and, in both cases, it evidently means the land of 
 Israel ; and such the Syriac translation renders it. The 
 Holy Land formed part of the first conquest of the Turks. 
 And many cou7itries shall be overthrown. The limits of the 
 Turkish empire embraced the ancient kingdoms of Baby- 
 lon, Macedon, Thrace, Epirus, Greece, &c. and the many 
 countries over which they ruled. The w^hole of Syria was 
 also included, with partial exceptions. These very excep- 
 tions are specified in the prophecy, though these territories 
 partially intersect the Turkish dominions, and divide one 
 portion of them from another, forming a singular contrast 
 to the general continuity of kingdoms. And, while every 
 particular prediction respecting these separate states has 
 been fully verified, their escaping out of the hands of the 
 Turks has been no less marvellously fulfilled. " But these 
 shall escape out of his hand, even Edomand Moab, and the 
 chief of the children of Ammon." Mede, Sir Isaac and 
 Bishop Newton, in applying this prophecy to the Turkish 
 empire, could only express, in general terms, that the Arabs 
 possessed these countries, and exacted tribute from the 
 Turks for permitting their caravans to pass through them. 
 But recent travellers, among whom Volney has to be num- 
 bered, have unconsciously given the most satisfactory in- 
 formation, demonstrative of the truth of all the minutiae of 
 the prediction, Volney describes these countries in part — 
 Burckhardt traversed them all — and they have since been 
 visited by other travellers. Edom and Moab are in posses- 
 sion of the Bedouin (or wandering) Arabs. The Turk.s- 
 have often attempted in vain to subjugate them. The par- 
 tial escape of Ammon from their dominion is not less dis- 
 criminating than just. For although that territory lies m 
 the immediate vicinity of thepachalic of Damascus, to which 
 part of it is subjected, — though it be extremely fertile by na- 
 ture, — though its situation and its soil have thus presented, 
 for several centuries, the strongest temptation to Turkish 
 rapacity, — though they have ofien attempted to subdue 
 it, — yet no fact could have been more explicitly detailed, 
 or more incidentally commimicated, than that the in- 
 habitants of the greater part of that country, particularly 
 what adjoins the ancient, but now desolate city of Am- 
 mon, "live in a state of complete independence of the 
 Turks." 
 
 " He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries." 
 How significantly do these words represent the vast extent 
 of the Turkish empire, which alone has stretched its do- 
 minion over many countries of Asia, of Europe, and of 
 Africa 1 Ill-fated Egypt was not to escape from subjection 
 to such a master. " And the land of Egypt shall not es- 
 cape ; but he shall have power over the treasures of gold 
 and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt." 
 The Turks have drained Egypt of its wealth, of its gold 
 and of its silver, and of its precious things : and such power 
 have they exercised over them, that the kingdom of the 
 Pharaohs, the land where everlasting pyramids were built, 
 despoiled to the utmost, is now one of the poorest, as it has 
 long been the basest, of kingdoms. " The Libyans and 
 Ethiopians shall be at his steps." These form the extremi- 
 ties of the Turkish empire, and were partially subject to 
 its power. " After the conquest of Egypt, the terror of Se- 
 lim's victories," says the historian, " spreading wide, the 
 kings of Africa, bordering upon Cyrenaica, sent their am- 
 bassadors with offers to become his tributaries. Other more 
 remote nations also towards Ethiopia were easily induced 
 to join in amity with the Turks." Exclusive of Egypt, they 
 still retain the nominal powerover other countries of Africa. 
 Such is the prophetic description of the rise and extent of 
 that power which was to possess Judea in the latter days ; 
 and it is a precise delineation of the rise and extent of the 
 Turkish empire, to which Judea has been subject for cen- 
 turies. — Keith. 
 
HOSEA. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver, 2. So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces 
 of silver, and for a homer of barley, and a half 
 homer of barley. 
 
 Sir J, Chardin observed in the East, that in their con- 
 tracts for theil temporary wives, which are known to be 
 frequent there, ^hich contracts are made before the kady, 
 there is always the formality of a measure of corn men- 
 tioned, over and above the sum of money that is stipulated. 
 I do not know of any thing that should occasion this for- 
 mality of late days in the East ; it may then possibly be 
 very ancient, as it is apparent this sort of wife is : if it be, 
 it will perhaps account for Hosea's purchasing a woman of 
 this sort for fifteen pieces of silver, and a certain quantity 
 of barley. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 12. My people ask counsel at their stocks, 
 and their staff declareth unto them : for the 
 spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, 
 and they have gone a whoring from under their 
 God. 
 
 The method of divination alluded to by the prophet in 
 these words, is supposed to have been thus performed: 
 The person consulting measured his staff by spans, or by 
 the length of his finger, saying, as he measured, " I will go, 
 or, I will not go; I will do such a thing, or, I will not do 
 it ;" and as the last span fell out, so he determined. Cyril and 
 Theophylact, however, give a different account of the mat- 
 ter. The/ say that it was performed by erecting two 
 sticks, after which they murmured forth a certain charm, 
 and then, according as the sticks fell, backward or for- 
 ward, towards the right or left, they gave advice in any 
 affair. — Btirder. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 12. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a 
 
 moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness. 
 See on Job 4. 9. and 27. 18. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 4. O Ephraim, v/hat shall I do unto thee ? 
 O Judah, what shall I do unto thee ? for your 
 goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the 
 early dew it goeth away. 
 
 " Early dew." " What, is this prosperity 1 what, this 
 pleasure 1 Ah ! what are my riches, and what my glory 1 
 Alas! 'tis like the dew, which flies off at the sight of the 
 morning sun." " My son, my son, be not too confident ; for 
 life is like the dew."— Roberts. 
 
 Dr. Shaw, speaking of Arabia Petraea, says, " The dews 
 of the night, as we had the heavens only for our covering, 
 would (in the night) frequently wet us to the skin : but no 
 sooner was the sun risen, and the atmosphere a little heat- 
 ed, than the mists were quickly dispersed, and the copious 
 moisture, which the dews had, communicated to the sands, 
 would be entirely evaporated." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 9. And as troops of robbers wait for a man, 
 so the company of priests murder in the way 
 by consent : for they commit lewdness. 
 
 The margin has, instead of " consent," " shoulder." The 
 Hindoos for the same thing say, " with one hand." Thus, 
 those people with " one hand'* have gone to the judge, i. e. 
 
 with one consent. " Those wretches with one hand are 
 doing evil." " If the coolies do their duly wiih one hand, 
 the work will soon be finished." " Why have they not ac- 
 complished their object 7 because they did not go about it 
 with one hand." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 1 6. They return, but not to the Most High ; 
 they are like a deceitful bow : their princes 
 shall fall by the sword for the rage of their 
 tongue. This shall be their derision in the 
 land of Egypt. 
 
 The strings of African bows are all made of the en- 
 trails of animals, a kind of catgut. Moist weather renders 
 it so soft, that they cannot shoot with it : should they try it, 
 the string .would either instantly break, or it would stretch 
 to such a length that it could not impel the arrow. In con- 
 sequence of this being the case," I have heard the remark 
 made in Africa, that the safest time to travel among the 
 wild Bushmen is in wet weather, for then they cannot shoot 
 you. Were people using such bows for defence, and un- 
 acquainted with this effect of moisture, in a time of danger 
 to seize their bow for self-defence, they would be grievous- 
 ly deceived, by finding them useless when most needed. 
 They would thus prove deceitful bows.— Campbell 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 8. Israel is swallowed up : now shall they 
 be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is 
 no pleasure. 
 
 I believe this refers to an earthen vessel, and not to one 
 made of skin. People often compare each other to an up- 
 P0-PANUM, i. e. literally, a salt vessel ; because after it has 
 contained salt it is most fragile, the least thing will break 
 it to pieces. " What are you, sir"? an uppu-pannm" a salt 
 vessel. " Look at that poor salt vessel ; if you touch him he 
 will fall to pieces." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild 
 ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath hired 
 lovers. 
 See on Job 39. 5—8. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 10. I found Israel like grapes in the wilder- 
 ness ; I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the 
 fig-tree at her first time : but they went to Baal- 
 peor and separated themselves unto that shame] 
 and their abominations were according as they 
 loved. 
 
 In Barbary, and no doubt in the hotter climate of Judea, 
 after mild winters, some of the more forward trees will 
 now and then yield a few ripe figs, six weeks or more be- 
 fore the full season. Such is probably the allusion in this 
 place. (Shaw.)— Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 7. As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the 
 foam upon the water. 
 
 " Those sons of fiends are now gone as the neer-molle" 
 i. e. the bubble. " Alas ! my race is cut off: it has disap- 
 peared like the bubble." *' Yes, those people were only 
 bubbles ; they have all gone." — Roberts. 
 
Chap. 10— H. 
 
 ROSEA. 
 
 549 
 
 Ver. 8. The high places also of Aveil, the sin of 
 Israel, shall be destroyed : the thorn and the 
 thistle shall come up on their altars, and they 
 shall say to the mountains, Cover us ; and to 
 the hills, Fall on us. 
 
 Has a man by fraud gained possession of another per- 
 son's land, then the imprecation is uttered, " Thorns and 
 thistles shall ever grow there !" " He get rice from his 
 land ! Never ! he will have thorns and thistles." " Yes, 
 yes, the rice shall be as thorns in his bowels." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap 
 in mercy ; break up your fallow ground : for 
 it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and 
 rain righteousness upon you. 
 
 It is said of a good king, " What a blessing is he to the 
 
 jj land ; he is always raining justice upon us." " You talk to 
 
 il me about the merit of remaining with such a master : he is 
 
 i always raining blessings upon him." A son after the de- 
 
 i cease of his father, asks, " Where is now the rain of love 1 
 
 I alas ! I am withered and dry." The figure is also used 
 
 i sarcastically, " Yes, indeed you are a very good friend, you 
 
 (1 are always raining favours upon me." — Roberts. 
 
 I CHAPTER XI. , 
 
 Ver. 2. As they called them, so they went from 
 them : they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burnt 
 incense to graven images. 
 
 We read frequently of graven images, and of molten 
 images, and the words are become so familiar, as names of 
 idolatrous images, that although they are not well chosen 
 to express the Hebrew names, it seems not advisable to 
 change them for others, that might more exactly correspond 
 with the original. The graven image was not a thing 
 wrought in metal by the tool of the workman we should 
 now call an engraver; nor was the molten image an image 
 made of metal, or any other substance melted and shaped in 
 a mould. In fact, the graven image and the molten image 
 are the same thing, under different names. The images of 
 the ancient idolaters were iirst cut out of wood by the car- 
 penter, as is very evident from the prophet Isaiah. This 
 figure of wood was overlaid with plates either of gold or 
 silver, or sometimes perhaps of an inferior metal ; and in 
 this finished state it was called a graven image, (i. e. a 
 carved image,) in reference to the inner solid figure of 
 wood, and a molten (z. e. an overlaid, or covered) image, 
 in reference to the outer metalline case or covering. Some- 
 times both epithets are applied to it at once. " I will cut 
 off the graven and molten image." (Nahum i. 14.) Again, 
 ' What profiteth the graven and molten image V (Hab. ii. 
 18.) The English word molten conveys a notion of melt- 
 ing, or fusion. But this is not the case with the Hebrew 
 word for which it is given. The Hebrew signifies, gen- 
 erally, to overspread, or cover all over, in whatever man- 
 ner, according to the different subject, the overspreading 
 or covering be effected ; whether by pouring forth a sub- 
 stance in fusion, or by spreading a cloth over or before, or 
 by hammering on metalline plates. It is on account of 
 this metalline case, that we find a founder employed to 
 make a graven image, (Judges xvii. 3 ;) and that we read 
 in Isaiah xl. 19, of a workman that melteth a graven image ; 
 and in another place (chap, xliv.) we find the question, 
 " Who hath molten a graven image 1" In these two pas- 
 sages the words should be overlayeth, and overlaid. — Hors- 
 
 Ver. 4. I drew them with cords of a man, with 
 bands of love ; and I was to them as they that 
 take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat 
 unto them. 
 
 Here we have another figure to show the affection of 
 Jehovah for backsliding Israel. An affectionate wife says 
 of a good husband, " He has bound me with the cords of 
 love." " Ah ! woman, have you not drawn me with the cords 
 
 of love "?" " True, true, I was once drawn by the cords of 
 love, but they are now all broken." — Roberts. 
 
 It is very probable that these words refer to the custom 
 of raising the yoke forward to cool the neck of the labour- 
 ing beast. — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 11. They shall tremble as a bird out of 
 Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of As- 
 syria : and I w^ill place them in their houses, 
 saith the Lord. 
 
 See on Is. 60. 8. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 1. Ephraim feedeth on wind, and folio weth 
 after the east wind : he daily increaseth lies 
 and desolation ; and they do make a covenant 
 with the Assyrians, and oil is carried into Egypt. 
 
 Syria is a land in which olives abound, and particularly 
 that part of it which the people of Israel inhabited. This 
 explains the reason why the Jews, when they wished to 
 court the favour of their neighbours, the Egyptians, sent 
 them a present of oil. The prophet thus upbraids his de- 
 generate nation for the servility and folly of their conduct : 
 " Ephraim feedeth on wind, and followeth after the east 
 wind ; he daily increaseth lies and desolation : and they do 
 make a covenant with the Assyrians, and oil is carried 
 into Egypt." The Israelites, in the decline of their nation- 
 al glory, carried the produce of their olive-plantations into 
 Egypt, as a tribute to their ancient oppressors, or as a pres- 
 ent to conciliate their favour, and obtain their assistance, 
 in the sanguinary wars which they were often compelled 
 to wage with the neighbouring slates. 
 
 Oil is now presented in the East, to be burnt in honour ot 
 the dead, whom they reverence with a religious kind ot 
 homage. Mr. Harmer thinks it most natural to suppose, 
 that the prophet Hosea refers to a similar practice, when 
 he upbraids the Israelites with carrying oil into Egypt. 
 They did' not carry it thither in the way of lawful com- 
 merce ; for they carried it to Tyre without reproof, to bar- 
 ter it for other goods. It was not sent as a present to the 
 king of Egypt ; for the Jewish people endeavoured to gain 
 the friendship of foreign potentates with gold and silver. 
 It was not exacted as a tribute ; for when the king ot 
 Egypt dethroned Jehoahaz the kingof Judah, and imposed 
 a fine upon the people, he did not appoint them to pay so 
 much oil, but so much silver and gold. But if they burnt 
 oil in those early times in hftnour of their idols, and their 
 departed friends, and the Jews sent it into Egypt with that 
 intention, it is no wonder the prophet so severely reproach- 
 es them for their conduct. Oil is in modern times very 
 often presented to the objects of religious veneration in 
 Barbary and Egypt. The Algerines, according to Pitts, 
 when they are in the mouth of the straits, throw a bundle 
 of wax candles, together with a pot of oil, overboard, as a 
 present to the marabot or saint who lies entombed there, on 
 the Barbary shore, near the sea. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 5. I will be as the dew unto Israel : he shall 
 grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots aa 
 Lebanon. 
 
 The earth, while it supplies the various plants whioh 
 grow upon it, is supplied for that purpose very much by the 
 dew, which is full of oleaginous particles. " The dews 
 seem to be the richest present the atmosphere gives to the, 
 earth ; having, when putrefied in a vessel, a black sedi- 
 ment like mud at the bottom ; this seems to cause the dark- 
 ish colour to the upper part of the ground ; and the sulphur 
 which is found in the dew may be the chief ingredient of 
 the cement of the earth, sulphur being very glutinous, as 
 nitre is dissolvent. Dew has both these." (Tull's Hus- 
 bandry.) A lively comment this upon the promise in this 
 passage, " I will be as the dew unto Israel." — Burder. 
 
 Apriest, or aged man, in blessing a newly married couple, 
 often says, " Ah ! may your roots shoot forth like the aru- 
 GAPiLi.u," {Agrostis Linearis.) This beautiful grass puts 
 forth NUMEROUS roots, and is highly valued for the feeding 
 of cattle. — Roberts. 
 
550 
 
 HOSEA 
 
 Chap. 1 
 
 Ver. 5. I will be as the dew unto Israel : he shall 
 grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as 
 Lebanon. 6. His branches shall spread, and 
 his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his 
 smell as Lebanon. 7. They that dwell under 
 his shadow shall return ; they shall revive as 
 the corn, and grow as the vine : the scent thereof 
 shall be as the wine of Lebanon. 
 
 Le Bruyn concludes his description of Lebanon, with an 
 account of the cedar-apples, or the fruit which these cele- 
 brated trees produce. He cut one of them in two, and 
 found that the smell within exactly resembled turpentine. 
 They exuded a juice from small oval grains, with which a 
 great many small cavities are filled, which also resembles 
 turpentine, both in smell and in clamminess. These cedar- 
 apples must be classed with the scented fruits of the orien- 
 tal regions ; and have perhaps contributed greatly to the 
 fragrance for which the sacred writers so frequently cele- 
 brate the mountains of Lebanon. — Paxton. 
 
 Not only both the great and small cedars of Lebanon 
 have a fragrant smell, but Maundrell found the great rup- 
 ture in that mountain, which "runs at least seven hours' 
 travel directly up into it, and is on both sides exceedingly 
 steep and high, clothed with fragrant greens from top to 
 bottom, and everywhere refreshed with fountains, falling 
 down from the rocks in pleasant cascades, the ingenious 
 works of nature. These streams all uniting at the bottom, 
 make a full and rapid torrent, whose agreeable murmuring 
 is heard all over the place, and adds no small pleasure to 
 
 it." — BURDER. 
 
 The approach to Lebanon is adorned with olive-planta- 
 tions, vineyards, and luxuriant fields ; and its lower re- 
 gions, besides the olive and the vine, are beautified with the 
 myrtle, the styrax, and other odoriferous shrubs: and the 
 perfume which exhales from these plants, is increased by 
 the fragrance of the cedars which crown its summits, or 
 garnish its declivities. The great rupture which runs a 
 long way up into the mountain, and is on both sides exceed- 
 ingly steep and high, is clothed from the top to the bottom 
 with fragrant evergreens, and everywhere refreshed with 
 streams, descending from the rocks in beautiful cascades, 
 the work of divine wisdom and goodness. These cool and 
 limpid streams uniting at the bottom, form a large and 
 rapid torrent, whose agreeable murmur is heard over 
 all the place, and adds greatly to the pleasure of thai 
 romantic scene. The fragrant odours wafted from the 
 aromatic plants of this noble mountain, have not been 
 overlooked by the sacred writers. The eulogium which 
 Christ pronounces on the graces of the church, contains 
 the following direct reference : " The smell of thy gar- 
 ments is like the smell of Lebanon ;" and the prophet Ro- 
 sea, in his glowing description of the future prosperity of 
 Israel, converts the assertion of Solomon into a promise: 
 
 " His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the 
 olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon." 
 
 The richness and flavour of the wines produced in its 
 vineyards, have been celebrated by travellers in all ages. 
 Rauwolf declares, that the wine which he drank at Cano- 
 bin, a Greek monastery on mount Libanus, far surpassed 
 any he had ever tasted. His testimony is corroborated by 
 Le Bruyn, who pronounces the wines of Canobin better 
 and more delicate than are to be found anywhere else in 
 the world. They are red, of a beautiful colour, and so 
 oily, that they adhere to the glass; these are so excellent, 
 that our traveller thought he never tasted any kind of drink 
 more delicious. The wines produced on other parts of the 
 mountain, although in much greater abundance, are not 
 nearly so good. To the delicious wines of Canobin, the 
 prophet Hosea certainly refers in this promise: " They that 
 dwell under his shadow shall return ; they shall revive as 
 the corn, and grow as the vine : the scent thereof shall be 
 as ihe wine of Lebanon." 
 
 De la Roque, who also visited Canobin, entirely agrees 
 with these travellers in their account of the superior qua- 
 lity of its wines; and expresses his full conviction, that 
 the reputation of the wines of Lebanon mentioned by the 
 prophet, is well founded. Volney asserts, indeed, that he 
 found the wines of Lebanon of a very inferior quality; this 
 may be true, and yet the testimony of these respectable 
 travellers perfectly correct. He might not be presented 
 with the most exquisite wine of Canobin, which has de- 
 servedly obtaingd so high a character; or ihe vintage of 
 that year might be inferior. But whatever might be the 
 reason, no doubt can be entertained concerning the accura- 
 cy of other equally credible witnesses, who, from their 
 own experience, and with one voice, attest the unrivalled 
 excellence of the wine of Lebanon. These travellers ad- 
 mit, that the neighbourhood of Canobin produces wines of 
 inferior quality; but, when the wine of Lebanon is men- 
 tioned by way of eminence, the best is undoubtedly meant. 
 
 In striking allusion to the scenery and productions of 
 that mountain, it is promised in the sixth verse: "His 
 branch shall spead, and his beauty shall be as the olive- 
 tree, and his smell (or his memorial, as the original term 
 signifies) as Lebanon." His branches shall spread like the 
 mighty arms of the cedar, every one of which is equal in 
 size to a tree ; his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, which 
 is generally admitted to be one of the most beautiful pro- 
 ductions of nature ; and his smell, his very memorial, shall 
 be as the wine of Lebanon, which delights the taste, and the 
 very recollection of which excites the commendation of 
 those that have drank it, long after the banquet is over. 
 The meaning of these glowing figures undoubtedly is, that 
 the righteous man shall prosper by the distinguishing fa- 
 vour of Heaven ; shall become excellent, and useful, and 
 highly respected while he lives ; and after his death, hi? 
 memory shall be blessed and embalmed in the affectionate 
 recollection of the church, for the benefit of many who had 
 not the opportunity of profiling by his example.— Paxton. 
 
JOEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 6. For a nation is come up upon my land, 
 strong, and without number, whose teeth are 
 the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth 
 of a great lion. 7. He hath laid my vine waste, 
 and barked my fig-tree ; he hath made it clean 
 bare, and cast it away ; the branches thereof 
 are made white. 
 
 So valuable is the fig-tree in the land of Canaan, and so 
 high is the estimation in which it is held, that to bark and 
 kill it, is reckoned among the severest judgments which 
 God inflicted upon his offending people. The prophet 
 alludes in these words to the destructive progress of the 
 locust, which, with insatiable greediness, devours the leaves 
 and bark of every tree on which it lights, till not the small- 
 est portion of rind is left, even on the slenderest twig, to 
 convey the sap from the root, and leaves it white and with- 
 ering in the sun, for ever incapable of answering the hopes 
 of the husbandman. Such were the people of Israel, de- 
 livered by Jehovah, for their numerous and inveterate 
 transgressions, into the hands of their cruel and implacable 
 enemies. — Paxton. 
 
 The skin of a man is sometimes spoken of as the bark 
 of a tree. Thus it is saidof those who have been severely 
 flogged, " Their backs are like the margossa-tree stripped 
 of its bark:" which alludes to the custom of taking off the 
 bark of that tree for medical purposes. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests; 
 howl, ye ministers of the altar : come, lie all 
 night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God : for 
 the meat-offering and the drink-offering is with- 
 holden from the house of your God. 
 See on Is. 20. 3. 
 
 Ver. 17. The seed is rotten under their clods, the 
 garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken 
 down ; for the corn is withered. 
 
 Dr. Shaw informs us, that " in Barbary, after the grain 
 is winnowed, they lodge it in mattamores or subterraneous 
 magazines, two or three hundred of which are sometimes 
 together, the smallest holding four hundred bushels." And 
 Dr. Russel says, that " about Aleppo, in Syria, their grana- 
 ries are even at this day subterraneous grottoes, the entry 
 to which is by a small hole or opening like a well, often 
 in the highway ; and as they are comm^bnly left open when 
 empty, they make it not a little dangerous riding near the 
 villages in the night." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. O Lord, to thee will I cry : for the fire 
 hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, 
 and the flame hath burnt all the trees of the 
 field. 
 
 There are doubtless different methods for felling timber, 
 practised by various nations. In more rude and uncivilized 
 times, and even still among people of that description, we 
 may expect to find the most simple, and perhaps, as they 
 may appear to us, inconvenient contrivances adopted. 
 Prior to the invention of suitable implements, such means 
 as would any way effect this purpose would certainly be 
 resorted to. We must not be surprised then to find that 
 formerly, and in the present day, trees were felled by 
 the operation of fire. Thus Niebuhr says, '* we cannot 
 
 help condemning the unskilful expedient which these high- 
 landers employ for felling trees: they set fire to the root, 
 and keep it burning till the tree falls of itself." Mr. Bruce 
 mentions whole forests, whose underwood and vegetation 
 are thus consumed. Possibly this custom may be alluded 
 to in Zech. xii. 6 : " I will make the governors of Judah 
 like a hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of 
 fire in a sheaf, and they shall devour all the people round 
 about." Such fires may be kindled either from design or 
 accident. In such instances, as obtaining the timber is the 
 object, these fires are purposely lighted, and would be so 
 managed as to do as little damage as possible, though some 
 injury must certainly result from this method of felling 
 trees. Strange as it may seem, we learn from Turner's 
 Embassy to Thibet, that there " the only method of felling 
 timber in practice, I was informed, is by fire. In the trees 
 marked out for this purpose, vegetation is dostroyed by 
 burning their trunks half through ; being left in that slate 
 to dry; in the ensuing year the fire is again applied, and 
 they are burnt till they fall." An allusion to something of 
 this kind the prophet Joel certainly has in these words. 
 Perhaps it may be rather to a general undesigned devasta- 
 tion by fire, than to any contrivance for procuring the tim- 
 ber. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 4. The appearance of them is as the appear- 
 ance of horses ; and as horsemen, so shall they 
 run. 5. Like the noise of chariots on the tops 
 of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of 
 a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a 
 strong people set in battle array. 6. Before 
 their face the people shall be much pained ; all 
 faces shall gather blackness. 7. They shall 
 run like mighty men ; they shall climb the wall 
 like men of war ; and they shall march every 
 one on his ways, and they shall not break their 
 ranks. 
 
 I never saw such an exhibition of the helplessness of man, 
 as I have seen to-day. While we were sitting at dinner, a 
 person came into the house, quite pale, and told us that 
 the locusts were coming. Every face gathered darkness. 
 I went to the door — I looked above, and all round, and saw 
 nothing. " Look to the ground," was the reply, when 1 . 
 asked where they were. I looked to the ground, and there 
 I saw a stream of young locusts without wings, covering 
 the ground at the entrance of the village. The streani was 
 about five hundred feet broad, and covering the ground, 
 and moving at the rate of two miles an hour. In^ a few 
 minutes they covered the garden wall, some inches deep, 
 and the water was immediately let into the channel, into 
 which it flows to water the garden. They swim with the 
 greatest ease over standing water, but the stream carried 
 ihem away, and after floating in it about a hundred paces, 
 :hey were drowned. All hands were now at work to keep 
 them from the gardens, and to keep them from crossing 
 the streams. To examine the phenomenon more nearly, 
 I walked about a mile and a half from the village, follow- 
 ing the course of the stream. Here I fonnd the stream 
 extending a mile in breadth, and, like a thousand rivulets, 
 all flowing into one common channel. It appeared as if 
 the dust under my feet was forming into life, and as if God, 
 when he has a controversy with a people, could raise the 
 very dust of the earth on which they tread in arms against 
 them. Men can conquer the tiger, the elephant, the lion, 
 and all the wild beasts of the desert; he can turn the course 
 of the mighty rivers, he can elude the violence of 'he tern- 
 
552 
 
 JOEL. 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 pest, and chain the wind to his car; he can raise the waters 
 into clouds, .and by the means of steam, create a power 
 that is yet beyond human measurement ; he can play with 
 the lightnings of heaven, and arrest the thunders of heav- 
 en ; but he is nothing before an army of locusts. Such a 
 scene as I have seen this afternoon would fill England with 
 more consternation than the terrific cholera. One of the 
 people here informs us, that he had seen a stream that con- 
 ^ tinued ten days and nights flowing upon his place. During 
 that time every person in the place was at work, to pre- 
 serve his garden ; as to the cornfields, they were obliged 
 to give them up. They continued to the fifth day defending 
 their gardens ; on the evening of the fifth day, the locusts 
 were between five and ten feet deep, and the mass by this 
 time became terrible, and literally fell in pieces over the 
 garden walls. — Campbell. 
 
 In some regions of the East, the whole earth is at times 
 covered with locusts for the space of several leagues, often 
 to the depth of four, sometimes of six or seven inches. 
 Their approach, which causes a noise like the rushing of 
 a torrent, darkens the horizon, and so enormous is their 
 multitude, it hides the light of the sun, and casts an awful 
 gloom, like that of an eclipse, over the field. Major Moore, 
 when at Poonah, had the opportunity of seeing an immense 
 army of these animals which ravaged the Mahratta coun- 
 try, and was supposed to have come from Arabia. " The 
 column they composed," says he, " extended five hundred 
 miles ; and so compact was it when on the wing, that like 
 an eclipse, it completely hid the sun, so that no shadow 
 was cast by any object ;" and some lofty tombs distant from 
 his residence not two hundred yards, were rendered quite 
 invisible. The noise they make in browsing on the trees 
 and herbage may be heard at a great distance, and re- 
 sembles the rattling of hail, or the noise of an army fora- 
 ging in secret. The inhabitants of Syria have observed 
 that locusts are always bred by too mild winters, and 
 that they constantly come from the deserts of Arabia. 
 When they breed, which is in the month of October, they 
 make a hole in the ground with their tails, and having laid 
 three hundred eggs in it, and covered them with their feet, 
 expire ; for they never live above six months and a half. 
 Neither rains nor frost, however long and severe, can de- 
 stroy their eggs ; they continue till spring, and, hatched by 
 the heat of the sun, the young locusts issue from the earth 
 about the middle of April. 
 
 From the circumstance of their young ones issuing from 
 the ground, they are called 312, gob or gobai, from an Arabic 
 verb, which signifies to rise out of the earth. Another 
 name is dtj gazam, from the root gazaz, to cut off, or to 
 spoil ; and more destructive and insatiable spoilers were 
 never let loose to desolate the earth. Pliny calls them a 
 scourge in the hand of an incensed Deity. Wherever their 
 innumerable bands direct their march, the verdure of the 
 country, though it resembled before the paradise of God, 
 almost instantaneously disappears. The trees and plants, 
 s-tripped of their leaves, and reduced to their naked boughs 
 and stems, cause the dreary image of winter to succeed in 
 an instant to the rich scenery of spring; and the whole 
 country puts on the appearance of being burnt. Fire itself 
 devours not so fast ; nor is a vestige of vegetation to be 
 found when they again take their flight to produce similar 
 disasters. In a few hours they eat up every green thing, 
 and consign the miserable inhabitants of" the desolated 
 regions to inevitable famine. Many years are not suffi- 
 cient t9 repair the desolation which these destructive insects 
 produce. When they first appear on the frontiers of the 
 cultivated lands, the husbandmen, if sufficiently numerous, 
 sometimes divert the storm by their gestures and their cries, 
 or they strive to repulse them by raising large clouds of 
 smoke, but frequently their herbs and wet straw fail them; 
 they then dig a variety of pits and trenches, all over their 
 fields and gardens, which they fill with water, or with 
 heath, stubble, and other combustible matter, which they 
 set on fire upon the approach of the enemy. These meth- 
 ods of stopping their march are of great antiquity, for 
 Homer familiarly refers to them as practised in his" time. 
 But they are all to no purpose, for the trenches are quickly 
 filled, and the fires extinguished, by infinite swarms suc- 
 ceeding one another ; and forming a bed on their fields of 
 six or seven inches in thickness. Fire itself is not more 
 active than these devourers ; and not a trace of vegetation 
 is to be discovered, when the cloud has resumed its flight. 
 
 But the two most powerful destroyers of these insects, is the 
 south, or southeasterly winds, and the bird called the sa- 
 marmar. These birds, which greatly resemble the wood- 
 pecker, follow them in large flocks, greedily devour them, 
 and besides, kill as many as they can ; they are, therefore, 
 much respected by the peasants, and no person is ever 
 allowed to destroy them. The southerly winds waft them 
 over the MediterrSnean, where they perish in so great 
 quantities, that when their carcasses are cast on the shore^ 
 they infect the air for several days to a considerable dis- 
 tance. In a state of putrefaction, the stench emitted from, 
 their bodies is scarcely to be endured; the traveller, who 
 crushes them below the wheels of his wagon, or the feet 
 of his horses, is reduced to the necessity of washing his 
 nose with vinegar, and holding his handkerchief, dipped 
 in it, continually to his nostrils. 
 
 One of the most grievous calamities ever inflicted by the 
 locust, happened to the regions of Africa, in the time of the 
 Romans, and fell with peculiar weight on those parts which 
 were subject to their empire. Scarcely recovered from the 
 miseries of the last Punic war, Africa was doomed to suffer, 
 about one hundred and twenty-three years before the birth 
 of Christ, another desolation, as terrible as it was unprece- 
 dented. An immense number of locusts covered the whole 
 country, consumed every plant and every blade of grass in 
 the field, without sparing the roots, and the leaves of the 
 trees, with the tendrils upon which they grew. These being 
 exhausted, they penetrated with their teeth the bark, how- 
 ever bitter, and even corroded the dry and solid timber. 
 After they had accomplished this terrible destruction, a 
 sudden blast of wind dispersed them into different portions, 
 and after tossing them awhile in the air, plunged their in- 
 numerable hosts into the sea. But the deadly scourge was 
 not then at an end; the raging billows threw up enormous 
 heaps of their dead and corrupted bodies upon that long- 
 extended coast, which produced a most insupportable and 
 poisonous stench. This soon brought on a pestilence, which 
 affected every species of animals ; so that oirds, and sheep, 
 and cattle, and even the wild beasts of the field, perished in 
 great numbers ; and their carcasses, being soon rendered 
 putrid by the foulness of the air, added greatly to the 
 general corruption. The destruction of the human species 
 was horrible ; in Numidia, where at that time Micipsa was 
 king, eighty thousand persons died ; and in that part of the 
 seacoast which bordered upon the reigon of Carthage and 
 Utica, two hundred thousand are said to have been carried 
 off by this pestilence. When Le Bruyn was at Rama he was 
 informed that the locusts were once so destructive there, 
 that in the space of two hours they ate up all the her- 
 bage round the town; and in the garden belonging to the 
 house in which he lodged, they ate the very stalks of the 
 artichoke down to the ground. 
 
 This statement will show, that the locust is one of the 
 most terrible instruments in the hand of incensed Heaven ; 
 it will discover the reason that the inspired writers, in de- 
 nouncing his judgments, so frequently allude to this insect, 
 and threaten the sinner with its vengeance ; it accounts, in 
 the most satisfactory manner, for the figures which the pro- 
 phets borrow, when they describe the march of cruel and 
 destructive armies, from the character and habits of this 
 creature. The narratives of Volney, Thevenot, and other 
 travellers, who have seen and described the innumerable 
 swarms of the locusts, and their wasteful ravages, fully 
 confirm the glowing description of Joel and other inspired 
 prophets, quoted in the beginning of this article. " A na- 
 tion," says Joel, " has come up upon my land, strong and 
 without number. He has laid my vine waste, and barked 
 my fig-tree ; he has made it clean bare, and cast it away ; the 
 branches thereof are made white — the vine is dried up, and 
 the fig-tree languishes, the pomegranate-tree, the palm-tree 
 also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the field, are 
 withered; because joy is withered away from the sons of 
 men." " A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of 
 clouds and thick darkness. A fire devoureth before them, 
 and behind them a flame burneth. They march every one 
 in his ways ; they do not break their ranks, neither does one 
 thrust another. The land is as the garden of Eden before 
 them, and behind them a desolate wilderness." " They shall 
 run up the wall ; they shall climb up upon the houses ; 
 they shall enter into the windows like a thief The eartk 
 shall quake before them : the heavens shall tremble, the 
 sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 JOEL. 
 
 i$a 
 
 withdraw their shining." The same allusion is involved 
 in these words of Nahum, concerning the fall of the As- 
 syrian empire; " Thy crowned are as the locusts; and thy 
 captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp in the 
 hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth, they flee 
 away, and their place is not known." Bochart and other 
 writers, who are best acquainted with the eastern countries, 
 mention a great variety of locusts, which vindicates the 
 language of the prophet : " Thy captains are as the great 
 grasshoppers." The next clause is attended with some dif- 
 ficulty. Mr. Lowth, in his comment, supposes that these 
 insects flee away to avoid the heat of the sun ; and it has 
 been queried, whether the phrase cold day, does not mean 
 the night. But it is well known that the heat of the sun, 
 instead of compelling the locusts to retire, quickens them 
 into life and activity ; and the words cold day, we believe, 
 are never used in scripture, nor by any writer of value, to 
 signify the night. The prophet evid.enlly refers, not to 
 their flight during the heat of the day, but to the time of 
 their total departure ; for he does not speak of their moving 
 from one field to another, but of their leaving the country 
 which they have invaded, so completely that the place of 
 their retreat is not known. 
 
 The day of cold cannot mean the depth of winter, for 
 they do not make their appearance in Palestine at that sea- 
 son ; and although in Arabia, from whence Fulcherius 
 supposes they come, thickets are found in some places, and 
 it has been imagined that the locusts lie concealed in them 
 during the winter, which may be thought to be their camp- 
 ing in the hedges in the cold day ; yet it is to be observed, 
 that the word translated hedges, properly signifies, not 
 living fences, but stone walls, and therefore cannot with 
 propriety be applied to thickets. But if the locust appears 
 in the months of April and May, the phrase " cold day" 
 may seem to be improperly chosen. This difl&culty, which 
 may be thought a considerable one, arises entirely from 
 our translation. The original term, (n-«p) karah, denotes 
 both cold and cooling; and the difliculty vanishes when 
 the latter is introduced, and the words are translated, the 
 day of cooling, or the time when the Orientals open their 
 windows with the view of refrigerating their houses, or to 
 retreat from the oppressive heats which commence in the 
 months of April and May, to the cooling shades of their 
 gardens. A derivative of this term is employed by the 
 sacred historian, to denote the refrigeratory or summer 
 parlour, which Eglon, the king of Moab, occupied, when 
 Ehud presented the tribute of his nation.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. Before their face the people shall be much 
 pained ; all faces shall gather blackness. 
 
 The margin has, for " blaclarness," "pot." The Tamul 
 translation has, " All faces shall wither, or shrivel." Th us of 
 a man in great poverty it is said, " His face is shrivelled." 
 It is very provoking to tell a person his face is like the 
 KARE-CHATTE, L 6. the carthcu vessel in which the rice is 
 boiled. The " pot" may allude to such a utensil, in being 
 made black with the smoke. — Roberts. 
 
 We have an expression, Joel ii, 6, " Before their ap- 
 proach [of the locusts] the people shall be much painea ; 
 all faces shall gather blackness," which is also adopted by the 
 prophet Nahum, ii. 10: " the heart melteth, the knees smite 
 together, much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them 
 all gather blackness." This phrase, which sounds uncouth to 
 an English ear, is elucidated by the following history frem 
 Ockley's History of the Saracens, (vol. ii. p. 319,) which we 
 the rather introduce, as Mr. Harmer has referred this black- 
 ness to the effect of hunger and thirst ; and Calmet, in his 
 Dictionary, under the article obscure, has referred it to a 
 bedaubing of the face with soot, &c. a proceeding not very 
 consistent with the hurry of flight, or the terror of distress. 
 " Kumeil, the son of Ziyad, was a man of fine wit. One day 
 I Hejage made him come before him, and reproached him, 
 : because in such a garden, and before such and such persons, 
 1 whom he named to him, he had made a great many impreca- 
 tions against him, saying, the Lord blacken his face, that is, 
 fill him tolth shame and confusion ; and wished that his neck 
 i was cut off", and his blood shed." The reader will observe 
 i how perfectly this explanation agrees with the sense of the 
 j passages quoted above : to gather blackness, then, is equiv- 
 i alent to suflTering extreme confusion, and being over- 
 whelmed with shame, or with terror and dismay. 
 70 
 
 In justice to Kumeil, we ought not to omit the ready tura 
 of wit which saved his life. " It is true," said he, " I did 
 say such words in such a garden ; but then I was under a 
 vine-arbour, and was looking on a bunch of grapes that 
 was not yet ripe : and I wished it might be turned black 
 soon, that they might be cut off, and be made wine of." 
 We see, in this instance, as says the sagacious moralist, 
 that " with the well-advised is wisdom :" and " the tongue 
 of the wise is health ;" that is, preservation and safety. — 
 Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 8. Neither shall one thrust another, they 
 shall walk every one in his path : and when 
 they fall upon the sword, they shall not be 
 wounded. 
 
 Dr. Shaw, speaking of locusts, says, " Those which I 
 saw were mucn bigger than our grasshoppers : no sooner 
 were any of them hatched, than they collected themselves 
 into a bodv of about two hundred yards square, which 
 marching forward, climbed over trees and houses, and ate 
 up every thing in their way. The inhabitants made large 
 fires on the approach of them, but to no purpose ; for the 
 fires were quickly put out by infinite swarms succeeding 
 one another ; while the front seemed regardless of danger ; 
 and the rear pressed on so close, that retreat was impossi- 
 ble." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 23. Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and re- 
 joice in the Lord your God : for he hath given 
 you the former rain moderately, and he will 
 cause to come down for you the rain, the former 
 rain, and the latter rain in the first month. 
 
 See on Prov. 16. 15. 
 
 Ver. 23. Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and 
 rejoice in the Lord your God: for he hath 
 given you the former rain moderately, and he 
 will cause to come down for you the rain, the 
 former rain, and the latter rain in the first 
 month. 24. And the floors shall be full of 
 wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine 
 and oil. 
 
 In southern climates, rain comes at particular seasons, 
 which are generally termed the rainy seasons. The rain 
 seldom continues to fall long at one time even then, but 
 rather falls in what may be called thunder-showers, and in 
 torrents. If the ground happens to be hard, which it gene- 
 rally is, such a short, though plentiful fall of rain, does little 
 service to the land, as it runs off immediately, not having 
 time to soften and sink into the ground ; afterward the 
 powerful heat of the sun, soon breaking forth from behind 
 the clouds, draws up the little damp that has been left, 
 which soon rehardens the surface of the ground, and ren- 
 ders it as impervious as before, so that succeeding showers 
 are rendered almost useless; but rain falling moderately, 
 as promised in the text, gradually penetrates the ground, 
 and prepares it to retain future showers, which process 
 produces fertility. — Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 1. For, behold, in those days, and in that 
 time, when I shall bring again the captivity ol 
 Judah and Jerusalem, 2. I will also gather all 
 nations, and will bring them down into the val- 
 ley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them 
 there for my people, and for my heritage Is- 
 rael, whom they have scattered among the na- 
 tions, and parted my land. 
 
 Those spiritualizing Jews, Christians, and Mohamme- 
 dans, who wrest !his passage, like a thousand others of the 
 scriptures, from a literal to a mystical sense, insist on its 
 applying to the resurrection of the dead on the last great 
 day. From this belief the modern Jews, whose fathers are 
 thought, by some of the most learned, to have had no idea 
 of a resurrection, or a future state, have their bones depos* 
 
554 
 
 JOEL. 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 ited in the valley of Jehoshaphat. From the same hope the 
 Mohammedans have leJfl a stone jutting out of the eastern 
 wall of Jerusalem, for the accommodation of their prophet, 
 who, they insist, is to sit on it here, and call the whole 
 world from below to judgment. And a late traveller, with 
 the staff of a Christian pilgrim, after summoning up all the 
 images of desolation which the place presents, but without 
 once thinking of the contemptible size of this theatre for so 
 grand a display, says, me might say that the trumpet of 
 judgment had already sounded, and that the dead were 
 about to rise in the valley of Jehoshaphat. (Chateaubriand.) 
 — Bdckingham. 
 
 Ver. 3. And they have cast lots for my people : 
 and. have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a 
 girl for wine, that they might drink. 
 
 Morgan, in his history of Algiers, gives us such an ac- 
 count of the unfortunate expedition of the emperor Charles 
 the Fifth against that city, so far resembling a passage of the 
 prophet Joel, as to induce me to transcribe it into these 
 papers. 
 
 That author tells us, that besides vast multitudes that 
 were butchered by the Moors and the Arabs, a great num- 
 ber were made captives, mostly by the Turks and citizens 
 of Algiers ; and some of them, in order to turn this misfor- 
 tune into a most bitter, taunting, and contemptuous jest, part- 
 ed with their new-made slavesibr an onion apiece. " Often 
 have I heard," says he, " Turks and Africans upbraiding 
 Europeans with this disaster, saying, scornfully, to such 
 as have seemed to hold their heads somewhat loftilv, 
 'What! have you forgot the time when a Christian at 
 Algiers was scarce worth an onion V The treatment of 
 the Jewish people by the heathen nations, which the pro- 
 phet Joel has described, was, in like manner, contemptuous 
 and bitterly sarcastic : " They have cast lots for my people, 
 and have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, 
 that they might drink." Joel iii. 3. 
 
 They that know the large sums that are wont to be paid, 
 in the East, for young slaves of either sex, must be sensible 
 that the prophet designs, in these words, to point out the 
 extreme contempt in which these heathen nations held the 
 Jewish people. 
 
 Considered as slaves are in the East, they are sometimes 
 purchased at a very low price. Joel complains of the con- 
 temptuous cheapness in which the Israelites were held by 
 those who made them captives. "' They cast lots for my 
 people, and have given a bov for a harlot, and sold a girl 
 for wine, that they might drink." On this passage Char- 
 din remarks, that, " the Tartars, Turks, and Cossacks, sell 
 the children sometimes as cheap, which they take. Not 
 only has this been done in Asia, where examples of it are 
 frequent ; our Europe has seen such desolations. When 
 the Tartars came into Poland they carried off all they were 
 able. I went thither some years after. Many persons of 
 the court assured me that the Tartars, perceiving that they 
 would no more redeem those that they had carried off, sold 
 them for a crown, and that they had purchased them for 
 that sum. In Mingrelia they sell them for provisions, and 
 for wine."— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 10. Beat your ploughshares into swords, and 
 your pruning-hooks into spears : let the weak 
 say, I am strong. 
 
 The Syrian plough, which was probably used in all the 
 regions around, is a very simple frame, and commonly so 
 light, that a man of moderate strength might carry it in 
 one hand. Volney states that in Syria it is often nothing 
 else than the branch of a tree, cut below a bifurcation, and 
 used without wheels. It is drawn by asses and cows, sel- 
 dom by oxen. And Dr. Russel informs us, the ploughing 
 of Syria is performed often by a little cow, at most with 
 two, and sometimes only by an ass. In Persia it is for the 
 
 most part drawn by one ox only, and not unfrequenily even 
 by an ass, although it is more ponderous than in Palestine. 
 With such an imperfect instrument the Syrian husband- 
 man can do little more than scratch the surface of his field, 
 or clear away the stones or weeds that encumber it, and 
 prevent the seed from reaching the soil. The ploughshare 
 IS a "piece of iron, broad, but not large, which tips the end 
 of the shaft." So much does it resemble the short sword 
 used by the ancient warriors, that it may, with very little 
 trouble, be converted into that deadly weapon; and when 
 the work of destruction is over, reduced again to its former 
 shape, and applied to the purpose of agriculture. In allu- 
 sion to the first operation, the prophet Joel summons the 
 nations to leave their peaceful employments in the cultiva- 
 ted field, and buckle on their armour: " Beat your plough- 
 shares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears." 
 This beautiful image the prophet Isaiah has reversed, and 
 applied to the establishment of that profound and lasting 
 peace which is to bless the church of Christ in the latter 
 days : " And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, 
 and their spears into pruning-hooks ; nation shall not lift 
 up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any 
 more." — Paxton. 
 
 An hour and a half beyond the bridge we gained the 
 road from Jaffa to Ramleh. The country had now become 
 generally cultivated, the husbandry good, the crops and 
 fallows clean. Upon a space of ten or twelve acres I ob- 
 served fourteen ploughs at work ; and so simple and light 
 is the construction of these implements, that the husband- 
 man, when returning from his labour in the evening, takes 
 his plough home upon his shoulder, and carries it to the 
 field again in the morning. The share is of wood, and 
 armed only at the end with a tooth, or point of iron. The 
 beam is very slender, as well as the rude handle by which 
 it is directed. — Munroe's Summer Ramble in Syria. 
 
 Ver. 19. Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom 
 shall be a desolate Avilderness, for the violence 
 against the children of Judah, because they 
 have shed innocent blood in their land. 
 
 Of the striking scene delineated in the engraving, the 
 enterprising traveller, who has contributed it, must speak 
 for himself: " Our conductor preceded us, calling our at- 
 tention to some large slabs, traces of an ancient pavement, 
 by which the labour of man had converted this abrupt and 
 wild ravine into a magnificent avenue. After many wind- 
 ings in the midst of this almost subterranean street, (so near 
 do the summits of the rocks above approach each other,) 
 we were arrested by a prospect Avhich it were vain to at- 
 tempt to describe. Our view is taken from the entry of the 
 ravine. Two Arabs, with their camels, are seen in the 
 foreground, advancing towards the city of Selah or Petra, 
 the magnificent ruins of which, seen in the distance, fully ; 
 exemplify the prophetic denunciation — * Edom shall be a 
 desolation.' (Joel iii. 19.) A grand triumphal arch raised 
 at this spot, such as the ancients were accustomed to con- 
 struct at the approaches of cities, boldly connects together 
 these two great walls of rocks. The impression produced 
 by it is very imposing, at the moment the traveller enters 
 this kind of covered way." 
 
 The novel disposition of this triumphal arch led M. de 
 Laborde at first to think that it might have served both as 
 a passage from one side of the rocks to another, and also 
 as a channel for conveying part of the waters of an aque- 
 duct, which was carried along the ravine. He ascended 
 by a steep opening encumbered with rocks ; but after reach- 
 ing the summit with difficulty, he found nothing which 
 could authorize the supposition that this arch was destined 
 for any other use than that of adorning the approaches to 
 the capital of Arabia Petraea. — Horne. 
 
 [See Jer. 49. 15 — 17. Mai. 1. 4, and the engravings there. 
 See also the Comprehensive Commentary, and some addU 
 tional views of this city, in that work.] 
 
AMOS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he said, The Lord will roar from 
 Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem ; and 
 the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, 
 and the top of Carmel shall wither. 
 
 See on ch. 9, 2, 3. 
 
 Ver. 5. I will break also the bar of Damascus, 
 and cut off the inhabitant/ from the plain of 
 the Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from 
 house of Eden : and the people of Syria shall 
 go into captivity unto Kir, saith the Lord. 
 
 Rather more than a century ago, Mr. Maundrell visited 
 the mountains of Lebanon. Having proceeded about half 
 an hour through the olive-yards of Sidon, he and his party 
 came to the foot of Mount Libanus. They had an easy as- 
 cent for two hours, after which it grew more steep and dif- 
 ficult ; in about an hour and a half more, they came to a 
 fountain of water, where they encamped for the night. 
 Next day, after ascending for three hours, they reached the 
 highest ridge of the mountain, where the snow lay by the 
 side of the road. They began immediately to descend on 
 the other side, and in two hours came to a small village, 
 where a fine brook, gushing at once from the side of the 
 mountain, rushes down into the valley below, and after 
 flowing about two leagues, loses itself in the river Letane. 
 The valley is called Bocat, and seems to be the same with 
 the Bicah-Aven of the prophet : " I will break also the bar 
 of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the plain 
 (rather the vale) of Aven, and him that holdeih the sceptre 
 from the house of Eden." The neighbourhood of Damas- 
 cus, and particularly a place near it, which, in the time of 
 Maundrell, still bore the name of Eden, render his conjec- 
 ture extremely probable. It might also have the name of 
 Aven, which signifies vanity, from the idolatrous worship 
 of Baal practised at Balbec or Heliopolis, which is situated 
 m this valley. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 13. Thus saith the Lord, For three trans- 
 gressions of the children of Ammon, and for 
 four, I will not turn away the punishment 
 thereof; because they have ripped up the 
 women with child, of Gilead, that they might 
 enlarge their border. 
 
 Margin, for " ripped," " divided the mountains." It was 
 common in the ancient wars thus to treat women, but in 
 general the Orientals are very kind to their wives in the 
 state alluded to. Nay, even to animals in that condition, 
 they are very tender : a man to beat his cow when with calf, 
 would be called a great sinner; and to kill a goat or a 
 sheep when with young, is altogether out of the question. 
 The Hindoo hunters will not destroy wild animals when 
 in that state. The term in the margin is applied to that 
 condition. "In the tenth moon the child fell from the 
 mountain."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 1. Thus saith the Lord, For three trans- 
 gressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn 
 away the punishment thereof: because he burnt 
 the bones of the king of Edom into lime. 
 
 " To plaster the walls of his house with it," as the Chal- 
 dee paraphrase explains the .ext, which was a cruel insult- 
 
 ing of the dead. A piece of barbarity resembling this ii 
 told by Sir Paul Rycaut, that the wall of the city of Phila- 
 delphia was made of the bones of the besieged, by the prince 
 who took it by storm. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 6. Thus saith the Lord, for three transgres- 
 sions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn 
 away the punishment thereof; because they 
 sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for 
 a pair of shoes. 
 
 The shoes, or rather sandals, have the least honour of 
 any thing which is worn by man, because they belong to 
 the feet, and are comparatively of little value. Nothing is 
 more disgraceful than to be beaten with the sandals : thus 
 when one man intends to exasperate another, he begins to 
 take off a sandal, as if going to strike him. To spit in the 
 face is not a greater indignity than this. When a person 
 wishes to insult another in reference to the price of any ar- 
 ticle, he says, " I will give you my sandals for it." " That 
 fellow is not worth the value of my sandals." " Who are 
 you, sir? you are not worthy to carry my sandals-," which 
 alludes to the custom of a rich man always having a ser- 
 vant with him to carry his sandals ; i. e. when he chooses to 
 walk barefoot. " Over Edom will I cast out my shoe :" 
 so contemptible and so easy was it to be conquered.— Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 7. That pant after the dust of the earth on 
 the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of 
 the meek ; and a man and his father will go in 
 unto the same maid, to profane my holy name. 
 
 Who were those that thus oppressed the poor, who sold 
 them for a pair of shoes, and panted " after the dust of the 
 earth V They were the judges and the princes of the peo- 
 ple. The Tamul translation has it, " To the injury of the 
 poor they eagerly took the dust of the earth ;" literally, 
 they gnawed the earth as a dog does a bone. " Dust of the 
 earth." What does this mean % I believe it alludes to the 
 lands of the poor, of which they had been deprived by the 
 judges and princes. Nothing is more common in eastern 
 language than for a man to call his fields and gardens his 
 MAN ; i. e. his dust, his earth. " That man has gnawed 
 away my dust or sand." " Ah ! the fellow ! by degrees he 
 has taken away all that poor man's earth." " The cruel 
 wretch ! he is ever trying to take away the dust of the 
 poor." In consequence of there not being fences in the 
 East, landowners often encroach on each other's posses- 
 sions. On the latter part of the verse and the next to it, I 
 dare not write. The heathenism, the devilism, described 
 by Amos, is still the same. Who did these things '] the 
 princes, the judges, and the people of Judah. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. And they lay themselves down upon 
 clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they 
 drink the wine of the condemned in the house 
 of their god. 
 
 It was found advantageous, both for ease and health, to 
 have a carpet or some soft and thick cloth spread on the 
 ground for those to sit upon who dwelt in tents: subse- 
 quently, those who lived in houses used them too. When 
 they held their idolatrous feasts in the temples dedicated to 
 the gods, they sat upon the ground, but not on the bare 
 earth, or the marble pavement of those temples, but upon 
 something soft and dry spread under them, brought for the 
 purpose. The clothes mentioned by the prophet mav mean 
 the coverings of the body for the night, as well as' for the 
 
556 
 
 AMOS. 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 day. " When it was dark, three coverlets, richly embroi- 
 dered, were taken from a press in the room which we occu- 
 pied, and delivered, one to each of us ; the carpet or sofa, 
 and a cushion, serving, with this addition, instead of a bed." 
 (Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor.) Such carpets or em- 
 broidered coverlets would neither be an improper pledge 
 for money, (Exod. xxii. 26, 27,) nor disgrace the pomp of 
 a heathen temple. It may not be amiss to consider why 
 the circumstance of clothes being taken to pledge, is men- 
 tioned here. Attending an idolatrous feast must have 
 been undoubtedly wrong in these Israelites : but of what 
 consequence was it to remark, that some of them seated 
 themselves on carpets that had been put into their hands 
 by way of pledge 1 It may be answered, that it might be 
 galling to those that had been obliged to pledge these valu- 
 able pieces of furniture secretly, to have them thus public- 
 ly exposed ; that it may insinuate that these idolatrous 
 zealots detained them, when they ought to have been re- 
 stored, (Ezek. xviii, 7, 12, 16. xxx. 15 ;) and that they sub- 
 jected them to be injured, in the tumult of an extravagant 
 and riotous banquet in a heathen temple ; to which may 
 be added, that they might belong to some of their country- 
 men who abhorred those idols, and might consider them as 
 dishonoured, and even dreadfully polluted, by being so em- 
 ployed. 
 
 With respect to the last of these circumstances but one, 
 (the being mjured in extravagant and riotous banqueting,) 
 I would remark, that they are accustomed, in their common 
 repasts, to take great care that their carpets are not soiled, 
 by spreading something over them ; but in public solemni- 
 ties they affect great carelessness about them, as a mark of 
 their respect and profound regard. (Russel.) Thus De 
 la Valle, describing the reception the Armenians of Ispahan 
 
 gave the king of Persia, in one of their best houses, when 
 e had a mind to attend at the celebration of their Epipha- 
 ny, says, after the ceremonies were over, he was conducted 
 to the house of Chogi*d Sefer, a little before deceased, where 
 his three sons and his brother had prepared every thing for 
 his reception : " All the floor of the house, and all the walks 
 of the garden, from the gate next the street to the most re- 
 mote apartments, were covered with carpets of brocatel, of 
 cloth of gold, and other precious manufactures, which were 
 for the most part spoiled, by being trampled upon by the 
 feet of those that had been abroad in the rain, and their 
 shoes very dirty : their custom being, not to put them off at 
 the entering into a house, but only at the door of the apart- 
 ments, and the places where they would sit down." — IBur- 
 
 DER. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 2. You only have I known of all the fami- 
 lies of the earth : therefore I will punish you 
 for all your iniquities. 
 
 In eastern language, to say you know a person, means 
 you APPROVE of him. Thus, should a man be well acquaint- 
 ed with two brothers, and should he not approve of one of 
 them, he will say, " I do not know him." But of him he 
 loves, he says, "Ah! I know him well." Jehovah had 
 known, i. e. approved of Israel, but because of their abomi- 
 nations he had determined to punish them. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Thus saith the Lord, As the shepherd 
 taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or 
 a piece of an ear : so shall the children of Is- 
 rael be taken out that dwell in Samaria in the 
 corner of a bed, and in Damascus m a couch. 
 
 Two kinds of goats wander in the pastures of Syria and 
 Canaan ; one that differs little from the common sort in 
 Britain ; the other remarkable for the largeness of its ears. 
 The size of this variety is somewhat larger than ours; but 
 their ears are often a foot long, and broad in proportion. 
 The Syrians keep them chiefly for their milk, of which 
 Ihey yield a considerable quantity. The present race of 
 goats in the vicinity of Jerusalem", are of this broad-eared 
 ppecies. To this kind of goat, so different from the common 
 breed, it is probable the prophet refers : " As the shepherd 
 taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of 
 tnear, so shall the children of Israel be taken out, that 
 dwell in Samaria and in Damascus." It is indeed the in- 
 
 tention of the prophet to express how few of his people, 
 escaped from the overthrow of their country, and were set- 
 tled in foreign parts ; but it would have been hardly natural 
 to suppose, that a shepherd would exert himself to make a 
 lion quit a piece of an ear, only of a common goat ; it must 
 therefore be supposed to refer to the long-eared kind. 
 Rauwolf observed goats on the mountains around Jerusalem, 
 with pendent ears almost two feet long. — Paxton. 
 
 Sitting in the corner is a stately attitude, and is expressiv^e 
 of superiority. Russel says, " the divans at Aleppo are 
 formed in the following manner. Across the upper end, 
 and along the sides of the room, is fixed a wooden platform, 
 four feet broad and six inches high ; upon this are laid cot- 
 ton mattresses exactly of the same breadth, and over these 
 a cover of broadcloth, trimmed with gold lace and fringes, 
 hanging over to the ground. A number of large oblong 
 cushions stuffed hard with cotton, and faced with flowered 
 velvet, are then ranged in the platform close to the wall. 
 The two upper comers of the divan are furnished also with 
 softer cushions, half the size of the others, which are laid 
 upon a square fine mattress, spread over those of cloth, both 
 being faced with brocade. The corners in this manner 
 distinguished are held to be the places of honour, and a 
 great man never offers to resign them to persons of inferior 
 rank." Mr. Antes, among other observations made on the 
 manners and customs of the Egyptians, from 1770 to 1782, 
 says, on his being carried before one of the beys of Egypt, 
 in about half an hour the bey arrived, with all his men, and 
 lighted flambeaux before him; he alighted, and went up 
 stairs into a room, sat doicn in a corner, and all his people 
 placed themselves in a circle round him. — Harmer. 
 
 An attendant came forward to usher us into the august 
 presence of the ruler of Egypt. We proceeded into a large 
 room, lighted by numerous windows, on every side except 
 that by which we entered. The pacha was standing up, 
 but when he perceived us approach, he hastily took his ac- 
 customed seat in the corner with great alertness. Round 
 three sides of the room was a broad scarlet divan, supplied 
 with cushions of gold brocade resting against the walls. 
 The corner swere distinguished as places of honour by a square 
 of crimson and gold silk, with a cushion of the same colour 
 and materials at the back of each. — Hogg's Visit to Da- 
 mascus. 
 
 Ver. 15. And I will smite the winter-house with 
 the summer-house ; and the houses of ivory 
 shall perish, and the great houses shall have 
 an end, saith the Lord. 
 
 In the writings of Jeremiah and Amos, a distinction is 
 made between winter and summer-houses. Russel thinks 
 they may refer to different apartments in the same house ; 
 but if the customs of Barbary resemble those of Palestine 
 in this respect, it is better to understand them of different 
 houses. The hills and valleys round about Algiers, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Shaw, are all over beautified with gardens and 
 country-seats, whither the inhabitants of better fashion retire 
 during the heat of the summer season. They are little 
 white houses, shaded with a variety of fruitful trees and 
 evergreens, which, besides the shade and retirement, afibrd 
 a gay and delightful prospect towards the sea. The gardens 
 are all of them well stocked with melons, fruit, and pot 
 herbs of all kinds ; and (what is chiefly regarded in these 
 hot climates) each of them enjoys a great command of 
 water. In Persia most of the summer-houses are slightly 
 constructed and divided into three pavilions at a considera- 
 ble distance from each other, with canals, fountains, and 
 flower gardens in the intermediate sp^es: while the winter- 
 houses, or palaces in cities, are built of strong masonry, and 
 ornamented at great expense; and palaces, villas, and 
 mosques, are often named after their principal embellish 
 ments. Thus at Barocke and Ahmedabad are the ivory and 
 silver mosques. This account furnishes an easy exposition 
 of a passage in the prophecies of Amos : " I will smite the 
 winter-house," the palaces of the great in fortified towns, 
 " with the summer-house," the small houses of pleasure, 
 used in the summer, to which any foe can have access; 
 " and the houses of i vorv shall perish ; and the great houses 
 shall have an end. saith the Lord," those that are distin- 
 guished by their amplitude and richness, built as they are 
 in their strongest places, yet all of them shall perish like 
 
Chap. 4 — - 
 
 AMOS, 
 
 557 
 
 their country-seats, by the irresistible stroke of almighty 
 power. — Pa xton. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 2. The Lord God hath sworn by his holi- 
 ness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that 
 he will take you away with hooks, and your 
 posterity with fish-hooks. 
 
 I am at a loss to know why there is a divStinction betwixt 
 " nooKs" and " fish-hooks." I think it fanciful to explain 
 it by saying it means " two modes of fishing." The Tamul 
 translation has, instead of "hooks," kuradu, i. e. pincers, 
 and it ought to be known that these were formerly much used 
 in punishments. In the Hindoo hells this instrument is 
 spoken of as being used to torture the inhabitants. A man 
 in his rage says, " I will tear thee with pincers." " Alas ! 
 alas ! I have been dragged away with pincers." " Ah ! 
 the severity of these troubles — they are like pincers." But 
 it is said that hooks also were formerly used to stick into 
 criminals when taken to the place of execution ; and there 
 is nothing very doubtful about this, because devotees often 
 have large hooks fastened into their flesh, by which they 
 are hoisted up on a long pole. " Your posterity with fish- 
 hooks:" this figure is used in the East to show how people 
 DRAW each other to any given place. Thus, does a man 
 wish to have a large party at some feast or ceremony he is 
 going to make, he persuades a man to say he will honour 
 him with his company ; and then he says to others, you are 
 invited to meet such an illustrious guest, which causes 
 numbers to come to the occasion. The man of rank in that 
 case is called the fish-hook; because, through him, the 
 guests are caught. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 9. I have smitten you with blasting and 
 mildew : when your gardens, and your vine- 
 yards, and your fig-trees, and your olive-trees 
 increased, the palmer-worm devoured them: 
 yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the 
 Lord. 
 
 Abp. Newcome says, that this means the unwholesome 
 eflluvia on the subsiding of the Nile, which causes some 
 peculiarly malignant diseases in this country. Maillet says, 
 that " the air is bad in those parts, where, when the inunda- 
 tions of the Nile have been very great, this river, in retiring 
 to its channel, leaves marshy places, which infect the coun- 
 try round about. The dew is also very dangerous in Egypt." 
 
 '-BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 4. That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch 
 themselves upon their couches, and eat the 
 lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of 
 the midst of the stall. 
 
 Amos reckons/a^ lambs among the delicacies of the Is- 
 raelites; and it seems these creatures are in the East ex- 
 tremely delicious. Sir John Chardin, in his manuscript 
 note to Amos vi. 4, expresses himself in very strong terms 
 on the deliciousness of these animals in the East. He tells 
 us, that there, in many places, lambs are spoken of as a sort 
 of food excessively delicious. That one must have eaten 
 of them in several places of Persia, Media, and Mesopota- 
 mia, and of their kids, to form a conception of the moisture, 
 taste, delicacy, and fat of this animal ; and as the eastern 
 people are no friends of game, nor offish, nor fowls, their 
 most delicious food is the lamb and the kid. This observa- 
 tion illustrates those passages that speak of kids- as used by 
 them for delicious repasts, and presents; as well as those 
 others that speak of the feasting on lambs. It also gives 
 great energy to our apprehensions of what is meant, when 
 the Psalmist talks of marroio and fatness. — Harmer. 
 
 Ivory is so plentiful in the East, it is no wonder that the 
 sovereigns had their beds made principally of that article. 
 But why is there a distinction made in reference to beds and 
 couches 1 I believe the latter word refers to the swinging 
 cot, as the Tamul translation also implies. In the houses 
 of the voluptuous these cots are always found, and many 
 are the stories in ancient books of kings and queens I 
 
 who were swinging together in their cots. When a man 
 affects great delicacy as to the place where he ■^lec^*, it 
 is common to say, " You had better have a swinging cot." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. And it shall come to pass, if there remain 
 ten men in one house, that they shall die. 
 10. And a man's uncle shall take him up, and 
 he that burneth him, to bring out the bones out 
 of the house, and shall say unto him that is by 
 the sides of the house, Is there yet any with 
 thee? and he shall say. No. Then shall he 
 say. Hold thy tongue ; for we may not make 
 mention of the name of the Lord. 
 
 These verses and the context refer to the mortality which 
 should result from the pestilence and famine, (in conse- 
 quence of the sins of the people ;) and to the burning of 
 the bodies. The number " ten" probably refers to many, 
 as that is a common expression in the East' to denote many. 
 I believe the whole alludes to the custom of burning hu- 
 man bodies, and to that of gathering up the half-calcined 
 bones, and to the putting them into an earthen vessel, and 
 then to the carrying back these fragments to the house or 
 into some out-building, where they are kept till conveyed 
 to a sacred place. In India this is done by a son or a near 
 relation ; but in case there is not one near akin, then any 
 person who is going to the place (as to the Ganges) can 
 take the fragments of bones, and thus perform the last rites. 
 Dr. Boothroyd takes the same view as to the pi-ace where 
 the bones have to be kept till they are removed, because he 
 translates, " a side-rpom of the house." " Hold thy tongue," 
 finds a forcible illustration in chap. viii. 3, where it is 
 mentioned that there were "dead in every place;" and 
 where it is said, they were to " cast them forth with si- 
 lence." When the cholera or any other pestilence has 
 carried off many of the people, the relations cease to weep or 
 speak ; they ask, " What is the use of wailing T' it is over, 
 " hold thy tongue." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 11. For, behold, the Lord command eth, and 
 he will smite the great house with breaches, 
 and the little house with clefts. 
 
 See on Ezek. 13. 11. 
 
 Chardin, speaking concerning the rains, says, " they are 
 the rains which cause the walls to fall, which are built of 
 clay, the mortar-plastering dissolving. This plastering 
 hinders the water form penetrating the bricks ; but when 
 the plastering has been soaked with wet, the wind cracks 
 it, and occasions the rain in some succeeding showers to 
 get between and dissolve every thing." This account illus- 
 trates the words of the prophet in a very happy manner, as 
 the houses were mostly built of these fragile materials. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 1. Thus hath the Lord God showed unto 
 me; and, behold, he farmed grasshoppers in 
 the beginning of the shooting up of the latter 
 growth ; and, lo, it was the latter growth after 
 the king's mowings. 
 
 See on Prov. 27. 25. 
 
 As they seldom make any hay in the East, the word ren- 
 dered " mowing," sliould rather have been, " feedings." 
 There is reason to conjecture, from the following passage 
 of La Roque, that the time of the king's feedings was the 
 month of March, or thereabouts : " The Arabs," he tells 
 us, from the papers of D'Arvieux, " turn their horses out 
 to grass in the month of March, when the grass is pretty 
 well grown; they then take care to have their mares cov- 
 ered, and they eat grass at no other time in the whole year, 
 any more than hay: they never give them any straw but to 
 heat them, when "they have been some time without dis- 
 covering an inclination to drink; they live wholly upon 
 barley." The Arab horses are all designed for riding and 
 war ;"so, there is reason to believe, were those of the kings 
 of Israel : and if the present usages of the Arabs prevailed 
 
558 
 
 AMOS. 
 
 Chap. 9. 
 
 anciently, they were turned out early in the spring, in the 
 month of March, and at oiher times weie nourished with 
 barley. These things seem to determine the time of the 
 king's feedings to March, of the shooiing up of the latter 
 growth of April. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. Then answered Amos, and said to Am- 
 aziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a proph- 
 et's son ; but 1 was a herdman, and a gatherer 
 of sycamore fruit. 
 
 The sycamore buds in the latter end of March, and the 
 prolific fruit ripens in the beginning of June. Pliny and 
 other natural historians allege, that it continues immature 
 till it is rubbed with iron combs, after which it ripens in 
 four days. Is it not an operation of this kind to which 
 the prophet Amos refers, in the text which we translate, 
 "I was a gatherer of sycamore fruit 1" The Septuagint 
 seems to refer it to something done to the fruit, to hasten its 
 maturity ; probably to the action of the iron comb, without 
 an application of which the figs cannot be eaten, because 
 of their intolerable bitterness. Parkhurst renders the 
 phrase, a scraper of sycamore fruit ; which he contends, 
 from the united testimony of natural historians, is the true 
 meaning of the original term. The business of Amos, then, 
 before his appointment to the prophetical office, was to 
 scrape or wound the fruit of the sycamore-tree, to hasten 
 its maturity and prepare it for use. Simon renders it a 
 cultivator of sycamore fruit, which is perhaps the prefer- 
 able meaning ; for it appears that the cultivation of this fig 
 required a variety of operations, all of which it is reason- 
 able to suppose, were performed by the same persons. To 
 render the tree fruitful, they scarified the bark, through 
 which a kind of milky liquor continually distilled. This, 
 it is said, causes a little bough to be formed without leaves, 
 having upon it sometimes six or seven figs. They are 
 hollow, without grains, and contam a little yellow matter, 
 which is generally a nest of grubs. At their extremity, a 
 sort of water collects, which, as it prevents them from ripen- 
 ing, must be let out. Amos, it is probable, was employed 
 in these various operations; which has induced Simon and 
 others to render the words, not a gatherer of sycamore fruit, 
 but a dresser of the sycamore-tree; which includes all the 
 culture and attendance it requires. 
 
 The sycamore is a large spreading tree, sometimes 
 shooting up to a considerable height, and so thick, that three 
 men can hardly grasp the trunk ; according to Hassel- 
 quist, the stem is often fifty feet thick. This unfolds the 
 reason why Zaccheus climbed up into a sycamore-tree, to 
 get a sight of his Redeemer. The incident also furnishes 
 a proof that the sycamore was still common in Palestine; 
 for this tree stood to protect the traveller by the side of the 
 highway. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 2. Though they dig into hell, thence shall 
 my hand take them ; though they climb up to 
 heaven, thence will I bring them down. 3. And 
 though they hide themselves in the top of Car- 
 mel, I will search and take them out thence ; 
 and though they be hid from my sight in the 
 bottom of the sea, thence will I command the 
 serpent, and he hall bite them. 
 
 Carmel was one of the barriers of the promised land, 
 ■which Sennacherib boasted he would scale with the multi- 
 tude of his horses and his chariots : " I will enter into the 
 lodgings of his borders, and into the forest of his Carmel." 
 tr^igrateful as the soil of this mountain is, the wild vines 
 and olive-trees that are still found among the brambles 
 which encumber its declivities, prove that the hand of in- 
 dustry has not laboured among the rocks of Carmel in vain. 
 So well adapted were the sides of this mountain to the cul- 
 livation of the vine, that the kings of Judah covered every 
 improvable spot with vineyards and plantations of olives. 
 Its deep and entangled forests, its savage rocks and lofty 
 summit, have been in all ages the favourite retreat of the 
 guilty or the oppressed. The fastnesses of this rugged 
 mountain are so difficult of access, that the prophet Amos 
 clasf«s them with the deeps of hell, the height of heaven, 
 
 and the bottom of the sea. The church, in her most af- 
 fluent state, is compared to a fugitive lurking in the deep 
 recesses of this mountain : " Feed thy people with thy rod, 
 the flock of thy heriiage which dwell solitarily in the 
 midst of Carmel." Lebanon raises to heaven a summit of 
 naked and barren rocks, covered for the greater part of the 
 year with snow : but the top of Carmel, how naked and 
 steril soever its present condition, seems to have been 
 clothed with verdure in the days of Amos, which seldom 
 was known to fade : " And he said. The Lord will roar from 
 Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the habita- 
 tion of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel 
 shall wiiher." — Paxton. 
 
 The wind was high when we left Acre, and blew the 
 sand about with such violence that we had great difficulty 
 in making our way. The bay to the southward extends to 
 Mount Carmel, and we were three hours in. skirting its 
 shore. We first forded the river Belus, the sand of which 
 has been much used in the making of glass, and then came 
 to " that ancient river, the river Kishon," immortalized in 
 the song of Deborah and Barak, over which we were fer- 
 ried by a Jewish boatman. The saddles are never taken 
 off the horses in these countries during a journey, either by 
 day or night. They were now taken from the animals that 
 they might not be wet in crossing the river, and the backs 
 of the poor creatures had been so chafed by them, that I 
 felt unwilling to mount mine again. After passing some 
 sepulchres in the rocks we entered the town of Hypha, and 
 were detained some time by the guard, until one of our 
 party waited on the governor, and obtained our release. 
 There were several brass cannon upon the walls, all ready 
 for action. The vessels have here better shelter than at 
 Acre, but the water is shallow. This town is nearly at the 
 foot of Mount Carmel, which extends about 30 miles in a 
 southeastern direction from the sea, in nearly an equal 
 ridge, and at an elevation of about 1600 feet. It is often re- 
 ferred to in scripture, and was onCe covered with trees, but 
 it is now nearly bare, and " the excellency of Carmel" has 
 withered before the curse of Heaven. It was the usual 
 residence of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. The place 
 where the false prophets of Baal were discomfited and slain 
 was towards the other extremity, nearer Jezreel, to which 
 Ahab retired ; and at some point near which it is approach- 
 ed by the Kishon. We may stand at the top of Carmel, as 
 did Gehazi, and look towards the sea, but alas 1 there is now 
 no " little cloud like a man's hand;" still there is the prom- 
 ise of a shower, and in due time the streams of divine mer- 
 cy will again fall upon this thirsty land, and men shall again 
 liken themselves in their prosperity to " the excellency of 
 Carmel and Sharon." Near the point that overlooks the 
 sea there is a monastery of Carmelite friars. It was de- 
 stroyed a few years ago by Abdullah Pacha, that he might 
 convert the materials to his own use, and though he was 
 ordered to rebuild it at his own expense by the sultan, when 
 a proper representation of the circumstances' had been 
 made to his court, no attention was ever paid to the man- 
 date. The monks are now rebuilding it themselves in a 
 very splendid manner, and one of the fraternity is the archi- 
 tect. At a lower elevation on the same point, is a palace 
 recently erected by the pacha. There is a small building 
 near the sea, said to cover the cave in which Elisha dwelt, 
 but as the door was locked we could not gain admittance. — 
 Hardy, 
 
 Ver. 6. It is he that buildeth his stories in the 
 heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth ; 
 he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and 
 poureth them out upon the face of the earth ' 
 The Lord is his name. 
 
 Seeon'jer. 22. 13. 
 
 The chief rooms of the house of Aleppo at this day arcj 
 those above, the ground-floor being chiefly made use of fori 
 their horses and servants. Perhaps the prophet referred tol 
 this circumstance, when he spoke of the heavens of God'sj 
 chambers, the most noble and splendid apartments of i he, 
 palace of God, where his presence is chiefly manifested, and] 
 the collection of its offices, its numerous ."Sttle mean divi- 
 sions, of this earth. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 3. Behold, the days come, saith the Lop >,J 
 
Chap. 1, 
 
 JONAH, 
 
 559 
 
 that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, 
 and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed ; 
 and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and 
 all the hills shall melt. 
 
 The Arabs commit depredations of every description. 
 They strip the trees of their fruit even in its unripe state, 
 as well as seize on the seed and com of the husbandman. 
 Maillet ascribes the alteration for the worse, that is found 
 in the wine of a province in Egypt, to the precipitation with 
 which they now gather the grapes. This was done to save 
 them from the Arabs, " who frequently made excursions 
 
 into it, especially in the season in which the fruits begin to 
 ripen. It is to save them from these depredations that the 
 inhabitants of the couhtry gather them bftfore they come to 
 maturity." It is this circumstance that must explain this 
 passage of the prophet : " Behold, the days come, saith the 
 Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the 
 treader of grapes him that soweth seed ; and the mountains 
 shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt :" that is, 
 the days shall come when the grapes shall not be gathered, 
 as they were before, in a slate of immaturity, for fear of 
 Arabs or other destroying nations, but they shall be suffer- 
 ed to hang till the time of ploughing ; so perfect shall be 
 the security of these times. — Harmer. 
 
 JONAH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 2. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and 
 cry against it ; for their wickedness is come up 
 before me. 
 
 See on Nah. 2. 8—11. 
 
 Ashur, probably imitating the policy of his dangerous 
 competitor, built four cities for the accommodation and 
 defence of his descendants ; the first of Which was Nine- 
 veh, the capital of his kingdom. This powerful city stood 
 on the east side of the Tigris, nor far from the river Lycus, 
 one of its tributary streams; but on which side of the 
 Lycus it lay, cannot now be discovered. The prediction of 
 Nahum, that Nineveh should be so completely destroyed 
 that future ages should search in vain for the spot which it 
 once covered, has been fulfilled in all its extent : " With 
 ; an overflowing flood, he will make an utter end of the 
 place thereof" Ancient geographers inform us of another 
 eity of this name, which stood on the Euphrates, and was 
 probably built by Nimrod in honour of his son. But Nine- 
 veh, so frequently mentioned in scripture, lay near the 
 Tigris; and to this last the following observations refer. 
 Strabo affirms that Nineveh was larger than Babylon 
 itself; an assertion confirmed by Diodorus, who makes that 
 city 60 miles in compass, while Strabo makes Babylon only 
 about 48. It is therefore with justice that the inspired writer 
 calls Nineveh " an exceeding great city of three days' jour- 
 ney." This account some interpreters refer not" to the 
 length, but to the compass of the city ; allowi^ng twenty 
 miles for a day's journey, which accords with the common 
 estimation of those times. But the phrase, " Jonah began 
 to enter into the city a day's journey," seems rather to inti- 
 mate, that the measure "of three days' journey is to be 
 understood of the length, not of the compass of Nineveh. 
 Hence it may be easily supposed, that agreeably to the 
 statement of the prophet, it contained " more than sixscore 
 thousand persons that could not discern between their right 
 hand and their left hand ;" for, supposing this to be imder- 
 stood of infants under two years old, these generally, as 
 Bochart observes, make at least the fifth part of the city. 
 If this proportion be just, the inhabitants of Nineveh would 
 not be more than six hundred thousand ; which is not more 
 than Seleucia contained in the days of Pliny, and not so 
 many as has been numbered in the 'capital of the British 
 empire.— Paxton. 
 
 
 Ver. 5. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried 
 every man unto his god, and cast forth the 
 wares that were in the ship into the sea, to 
 lighten it of them : but Jonah was gone down 
 
 ' into the sides of the ship ; and he lay, and was 
 fast asleep. 
 
 Here again xoe are at home, (to speak royally :) never was 
 there a more natural description of the conduct of a heathen 
 crew, in a storm, than this. No sooner does danger come, 
 than one begins to beat his head, and cry aloud, Siva, Siva; 
 another piteously shrieks, and beats his breast, and says, 
 Vishnoo; and a third strikes his thigh, and shouts with all 
 his might, Varuna. Thus do they cry to their god^ 
 instead of doing their duty. More than once have I been 
 in these circumstances, and never can I forget the horror 
 and helplessness of the poor idolaters. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. And they said every one to his fellow, 
 Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know 
 for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they 
 cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. 15. So 
 they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the 
 sea ; and the sea ceased from her raging. 
 16. Then the men feared the Lord exceeding- 
 ly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and 
 made vows. 
 
 In a storm, the heathen mariners always conclude that 
 there is some one on board who has committed a great 
 crime, and they begin to inquire, " Who is the sinner ?" 
 Some time ago, a number of native vessels left the roads of 
 Negapatam, at the same hour, for Point Pedro, in the Island 
 of Ceylon : they had not been long at sea before it was per- 
 ceived that one of them could not make any way; she roll- 
 ed, and pitched, and veered about in every direction; but 
 the other vessels went on beautifully before the wind. 
 The captain and his crew began to look at the passengers, 
 and, at last, fixed their eyes upon a poor woman, who was 
 crouched in a corner of the hold ; they inquired into her 
 condition, antl found she was in a state of impurity: "Let 
 down the canoe," was the order, "and take this woman 
 ashore:" in vain she remonstrated, she was compelled to 
 enter, and was soon landed on the beach. " After this, the 
 vessel sailed as well as any other!" When the storm rages, 
 they make voavs to their gods ; one will go on a pilgrimage 
 to some holy place, another will perform a penance, and a 
 third will make a valuable present to his favourite temple, 
 " Offered a sacrifice :" this is generally done when they get 
 safe to shore, but I have been on board when they have of- 
 fered cocoa-nuts and other articles with the greatest earnest- 
 ness. To interfere with them is not always prudent ; 
 because, were it not from the hope they have from such 
 offerings, they would cease to work the vessel. — Roet^ts. 
 
560 
 
 JONAH 
 
 Chap. 3, 4. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 4. And Jonah began to enter into the city a 
 day's journey; and he cried, and said, Yet forty 
 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 
 
 See on Nah. 1. 8. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 5. So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on 
 the east side of the city, and there made him a 
 booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he 
 might see what would become of the city. 
 6. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and 
 made it to come up over Jonah, that it might 
 be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from 
 his grief So Jonah was exceeding glad of 
 the gourd. 7. But God prepared a worm, 
 when the morning rose the next day, and it 
 smote the gourd that it withered. 8. And it 
 came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God 
 prepared a vehement east wind : and the sun 
 beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, 
 • and wished in himself to die, and said, It is 
 better for me to die than to live. 
 
 The gourd produces leaves and branches resembling 
 those of the garden cucumber. Its fruit is shaped like an 
 orange, of a light white substance when the rind is taken 
 off, and so bitter that it has been called the gall of the earth. 
 It is not eatable; but is a very fit vessel for flagons, being 
 light, capacious, and smooth, frequently a foot and a half 
 in diameter. 
 
 The gourd of Jonah is generally allowed to be the elke- 
 roa or ricinus, a plant well known in the East ; " it grows 
 very high, and projects many branches and large leaves. 
 In a short time it reaches a considerable height : its stem is 
 thick, channelled, distinguished by many knots, hollow 
 within, branchy at top, of a sea-green colour : its leaves 
 are large, cut into seven or more divisions, pointed and 
 edged, of a bright, blackish, shining-green. Those near- 
 est the top are the largest ; its flowers are ranged on their 
 stem like a thyrsus : they are of a deep-red, and stand three 
 together. 
 
 With this description agrees the account in the prophet, 
 of its rising over his head to shelter it; for this plant rises 
 eight or nine feet, and is remarkably rapid in withering, 
 when decayed or gathered. 
 
 The gourd which defended the prophet is said to have 
 been prepared by the Lord. We have no reason to con- 
 clude from this expression, that the Almighty created it 
 for the special purpose ; he only appointed and promoted 
 its growth in that particular spot, raising its stem and ex- 
 
 f)anding its branches and leaves according to the ordinary 
 aws of nature, till it formed a most refreshing shade over 
 the place where the angry seer waited the fulfilment of his 
 prediction. *' We may conceive of it," says Calmet, " as 
 an extraordinary one of its kind, remarkably rapid in 
 growth, remarkably hard in its stem, remarkably vigorous 
 in its branches, and remarkable for the extensive spread of 
 its leaves, and the deep gloom of their shadow; and after a 
 certain duration, remarkable for a sudden withering and 
 uselessness to the impatient prophet. 
 
 The worm which struck the gourd has been considered 
 rather as a maggot than a worm. It was, no doubt, of the 
 species appropriate to the plant ; but of what particular spe- 
 cies is uncertain. Like the gourd, it was also prepared by 
 Jehovah, to indicate its extraordinary size and vigour; that 
 it acted by his commission ; and that the effect of its opera- 
 tions was so rapid and decisive, as clearly to discover the 
 presence of divine energy. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, 
 and made it to come up over Jonah, that it 
 might be a shadow over his head, to deliver 
 him from his grief So Jonah was exceeding 
 glad of the gourd. 
 
 The margin has, instead of " gourd," " Kikajon, or Palme- 
 crist 1" Dr. Clarke asks, " But what was the Kikajon 1 the 
 best judges say the racinus or Palma-Christi, from which we 
 get what is vulgarly called castor-oil." The Tamul trans- 
 lation has, instead of "gourd," Amanaku, i. e. the Palma- 
 Christi ! It is believed, also, the verb is in the preterperfect 
 tense, had prepared, which may be another instance of the 
 verb as illustrated under Isa. xxi. 9. The Palma-Christi 
 is most abundant in the East, and I have had it in my own 
 garden to the height of fourteen feet. The growth is very 
 rapid : v. 7, " God prepared a worm when the morning rose 
 the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered," i. e, 
 the Palma-Christi till it withered. This tree, in the course 
 of a VERY short period, produces the "rough caterpillar," 
 respecting which, I have written under Jer. li. 27, and in 
 one night (where the caterpillers are abundant) will they 
 strip the tree of its leaves, and thus take away the shade. 
 But there is another worm in the East, called the kurutlu- 
 pullu, i. e. blind worm, said to be produced by the dew; it 
 begins its devastations at what is called the cabbage part of 
 the palm, and soon destroys the tree : v. 8, " God prepared 
 a vehement east wind." I have already written on that 
 parching, life-destroying wind. But the margin has it, or 
 " SILENT," which probably means calm. Thus when there 
 is a lull of an easterly wind, and the sun pours his fierce 
 rays on the head of the poor traveller, it seems as if life 
 miist depart: birds and beasts pant; there is the silence of 
 death, and nature seems ready to expire. — Roberts. 
 
 " It was early in the evening, when the pointed turrets of 
 the city of Mosul opened on our view, and communicated 
 no very unpleasant sensations to my heart. I foimd myself 
 on scripture-ground, and could not help feeling some por- 
 tion of the pride of the traveller, when I reflected that I 
 was now within sight of Nineveh, renowned in holy writ. 
 The city is seated in a very barren sandy plain, on the 
 banks of the river Tigris, embellished with the united 
 gifts of Pomona, Ceres, and Flora. The external view of 
 the town is much in its favour, being encompassed with 
 stately walls of solid stone, over which the steeples or min- 
 arets, and other lofty buildings, are seen with increased ef- 
 fect. Here I saw a caravan encamped, halting on it3 
 march from the Gulf of Persia to Armenia ; and it cer- 
 tainly mad« a most noble appearance, filling the eye with 
 a multitude of grand objects, all uniting to form one mag- 
 nificent whole. But though the outside be so beautiful, the 
 inside is most detestable : the heat is so intense, that in the 
 middle of the day there is no stirring out, and even at nighi 
 the walls of the houses are so heated by the dafs sun, as to pro- 
 duce a disagreeable heat to the body, at afoot, or even a yard 
 distance from them. However, I entered it with spirits, 
 because 1 considered it as the last stage of the worst part 
 of my pilgrimage. But, alas ! I was disappointed in my 
 expectation ; for the Tigris was dried tip by the ivicnsily of 
 the heat, and an unusual long drought, and I was obliged 
 to take the matter with a patient shrug, and accommodate 
 my mind to a journey on horseback, which, though not so 
 long as that I had already made, was likely to be equally 
 dangerous ; and which, therefore, demanded a full exer- 
 tion of fortitude and resolution. 
 
 " It was still the hot season of the year, and we were to 
 travel through that country, over which the horrid wind I 
 have before mentioned sweeps its consuming blasts: it is 
 called by the Turks somiel, is mentioned by holy Job under 
 the name of the east Avind, and extends its ravages all the 
 way from the extreme end of the Gulf of Cambaya, up to 
 Mosul ; it carries along with it fleaks of fire, like threads 
 of silk; instantly strikes dead those that breathe it, and 
 consumes them inwardly to ashes ; the flesh soon becoming 
 black as a coal, and dropping off the bones. Philosophers 
 consider it as a kind of electric fire, proceeding from the 
 sulphureous or nitrous exhalations which are kindled by 
 the agitation of the winds. The only possible means of 
 escape from its fatal effects, is to fall flat on the ground, 
 and thereby prevent the drawing it in : to do this, however, 
 it is necessary first to see it, which is not always practica- 
 ble. Besides this, the ordinary heat of the climate is ex- 
 tremely dangerous to the blood and lungs, and even to the 
 skin, which it blisters and peels from the flesh, affecting the 
 eyes so much, that travellers are obliged to wear a trans- 
 parent covering over them to keep the heat off"." 
 
 These accounts, from Col. Campbell's Travels, illustrate 
 the history of Jonah, his behaviour and his sufferings, in the 
 
Chap. 1—3. 
 
 MICAH 
 
 561 
 
 same parts. The colonel reports that the heat is extreme, 
 both by day and night, in the town ; that the Tigris 
 was dried up by the intensity of the heat ; that the heat 
 blisters the skin, &c. " Now Jonah went out of the city, 
 and sat on the east side of the city, till he might see what 
 would become of the city," (iv. 5,) to which he had prophe- 
 sied destruction in forty days' time, (iii. 4.) Jonah could 
 not expect the destruction of the city until about, or after, 
 the expiration of the forty days' respite allowed to it ; so 
 long then, at least, he waited in this burning climate. But, 
 as he kneio God to be slow to anger, (iv. 2,) he might wait 
 some days, or even some weeks, after the expiration of 
 the appointed time ; so that although he was sent on his 
 message, and had delivered it before the great heats came on, 
 yet, to satisfy his curiosity, he endured them. Thus cir- 
 cumstanced, he constructed for himself a shelter from the 
 sun ; and doubtless, when the ivp'P kikium, {gourd, English 
 translation,) or kind of palm, rose in addition to his booth, 
 at once ornamenting, filling, and shadowing it, to complete 
 his shelter, he might well rejoice over the gourd with ex- 
 ceeding great joy. [Might not this plant, growing chiefly 
 by night, Heb. " which a son of night was, and (as) a son 
 of night perished," be some time in rising for that purpose 1 
 See Kikajon, Jonah, and Fragment, No. Ixxviii.] This 
 plant, during a time, perhaps during a great part of the 
 forty days, or several weeks succeeding, afforded him shel- 
 ter ; then, while in full vigour, without apparent decay, he 
 left it well overnight, and in the morning it was shrunk, 
 faded, and gone: so that at sunrise, when the morning 
 should be cool, Jonah, examining his plant, was struck by 
 the scarcely-moving aura of an east wind, vehemently hot ; 
 no wonder, then, he fainted, and wished to die, when the 
 
 only part of the day in which he could hope for coolness, 
 was thus suiFocating. "What Jonah must have endured 
 from the heat. Colonel Campbell's account may assist us to 
 conceive. We may observe, further, how aptly this plant 
 was a SIGN of Nineveh, its history, and its fate : it was a 
 time in coming to perfection, and it was a time in a perfect 
 state : so that city was long before it was mistress of the 
 countries around it, and it held that dignity for a time ; 
 but, at about forty years after Jonah's prophecy, (prophetic 
 days, for years, as some have supposed,) the worm (insur- 
 rection and rebellion) smote the plant ; and the king of 
 Nineveh (Sardanapalus) burnt himself, with his treasures, 
 &c., in his palace. A fate very appropriately prefigured 
 by the kikium of Jonah! The expectation of coolness in 
 the morning, may be justified from the following extract, 
 in which we find the colonel, like Jonah, reposing under 
 trees in the heat of the day. "From Latikea to Aleppo, 
 mounted on a mule, I travelled along, well pleased with 
 the fruitful appearance of the country; and delighted with 
 the serenitv of the air. We were, as well as I can now 
 recollect, near ten aays on the road ; during which time, 
 we travelled amy m tJie morning early, and in the heat of 
 the day we reposed under the shade of trees." — Tatlor in 
 Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 11. And should not I spare Nineveh, that 
 great city, wherein are more than sixscore 
 thousand persons that cannot discern between 
 their right hand and their left hand ; and also 
 much cattle 1 
 
 See on Nah. 1. 8. 
 
 MICAH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 7. And all the graven images thereof shall 
 be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof 
 shall be burnt with the fire, and all the idols 
 thereof will I lay desolate : for she gathered it 
 of the hire of a harlot, and they shall return to 
 the hire of a harlot. 
 
 Here again we have unalloyed and rampant heathenism: 
 the " sacred" courtesans of the temple give a part of their 
 hire towards the repairing and beautifying of tne building ; 
 and also to purchase idols, or carry on the festivals. At 
 the annual festival of Scandan, which continues twenty- 
 four days, the females alluded to defray the expenses of 
 the last day from the proceeds of their own wickedness. — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 8. Therefore I will wail and howl, I will 
 go stripped and naked : I will make a wailing 
 like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. 
 
 Or, " ostriches." It is affirmed by travellers of good 
 credit, that ostriches make a fearful, screeching, lamentable 
 noise. " During the lonesome part of the night, they often 
 make a very doleful and hideous noise. I have often heard 
 them groan, as if they were in the greatest agonies : an ac- 
 tion beautifully alluded to by the prophet Micah." (Shaw.) 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 16. Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy 
 delicate children ; enlarge thy baldness as the 
 71 
 
 eagle ; for they are gone into captivity from 
 thee. 
 
 Mr. Bruce has given us an account of an eagle, known 
 in Ethiopia only by the name nisser, eagle ; but by him 
 called the golden eagle ; by the vulgar, abou duch'n, father 
 long-beard, from the tuft of hair under his chin. He is a 
 very large bird. " A forked brush of strong hair, divided 
 at the point into two, proceeded from the cavity of his lower 
 jaw, at the beginning of his throat. He had the smallest 
 eye I ever remember to have seen in a large bird, the aper- 
 ture being scarcei'y half an inch. The crown of his head 
 was bare or bald, so was the front where the bill and 
 scull joined." This is the bird alluded to by the prophet. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 2. And they covet fields, and take them by 
 violence ; and houses, and take them away : so 
 they oppress a man and his house, even a man 
 and his heritage. 
 
 See on Job 27. 18. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 12. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be 
 ploughed as a field ; and Jerusalem shall be- 
 come heaps ; and the mountain of the house as 
 the high places of the forest. 
 
 We had been to examine the hill, which now bears the 
 name of Zion ; it is situated on the south side of Jerusalem, 
 
562 
 
 MICAH. 
 
 Chap. 4—6. 
 
 part of it being excluded by the wall of the present city, 
 which passes over the top of the mount. If this be indeed 
 Mount Zion, the prophecy concerning it, that the plough 
 should pass over it, has been fulfilled to the letter; for 
 such labours were actually going on when we arrived. — 
 Clarke. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 4. But they shall sit every man under his 
 vine, and under his fig-tree; and none shall 
 make them afraid : for the mouth of the Lord 
 of hosts hath spoken it. 
 
 See on Ps. 88. 47. 
 
 The people of the East have great pleasure in sitting or 
 lounging under their tamarind or mango-trees in the grove. 
 Thus, in the heat of the day, they while away their time in 
 
 E laying with their children, in taking up the fruit, or smo- 
 ing their much-loved shroot.— Roberts. 
 This expression most probably alludes to the delightful 
 eastern arbours, which were partly composed of vines ; 
 and the agreeable retreat which was enjoyed under them 
 might also be found under their fig-trees. Norden ex- 
 pressly speaks of vine arbours as common in the Egyptian 
 gardens, (vol. i. p. 71,) and the Praenestine pavement, in 
 Dr. Shaw, gives us the figure of an ancient one, — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 5. For all people will walk every one in the 
 name of his god, and we will walk in the name 
 of the Lord our God for ever and ever. 
 
 Nothing more arrests the notice of a stranger, on entering 
 Sinde, than the severe attention of the people to the forms 
 of religion, as enjoined by the prophet of Arabia. In all 
 places, the meanest and poorest of mankind may be seen, 
 at the appointed hours, turned towards Mecca, oiSering up 
 their prayers. I havp observed a boatman quit the labori- 
 ous duty of dragging the vessel against the stream, and re- 
 tire to the shorC; wet and covered with mud, to perform his 
 genuflexions. In the smallest villages the sound of the 
 " mowuzzun," or crier, summoning true believers to pray- 
 ers, may be heard, and the Mohammedans within reach of 
 the sonorous sound suspend, for the moment, their employ- 
 ment, that they may add their " Amen" to the solemn sen- 
 tence when concluded. The effect is pleasing and impres- 
 sive ; but, as has often happened in other countries at a 
 like stage of civilization, the moral qualities of the people 
 do not keep pace with this fervency of devotion. — Burnes. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 7. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands 
 of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil 1 
 shall I give my first-born for my transgression, 
 the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 
 
 Allusions are often made in the scriptures to the value of 
 oil ; and to appreciate them, it should be recollected, that oil 
 ONLY is used to light the houses, and also, for anointing the 
 body, and many medicinal purposes. " Have you heard of 
 
 the charity of Venase 1 Why, he has given a river of oil 
 to the temple ; and Muttoo has given a river of ghee." 
 " Milk ! why that farmer has rivers of it ; and the Mode- 
 liar has a SEA." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; 
 thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not 
 anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt 
 not drink wine. 
 
 See on Ps. 37. 35; Deut. 33. 24 ; and Is. 63. 1—3. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 1. Wo is me ! for I am as when they have 
 gathered the summer-fruits, as the grape-glean- 
 ings of the vintage : there is no cluster to eat : 
 my soul desired the first ripe fruit. 
 
 The expression here made use of by the prophet may 
 probably be understood by the assistance of a remark 
 which Sir John Chardin has made upon this passage. 
 He informs us, that the Persians and Turks are not only 
 fond of almonds, plumbs, and melons in a mature state, but 
 that thev are remarkable for eating them before they are 
 ripe. As soon as ever they approach to that state, they 
 make use of them, the great dryness and temperature of the 
 air preventing flatulencies. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 3. That they may do evil with both hands 
 earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge ask- 
 eth for a reward; and the great man he utter- 
 eth his mischievous desire : so they wrap it up. 
 
 We have seen that to do a thing with one hand, signifies 
 earnestness and oneness of consent. Whenever a person 
 has to receive a thing from a superior, he must put out 
 BOTH hands ; for not to do so, would be a mark of great 
 disrespect. " Alas ! I went to that man with both hands, 
 (i. e. held them out to him,) but he turned me away." 
 " The greedy wretch eats with both hands," meaning, he is 
 a glutton ; because all respectable and decent people eat 
 with the right hand only. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock 
 of thy heritage, which dwell solitarily in the 
 wood, in the midst of Carmel : let them fe&i in 
 Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. 
 
 See on Am. 9. 10. 
 
 Ver. 19. He will turn again, he will have com- 
 passion upon us: he will subdue our iniquities ; 
 and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths 
 of the sea. 
 
 When a devotee believes the guilt of his transgressions 
 has been removed, whether by prayers or austerities, he 
 says, " My sins have all fallen into the sea." — Roberts. 
 
NINEVEH. 
 
 Nahum 1:8. Page 565. 
 
NAHUM 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Vor. 8. But with an over-running flood he will 
 make an utter end of the place thereof, and 
 darkness shall pursue his enemies. 
 
 To a brief record of the creation of the antediluvian 
 world, and of the dispersion and the different settlements of 
 mankind after the deluge, the scriptures of the Old Testa- 
 ment add a full and particular history of the Hebrews for 
 the space of fifteen hundred years, from the days of Abra- 
 ham to the era of the last of the prophets. While the his- 
 torical part of scripture thus traces, from its origin, the 
 history of the world, the prophecies give a prospective view 
 which reaches to its end. And it is remarkable that pro- 
 fane history, emerging from fable, becomes clear and 
 authentic about the very period when sacred history termi- 
 nates, and when the fulfilment of these prophecies com- 
 mences, which refer to other nations besides the Jews. 
 
 Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was for a long time an 
 extensive and populous city. Its walls are said, by heathen 
 historians, to have been a hundred feet in height, sixty miles 
 in compass, and to have been defended by fifteen hundred 
 towers, each two hundred feet high. Although it |brmed 
 the subject of some of the earliest of the prophecies, and was 
 the very first which met its predicted fate, yet a heathen 
 historian, in describing its capture and destruction, repeat- 
 edly refers to an ancient prediction respecting it. Diodorus 
 Siculus relates, that the king of Assyria, after the complete 
 discomfiture of his army, confided in an old prophecy, that 
 Nineveh would not be taken unless the river should become 
 the enemy of the city ; that after an ineffectual siege of two 
 years, the river, swollen with long-continued and tempestu- 
 ous torrents, inundated part of the city, and threw down the 
 wall for the space of twenty furlongs; and that the king, 
 deeming the prediction accomplished, despaired of his 
 safety, and erected an imAiense funeral pile, on which he 
 heaped his wealth, and with which himself, his household, 
 and palace, were consumed. The book of Nahum was 
 avowedly prophetic of the destruction of Nineveh : and it 
 is there foretold, " that the gates of the river shall be opened, 
 and the palace shall be dissolved." " Nineveh of old, like 
 a pool of water — with an overflowing flood he will make 
 an utter end of the place thereof." The historian describes 
 the facts by which the other predictions of the prophet were 
 as literally fulfilled. He relates that the king of Assyria, 
 elated with his former victories, and ignorant of the revolt 
 of the Bactrians, had abandoned himself to scandalous in- 
 action ; had appointed a time of festivity, and supplied his 
 soldiers with abundance of wine ; and that the general of 
 the enemy, apprized by deserters of their negligence and 
 drunkenness, attacked the Assyrian army while the whole 
 of them were fearlessly giving way to indulgence, destroyed 
 a great part of them, and drove the rest into the city. The 
 words of the prophet were hereby verified : " While they 
 be folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken 
 as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble full dry," 
 The prophet promised much spoil to the enemy: "Take 
 the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold ; for there is no end 
 of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture." 
 And the historian affirms, that many talents of ^old and 
 silver, preserved from the fire, were carried to Ecbatana. 
 According to Nahum, the city was not only to be destroyed 
 by an overflowing flood, but the fire also was to devour it ; 
 and, as Diodorus relates, partly by water, partly by fire, it 
 was destroyed. 
 
 The utter and perpetual destruction and desolation of 
 Nineveh were foretold : — " The Lord will make an utter 
 end of the place thereof. Affliction shall not rise up the 
 second time. She is empty, void, and waste. The Lord 
 will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy As- 
 syria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a 
 
 wilderness. How is she become a desolation, a place for 
 beasts to lie down in !" In the second century, Lucian, a 
 native of a city on the banks of the Euphrates, testified that 
 Nineveh was utterly perished ; that there was no vestige of 
 it remaining ; and that none could tell where once it was 
 situated. This testimony of Lucian, and the lapse of many 
 ages during which the place was not known where it stood, 
 render it at least somewhat c oubtful whether the remains oi 
 an ancient city, opposite to Mosul, which have been de- 
 scribed as such by travellers, be indeed those of ancient 
 Nineveh. It is, perhaps, probable that they are the remains 
 of the city which succeeded Nineveh, or of a Persian city 
 of the same name, which was built on the banks of the 
 Tigris by the Persians subsequently to the year 230 of the 
 Christian era, and demolished by the Saracens in 632, In 
 contrasting the then existing great and increasing popula- 
 tion, and the accumulating wealth of the proud inhabitants 
 of the mighty Nineveh, with the utter ruin that awaited it, 
 —the word of God (before whom all the inhabitants of the 
 earth are as grasshoppers) by Nahum was — " Make thyself 
 many as the canker-worm, make thyself many as the lo- 
 custs. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars 
 of heaven: the canker-worm spoileth, and flyeth away. 
 Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy captains as the great 
 grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day : 
 but when the sun riseth, they flee away; and their place is 
 not known where they are," or were. Whether these 
 words imply that even the site of Nineveh would in future 
 ages be uncertain or unknown ; or, as they rather seem to 
 intimate, that every vestige of the palaces of its monarchs, 
 of the greatest of its nobles, and of the wealth of its numer- 
 ous merchants, would wholly disappear; the truth of the 
 prediction cannot be invalidated under either interpretation. 
 The avowed ignorance respecting Nineveh, and the obli- 
 vion which passed over it, for many an age, conjoined with 
 the meagerness of evidence to identify it, still prove that 
 the place was long unknown where it stood, and that, even 
 now, it can scarcely with certainty be determined. _ And if 
 the only spot that bears its name, or that can be said to be 
 the place where it was, be indeed the site of one of the most 
 extensive of cities on which the sun ever shone, and which 
 continued for many centuries to be the capital of Assyria — 
 the "principal mounds," few in number, which "show 
 neither bricks, stones, nor other materials of building, but 
 are in many places overgrown with grass, and resemble the 
 mounds left by intrenchments and fortifications of ancient 
 Roman camps," and the appearances of other mounds and 
 ruins less marked than even these, extending for ten miles, 
 and widelv spread, and seeming to be " the wreck of former 
 buildings," show that Nineveh is left without one monu- 
 ment of royalty, without any token whatever of its splendour 
 or wealth ; that their place is not known where they were ; 
 and that it is indeed a desolation — " empty, void, and waste," 
 its very ruins perished, and less than the wreck of what it 
 was. " Such an utter ruin,^' in every view, " has been made 
 of it ; and such is the truth of the divine predictions." — 
 Keith, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 7. And Huzzab shall be led away captive, 
 she shall be brought up, and her maids shall 
 lead her as with the voice of doves, tabering 
 upon their breasts. 
 
 See on Is, 5, 12. 
 
 When D'Arvieux was in the camp of the great emir, his 
 princess was visited by other Arab princesses. The last 
 that came, whose visit alone he describes, was mounted, he 
 says, on a camel, covered with a carpet, and decked with 
 flowers ; a dozen women marched in a row before her, 
 holding the camel's halter with one hand ; they sung the 
 
564 
 
 HABAKKUK. 
 
 Chap. 1, 2. 
 
 praises of their mistress, and songs which expressed joy, 
 and the happiness of being in the service of such a beauti- 
 ful and amiable lady. Those which went first, and were 
 more distinct from her person, came in their turn to the 
 head of the camel, and took hold of the halter, which place, 
 as being the post of honour, they quitted to others, when the 
 princess had gone a few paces. The emir's wife sent her 
 women to meet her, to whom the halter was entirely quit- 
 ted, out of respect, her own women putting themselves be- 
 hind the camel. In this order they marched to the tent, 
 where they alighted. They then all sung together the 
 beauty, birth, and good qualities of this princess. This ac- 
 count illustrates those words of the prophet, wherein he 
 PT:>eaks of the presenting of the queen of Nineveh, or Nine- 
 veh itself, under the figure of a queen, to her conqueror. 
 He describes her as led by the maids, with the voice of 
 doves, that is, with the voice of mourning ; their usual 
 songs of joy, with which they used to lead her along, as the 
 Arab women did their princess, being turned into lamenta- 
 tions. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 14. Draw the waters for the siege, fortify 
 thy strongholds: go into clay, and tread the 
 mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. 
 See on Is. 41. 26. 
 
 Ver. 17. Thy crowned are as the locusts, and thy 
 captains as the great grasshoppers, which camp 
 in the hedges in the cold day ; hut when the 
 sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is 
 not known where they a%e. 
 
 " The operation of the female locust in laying her eggs 
 is highly interesting. She chooses a piece of light earth, 
 well protected by a bush or hedge, where she makes a hole 
 for herself, so deep that her head just appears above it ; she 
 here deposites an oblong substance, exactly the shape of her 
 own body, which contains a considerable number of eggs, 
 arranged in neat order, in rows agkinst each other, which 
 remain buried in the ground most carefully, and artificially 
 protected from the cold of winter." (Pliny.) " The eggs are 
 brought into life by the heat of the sun. If the heats com- 
 mence early, the locusts early gain strength, and it is then 
 that their depredations are most feared, because they com- 
 mence thiem before the corn has had time to ripen, and they 
 attack the stem when it is still tender. I conjecture that 
 camping in the hedges in the cold day may be explained by 
 the eggs being deposited during the winter : and when the 
 sun ariseth they flee away, may also be illustrated by the; 
 flying away of the insect, as soon as it had felt the sun's in- 
 fluence." (Morier.)— Btoder. 
 
 HABAKKUK 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 8. Their horses also are swifter than the 
 leopards, and are more fierce than the evening 
 wolves : and their horseman shall spread them- 
 selves, and their horsemen shall come from 
 far ; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to 
 eat. 
 
 The Baron De Tott, in his entertaining work, has given 
 us an account of the manner in which an army of modern 
 Tartars conducted themselves, which serves greatly to il- 
 lustrate this passage: " These particulars," says the baron, 
 " informed the cham or prince, and the generals, what their 
 real position was ; and it was decided that a third of the 
 army, composed of volunteers, and commanded by a sultan 
 and several mirzas, should pass the river at midnight, di- 
 vide into several columns, subdivide successively, and thus 
 overspread New Servia, burn the villages, corn, and fod- 
 der, and carry off" the inhabitants of the country. The rest 
 of the army, in order to follow the plan concerted, marched 
 till they came to the beaten track m the snow made by the 
 detachment. This we followed, till we arrived at the place 
 where it divides into seven branches, to the left of which 
 we constantly kept, observing never to mingle or confuse 
 ourselves with any of the subdivisions which we succes- 
 sively found; and some of which were only small paths, 
 traced by one or two horsemen. Flocks were found frozen 
 to death on the plain, and twenty columns of smoke, al- 
 ready rising in the horizon, completed the horrors of the 
 Riene, and announced the fires which had laid waste New 
 Servia." The difficulties which have attended the expla- 
 nation of this prediction are thus happily removed, and the 
 propriety of the expression fully established. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 1 0. And they shall scoff at the kings, and 
 the princes shall he a scorn unto them : they 
 shall deride every stronghold; for they shall 
 heap dust, and take it. 
 
 Another contrivance which the besiegers employed, wa^ 
 the agger or mount, which they raise so high as to equal, 
 if not exceed, the top of the besieged walls : the sides were 
 supported with bricks or stones, or secured with strong, 
 rafters to hinder it from falling ; the forepart only remain- 
 ed bare, because it was to be advanced by degrees nearer 
 the city. The pile itself consisted of all sorts of materials, 
 as earth, timber, boughs, stones ; into the middle were cast 
 also wickers, and twigs of trees to fasten, and, as it were, 
 cement the other parts. The prophet Habakkuk manifestly 
 refers to the mount, in that prediction where he describes 
 the desolating march of the Chaldeans, and the success of 
 their arms. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 2. And the Lord answered me, and said, 
 Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, 
 that he may run that readeth it. 
 
 Writing-tables were used in and before the time of Ho- 
 mer; for he speaks of writing very pernicious things upon 
 a two-leaved table. They were made of wood, consisted 
 of two, three, or five leaves, and were covered with wax ; 
 on this impressions were easily made, continued long, and 
 were very legible. It was a custom among the Romans for 
 the public affairs of every year to be committed to writing 
 by the pontifex maximum, or high-priest, and published on 
 a table. They were exposed to public view, so that the 
 people might have an opportunity of being acquainted with 
 them. It was also usual to hang up laws approved and re- 
 corded on tables of brass in their market-places, and in their 
 temples, that they might be seen and read. In like manner 
 the Jewish prophets used to write, and expose their proph- 
 ecies publicly on tables, either in their own houses, or m 
 the temple, that every one that passed by might read them. 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 11. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, 
 and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. 
 
Chap. 1. 
 
 ZEPHANIAH. 
 
 665 
 
 The margin has, instead of " answer it," " or witness 
 against." When a man denies what he has solemnly 
 promised, the person who complains of his perfidy, says, 
 " The place where you stood shall witness against you." 
 " A beautiful princess was once enjoying herself in a fra- 
 grant grove, when a noble prince passed that way ; she be- 
 came enamoured of his person, and he solemnly promised 
 to return and marry her. When he left her, she wept bit- 
 terly, and said, ' Ah ! should he not return, this tali-tree 
 (pandanus odoratissima) shall witness against him. Yes, 
 the birds shall be my witnesses.' " — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. For the violence of Lebanon shall cover 
 thee, and the spoil of beasts, which make them 
 afraid, because of men's blood, and for the vio- 
 lence of the land, of the city, and of all that 
 dwell therein. 
 
 The lofty summits of Lebanon were the chosen haunts 
 of various beasts of prey ; the print of whose feet Maun- 
 drell and his party observed in the snow. But they are not 
 confined to these situations: a recent traveller continued 
 descending several hours, through varied scenery, present- 
 ing at every turn some new feature, distinguished either 
 by its picturesque beauty or awful sublimity. On arriving 
 at one of the lower swells, which form the base of the 
 mountain, he and his parly broke rather abruptly into a 
 deep and thick forest. As they traversed the bocage, the 
 bowlings of wild animals were distinctly heard from the re- 
 cesses. To these savage tenants of the desert, the prophet 
 
 Habakkuk seems to allude. The vi..)lence of Lebanon is 
 a beautiful and energetic expression, denoting the ferocious 
 animals that roam on its mountains, and lodge in its thick- 
 ets; and that, occasionally descending into the plain m quest 
 of prey, ravage the fold or seize upon the unwary villager. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 4. And his brightness was as the light ; he 
 had horns coming out of his hand; and there 
 was the hiding of his power. 
 
 See on Ps. 92. 10. 
 
 Ver. 9. Thy bow was made quite naked, accord- 
 ing to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. 
 Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. 
 
 The oriental bows, according to Chardin, were usually 
 carried in a case hung to their girdles ; it was sometimes 
 of cloth, but more commonly of leather. The expression 
 in these words of the prophet must consequently be under- 
 stood of the bow when out of the case. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 19. The Lord God is my strength, and he 
 will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will 
 make me to walk upon my high places. To 
 the chief singer on my stringed instruments. 
 
 See on Ps. 18. 33. 
 
 ZEPHANIAH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 8. And it shall come to pass in the day of 
 the Lord's sacrifice, that I will punish the 
 princes, and the king's children, and all such 
 as are clothed with strange apparel. 9. In the 
 same day also will I punish all those that leap 
 on the threshold, which fill their masters' houses 
 with violence and deceit. 
 
 " Those that wear strange apparel." These are words that 
 in this connexion seem to mean only the rich that were 
 conscious of such power and influence as to dare in time of 
 oppression and danger, to avow their riches, and who there- 
 fore were not afraid to wear the precious manufactures of 
 strange countries, though they were neither magistrates, 
 nor yet of royal descent. A great number of attendants is 
 a modern piece of oriental magnificence ; as I shall here- 
 after have occasion to remark it appears to have been so 
 anciently, Eccles. v. 11 ; these servants, now, it is most cer- 
 tain, frequently attend their master on horseback, richly at- 
 tired, sometimes to the number of twenty-five or thirty : if 
 they did so anciently, with a number of servants attending 
 great men, who are represented by this very prophet as at that 
 time in common terrible oppressors, ch. iii. 3, they may be 
 naturally supposed to ride into people's houses, and having 
 gained -admission by deceit, to force from them by violence 
 considerable contributions : for this riding into houses is 
 not now only practised by tl;ie Arabs; it consequently might 
 be practised by others, too, anciently. It is not now peculiar 
 to the Arabs, for Le Bruyn, after describing the magnifi- 
 cent furniture of several of the Armenian merchants at 
 Julfa, that suburb of Ispahan in which they live, tells us, 
 .hat the front door of the greatest part of these houses is 
 
 very small, partly to hinder the Persians from entering into 
 them on horseback, and partly that they may less observe 
 the magnificence within. To which ought to be added, 
 what he elsewhere observes, that these Armenians are 
 treated with great rigour and insolence by the Persians. If 
 this text refers to a violence of this sort, they are the thresh- 
 olds of the oppressed over which they leaped, not the thresh- 
 olds of the oppressive masters, which some have supposed, 
 when they returned laden with spoil. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 12. And it shall come to pass at that time, 
 that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and 
 punish the men that are settled on their lees : 
 that say in their heart. The Lord will not do 
 good, neither will he do evil. 
 
 The margin has, in place of " settled," " curdled or thick- 
 ened." The Tamul translation has this, " dregs stirred 
 up," i. e. sediment shaken together well thickened. Of 
 people who are in great straits, of those who are a strange 
 compound of good and evil, of things which are difficult to 
 understand, it is said, " Ah ! this is all kullumbin-vandal," 
 i, e. stirred up dregs. This appears to have been the state 
 of the Jews, and they wanted to show that the Lord would 
 neither do good nor evil; that in him was not any distinct 
 character; and that he would not regard them in their 
 thickened and mixed condition; that though they were 
 joined to the heathen, it was not of any consequence. '* I 
 will search Jerusalem with candles ;" thus were they mis- 
 taken in their false hopes. Does a man declare his inno- 
 cence of any crime, the accusers say, " We will search thee 
 with lamps." "Tes, yes, I will look into that affair with 
 lamps." " What ! have your lamps gone out 1 You see 
 I am not guilty." — Roberts. 
 
566 
 
 ZEPHANIAH, 
 
 Chap. 2. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 4. For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashlce- 
 lon a desolation ; they shall drive out Ashdod 
 at the noonday, and Ekron shall be rooted up. 
 
 The city of Ashkelon or Ascalon, was one of the five 
 principalities of the ancient Philistines : it is situated on 
 the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, between Azotus, or 
 Ashdod, and Gaza. Ashkelon is mentioned in Judg. i. 
 18, as having been taken by the tribe of Judah ; after- 
 ward it fell successively under the dominion of the As- 
 syrians, Persians, Macedonians, and Romans. This city 
 had a temple dedicated to Venus Urania, which was de- 
 stroyed by the Scythians, six hundred and thirty years be- 
 fore the Christian era ; another dedicated to Derceto, a tu- 
 telary deity of the Philistines; and another consecrated to 
 Apollo, of which Herod, the grandfather of Herod the 
 Great, was priest : the latter was born here, and from this 
 circumstance he has sometimes been called the Ascalonite. 
 In the early ages of Christianity, Ascalon was a bishop's 
 see. During the crusades it was a place of considerable 
 importance ; but having been repeatedly captured and re- 
 captured by the Saracens, it was finally reduced to a heap 
 of ruins. Though it was one of the chief maritime cities 
 of Phenicia, at present it does not exhibit the least vestige 
 of a port. 
 
 " The position of Ashkelon is strong : the walls are built 
 on the top of a ridge of rock that winds round the town in a 
 semicircular direction, and terminates ,at each end in the 
 sea. The foundations remain all the way round ; the walls 
 are of great thickness, and in some places of considerable 
 height, and flanked with towers at different distances. 
 Patches of the wall preserve their original elevation ; but 
 in general it is ruined throughout, and the materials lie 
 scattered around the foundation, or rolled down the hill on 
 either side. The ground falls within the walls, in the same 
 manner that it does without : the town was situated in the 
 hollow, so that no part of it could be seen from the outside 
 of the walls. Numerous small ruined houses still remain, 
 with small gardens interspersed among them. In the highest 
 part of the town are the remains of a Christian convent 
 close upon the sea, with a well of excellent water beside it. 
 The sea beats strongly against the bank on which the con- 
 vent stands ; and six prostrate columns of gray granite, 
 half covered with the waves, attest the effects of its en- 
 croachments. There is no bay or harbour for shipping; 
 but a small harbour, advancing a little way into the town 
 towards its eastern extremity, seems to have been formed 
 for the accommodation of such small craft as were used in 
 the better days of the city." The water, seen in the fore- 
 ground of our view, is the result of the overflowing of a 
 torrent during the rainy season, the channel of which is 
 viry at other times. 
 
 Ashkelon was one of the proudest satrapies of the Philis- 
 tines : 710W there is not an inhabitant within its walls ; and 
 the predictions of Jeremiah, Amos, Zephaniah, and Zecha- 
 riah, have been literallv fulfilled :— " Ashkelon is cut off 
 with the remnant of their valley." (Jer. xlvii. 5.) He 
 *' that holdeth the sceptre" has been cut off " from Ashke- 
 lon." (Amos i. 8.) " Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon 
 a desolation." (Zeph. ii. 4.) " The king shall perish from 
 Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited." (Zech. ix. 5.) 
 At the time the two last-cited predictions were uttered, both 
 these satrapies of the Philistines were in a flourishing con- 
 dition ; each the capital of its own petty state : " and noth- 
 ing but the prescience of heaven could pronounce on which 
 of the two, and in what manner, the vial of his wrath should 
 thus be poured out." Gaza is still a large and respectable 
 town, but truly without a king : the walls of Ashkelon are 
 broken down, its lofty towers lie scattered on the ground, 
 and the houses are lying in ruins without a human inhabit- 
 ant to occupy them, or to build them up. " How is the 
 wrath of man made to praise his Creator I Hath He said. 
 
 and shall He not do it 1 The oracle was delivered by the 
 prophet (Zechariah) more than five hundred years before 
 the Christian era, and we behold its accomplishment eigh- 
 teen hundred years after that event, and see with our eyes 
 that the king has perished from Gaza, and that Ashkelon is 
 not inhabited ; and were there no others on which the mind 
 could confidently rest, from the fulfilment of this one pro- 
 phecy even the most skeptical may be assured, that all that 
 is predicted in the sacred volume shall come to pass." - 
 
 HORNE. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the seacoast shall be dwellings, and 
 cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks. 
 
 Archbishop Newcome has remarked, that many manu- 
 scripts and three editions have a single letter in one of these 
 words more than appears in the common editions; which, 
 instead of cherith, gives us a word which signifies cares ; 
 and he thus renders the words : and the seacoast shall be 
 sheep-cotes ; caves for shepherds, and folds for flocks. This 
 translation wi.l appear perfectly correct, if it be considered 
 that the mountains bordering on the Syrian coast are re- 
 markable for the number of caves in them. In the history 
 of the crusades it is particularly mentioned that a number 
 of persons retired with their wives and children, their flocks 
 and herds, into subterraneous caves, to find shelter from the 
 enemy. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 7. And the coast shall be for the remnant of 
 the house of Judah ; they shall feed thereupon : 
 in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down 
 in the evening : for the Lord their God shall 
 visit them, and turn away their captivity. 
 
 An extract from Dr. Chandler's Travels furnishes a 
 very lively comment on these words : ** Our horses were 
 disposed among the walls and rubbish, (of Ephesus,) with 
 their saddles on ; and a mat was spread for us on the ground. 
 We sat here in the open air while supper was preparing ; 
 when suddenly fires began to blaze up among the bushes, 
 and we saw the villagers collected about them in savage 
 groups, or passing to and fro, with lighted brands for 
 torches. The flames, with the stars and a pale moon, af- 
 forded us a dim prospect of ruin and desolation. A shrill 
 owl, called cucuvaia from its note, with a nighthawk, 
 flitted near us ; and a jackal cried mournfully, as if for- 
 saken by his companions on the mountain." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 9. Therefore, as I live saith the Lord of 
 hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be 
 as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Go- 
 morrah, even the breeding of nettles, and salt- 
 pits, and a perpetual desolation : the residue of 
 my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of 
 my people shall possess them. 
 
 See on Jer. 17. 5, 6, 
 
 Ver. 14. And flocks shall lie down in the midst 
 of her, all the beasts of the nations : both the 
 cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the 
 upper lintels of it ; their voice shall sing in the 
 windows ; desolation shall he in the thresholds : 
 
 . for he shall uncover the cedar-work. 
 
 Margin, " knobs or chapiters." Chardin, describing the 
 magnificent pillars that he found at Persepolis, tells us, that 
 the storks (birds respected by the Persians^ make their 
 nests on the tops of these columns with great boldness, and 
 are in no danger of being dispossessed. — Burder. 
 
ZECHARIAH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 8. I saw by night, and behold a man riding 
 
 upon a red horse, and he stood among the 
 
 j myrtle-trees that were in the bottom : and be- 
 
 ' hind him were there red norses, speckled, and 
 
 white. 
 
 The word here translated red signifies blood-red, not 
 my kind of bright bay, or other colour usual among horses. 
 3ut the custom of painting or dying animals for riding, 
 (vhether asses or horses, explains the nature of this de- 
 fcription. Tavernier, speaking of a city which he visited, 
 says, " five hundred paces from the gate of the city we 
 net a young man of a good family, for he was attended by 
 wo servants, and rode upon an ass, the hinder part of 
 vhich was painted red." And Mungo Park informs us, that 
 he Moorish sovereign Ali, always rode upon a milk-white 
 lorse, with its tail died red. See also Zech. vi. 2. Rev. vi. 
 
 :. — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 4. And said unto him. Run, speak to this 
 young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabit- 
 1 ed as towns without walls for the multitude of 
 men and cattle therein: 5. For I, saith the 
 Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round 
 about, and will be the glory in the midst of her. 
 
 ?he promise of God's being to Jerusalem, or his church, 
 a nil of fire, seems to be spoken in allusion to the manner 
 in/hich travellers in desert parts of the earth defend them- 
 seles in the nighttime from the attacks of ferocious ani- 
 ms. They place fires in various directions around their 
 enimpment. This was our constant practice in the wilds 
 of frica, when timber to burn could be obtained. While 
 theres kept burning, we were in perfect safety, as no un- 
 doiisticated animal, however ferocious, will approach 
 neaio fire. Something in its brightness seems to give 
 alai. — Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 V. 2. And the Lord said unto Satan, The 
 Lord rebuke thee, O Satan ; even the Lord 
 hat hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee : is not 
 his a brand plucked out of the fire ? 
 
 Wsn a man has had a very narrow escape from dan- 
 ^r oifrota death, he is called a firebrand! Thus, when 
 tie chlera rages, should only one in a family escape, he is 
 lamed" he firebrand." When a person talks of selling 
 lis proorty in consequence of not having an heir, people 
 say, " Sd it not, there will be yet a firebrand to inherit it." 
 •' Alas ! .las ! my relations are" all dead, I am a firebrand." 
 
 — ROBEFS. 
 
 Ver. ?. Now Joshua was clothed with filthy gar- 
 mats, and stood before the angel. 
 
 It wasasual, especially among the Romans, when a man 
 was chafed with a capital crime, and during his arraign- 
 ment, to et down his hair, suffer his beard to grow long, to 
 wear filly ragged garments, and appear in a very dirty 
 and sordd habit ; on account of which they were called 
 sordidati When the person accused was brought into 
 court to le tried, even his near relations, friends, and ac- 
 quaintanes, before the court voted, appeared with dishev- 
 elled hail and clothed with garments foul and out of fash- 
 ion, weepng, crying, and deprecating punishment. The 
 
 accused sometimes appeared before the judges clothed ib 
 black, and his head covered with dust. In allusion to this 
 ancient custom, the prophet Zechariah represents Joshua, 
 the high-priest, when he appeared before the Lord, and 
 Satan stood at his right hand to accuse him, as clothed with 
 filthy garments. After the cause was carefully examined, 
 and all parties impartially heard, the public crier, by cona- 
 mand of the presiding magistrate, ordered the judge* to 
 bring in their verdict. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 10. In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, 
 shall ye call every man his neighbour under 
 the vine and under the fig-tree. 
 
 See on Ps. 78, 47, and I Kings 1. 9. 
 
 The oriental banquet, in consequence of the intense heat, 
 is often spread upon the verdant turf, beneath the shade of 
 a tree, where the streaming rivulet supplies the company 
 wfth wholesome water, and excites a gentle breeze to cool 
 their burning temples. The vine and the fig, it appears 
 from the faithful page of inspiration, are preferred on such 
 joyous occasions. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 10. For who hath despised the day of small 
 thmgs ? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the 
 plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those 
 seven ; they are the eyes of the Lord, which 
 run to and fro through the whole earth. 
 
 The margin has, instead of " they shall rejoice," " or 
 since the seven eyes of the Lord shall." (iii. 9, " Seven 
 eyes.") Dr. Boothroyd says, these eyes represent " the per- 
 fect oversight and providence of God," which I doubt not is 
 the true meaning. It is a curious fact that the sun whidi 
 shines seven times in the course of the week, i^ spoken of 
 as the " seven eyes" of the deity, because theie is an eye 
 for each day. Thus, the Sunday, the " first eye" of God 
 shines, and so on through the rest of the days. In the 9th 
 verse mention is made of laying the foundation stone of a 
 temple for Jehovah, and again in the 10th verse it is asked, 
 " Who hath despised the day of small things V saying it is 
 ONLY the foundation, this is a small beginning : fear not, 
 for the " seven eyes" of the Lord are over the work. His 
 good providence shall accomplish the whole, because be 
 has an eye for each day of the week. Has a man suffered 
 a great evil, has an antagonist triumphed over another, 
 either in a court of justice or any other way, he says, in 
 talking about his misfortunes, " God has lost his eyes, or I 
 should not have fallen into this trouble." " Well, friend, 
 how is this 1 I hear you have gained the day." — " True, 
 true, the eyes of God were upon me." Should there not 
 have been rain for some time, the people say, " God has no 
 eyes in these days," i. e. he does not take care of us. In the 
 book Neethe-veanpd it is said, " To all there are two eyes ; 
 to the learned there' are three ; to the giver of alms there 
 are seven eyes, (alluding to each day ;) but to those who 
 through penance have received gracious gifts, there are in- 
 numerable eyes."— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 9. Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, 
 and, behold, there came out two women, and 
 the wind was in their wings ; (for they had 
 wings like the wings of a stork ;), and' they 
 lifted up the ephah between the earth and the 
 heaven. 
 
 In the vision of which these words are apart, the prophe. 
 
568 
 
 ZECHARIAH. 
 
 Chap. 8—11, 
 
 beheld in fearful perspective, the future calamities of his 
 nation. The ephah represented the measure of iniquity 
 which the Jews were fast filling up by their increasing 
 enormities. The woman whom he saw sitting in the midst 
 of the ephah, signified the Jewish nation in their degene- 
 rate state ; this woman the angel calls wickedness, the ab- 
 stract being put for the concrete, the wicked people of the 
 Jews, to whom God was about to render according to their 
 works. Into the ephah the woman is thrust down, and a 
 talent of lead cast upon the mouth of it, to keep her a close 
 prisoner; denoting that the condemned sinner who has 
 filled up the measure of his iniquity, can neither escape 
 from the curse of God, nor endure the misery which it in- 
 flicts. The ephah containing this mystical woman, he now 
 sees carried away into a far country ; that is, the nation of 
 the Jews overthrown, their civil and religious polity extin- 
 guished, their temple burned, their priests slain, and the 
 poor remains of their people scattered over the face of all 
 the earth. This great and terrible destruction is accom- 
 plished by the Roman emperors, Vespasian and Titus, sym- 
 bolized by " two women who had wings like a stork," 
 which are sufficiently powerful to waft that bird to a very 
 distant country. These symbolical women lifted up the 
 ephah between the earth and the heaven ; which was ful- 
 filled when the Roman armies, with a rapidity resembling 
 the flight of a bird of passage, came up against the Jews, 
 now ripe for destruction, and swept them from the land of 
 their fathers into regions far remote, from which they were 
 not, as in the first captivity, to return after seventy years, 
 but to remain in a state of depression and suffering for 
 many generations. Under the curse of incensed heaven 
 they still remain, and must do so, till the fulness of the 
 Gentiles be corne in, and then all Israel shall be saved. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 7. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, I 
 will save my people from the east country, and 
 from the west country. 
 
 The margin has, instead of " west country," " country of 
 the going down of the sun." The form in the margin is 
 ■exceedingly common; thus people do not always say, We 
 are to go to the east or west, but " to the side where is 
 the going down," or " to the side where is the ascending 
 nlace." " In what direction are you going 1" — " To the 
 place of the going down."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. These are the things that ye shall do. 
 Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour: 
 execute the judgment of truth and peace in 
 your gates. 
 
 It appears from the above, and other passages of scrip- 
 ture, that the kings of Israel distributed justice, or sat in 
 judgment to decide causes that might be brought before 
 them, at the gate,— that the gate of the city was the place 
 where these causes came before them, and where they pro- 
 nounced their decision ;— that the king held his councils at 
 the gate, or where the elders or chiefs met the king, to con- 
 sider the affairs of the nation ; — and that, in fact, all their 
 principal assemblies were held at the gates of the citv. 
 This Jewish custom still exists high in the interior of South 
 Africa. While in Kurreechane, a city about twelve or 
 thirteen hundred miles up from the Cape of Good Hope, I 
 was told that a cause was going to b^ brought before the 
 king. Being anxious to witnes's it, I was led in haste to 
 The gate, where I saw the king sit down at ihe right side of 
 it, with his secretary on his right hand, and the prosecutor, 
 or coraplainer, on his left, who stated his case across to the 
 secretary. During his narrating his case, the king was look- 
 ing about as if not attending to what was said, but I saw 
 from his eye that he was attending to what, for form's 
 sake, was addressed to the secretary. When the party had 
 finished what he had to say, the secretary repeated the 
 whole to (he king, as if he had been entirely ignorant of 
 the matter. The king immediately gave judgment. — 
 Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 4. OtU of him came forth the corner, out of 
 
 him the nail, out of him the battle-bow, out of 
 
 him every oppressor together. 
 See on Is. 22. 23. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Ver. 1. Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the Sra 
 
 may devour thy cedars. 
 See on Ps. 72. 16. 
 
 Ver. 1. Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fiie 
 may devour thy cedars. 2. Howl, fir-tree, for 
 the cedar is fallen ; because all the mighty are 
 spoiled : howl, O ye oaks of Bashan ; foi the 
 forest of the vintage is come down. 
 
 The mountainous range of Lebanon was celebrated ;br 
 the extent of its forests, and particularly for the size aid 
 excellence of its cedars. The ascent from the village of 
 Eden, or Aden, near Tripoli, to the spot where the ceda-s 
 grow, is inconsiderable. This distance is computed y 
 Captains Irby and Mangles to be about five miles, allowiig 
 for the windings of the road, which is very rugged, axi 
 passes over hill and dale. These far-famed trees are siU- 
 ated on a small eminence in a valley at the foot of the high- 
 est part of the mountain : the land on the mountain's side hs 
 a steril aspect, and the trees are remarkable by being i- 
 together in one clump. By the natives they are called A- 
 sileban. There are, in fact, two generations of trees ; te 
 oldest are large and massy, four, five, or even seven tnins 
 springing from one base ; they rear their heads to an enff- 
 mous height, spreading their branches afar; and they re 
 not found in any other part of Lebanon, thooigh young tres 
 are occasionally met with. 
 
 The ancient cedars — those which superstition has on- 
 secrated as holy, and which are the chief object of.he 
 traveller's curiosity, have been gradually diminishin in 
 number for the last three centuries. In 1550, Belloni fond 
 them to be twenty-eight in number: Rauwolf, in )75, 
 counted twenty-four; Dandini, in 1600, and Thevenot, 90ui 
 fifty years after, enumerated twenty-three, which IVtun- 
 drell, in 1697, states were reduced to sixteen. Dr. Poccke, 
 in 1738, found fifteen standing, and one which had bei re- 
 cently blown down. Burckhardt, in 1810, counted even 
 or twelve ; twenty-five others were very large ones^bout 
 fifty of middling size, and more than three hundred sailer 
 and youngones. Lastly, in 1818, Dr. Richardson foui that 
 the old cedars, " the glory of Lebanon," were no mo than 
 seven in number. In the course of another centu^ it is 
 probable that not a vestige of them will remain, .-d the 
 predictions of the prophets will then be most literfy ful- 
 filled : — " Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down. Ti high 
 ones of stature shall be hewn down: Lebanon s'H fall 
 mightily." (Isa. xxxiii. 9 ; x. 33, 34.) *« Upon theaount- 
 ains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen to the 
 end that none of all the trees by the water exalt thaselves 
 for their height, neither shoot up the top among t3 thick 
 boughs." (Ezek. xxxi. 12, 14.) " Open thy doonO Le- 
 banon, that the fire may destroy thy cedars. Theedai is 
 fallen ; the forest of the vintage is come dovm." (Zedi. 
 xi. 1, 2.) 
 
 The trunks of the old trees are covered wi^'h tb nam^s 
 of travellers and other persons who have visited \hm, sone 
 of which go as far back as 1640. These truric are de- 
 scribed by Burckhardt as seeming to be quite ead ; thei| 
 wood is of a gray teint. Maundrell, in 1697, mesured on« 
 which he found to be twelve yards and six inchs in girt" 
 and thirty-seven yards in the spread of its bough;: at above 
 five or six yards from the ground it was dividd into five 
 limbs, each of which was equal to a great tree. Forty-onel 
 years afterward, (viz. 1738,") Dr. Pococke mesured one^ 
 which had the roundest body, though not the Irgest, and 
 found it twenty-four feet in circumference ; anther, with 
 a sort of triple body and of a triangular figure measured 
 twelve feet on each side. In 1818, Dr. Richarlson mea.s- 
 ured one, which he afterward discovered was lot the lar- 
 gest in the clump, and found it to be thirty-two eet in cir- 
 cumference. Finally, in 1824, Mr. M.-idox rfeled under 
 the branches of a cedar, which measured twenty-seven feet 
 iij circumference, a little way from the ground: ifter which 
 he measured the largest of the trees now staniing, which 
 
Chap. 11—14. 
 
 ZECHARIAH. 
 
 569 
 
 he found to be thirty-nine or forty feet in circumference : it 
 has three very large- stems, and seven large branches, with 
 various smaller ones. 
 
 The cedars of .Lebanon are frequently mentioned in the 
 sacred writings. Besides their uncommon size and beauty 
 of shape and foliage, (which must be borne in mind in order 
 to enter fully into the meaning of the sacred writers,) they 
 send forth a fragrant odour, which seems to be intended by 
 "the smell of Lebanon." (Hos. xiv, 6. Sol. Song iv. 11.) 
 Its timber was used in the erection of the first and second 
 temple at Jerusalem, as well as of the palace of Solomon ; 
 and in the last-mentioned edifice, so much cedar-wood ap- 
 pears to have been used, that it was called " the house of the 
 forest of Lebanon." (1 Kinsrs vii. 2; x. 19.) The Tyrians 
 used it in ship-building, (Ezek. xxvii. 5, 6.)— Horne. 
 
 [See engraving of the Cedars op Lebanon, iw the Compre- 
 hensive Commentary.] 
 
 Ver. 7. And I will feed the flock of slaughter, 
 even you, O poor of the flock. And I took 
 unto me two staves ; the one I called Beauty, 
 and the other I called Bands : and I fed the 
 flock. 
 
 Written obligations were cancelled in different ways; 
 one was by blotting or drawing a line across them, and an- 
 other by striking them through with a nail; in both cases 
 the bond was rendered useless, and ceased to be valid. 
 These customs the apostle applies to the death of Christ in 
 his epistle to the Colossians : " Blotting out the handwri- 
 ting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary 
 to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross." 
 A rod was sometimes broken, as a sign that the covenant 
 into which they had entered was nullified. A trace of this 
 ancient custom is still discernible in our own country : the 
 lord steward of England, when he resigns his commission, 
 breaks his wand of office, to denote the termination of his 
 power. Agreeably to this practice, the prophet Zechariah 
 broke the staves of Beauty and Bands, the symbols of God's 
 covenant with ancient Israel, to show them, that in conse- 
 quence of their numerous and long-continued iniquities, he 
 withdrew his distinguishing favour, and no longer ac- 
 knowledged them as his peculiar people. This is the ex- 
 position given by the prophet himself: "And I took my 
 staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my 
 covenant which I had made with all the people ; and it was 
 broken in that day. Then I cut asunder my other staff, 
 even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between 
 Judah and Israel." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 6. In that day will I make the governors of 
 Judah like a hearth of fire among the wood, 
 and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they 
 shall devour all the people round about, on the 
 right hand and on the left : and Jerusalem shall 
 be inhabited again in her own place, even in 
 Jerusalem, 
 
 See on Joel 1. 19. 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 Ver. 4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that 
 the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his 
 vision, when he hath prophesied : neither shall 
 they wear a rough garment to deceive. 
 
 See on Is. 20. 3. 
 
 Ver. 6. And one shall say unto him. What are 
 these wounds in thy hands ? Then he shall 
 answer, Those with which I was wounded in 
 the house of my friends. 
 
 See on Lev. 19. 36. 
 
 Ver. 9. And I will bring the third part ihrough 
 the fire, and will refine them as silver is re- 
 fined, and will try them as gold is tried. 
 72 
 
 The people of the East try the quality of gold by the 
 TOUCH. Thus, they have a small stone on which they first 
 rub a needle of known quality : they then take the article 
 they wish to try, and rub it near to the mark left by the 
 other, and by comparing the two, they judge of the value of 
 that which they " try." In those regions there are not any* 
 MARKS by which we can judge of the standard, except in 
 the way alluded to. Under such circumstances, there can- 
 not be any wonder that there is inuch which is not " fine 
 gold ;" and such is the skill of some of the goldsmiths, they 
 often deceive the most practised eye. The grand secret of 
 ALCHYMY, by which other metals could be transmuted into 
 gold, has never been fully divulged, but multitudes be- 
 lieve that certain individuals have this knowledge. Nor 
 was that invaluable acquirement confined to Hindoos; for 
 " Diocletian caused a diligent inquiry to be made for all 
 the ancient books which treated of the admirable art of 
 making gold and silver, and without pity committed them 
 to the flames, apprehensive, as we are assured, lest the 
 opulence of the Egyptians should inspire them with coi.-fi- 
 dence to rebel against the empire." "The conquest of 
 Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science over the 
 globe." 
 
 Numbers in the East waste their entire property in trying 
 to acquire this wonderful secret. Not long ago a party of 
 the " gold-makers," having heard of a very charitable man, 
 went to him and said they had heard of his good deeds, ana 
 in order to enable him to be more benevolent, they offered, 
 at a trifling expense, to make him a large quantity of gold. 
 The kind-hearted creature was delighted at the thought, 
 and furnished the required materials, among which, it must 
 be observed, was a considerable quantity of gold. The 
 time came for making the precious metal, and the whole 
 was cast into the crucible, the impostors taking care to put 
 in an extra quantity of gold. When it was nearly ready, 
 the alchymists threw in some stalks of an unknown plant, 
 and pronounced certain incantations : after which the con- 
 tents were turned out, and there the astonished man saw a 
 great deal more gold than he had advanced. Such an op- 
 portunity was not to be lost; he therefore begged them to 
 make him a much larger quantity, and after some objec- 
 tions the knaves consented, taking good care immediately 
 to decamp Avith the whole amount. An Armenian gentle- 
 man, who died at the age of 82, as is recorded in the Mad- 
 ras Gazette of July 22, 1830, had expended the whole of 
 his property, amounting to 30,000 pagodas, in search of 
 the philosopher's stone, but left the world a beggar. 
 
 " With crucible and furnace, bursting on his trunli, 
 His last remains of blissful fervour sunk." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 1 8. And if the family of Egypt go not up 
 and come not, that have no rain, there shall be 
 the plague wherewith the Lord will smite the 
 heathen that come not up to keep the feast ot 
 tabernacles. 
 
 See on 1 Kings 17, 1. 
 
 Ver. 20. In that day shall there be upon the bells 
 of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE 
 LORD; and the pots in the Lord's house 
 shall be like the bowls before the altar. 
 
 The finest breed of Arabian horses is in this country, and 
 has furnished us with those we make use of for the turf. 
 They are here chiefly articles of luxury, used only in war, 
 or for parade. The governor has a large stud opposite the 
 house where I live, which affords me much pleasure, as I 
 pay them frequent visits. They are small, but finely sha- 
 ped and extremely active. Of this I had an opportunity of 
 judging yesterday, when the cavalry had a field-day in the 
 great square, which, from the mode of exercise, called to 
 my mind the idea of our ancient tilts and tournaments. 
 The horses were sumptuously caparisoned, being adorned 
 with gold and silver trappings, bells hung roitnd their necks, 
 and rich housings. The riders were in handsome Turkish 
 dresses, with white turbans, and the whole formed to me a 
 new and pleasing spectacle. (Rooke's Travels to the 
 Coast of Arabii F'jlix.)— Burder. 
 
MALACHI 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 1. The burden of the word of the Lord to 
 Israel by Malachi. 
 
 The prophecy is here called " burden," a term which 
 frequently occurs elsewhere, jmd which is usually under- 
 stood as equivalent to " burdensome prophecy," or such as 
 denounced heavy and grievous things. But from the fol- 
 lowing passage of Jeremiah, it would seem that that inter- 
 pretation does not universally hold : " And as for the pro- 
 phet, and the priest, and the people, that shall say, The 
 burden of the Lord, I will even punish that man and his 
 house. Thus shall ye say every one to his neighbour, and 
 every one to his brother. What hath the Lord answered 1 
 and. What hath the Lord spoken 1 And the burden of the 
 Lord shall he mention no more : for every man's word 
 shall be his burden ; for ye have perverted the words of 
 the living God, of the Lord of hosts our God. Thus shalt 
 thou say to the prophet, What hath the Lord answered 
 thee 1 and, What hath the Lord spoken 1 But since ye 
 say, The burden of the Lord; therefore thus saith the 
 Lord, Because you say this word. The burden of the Lord, 
 and I have sent unto you, saying, Ye shall not say. The 
 burden of the Lord." (Jer. xxiii. 34—38.) This has evi- 
 dently the air of a prohibition against taking the word in 
 that unfavourable sense. The original term Tfuissa, from 
 a root signifying to bear, carry, take up, is of doubtful im- 
 port, and sometimes signifies a burden, and sometimes what 
 was borne, carried, or delivered from one to another, whether 
 a thing or a word, and so was used for a prophecy or mes- 
 sage from God, or other speech or doctrine. The Jews, 
 therefore, regarding the messages received from God, and 
 delivered to them by the prophets, as things grievous and 
 burdensome, called the word thus spoken, a burden, by way 
 of reproach, meaning that it always portended evil, and 
 never good, or in other words, a calamitous prophecy. But 
 God, seeing the wickedness of their hearts, charges them 
 with perverting his word, and forbids them any nc ore so to 
 abuse it. We infer that the term does not origii.ally and 
 exclusively imply a grievous and heavy burden, but simply 
 a message, whether its import were joyous or afflictive. 
 This is confirmed by Zech. xii. 1, where it is prefixed to 
 the promise of good things. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 4. Whereas Edom saith, We are impover- 
 ished, but we will return and build the desolate 
 places ; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They 
 shall build, but I will throw down ; and they 
 shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, 
 The people against whom the Lord hath in- 
 dignation for ever. 
 
 See on Jer. 49. 15—17, and Joel 3. 19. 
 
 Astonishment, for which language can scarcely find 
 utterance, is the sentiment expressed by every tmveller 
 who has been able to explore the magnificent ruins of the 
 once proud metropolis of Idumea or Edom. A narrow and 
 circuitous defile, surrounded on each side by lofty and 
 precipitous or perpendicular rocks, forms the approach to 
 the desolate yet magnificent scene delineated in our engra- 
 ving. The ruins of the city here burst upon the view in 
 their full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren 
 craggy precipices, from which ntimerous ravines and val- 
 leys branch out in all directions ; the sides of the mount- 
 ains, covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs 
 and private dwellings, present altogether the most shigular 
 scene that can well be conceived. In further confirmation 
 of the identity of the site, and the accuracy of the applica- 
 tion of the prophecy of Jeremiah, it may be added, that 
 
 the name of this capital, in all the various languages U 
 which it occurs, impHes a rock. 
 
 The theatre, which is seen on the left of our view, is the 
 first object which presents itself to the traveller on entering 
 Petra from the eastward. Captains Irby and Mangles 
 state that it was entirely hewn out of the live rock. The 
 scene was unfortunately built, and not excavated. Frag- 
 ments of columns are strewed on the ground in front. 
 This theatre is surrounded by sepulchres. Every avenue 
 leading to it is full of them ; and it may be safely affirmed, 
 that one hundred of the largest dimensions are visible from 
 it. Indeed, throughout almost every quarter of this me- 
 tropolis, the depositories of the dead must have presented 
 themselves constantly to the eyes of the inhabitants, and 
 have almost outnumbered the inhabitants of the living. 
 There is a long line of them, not far from the theatre, at 
 such an angle as not to be comprehended from the view of 
 it, but which must have formed a principal object for the 
 city itself. 
 
 " The largest of the sepulchres had originally three sto- 
 ries, of which the lowest presented four portals, with large 
 columns set between them ; and the second and third, a 
 row of eighteen Ionic columns each, attached to the facade : 
 the live rock being insufficient for the total elevation, a 
 part of the story was grafted on in masonry, and is for the 
 most part fallen away. The four portals of the basement 
 open into as many chambers, but all sepulchral, and without 
 any communication between them. In one were three re- 
 cesses, which seem to have been ornamented with marble . 
 or some other extraneous material. 
 
 " Of all the ruins of Petra, the mausoleums and sepul- 
 chres are among the most remarkable ; and they give the 
 clearest indication of ancient and long-continued royalty 
 and of courtly grandeur. Their immense number corrob- 
 orates the accounts given of their successive kings and 
 princes by Moses and Strabo, though a period of eighteen 
 hundred years intervened between the dates of their re- 
 spective records concerning them. The structure of the 
 sepulcnres also shows that many of them are of a more 
 recent date. Great must have been the opulence of a city 
 which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of 
 its rulers. But the long line of the kings and nobles of 
 Idumea has for ages been cut ofi": they are without any 
 representative now, without any memorial but the multi- 
 tude and magnificence of their unvisited sepulchres. 'No 
 more shall they boast of the renown of the kingdom ; and 
 all her princes shall utterly fail.' (Bp. Lowth's translation 
 of Isa. xxxiv. 12.) 
 
 " Amid the mausoleums and sepulchres, the remains of 
 temples or palaces, and the multiplicity of tombs, — which 
 all form, as it were, the grave of Idumea, where its ancient 
 splendour is interred, — there are edifices, the Greek and 
 Roman architecture of which decides that they were built 
 long posterior to the era of the prophets." — " They shall 
 Imild, but I will throw down." (Mai. i. 4.)— Horne. 
 
 Ver. 7. Ye offer polluted bread upon my altar; 
 and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee ? 
 In that ye say, The table of the Lord is con- 
 temptible. 
 
 " In that ye say." They said, in effect, that the altar of 
 Jehovah was vile and contemptible, by offering on it torn, 
 blind, lame, and sick victims. — Newcomb. 
 
 Ver. 8. And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is 
 it not evil ? and if ye offer the lame and sick, 
 is it not evil ? offer it now unto thy governor ; 
 will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy per- 
 son ? saith the Lord of hosts. 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 MALACHI. 
 
 571 
 
 Though things of very little value are sometimes offered 
 as presents, those to whom presents are made do not think 
 themselves always obliged graciously to accept every thing 
 that is brought, or even to dissemble their dislike ; they 
 frequently reject the present, and refuse the favour sought. 
 The behaviour of an aga in Egypt to Dr. Pococke, de- 
 monstrates this ; as does also this passage of Capt. Norden : 
 " The cashef of Esna was encamped in this place. He 
 made us come ashore. I waited immediately upon him, 
 with some small presents. He received me very civilly, 
 and ordered coffee to be served me. But he refused abso- 
 lutely what I offered him as a present, and let me know 
 by the interpreter, that in the places from whence we were 
 come, we had given things of greater value, and that we 
 ought not to show less respect to him." Something of the 
 like nature appears in many other passages in travels. 
 
 If a present was not somewhat proportionate to the quali- 
 ty of the person applied to, the circumstances of him that 
 offered it, and the value of the favour asked, it was reject- 
 ed. Lambs and sheep were often given as presents. So 
 the cashef I have been speaking of, made Norden and his 
 company a present the next day of two very fat sheep, to- 
 gether with a great basket of bread. The reys, or boat- 
 men, that had carried them up the Nile, we are told, in 
 like manner, came to see them three days before, and made 
 them a present of an excellent sheep, together with a basket 
 of Easter bread. Perhaps we may be ready to imagine 
 presents of this kind were only made to travellers that 
 wanted provisions ; but this would be a mistake. Sir John 
 Chardin, in his MS. expressly tells us, " it is the custom 
 of the East for poor people, and especially those that live 
 in the country, to make presents to their lords of lambs 
 and sheep, as an offering, tribute, or succession. Presents 
 to men, like offerings to God, expiate offences." So D'Ar- 
 vieux mentions lambs among the things offered to him as 
 presents, when he officiated as secretary to the great emir 
 of the Arabs. The Jewish people were in a low state in 
 the time of Malachi, and almost entirely engaged in coun- 
 try business. 
 
 How energetic, if we assemble these circumstances to- 
 gether, is the expostulation of the prophet ! " If ye offer 
 the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil ? And if ye offer the 
 lame and the sick, is it not evil 1 Offer it now unto thy 
 governor, will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy per- 
 son V Mai. i. 8. When they made presents of lambs or 
 .sheep, they brought those that were very fat : would a Jew- 
 ish governor have accepted one that was blind, and conse- 
 quently half starved 1 or pining with lameness or sick- 
 ness 1 — Harmer. 
 
 Ver, 13. Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness 
 is it ! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the Lord 
 of hosts : and ye brought that which was torn, 
 and the lame, and the sick ; thus ye brought an 
 offering : should I accept this of your hand ? 
 saith the Lord. 
 
 The margin has, instead of " and ye have snuffed at it," 
 " or whereas ye might have blown it away." The mar- 
 ginal reading is, I doubt not, the best. The Jews had com- 
 plained of the "weariness" of their duties: they were 
 tired of making offerings, and those they did offer were 
 '• polluted," or " lame," or " blind ;" whereas, instead of 
 those duties being burdensome, they were so light that 
 they might have blown them away. Does a person com- 
 plain of his numerous labours or "duties, another will ask, 
 " What are they 1 why, a breath will blow them away." 
 " Alas ! I have many things to attend to." — " Fy on you 
 for talking so ; if you blow on them they will go." — Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 8. Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and 
 spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of 
 your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away 
 with it. 
 
 In the 11th verse of this chapter, allusion is again made 
 to the heathenism of Judah : they had " married the daughter 
 of a strange god." " Dung upon your faces." What can 
 
 this refer iol Probably to the custom of the idolaters, of 
 spreading the ashes of cow-dung on their faces, and to the 
 marginal reference of Deut. xxix. 17, " dungy gods," on 
 which see the remarks. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 12. The Lord will cut off the man that 
 doeth this, the master and the scholar, out o^ 
 the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth 
 an offering unto the Lord of hosts. 
 
 " The master and the scholar." This should rather b« 
 rendered, "the watchman and the answerer," as Arias 
 Montanus has it, vigilantem et respondentem. The true 
 explanation is probably to be brought from the temple ser- 
 vice, in which there was appointed a constant watch, day 
 and night, by the Levites ; and among them this seems to 
 have belonged particularly to the singers, 1 Chron. ix. 33. 
 Now the watches in the East are, to this day, performed 
 by a loud cry from time to time, by the watchmen, one 
 after another, to mark the hour, and that very frequently, 
 in order to show that they are constantly attentive to their 
 duty. Tavernier remarks, that "the watchmen in the 
 camps go their rounds, crying one after another, " God is 
 one. He is merciful ;" and often add, " Take heed to your- 
 selves," The hundred and thirty-fourth Psalm gives us 
 an example of the temple-watch. The whole Psalm is 
 nothing more than the alternate cr^ of the two different 
 divisions of the watch. The allusion is similar in the 
 passage before us. (See Lowth on Is, Ixii. 6.)— Bush, 
 
 Ver. 14. Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the 
 Lord hath been witness between thee and the 
 wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast 
 dealt treacherously : yet is she thy companion, 
 and the wife of thy covenant, 15. And did 
 not he make one? Yet had he the residue of 
 the Spirit. And wherefore one? That he 
 might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed 
 to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously 
 against the wife of his youth. 
 
 " And did not he make one 1" This, Madan contends, 
 (Thelypthora, vol, 1, p. 135,) should be rendered, " and 
 did not one make 7" The mass of commentators, he re- 
 marks, misled by translators, understand the words as sig- 
 nifying that in the beginning God made but mie toomam ; 
 He had the residue of the spirit, i. e. of power, and therefore 
 could have made more women for Adam, if he had seen fit. 
 To this interpretation he objects, that the original word 
 nriN cannot signify one 'woman, inasmuch as it is not of the 
 feminine, but of the masculine gender. Besides which, 
 to read it in this manner requires an unnatural transposition 
 of the words. He prefers, therefore, the rendering, " Did 
 not one make 1" as v. 10, " Have we not all one Father 7 
 Did not one God create us 1 Did not one, or The one, make 
 both you and your Jewish wives 1 Did he not form both 
 of you naturally of the same seed of Abraham, and spirit- 
 uallyhyihe same holy dispensation and ordinances 1 And 
 he hath (or, hath he not) the residue of the spirit 7 i. e. 
 Hath he not the same power he ever had ? Is his hand 
 shortened at all so that he cannot complete your restora- 
 tion if he pleases, or punish you still more severely if ye 
 •continue disobedient to his wilH And wherefore onel 
 What did he seek 1 A godly seed ; or, Heb. a seed o/ 
 God, a holy seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, 
 i. e, to your temper, your affections. Curb your irregular 
 passions, and let none deal treacherously against the wife 
 of his youth, by putting her away, and taking these idola- 
 tresses ; for I the Lord hate putting away," 
 
 The consideration of the relation in which they stood 
 to Jehovah ; he their common Father, they his professing 
 children; was one argument against their separating. 
 Another was, that as the Lord sought a godly seed in their 
 offspring, by their l)eing devoted to him in their earliest 
 infancy, then brought up in the nurture and admonition ol 
 the Lord, this design would be defeated by their taking 
 idolatrous women, who, instead of devoting the children 
 to Jehovah, would be apt to bring them up to the worship 
 of their idols, and an wigodly seed would be the conse- 
 
572 
 
 MALACHL 
 
 Chap. 3, 4. 
 
 quence. Lastly, he had forbidden divorce from the begin- 
 ning, for he hateth putting away at any rate; but how 
 much more to see his own professing daughters put away, 
 that his own professing sons might marry the daughters of 
 a strange god. This was indeed doing an abominable 
 thing, which God hated.— Bush, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 1 4. Ye have said, It is vain to serve God : 
 and what profit is it that we have kept his or- 
 dinance, and that we have walked mournfully 
 before the Lord of hosts 1 
 
 The margin, for " mournfully," has, " in black." Here 
 we have another instance of the base ingratitude of the 
 people : " It is vain to serve God." — " In black." " My 
 iriend, why has your face become so black 1" " Alas ! my 
 sorrow, my sorrow ; therefore my face is full of blackness." 
 '' Yes, my sorrows are chased away, like dew before the 
 sun, and my face no longer gathers blackness." — Roberts, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 2. But unto you that fear my name shall the 
 Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his 
 wings : and ye shall go forth and grow up as 
 calves of the stall. 
 
 The late Mr. Robinson, of Cambridge, called upon a 
 friend just as he had received a letter from his son, who 
 was surgeon on board a vessel then lying off Smyrna. The 
 son mentioned to his father, that every morning about sun- 
 rise a fresh gale of air blew from the sea across the land, 
 and from its wholesomeness and utility in clearing the 
 
 mfected air, this wind is always called the Doctor. " Now," 
 says Mr. Robinson, " it strikes me that the prophet Maiachi, 
 who lived in that quarter of the world, might allude to this 
 circumstance, when he says. The Sun of righteousness shall 
 arise with healing in his wings. The Psalmist mentions 
 the wings of the wind, and it appears to me that this salu- 
 brious breeze, which attends the rising of the sun, may be 
 properly enough considered as the wings of the sun, which 
 contain such healing influences, rather than the beams ol 
 the sun, as the passage has been commonly understood." — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 3. And ye shall tread down the wricked; 
 for they shall be ashes under the soles of your 
 feet, in the day that I shall do this, saith the 
 Lord of hosts. 
 
 See on Is. 41. 25. 
 
 One sort of mortar made in the East is composed of one 
 part of sand, two of wood-ashes, and three of lime, wel. 
 mixed together, and beaten for three days and nights inces- 
 santly with wooden mallets. (Shaw.) Chardin mentions 
 this circumstance, and applies it to this passage of the 
 prophet, supposing there is an allusion in these words to 
 the making of mortar in the East, with ashes collected from 
 their baths. Some learned men have supposed the wicked 
 here are compared to ashes, because the prophet had been 
 speaking of their destruction under the notion of burning, 
 ver. 1 ; but the sacred writers do not always keep close to 
 those figures which they first propose ; the paragraph ol 
 Maiachi is a proof of this assertion, and if they had, he 
 would not have spoken of treading on the wicked like ashes 
 if it had not been customary in these times to tread ashes 
 which it seems was done to make mortar. — Harmer. 
 
 END OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 GENERAIi VIEW OF PETRA FROM THE NORTH-EAST.-Mal 1; 4. J«r. 49. 
 
J^<ji!it^. 
 
 BETIILETTT7,]\T. 
 
 Matt. 2:4. Page 575. 
 
THE 
 
 NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on 
 this wise: When as his mother Mary was 
 espoused to Joseph, before they came together, 
 she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Espousing or betrothing was a solemn promise of mar- 
 riage made by two persons, each to the other, at such a 
 distance of time as they agreed upon. The manner of 
 performing this espousal was either by a writing, or by a 
 piece of silver given to the bride, or by cohabitation. The 
 writing that was prepared on these occasions ran in this 
 form : " On such a day of such a month, in such a year, A, 
 the son of A, has said to B, the daughter of B, be thou my 
 spouse according to the law of Moses and the Israelites, 
 and I will give thee, for the portion of thy virginity, the 
 sum of two hundred zuzim, as it is ordained by the law. 
 And the said B has consented to become his spouse upon 
 these conditions, which the said A has promised to per- 
 form upon the day of marriage. To this the said A obliges 
 himself: and for this he engages all his goods, even as far 
 as the cloak which he wears upon his shoulder. Moreover, 
 he promises to perform all that is intended in contracts of 
 marriage in favour of the Israelitish women. Witnesses, 
 A, B, C." The promise by a piece of silver, and without 
 writing, was made before witnesses, when the young man 
 jRiid to his mistress, " Receive this piece of silver, as a 
 jfledge that you shall become my spouse." The engage- 
 ment by cohabitation, according to the rabbins, was allowed 
 py the law, but it had been wisely forbidden by the ancients, 
 fecause of the abuses that might happen, and to prevent 
 the inconvenience of clandestine marriages. After such 
 espousal was made, (which was generally when the parties 
 were young,) the woman continued with her parents several 
 months, if not some years, before she was brought home 
 
 id her marriage consummated. — Calmet. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 1. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem 
 of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, 
 there came wise men from the east to Jerusa- 
 lem. 
 
 There is no traveller in Palestine, of any nation, what- 
 ever may be his creed, who does not visit Bethlehem, 
 (There " Jesus was born in the days of Herod the king." 
 Matt. ii. 1.) Though now reducecl to a village, anciently 
 I was a city, (Ruth iii. 11. iv. 1,) and was fortified by Reho- 
 oam. (2 Chron. xi. 6.) In Matt. ii. 1, 5, it is called Beth- 
 dhem of Judea, in order to distinguish it from another town 
 if the same name, which had been allotted to the tribe of 
 Sebulun. In Luke ii. 4, it is termed the " city of David," 
 locause David was born and educated there. 
 
 Two roads lead from Jerusalem to Bethlehem : the short- 
 
 est, which is most used, passes over ground extremely rocky 
 and barren, diversified only by some cultivated patches, 
 bearing a scanty crop of grain, and by banks of wild flowers, 
 which grow in" great profusion. This town, or rather vil- 
 lage, is pleasantly situated about six miles southwest of 
 Jerusalem, on the brow of a steep hill, in a very fertile soil, 
 which only wants cultivation to render it what the name, 
 " Bethlehem," imports, — a house of bread. At the further 
 extremity, like a citadel, stands the convent of Saint Gio- 
 vanni, which contains the Church of the Nativity, A star 
 is introduced into our view, in order to guide the reader's 
 eye to this spot. This convent is divided among the Greek, 
 Roman, and Armenian Christians, to each of whom are 
 assigned separate portions, as well for lodging as for places 
 of worship ; but on certain days they may all perform their 
 devotions at the altars which are erected over the most mem- 
 orable spots within these sacred walls. This convent is 
 entered through a door strongly bound with iron, so low as 
 to oblige the party entering to stoop considerably, and too 
 narrow to allow more than one person to pass at a time. 
 This leads into the Church of the Nativity, which was 
 erected by the Emperess Helena, on the site of a temple of 
 Adonis, which was built here by the Emperor Hadrian, in 
 his hatred against all who professed the Christian name and 
 faith. 
 
 About a mile to the northeast of Bethlehem is a deep 
 valley, in which Dr. Clarke imagined that he halted at the 
 identical fountain or well, for the delicious water of which 
 David longed. (2 Sam. xxiii. 15 — 18.) Here, according 
 to tradition, is the field where the shepherds kept watch by 
 night, when the angels announced to them the birth of our 
 Lord. (Luke ii. 8—11.) When this spot was visited by 
 Mr. Came, two fine and venerable trees stood in the cen- 
 tre; and the earth around it was thickly covered with 
 flowers : he represents it as '• so sweet and romantic a spot, 
 that it would be painful to doubt its identity." 
 
 Bethlehem is now a poor village, with a population of 
 about three hundred inhabitants, most of whom are Chris- 
 tians. Their number was dreadfully reduced by the plague 
 in the year 1832 ; and though this village is only a fe^v* 
 miles distant from Jerusalem, the mortality is generally 
 much greater here than in the metropolis of the Holy Land 
 The Bethlehemites are represented by all travellers as a 
 bold and fierce race, of whom both Turks and Arabs stand 
 in awe. The greater part of them gain their livelihood by 
 making beads, carving mother-of-pearl shells with sacred 
 subjects, and other trinkets, which are highly valued and 
 eagerly purchased by the devout visiters. The monks of 
 Bethlehem claim the exclusive privilege of marking the 
 limbs and bodies of such pilgrims as choose to submit to the 
 operation, with crosses, stars, and monograms, by means of 
 gunpowder ; — an operation this, which is always painful, 
 and sometimes dangerous. This practice is very ancient; 
 it is noticed by Virgil (^neid. lib. iv. v. 14G) and by Pom- 
 ponius Mela, (lib. xxi.) Dr. Clarke remarks, that there 
 rarely exists an instance among the minor popular super- 
 
576 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 stitions of the Greek and Roman churches, but its origin 
 may be found in more remote antiquity, and very often 
 among the religious customs of the heathen nations. — 
 
 HORNG. 
 
 Ver. 11. And when they were come into the 
 house, they saw the young child with Mary 
 his mother, and fell down, and worshipped 
 him: and when they had opened their trea- 
 sures, they presented unto them gifts ; gold, 
 and frankincense, and myrrh. 
 
 The birth of a son is always a time of great festivity in 
 the East ; hence the relations come together, to congratulate 
 the happy parents, and to present their gifts to the little 
 stranger. Some bring the silver anklets ; others, tl^e brace- 
 lets, or ear-rings, or silver cord for the loins. Others, ho^t^- 
 ever, take gold, and a variety of needful articles. The 
 wise men did not make presents as a matter of charity, 
 but to show their affedian and re&pect. When the infant 
 son of a king is shown, the people make their obeisance to 
 Mm. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 1 8. In Rama was there a voice heard, lam- 
 entation, and weeping, and great mourning, 
 Rachel weeping for her children, and would 
 not be comforted, because they are not. 
 
 See on ch. 9. 23. 
 
 Ver. 23. And he came and dwelt in a city called 
 Nazareth : that it might be fulfilled which was 
 spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a 
 Nazarene. 
 
 Nassara, the Nazareth of the scriptures, is called by 
 Maundrell an inconsiderable village ; by Brown, a pleasant 
 one, with a respectable convent ; and in Dr. Clarke's visit 
 was said to have so declined, under the oppressive tyranny 
 of Djezzar's government, as to seem destined to maintain 
 its ancient reputation, since now, as of old, one might ask, 
 with equal reason, Can there any good thins come out of 
 Nazareth 7 John i. 46. This town, or village, is situated 
 in a deep valley, not on the top of a hill, as has been erro- 
 neously stated, but rather on the side of a hill, nearer its 
 base than its summit, facing to the southeast, and having 
 above it the rocky eminence which we had passed over in 
 approaching it. The fixed inhabitants are estimated at about 
 two thousand, five hundred of whom are Catholic Chris- 
 tians, about three hundred Maronites, and two hundred 
 Mohammedans ; the rest being schismatic Greeks. These 
 are all Arabs of the country, and notwithstanding the small 
 circle in which their opposing faiths meet, it is said to their 
 honour, that they live together in mutual forbearance and 
 tranquillity. The private dwellings of the town, to the 
 number of about two hundred and fifty, are built of stone, 
 which is a material always at hand : they are flat-roofed, 
 being in general only of one story, but are sufficiently spa- 
 cious and commodious for the accommodation of a numer- 
 ous poor family. The streets are steep, from the inclina- 
 tion of the hill on which they stand ; narrow, from custom ; 
 and dirty, from the looseness of the soil. Of the public 
 buildings, the mosque is the most conspicuous from without, 
 and is, indeed, a neat edifice ; it has six arches on one of 
 its sides, for we could see no more of it, as it is enclosed 
 within a wall of good masonry, and furnished with a plain 
 whitened thin arch, surrounded by a gallery, and surmount- 
 ed by the crescent: the whole rising from the centre of the 
 town, as if to announce the triumph of its dominion to 
 those approaching it from afar. The Greeks have their 
 church on the southeast edge of the town, at the foot of the 
 hill ; the Maronites theirs in front of the Franciscan con- 
 Vent. The church is built over a grotto, held sacred from 
 a belief of its being the scene of the angels announcing to 
 Mary her favour with God, and her conception and bear- 
 ing of the Saviour. On entering it we passed over a 
 white marble pavement, ornamented in the centre with a 
 device in Mosaic, and descended by a flight of marble 
 steps into a grolto, beneath the body of the church. In the 
 first compartment of this subterraneous sanctuary, we were 
 
 told had stood the mass which constitutes the famous chapel 
 of Loretto, in Italy ; and the fricfrs assured us, with all 
 possible solemnity, that the angels appointed to the task 
 took out this mass from the rock, and flew with it, first 
 to Dalmatia and afterward to Loretto, where it now stands: 
 and that in measuring the mass itself, and the place 
 from which it had been taken, they had found them to cor- 
 respond in every respect, neither the one by the voyage, 
 nor the other by age, having lost or altered any part of 
 its size or shape. Proceeding farther in, we were shown 
 a second grotto, or a continuation of the first, with two red 
 granite pillars, of about two feet in diameter, at its entrance, 
 and were told that one marked the spot where the angel 
 stood when he appeared to Mary, exclaiming. Hail, thou 
 that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee : blessed art 
 thou among women. Luke i. 28. The pillar on the right 
 is still perfect, but that on the left has a piece of its shaft 
 broken out, leaving a space of about a foot and a half 
 between the upper and under fcagment; the latter of those 
 continuing still to be supported by being firmly imbedded 
 in the rock above, offers to the eyes of believing visiters, 
 according to the expression of the friars, a standing mira- 
 cle of the care which Christ takes of his church, as they 
 insist on its being supported by the hand of God alon.e. 
 The grotto here, though small, and about eight feet in 
 height, remains still in its original roughness, the roof 
 being slightly arched. In the outer compartment, from 
 whence the chapel of Loretto is said to have been taken, the 
 roof, as well as the sides, have been reshaped, and plastered, 
 and ornamented, so that the original dimensions no longer 
 remain. Within, hoM^ever, all is left in its first rude state, 
 to perpetuate to future ages the interesting fact which it is 
 thought to record. Passing onward from hence, and 
 ascending through narrow passages, over steps cui out of 
 the rock, and turning a little to the right, we came to a 
 chamber which the friars called La Cucina della Santa 
 Madona; they here showed us the chimney of the hearth 
 on which Mary warmed the food for Jesus, while yet a 
 helpless infant, and where she baked the cakes for her 
 husband's supper, when he returned from the labours of 
 the day. This was an apartment of the house, as they 
 observed, in which the Son of God lived so many years in 
 subjection to man ; as it is believed by all that he was 
 brought up from childhood to manhood in Nazareth. The 
 fact of Joseph and Mary having resided in this house, and 
 used the very room in which we stood, as their kitchen, has 
 nothing at all of improbability in it: and as excavated 
 dwellings, in the side of a steep hill Ijke this, would be 
 more secure, and even more comfortable, than fabricated 
 ones^ it is quite as probable that this might have really 
 been the residence of the holy family, as of any other. 
 The synagogue in which Jesus read and expounded the 
 prophet Esaias on the sabbath, is shown here within the 
 town, while the precipice from which the exasperated peo- 
 ple would have hurled him, is pointed out at a place more 
 than a mile distant, to the southward, and on the other side 
 of the vale. — Buckingham, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 4. And the same John had his raiment of 
 camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his 
 loins ; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. 
 
 See on Mark 1. 6; 
 
 His raiment was not made of the fine hair of that ani- 
 mal, whereof an elegant kind of cloth is made, which is 
 thence called camlet, (in imitation of which, though made 
 of wool, is the English camlet,) but of the long and shaggy 
 hair of camels, which is in the East manufactured into a 
 coarse stuflT, anciently worn by monks and anchorites. It 
 is only when understood in this way, that the words suit 
 the description here given of John's manner of life.— 
 Campbell. 
 
 The girdle is an indispensable article in the dress of an 
 Oriental; it has various uses; but the principal one is to 
 tuck up their long flowing vestments, that they may not 
 incommode them in their work, or on a j(Rirney. The 
 Jews, according to some writers, wore a double girdle, one 
 of greater breadth, with which they girded their tunic 
 when they prepared for active exertions : the other they 
 wore under their shirt, around their loins. This under- 
 girdle they reckon necessary to distinguish between the 
 
Im'.'.' ';-.:! 
 
Chap. 4. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 577 
 
 heart, and the less honourable parts of the human frame. 
 The upper girdle was sometimes made of leather, the ma- 
 terial of v/hich the girdle of John the Baptist was made ; 
 but it was more commonly fabricated of worsted, often 
 very artfully woven into a variety of j&gures, and made 
 to fold several times about the body; one end of which 
 being doubled back, and sewn along the edges, serves 
 them for a purse, agreeably to the acceptation of ^wvi? in 
 the scriptures, which is translated purse in several places 
 of the New Testament. — Paxton. 
 
 The dress of John greatly resembled that of the interior 
 nations of South Africa, only substituting a skin cloak for 
 one of camel's hair; and his food that of the wild Bush- 
 men during the locust season. Locusts resemble gigantic 
 grasshoppers furnished with wings. When they come, 
 like innumerable armies, they certainly destroy all vegeta- 
 tion ; but their carcasses are suificient for the support of 
 human life. The wild Bushmen kill millions of them, 
 which they gather together, dry them in the sun, and then 
 grind them into powder, which they mix up with wild 
 honey, or what the bees deposite upon rocks, trees, and 
 bushes, and on this compound live a part of the year ; so 
 that the locusts, which are the greatest scourge of more 
 civilized people, are considered as welcome visiters by 
 the wild Bushmen, who hail their approach. Indeed, the 
 crocus and locust seasons are called their harvests ; thus 
 showing that what is a judgment to one nation is a mercy 
 to another. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 11. I indeed baptize you with water unto 
 repentance: but he that cometh after me is 
 mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy 
 to bear : he shall baptize you with the Holy 
 Ghost, and with fire. 
 
 The custom of Ibosing the sandals from off the feet of an 
 eastern worshipper was ancient and indispensable. It is 
 also commonly observed in visits to great men. The san- 
 dals or slippers are pulled off at the door, and either left 
 there, or given to a servant to bear. The person to bear 
 them means an inferior domestic, or attendant upon a man 
 of high rank, to take care of, and return them to him again. 
 This was the work of servants among the Jews : and it was 
 reckoned so servile, that it was thought too mean for a 
 scholar or a disciple to do. The Jews say, " all services 
 which a servant does for his master a disciple does for his 
 master, except unloosing his shoes." John thought it was 
 too great an honour for him to do that for Christ, which 
 was thought too mean for a disciple to do for a wise man. 
 — Gill. 
 
 A respectable man never goes out without his servant or 
 attendant; thus, he has always some one to talk with, and 
 to do any thing he may require. When the ground is 
 smooth, or where there is soft grass to walk on, the sandals 
 are taken off, and the servant carries them in his hand. 
 The devoted, the humble John, did not consider himself 
 worthy to bear the sandals of his divine Master. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. Whose fan is in his hand, and he will 
 thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his 
 wheat into the garner ; but will burn up the 
 chaff with unquenchable fire. 
 
 There is, in what the Baptist here declares, an evident 
 allusion to the custom of burning the chaff after winnowing, 
 that it might not be blown back again, and so be mingled 
 with the wheat. There was danger, lest, after they had 
 been separated, the chaff should be blown again among 
 the wheat by the changing of the wind. To prevent this 
 they put fire to it at the windward side, which crept on and 
 never gave over till it had consumed all the chaff. In this 
 sense it was an unquenchable fire. See also Psalm Ixxxiii. 
 13, 14. Isaiah v. 24. — Burder. 
 
 After the grain is trodden out, they winnow it by throw- 
 ing it up against the wind with a shovel — the ro tttvov of 
 the gospels according to Matthew and Luke, there rendered 
 a fan, which is too cumbersome a machine to be intended 
 by the evangelist. The text should rather run, whose 
 shovel or fork, the opyavov o6ovtikov, (which is a portable in- 
 strument,) is in his hand, agreeably to the practice recorded 
 by Isaiah, who mentions both the shovel and the fan : " The 
 73 
 
 oxen likewise, and the young asses that ear the ground, 
 shall eat clean provender, which hath been winnowed with 
 the shovel and with the fan." 
 
 After the grain is winnowed, they lodge it in subterrane- 
 ous magazines, as was formerly the custom of other nations ; 
 two or three hundred of these receptacles are sometimes to 
 be found together, the smallest holding four hundred bush- 
 els. These grottoes are dug in the form of an oven, grad- 
 ually enlarging towards the bottom, with one round opening 
 at top ; and this being close shut when the magazine is full, 
 is covered over with earth, so as lo remain perfectly con- 
 cealed from an enemy. These magazines are sometimes 
 discovered in the midst of a ploughed field ; sometimes on 
 the verge, and even in the middle of the highway. The 
 same kind of granaries are used in Palestine as in Syria. 
 Le Bruyn speaks of a number of deep pits at Rama, which 
 he was told were designed for corn : and Rauwolf, of three 
 very large vaults at Joppa, where the inhabitants laid up 
 their corn, when he was in that country. The treasures in 
 the field, consisting of wheat and of barley, of oil and of 
 honey, which were offered to Ishmael, as a ransom for the 
 lives of his captives, were undoubtedly laid up in the same 
 kind of repositories. In dangerous and unsettled times like 
 those of Jeremiah, it is quite common, even at present, for 
 the Arabs to secure their corn and other effects, which they 
 cannot carry along with them, in deep pits or subterraneous 
 grottoes. Sir John Chardin, in a note upon this very pas- 
 sage of the prophet, says, " The eastern people in many 
 places hide their corn in these concealments." To these 
 various customs the Baptist alludes in his solemn warning 
 to the multitudes concerning Christ : " Whose fan (rather 
 whose shovel) is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge 
 his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner ; but the 
 chaff will he burn with unquenchable fire." And our Lord 
 himself, in his parable of the good seed : " Gather ye to- 
 gether first the tares, and bind^ them in bundles to burn 
 them ; but gather the wheat into my barn." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And Jesus, wh^i he was baptized, went 
 up straightway out 9f the water : and lo, the 
 heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the 
 Spirit of God descending like a dove, and light- 
 ing upon him. 
 
 Many have supposed, that the third person of the trinity, 
 on this occasion, assumed the real figure of a dove ; but 
 the sacred writer seems to refer, not to the shape, but to the 
 manner in which the dove descends from the sky. Had it 
 related to the shape or form, it would not have been uxtei 
 ncptffepav, as a dovc ; but wcrec irspicepas, as of a dove. In this 
 manner, the likeness of fire is expressed by the same evan- 
 gelist, in the Acts of the Apostles ; " There appeared cloven 
 tongues (a)0£i TTvpoi) as of fire." The meaning of the clause 
 therefore is, that as a dove hovers on the wing, and over- 
 shadows the place upon which she intends to perch, so did 
 the Holy Spirit, in the form of a luminous cloud, like the 
 Shechinah which rested on the tabernacle, gradually de- 
 scend, hovering, and overshadowing the Saviour as he 
 came up from the water. This exposition refutes another 
 opinion, which was entertained by many of the ancients, 
 that it was a real dove which alighted upon the head of our 
 Lord ; for if the sacred writer describes only the manner of 
 descending, neither the form nor the real presence of a dove 
 can be admitted. But although the evangelist alludes only 
 to the manner in which that bird descends from the wing, 
 he clearly recognises her as the chosenemblem of the Holy 
 Spirit, the messenger of peace and joy to sinful and miser- 
 able men. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 1. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into 
 the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 
 
 In sacred language, a mountainous, or less fruitful tract, 
 where the towns and villages are thinly scattered, and sin- 
 gle habitations few and far between, is distinguished by the 
 name of the wilderness. The forerunner of our Lord re- 
 sided in the wilderness of Judah till he commenced his 
 public ministry. We are informed, in the book of Genesi.«?, 
 that Ishmael settled in the wilderness of Paran ; and in the 
 first book of Samuel, that David took refuge from the pci' 
 
578 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 sccution of Saul in the same desert, where it appears the 
 numerous flocks of Nabal the Carmelite were pastured. 
 Such places, therefore, were not absolute deserts, but thinly 
 peopled, or less fertile districts. But this remark will 
 scarcely apply to the wilderness where our Lord was tempt- 
 ed of the devil. It is a most miserable, dry, and barren 
 solitude, "consisting of high rocky mountains, so torn and 
 disordered, as if the earth had here suffered some great con- 
 vulsion, in which its very bowels had been turned outward." 
 A more dismal and solitary place can scarcely be found in 
 the whole earth. About one hour's journey from the foot 
 of the mountains which environ this wilderness, rises the 
 lofty Ctuarantania, which Maundrell was told is the mount- 
 ain into which the devil carried our blessed Saviour, that 
 he might show him all the kingdoms and glory of the world. 
 It is, as the evangelist styles it, "an exceeding high mount- 
 ain," and in its ascent both diflicult and dangerous. It has 
 a small chapel at the top, and another about half way up, 
 founded on a prominent part of the rock. Near the latter 
 are several caves and holes in the sides of the mountain, 
 occupied formerly by hermits, and even in present times 
 the resort of religious devotees, who repair to these lonely 
 cells to keep their lent, in imitation of our Lord's fasting in 
 the wilderness forty days. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 23. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teach- 
 ing in their synagogues, and preaching the 
 gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner 
 of sickness, and all manner of disease among 
 the people. 
 
 The scribes ordinarily taught in the synagogues : but it 
 was not confined to them, as it appears that Christ did the 
 same. It has been questioned by what right Christ and his 
 apostles, who had no public character among the Jews, 
 taught in their synagogues. In answer to this Dr. Lightfoot 
 observes, that though this liberty was not allowed to any 
 illiterate person or mechanic, but to the learned only, they 
 granted it to prophets and workers of miracles, and such 
 as set up for heads and leaders of new sects, in order that 
 they might inform themselves of their dogmata, and not 
 condemn them unheard and unknown. Under these char- 
 acters Christ and his apostles were admitted to this privi- 
 lege. — Jennings. 
 
 Ver. 24. And his fame went throughout all Syria: 
 and they brought unto him all sick people that 
 were taken with divers diseases and torments, 
 and those which were possessed with devils, 
 and those which were lunatic, and those that 
 had the palsy, and he healed them. 25. And 
 there followed him great multitudes of people, 
 from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from 
 Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond 
 Jordan. 
 
 The news that a foreign hakeem or doctor, was passing 
 (liTough the country, very soon was spread abroad ; and at 
 every halt our camp was thronged with the sick, not only 
 of the village near to which we were encamped, but of all 
 the surrounding villages. Many came several days' jour- 
 ney to consult our doctor, and were brought to him in spite 
 of every difficulty and inconvenience ; some came on asses, 
 bolstered up with cushions, and supported by their relations ; 
 others on camels, whose rough pace must have been tor- 
 ture to any one in sickness. It may be conceived what a 
 misfortune sickness must be in a country where there is no 
 medical relief, nor even a wheeled conveyance to seek re- 
 lief when it is at hand. The greatest credit is due to the 
 medical gentlemen, who were attached, not only to our 
 embassy, but to all preceding embassies, for the charity and 
 humanity with which they relieved the wants of these poor 
 people : they not only distributed their medicines gratis, but 
 they as gratuitously bestowed their skill, their time, and 
 their zeal, for which, it is grievous to say, in very few in- 
 slanees did they meet with corresponding gratitude,"— 
 Mmu£u. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 1. And seeing the multitudes, he went up 
 into a mountain : and when he was set, his dis- 
 ciples came unto him. 
 
 We left our route to visit the elevated mount, where it 
 is believed that Christ preached to his disciples that mem- 
 orable sermon, concentrating the sum and substance of 
 every Christian virtue. Having attained the highest point 
 of it, a view was presented which, for its grandeur, inde- 
 pendently of the interest excited by the difierent objects 
 contained in it, has no parallel in the Holy Land. 
 
 From this situation we perceived that the plain, over 
 which we had been so long riding, was itself very elevated. 
 Far beneath appeared other plains, one lower than the 
 other, in that regular gradation, concerning which obser- 
 vations were recently made, and extending to the surface of 
 the Sea of Tiberias, or Sea of Galilee. This immense 
 lake, almost equal in the grandeur of its appearance to that 
 of Geneva, spreads its waters over all the lower territory, 
 extending from the northeast towards the southwest, and 
 then bearing east of us. Its eastern shore presents a sublime 
 scene of mountains, extending towards the north and south, 
 and seeming to close in at either extremity, both towards 
 Chorazin, where the Jordan enters, and the Anion or 
 Campus Magnus, through which it flows to the Dead Sea. 
 The cultivated plains reaching to its borders, which we be- 
 held at an amazing depth below our view, resembled, by 
 the various hues their different produce exhibited, the 
 motley pattern of a vast carpet. To the north appeared 
 snowy summits, towering beyond a series of intervening 
 mountains, with unspeakable greatness. We considered 
 them as the summits of Libanus ; but the Arabs belonging 
 to our caravan called the principal eminence Jebel el Sieh, 
 saying it was near Damascus : probablj^, therefore, a part 
 of the chain of Libanus. This summit was so lofty, that 
 the snow entirely covered the upper part of it ; not lying in 
 patches, as I have seen it during summer, upon the tops of 
 very elevated mountains, (for instance, that of Ben Nevis, 
 in Scotland,) but investing all the higher part with that 
 perfect white and smooth velvet-like appearance which 
 snow only exhibits when it is very deep; a striking spectacle 
 in such a climate, where the beholder, seeking protection 
 from a burning sun, almost considers the firmament to be 
 on fire. The elevated plains upon the mountainous terri- 
 tory, beyond the northern extremity of the lake, are called 
 by a. name, in Arabic, which signifies The Wilderness. To 
 the southwest, at the distance of only twelve miles, we be- 
 held Mount Tabor, having a conical form, and standing 
 quite insular, upon the northern side of the plain of Esdrae- 
 lon. The mountain whence this superb view was present- 
 ed, consists entirely of limestone ; the prevailing constituent 
 of all the mountains in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Phe- 
 nicia, and Palestine. 
 
 As we rode towards the Sea of Tiberias, the guides 
 pointed to a sloping spot from the heights upon our right, 
 whence we had descended, as the place where the miracle 
 was accomplished by which our Saviour fed the multitude : 
 it is therefore called The Multiplication of Bread ; as the 
 mount above, where the sermon was preached to the disci- 
 ples, is called The Mountain of Beatitudes, from the express 
 sions used in the beginning of that discourse. This part of 
 the Holy Land is very full of wild animals. Antelopes 
 are in great number. We had the pleasure of seeing these 
 beautiful quadrupeds in their natural state, feeding among 
 the thistles and tall herbage of these plains, and bounding 
 before us occasionally as we disturbed them. The lake 
 now continued in view upon our left. The wind rendered 
 its surface rough, and called to mind the situation of our 
 Saviour's disciples, when, in one of the small vessels 
 which traverse these waters, they were tossed in a storm, 
 and saw Jesus, in the fourth watch of the night, walking to 
 them upon the waves. Matt. xiv. 24. Often as this subject 
 has been painted, combining a number of circumstances 
 adapted for the representation of sublimity, no artist has 
 been aware of the uncommon grandeur of the scenery, 
 memorable on account of the transaction. The lake ot 
 Gennesareth is surrounded by objects well calculated to 
 heighten the solemn impression made by such a picture : 
 and, independent of the local feelings likely to be excited 
 in its contemplation, afibrds one of the most striking pros- 
 
Chap. 5. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 579 
 
 pects in the Holy Land. It is by comparison alone that 
 any due conception of the appearance it presents can be 
 conveyed to the minds of those who have not seen it : and, 
 speaking of it comparatively, it may be described as longer 
 and finer than any of our Cumberland and Westmoreland 
 lakes, although, perhaps, it yields in majesty to the stupen- 
 dous features of Loch Lomond, in Scotland. It does not 
 ♦possess the vastness of the lake of Geneva, although it much 
 resembles it in particular points of view. The lake of 
 Locarno, in Italy, comes nearest to it in point of picturesque 
 beauty, although it is destitute of any thing similar to the 
 islands by which that majestic piece of water is adorned. 
 It is inferior in magnitude, and, perhaps, in the height of 
 its surrounding mountains, to the lake Asphaltites ; but its 
 broad and extended surface, covering the bottom of a pro- 
 found valley, environed by lofty and precipitous eminences, 
 added to the impression of a certain reverential awe under 
 which every Christian pilgrim approaches it, give it a 
 character of dignity unparalleled by any similar scenery. 
 — Clarke. 
 
 Sitting was the proper posture of masters or teachers. 
 The form in which the master and his disciples sat, is thus 
 described by Maimonides : " The master sits at the head, 
 or in the chief place, and the disciples before him in a cir- 
 cuit, like a crown ; so that they all see the master, and hear 
 his words. The master may not sit upon a seat, and the 
 scholars upon the ground; but either all upon the earth, or 
 upon seats. Indeed from the beginning, or formerly, the 
 master used to sit, and the disciples to stand ; but before the 
 destruction of the second temple, all used to teach their dis- 
 ciples sitting." — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 2. And he opened his mouth and taught 
 them. 
 
 Some have made impertinent observations respecting 
 this mode of expression ; he opened his mouth. When the 
 Hindoos speak of a king, or a priest, or the gods, as giving 
 instructions or commands, they use the same form of 
 speech. But the word which is used to denote the opening 
 of a door, or of any thing which requires to be unfolded, is 
 never applied to the opening of the mouth of a beautiful 
 or dignified speaker. For of that action in him, they say, 
 his mouth mallara-kurrathu, i. e. blossomed; the flower un- 
 folded itself: and there were its fair teints, and promised 
 fruits. So the Redeemer opened his mouth, and taught 
 them, saying. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the 
 salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be 
 salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but 
 to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of 
 
 Our Lord's supposition of the salt losing its savour is il- 
 lustrated by Mr. Maundrell, who tells us, that in the Valley 
 of Salt near Gebul, and about four hours' journey from 
 Aleppo, there is a small precipice, occasioned by the con- 
 tinual taking away of the salt. " In this," says he, " you 
 may see how the veins of it lie. I broke a piece of it, of 
 which the part was exposed to the rain, sun, and air, though 
 it had the sparks and particles of salt, yet had perfectly lost 
 its savour. The innermost, which had been connected to 
 the rock, retained its savour, as I found by proof," — Bur- 
 
 DER. 
 
 Ver. 18. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven 
 and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no 
 wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 
 
 It has been thought that this refers to one of those ducts, 
 dashes, or corners of letters, which distinguish one letter 
 from another, and nearly resemble each other. Other per- 
 sons have apprehended that it refers to one of those little 
 strokes in the tops of letters, which the Jews call crowns or 
 spikes, in which they Imagined great mysteries were con- 
 tained. There were some persons among them who made 
 it their business to search into the meaning of every letter, 
 and of every one of these little horns or pricks that were 
 upon the top of them. To this custom Christ is here sup- 
 posed to refer. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 29. And if thy right eye offend tnee, pluck 
 it out, and cast it from thee : for it is profitable 
 for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
 and not that thy whole body should be cast 
 into hell. 
 
 This metaphor is in common use to this day ; hence people 
 say of any thing which is valuable, " It is like my vallutha-' 
 kan" i. e. right eye ! " Yes, yes, that child is the right eijp: 
 of his father." " I can never give up that lady ; she is my 
 right eye," " That fellow forsake his sins ! never; they are 
 his right eye." *' True, true ; I will pull out my right eye." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 36. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, 
 because thou canst not make one hair white or 
 black. 
 
 It was very common among the Orientals to swear by the 
 head or the life of the king. Joseph, improperly yielding 
 to the fashion of the country, swore by the life of Pharaoh ; 
 and this oath is still used in various regions of the East. 
 According to Mr. Hanway, the most sacred oath among 
 the Persians is by the head of the king : and Thevenot 
 asserts, that to swear by the king's head is, in Persia, more 
 authentic, and of greater credit, than if they swore by all 
 that is most sacred in heaven and upon earth. In the 
 time of our Lord, it seems to have been a common prac- 
 tice among the Jews to swear by this form ; for, said he 
 to the multitudes, "Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, 
 because thou canst not make one hair white or black." — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 40. And if any man will sue thee at the law, 
 and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 
 also. 
 
 The laws of Moses prohibited the taking or keeping in 
 pledge certain indispensable articles, such as, 
 
 1. " The upper garment of the poor, which served him 
 also by night for a blanket," Exod. xxii. 25, 26. Deut. xxiv. 
 12, 13. If taken as a pledge, it was to be restored to him 
 before sunset ; " for," says Moses, or rather God by Moses, 
 "it is his only covering, in which he inwraps his naked 
 body. Under what, then, shall he sleep 7 If he cries for 
 it unto me, I will hearken unto him ; for I am merciful." 
 The better to understand this law, we must know, that the 
 upper garment of the Israelites {simla nVncr) was a large 
 square piece of cloth, which they threw loosely over them, 
 and which by the poor was also used for a blanket or cover- 
 let to their beds. Dr. Shaw, in his travels through Barba- 
 ry, has given the best description of it, under its modern 
 Arabic name, hyke. It might be laid aside in the daytime, 
 and, in fact, in walking it was so troublesome, that labour- 
 ing people preferred being clear of it, and were then, what 
 the ancients so often call naked. When they had to walk, 
 they tucked it together, and hung it over their shoulder. 
 By night it was indispensable to the poor man for a cover- 
 ing: at least, it was at the risk of his health, and even his 
 life, by exposure to the cold, if he wanted it : for in south- 
 ern climates the nights, particularly in the summer, are ex- 
 tremely cold. 
 
 It appears, however, that the above-quoted law of Moses 
 concerning the upper garment had, by a very strange mis- 
 construction, in process of time, given a handle to the ex- 
 ercise of a claim in the highest degree absurd. It is merely 
 of pledge that Moses speaks ; and the natural meaning of 
 the law is that no one would leave his under garment in 
 pledge, and go naked from the presence of his creditor with 
 what he had borrowed; while, on the other hand, there 
 might be frequent cases where a man, to the great detri- 
 ment of his health, having pledged his wpper garment, must 
 lie all night without a covering. He, therefore, enacted 
 the law in favour of the latter, and did not think it neces- 
 sary to say a word about the former. But when the Jews 
 came to regulate their procedure solely by the letter of his 
 law, as that made no mention of.the under garment, so in 
 the time of Christ, we find cruel creditors claiming the un- 
 der garment of their debtors ; but, at the same time, quite 
 conscientiously leaving with them the upper one, which 
 Moses had expressly privileged. This I infer from a p&a- 
 
580 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap, 6. 
 
 sage in the sermon on the mount, which though in itself 
 obscure, receives great light from a comparison with Exod. 
 xxii. 25, 26, and from the conjecture above stated, upon it : 
 "Whoever will go to law with thee, and take thy {x^TMva^ 
 under garment, let him have thy (i/^artoi/) upper one also." 
 Matt. V. 40. If a man went to law with another, and was 
 determined to accept of nothing else in payment but the 
 very shirt off his back, he must have conceived that he 
 could urge a legal right to it, or at least the resemblance of 
 one ; or that else his complaint, instead of being admitted 
 by any court, would, without their once citing his adversa- 
 ry, be dismissed as futile. We must suppose a court to be 
 incredibly corrupt and imprudent, if we can doubt this. 
 Now, that a person, to whom I am nothing indebted, should 
 urge a claim to my under garment, is what I can scarcely 
 comprehend. The case, therefore, which Christ puts, is 
 most probably this : " I have borrowed from some one, and 
 , as I cannot pay, my hard-hearted creditor, with the help of 
 the law, means to strip me of my clothes. To my upper 
 garment he can put in no claim, because it is privileged by 
 Moses ; and therefore he directs his attack against my un- 
 der garment, which I wear over my naked body. Here, 
 on the one hand, the summum jus, as it is called, is, no doubt, 
 in favour of my creditor; but, on the other, perhaps the 
 highest equity, and even humanity itself, pleads for me." 
 In this case, the admonition of Jesus is to this effect : " So 
 far shol^ld it be from your desire to act unjustly, or mani- 
 fest exasperation, and vow revenge against a cruel creditor, 
 that, if your under garment does not suffice to pay him, you 
 ought to give him even the upper one, although he could 
 not get it by any judicial decree." — Michaelis. 
 
 Ver. 41. And whosoever shall compel thee to go 
 a mile, go with him twain. 
 
 Our Lord in this passage refers to the angari, or Persian 
 messengers, who had the royal authority for pressing horses, 
 ships, and even men, to assist them in the business on which 
 they were employed. In the modern government of Persia 
 there are officers not unlike the ancient angari, called 
 chappars, who serve to carry despatches between the court 
 and the provinces. When a chappar sets out, the master 
 of the horse furnishes him with a single horse, and when 
 that is weary, he dismounts the first man he meets, and 
 takes his horse. There is no pardon for a traveller who 
 should refuse to let a chapper have his horse, nor for 
 any other who should deny him the best horse in his stable. 
 (Hanway.)— BuRDER. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 3. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left 
 hand know what thy right hand doeth. 
 
 The right hand always dispenses gifts, because " it is 
 more honourable than the other ;" the left hand, therefore, 
 was to be unacquainted with the charities of the other, i. e. 
 there was to be no ostentation ; to be perfect secrecy. The 
 Hindoos say of things which are not to be revealed, " The 
 left ear is not to hear that which went into the right, nor 
 the right to be acquainted with that which was heard by 
 the left." — Roberts. 
 
 The manner in which the Samaritan priest desired me, 
 on parting, to express our mutual good-will, was by an ac- 
 tion, than which there is not one more common in all the 
 Levant. He put the forefinger of his right hand parallel 
 to that of his left, and then rapidly rubbed them together, 
 while I was expected to do the same, repeating the words, 
 sui, sui; that is, " right, right ;" or, in common acceptation, 
 " together, together." It is in this manner that persons ex- 
 press their consent on all occasions ; on concluding a bar- 
 gain, on engaging to bear one another company, and on 
 every kind of friendly agreement or good understanding. 
 
 May not this serve to explain the phrase in Matt. vi. 3 : 
 " Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth 7" 
 that is, " Let'not thy heart consent to its own good thoughts, 
 with a sinful self-applause." So much is said in the Old 
 Testament of speaking with the eyes, hands, and even 
 feet, that it is scarcely u5iderstood by Englishmen. They 
 should see the expressive and innumerable gesticulations 
 of foreigners when they converse : many a question is an- 
 swered, and many a significant remark conveyed, by even 
 children, who learn this language much sooner than their 
 
 mother-tongue. Perhaps the expression of Solomon, that 
 the wicked man speakelh with his feet, (Prov. vi. 13,) may 
 appear more natural, when it is considered that the mode ol 
 sitting on the ground in the East brings the feet into view, 
 nearly in the same direct line as the hands; the whole body 
 crouching down together, and the hands, in fact, often rest- 
 ing upon the feet. — Jowett. 
 
 * 
 
 Ver. 5. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not 
 be as the hypocrites are : for they love to pray 
 standing in the synagogues, and in the corners 
 of the streets, that they may be seen of men. 
 Verily I say unto you, They have their rn- 
 ward. 
 
 False religion has ever been fond of shmo ; hence its dev- 
 otees have assumed a greater appeanance of sanctity to 
 make up the deficiency of real worth, Pehaps few systems 
 are so replete with the show of religion as Hindooisiii, Its 
 votaries may be seen in every street with uplifted hands, or 
 bespattered bodies; there they are standing before every 
 temple, making their prostrations or repeating their pray- 
 ers. Nor are the Mohammedans, with all their boasting, a 
 whit the better. See them when the sun is going down, 
 spreading their garments on the ground, on which they are 
 about to kneel, and say their prayers. They bow down to 
 the earth, and touch it with their forehead ; and then arise, 
 putting their hands above their heads, with the fingers 
 pointing to the clouds ; and now they bring them lower, in 
 a supplicating position, and all the time keep muttering 
 their prayers ; again they kneel, and again touch the earth 
 with their forehead, and all this, without paying any appa- 
 rent attention to those who pass that way. — Roberts. 
 
 Such a practice as here intimated by our Lord was prob- 
 ably common at that time with those who were fond of 
 ostentation in their devotions, and who wished to engage 
 the attention of others. It is evident that the practice was 
 not confined to one place, since it maybe traced in diflferent 
 nations. We have an instance of it related by Aaron Hill, 
 in his Travels: " Such Turks as at the common hours of 
 prayer are on the road, or so employed as not to find con- 
 venience to attend the mosques, are still obliged to execute 
 that duty : nor are they ever known to fail, whatever busi- 
 ness they are then about, but pray immediately when the 
 hour alarms them, in that very place they chance to stand 
 on : insomuch that when a janizary, whom you have to 
 guard you up and down the city, hears the notice which is 
 given him from the steeples, he will turn about, stand still, 
 and beckon with his hand, to tell his charge he must have 
 patience for awhile; when, taking out his handkerchief, he 
 spreads it on the ground, sits cross-legged thereupon, and 
 says his prayers, though in the open market, which having 
 ended, he leaps briskly up, salutes the person whom he un- 
 dertook to convey, and renews his journey with the mild ex- 
 pression oi gheU, johnnum, ghell, or, come, dear, follow me." 
 It may be proper to add, that such a practice as this is gen- 
 eral throughout the East, — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. Lay not up for yourselves treasures up- 
 on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, 
 and where thieves break through and steal. 
 
 " At Pondicherry," says Bartolomeo, " I met with an 
 incident which excited my astonishment. I had put my 
 effects into a chest which stood in my apartment, and being 
 one day desirous of taking out a book, in order to amuse 
 myself with reading, as soon as I opened the chest, I dis- 
 covered in it an innumerable multitude of what are improp- 
 erly called white-ants. The appellation, termites, from the 
 Latin systematic name, termes, is better. There are vari- 
 ous kinds of them, but only in warm countries, which are 
 all equally destructive, and occasion great devastations, 
 not only in sugar-plantations, but also among furniture 
 and clothes in habitations. When I examined the different 
 articles in the chest, I observed that these little animals had 
 perforated my shirts in a thousand places, and gnawed to 
 pieces my books, my girdle, my amice, and my shoes. 
 They were moving in columns, each behind the other; and 
 each carried away in its mouth a fragment of my effects 
 which were more than half destroye(j." (Bartolomeo.)— 
 Critica Biblica. 
 
Chap. 7. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 581 
 
 Ver. 20. But lay up for yourselves treasures in 
 heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth cor- 
 rupt, and where thieves do not break through 
 nor steal. 
 
 See on Job 27. 18. 
 
 Ver. 26. Behold the fowls of the air : for they 
 sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into 
 barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. 
 Are ye not much better than they ? 
 
 Does a person who has lost his situation complain, from 
 a fear of the future ; it is said to him, by way of comfort, 
 " Look at the birds and beasts, have they any situations 1 
 Do they sow or reap 1 Who sustains the frog in the stone 1 
 or the germ in the egg 1 or the fetus in the womb 1 or the 
 worm which the wasp encloses in its house of clay 1 Does 
 not the Lord support all these 1 and will he not help you V 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 27. Which of you by taking thought can 
 add one cubit unto his stature ? 
 
 This form of speech is sometimes used to humble those 
 of high pretensions ; thus, a man of low caste, who has be- 
 come rich, and who assumes authority over his better-born, 
 though poor neighbours, will be asked, " W hat ! has your 
 money made you a cubit higher'?" i. e. in the scale of 
 being. Is a man ambitious of raising in society ; a person 
 who wishes to annoy him, puts his finger on his elbow, 
 and, showing that part to the tip of the middle finger, asks, 
 " Friend, will you ever rise thus much, (a cubit,S after all 
 your cares 1" " Yes, yes, the low-caste thinks nimself a 
 cubit taller, because he has got the favour of the king." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 28. And why take ye thought for raiment? 
 Consider the lilies of the field how they grow ; 
 they toil not, neither do they spin. 
 
 The lily of the field sometimes appears with unrivalled 
 magnificence. This remark is justified by the following 
 statement of Mr. Salt, Voyage to Abyssinia : " At a few 
 miles from Adowa, we discovered a new and beautiful 
 species of amaryllis, which bore from ten to twelve spikes 
 of bloom on each^stem, as large as those of the bella-donna, 
 springing from one common receptacle. The general col- 
 our of the corolla was white, and every petal was marked 
 with a single streak of bright purple down the middle ; the 
 flower was sweet scented, and its smell, though much more 
 powerful, resembled that of the lily of the valley. This 
 superb plant excited the admiration of the whole partv; 
 and it brought immediately to my recollection the beautiful 
 comparison used on a particular occasion by our Saviour: 
 " I say unto you, that Solomon, in all his glory, was not 
 arrayed like one cf these." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 30. Whe refore, if God so clothe the grass of 
 the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast 
 into the oven, shall he not much more clothe 
 you, O ye of little faith ? 
 
 The scarcity of fuel in the East obliges the inhabitants 
 use, by turns, every kind of combustible matter. The 
 withered stalks of herbs and flowers, the tendrils of the 
 vine, the small branches of myrtle, rosemary, and other 
 plants, are all used in heating their ovens and bagnios. 
 We can easily recognise this practice in these words of 
 our Lord : " Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; 
 they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say uiito you, 
 that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of 
 these. Wherefore, if God s "lothe the grass of the field, 
 which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall 
 he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith 1" The 
 grass of the field in this passage, evidently includes the li- 
 lies of which our Lord had just been speaking ; and by con- 
 i;equence herbs in general ; and in this extensive sense the 
 word %oproj is not unfrequently taken. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 Ver. 3. And why beholdest thou the mote that is 
 in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the 
 beam that is thine own eye ? 
 
 See on ch. 23. 24. 
 
 Ver. 6. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, 
 neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest 
 they trample them under their feet, and turn 
 again and rend you. 
 
 Similar language is used to those who speak on subjects 
 of a highly sacred nature, before people of gross minds. 
 "What, are silk tassels to be tied to the broom? Will 
 you give a beautiful flower to a monkey 1 Who would 
 cast rubies into a heap of rubbish 1 What, are you giving 
 ambrosia to a dog?"— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 9. Or what man is there of jrou, whom if hill 
 son ask bread, will he give him a stone ? 
 
 " What father, when his son asks for sugar-cane, will 
 give him the poison-fruit 1 If he asks a fish, will he give 
 him a serpent V This may allude to the eel, which is so 
 much like the serpent. Some have said, on the parallel 
 passage in Luke: " If he shall ask an egg, will he offer 
 him a scorpion?" — " This expression is used, because the 
 white scorpion is like an egg. They might as well have 
 said, it is like a whale. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 18. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, 
 neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 
 
 When people converse on the good qualities of an obedi- 
 ent son, it is asked, "Will the seed of the watermelon 
 produce the fruit of the bitter pavatta-koUi?" — meaning, 
 the father is good, and therefore the son is the same. A 
 profligate son always leads the people to suspect the father 
 or grandfather was not what he ought to have been. 
 " You talk to me about that family : I know them well ; the 
 tree is bad, and the fruit is the same." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 26. And every one that heareth thes^ say- 
 ings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be liken- 
 ed unto a foolish man, which built his house 
 upon the sand. 
 
 The fishermen of Bengal build their hiits in the dry 
 season on the beds of sand, from which the river has retired. 
 When the rains set in, which they often do very suddenly, 
 accompanied Avith violent northwest winds, the water pours 
 down in torrents from the mountains. In one night multi- 
 tudes of these huts are frequently swept away, and the 
 place where they stood is the next morning undiscoverable. 
 (Wfird's View of the Hindoos.) 
 
 " It so happened, that we were to witness one of the 
 greatest calamities that have occurred ip Egypt in the 
 recollection of any one living. The Nile rose this season 
 three feet and a half above the highest mark left by the 
 former inundation, with uncommon rapidity, and carried 
 off several villages, and some hundreds of their inhabitants, 
 I never saw any picture that could give a more correct 
 idea of a deluge than the valley of the Nile in this season. 
 The Arabs had expected an extraordinary inundation this 
 year, in consequence of the scarcity of water in the prece- 
 ding season; but they did not apprehend it would rise to 
 such a height. They generally erect fences of earth and 
 reeds around their villages, to keep the water from their 
 houses; but the force of this inundation baffled all their 
 efforts. Their cottages being built of earth, could not 
 stand one instant against the current; and no sooner did 
 the water reach them, than it levelled them with the ground. 
 The rapid stream carried off" all that was before it; men, 
 women, children, cattle, corn, every thing was washed 
 away in an instant, and left the place where the villnge 
 stood without any thing to indicate that there had eve* 
 been a house on the spot." (Belzoni.) — Burder, 
 
682 
 
 MATTHEW 
 
 Chap. 7—9. 
 
 Ver. 27. And the rain descended, and the floods 
 came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that 
 house ; and it fell : and great was the fall of it. 
 
 Tha rains, and floods, and winds of an eastern monsoon, 
 give a striking illustration of the above passage. When 
 people in those regions speak of the strength of a house, it 
 is not by saying it will last so many years, but, " It will 
 outstand. the^ rains : it will not be injured by the floods." 
 Houses built of the best materials and having deep founda- 
 tions, in a few years often yield to the rains of a monsoon. 
 At first, a small crack appears in some angle, which grad- 
 ually becomes larger, till the whole building tumbles to 
 the ground. And who can wonder at this, when he con- 
 siders the state of the earth 1 For several months there is 
 not a drop of rain, and the burning sun has loosened the 
 ground; when at once the torrents descend, the chapped 
 earth suddenly swells, and the foundations are moved by 
 the change. The house founded upon a rock can alone 
 stand the rains and floods of a wet monsoon. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. For he taught them as one having au- 
 thority, and not as the scribes. 
 
 When the scribes delivered any thing to the people, they 
 used to say, " Our rabbins, or our wise men, say so." Such 
 as were on the side of Hillel made use of his name, and 
 those who were on the side of Shammai made use of his. 
 Scarcely ever would they venture to say any thing as of 
 themselves. But Christ spake boldly, of himself, and did 
 not go about to support his doctrine by the testimony of the 
 elders. — Gill. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 20. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes 
 have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; 
 but the Son of man hath not where to lay his 
 head. 
 
 Listen to that poor man who is stating his case to a rich 
 man ; he pathetically laments his forlorn condition, and 
 says, " Ah ! sir, even the birds have their nests, but I have 
 not so much as they." — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 28. And when he was come to the other 
 side, into the country of the Gergesenes, there 
 met him two possessed with devils, coming out 
 of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man 
 might pass by that way. 
 
 " As I was not induced to accept the offers made me to re- 
 main at Tiberias, I left it early the following morning, the 
 11th of September, coasted the lake, and trod the ground 
 celebrated for the miracle of the unclean spirit driven by 
 our Saviour among the swine. The tombs still exist in the 
 form of caverns, on the sides of the hills that rise from the 
 shore of the lake ; and from their wild appearance may 
 well be considered the habitation of men exceeding fietce, 
 possessed by a devil : they extend at a distance for more 
 than a mile from the present town." (Light's Travels in 
 Egypt.) " From this tomb we went to a still more perfect 
 one, which was entirely cleared out, and now used as a 
 private dwelling. Though the females of the family were 
 withm, we were allowed to enter, and descended by a flight 
 of three steps, there being either a cistern or a deep sepul- 
 chre on the right of this descent. The portals and archi- 
 trave were here perfectly exposed ; the ornaments of the 
 latter were a wreath and open flowers ; the door also was 
 divided by a studded bar, and panelled, and the ring of the 
 knocker remained, though the knocker itself had been bro- 
 ken off; the door, which was of the same size and thick- 
 ness as those described, traversed easily on its hinges, and 
 we were permitted to open and close it at pleasure. The 
 tomb was about eight feet in height, on the inside, as there 
 was the descent of a steep step from the stone threshold to 
 the floor. Its size was about twelve paces square ; but as 
 no ,iglit was received into it except by the door, we could 
 not see v/hether there was an inner chamber, as in some of 
 the others. A perfect sarcophagus still remained within, 
 and this was now used by the family as a chest for corn 
 
 and other provisions : so that this violated sepulchre of the 
 dead had thus become a secure, a cool, and a convenient 
 retreat to the living of a diiferent race." (Buckingham.) 
 These burying-grounds frequently afibrd shelter to the 
 weary traveller when overtaken by the night ; and their 
 recesses are also a hiding-place for thieves and murderers, 
 who sally out from thence to commit their nocturnal depre- 
 dations. (Forbes.) — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 9. And as Jesus passed forth from thence, 
 he saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the 
 receipt of custom : and he saith unto him, Fol- 
 low me. And he arose and followed him. 
 
 The publicans had houses or booths built for them at 
 the foot of bridges, at the mouth of rivers, and by the sea- 
 shore, where they took loll of passengers that went to and 
 fro. Hence we read of the tickets or seals of the publicans, 
 which, when a man had paid toll on one side of a river, 
 were given him by the piiblican to show to him that sat 
 on the other side, that it might appear he had paid. On 
 these were written two great letters, larger than those in 
 common use. — Gill. 
 
 Arriving at Persepolis, Mr. Morier observes, " here is a 
 station of rahdars, or toll-gatherers, appointed to levy a toll 
 upon kafilehs, or caravans of merchants; and who, in 
 general, exercise their office with so much brutality and 
 extortion as to be execrated by all travellers. The collec- 
 tions of the toll are farmed, consequently extortion ensues; 
 and, as most of the rahdars receive no other emolument 
 than what they can exact over and above the prescribed 
 dues from the traveller, their insolence is accounted for, 
 and a cause sufficiently powerful is given for their inso- 
 lence on the one hand, and the detestation in which they 
 are held on the other. Baj-gah means the place of tribute : 
 it may also be rendered the receipt of custom ; and, per- 
 haps, it was from a place like this that our Saviour called 
 Matthew to follow him." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15. And Jesus said unto them, Can the 
 children of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as 
 the bridegroom is with them ? but the days will 
 come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from 
 them, and then shall they fast. 
 
 Does a man look sorry when he ought to rejoice, has he 
 become rich, has he been greatly honoured, has a dear 
 friend come to see him, has he become the father of a 
 male child, and does he still appear dejected, it is asked, 
 " What, do people weep in the house of marriage 7 Is 
 it a funeral or a wedding you are going to celebrate 1" 
 Does a person go to cheer his friend, he says, on entering 
 the house, " I am come this day to the house of marriage." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 17. Neither do men put new wine into old 
 bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine 
 runneth out, and the bottles perish : but they 
 put new wine into new bottles, and both are 
 preserved. 
 
 The eastern bottle, called turnntke, is made of the raw 
 hide of an animal, consequently, when any fermenting 
 liquor is put into it, the skin being comparatively green, 
 distends itself to the swelling of the liquor. But, should 
 the bottle have been previously stretched by the same 
 process, then it must burst if put to a second trial, be- 
 cause it cannot yield to the new pressure of fermentation.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 20. And behold, a woman which was dis- 
 eased with an issue of blood twelve years, came 
 behind him, and touched the hem of his gar- 
 ment. 
 
 f 
 The Jewish mantle or upper garment was considered as 
 consisting of four quarters, called in the oriental idiom 
 wings. Every wing contained one corner, whereat yras 
 
Chap. 10. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 5S3 
 
 suspended a tuft of threads or strings, which they called 
 KparrireS'n'. Numb. XV. 37. Deut. xxii. 12. What are there 
 called fringes are those strings, and the four quarters of 
 the vesture are the four corners. As in the first of the pas- 
 sages above referred to, they are mentioned as serving to 
 make them remember the commandmen ,s of the Lord to 
 do them, there was conceived to be a spec ial sacredness in 
 them, which must have probably led ihe woman to think 
 of touching that part of his garment, rather than any other. 
 Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 23. And when Jesus came into the ruler's 
 house, and saw the minstrels and the people 
 making a noise. 
 
 In Egypt, the lower class of people call in women, who 
 play on the tabour, and whose business it is, like the hired 
 mourners in other countries, to sing elegiac airs to the 
 sound of that instrument, which they accompany with the 
 most frightful distortions of their limbs. These women 
 attend the corpse to the grave, intermixed with the female 
 relations and triends of the deceased, who commonly have 
 their hair in the utmost disorder, their heads covered with 
 dust, their faces daubed with indigo, or at least rubbed 
 with mud, and howling like maniacs. Such were the 
 minstrels whom our Lord found in the house of Jairus, 
 making so great a noise round the bed on which the dead 
 body of his daughter lay. The noise and tumult of these 
 retained mourners, and the other attendants, appear to have 
 begun immediately after the person expired. " The mo- 
 ment," says Chardin, " any one returns from a long jour- 
 ney, or dies, his family burst into cries that may be heard 
 twenty doors off; and this is renewed at different times, and 
 contin ues many days, according to the vigour of the passions. 
 Especially are these cries long and frightful in the case of 
 death, for the mourning is right down despair, and an image 
 of hell." 
 
 The longest and most violent acts of mourning are when 
 they wash the body; when they perfume it; when they 
 carry it out to be interred. During this violent outcry, 
 the greater part even of the relations do not shed a single 
 tear. While the funeral procession moves forward, with 
 the violent wailings of the females, the male attendants en- 
 gage in devout singing. It is evident that this sort of 
 mourning and lamentation was a kind of art among the 
 Jews : " Wailing shall be in the streets ; and they shall 
 call such as are skilful of lamentation to wail." Mourners 
 are hired at the obsequies of Hindoos and Mohammedans, 
 as in former times. To the dreadful noise and tumult of 
 the hired mourners, the following passage of Jeremiah in- 
 disputably refers, and shows the custom to be derived from 
 a very I'emote antiquity : " Call for the mourning women 
 that they may come ; and send for cunning women, that 
 they may come, and let them make haste, and take up a 
 wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and 
 our eyelids gush out with waters."— Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 9. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass 
 in your purses. 
 
 Clothed as the eastern people were with long robes, gir- 
 dles were indispensably necessary to bind together their 
 flowing vestments. They wei-e worn about the waist, and 
 properly confined their loose garments. These girdles, 
 ^wvia, were so contrived as to be used for purses; and they 
 are still so woi'n in the East. Dr. Shaw, speaking of the dress 
 of the Arabs in Barbary, says, " The girdles of these people 
 are usually of worsted, very artfully Avoven into a variety of 
 figures, and made to wrap several times about their bodies. 
 One end of them being doubled and sewed along the edges, 
 serves them for a purse, agreeable to the acceptation of the 
 word (oji'f? in the holy scripture." The Roman soldiers 
 used in like manner to carry their money in their girdles. 
 Whence in Horace, qui zonam perdidil, means one who 
 had lost his purse. And in Aulus Gellius, C. Gracchus is 
 introduced, saying, those girdles which I carried out full 
 of money, ^ hen I went from Rome, I have at my return 
 f-x m the pre ince brought home empty. — Burder. 
 
 Ver, 10 Nor scrip for i/our journey, neither two 
 
 coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: (for the 
 workman is worthy of his meat.) 
 
 Though the hospitality of the Arabs be general, and not 
 confined to the superior classes, yet we are not to suppose 
 that it admits of imposition, or is without proper bounds. 
 Of this we have a manifest instance in the directions of our 
 Lord to the apostles. Matt. x. 11. To send a couple of 
 hearty men with appetites good, and rendered even keen, 
 by the effect of travelling— to send two such to a family, 
 barely able to meet its own necessities — having no provis- 
 ion of bread — or sustenance for a day beforehand, were 
 to press upon indigence beyond the dictates of prudence, or 
 the permission of Christian charity. Our Lord, therefore, 
 commands his messengers — " Into whatsoever -city or town 
 ye enter, inquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till 
 ye go thence." " Worthy," a^ios, this has no reference to 
 moral worthiness; our Lord means suitable; to whom 
 your additional board for a few days will be no inconve- 
 nience — substantial man. And this is exactly the import 
 of the same directions, given Luke x. 5, 6: "Into what- 
 ever oikia — house-establishment on a respectable scale — 
 residence affording accommodation for strangers, (the hos- 
 pitalia of the Latins,) ye enter, in the same oikia remain : 
 go not from oikia to oikia, jn search of superior accommo- 
 dations ; though it may happen that after you have "been 
 in a town some day.s, you may hear of a more wealthy in- 
 dividual, who could entertain you better. No ; in the 
 same house remain, eating and drinking such things as 
 they give : — whatever is set before you." The same 
 inference is deduced from the advice of the apostle John 
 to the lady Electa, (2 Epistle 10.) " If there come any to 
 you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your 
 oikia." She was, therefore, a person of respectability, if 
 not of rank ; mistress of a household establishment, on a 
 scale proper for the exercise of Christian benevolence in a 
 convenient and suitable manner — of liberal heart, and of 
 equally liberal powers. 
 
 Whoever has well considered the difficulties to which 
 travellers in the East are often exposed to procure supplies, 
 or even sufficient provisions to make a meal, will perceive 
 the propriety of these directions. Although it was one 
 sign of the Messiah's advent, that to the poor the gospel 
 was preached, yet it was not the Messiah's jjurpose to add 
 to the difficulties of any man's situation. He supposes that 
 a family-man, a housekeeper, might be without bread, 
 obliged to borrow from a friend, to meet the wants of a 
 single traveller, (Luke xi. 5, " I have nothing to set before 
 him,") no uncommon case ; but, if this were occasioiied by 
 real penury, the rights of hospitality, however congeifial to 
 the manners of the people, or to the feelings of the indi- 
 vidual, and however urgent, must be waived. — Taylor in 
 Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 12. And when ye come into a house, salute it. 
 
 When the priests or pandarams go into a house, they 
 sometimes sing a verse of blessing ; at other times the priest 
 stretches out his right hand, and says aloud, " aservdUiam" 
 i. e. blessing. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. It is enough for the disciple that he be 
 as his master, and the servant as his lord : if 
 they have called the master of the house Beel- 
 zebub, how much more shall they call them of 
 his household ? 
 
 It is supposed that this idol was the same with Baal-zebud, 
 the fly-god, worshipped at Ekron, (2 Kings i. 2,) and who 
 had his name changed afterward by the Jews to Baal-zebul, 
 the dung-god : a title expressive of the utmost contempt. 
 Among the Jews it was held, in a manner, for a matter of 
 religion to reproach idols, and to give them odious names: 
 and among the ignominious ones bestowed upon them, the 
 general and common one was zebul, dung, or a dunghill. 
 Many names of evil spirits, or devils, occur in the Talmud. 
 Among all the devils, they esteem.ed him the worst, the 
 prince of the rest, who ruled over idols, and by whom ora- 
 cles and miracles were given forth among the heathen. 
 This demon they called Baal-zebul. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 42. And whosoever shall give to drink unto 
 
684 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 10—13. 
 
 one of these little ones, a cup of cold water only, 
 in the name of a disciple, verily, I say unto 
 you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. 
 
 In the eastern countries, a cup of water was a considera- 
 ble object. In India, the Hindoos go sometimes a great 
 way to fetch it, and then boil it, that it may do the less hurt 
 to travellers when they are hot; and after that, they stand 
 from morning till night in some great road, where there is 
 neither pit nor rivulet, and offer it in honour of their god, 
 to be drank by all passengers. This necessary work of 
 charity, in these hot countries, seems to have been practised 
 by the more pious and humane Jews. (Asiatic Miscella- 
 ny.) — BURDER, 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Ver. 8. But what went ye out for to see? A 
 man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they 
 that wear soft clothing are in king's houses. 
 
 Persons devoted to a life of austerity, commonly wore a 
 dress of coarse materials. John the Baptist, we are told in 
 the sacred volume, was clothed in a garment of camel's 
 hair, with a broad leathern girdle about his loins. It is a 
 circumstance worthy of notice, that the finest and most 
 elegant shawls, which constitute so essential a part of the 
 Turkish dress, and are worn by persons in the highest 
 ranks of life, are fabricated of camel's hair. These un- 
 questionably belong to the " soft raiment" worn by the resi- 
 dents in the palaces of eastern kings. But it is evident that 
 the mspired writer intends, by the remark on the dress of 
 John, to direct our attention to the meanness of his attire. 
 " What went ye out for to see 7 a man clothed in soft rai- 
 ment "? Behold, they that are in king's houses wear soft 
 clothing ;" but the garments of John were of a very differ- 
 ent kind. It is, indeed, sufficiently apparent, that the in- 
 habitants of the wilderness, where John spent his days before 
 he entered upon his ministry, and other thinly settled dis- 
 tricts, manufactured a stuff, in colour and texture somewhat 
 resembling our coarse hair-cloths, of the hair which fell 
 from their camels, for their own immediate use, of which 
 the raiment of that venerable prophet consisted. In 
 the same manner, the Tartars of modern times work up 
 their camel's hair into a kind of felt, which serves as a 
 covering to their tents, although their way of life is the very 
 reverse of easy and pompous. Like the austere herald of 
 the Saviour, the modern dervises wear garments of the 
 same texture, which they, too, gird about their loins with 
 great:'' leathern girdles. "Elijah, the Tishbite, seems to have 
 worn a habic of camel's hair, equally mean and coarse; for 
 he is represented in our translation as a "hairy man," 
 which perhaps ought to be referred to his dress, and not to 
 his person. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. But whereunto shall I liken this gene- 
 ration? It is like unto children sitting in the 
 markets, and calling unto their fellows. 
 
 It was the custom of children among the Jews, in their 
 sports, to imitate what they saw done by others upon great 
 occasions, and particularly the customs in festivities, where- 
 in the musician beginning a tune on his instrument, the 
 company danced to his pipe. So also in funerals, wherein 
 the women beginning the mournful song, (as the frccfaca 
 of the Romans^ the rest followed lamenting and beating 
 .heir breasts. These things the children acted and person- 
 ated in the streets in play, and the rest not following the 
 leader as usual, gave occasion to this speech : " We have 
 piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned 
 unto you, and ye have not lamented."— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 16. But whereunto shall I liken this gene- 
 ration ? It is like unto children sittitig in the 
 markets, and calling unto their fellows, 17. Arid 
 saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have 
 not danced ; we have mourned unto you, and 
 ye have not lamented. 
 
 The funeral procession was attended by professional 
 mourners, eminently skilled in the art of lamentation, whom 
 
 the friends and relations of the deceased hired, to assist 
 them in expressing their sorrow. They began the ceremo- 
 ny with the stridulous voices of old women, who strove, by 
 their doleful modulations, to extort grief from those that 
 were present. The children in the streets through which 
 they passed, often suspended their sports, to imitate the 
 sounds, and joined with equal sincerity in the lamentations. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 27. And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, 
 by whom do your ahildren cast them out % 
 therefore they shall be your judges. 
 
 The universal opinion in the East is, that devils have the 
 power to enter into and take possession of men, in the same 
 sense as we understand it to have been the case, as de- 
 scribed by the sacred writers. I have often seen the poor 
 objects who were believed to be under demoniacal influ- 
 ence, and certainly, in some instances, I found it no easy 
 matter to account for their conduct on natural principles. 
 I have seen them writhe and tear themselves in the most 
 frantic manner; they burst asunder the cords with which 
 they were bound, and fell on the ground as if dead. At one 
 time they are silent, and again most vociferous ; they dash 
 with fury among the people, and loudly pronounce their 
 imprecations. But no soonor does the exorcist come for- 
 ward, than the victim becomes the subject of new emotions ; 
 he stares, talks incoherently, sighs, and falls on the ground ; 
 and in the course of an hour is as calm as any who are 
 around him. Those men who profess to eject devils are 
 frightful-looking creatures, and are seldom associated with, 
 except in the discharge of their official duties. It is a fact, 
 that they affect to eject the evil spirits by their prince oj 
 devils. Females are much more subject to those affections 
 than men ; and Friday is the day of all others on which they 
 are most liable to be attacked. I am fully of opinion that 
 nearly all their possessions would be removed by medicine, 
 or by arguments of a more tangible nature. Not long ago, 
 a young female was said to be under the influence of an evil 
 spirit, but the father, being an unbeliever, took a large broom 
 and began to beat his daughter in the most unmerciful man- 
 ner. After some time the spirit cried aloud, " Do not beat 
 me, do not beat vie" and took its departure ! There is a 
 fiend called poothani, which is said to take great delight in 
 entering little children; but the herb called j^a-wartite is 
 then administered with great success ! — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 42. The queen of the south shall rise up in 
 the judgment with this generation, and shall 
 condemn it : for she came from the uttermost 
 parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solo- 
 mon ; and behold, a greater than Solomon is 
 here. 
 
 This is spoken in allusion to a custom among the Jews 
 and Romans, which was, for the witnesses to rise from their 
 seats when they accused criminals, or gave any evidence 
 against them. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 25. But while men slept, his enemy came 
 and sowed tares among the wheat and went 
 his way. * 
 
 Strange as it may appear, this is still literally done in the 
 East. See that lurking villain, watching for the time when 
 his neighbour shall plough his field; he carefully marks 
 the period when the work has been finished, and goes in 
 the night following, and casts in what the natives call the 
 jjandinellu, i. e. pig paddy ; this being of rapid growth, 
 springs up before the good seed, and scatters itseif before 
 the other can be reaped, so that the poor owner of the field 
 will be for years before he can get rid of the troublesome 
 weed. But there is another noisome plant which these 
 wretches cast into the ground of those they hate, called pe- 
 rvm-pirandi, which is more destructive to vegetation than 
 any other plant. Has a man purchased a field out of the 
 hands of another, the offended person says, " I will plant 
 the perum-pirandi in his grounds." — Roberts. 
 
Chap. 13—15. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 585 
 
 Ver 31. Another parable put he forth unto them, 
 saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a 
 grain of mustard -seed, which a man took, and 
 sowed in his field : 32. Which indeed is the 
 least of all seeds : but when it is grown, it is 
 the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, 
 so that the birds of the air come and lodge in 
 the branches thereof 
 
 The account which our Lord gave of the mustard-tree, 
 recorded in the gospel of Matthew, has often excited the 
 ridicule of unbelievers, or incurred their pointed condem- 
 nation : " The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mus- 
 tard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; which 
 indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is 
 the greatest among herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the 
 birds of the air come and lodge in the branches of it." We 
 behold no such mustard-trees in this country, say the ene- 
 mies of revelation, therefore the description of Christ must 
 be erroneous. But the consequence will not follow, till it 
 is proved that no such trees exist in any part of the world. 
 This parable of the mustard-tree was delivered in a public 
 assembly, every individual of which was well acquainted 
 with it ; many of them were the avowed enemies of our 
 Lord, and would have gladly seized the opportunity of ex- 
 posing him to the scorn of the multitude, if he had commit- 
 ted any mistake. The silent acquiescence of the scribes 
 and Pharisees aifordsan irrefragable proof that his descrip- 
 tion is perfectly correct. They knew that the same account 
 of that plant more than once occurs in the writings of their 
 fathers. In the Babylonish Talmud, a Jewish rabbi writes, 
 that a certain man of Sichem had bequeathed him by his 
 father three boughs of mustard : one of which broken off 
 from the rest yielded nine kabs of seed, and the wood of it 
 was sufficient to cover the potter's house. Another rabbi, 
 in the Jerusalem Talmud, says, he had a stem of mustard 
 in his garden, into which he could climb as into a fig-tree. 
 After making every reasonable allowance for the hyper- 
 bolical terms in which these Talmudical writers indulged, 
 they certainly referred to real appearances in nature ; and 
 no man will pretend that it was any part of their design to 
 justify the Saviour's description. But the birds of the air 
 might certainly lodge with ease among the branches of a 
 tree that was sufficiently strong to sustain the weight of a 
 man. The fact asserted by our Lord is stated in the clear- 
 est terms by a Spanish historian, who says, that in the pro- 
 vince of Chili, in South America, the mustard grows to the 
 size of a tree, and the birds lodge under its shade, and build 
 their nests in its branches. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 44. Again, The kingdom of heaven is like 
 unto treasure hid'in a field; the which when a 
 man hath faund, he hideth, and for joy thereof 
 goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth 
 that field. 
 
 No practice was more common than that of hiding trea- 
 sures in a field or garden, because the people had not any 
 place of safety in which to deposite their riches, and becluse 
 their rapacious rulers were sure to find some pretext for 
 accusation against them, in order to get their money. 
 Hence men of great property affected poverty, and walked 
 about in mean apparel, in order to deceive their neighbours, 
 and hence came the practice of hiding their treasures in 
 the earth. In the book of fate, called Sagd-Thevan Saste- 
 rdm, the following question occurs many times: " Will the 
 buried things be found V There can be no doubt that there 
 are immense treasures buried in the East at this day. Not 
 long ago a toddy drawer ascended a palmirah-tree to lop 
 off the upper branches, when one of them in falling stuck 
 in the ground. On taking out that branch, he saw some- 
 thing yellow ; he looked, and found an earthern vessel full 
 of gold coins and other articles. I rescued three of the coins 
 from the crucible of the goldsmith, and what was my sur- 
 prise to find on one of them, in ancient Greek characters, 
 konoh-obryza. About two years ago an immense hoard was 
 found at Putlam, which must have been buried for severa. 
 ftges. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 55. Is not this the carpenter's son? is not 
 
 74 
 
 his mother called Mary? and his brethren, 
 James, and loses, and Simon, and Judas ? 
 See on Mark G. 3. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 7. Whereupon he promised with an oath to 
 give her whatsoever she would ask. 
 
 In the East it is customary for public dancers, at festi- 
 vals in great houses, to solicit from the company they hav« 
 been entertaining, such rewards as "^he spectators may 
 choose to bestow. These usually are small pieces of money, 
 which the donor sticks on the face of the performer. A 
 favourite dancer will have her face covered with such 
 presents. " Shah Abbas, being one day drunk, gave a wo- 
 man that danced much to his satisfaction, the fairest hhai 
 in all Ispahan, which was not yet finished, but wanted little 
 This hhan yielded a great revenue to the king, to whom ii 
 belonged, in chamber-rents. The nazar having put him in 
 mind of it next morning, took the freedom to tell him that 
 it was unjustifiable prodigality ; so the king ordered to give 
 her a hundred tomans, with which she was forced to be 
 contented." (Thevenot.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 26. And when the disciples saw him walk- 
 ing on the sea, they were troubled, saying. It 
 is a spirit ; and they cried out for fear. 
 
 The Hindoos have to do with so many demons, gods, 
 and demigods, it is no wonder they live in constant dread 
 of their power. There is not a hamlet without a tree, or 
 some secret place, in which evil spirits are not believed to 
 dwell. Hence the people live in constant fear of those 
 sprites of darkness, and nothing but the most pressing nc* 
 cessity will induce a man to go abroad after the sun hai 
 gone down. See the unhappy wight who is obliged to go^ 
 out in the dark ; he repeats his incantations and touches iiis» 
 amulets, he seizes a firebrand to keep off the foes, and 
 begins his journey. He goes on with gentle step, he 
 listens, and again repeats his prayers ; should he hear the 
 rustling of a leaf, or the moaning of some living animal, 
 he gives himself up for lost. Has he worked himself up 
 into a state of artificial courage, he begins to sing and 
 bawl aloud, " to keep his spirits up." But, after all his 
 efforts, his heart will not beat with its wonted ease till he 
 shall have gained a place of safety. I was once sitting, 
 after sunset, under a large banyan-tree, {Jicus religiGsa,) 
 when a native .soldier passed that way. He saw me in the 
 shade, and immediately began to cry aloud, and beat his 
 breast, and ran off in the greatest consternation. That 
 man had conducted himself bravely in the Kandian war, 
 but his courage fled when in the presence of a supposed 
 spirit. On another occasion, having to go to some islands 
 to distribute tracts, and having determined when to return, 
 I directed my servant to bring my pony to a certain point 
 of land, where I intended to disembark. Accordingly, 
 when I had finished my work, I returned in a little canoe, 
 and saw my pony and the boy in the distance. But the 
 sun having gone down, the unfortunate fellow, seeing us 
 indistinctly, thought we were spirits : he mounted the pony 
 and galloped off with all speed, leaving me to my medita- 
 tions on a desolate beach. " They were troubled, saying, 
 It is a spirit." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Ver. 2. Why do thy disciples transgress the tra- 
 dition of the elders ? for they wash not their 
 hands when they eat bread. 
 
 No Hindoo of good caste will eat till he has washed 
 his hands. Thus, however numerous a company may be, 
 the guests never commence eating till they have perfcriB?d 
 that necessary ablution. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 4. For God commanded, saying, Honour 
 thy father and mother : and he that curseth 
 father or mother, let him die the death. 5. But 
 ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his' 
 mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mio;htest 
 
586 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 15—18. 
 
 be profited by me : 6. Ai. i honour not his 
 father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus 
 have ye made the commandment of God of 
 none effect by your tradition. 
 
 By the term cursing, we are here to understand, not 
 only what may be peculiarly so termed, that is, imprecating 
 evil on a parent, but probably all rude and reproachful 
 language used towards him; at least, the Hebrew word 
 h'^p, (to which I cannot find any German term altogether 
 equivalent; and the Latin, m«Zet?icere, which more nearly 
 resembles it, has rather a wider range of signification,) 
 would seem to comprehend as much, according to the com- 
 mon usage of the language. An example of this crime, 
 and, indeed, one altogether in point, is given by Christ, in 
 Matt. XV. 4—6, or Mark vii. 9—12, where he upbraids the 
 Pharisees with their giving, from their deference to hunian 
 traditions and doctrines, such an exposition of the divine 
 law, as converted an action, which, by the law of Moses, 
 would have been punished with death, into a vow, both 
 obligatory and acceptable in the sight of God. It seems 
 that it was then not uncommon for an undutiful and de- 
 generate son, who wanted to be rid of the burden of sup- 
 porting his parents, and, in his wrath, to turn them adrift 
 upon the wide world, to say to his father or mother, " Kor- 
 ban, or, Be that Korban (consecrated) which I should ap- 
 propriate to thy support ; that is. Every thing wherewith I 
 might ever aid or serve thee, and, of course, every thmg, 
 which I ought to devote to thy relief in the days of help- 
 less old age, I here vow unto God." A most abominable vow 
 indeed ! and which God would, unquestionably, as little 
 approve or accept, as he would a vow to commit adultery 
 or sodomy. And yet some of the Pharisees pronounced on 
 such vows this strange decision ; that they were absolutely 
 obligatory, and that the son who uttered such words, was 
 bound to abstain from contributing, in the smallest article, 
 to the behoof of his parents; because every thing that 
 should have been so appropriated, had become consecrated 
 to God, and could no longer be applied to their use, without 
 sacrilege and a breach of his vow. But on this exposition, 
 Christ not only remarked, that it abrogated the fifth com- 
 mandment, but he likewise added, as a counter-doctrine, 
 that Moses, th^ir own legislator, had expressly declared, 
 that the man who cursed father or mother deserved to die. 
 Now, it is impossible for a man to curse his parents more 
 effectually, than by a vow like this, when he interprets it 
 with such rigour, as to preclude him from doing any thing 
 in future for their benefit. It is not imprecating upon them 
 a curse in the common style of curses, which but evapo- 
 rate into air, because neither the devil, nor the lightning, 
 are wont to be so obsequious as to obey our wishes every 
 time we call upon the one to take, or the other to strike dead, 
 our adversaries: but it is fulfilling the curse, and making 
 it to all intents and purposes effectual. — Michaeljs. 
 
 Ver. 28. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, 
 O woman, great is thy faith ! be it unto thee 
 even as thou wilt. And her daughter was 
 made whole from that very hour. 
 
 The sex, on all common occasions, are always addressed 
 with this distinctive appellation. Thus people in going 
 along the road, should they have to speak to a female, say, 
 manushe, i. e. woman, hear me. The term sometimes is 
 '"xpressive of affection ; but, generally, it is intended to 
 convey an intimation of weakness and contempt. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 19. And I will give unto thee the keys of 
 
 the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou 
 
 shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven ; 
 
 and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall 
 
 be loosed in heaven. 
 
 • 
 As stewards of a great family, especially of the royal 
 household, bore a key, probably a golden one, in token 
 of their oflftce, the phrase of giving a person the key nat- 
 urally grew into an expression of raising him to great 
 power. (Comp. Is, xxii. 22, with Rev. iii. 7.) This was 
 with peculiar propriety applicable to the stewards of the 
 
 mysteries of God. (1 Cor. iv. 1.) Peter's opening of thr 
 kingdom of heaven, as being the first that preached it both 
 to the Jews and to the Gentiles, may be considered as an 
 illustration of this promise ; but it is more fully explained 
 by the power of binding and loosing afterward mentioned. 
 
 — BURDER. ' 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 1. And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, 
 James, and John his brother, and bringeth them 
 up into a high mountain apart, 2. And was 
 transfigured before them : and his face did shine 
 as the sun, and his raiment' was white as the 
 light. 
 
 Mount Tabor, or Thabor, as it is sometimes called, is 
 a calcareous mountain of a conical form, entirely detached 
 from any neighbouring mountain : it stands on one side of 
 the great plain of Esdraelon. The sides are rugged and 
 precipitous, and covered to the summit with the most beau- 
 tiful shrubs and flowers. Here Barak was encamped when, 
 at the suggestion of the prophetess Deborah, he descended 
 with ten thousand men, and discomfited the host of Sisera. 
 (Judg. iv. 6, &c.) And, long afterward, Hosea reproach- 
 ed the princes of Israel and the priests of the golden calves, 
 with having " been a snare in Mizpeh and a net spread 
 upon Tabor," (Hos. v. 1,) doubtless referring to the altars 
 and idols which were here set up ; and on this " high 
 mountain apart" the transfiguration of Jesus Christ is gen- 
 erally believed to have taken place. (Matt. xvii. 1, 2.) 
 Tabor is computed to be about a mile in height. To a 
 person standing at its foot, it appears to terminate in a 
 point : but, on reaching the top, he is agreeably surprised 
 to find an oval plain, about a quarter of a mile in its great- 
 est length, covered with a bed of fertile soil on the west, 
 and having en its eastern side a mass of ruins, apparently 
 the vestiges of churches, grottoes, and strong walls, all 
 decidedly of some antiquity, and a few appearing to be the 
 works of a very remote a_ge. The Hon. Capt. Fitzmaurice, 
 who visited this mountain in February, 1833, stales that he 
 saw the ruins of a very ancient church, built over the spot 
 where the transfiguration is supposed to have taken place. 
 
 The prospects" from the summit of Mount Tabor are 
 singularly delightful and extensive. On the northwest, 
 says Mr. Buckingham, (whose graphic description has 
 been confirmed by subsequent travellers,) " w-e had a view 
 of the Mediterranean Sea, whose blue surface filled up an 
 open space left by a downward bend in the outline of the 
 western hills; to the west-northwest a small portion of its 
 waters were seen ; and on the west, again, the slender line 
 of the distant horizon was just perceptible over the range of 
 land near the .seacoast. From the west to the south, the 
 plain of Esdraelon extended over-a vast space, beino bound- 
 ed on the south by a range of hills generally considered to 
 be Hermon, whose dews are poetically celebrated, (Psal. 
 cxxxiii. 3,) and having in the same direction, nearer the t 
 foot of Tabor, the springs of Ain-el-Sherar, which send 
 a perceptible stream through its centre, and form the brook 
 Kishon of antiquity. From the southeast to the east is the 
 plain of Galilee, being almost a continuation of Esdraelon, 
 and, like it, appearing to be highly cultivated. Beneath 
 the range of Hermon is seated Endor, famed for the witch 
 who raised the ghost of Samuel, (I Sam. xxviii.)and Nain, 
 equally celebrated as the place at which Jesus raised to 
 life the only son of a widow, and restored him to his 
 afilicted parent. The range which bounds the eastern view 
 is thought to be the ' mountains of Gilboa,' so fatal to Saul, 
 (1 Sam. xxxi.) The Sea of Tiberias, or Lake of Gen- 
 nesareth, is clearly discovered towards the northeast, and 
 somewhat further in this direction is pointed out the village 
 of Saphet, anciently nam'ed Bethulia, the city alluded to 
 by Jesus Christ in his divine sermon on the mount, from 
 which it is also very conspicuous. 
 
 " The rest of this glorious panorama comprehends the 
 sublime ' Mount of Beatitudes,' upon which that memorable 
 sermon was delivered, together with the route to Damas- 
 cus, and, lastly. Mount Lebanon, towering in the back- 
 ground in prodigious grandeur, the summit of which is 
 covered with perpetual snow." — Horne, 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 6. But whoso shall ofl^end one of these little 
 
Chap. 18—20. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 587 
 
 ones which believe in me, it were better for 
 him that a millstone were lianged about his 
 neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of 
 the sea. 
 
 It was a favourite punishment in ancient times, to tie a 
 large stone round the neck of a criminal, and then to cast 
 him into the sea or deep waters. Thus, Appe-Murte, a 
 man of rank, was destroyed in this way, for changmg his 
 religion, Budhism, for Hindooism. The punishment is 
 called sala-pti.ruchy. The millstones in the East are not 
 moi-e than twenty inches in diameter, and three inches 
 thick, so that there would not be that difficulty which some 
 have supposed in thus despatching criminals. It is common, 
 when a person is much oppressed, to say, " I had rather 
 have a stone tied round about my neck, and be thrown into 
 the sea, than thus suffer." A wife says to her husband, 
 " Rather than beat me thus, tie a stone round my neck, and 
 throw me into the tank." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 10. Take heed that ye despise not one of 
 these little ones : for I say unto you, That in 
 heaven their angels do always behold the face 
 of my Father which is in heaven. 
 
 Why is the fact of the angels constantly beholding the 
 face of God in heaven, a reason for not despising one of 
 Christ's little ones 1 On this point the commentators, for 
 the most part, leave the reader no more enlightened than 
 they found him. We suppose the true answer to be, that a 
 posture of strict attention, a look of wistful, intense, and 
 obsequious regard, directed to the eye, the countenance, or 
 the hand of a superior, is characteristic of a dutiful servant, 
 Df one intent upon the performance of his master's com- 
 mands. It is a posture indicative at once of an anxious 
 wish to know, and a cordial readiness to execute, the will 
 of a lord or ruler. This is apparent from the following in- 
 stances of scripture usage: — 1 Kings i. 20, " And then, my 
 lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel arc upon thee, that thou 
 shouldsttellthemwho shall sit on the throneof my lord the 
 king after him." Ps. cxxiii. 2, " Behold, as the eyes of ser- 
 vants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a 
 maiden unto the handof her mistress; so our eyes wait 
 upon the Lord our God." Our Saviour accordingly would 
 intimate that such was the attitude of the angels in heaven, 
 who are ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation. Act- 
 ing as a tutelary cohort to the sons of the kingdom, they 
 were always on the alert to undertake their cause. For 
 this purpose they stood obedient to the beck and bidding of 
 their heavenly master. Like devoted servants ready to 
 take their orders from a bare look, a glance of the eye, or 
 a turn of the head, so these guardian spirits were inces- 
 santly on the watch, to learn when and where they should 
 be sent, with the speed of the wind, to avenge the wrongs 
 and injuries of God's chosen. Seeing then such a prompt 
 and powerful custody is provided for the little ones of Christ, 
 it must be dangerous to despise them, whether in word or 
 deed. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 21. Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, 
 how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I 
 forgive him 1 till seven times ? 
 
 This number is in common use, to show a thing has been 
 often done. " Have I not told you sg-ym times to fetch water 
 and wash my feet 1" " Seven times have I been to the temple, 
 but still my requests are not granted." " Seven times have 
 I requested the father to give me the hand of his daughter, 
 but he refused me : and, therefore, will not ask him again." 
 " Have I not forgiven you seven times, and how shall I for- 
 give you again V — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 34. And his lord was wroth, and delivered 
 him to the tormentors, till he should pay all 
 that was due unto him. 
 
 The word 0aaavirm properly denotes examiner, particu- 
 larly one who has it in charge to examine by torture. 
 Hence it came to signify jailer, for on such in those days 
 this charge commonly devolved. They were not only al- 
 
 lowed, but even commanded, to treat the wretches in their 
 custody with every kind of cruelty, in order to extort pay- 
 ment from them, in case they had concealed any of their 
 effects ; or, if ihey had nothing, to wrest the sum owed from 
 the compassion of their relations and friends, who, to re- 
 lease an unhappy person for whom they had a regard from 
 such extreme misery, might be induced to pay the debt ; 
 for, let it be observed, that the person of the insolvent debtor 
 was absolutely in the power of the creditor, and at his dis- 
 
 'posal .^— C A MPBELL . 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 6. Wherefore they are no more twain, but 
 one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined 
 together, let no man put asunder. 
 
 Of a happy couple it is said, " They have one life and 
 one body." If they are not happy. " Ah ! they are like the 
 knife arid the victim," " They are like the dog and the 
 cat, or the crow and the how, or the kite and the serpent." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 24. And again I say unto you, It is easier 
 for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, 
 than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 This metaphor finds a parallel in the proverb which is 
 quoted to show the difficulty of accomplishing any thing. 
 " Just as soon will an elephant pass through the spont of a 
 kettle." " Ah! the old sinner, ne finds it no easy thing to 
 die; his life is lingering, lingering; it co.nnot escape; it is 
 like the elephant trying to get through the spout of a kettle." 
 — Roberts. 
 
 To pass a camel through the eye of a needle, was a pro- 
 verbial expression among the nations of high antiquity, de- 
 noting a difficulty which neither the art nor the power of 
 man can surmount. Our Lord condescends to employ it in 
 his discourse to the disciples, to show how extremely diffi- 
 cult it is for a rich man to forsake all for the cause of God 
 and truth, and obtain the blessings of salvation : " I say unto 
 you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
 needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
 God." Many expositors, however, are of opinion, that the 
 allusion is not to the animal of ^nat name, but to the cable 
 by which an anchor is made fast to the ship : and for came), 
 they read camil, from which our word cable is supposed to 
 be descended. It is not perhaps easy to determine which 
 of these ought to be preferred ; and" some interpreters of 
 considerable note have accordingly adopted both views. 
 The more common signification of the term, however, 
 seems rather to countenance the first view. The Talmudi- 
 cal writers had a similar proverb concerning him who pro- 
 posed to accomplish an impossibility, which they couched 
 in the following terms : " Thou art perchance from the 
 city of Pomboditha, where they send an elephant through 
 the eye of a needle." Another Hebrew adage, mentioned 
 by the learned Buxtorf, bears a striking resemblance to 
 this : They neither show one a golden palm, nor an elephant 
 which enters through the eye of a needle. Both these pro- 
 verbial expressions were intended to express either a thing 
 extremely difficult, or altogether impracticable to human 
 power; but our Lord, instead of the elephant, took the 
 camel, as being an animal better known to the Jews. The 
 striking analogy ^^ however, between a cable and a thread 
 which is wont to be passed through the eye of a needlQ 
 would incline us to embrace the second view. By the He- 
 brew term (Sns) gamel, and the Greek word {Kanninc,) kame- 
 los, the Syrians, the Helenistis Jews, and the Arabians, all 
 understood a ship's cable: and hence, the Assyrians and 
 Arabians contended that the word must be so interpreted 
 in the proverb under consideration. The Talmudical wri- 
 ters also have a similar adage, which is quoted by Bux- 
 torf: " The departure of the soul from the body is diffi- 
 cult as the passing of a cable through a small aperture."— 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Ver. 6. And about the eleventh hour he went out, 
 and found others standing idle, and saith unio 
 them, AVhy stand ye here all the day idle? 
 
588 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 20—22. 
 
 7. They say unto him, Because no man hath 
 hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into 
 the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that 
 shall ye receive. 
 
 The most conspicuous building in Hamadan is the Mes- 
 jid Jumah, a large mosque now falling inio decay, and 
 before it a maidan or square, which serves as a market- 
 place. Here we observed every morning before the sun 
 rose, that a numerous band of peasants were collected with 
 spades in their hands, waiting, as they informed us, to be 
 hired for the day to work in the surrounding fields. This 
 custom, which I have never seen in any other part of Asia, 
 forcibly struck me as a most happy illustration of our Sa- 
 viour's parable of the labourers in the vineyard in the 20th 
 chapter of Matthew, particularly when passing by the same 
 place laie in the day, we still found others standing idle, 
 and remembered his words, " Why stand ye here all the 
 day idle 1" as most applicable to their situation : for in put- 
 ting the very same question to them, they answered us, 
 " Because no man hath hired us." — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 11. And when they had received it, they 
 murmured against the good man of the house. 
 
 Pay a man ever so liberally, he will still murmur ; he 
 looks at the money and then at your face, and says, " po- 
 THATHu," i. e. not sufficient. He tells you a long story about 
 what he has done and suffered, about the great expense he 
 has been at to oblige you, and he entreats you for a little 
 more. I ask any Englishman who has been in India, if he 
 ever met with a Hindoo who was not at all times ready to 
 MURMUR 1 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 16. So the last shall be first, and the first 
 last : for many be called, but few chosen. 
 
 The Jews never spake of levying troops, but of choosing 
 them ; because all the males, from twenty years old and 
 upwards, being liable to serve, they had always a great 
 many more than they wanted. In allusion to the general 
 muster of the people, and the selection of a certain number 
 for the service of their country, our Lord observes, " Many 
 are called, but few chosen." The great mass of the 
 people were called together by sound of trumpet, and on 
 passing in review before the officers, those were chosen who 
 were deemed most fit for service. This is the reason the 
 Hebrews usually called their soldiers young men, and 
 bahurim, chosen. But no man, who felt a disposition to 
 serve his country, was rejected ; though an Israelite was not 
 chosen, he might volunteer his services, and was then en- 
 rolled. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 5. Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy 
 king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon 
 an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. 
 See on Is. 30. 24. 
 
 Ver. 7. And brought the ass, and the colt, and put 
 on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. 
 
 In later times also it was customary #n those countries 
 fo make riding more convenient in this manner. Tucher, 
 who made a pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre in the last 
 half of the fi^fteenth century, gives the following advice 
 to a person who intends travelling in Palestine : " Have 
 a coat made at Venice of double cloth : it is very conve- 
 nient in the Holy Land. You spread it upon the ass, and 
 ride on it." — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 8. And a very great multitude spread their 
 garments in the way; others cut down branches 
 from the trees, and strewed them in the way. 
 
 It was a common practice in the East, and one which, 
 on certain great and joyful occasions, has been practised 
 in other countries, to strew flowers and branches of trees 
 in the way of conquerors and renowned princes. Herod- 
 
 otus states, that people went before Xerxes passing over 
 the Hellespont, and burnt all manner of perfumes oa the 
 bridges, and strewed the way with myrtles. So did those 
 Jews who believed Christ to "be the promised Messiah, and 
 the king of Israel ; they cut down branches of the trees, 
 and strewed them in the way. Sometimes the whoh; road 
 which leads to the capitol of an eastern monarch, for sev- 
 eral miles, is covered with rich silks over which he rides 
 into the city. Agreeably to this custom, the multitudes 
 spread their garments in the way when the Saviour rode 
 in triumph into Jerusalem. — Paxton. 
 
 Campbell is right, " Spread their mantles ^n the way." 
 The people of the East have a robe which corresponds 
 with the mantle of an English lady. Its name is salvi, and 
 how often may it be seen spread on the groimd where men 
 of rank have to walk ! 1 was not a little surprised soon 
 after my arrival in the East, when going to visit a native 
 gentleman, to find the path through the garden covered 
 with white garments. I hesitated, but was told it was for 
 " my respect." I must walk on them to show I accepted 
 the honour. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 12. And Jesus went into the temple of God, 
 and cast out all them that sold and bought in 
 the temple, and overthrew the tables of the 
 money-changers, and the seats of them that sold 
 doves. 
 
 The money-changers were such persons as supplied the 
 Jews, who came from distant parts of Judea, and other 
 parts of the Roman empire, with money, to be received 
 back at their respective homes, or which they had paid 
 before they began their journey. Perhaps also they ex- 
 changed foreign coins for those current at Jerusalem. The 
 Talmud and Maimonides inform us that the half-shekel 
 paid yearly to the temple by all the Jews, (Exod. xxx. 15,) 
 was collected there with great exactness in the month Adar, 
 and that on changing the shekels and other money into 
 half-shekels for that purpose, the money-changers exacted 
 a small stated fee, or payment, called kolbon. It was the 
 tables on which they trafficked for this unholy gain which 
 Christ overturned. — Hammond. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Ver. 2. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a 
 certain king, which made a marriage for his 
 
 The hpspitality of the present day, in the East, exactly 
 resembles that of the remotest antiquity. The parable of 
 the " great supper" is in those countries literally realized. 
 And such was the hospitality of ancient Greece and Rome. 
 "When a person provided an entertainment for his friends 
 or neighbours, he sent round a number of servants to in- 
 vite the guests ; these were called vocatores by the Romans, 
 and K\riT(x}pEf by the Greeks. The day when the entertain- 
 ment is to be given is fixed some considerable time before ; 
 and in the evening of the day appointed, a messenger comes 
 to bid the guests to the feast. The custom is thus introduced 
 in Luke : " A certain man made a great supper, and bade 
 many; and sent his servant at supper time, to say to them 
 that were bidden, Come, for all things are now ready." 
 They were not now asked for the first time ; but had al- 
 ready accepted the invitation, when the day was appointed, 
 and "were therefore already pledged to attend at the hour 
 when they might be summoned. They were not taken 
 unprepared, and could not in consistency and decency plead 
 any prior engagement. They could not now refuse, with- 
 out violating their word and insulting the master of the feast, 
 and therefore justly subjected themselves to punishment. 
 The terms of the parable exactly accord with established 
 custom, and contain nothing of the harshness to which 
 infidels object. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 4. Again he sent forth other servants, say- 
 ing, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have 
 prepared my dinner ; my oxen and w?/ fatlings 
 are killed, and all things are ready : come unto 
 the marriage. 
 
Chap. 23. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 589 
 
 The following extract gives us an interesting account 
 of a Persian dinner : " On the ground before us was 
 spread the sofra, a fine chints cloth, which perfectly in- 
 trenched our legs, and which is used so long unchanged, 
 vthat the accumulated fragments of former meals collect 
 into a musty paste, and emit no very savoury smell ; but 
 the Persians are content, for they say that changing the 
 sofra brings ill luck. A tray was then placed before each 
 guest ; on these trays were three fine China bowls, which 
 were filled with sherbets, two made of sweet liquors, and 
 one of a most exquisite species of lemonade. There were, 
 besides, fruits ready cut, plates with elegant little arrange- 
 ments of sweetmeats and confectionary, and smaller cups, 
 of sweet sherbet ; the whole of which were placed most 
 symmetrically, and were quite inviting, even by their ap- 
 pearance. In the vases of sherbet were spoons made of 
 the pear-tree, with very deep bowls, and worked so deli- 
 cately, that the long handle just slightly bent when it was 
 carried to the mouth. The pillaws succeeded, three of 
 which were placed before each two guests; one of plain 
 rice, called the chillo, one made of mutton, with raisins and 
 almonds ; the other of a fowl, and rich spices and plums. 
 To this were added various dishes, with rich sauce. Their 
 cooking, indeed, is mostly composed of sweets. The busi- 
 ness of eating was a pleasure to the Persians, but it was 
 misery to us. They comfortably advanced their chins 
 close to the dishes, and commodiously scooped the rice or 
 other victuals into their mouths with three fingers and the 
 thumb of their right hand ; but in vain did we attempt to 
 approach the dish : our tight-kneed breeches, and all the 
 ligaments and buttons of our dress, forbid us ; and we were 
 forced to manage as well as we could, fragments of meat 
 and rice falling through our fingers all around us." (Mo- 
 rier.) — Border. 
 
 Ver. 9. Go ye therefore into the highways, and, 
 as many as ye shall find, bi^ to the marriage. 
 
 It is as common in the East for a rich man to give a 
 feast to the poor, and the maimed, and the blind, as it is in 
 England for a nobleman to entertain men of his own de- 
 gree. Thus, does he wish to gain some temporal or spirit- 
 ual blessing, he orders his head servant to prepare a feast 
 for one or two hundred poor guests. Messengers are then 
 despatched into the streets and lanes to inform the indigent, 
 that on such a day rice and curry will be given to all who 
 are there at the appointed time. Long before the hour the 
 visiters may be seen bending their steps towards the house 
 of the RASA, or king : there goes the old man, who is scarce- 
 ly able to move his palsied limbs, he talks to himself 
 about better days; and there the despised widow moves 
 with a hesitating step ; there the sanydsi or pa^iddrum bold- 
 ly brushes along and scowls upon all who offer the least 
 impediment to his progress ; there objects suffering under 
 every possible disease of our nature congregate together, 
 without a single kindred association, excepting the one 
 which occupies their expectations. The food is ready, 
 the guests sit in rows on the grass, (Luke ix. 14,) and the 
 servants begin to hand out the portions in order. Such is 
 the hunger of some that they cannot stay to let the mess get 
 cool, and thus have to sTiffer the consequences of their impa- 
 tience ; others, upon whom disease or age has made a fatal 
 inroad, can scarcely taste the provision; some are of high 
 caste, who growl as they eat, at those of lower grades, for 
 having presumed to come near them; and others, on ac- 
 count ot the high blood which flows in their veins, are al- 
 lowed to take a portion to their homes. What a motley 
 scene is that, and what a strange contrariety in their talk ; 
 some are bawling out for more food, though they are already 
 gorged to the full : others are talking about another feast 
 which is to be given in such a village, and others who have 
 got a sight of the host, are loudly applauding his princely 
 generosity. He is delighted to hear their flattery; it all 
 falls sweetly on his feelings, for the higher the tone, the 
 greater the relish. He has gained his object, taramum, i. e. 
 charity has been attended to ; he has been exhilarated with 
 adulation, he has got a " name in the street,^' (Job xviii. 17,) 
 and the gods have been propitiated. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 11. And when the king came in to see the 
 guests, he saw there a man which had not on 
 a wedding garment. 
 
 " The Persians, in circumstances of grief or joy, visit 
 each other wiih great attention, which is a tribute of duty 
 always expected from persons of inferior condition, espe- 
 cially if they be dependant. The guests are ushered into 
 a large room, and served with coffee and tobacco. After 
 some time the master of the house enters, and his visiters, 
 rising to receive him, continue standing till he has passed 
 'through the whole company and paid his respects to each : 
 he then takes his seat, and "by signs permits them to be also 
 seated." (Goldsmith's Geography.) In the parable now 
 referred to, the circumstances of which may reasonably 
 be supposed conformable to existing customs, it is evidently 
 implied that the guests were collected together previous to 
 the appearance of the king, who came in to see the guests. 
 So also in Luke xiv. 10,*in a similar parable, it is said, 
 "when thou art bidden, go and sit downin the lowest room ; 
 that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee. Go 
 up higher." This unquestionably confirms the application 
 of the Persian ceremony to the parable first cited. It may 
 just be further observed, that in the last-mentioned passage 
 it seems as if it; had then been the prevailing practice for 
 the master of the house " to pass through the guests, and 
 pay his respects to each of th^m," as was certainly the 
 case in Persia. 
 
 The following extract will show the importance of hav- 
 ing a suitable garment for a marriage feast, and the of- 
 fence taken against those who refuse it when presented as 
 a gift : " The next day, Dec. 3, the king sent to invite the 
 ambassadors to dine with him once more. The Mehe- 
 mander told them, it was the custom that they should wear 
 over their own clothes the best of those garments which 
 the king had sent them. The ambassadors at first made 
 some scruple of that compliance: but when they were told 
 that it was a custom observed by all ambassadors, and that 
 no doubt the king would take it very ill at their hands if 
 they presented themselves before him without the marks of 
 his liberality, they at last resolved to do it ; and, after their 
 example, all the rest of the retinue." (Abassador's Trav 
 
 els.) BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 Ver. 6. And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, 
 and the chief seats in the synagogues. 
 
 See on Luke 14. S-11. 
 
 At their feasts matters were commonly ordered thus: 
 three couches were set in the form of the Greek letter IT. 
 The table was placed in the middle, the lower end whereof 
 was left open to give access to servants for setting and re- 
 moving the dishes, and serving the guests. The other 
 three sides were enclosed by the couches, whence it got the 
 name of triclinium. The middle couch, which lay along 
 the upper end of the table, and was therefore accounted 
 the most honourable place, and that which the Pharisees 
 are .said particularly to have affected, was distinguished 
 by the name TrpuroKXtffia. — Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 7. And greetings in the markets, and to be 
 called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. 8. But be not 
 ye called Rabbi ; for one is your Master, even 
 Christ, and all ye are brethren. 
 
 This title (rabbi) began first to be assumed by men of 
 learning about the time of the birth of Christ. Simeon, 
 the son of Hillel, who succeeded his fat ^er as president 
 of the Sanhedrim, was the first Jew'sfi r^bbi. The title 
 was generally conferred with a great deal of ceremony. 
 When a person had gone through me schools, and was 
 thought worthy of the degree of raboi, he was first placed 
 in a chair, a little raised above the company ; then were 
 delivered to him a key and a table-book ; the key as a sym- 
 bol of the power and authority conferred upon him to 
 teach others, and the table-book as a symbol of his dili- 
 gence in his studies. The key he afterward wore as a 
 badge of honour, and when he died it was buried with 
 him. On this occasion also, the imposition of hands by 
 the delegates of the sanhedrim was practised. (Alting. j 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 16. Wo unto you, ye blind guides! which 
 
MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 23. 
 
 say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is 
 nothing: but whosoever shall swear by the 
 gold of the temple, he is a debtor. 
 
 With respect to oaths, there came a doctrine into vogue 
 among the Je\rs, in the time of Christ, which made such a 
 nice distinction between what was and what loas not an 
 oath, that illiterate people Avere really incapable of compre- 
 hending it, or indeed forming any idea of it : and thus a 
 Jew had it in his power to be guilty of the grossest treach- 
 ery to his neighbour, even when the latter thought he had 
 heard him swear by all that was sacred. Who could sup- 
 pose, for instance, that a Jew did not speak seriously, when 
 he swore by the temple. Yet by this doctrine, such an oath 
 was a mere nothing, because the stones of the temple icere 7iot 
 consecrated. I do not mean to describe this morality by 
 passages from the writings of the rabbins, both because 
 sufficient collections of these have already been made by 
 others, and because they are not only too extensive, but also 
 .00 modern for my purpose, as I have principally to do with 
 it as it stood in the time of Christ. I rather choose to take 
 what the Jewish moralists of his day taught, from his own 
 mouth, and to accompany their doctrine with his refutation. 
 The reader who wishes "to see passages from the rabbins, 
 may either consult learned commentators on Matt. v. 33 — 
 37. xxiii. 16 — 22, or peruse what Wetstein has collected 
 from them, in whose New Testament he will find a pretty 
 copious collection of such passages. 
 
 Christ himself, then, in Matt, xxiii. 16 — 22, mentions 
 some specimens of their doctrine, which he finds it neces- 
 sary to controvert. The Pharisees, whom he censured, 
 were in the way of saying, " If a man swear by the tem- 
 ple, he is not bound by that oath ; but if he swear by the 
 gold of the temple, he "is bound." This was a very para- 
 doxical distinction; and no one who heard their oaths 
 could possibly divine it, unless he happened to be initiated 
 into the whole villany of the business. One would natu- 
 rally entertain the very same idea concerning it, which 
 Christ expresses in his refutation of it, viz. that " the tem- 
 ple which consecrates the gold is of greater account, and 
 belongs more immediately to God, than the gold." But the 
 foundation of the refined distinction made by the Pharisees 
 was, that the gold was sanctified, but not the materials of 
 ihe edifice. Again, the Pharisees said, " If a man swear 
 !<y the altar, it is no oath ; but if he •K'ear by the offering, 
 (i-^ is bound ;" because, forsooth, the offering was consecra- 
 ' J, but the stones of the altar, nothing more than common 
 stones. But to this doctrine, Jesus, with equal reason, 
 makes the following objection : that " the altar which sanc- 
 tifies the offering is greater than the offering;" and he 
 founds it on this unanswerable argument : " If I appear to 
 swear, and use the language of an oath, my words, though 
 perhaps otherwise equivocal, must be understood in the 
 sense which they generally have in oaths. Thus, if I 
 merely mention heaven, that word may have various mean- 
 ings ; it may mean heaven, in the physical sense of the term, 
 that is, either the blue atmosphere which we behold, or that 
 unknown matter which fills the remote regions of space 
 above us, and which the ancients called etlier ; but neither 
 of these is God. When, however, I swear by heaven, every 
 one understands me as regarding heaven in its relation to- 
 wards God, as his dwelling-place, or as his throne; and 
 thinks I forbear pronouncing the name of God, merely 
 from reverential awe, and that, in naming the throne of 
 God, I include the idea of him who sitteth upon it; so that 
 if my words are to be explained honestlv and grammati- 
 cally, I have really sworn by God. In like manner, if a 
 man swear by the temple, that is not swearing by the stones 
 or other materials of which the temple is composed, but by 
 the God who dwelleth in the temple: and thus also, he who 
 swears by the altar, is not to understand the bare stones, as 
 such, but as they form an altar, and have offerings made 
 upon them ; so that he swears by the altar and lohat is upon 
 it : an oath no less solemn and binding, than that most aw- 
 fiii oath which is taken amid a sacrifice, by passing between 
 tb^ dismembered pieces of the victim." A most rational 
 exposition ; without which we can never, in any compact, 
 be sure of understanding our neighbour's words ; not even 
 '.hough he name the name of God in his oath, and swear 
 without any mental reservation whatever ; for the syllables, 
 perhaps, might still be susceptible of another signification ! 
 
 — MiCHAEUS. 
 
 Ver. 24. Ye blind guides ! which strain at a gnat, 
 and swallow a camel. 
 
 In these words, he charges them with being extremely 
 scrupulous about very small matters, while they betrayed a 
 glaring and criminal negligence about things of great im- 
 portance. But as the Pharisees could not literally swallow 
 down a camel, Cajetan supposes a corruption in the text ; 
 and maintains that our Lord did not mention a camel, but 
 a larger species of fly, which might actually be swallowed 
 in drinking. Without admitting this, he contends the 
 words contain no proper antithesis. But as all the ancient 
 versions of this text harmonize with the Greek, a corrup 
 tion cannot be admitted. Nor is the objection of any im- 
 portance; for, does not our Lord say, " Why beholdest thou 
 the mote that is in thy brother's eyej and considerest not the 
 beam that is thine own eye 1" Is it usual then for a beam 
 to be in the eye 1 Our Lord, who knows all things, knew 
 that a camel cannot be swallowed ; but on this very account 
 the proverb was proper ; because, while the Pharisees were 
 extremely precise in little things, they readily perpetrated 
 crimes, which, like the camel, were of enormous magni- 
 tude. The design of our Lord was, not to teach that a 
 camel could be swallowed, but that the minutiae of the law 
 in which they displayed such scrupulous accuracy, as the 
 tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, were as much inferior 
 to the weightier matters of the law, as a gnat is inferior to 
 a camel. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 27. Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, 
 hypocrites ! for ye are like unto vvhited sepul- 
 chres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, ' 
 but are within full of dead men^s bones, and of 
 all uncleanness. 28. Even so ye also outwardly 
 appear righteous unto men, but within ye are 
 full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29. Wo unto 
 you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because 
 ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish 
 the sepulchres of the righteous. 
 
 The tombs of the lower orders are constructed of stone, 
 at a small distance from their cities and villages, where a 
 great extent of ground is allotted for that purpose. Each 
 family has a particular portion of it walled in like a gar- 
 den, where the bones of their ancestors have remained for 
 many generations ; for, in these enclosures, the graves are 
 all distinct and separate, having each of them a stone placed 
 upright both at the head and feet, inscribed with the name 
 of the person who lies there interred ; while the intermedi- 
 ate space is either planted with flowers, bordered round 
 with stone, or paved all over with tiles. The graves of 
 more wealthy citizens are further distinguished by some 
 square chambers, or cupolas, that are built over them. 
 The sepulchres of the Jews were made so large, that per- 
 sons might go into them. The rule for making them is this : 
 he that sells ground to his neighbour, to make a burying- 
 place, must make a court at the mouth of the cave, six feet 
 by six, according to the bier and tjiose that bury. It was 
 into this court that the women, who visited the sepulchre 
 of our Lord, entered. Here they could look into the sep- 
 ulchre, and the several graves in it, and see every thing 
 within. The words of the sacred historian are : " And en- 
 tering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man, sitting on 
 the right side, clothed in a long white garment, and they 
 were affrighted." 
 
 These different sorts of tombs and sepulchres, with the 
 very walls likewise of the enclosures, are constantly kept 
 clean, whitewashed, and beautified; and by consequence, 
 continue to this day to be an excellent comment upon thai 
 expression of our Saviour's : " Ye are like unto whited 
 sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but 
 are within full of dead men^s bones and rottenness.— Wo 
 unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye 
 build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres 
 of the righteous." It was in one of these chambers, or cu- 
 polas, which were built over the sepulchre, that the demo- 
 niacs, mentioned in the eighth chapter of Matthew, proba- 
 bly had their dwelling.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill- 
 
Chap. 23 -25. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 591 
 
 est the prophets, and stonest them which are 
 sent unto thee : how often would I have gather- 
 ed thy children together, even as a hen gather- 
 eth her chickens under her wings, and ye \70uld 
 not! 
 
 The Psalmist says, " Hide me under the shadow of thy 
 wings." " The children of men put their trust under the 
 shadow of thy wings." The word wing primarily signifies 
 PROTECTION, and not comfort, as some have supposed. They 
 appear to have gained that idea from the comfort which 
 chickens have under the wing of the hen. In the East, 
 hawks, kites, and other birds of prey, are continually on the 
 wing ; hence it is difficult to rear chickens, because at 
 every moment they are in danger of being pounced on 
 and carried off. Hence the eye of the mother is continu- 
 ally looking up to watch the foes, and no sooner does she 
 see them skimming along, than she gives a scream, and 
 the brood for protection run under her wings. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Ver. 17. Let him which is on the house-top not 
 come down to take any thing out of his house. 
 
 " It was not possible to view this country without calling 
 to mind the wonderful events that have occurred in it at 
 various periods from the earliest times : more particularly 
 the sacred life and history of our Redeemer pressed fore- 
 most on our minds. One thing struck me in the form of 
 the houses in the town now under our view, which served 
 to corroborate the account of former travellers in this coun- 
 try explaining several passages of scripture, particularly 
 the following: In Matt. xxiv. 17, our blessed Saviour, in 
 describing the distresses which shortly would overwhelm 
 the land of Judea, tells his disciples, ' when the abomina- 
 tion of desolation is seen standing in the holy place, let him 
 whc is on the house-top not come down to take any thing 
 out 3f his house, but fly,' &c. The houses in this country 
 are all flat-roofed, and communicate wiih each other: a 
 person there might proceed to the city walls and escape 
 mto the country, without coming down into the street." 
 ( Willyams's Voyage up the Mediterranean.) Mr. Harmer 
 endeavours to illustrate this passage, by referring to the 
 ea»-tern custom of the staircase being on the outside of the 
 house : but Mr. Willvatps's representation seems to afford 
 a more complete elucidation of the text. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 18. Neither let him which is in the field re- 
 turn back to take his clothes. 
 
 The oriental husbandman is compelled, by the extreme 
 heat of the climate, to prosecute his labours in the field al- 
 most in a state of nudity. The ardour with which the 
 farmer urged his labour, even under the milder sky of Italy, 
 required the same precaution. " Plough naked, and sow 
 naked," said Virgil; "winter is an inactive time for the 
 hind." 
 
 Aurelius Victor informs us, that the Roman messengers, 
 who were sent to Cincinnatus, from Atenutius, the consul, 
 whoni he had delivered from a siege, found him ploughing 
 naked, beyond the Tiber. But the truth is, neither the 
 Syrian nor Italian husbandman pursued his labours in the 
 field entirely naked, but only stripped off his upper gar- 
 ments. An Oriental was said to be naked when these were 
 laid aside. This enables us to understand the meaning of 
 the charge which our Lord gave his disciples : " Neither 
 let him who is in the field return back to take his clothes." 
 The Israelitish peasant when he proceeded to his work in 
 the field, was accustomed to strip off his upper garments, 
 and leave them behind in the house, and to resume them 
 when his task was finished. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 28. For wheresoever the carcass is, there 
 will the eagles be gathered together. 
 
 Tt has often appeared to me that the sight and scent of 
 birds of prey in the East are keener than those of the same 
 species in England. Any garbage thrown from the kitchen, 
 or in the wilderness, will soon attract these winged scav- 
 engers. Should there be a dead elephant or any other beast 
 in the jungle, vast numbers of ravenous birds and animals 
 
 hasten to the spot. The eagles, kites, and crows, begin to 
 tear at the carcass and attack each other, and the jackals 
 snap at their feathered rivals ; thus, though there is enough 
 for all, they each try to hinder the other from eating. 
 There can be no doubt that birds of prey are very use- 
 ful in the East, as they carry off the putrid matter which 
 would otherwise infect the air. Hence Europeans do not 
 often destroy such birds, and in the city of Calcutta there 
 is a law to protect them from being injured. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 41. Two women shall be grinding at the 
 mill ; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 
 See on Ex. 11. 5. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Ver. 4. But the wise took oil in their vessels 
 with their lamps. 
 
 Sir John Chardin informs us, that in many parts of the 
 East, and in particular in the Indies, instead of torches and 
 flambeaux, they carry a pot of oil in one hand, and a lamp 
 full of oily rags in the other. This seems to be a very 
 happy illustration of this part of the parable. He observes, 
 elsewhere, that they seldom make use of candles in the East, 
 especially among the great; candles casting but little light, 
 and they sitting at a considerable distance from them. Ezek. 
 i. 18, represents the light of lamps accordingly as very 
 lively. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 6. And at midnight there was a cry made, 
 Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to 
 meet him. 
 
 An eastern wedding is always celebrated in the night ; 
 for though the fortunate hour foi performing some parts of 
 the ceremony may be in the day, yet the festivities of the 
 scene will rwttake place till night. When the bridegroom 
 goes forth to the house of the bride, or when he returns to 
 his OAvn habitation or to that of his father, he is always ac- 
 companied by numerous friends and dependants, who carry 
 lamps and torches. When he approaches either house the 
 inmates rush out to meet him, and greet him with their 
 best wishes and congratulations. The path is covered with 
 " garments," and lamps like fire flies sparkle in every di- 
 rection. — Roberts. 
 
 A similar custom is observed among the Hindoos. The 
 husband and wife, on the day of their marriage, being both 
 in the same palanquin, go about seven or eight o'clock at 
 night, accompanied with all their kindred and friends ; the 
 trumpets and drums go before them ; and they are lighted 
 by a number of flambeaux ; immediately before the palan- 
 quin walk many women, whose business it is to sing verses, 
 in which they wish them all manner of prosperity. They 
 march in this equipage through the streets for the space 
 of some hours, after which they return to their own house, 
 where the domestics are in waiting. The whole house is 
 illuminated with small lamps ; and many of those flaip- 
 beaux already mentioned are kept ready for their arrival, 
 besides those which accompany them, and are carried 
 before the palanquin. These flambeaux are composed of 
 many pieces of old linen, squeezed hard against one an- 
 other in a round figure, and thrust down into a mould ©f 
 copper. The persons that hold them in one hand, have in 
 the other a bottle of the same metal with the copper mould, 
 which is full of oil, which they take care to pour out from 
 time to time upon the linen, which otherwise gives no 
 light. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed 
 their lamps. 
 
 The nuptial lamps, probably, were highly decorated; 
 the trimming was to prepare them for burning. The fol- 
 lowing account of the celebration of a wedding taken from 
 the Zendavesta, may throw some light on this place. " The 
 day appointed for the marriage, about five o'clock in the 
 evening, the bridegroom comes to the house of the bride, 
 where the mobed, or priest, pronounces, for the first time, 
 the nuptial benediction: he then brings her to his own 
 house, gives her some refreshment, and afterward the as- 
 sembly of our relatives and friends reconduct her to her 
 
592 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 25—17. 
 
 father's house. When she arrives, the mobed repeats the 
 nuptial benediction, which is generally done about mid- 
 night ; immediately after, the bride, accompanied with a 
 part of her attending troop, the rest having returned to 
 their own houses, is reconducted to the house of her hus- 
 band, where she generally arrives about three o'clock in 
 the morning. Nothing can be more brilliant than these 
 nuptial ceremonies in India : sometimes the assembly con- 
 sists of not less than 2000 persons, all richly dressed with 
 gold and silver tissue ; the friends and relatives of the 
 bride, encompassed with their domestics, are all mounted 
 on horses richly harnessed. The goods, wardrobe, and 
 even the bed of the bride, are carried in triumph. The 
 husband, richly mounted and magnificently dressed, is ac- 
 companied by his friends and relatives ; and the friends of 
 the bride following him in covered carriages. At inter- 
 vals, during the procession, guns and rockets are fired, and 
 the spectacle is rendered grand beyond description by a 
 prodigious number of lighted torches", and by the sound of 
 a mulntude of musical instruments." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. And while they Avent to buy, the bride- 
 groom came ; and they that were ready went 
 in with him to the marriage: and the door 
 was shut. 
 
 At a marriage, the procession of which I saw some 
 years ago, the bridegroom came from a distance, and the 
 bride lived at Serampore, to which place the bridegroom 
 was to come by water. After waiting two or three hours, 
 at length, near midnight, it was announced, as if in the 
 very words of scripture. Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go 
 ye out to meet him. All the persons employed now light- 
 ed their lamps, and ran with them in their hands to fill up 
 their stations in the procession ; some of them had lost their 
 lights, and were unprepared, but it was then too late to 
 seek them, and the cavalcade moved forward to the house 
 of the bride, at which place the company entered a large 
 and splendidly illuminated area, before the house, covered 
 with an awning, where a great multitude of friends, dress- 
 ed in their best apparel, were seated upon mats. The 
 bridegroom was carried in the arms of a friend, and placed 
 on a superb seat in the midst of the company, where he sat 
 a short time, and then went into the housCj the door of 
 which was immediately shut, and guarded by Sepoys. I 
 and others expostulated with the door-keepers, "but in vain." 
 (Ward's View of the Hindoos.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 36. Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, 
 and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye 
 came unto me. 
 
 It is more easy in the East to visit imprisoned friends 
 than it is in Europe, Thus Rauwolf tells us, that he was 
 allowed at Tripolis, in Syria, to visit his confined friends 
 as often as he liked. " After we had gone through small 
 and low doors into the prisons in which they were confin- 
 ed, their keepers always willingly let me in and oat ; some- 
 times I even remained in the prison with them during the 
 
 night," — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 "Ver. 18. And he said, Go into the city to such a 
 man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My 
 time is at hand ; I will keep the passover at thy 
 house with my disciples. 
 
 When a man believes himself to be near death, he says, 
 " Go tell the priest I am going on my journey, mj^ time is 
 at hand." When dead, it is said of him, " His time has 
 gone, he has fallen." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 23. And he answered and said, He that dip- 
 peth his hand with me in the dish, the same 
 shall betray me. 
 
 See on John 13. 23. 
 
 The practice which was most revolting to me was this : 
 ■when the master of the house found in the dish any dainty 
 morsel, he took it out with his fingers, and applied it to my 
 mouth. This was true Syrian courtesy and hospitality; 
 
 and, had I been sufficiently well-bred, my mouth would 
 have opened to receive it. On my pointing to my plate, 
 however, he had the goodness to deposile the choice morsel 
 there. I would not have noticed so trivial a circumstance, 
 if it did not exactly illustrate what the Evangelists record 
 of the Last Supper.— Jo wett. 
 
 Ver. 30. And when they had sung a hymn, they 
 went out into the Mount of Olives. 
 
 This was the Hallel which the Jews were obliged to 
 sing on the night of the passover. It consisted of six 
 psalms, the hundred and thirteenth, and the five following 
 ones. This they did not sing all at once, but in parts. Just 
 before the drinking of the second cup and eating of the 
 lamb they sung the first part ; and on mixing the fourth 
 and last cup they sung the remainder; and said over it 
 what they call the blessing of the song, which was Psalm 
 cxlv. 10. They might, if they would, mix a fifth cup, and 
 say over it the Great Hallel, which was Psalm cxxxvi. but 
 they were not obliged to. — Gill. 
 
 Ver. 34. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto 
 thee, That this night, before the cock crow, 
 thou shalt deny me thrice. 
 
 See on Mark 14. 30. 
 
 Ver, 69, Now Peter sat without in the palace : 
 and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also 
 wast with Jesus of Galilee, 
 
 The Greek words are more accurately translated by, 
 "Peter sat without in the court," This court {a'aXfi) in 
 which Peter was at the fire in the palace of the high- 
 priest, was, according to the usual old and oriental mode 
 of building, the inner part of the house enclosed on all sides, 
 which was not roofed, but was in the open air. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Ver. 2. And when they had bound him, they led 
 him aw^ay, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate 
 the governor. 
 
 The Street of Grief, or Dolorous Way, derives its appel- 
 lation from its being the supposed site of the street through 
 which the chief priests and elders of the Jews, after binding 
 Jesus Christ, led him away and delivered him to Pontius 
 Pilate. (Mat. xxvii. 2.) It proceeds from the gate of Saint 
 Stephen up to an archway, which appears to have been at 
 one time called " the Gate of Judgment," because malefac- 
 tors were anciently conducted through it to the place of 
 execution. This archway is exhibited in the annexed en- 
 graving. At the period of the crucifixion, this gate stood 
 in the western wall of Jerusalem : but now it is in the cen- 
 tre of the city. The wall above the archway is supposed 
 to have formed a part of the house of Pilate ; and the cen- 
 tral window is reputed to have been the place whence our 
 Saviour was shown unto the people. 
 
 The " Street of Grief" rises with a gradual ascent, be- 
 coming narrower towards Calvary, where it terminates. 
 It is diflScult to pass along it, owing to the stones being 
 broken up, and it is completely out of order. — Horne. 
 
 [See Comprehensive Commentary, 07l Ps. 122. 3, and the 
 engraving there of an arched street in Jerusalem. 
 
 Ver. 7, And they took counsel, and bought with 
 them the potters' field, to bury strangers in. 
 
 It lay immediately without the wall of the city, on the 
 southeast corner, about a mile from the Temple, " On the 
 west side of the valley of Hinnom, is the place anciently 
 called the potters' field, and afterward the field of blood, 
 but now campo sancto. It is only a small piece of ground, 
 about thirty yards long, and fifteen broad; one half of 
 which is taken up by a square fabric, built for a charnel- 
 house, that is twelve yards high. Into this building dead 
 bodies are let down from the top, there being five holes left 
 open for that purpose, through which they may be seen 
 under several degrees of decay," (Maundrell.) 
 ■ Why a potters' field should be preferred to any other as 
 
Chap. 27. 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 593 
 
 a burial-place, may be conjectured from the following ex- 
 tract, as in all probability the same causes which prevented 
 its being convertible to aVable or pasture ground, must have 
 existed in an equal degree in Palestine. A burial-ground 
 was one of the few purposes to which it could have been 
 applied. , 
 
 *' We travelled eleven hours this day, and the last six 
 without once halting . The ground over which we travelled 
 seemed strewed over with small pieces of green earthen- 
 ware, which was so plenty that many bushels could be 
 gathered in the space of a mile. I inquired into the oc- 
 casion of it : the information which we received from our 
 sheik and others in the caravan, was, that in former ages 
 the greatest part of this plain was inhabited by potters, as 
 the soil abounded then, as it does at present, with clay fit 
 for their use : that they moved their works from place to 
 place, as they consumed the clay, or it suited their con- 
 venience. They now make at Bagdad such kinds of 
 earthenware, with a green glazing on it. When the sun 
 shines it appears like green glass, which is very hurtful to 
 the sight. They cannot plough this ground, as it would 
 cut the feet of both men and oxen." (Parsons' Travels in 
 Asia.) — BuRDER. 
 
 Ver. 26. Then released he Barabbas unto them ; 
 and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered 
 him to be crucified. 29. And when they had 
 platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his 
 hea(i, and a reed in his right hand : and they 
 bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, 
 saying, Hail, King of the Jews ! 
 
 Mohammed Zemaun Khan was carried before the king. 
 When he had reached the camp, the king ordered Moham- 
 med Khan, chief of his camel artillery, to put a mock- 
 crown upon the rebel's head, bazubends or armlets on his 
 arms, a sword by his side, to mount him upon an ass, 
 with his face towards the tail ; then to parade him through- 
 out the camp, and to exclaim. This is he who wanted to be 
 the king. After this was over, and the people had mocked 
 and insulted him, he was led before the king, who called 
 for his looties, and ordered them to turn him into ridicule, 
 by making him dance and make antics against his will : he 
 then ordered, that whoever chose might spit in his face. 
 After this he received the bastinado on the soles of his feet, 
 which was administered by the chiefs of the Cagar tribe, 
 and some time after he had his eyes put out. — Morier. 
 
 Ver. 29. And when they had platted a crown of 
 thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in 
 his right hand : and they bowed the knee be- 
 fore him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King 
 of the Jews ! 
 
 Among other circumstances of suffering and ignominy, 
 which accompanied the death of Christ, it is said that they 
 platted " a crown of thorns, and put it upon his head." Has- 
 selquist says : " The naba or nabka of the Arabians is in 
 all probability the tree which afforded the crown of thorns 
 put on the head of Christ : it grows very commonly in the 
 East. This plant was very fit for the purpose, for it has 
 many small and sharp spines, which are well adapted to 
 give pain; the crown might be easily made of these soft, 
 round, and pliant branches ; and what in my opinion 
 seems to be the greatest proof is, that the leaves much re- 
 semble those of ivy, as they are of a very deep green. 
 Perhaps the enemies of Christ would have "a plant some- 
 what resembling that with which emperors and generals 
 were used to be crowned, that there might be calumny even 
 in the punishment," — Border. 
 
 Ver. 31. And after that they had mocked him, 
 they took the robe off from him, and put his 
 own raiment on him, and led him away to cru- 
 cify him. 
 
 Crucifixion was a very common mode of inflicting the 
 
 fmnishment of death among several ancient nations, name- 
 y, among the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Persians, Greeks, 
 and Romans. The cross consisted of a long pole, and a short 
 75 
 
 transverse beam, both of which, as the ancients affirm, were 
 united in the form of a Greek and Roman T ; a little piece 
 of the perpendicular beam, however, generally projected at 
 the top, to which the writing, containing the cause of the 
 punishment, was affixed. In the middle of the perpendicu- 
 lar poles there was a wooden plug, which projected like a 
 horn, on which the person crucified rode or rested, that the 
 weight of the body might not tear the hands loose. The 
 cross was erected on the place of execution, and fastened 
 in the ground ; it was generally not high, and the feet of the 
 criminal were scarcely four feet above the ground. The 
 person condemned was raised up, quite naked, upon the 
 projecting plug, or pulled up with cords ; his hands were 
 first tied with cords to the transverse beam, and then nailed 
 on with strong iron nails. Cicero against Verres calls 
 crucifixion the most cruel and horrid punishment; and in 
 another place, a punishment w^hich must be far, not only 
 from the body of a Roman citizen, but also from his eyes, 
 and even his thoughts. It was, therefore, properly de- 
 signed among the Romans only for such as had been guilty 
 of murder, highway robbery, rebellion against the govern- 
 ment, and violation of the public tranquillity. A learned 
 physician, George Gottlieb Richter, has proved in a treatise 
 dedicated to this subject, that the tortures of crucifixion muse 
 have been indeed indescribable. Even the unnatural con- 
 strained situation of the body, with the arms stretched 
 upward, sometimes for days together, must have been an 
 inexpressible torment, especially as not the slightest motion 
 or convulsion could take place without causing excrucia- 
 ting pain over the whole body, particularly in the pierced 
 limbs, and on the back, mangled by previous scourging. 
 Besides this, the nails were driven through the hands, and 
 sometimes through the feet, exactly in places where irri- 
 table nerves and sinews meet, which were partly injured 
 and partly forcibly compressed, by which the most acute 
 pains must have been excited, and constantly increased. 
 As the wounded parts were always exposed to the air, they 
 became inflamed. The same also probably occurred in 
 many other parts, where the circulation of the juices, was 
 impeded by the violent tension of the whole body. As the 
 blood, too, which is impelled from the left ventricle of the 
 heart through the veins into all parts of the body, did not 
 find room enough in the wounded and violently extended 
 extremities, it must flow back to the head, which was free, 
 unnaturally extend and oppress the arteries, and thus cause 
 constantly increasing headache. On account of the imped- 
 iment of the circulation of the blood in the external parts, 
 the left ventricle of the heart could not entirely discharge 
 itself of all the blood, and, consequently, not receive all the 
 blood which comes from the right ventricle ; hence the 
 blood in the lungs had no free vent, by which a dreadful 
 oppression was occasioned ; under such constantly increas- 
 ing tortures, the person crucified lived generally three days, 
 sometimes even longer. Hence Pilate did not credit the 
 account that Jesus had expired so soon, and, therefore, 
 questioned the centurion who had kept watch at the cross. 
 
 — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 Ver. 48. And straightway one of them ran,, and 
 took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and 
 put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. 
 
 What most tormented crucified persons was, dreadfiil 
 thirst, which must naturally be occasioned by the heat of 
 the wounds or fever. Out of a spirit of humanity, one of 
 the soldiers keeping watch, gave Jesus, at his request, a 
 sponge dipped in vinegar. It is probable that they gave 
 Jesus such vinegar as they had standing there for their 
 usual drink. An example, in more modern times, of giv- 
 ing, in the East, a sponge dipped in vinegar, to such as 
 were to be executed by slow torture, in order to refresh 
 them, is mentioned by Heberer, in his. Description .of big 
 Slavery in Egvpt. *' When this Greek had hung upon the 
 hook beyond the third day in much pain, one of the keepers 
 was at last prevailed upon, by the presents of his friends, 
 secretly to give him poison upon a sponge, under the ap- 
 pearance of refreshing him a little with vinegar,"— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 51. And, behold, the vail of the temple was 
 rent in twain, from the top to the bottom ' and 
 the earth did quake, and the rocks rent» 
 
594 
 
 MATTHEW. 
 
 Chap. 28. 
 
 " About one yard and a half distance from the hole in 
 which the foot of the cross was fixed, is seen that memo- 
 rable cleft in the rock, said to have been made by the earth- 
 quake which happened at the suffering of the God of Na- 
 ture, when the rocks rent, and the very graves were opened. 
 This cleft, as to what now appears of it, is about a span 
 wide, at its upper part, and two deep, after which it closes; 
 but it opens again below, (as you may see in another chapel 
 contiguous to the side of Calvary,) and runs down to an 
 unknown depth in the earth. That this rent was made by 
 the earthquake that happened at our Lord's passion, there 
 is only tradition to prove ; but that it is a natural and gen- 
 uine breach, and not counterfeited by any art, the sense 
 and reason of every one that sees it may convince him; 
 for the sides of it fit like two tallies to each other; and yet it 
 runs in such intricate windings as could not well be counter- 
 feited by art, nor arrived at by any instruments." (Maundrell.) 
 " The far end of this chapel, called the Chapel of St. John, 
 is confined with the foot of Calvary, where, on the left 
 .side of the altar, there is a cleft in the rock : the insides do 
 tesiify that art had no hand therein, each side to the other 
 being answerably rugged, and these were inaccessible to 
 the workmen: that before spoken of, in the chapel below, 
 is a part of this, which reacheth, as they say, to the centre." 
 ( Sandys.) — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 60. And laid it in his own new tomb, which 
 he had hewn out in the rock : and he rolled a 
 great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and de- 
 parted. 
 
 The sepulchres were not only made in rocks, but had 
 doors to go in and out at ; these doors were fastened with 
 a large and broad stone rolled against ihera. It was at the 
 shutting up of the sepulchre with this stone that mourning 
 began : and after it was shut with this sepulchral stone, it 
 was not lawful to open it. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Ver. 6. He is not here ; for he is risen, as he 
 said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. 
 
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with the Sepulchre it- 
 self, is a prominent object of attention to the devout pil- 
 grim. The Holy Sepulchre, in which, according to an- 
 cient tradition, the body of the Redeemer was deposited by 
 Nicodemus, after he had taken it down from the cross, 
 'John xix. 39— 42,) stands a little north of the centre of this 
 church, and is covered by a small oblong quadrilateral 
 building of marble, crowned with a tiny cupola standing 
 upon pillars, and divided into three compartments. Over 
 the entrance to this edifice, the reader will observe a tem- 
 porary covering of canvass extended by means of cords, the 
 object of which is to prevent the voice of the preacher, who 
 lectures from the door of the Sepulchre during Passion- 
 week, from being dissipated in the dome above and rendered 
 inaudible. The first compartment is an antechamber, which 
 may contain six or eight persons : here the pilgrims put off 
 their shoes from their feet, before they enter upon the holy 
 ground within ; where, occupying half of the second part 
 of the building, is " the place where the Lord lay." (Matt, 
 xxviii. 6.) The third compartment is a small chapel ap- 
 propriated to the Copls, which is entered from behind, and 
 which has no internal communication with the others. 
 
 Dr. E. D. Clarke, the traveller, (whose skepticism con- 
 cerning some of the sacred antiquities of Jerusalem was as 
 great as his credulity in others,) was of opinion that the 
 spot now shown as the site of the sepulchre, was not the 
 place of Christ's interment, from the variance of 'its present 
 appearance with the accounts in the Gospel. His reasons 
 for disbelief are as follows:—!. The tomb of Christ was in' 
 a garden without the walls of Jerusalem; the structure 
 whidi at present bears its name is in the heart of, at least, 
 the modern city ; and Dr. Clarke is unwilling to believe that 
 
 the ancient limits can have been so much circumscribed to 
 the north as to exclude its site. 2. Further, the original 
 sepulchre was undoubtedly a cave : the present offers no 
 such appearance, being an insulated pile, constructed or 
 cased with distinct slabs of marble. 
 
 Bishop Heber, however, in his elaborate critique on Dr. , 
 Clarke's Travels, has shown that these arguments are in- 
 conclusive. For, — 
 
 L One of the Discourses of Cyril, patriarch of Jerusa- 
 lem, incidentally proves two facts ; viz., first, that the sepul- 
 chre, as we now see it, was without the ancient wall ; and, 
 secondly, that before it was ornamented by the Emperess 
 Helena, (with whom he was contemporary,) it was a simple 
 cave in the rock. 
 
 2. Further, that the present sepulchre, defaced and alter- 
 ed as it is, may really be " the place where the Lord lay," 
 is likely from the following circumstances : " Forty yards, 
 or thereabouts," says Bishop Heber, " from the upper end 
 of the sepulchre, the natural rock is visible: and in the 
 place which the priests call Calvary, it is at least as high 
 as the top of the sepulchre itself The rock then may have 
 extended as far as the present entrance ; and though the 
 entrance itself is hewn into form, and cased with marble, 
 the adytum yet offers proof that it is not factitious. It is a 
 trapezium of seven feet by six, neither at right angles to its 
 own entrance, nor to the aisle of the church which con- 
 ducts to it, and in no respect conformable to the external 
 plan of the tomb. This last is arranged in a workmanlike 
 manner, with its frontal immediately opposite the principal 
 nave, and in the same style with the rest of the church. It 
 is shaped something like a horseshoe, and its walls, naeas- 
 ured from this outer horseshoe to the inner trapezium, vary 
 from five to eight feet in thickness, a suflicient space to ad- 
 mit of no inconsiderable density of rock between the outer 
 and inner coating of marble. This, however, does not ap- 
 ply to the antechamber, of which the frontal, at least, is 
 probably factitious ; and where that indenture in the mar- 
 ble is found which induced Dr. Clarke to believe that the 
 whole thickness of the wall was composed of the same cost- 
 ly substance. Now these circumstances afford, we appre- 
 hend, no inconsiderable grounds for supposing, with Po- 
 cocke, that it is indeed a grotto above ground: the irregu- 
 larity of the shape ; the difference between the external and 
 internal plan; the thickness of the walls, so needless, il 
 they are throughout of masonry, all favour this opinion ; 
 nor is the task ascribed to Helena's workmen, of insulating 
 this rock from that which is still preserved a few yards 
 distant, at all incredible, when we consider that the labour, 
 while it pleased the taste of their employer, furnished at 
 the same time materials for her intended cathedral." 
 
 3. Although the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been 
 burnt down since Dr. Clarke's visit, yet the " rock-built sep- 
 ulchre of the Messiah, being of all others the least liable to 
 injury, has remained in spite of the devouring element." 
 
 The Holy Sepulchre is a sarcophagus of white marble, 
 destitute of ornament, and slightly tinged with blue; 6 ft. 
 li in. long, 3 ft. Of in. broad, and 2 ft. li in. deep, measured 
 on the outside. It is but indifferently polished, and ap- 
 pears as if it bad at one time been exposed to the pelting of 
 the storm and the changes of the seasons, by which it has 
 been considerably disintegrated. Over it are suspended 
 twelve massy splendid silver lamps, the gifts of monarchs 
 and princes: these are kept continually burning, in honour 
 of the twelve apostles. The sarcophagus occupies about 
 one half of the sepulchral chamber, and extends from one 
 end of it to the other. A space, not exceeding three feet 
 wide, in front of it, is all that remains for the reception of 
 visiters, so that not more than three or four persons can be 
 conveniently admitted at a time. Over the sarcophagus is 
 a large painting, representing Christ bursting the bonds of 
 the tomb, and his triumphant ascent out of the grave on the J 
 morning of the resurrection. A Greek or Latin priest al- J 
 ways stands here with a silver vase of incense, which he 
 waves over the pilgrims. — Horne. 
 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 3. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths 
 straight. 
 
 When a man of rank has to pass through a town or vil- 
 lage, a messenger is despatched to tell the people to prepare 
 the way, and to await his orders. Hence may be seen some 
 8-w^eeping the road, others who "spread their garments in 
 the way," and some who are cutting " down branches from 
 the trees" (Matt. xxi. 8) to form arches and festoons where 
 the great man has to pass.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 6. And John was clothed with camel's hair, 
 and with a girdle of a skin about his loins ; 
 and he did eat locusts and wild honey. 
 
 The Jews were allowed to eat locusts, and when sprinkled 
 with salt, and fried, they are not unlike our fresh water 
 Cray fish. The Acridophagi must have preferred them to 
 almost every other species of food, since they derived their 
 name from their eating locusts. We learn from the valua- 
 ble work of Dr. Russel, that the Arabs salt and eat them as 
 a delicacy. Locusts were accordingly the common food of 
 John, the precursor of Christ, while he remained in the 
 wilderness. In feeding on that insect, the Baptist submitted 
 to no uncommon privation, and practised no savage rigour, 
 like many of the hermits who inhabited the deserts; but 
 merely followed the abstemious mode of living to which 
 the people were accustomed, in the less frequented parts of 
 the country. The food upon which he subsisted in the wil- 
 derness appears to be particularly mentioned, merely to 
 show that he fared as the poorest of men, and that his man- 
 ner of living corresponded with the meanness of his dress. 
 Much unnecessary pains have been taken by some squeam- 
 ish writers, to prove that the locusts which John used for 
 food, were the fruit of a certain tree, and not the carcass of 
 the insects distinguished by that name ; but a little inquiry 
 will fully clear up this matter, and show, that however dis- 
 gusting the idea of that kind of meat may appear to us, the 
 Orientals entertain a different opinion. Many nations in 
 the East, as the Indians of the Bashee islands, the Tonquin- 
 ese, and the inhabitants of Madagascar, make no scruple 
 to eat these insects, of which they have innumerable swarms, 
 and prefer them to the finest fish. The ancients affirm, that 
 in Africa, Syria, Persia, and almost throughout Asia, the 
 people commonly eat these creatures, Clenard, in a letter 
 from Fez, in 1541, assures us, that he saw wagon loads of 
 locusts brought into that city for food. Kirstenius, in his 
 notes on Matthew, says, he was informed by his Arabic 
 master, that he had often seen them on the river Jordan; 
 that they were of the same form with ours, but larger; that 
 the inhabitants pluck off their wings and feet, and hang the 
 rest at their necks till they grow warm and ferment; and 
 then they eat them, and think them very good food. A 
 monk, who had travelled into Egypt, asserts, that he had 
 eaten of these locusts, and that in the country they subsist- 
 ed on them four months in the year. In Bushire, they are 
 used by the lowest peasantry as food. The Arabs fee'd on 
 them to this day, and prepare them for use in the following 
 manner : They grind them to flour in their handmills, or 
 powder them in stone mortars. This flour they mix with 
 water to the consistency of dough, and make thin cakes of 
 it, which they bake like other bread on a heated girdle ; and 
 this, observes Hasselquist, serves instead of bread to sup- 
 port life for want of something better. At other times they 
 poil them in water, and afterward stew them with butter, 
 fUid make a soft of fricassee, which has no bad taste.— 
 
 PAXTON. 
 
 Ver. 10. And straightway coming up out of the 
 water, he saw the heavens opened, and the 
 Spirit like a dove descending upon him. 
 
 See on Matt. 3. II. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 3. And they come unto him, bringing one 
 sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. 
 4. And when they could not come nigh unto 
 him for the press, they uncovered the roof 
 where he was ; and when they had broken it 
 up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of 
 the palsy lay. 
 
 Among other pretended difficulties and absurdities rela- 
 ting to this fact, it has been urged, that, as the uncovering, 
 or breaking up of the roof, as mentioned by Mark, or the 
 letting a person down through it, as recorded by Luke, sup- 
 poses the breaking up of tiles, spars, rafters, &c., " so," says 
 the infidel, " it was well if Jesus, and his disciples, escaped 
 with only a broken pate, by the falling of the tiles, and if the 
 rest were not smothered with dust." But if the construction 
 of an oriental dwellingbe recollected, we shall find nothing 
 in the conduct of these men either absurd in itself, or haz- 
 ardous to others. Dr. Shaw contends, that no violence was 
 offered to the roof, and that the bearers only carried the 
 paralytic up to the top of the house, either by forcing their 
 way through the crowd up the staircase, or else by convey- 
 ing him over some of the neighbouring terraces, and these, 
 after they had drawn away the orly??, or veil, let him down 
 along the side of the roof (through the opening, or impluvi- 
 um) into the midst of the court before Jesus. But this in- 
 genious explanation is encumbered with several important 
 difficulties. The natural and obvious idea which the text 
 suggests to the mind is, that the roof of the house was ac- 
 tually opened, and the paralytic letdown through the tiling, 
 or roof, into the upper apartment, where Jesus was sitting; 
 while an elaborate process of criticism is necessary to elicit 
 the sense of the learned author: this is a circumstance 
 strongly in favour of the common exposition. Besides, he 
 has produced no proof that areyri ever signifies a veil, for 
 which the sacred writers, in particular, employ other words, 
 as KaXv/j/ia, KaTaTreraorjia ; but its usual meaning is the roof, 
 or flat terrace of a house, and, by an easy transition, the 
 house itself. Nor has he assigned a sufficient reason for 
 the use of the strong term e^opv^avres, by which he is evi- 
 dently embarrassed. He endeavours, in the first place, to 
 get quit of it altogether, by observing that it is omitted in 
 the Cambridge manuscript, and not regarded in the Syriac, 
 and some other versions. But conscious it could neither 
 be expunged, nor disregarded upon such authority, he thinks 
 " it may be considered as further explanatory of oOTo-rty ao-ai' : 
 or, as in the Persian version, referred either to the letting 
 down of the bed, or, preparatory thereto, to the making 
 holes in it for the cords to pass through." But the word 
 cannot, with propriety, be considered as a further explana- 
 tion of aTrsffTeyarrav; for it has quite a different meaning; it 
 signifies to dig out, to break up, or pluck out, and always in- 
 volves the idea of force and violence ; but no violence, and 
 but very little exertion was necessary, to fold back the veil, 
 which was expanded by cords over the court. Nor can it 
 be referred to the removal of other obstructions, for when 
 the veil was removed, no further obstruction remained. It 
 cannot, in this place, signify to tie the four corners of the 
 bed or bedstead with cords, for it bears no such meaning in 
 any other part of ihe holy scriptures, or in any classic- 
 author ; and since it is more naturally constructed with 
 oTcyr] than with KpaPParor, it ought to be referred to the for- 
 
596 
 
 MARK. 
 
 Chap. 2—6. 
 
 mer. Pearce, in his Miracles of Jesus Vindicated, offers an- 
 other solution ; according to him, they opened the trap-door, 
 which used to be on the top of the houses in Judea, and 
 which lying even with the roof, was a part of it when it was 
 let down and shut. But with regard to this exposition, 
 Parkhurst justly observes, that the most natural interpreta- 
 tion of a-:ro<TT£Ya^eiv, is to uuroof, break up the roof, and that 
 the verb is twice used by Strabo, as cited by Eisner and 
 Wetstein, in this sense; which also best agrees with the 
 following word e^opv^avreg. The history, as recorded by 
 the evangelists Mark and Luke, seems to be this; Jesus, 
 after some days absence, returned to Capernaum, and to 
 the house where he used to dwell. And when it was re- 
 ported that he was there, the people crowded to the square 
 court, about which the house was built, in such numbers 
 that there was no room for them, even though they filled 
 the porch. The men who carried the paralytic, endeavour- 
 ' ed to bring him into the court among the crowd ; but, find- 
 ing this impossible, they went up the staircase which led 
 from the porch (or possibly came from the terrace of a 
 neighbouring house) to the flat roof of the house, over the 
 upper room in which Jesus was, Kai e^opv^avres ; and having 
 forced up as much both of the tiles or plaster, and of the 
 boards on which they were laid, as was necessary for the 
 purpose, they let down the paralytic's mattress, Sia Ta)v 
 K£oaiiO)v, through the tiles or roof, into the midst of the room 
 before Jesus. This operation, under the careful manage- 
 ment of these men, who must have been anxious not to in- 
 commode the Saviour and his auditory, could be attended 
 with no danger. The tiles or plaster might be removed to 
 another part of the flat roof, and the boards likewise, as 
 they were broken up ; and as for the spars, they might be 
 sufficiently wide to admit the narrow couch of the sick 
 man, without moving any of them from their places. It 
 may be even inferred from the silence of the two evange- 
 lists, that the company suffered not the least inconvenience ; 
 and the infidel can produce the testimony of no writer in 
 support of his insinuations. But though we were unable to 
 remove the objection, or silence the ridicule of the unbe- 
 liever, it is in every respect better to abide by the natural 
 and obvious sense of the passage. Many of the oriental 
 piinces and nobles have a favourite upper chamber to which 
 they retire from the fatigues of state and the hurry of busi- 
 ness. To such a retired apartment the Saviour and his 
 disciples withdrew to celebrate the passover before he suf- 
 • lered. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw 
 him eat with publicans and sinners, they said 
 unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and 
 drinketh with publicans and sinners. 
 
 At this period there were in the Roman empire two 
 Classes of men, who might be called publicans, {piiblicani, 
 Tshovai.) First, such as farmed the revenues of whole prov- 
 inces. These were generally Roman knights, frequently 
 highly respected men, as may be inferred from the picture 
 which Cicero draws of some of them in his speeches for 
 the Manilian law and for Plancus. These were properly- 
 called publicani, but they are not mentioned in the Evan- 
 gelists. They likewise did not collect the taxes themselves ; 
 they employed for this purpose their freedmen and slaves, 
 to whom they gave as assistants as many natives as was 
 requisite. These sub tax-gatherers were indeed also called 
 publicans, (^publicani, rsWvai ;) but their proper Latin name 
 was portitores. Their places were united with great tempta- 
 tions ; for as they had farmed the taxes for a fixed sum, they 
 tried to press as much as possible from individual persons. 
 Besides this, gathering the taxes for a foreign power, is un- 
 doubtedly a detested employment in every country, and 
 among the natives generally only people of the meanest 
 rank, and of a low way of thinking, lend themselves to it. 
 Among the Jews, the ill-will towards ptMiple of this class 
 was increased by pride and zeal for the independence of 
 the nation ; and such of their countrymen as sufl^ered them- 
 / selves to be employed in gathering taxes for heathens, they 
 considered as apostates to their religion. Publicans and 
 sinners were among their synonymous names. — Rosen- 
 
 MULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 38. And he cometh to the house of the ruler 
 
 of the synagogue, and seeth the tumuh, and 
 them that wepi and wailed greatly. 
 
 See on Gen, 45. 2. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 3. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, 
 the brother of James and Joses, and of Jnda, and 
 Simon ? and are not his sisters here with us ] 
 And they were offended at him. 
 
 It was a common practice, in almost every country, to distin- 
 guish a person from others of the same name, by giving him 
 asurname derived from the trade or occupation of his parent. 
 The English language furnishes us with examples of this 
 in the surnames of Baker, Taylor, Carpenter, and the like; 
 and what is still more to the point, it is at this day the cus- 
 tom in some of the oriental nations, and particularly among 
 the Arabs, to distinguish any learned and illustrious man, 
 who may chance to be born of parents who follow^ a particu- 
 lar trade or art, by giving him the name of such trade or 
 art as a surname, although he may never have followed it 
 himself. Thus, if a man of learning happen to be descend- 
 ed from a dier or a tailor, they call him the tailor's son or 
 the dier's son, or frequently omitting the word son, simply 
 the dier or the tailor. According to this custom, the re- 
 mark of the Jews, in which our Saviour is termed the car- 
 penter, may be considered as referring merely to the occu- 
 pation of his reputed father: and that t£kto)v ought to be un- 
 derstood in this place as meaning nothing more than b rov 
 TCKTovog viog, the son of the carpenter. This explanation of 
 the term is supported by the authority of another evan- 
 gelist, who resolves it by this very phrase." (Mosheim.) — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 8. And commanded them that they should 
 take nothing for their journey, save a staff 
 only ; no scrip, no bread, no money in their 
 purse. 
 
 See on Mat. 10. 9. 
 
 Ver. 11. And whosoever shall not receive you, 
 nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off 
 the dust under your feet for a testimony against 
 them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more 
 tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day 
 of judgment, than for that city. 
 
 When a person is made angry by another, he says, " 1 
 will shake thee off" as I do the dust from my sandals." " I 
 have washed my feet ; never more shall they tread that 
 place." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 13. And they cast out many devils, and 
 anointed with oil many that were sick, and 
 healed them. 
 
 The people of the East give a decided preference to ex- 
 ternal applications; hence when they are directed to " eat" 
 or " drink" medicine, they ask, can they not have something 
 to apply outside 1 For almost every complaint a man will 
 smear his body with bruised leaves, or saffron, or ashes of 
 certain woods, or oils; and he professes to derive more 
 benefit from them than from those medicines which are 
 taken internally: at all events, he knows they cannot do 
 him so much harm. It ought to be observed, that they do 
 not attach any miraculous effects to the being " anointed 
 with oil."— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. And when a convenient day was come, 
 that Herod, on his birthday, made a supper to 
 his lords, high captains, and chief estates of 
 Galilee. 
 
 The Orientals have nearly all their great feasts in the 
 evening : thus, to give a supper is far more common than 
 a dinner. Those evening festivals have a very imposing 
 effect : what with the torches and lamps, the splendid dresses 
 
Chap. 9—12. 
 
 MARK. 
 
 597 
 
 jewels, processions, the bowers, the flowers, and the music, 
 a kind of enchantment takes hold of the feelings, and the 
 mind is half bewildered in the scenes. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 41. For whosoever shall give you a cup of 
 water to drink, in my name, because ye belong 
 to Christ, verily I say unto you, He shall not 
 lose his reward. 
 
 In the sacred scriptures, bread and water are commonly 
 mentioned as the chief supports of human life ; and to pro- 
 vide a sufficient quantity of water, to prepare it for use, 
 and to deal it out to the thirsty, are still among the princi- 
 pal cares of an oriental householder. To furnish travel- 
 lers with water is, even in present times, reckoned of so 
 great importance, that many of the eastern philanthropists 
 have been at considerable expense to procure them that 
 enjoyment. The nature of the climate, and the general 
 aspect of the oriental regions, require numerous fountains 
 to excite and sustain the languid powers of vegetation ; and 
 the sun, burning with intense heat in a cloudless sky, de- 
 mands for the fainting inhabitants the verdure, shade, and 
 coolness, which vegetation produces. Hence fountains of 
 living water are met with in the towns and villages, in the 
 fields and gardens, and by the sides of the roads and of the 
 beaten tracks on the mountains ; and a cup of cold water 
 from these wells, is no contemptible present. 
 
 In Arabia, equal attention is paid by the wealthy and 
 b-snevolent to the refreshment of the traveller. On one of 
 the mountains of Arabia, Niebuhr found three little reser- 
 voirs, which are always kept full of fine water for the use 
 of passengers. These reservoirs, which are about two 
 feet and a half square, and from five to seven feet high, 
 are round, or pointed at the top, of mason's work, having 
 only a small opening in one of the sides, by which they 
 pour water into them. Sometimes he found, near these 
 places of Arab refreshment, a piece of a ground shell, or 
 a little scoop of wood for lifting the water. 
 
 The same attention to the comfort of travellers, is mani- 
 fested in Egypt, where public buildings are set apart in 
 some of their cities, the business of whose inhabitants is to 
 supply the passenger with water free of expense. Some of 
 these houses make a very handsome appearance ; and the 
 persons appointed to wait on the passengers, are required 
 to have some vessels of copper, curiously tinned and filled 
 with water, always ready on the wingow next the street. 
 Some of the Mohammedan villagers in Palestine, not far 
 from Nazareth, brought Mr. Buckingham and his party 
 bread and water, while on horseback, without even being 
 solicited to do so ; and when they halted to accept it, both 
 compliments and blessings were mutually interchanged.* 
 Hence a cup of cold water is a present in the East of much 
 value, though there are some other refreshments of a su- 
 perior quality. When Sisera asked a little water to drink, 
 Jael brought him milk, which she thought he would natural- 
 ly prefer; and in the book of Proverbs, the mother of Lem- 
 uel instructed him to give strong drink to him that is ready 
 to perish, and wine to those that were of heavy heart. Still, 
 however, the value of a cup of water, though to be num- 
 bereJ among the simple.^ presents the traveller can re- 
 ceive, is of great value in those countries. If this be duly 
 considered, the declaration of our Lord, " Whosoever 
 shall give you a cup of water to drink, in my name, 
 because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you. He 
 shall not lose his reward," is of greater importance than 
 Ave are apt at first sight to imagine. The general thought 
 is plain to every reader, That no service performed to a 
 disciple of Christ, out of love to his master, although com- 
 paratively small, shall remain unrewarded ; but the inhab- 
 itants of more temperate climates are sometimes ready to 
 think that the instance which our Lord mentions, is rather 
 insignificant. It certainly would not appear so now to an 
 inhabitant of the East, nor did it then, we have reason to 
 believe, appear so to them who heard the Saviour's decla- 
 ration. But the words of Christ evidently contain more 
 than this ; they lead up our thoughts to the character of 
 
 * "In this, as in most of the other villages, is a hut with a large jar 
 of water in it, by the road-side, for travellers. When there are no 
 houses, this jar is generally placed under a fme-tree." (Waddington's 
 Travels inEtliiopia, p. 35.)--B. 
 
 him for whose sake the cup of water is given. Ao act of 
 benevolence, how small soever, is certainly pleasing in the 
 sight of God, so far as it proceeds from proper motives, is 
 performed in the appointed manner, and directed to the 
 proper end, and particularly if it be connected with the 
 name of his own Son. But to give a cup of water to a dis- 
 ciple in the name of Christ, and because he belongs to him, 
 must signify, that it is given in honour of Christ ; and this 
 is the particular reason of the reward which the remuner- 
 ative justice of God bestows. An article in the Asiastic 
 Miscellany, quoted by Dr. Clarke in his edition of Har- 
 mer, will "set this in a very clear light. In India, the Hin- 
 doos go sometimes a great way to fetch water, and then 
 boil it, that it may not be hurtful to travellers who are hot ; 
 and after this, stand from morning till night in some great 
 road, where there is neither pit nor rivulet, and otiisr it 
 in honour of their gods, to be drunk by the passengers. 
 Such necessary works of charity in these hot countries, 
 seem to have been practised among the more pious and 
 humane Jews ; and our Lord assures them, that if they do 
 this in his name, they shall not lose their reward. This 
 one circumstance. Dr. Clarke justly remarks, of the Hin- 
 doos offering the water to the fatigued passengers, in hon- 
 our of their gods, is a better illustration of our Lord's 
 words, than all the collections of Mr. Harmer on the sub- 
 ject. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 46. And they came to Jericho : and as he 
 went out of Jericho with his disciples, and a 
 great number of people, blind Bartimeus, the 
 son of Timeus, sat by the highway-side, beg- 
 ging. 
 
 Here again the picture is teeming with life. See that 
 blind man seated under a shady tree " by the highway 
 side," he has occupied the place from infancy. The trav- 
 ellers who are accustomed to pass that way always expect 
 to see the blind beggar ; and were he not there they would 
 have a sense of discomfort, and anxiously inquire after 
 the cause. So soon as he hears the sound of a footstep he 
 begins to cry aloud, " The blind 1 the blind 1 remember the 
 blind!" He knows almost every man's voice, and has 
 always some question to ask in reference to the family at 
 home. Should a stranger be passing, he inquires, Ath-d?, 
 i. e. Who is thaf? Those who cannot walk are carried to 
 their wonted place, as was the man who was " laid daily 
 at the gate of the tempie, which is called Beautiful, to ask 
 alms of them that entered into the temple." Some cripples 
 are carried about in a basket by two men, who have a 
 share of the alms. Sometimes they have tremendous 
 quarrels, as the bearers take too great a share of the money 
 or provisions, whigh induces the lame man to use his 
 tong)ie: they, however, generally get the victory by threat- 
 ening to leave the poor fellow to get home as well as he 
 can. Some of the blind mendicants have not the pa'tience 
 to remain in one place : hence they get a person to lead 
 them, and here again they have a constant source of quar- 
 rel in the suspicions of the one and the rogueries of the 
 other. The guide falls into a passion, and abuses the beg- 
 gar, tells him he is cursed of the gods, and pretends to take 
 his departure ; the blind man retorts, and calls him a hnc 
 caste, a servant of beggars, and tells him he shall not hav 
 any more of his rice. They both having expended a' 
 their hard words, become a little calmer; and after a few 
 expostulations, once more approximate, and trudge ofi" in 
 pursuit of their calling.— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 1. And he began to speak unto them by 
 parables. A certain man planted a vineyard 
 and set a hedge about izf, and digged a place for 
 the wine-fat, and built a tower, and let it out to 
 husbandmen, and went into a far country. 
 
 I was particularly struck with the appearance of several 
 small and detached square towers in the midst of vine- 
 lands, said by our guide to be used as watch-towers, from 
 which watchmen looked out to guard the produce of the 
 lands themselves even in the present day. — Buckingham, 
 
598 
 
 MARK. 
 
 Chap. 13, 14. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 15. And let him that is on the house-top not 
 go down into the house, neither enter therein, 
 to take any thing out of his house. 
 
 See on Matt. 24. 17. 
 
 "When the houses, were not contiguous, the staircase, ac- 
 cording to the description of some travellers, was conduct- 
 ed along the outside of the house ; but when they were 
 built close together, it was placed in the porch, or at the 
 entrance into the court, and continued through one corner 
 of the gallery, or another, to the top of the house. For 
 the sake of greater privacy, and to prevent the domestic 
 animals from daubing the terrace, and by that means 
 spoiling the water which falls from thence into the cisterns 
 below the court, a door was hung on the top of the stair, 
 and kept constantly shut. This door, like most others to 
 be met with in those countries, is hung, not with hinges, 
 but by having the jamb formed at each end into an axle- 
 tree or pivot ; of which the uppermost, which is the longest, 
 IS to be received into a correspondent socket in the lintel, 
 while the other falls into a similar cavity in the threshold. 
 Doors with hinges of the same kind are still to be seen in 
 the East. The stone door, so much admired by Mr. Maun- 
 drell, is exactly of this fashion, and very common in most 
 places. " The staircase is uniformly so contrived, that a 
 person may go up or come down by it, without entering 
 into any of the offices or apartments; and by consequence, 
 without disturbing the fami'ly, or interfering with the busi- 
 ness of the house. In allusion to this method of building, 
 our Lord commands his disciples, when the Roman armies 
 entered Judea, to " flee to the mountains ;" and adds, " Let 
 him that is on the house-top not go down into the house, 
 neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house." 
 They were commanded to flee from the top of the house to 
 the mountains, without entering the house; which was im- 
 possible to be done, if the stairs had not been conducted 
 along the outside of it, by which they could escape. — Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 Ver. 35. Watch ye, therefore : for ye know not 
 when the master of the house cometh, at even, 
 or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in 
 the morning. 
 
 See on ch. 14. 30. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 3. And being in Bethany, in the house of 
 Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came 
 a woman, having an alabaster box of ointment 
 of spikenard, very precious; and she brake the 
 box, and poured it on his head. 
 
 While the entertainment was going on, the master of the 
 family, to show his respect for the company, and to prevent 
 the hurtful consequences of indulgence, caused the ser- 
 vants in attendance to anoint their heads with precious 
 unguents, and perfume the room by burning myrrh, frank- 
 incense, and other odours. Hence the act of Mary, in 
 anointing the head of her Lord, as he sat at meat in the 
 house of Simon, was agreeable to the established custom 
 of the country, and she did no more on that occasion than 
 what the rules of politeness required from his entertainer. 
 It was at once a signal testimony of her veneration for the 
 Saviour, and a pointed reproof to Simon for his disre- 
 spectful omission. " As Jesus sat at meat, there came a 
 woman, having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, 
 (or liquid nard, according to the margin,) very precious, 
 and she brake the box and poured it on his head." The 
 balsam was contained in a box of alabaster, whose mouth 
 was stopped with cotton, upon which melted wax was 
 poured so as effectually to exclude the air. When Mary 
 approached to anoint her Lord, she broke the cemeiil 
 which secured the stopple, not the box itself, for this was 
 quite unnecessary; and we know thai in the language of 
 the East, the opening of a vessel, by breaking the cement 
 that secured it, was called breaking the vessel. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 30. And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say 
 
 unto thee. That this day, even in this night, be- 
 fore the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me 
 thrice. 
 
 The cock-crowing was, properly, the time which inter- 
 vened between midnight and the morning ; which is evident 
 from the words of the evangelist just quoted. Availing 
 themselves of this circumstance, the Romans divided their 
 day and night into various parts, which they distinguished 
 by appropriate names. Midnight was the point at which 
 their day commenced and terminated ; then followed, what 
 they called the inclination of midnight; after that, the 
 cock-crowing; then the conticinium, or time of silence, 
 when all was still; this was followed by the dawn, which 
 ushered in the morning ; and this in its turn was succeeded 
 by the noonday. The Greek term which denotes the cock- 
 crowing, is often used in the plural number, because that 
 wakeful bird announces more than once the approach of 
 light. He begins to chant at midnight; and again raises 
 his warning voice, between midnight and the dawn ; which, 
 on this account, is often called the second cock-crowing. 
 Thus Juvenal : 
 
 " Quod tamen ad cantum galli facit ille secundi, 
 Proxitnus ante diem caupo sciet."— (Sat. ix. 1. 106.) 
 
 The second cock-crowing corresponds with the fourth 
 watch of the night; for, says Ammianus, he ascended 
 Mount Casius, from whence, at the second crowing of the 
 cock, the rising sun might be first descried. But, according 
 to Pliny, from the towering height of Mount Casius, the sun 
 might be seen at the fourth watch, ascending through the 
 shades of night. But, although the cock crows twice in the 
 night, yet, when any thing is said to be done at the time of 
 the cock-crowing, without stating whether it is the first or 
 the second, it must always be understood of the last, which 
 is by way of distinction called the cock-crowing, either be- 
 cause the warning is more loud and cheerful, or because it 
 is more useful to mankind, as it rouses them from their 
 slumbers to the active scenes of life; or, in fine, because 
 the time of the first warning is called by another name, the 
 middle of the night. Thus, the evangelist Mark agrees 
 with the uninspired writers of antiquity, in placing the 
 lime of the second crowing between the hour of midnight 
 and the morning. And Isidore, as quoted by Bochart, says, 
 it was called the cock-crowing, because then the cock an- 
 nounced the approach of day. Hence it is evident he meant 
 the time of the second crowing. Horace also refers to 
 the same hour in these lines: 
 
 " Agricolum laudat juris legumque peritus 
 
 Sub galli cantum consultor ubi ostia pulsat." — (Sat. i. 1. 10.) 
 
 It appears from these, and many other testimonies, which 
 the learned reader will find in Bochart, that the same time 
 was now called simply, the cock-crowing ; and now more 
 expressly, the second cock-crowing : from whence it has 
 been justly thought, that Mark may be easily reconciled with 
 the other evangelists, in relation to the time when the apos- 
 tle Peter thrice denied his Lord. According to Mark, the 
 Saviour informed his presumptuous disciple, " Before the 
 cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice." As the Sa- 
 viour had foretold, the cock crew after the first, and a se- 
 cond time after the third denial ; but according to the other 
 evangelists, the cock did not crow before he denied him 
 the third time. The words of Christ, according to Matthew, 
 are these: " Verily I say unto thee, that this night before 
 the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." In Luke: " I 
 tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, be-bre that 
 thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me!" In John : 
 " Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake 1 Verily, verily, 
 I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied 
 me "thrice." But it is no difficult task to reconcile thes^ 
 different accounts ; for the prediction clearly refers to tl 
 time of the second crowing, before when, according to all 
 the four evangelists, Peter had thrice denied his Master. 
 These phrases, The cock shall not crow, or. Before the 
 cock shall crow, are the same as if he had said, Before the 
 time of the cock-crowing, or the cock shall not give that 
 loud and cheerful alarm, from which the time called em- 
 phatically the cock-crowing {n\tKTnpo,bmna) is dated, before 
 thou shait deny me thrice.' No doubt can reasonably be 
 entertained, that Mark, who was the disciple of Peter, re- 
 corded the very words of Christ, as he received them from 
 the apost»fe. But it was sufficient for the others to mentioR 
 
Chap. 15. 
 
 MARK. 
 
 599 
 
 the principal fact, that Christ not only foresaw and predict- 
 ed the threefold denial of Peter, but also fixed the time 
 when it should happen, before the second crowing. The 
 words of our Lord are certainly to be understood of the 
 second, because this only was simply called the cock-crow- 
 ing; yet Mark expressly asserts it, and declares also, that 
 the first denial of Peter preceded the first cock-crowing. 
 Here it may be objected, that between the first and second 
 crowing, the fourth part of the night commonly intervenes ; 
 which at that time was nearly three hours ; for in Judea, at 
 tne time of the year when our Lord was crucified, the 
 nights are more than eleven hours in length ; but between 
 the first and second denial of Peter, scarcely the half of 
 that time could have elapsed. This appears from the nar- 
 rative of the evangelist Luke, in which it is stated, that 
 when the terrified apostle had first denied his Lord to the 
 maid, as he sat by the fire, " A little after, another saw him, 
 and said. Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, 1 
 am not ;" which was the second denial. " And about the 
 space of one hour after, another confidently affirmed, say- 
 ing, Of a truth, this fellow also was with him; for he is a 
 Galilean." " And Peter denied the third time, and imme- 
 diately the cock crew." To this objection it may be sufi[i- 
 cient fo reply, that the statement of the evangelist is ex- 
 tremely brief; and while Peter endeavoured to clear himself 
 of the charge, many words might pass on both sides, which 
 are not put on record, and the discussion be protracted 
 through a great part of the night. Nor will it follow from 
 the phrase which Luke uses, after a little lohile, that no 
 ^time, or only a very short interval passed, between the first 
 'and second denial; for the apostle John, in his gospel, 
 mentions many incidents which happened in that time; 
 and the third denial, which Luke says happened about the 
 space of one hour after the second denial, is in Matthew 
 and Mark said to have taken place " a little after." Hence, 
 this phrase may denote a much longer space of time than is 
 commonly supposed. Besides, Luke does not say, that the 
 third denial happened precisely at the distance of one 
 hour, but about the space of one hour, which might there- 
 fore be considerably more. In fine, although the fourth 
 part of the night commonly intervenes between the first 
 and second crowing, it is not always the case ; for it is well 
 known, that these birds do not always crow at stated times. 
 Some cock, therefore, after the third denial of Peter, might 
 anticipate the usual time of announcing the approach of 
 morning, by one hour. It may be objected again, when 
 Peter denied his Lord, the scribes, the priests, and the elders, 
 were met in the house of Caiaphas, and sitting in judg- 
 ment on the Saviour ; while the apostle wailed the issue, 
 among the servants in the hall. But it is not likely that 
 the council would prolong their sitting through so great a 
 part of the night. Who can believe, that so many persons 
 of the first rank among the Jews, would spend almost the 
 whole night on the judgment-seat, when the cause for which 
 they were assembled could, with equal convenience, be 
 referred to another time 1 But this objection is urged in 
 vain ; for the fact, that they actually did so, is certain. 
 This will appear, when it is considered how many things 
 were done that night, before the apostle denied his Lord 
 the third time. When the evening was come, that is, at the 
 setting of the sun, our Lord celebrated the passover with 
 his disciples ; he then washed their feet, and addressed them 
 on the occasion. After finishing this discourse, he insti- 
 tuted the supper ; then he reproved his disciples for their 
 contentions with one another about the supremacy. When 
 he had finished this reproof, he sung a hymn, which, ac- 
 cording to the Talmudical writers, consisted of a number 
 of psalms. This act of devotion being ended, he went out 
 to the mount cf Olives, — came to the garden of Gethsemane 
 — withdrew f.ora his disciples to pray — and after praying 
 an hour, he returned to the disciples, whom he found asleep, 
 and reproved them for their unseasonable indulgence ; this 
 he did a second, and a third time. In the meantime, Judas 
 arrived with a numerous party, and apprehended him ; 
 and led him away, first to Annas, and then to Caiaphas, in 
 whose house, the scribes, the priests, and the elders were 
 assembled. Into the hall of judgment, Peter with difficulty 
 obtained admission ; and, being recognised as one of his 
 
 followers, denied his Lord. Christ was placed at the bar. 
 and interrogated by Caiaphas ; this being done, Peter de- 
 nied his Master a second time, and again in the space of 
 an hour. It will appear to every reflecting and candid 
 mind, that these transactions must have occupied the greater 
 part of the night. The despatch which the high-priest and 
 his council made, indeed would seem quite extraordinary, 
 if we did not consider that the passover, their most solemn 
 festival, was just ready to commence, and that the worst 
 passions of their depraved hearts were now in a state of high 
 excitement against the Redeemer.— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 35. And he went forward a little, and fell on 
 the ground, and prayed, that, if it were possi- 
 sible, the hour might pass from him. 
 
 How often are we reminded of this by the way in which 
 the heathen worship their gods ! they fall prostrate before 
 the temples and repeat their prayers. In our own chapels 
 and school rooms, natives sometimes prostrate themselves 
 at the time of prayer. — Roberts, 
 
 Ver. 5L And there followed him a certain young 
 man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked 
 body : and the young men laid hold on him. 
 52. And he left the linen cloth, and fled from 
 them naked. 
 
 See on Judg. 14. 12. 
 
 Pococke observes, in describing the dresses of the people 
 of Egypt, that " it is almost a general custom among the 
 Arabs and Mohammedan natives of the country, to wear a 
 large blanket, either white or brown, and in summer ablue 
 and white cotton sheet, which the Christians constantly use 
 in the country: putting one corner before, over the left 
 shoulder, they bring it behind, and under the right arm, 
 and so over their bodies, throwing it behind over the left 
 shoulder, and so the right arm is 1 eft bare for action. When 
 it is hot, and they are on horseback, they let it fall down on 
 the saddle round them : and about Faiume, I particularly 
 observed, that young people especially, and the poorer sort, 
 had nothing on whatever but this blanket ; and it is probable 
 the young man was clothed in this manner, who followea 
 our Saviour when he was taken, having a linen cloth casi 
 about his naked body ; and when the young men laid hold 
 on him, he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked." — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 But the chief priests moved the people, 
 rather release Barabbas unto 
 
 Ver. 1 
 that he should 
 libera. 
 
 Another mode of capital punishment, to which the in- 
 spired writers refer, is crucifixion. It was used in Greece, 
 but not so frequently as at Rome. It consisted of two 
 beams, one of which was placed across the other, in a form 
 nearly resembling the letter T, but with this difference, 
 that the transverse beam was fixed a little below the top of 
 the straight one. When a person was crucified, he was 
 nailed to the cross as it lay upon the ground, his feet to the 
 upright, and his hands to each side of the transverse beam ; 
 it was then erected, and the foot of it thrust with violence 
 into a hole prepared in the ground to receive it. By this 
 means, the body, whose whole weight hung upon the nails 
 which went through the hands and feet, was completely 
 disjointed, and the sufterer expired by slow and agonizing 
 torments. This kind of death, the most cruel, shameful, 
 and accursed that could be devised, was used by the Ro- 
 mans only for slaves, and the basest of the people. The 
 malefactors were crucified naked, that is, without their 
 upper garments: for it does not appear they were stripped 
 of all their clothes, and we know that an Oriental was said 
 to be naked, when he had parted with his upper garments, 
 which were loosely bound about him with a girdle.— Pax- 
 
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 78. Through the tender mercy of our God ; 
 whereby the day-spring from on high hath 
 visited us. 
 
 A king's minister once said of the daughter of Pande- 
 yan, after she had been in great trouble on account of the 
 danger in Avhich her husband had been placed, " She had 
 seen the great ocean of darkness, but now she saw the 
 rising sun, the day-spring appeared." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 4. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, 
 out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, unto the 
 city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (be- 
 cause he was of the house and lineage of Da- 
 vid,) 5. To be taxed with Mary his espoused 
 wife, being great with child. 
 
 A Jewish virgin legally betrothed, was considered as a 
 lawful wife ; and by consequence, could not be put away 
 without a bill of divorce. And if she proved unfaithful to 
 her betrothed husband, she was punished as an adulteress; 
 and her seducer incurred the same punishment as if he had 
 polluted the wife of his neighbour. This is the reason that 
 the angel addressed Joseph, the betrothed husband of Mary, 
 in these terms: " Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to 
 take unto thee Mary thy wife ; for that which is conceived 
 in her is of the Holy Ghost." The evangelist Luke gives 
 her the same title : " And Joseph also went up from Gali- 
 lee unto Bethlehem, to be taxed, with Mary his espoused 
 wife." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 7. And she brought forth her first-born son, 
 and wrapped him in swaddling-clothes, and laid 
 him in a manger ; because there was no room 
 for them in the inn. 
 
 It will be proper here to give a full and explicit account 
 of the inns or caravansaries of the East, in which travellers 
 are accommodated. They are not all alike, some being sim- 
 ply places of rest, by the side of a fountain if possible, and 
 at a proper distance on the road. Many of these places are 
 nothing'more than naked walls ; others have an attendant, 
 who subsists either by some charitable donation, or the be- 
 nevolence of passengers ; others are more considerable es- 
 tablishments, where families reside, and take care of them, 
 and furnish the necessary provisions. 
 
 " Caravansaries were originally intended for, and are 
 now pretty generally applied to the accommodation of stran- 
 gers and travellers, though, like every other good institu- 
 tion, sometimes perverted to the purposes of private emol- 
 ument, or public job. They are built at proper distances 
 through the roads of the Turkish dominions, and afford to 
 the indigent or weary traveller an asylum from the iDclem- 
 ency of the weather: are in general built of the most 
 solid and durable materials, have commonly one story above 
 the ground-floor, the lower of which is arched, and serves 
 for warehouses to store goods, for lodgings, and for stables, 
 while the upper is used merely for lodgings ; besides which 
 they are always accommodated with a fountain, and have 
 cooks-shops and other conveniences to supply the wants of 
 lodgers. In Aleppo, the caravansaries are almost exclu- 
 sively occupied by merchants, to whom they are, like other 
 houses, rented." (Campbell.) 
 
 The poverty of the eastern inns appears from the follow- 
 ing extract. " There are no inns anywhere ; but the cities, 
 and commonly the villages, have a/ large building called a 
 
 khan, or caravansary, which serves as an asylum for all 
 travellers. These houses of reception are always built 
 without the precincts of towns, and consist of four wings 
 round a square court, which serve by way of enclosure 
 for the beasts of burden. The lodgings are cells, where 
 ; ou find nothing but bare walls, dust, and sometimes scor- 
 pions. The keeper of this khan gives the traveller the key 
 and a mat, and he provides himself the rest ; he must there- 
 fore carry with him his bed, his kitchen utensils, and even 
 his provisions, for frequently not even bread is to be found 
 in the villages. On this account the Orientals contrive their 
 equipage in the most simple and portable form. The bag- 
 gage of a man, who wishes to be completely provided, con- 
 sists in of carpet, a mattress, a blanket, two saucepans with 
 lids contained within each other, two dishes, two plates, 
 and a coffee-pot, all of copper well tinned; a small wooden 
 box for salt and pepper ; a round leathern table, which he 
 suspends from the saddle of his horse ; small leathern bot- 
 tles or bags for oil, melted butter, water, and brandy, (if. 
 the travellei be a Christian,) a pipe, a tinder-box, a cup of 
 cocoa-nut, some rice, dried raisins, dates, Cyprus-cheese, 
 and above all, coffee-berries, with a roaster and wooden 
 mortar to pound them." (Volney.) 
 
 " The caravansaries are the eastern inns, far different 
 from ours ; for they are neither so convenient nor hand- 
 some : they are built square, much like cloisters, being 
 usually but one story high, for it is rare to see ofle of two 
 stories. A wide gate brings you into the court, and in the 
 midst of the buildmg, in the front ; and upon the right and 
 left hand, there is a hall for persons of the best quality to 
 keep together. On each side of the hall are lodgings for 
 every man by himself These lodgings are raised all along 
 the court, two or three steps high, just behind which are 
 the stables, where many times it is as good lying as in the 
 chambers. Right against the head of every horse there is 
 a niche with a window into the lodging-chamber, out ol 
 which every man may see that his horse is looked after. 
 These niches are usually so large that three men may lie 
 in them, and here the servants usually dress their victuals." 
 (Tavernier.) — Burder. 
 
 The following graphic sketch will afford the reader a 
 still more correct idea of an eastern inn, or caravansary. 
 " After descending for about two hours, we met with an 
 isolated khan, (inn,) beneath magnificent plantains, on the 
 edge of a fountain. It will be proper to describe, once for 
 all, what is called a khan in Syria, as well as in every 
 other eastern country ; it is a hut, the walls of vi'hich are of 
 ill-joined unceme/ited stones, affording no protection from 
 wind or rain; these stones are generally blackened by the 
 smoke of the hearth, which continually filters through the 
 open spaces. The walls are about seven or eight feet high, 
 and covered over with pieces of rough wood retaining its 
 bark and largest branches; the whole is shaded with dry 
 fagots, answering the purpose of a roof The inside is 
 unpaved, and is, according to the season of the year, a bed 
 of dust or of mud. One or two stakes support the roof of 
 leaves, and the traveller's cloak and arms are suspended 
 thereon. In one corner is a small hearth raised upon a 
 few rough stones; a charcoal fire is constantly burning 
 upon this hearth, and one or two copper cotfee-pots are al- 
 ways full of thick farinaceous coffee, the habitual refresh- 
 ment and only want of the Turks and Arabs. There are 
 in general two rooms similar to the one I have described. 
 One or two Arabs are authorized, in return for the tribute 
 they pay to the pacha, to do the honours of the dwelling, 
 and to sell coffee and barley-flour cakes to the caravans. 
 When the traveller reaches the door of these Khans, he 
 alights from his horse or camel, and removes the straw 
 mats or damask carpets which are to serve him for a bed ; 
 they are spread in a corner of the smoking-room ; he sits 
 down, calls for coffee, lights his pipe, and waits until his 
 
Chap. 2—4. 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 601 
 
 slaves have collected some dry wood to prepare his repast. 
 This repast usually consib^s of two or three cakes, half- 
 baked on a heated pebble, and of some slices of hashed mut- 
 ton, which is boiled with rice in a copper pot. It rarely 
 happens that rice or mutton can be procured in the khan ; 
 the traveller must then bo satisfied with the cakes and the 
 excellent fresh water whicn is always found in the neigh- 
 bourhood of khans. The servants, the slaves, the moukres, 
 (camel-leaders,) and the horses, remain round the khan in 
 the open air. There is generally in the neighbourhood 
 some noted and long-standing tree, which serves as a bea- 
 con to the caravan ; this is mostly an immense sycamore 
 fig-tree, such as I have never seen in Europe ; it is of the 
 size of the largest oaks, and grows to an older age. Its 
 trunk sometimes measures thirty or forty feet in circumfe- 
 rence, and is often larger ; its branches, which begin to 
 spread at an elevation of fifteen or twenty feet from the 
 ground, at first extend in a horizontal direction, to an im- 
 mense distance; the upper branches then group themselves 
 in narrower cones, and resemble from afar our beech-trees. 
 The shadow of those trees, which Providence seems to have 
 scattered here and there, as an hospitable cloud over the 
 burning soil of the desert, extends to a great distance from 
 the trunk ; and it is not unusual to see perhaps sixty camels 
 and horses, and as many Arabs, encamped, during the heat 
 of the day, under the shadow of one of these trees. In this, 
 however, as in every thing else, it is painful to notice the 
 indifference of eastern people and of their government. 
 These plantains, which should be preserved with care, as 
 inns provided by nature for the wants of the caravan, are 
 left to the stupid improvidence of those who benefit by their 
 shade ; the Arabs light their fires at the foot of the syca- 
 more, and the trunks of most of these splendid trees are 
 blackened and hollowed by the flames of Arab hearths. 
 Our little caravan settled itself under one of those majestic 
 sycamores, and we passed the night wrapped up in our 
 c ioaks, and stretched on a straw mat in a corner of the 
 1 han, (De Lamartine's Pilgrimage.) — B. 
 
 Ver. 25. And, behold, there was a man in Jeru- 
 salem, whose name was Simeon ; and the same 
 man was just and devout, waiting for the con- 
 solation of Israel ; and the Holy Ghost was 
 upon him. 
 
 The Jews often used to style the expected Messiah, the 
 consolation ; and, may 1 never see the consolaiio7i,Vf a.s a com- 
 "aon form of swearing among them. — Gill. 
 
 Ver. 44. But they, supposing him to have been 
 in the company, went a day's journey; and 
 they sought him among their kinsfolk and ac- 
 quaintance. 
 
 We are assisted in our view of this subject by the large 
 companies which go to and return from the heathen festi- 
 vals. Ten or twenty thousand sometimes come together to 
 one ceremony, and it is almost impossible for friends and 
 relations to keep together ; hence, in going home, though 
 they cannot find each other in the way, they do not give 
 themselves any trouble, as they consider it to be a matter of 
 course to be thus separated. — Roberts. 
 
 As at the three great festivals all the men who were able 
 were obliged, and many women chose, at least at the pass- 
 over, to attend the celebration at Jerusalem, they used, for 
 their greater security against the attacks of robbers on the 
 road, to travel in large companies. All who came, not only 
 from the same city, but from the same canton or district, 
 made one company. They carried necessaries along with 
 them, and tents for their lodging at night. Sometimes, in 
 hot weather, they travelled all night, and rested in the day. 
 This is nearly the manner of travelling in the East to this 
 hour. Such companies they now call caravans; and in 
 several places have got houses fitted up for their reception, 
 called caravansaries. This account of their manner of 
 travelling furnishes a ready answer to the question, How 
 could Joseph and Mary make a day's journey, without dis- 
 covering before night'that Jesus was not in the company'? 
 In the daytime we may reasonably presume that the travel- 
 lers would, as occasion, business, or inclination led them, 
 mingle with different parties of their friends or acquaint- 
 76 
 
 ance ; but that in the evening, when they were about to en- 
 camp, every one would join the family to which he belong- 
 ed. As Jesus ('id not appear when it was growmg late, 
 his parents firtt sought him where they supposed he 
 would most probably be, among his relations and ac- 
 quaintance ; and not finding him, returned to Jerusalem. — 
 Campbell. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 22. And the Holy Ghost descended in a 
 bodily shape like a dove upon him ; and a voice 
 came from heaven, which said, Thou art my 
 beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased. 
 See on Mat. 3. 16. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 1. And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost,, 
 returned from Jordan, and was led by the spirit 
 into the wilderness. 
 
 Mr. Maundrell, in his travels in the Holy Land, saw the 
 
 Slace which was the scene of Christ's temptations, and thus 
 escribes it : " From this place (the Fountain of the Apos- 
 tles) you proceed in an intricate way among hills and val- 
 leys interchangeably, all of a very barren aspect at present, 
 but discovering evident signs of the labour of the husband- 
 man in ancient times. After some hours' travel in this sort 
 of road, you arrive at the mountainous desert into which our 
 blessed Saviour was led by the spirit to be tempted by the 
 devil. A most miserable dry barren place it is, consisting of 
 high rocky mountains, so torn and disordered as if the earth 
 had suffered some great convulsion, in which its very bowels 
 had been turned outward."— Border. 
 
 Ver. 16. And he came to Nazareth, where he 
 had been brought up : and, as his custom was,] 
 he went into the synagogue on the sabbath-day, 
 and stood up for to read. 
 
 The custom of reading the scriptures publicly was an ap- 
 pointment of Moses, according to the Jews. It was also 
 usual to stand at reading the law and the prophets. Some 
 parts of the Old Testament were allowed to be read sitting 
 or standing ; as particularly, the book of Esther, Common 
 Israelites, as well as priests and Levites, were allowed to 
 read the scriptures publicly. Every sabbath-day seven per- 
 sons read ; a priest, a Levite, and five Israelites. And it is 
 said to be a known custom to this day, that even an un- 
 learned priest reads before the greatest wise man in Israel. 
 —Gill. 
 
 Ver. 20. And he closed the book, and he gave it 
 again to the minister, and sat down. And the 
 eyes of all them that were in the synagogue 
 were fastened on him. 
 
 The third part of the synagogue service was expounding 
 the scriptures and preaching to the people. The posture in 
 which this was performed, whether in the synagogue or in 
 other places, was sitting. Accordingly, when our Saviour 
 had read the haphtaroth in the synagogue at Nazareth, of 
 which he was a member, having been brought up in that 
 city, instead of retiring to his place, he sat down in the 
 desk or pulpit ; and it is said that the eyes of all that were 
 present were fastened upon him, as they perceived by his 
 posture that he was going to preach to them. And when 
 Paul and Barnabas went into the synagogue at Antioch, and 
 sat down, thereby intimating their desire to speak to the 
 people if they might be permitted, the rulers ot the syna- 
 gogue sent to them, and gave them leave. Acts xiii. 14, 15, 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 Ver. 23. And he said unto them, Ye will surely 
 say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thy- 
 self: whatsoever we have heard done in Caper 
 naum, do also here in thy country. 
 
 In the same way do the people recriminate on each other. 
 " You teach me to reform my life ! go, reform your own." 
 
502 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 Chap. 5. 
 
 " Doctor, go heal yourself, and you shall then heal me." 
 "Yes, yes, the fellow can cure all but his own wife and him- 
 self." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. And rose up, and thrust liim out of the 
 city, and led him unto the brow of tiie hill 
 whereon their city was built, that they might 
 cast him down headlong. 
 
 The Mount of Precipitation, as it is now called, is about 
 a mile and a half distant from Nazareth, according to Dr. 
 Richardson, but two miles according to the observations 
 made by Mr. Buckingham and the Rev. W. Jowett ; though 
 Dr. E. D. Clarke maintains that the words of the evange- 
 list explicitly prove the situation of the ancient city to have 
 been precisely that which is occupied by the modern vil- 
 lage. Mr. Jowett, however, has (we conceive) clearly 
 shown that the Mount of Precipitation could not be immedi- 
 ately contiguous to Nazareth. This village, it will be ob- 
 served, is situated in a litile sloping vale or dell on the side, 
 and nearly extends to the foot of a hill, which, though not 
 very lofty, is rather steep and overhanging. 
 
 '* The eye naturally wanders over its summit, in quest of 
 some point from which it might probably be, that the men 
 of this place endeavoured to cast our Saviour down, (Luke 
 iv. 29 ;) but in vain : no rock adapted to such an object ap- 
 pears. At the foot of the hill is a modest simple plain, 
 surrounded by low hills, reaching in length nearly a mile; 
 in breadth, near the city, a hundred and fifty yards ; but 
 farther on, about four hundred yards. On this plain there 
 are a few olive-trees and fig-trees, suificient, or rather 
 scarcely sufficient, to make the spot picturesque. Then 
 follows a ravine, which gradually grows deeper and nar- 
 rower, till, after walking about another mile, you find 
 yourself in an immense chasm with steep rocks on either 
 side, from whence you behold, as it were beneath your feet, 
 and before you, the noble Plain of Esdraelon. Nothing 
 can be finer than the apparently immeasurable prospect of 
 this plain, bounded to the south by the mountains of Sa- 
 maria. The elevation of the hills on which the spectator 
 stands in this ravine is very great; and the whole scene, 
 when we saw it, was clothed in the most rich mountain- 
 blue colour that can be conceived. At this spot, on the 
 right hand of the ravine, is shown the rock to which the men 
 of Nazareth are supposed to have conducted our Lord, lor 
 the purpose of throwing him down. With the Testament 
 in our hands, we endeavoured to examine the probabilities 
 of the spot: and I confess there is nothing in it which ex- 
 cites a scruple of incredulity in my mind. The rock here 
 is perpendicular for about "fifty" feet, down which space it 
 would be easy to hurl a person who should be unawares 
 brought to the summit; and his perishing would be a very 
 certain consequence. That the spot might be at a consid- 
 erable distance from the city is an idea not inconsistent with 
 St. Luke's account ; for the expression * thrusting' Jesus 
 'out of the city, and leading him to the brow of the hill on 
 which their city was built,' gives fair scope for imagining, 
 that, in their rage and debate, the Nazarenes might, without 
 originally intending his murder, press upon him for a con- 
 siderable distance after they had quitted the synagogue. 
 The distance, as already noticed, from modern Nazareth 
 to this spot is scarcely two miles — a space which, in the 
 fury of persecution, might soon be passed over. Or should 
 this appear too considerable, it is by no means certain but that 
 Nazareth may at that time have extended through the prin- 
 cipal part of the plain, which lies before the modern town: 
 in this case, the distance passed over might not exceed a 
 mile. It remains only to note the expression — ' the brow 
 of the hill, on which their city was built:' this, according 
 to the modern aspect of the spot, would seem to be the hill 
 north of the town, on the lower slope of which the town is 
 built; but I apprehend the word ' hill' to have in this, as it 
 has in very many other passages of scripture, a much larger 
 sense ; denoting sometimes a range oi mountains, and in 
 some instances a whole mountainous district. In all these 
 cases the singular word ' Hill,' ' Gebel,' is used, according 
 to the idiom of the language of this country. Thus, ' Gebel 
 Carmel,' or Mount Carmel, is a range of nicnmtains : ' Gebel 
 Libnan,' or Mount Lebanon, is a mountainous district of 
 more than fifty miles in length : ' Gebel ez-Zeitun,' the 
 Mount of Olives, is certainly a considerable tract cf moun- 
 
 tainous country. And thus any person, coming from Jeru- 
 salem and entering on the Plain of Esdraelon, would, if 
 asking the name of that bold line of moimtains which 
 bounds the north side of the plain, be informed that it was 
 'Gebel Nasra,' the Hill of Nazareth; though, in English, 
 we should call them the Mountains of Nazareth. Now the 
 spot shown as illustrating Luke iv. 29, is, in fact, on the 
 very brow of this lofty ridge of mountains ; in comparison 
 of which, the hill upon which the modern town is built is 
 but a gentle eminence." 
 
 This intelligent traveller, therefore, concludes that this 
 mountain maybe the real scene where our Divine Prophet, 
 Jesus, experienced so great a dishonour from the men of his 
 own country and of his own kindred. In a valley near 
 Nazareth is a fountain which bears the name of the Virgin 
 Mary, and where the women are seen passing to and fro 
 with pitchers on their heads as in days of old. It is justly 
 remarked that, if there be a spot throughout the Holy Land 
 which was more particularly honoured by the presence of 
 Mary, we may consider this to be the place ; because the 
 situation of a copious spring is not liable to change, and 
 because the custom of repairing thither to draw water has 
 been continued among the female inhabitants of Nazareth 
 from the earliest period of its history. — Horne. 
 
 We went out to see the hill from' which the inhabitants 
 of Nazareth were for throAving down Christ when he 
 preached to them. This is a high stony mountain, situated 
 some gun-shots from Nazareth, consisting of the limestone 
 common here, and full of fine plants. On its top, towards 
 the south, is a steep rock, which is said to be the spot for 
 which the hill is famous : it is terrible to behold, and proper 
 enough to take away the life of a person thrown from it. — 
 
 HASSEr.QUIST. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 5. And Simon answering, said unto him, 
 Master, we have toiled all the night, and have 
 taken nothing : nevertheless, at thy word I will 
 let down the net. 
 
 In general, the fishermen of the East prefer the night lo 
 any other time for fishing. Before the sun has gone down 
 they push ofFlheir canoes, or catta-ma rams, edch carrying a 
 lighted torch, and, in the course of a few hours, may be seen 
 out at sea, or on the rivers, like an illuminated city. They 
 swing the lights about over the sides of the boat, which the 
 fish no sooner see than they come to the place, and then the 
 men cast in the hook or the spear, as circumstances may re- 
 quire. They have many amusing savings about the folly 
 of the fish in being th,us attracted by the glare of a torch.— 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. And when they could not find by what 
 waj/ they might bring him in because of the 
 multitude, they went upon the house-top, and let 
 him down through the tiling, with his couch, 
 into the midst before Jesus. 
 
 From the gate of the porch, one is conducted into the 
 quadrangular court, which, being exposed to the weather, 
 is paved with stone, in order to carry off the water in the 
 rainy season. The principal design of this quadrangle is, 
 to give light to the house, and admit the fresh air into 
 the apartments; it is also the place where the master of 
 the house entertains his company, which are seldom or 
 never honoured with admission into the inner apartments. 
 This open space bears a striking resemblance to the implu" 
 vium or cava (tdium of the Romans, Avhich Avas also ai 
 uncovered area, from whence the chambers Avere lighted^ 
 For the accommodation of the guests, the pavement ia 
 covered with mats or carpets; and as it is secured agains" 
 all interruption from the street, is well adapted to public 
 entertainments. It is called, says Dr. Shaw, the middle 
 of the house, and literally answers to the r» incrnv of th< 
 Evangelist, into which the man afflicted with the pabj 
 was let down through the ceiling, Avith his conch, befor^ 
 Jesus. Hence, he conjectures that our Lord Avas at thi 
 time instructing the people in the court of one of the 
 houses ; and it is by no means improbable that the qua< 
 rangle was to him and his apostles a favourite situatic" 
 while they were engaged in disclosing the mysteries 
 
Chap. 6, 7. 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 603 
 
 redemption. To defend the company from the scorching 
 sunbeam, or " windy storm and tempest," a veil was ex- 
 panded upon ropes from the one side of the parapet wall 
 t:> the other, which might be folded or unfolded at pleasure. 
 The Psalmist seems to allude either to the tents of the Be- 
 douins, or to some covet;ing of this kind, in that beautiful 
 expression of spreading out the heavens like a veil or cur- 
 tain. We have the same allusion in the sublime strains of 
 Isaiah : " It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and 
 the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth 
 out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a 
 tent to dwell in." — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 38. Give, and it shall be given unto you; 
 good measure, pressed down, and shaken to- 
 gether, and running over, shall men give into 
 your bosom. For with the same measure that 
 ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you 
 again. 
 
 Instead of the fibula that was used by the Romans, the 
 Arabs join together with thread, or with a wooden bod- 
 kin, the two upper corners of this garment ; and after hav- 
 ing placed them first over one of their shoulders, they then 
 fold the rest of it about their bodies. The outer fold serves 
 them frequently instead of an apron, in which they carry 
 herbs, loaves, corn, and other articles, and may illustrate 
 several allusions made to it in scripture : thus, " One of 
 the sons of the prophets went out into the field to gather 
 herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered there of wild 
 gourds, his lap full" And the Psalmist offers up his prayer, 
 ;hat Jehovah would " render unto his neighbours sevenfold 
 into their bosom, their reproach." The same allusion' oc- 
 «urs in our Lord's direction to his disciples : " Give, and It 
 shall be given unto you ; good measure, pressed down, and 
 shaken together, and running over, shall men give into 
 your bosom." It was also the fold of this robe which 
 Nehemiah shook before his people, as a significant em- 
 blem of the manner in which God should deal with the 
 man who ventured to violate his oath and promise, to 
 restore the possessions of their impoverished brethren : 
 "Also, I shook my lap, and said, So God shake out every 
 man from his house, and from his labour, that performeth 
 not this promise, even thus be he shaken out, and emptied." 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 48. He is like a man which built a house, 
 
 and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a 
 
 I rock : and, when the flood arose, the stream 
 
 beat vehemently upon that house, and could 
 
 not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. 
 
 In the rainy season, the clouds pour down their trea- 
 sures at certain intervals with great violence, for three or 
 four days together. Such abundant and violent rains, in a 
 mountainous country like Judea, by washing away the soil, 
 must often be attended with very serious consequences to 
 the dwellings of the inhabitants, which happen to be 
 placed within the reach of the rapid inundation. At Alep- 
 po, the violent rains often wash down stone walls ; and Dr. 
 Russel mentions a remarkable instance of a hamlet with a 
 fig garden, in the Castravan mountains, being suddenly re- 
 moved by the gelling waters to a great distance. It was 
 to an event of this kind, which is by no means uncommon 
 in those regions, that our Lord refers. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 3. And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto 
 him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him tiat 
 he would come and heal his servant. 
 
 ^ This IS the oriental way of making an inquiry or a propi- 
 tiation. Does a man wish to know something about another, 
 he will not go himself, because that might injure him in 
 his future operations ; he calls for two or three confidential 
 friends, states what he wants to ascertain, and tells them 
 how to proceed. They perhaps first go to some neighbour 
 to gain all the information they can, and then go to the m«n 
 
 himself, but do not at once tell him their errand : no, no, 
 they TRY the ground, and make sure cf their object, before 
 they disclose their purposes. Should they, however, be ir 
 doubt, they have the adroitness to conceal their plans ; and 
 if asked what they want, they simply reply " chuma," i. e. 
 nothing ; they only came to say salam, " had not seen the 
 honoured individual for a long time, and therefore wished 
 to set their eyes on him." When a person desires to gain 
 a favour, as did the centurion, he sends an elder, a respect- 
 able person, to state his case, and there is generally an 
 understanding that the messenger, if he succeed, shall share 
 in the benefit. If flattery, humiliations, and importimities 
 can do any thing, he is sure to gain the point.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 36. And one of the Pharisees desired him 
 that he would eat with him, and he went into 
 the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. 
 
 The tables of the ancient Jews were constructed of three 
 distinct parts, or separate tables, making but one in the 
 whole. One was placed at the upper end crossways, and 
 the two others joined to its ends, one on each side, so as to 
 leave an open space between, by which the attendants could 
 readilv wait at all the three. Round these tables were 
 placed, not treats, but beds, one to each table; each of these 
 beds was called clinium, and three of these being united to 
 surround the three tables made the tridiniurn. At the end 
 of each clinium was a footstool for the convenience of 
 mounting up to it. These beds were formed of mattresses, 
 and were supported on frames of wood, often highly orna- 
 mented. Each guest reclined on his left elbow, using prin- 
 cipally his right hand, which was therefore kept at liberty. 
 The feet of the person reclining being towards the external 
 edge of the bed, were much more readily reached by any 
 body passing than any other part. 
 
 The Jews, before they sit down to table, carefully wash 
 their hands; they consider this ceremony as essential. 
 After meals, they wash them again. Wheii they sit down 
 to table, the master of the house, or chief person in the 
 company, taking bread, breaks it, but does not divide it; 
 then putting his hand to it he recites this blessing : Blessed 
 be thou, O Lord, our God, the king of the world, who pro- 
 ducest the bread of the earth. Those present answer, 
 Amen. Having distributed the bread among the guests, he 
 takes the vessel of the wine in his right hand, saying, Bless- 
 ed art thou; O Lord, our God, king of the world, who 
 hast produced the fruit of the vine. They then repeat the 
 23d psalm. They take care that after meals there shall be 
 a piece of bread remaining on the table. The master of 
 the house orders a glass to be washed, fills it with wine, and 
 elevating it, says, Let useless him of whose benefits we 
 have been partaking; the rest answer. Blessed be he who 
 has heaped his favours on us, and by his goodness has now 
 fed us. Then he recites a pretty long prayer, wherein he 
 thanks God for his many benefits vouchsafed to Israel ; be- 
 seeches him to pity Jerusalem and his temple ; to restore the 
 throne of David ; to send Elijah and the Messiah, and to 
 deliver them out of their long captivity. They all answer, 
 Amen. They recite Psalm xxiv. 9, 10. Then giving the 
 glass with the little wine in it to be drank round, he takes 
 what is left, and the table is cleared. These are the cere- 
 monies of the modern Jews. — Calmet. 
 
 Ver. 38. And stood at his feet behind him weep- 
 ing, and began to wash his feet with tears, and 
 did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and 
 kissed his feet, and anointed them with the oint- 
 ment. 
 
 During my travels, I was in the custom of having a lan- 
 cet always about me, in case of accidents, and when I took 
 this out of my pocket-book, piU it into his bands, and told 
 him it was for himself, he looked at me, and at it, with his 
 mouth open, as if he hardly comprehended the possibilitv 
 of my parting with such a jewel. But when I repeated the 
 words. It is yours, he threw himself on the ground, kissed 
 my knees and my feet, and wept with a joy that stifled his 
 expression of thanks.— Sir R. K. Porter. 
 
 Ver. 44. And he turned to the woman, and said 
 unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entei> 
 
604 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 Ch ^p. 7—10. 
 
 ed into thy house, thou gavest me no water for 
 my feet: but she hath washed my feet with 
 tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her 
 head. 
 
 The first ceremony after the guests arrived at the house 
 of entertainment, was the salutation performed by the 
 master of the house, or one appointed in his place. Among 
 the Greeks, this was sometimes done by embracing with 
 arms around ; but the most common salutation was by the 
 conjunction of their right hands, the right hand being rec- 
 koned a pledge of fidelity and friendship. Sometimes 
 they kissed the lips, hands, knees, or feet, as the person 
 deserved n\ore or less respect. The Jews welcomed a 
 stranger to their house in the same way ; for our Lord 
 complains to Simon, that he had given him no kiss ; had 
 welcomed him to his table with none of the accustomed 
 tokens of respect, — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 45. Thou gavest me no kiss ; but this wo- 
 man, since the time I came in, hath not ceased 
 to kiss my feet. 
 
 See that poor woman whose husband has committed 
 some crime, for which he is to be taken to the magistrate ; 
 .she rushes to the injured individual, she casts herself down 
 and begins to kiss his feet ; she touches them with her nose, 
 her eyes, her ears, and forehead, her long hair is dishevel- 
 led, and she beseeches the feet of the offended man to forgive 
 her husband. " Ah ! my lord, the gods will then forgive 
 you." " My husband will in future be your slave, my chil- 
 dren will love you, the people will praise you ; forgive, for- 
 give, my lord." (See on John xii. 3.) — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 59. And he said unto another. Follow me. 
 But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury 
 my father. 
 
 It is considered exceedingly desirable for children to be 
 •with their parents when they die; they then hear their last 
 requests and commands, and also can perform the funeral 
 rites in such a way as none but themselves can do. It is 
 just before death, also, that the father mentions his property ; 
 especially that part which he has concealed in his house, 
 gardens, or fields. It is, therefore, a very common saying, 
 " When I have buried my father, I will do this or that." 
 Should a young man be requested to do that which is not 
 agreeable to his father, he says, " Let me first perform the 
 funeral rites, and then I will dolt," — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 62. And Jesus said unto him. No man having 
 put his hand to the plough, and looking back, 
 is fit for the kingdom of God, 
 
 The plough used in Syria is so light and simple in its 
 construction, that the husbandman is under the necessity of 
 guiding it with great care, bending over it, and loading it 
 with his own weight, else the share would glide along the 
 surface without making any incision. His mind should be 
 wholly intent on his work, at once to press the plough into 
 the ground, and direct it in a straight line, " Let the plough- 
 man," said Hesiod, " attend to his charge, and look before 
 him ; not turn aside to look on his associates, but make 
 straight furrows, and have his mmd attentive to his work," 
 And Pliny : " Unless the ploughman stoop forward" to press 
 his plough into the soil, and conduct it properly, " he will 
 turn it aside." To such careful and incessant exertion our 
 Lord alludes in that declaration : " No man having put his 
 hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the king- 
 dom of heaven," — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER X, 
 
 Ver. 4. Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes : 
 and salute no man by the way. 
 
 The object of this instruction was to prevent their being 
 hindered by unnecessary delay in their journey. It was 
 not designed to prevent the usual and proper civilities which 
 
 were practised among the people, but to avoid the impedi- 
 ments occasioned by form and ceremony : and this was the 
 more necessary, since it was a maxim with the Jews, pre- 
 vent every man with a salutation. How persons might thus 
 be prevented and hindered will clearly appear in the fol- 
 lowing extract. " The more noble and educated the man, 
 the oftener did he repeat his questions. A well-dressed 
 young man attracted my particular attention, as an adept in 
 the perseverance and redundancy of salutation. Accosting 
 an Arab of Augila, he gave him his hand, and detained 
 him a considerable time with his civilities : when the Arab 
 being obliged to advance with greater speed to come up ^ 
 again with his companions, the youth of Fezzan thought he 
 should appear deficient in good manners if he quitted him 
 so soon. For near half a mile he kept running by his horse, 
 while all his conversation was, How dost thou fare 1 well, 
 how art thou thyself? praised be God, thou art arrived in ' 
 peace ! God grant thee peace ! how dost thou do 1 &c," — 
 
 HORNEMAN. 
 
 Our Lord commanded his disciples to salute no man by 
 the way. It is not to be supposed, that he would require 
 his followers to violate or neglect an innocent custom, still 
 less one of his own precepts ; he only directed them to make 
 the best use of their time in executing his work. This pre- 
 caution was rendered necessary by the length of time 
 which their tedious forms of salutation required. They 
 begin their salutations at a considerable distance, by bring- 
 ing the hand down to the knees, and then carrying it to the 
 stomach. They express their devotedness to a person, by 
 holding down the hand ; as they do their affection by rais- 
 ing it afterward to the heart. When they come close to- 
 gether, they take each other by the hand in token of friend- 
 ship. The countrypeople at meeting, clap each other's 
 hands very smartly twenty or thirty times together, without 
 saying any thing more than, How do ye do'? I wish you 
 good health. After this first compliment, many other 
 friendly questions about the health of the family, mention- 
 ing each of the children distinctly, whose names they know. 
 To avoid this useless waste of time, rather than to indicate 
 the meanness in which the disciples were to appear, as 
 Mr. Harmer conjectures, our Lord commanded them to 
 avoid the customary salutations of those whom they might 
 happen to meet by the way. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 19. Behold, I give unto you power to tread 
 on serpents and scorpions, and over all the 
 power of the enemy ; and nothing shall by any 
 means hurt you. 
 
 See on Ezek, 2. 6. 
 
 Ver, 30. And Jesus answering, said, A certain 
 man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, 
 and fell among thieves, which stripped him of 
 his raiment, and wounded hijn, and departed, 
 leaving him half dead. 
 
 This is thus illustrated by a recent traveller who " went 
 down from Jerusalem to Jericho," under the protection of 
 a tribe of Arabian shepherds, and the conduct of two ol 
 their number. " After going through the pass, we descend- 
 ed again into deeper valleys, travelling sometimes on the 
 edges of cliffs and precipices, which threatened destruction 
 on the slightest false step. The scenery all around us was 
 grand and awful, notwithstanding the forbidding aspect of 
 the barren rocks that everywhere met our view; but it 
 v.^as that sort of grandeur which excited fear and terror, 
 rather than admiration." 
 
 " The whole of this road from Jerusalem to the Jordan, 
 is held to be the most dangerous about Palestine, and, in- 
 deed, in this portion of it, the very aspect of the scenery i« 
 sufficient, on the one hand, to tempt to robbery and murder, 
 and on the other, to occasion a dread of it on those who 
 pass that way. It was partly to prevent any accident hap- 
 pening to us in this early stage of our journey, and partly, 
 Eerhaps, to calm our fears on that score, that a messenger 
 ad been despatched by onr guides to an encampment of 
 their tribe near, desiring them to send an escort to meet us 
 at this place. We were met here accordingly, by a band 
 of about twenty persons on foot, all armed with matchlocks, 
 and presenting the most ferocious and lobber-like appear- 
 
Chap. 11—13. 
 
 LUKE 
 
 605 
 
 ance that could be imagined. The effect of this was 
 heightened by the shouts which they sent forth from hill to 
 hill, and which were re-echoed through all the valleys, 
 while the bold projecting crags of rock, the dark shadows in 
 which every thing lay buried below, the towering height 
 of the cliffs above, and the forbidding desolation which 
 everywhere reigned around, presented a picture that was 
 quite in harmony throughout all its parts. 
 
 " It made us feel most forcibly the propriety of its being 
 chosen as the scene of the delightful tale of compassion 
 which we had before so often admired for its doctrine, in- 
 dependently of its local beauty. One must be amid these 
 wild and gloomy solitudes, surrounded by an armed band, 
 and feei the impatience of the traveller who rushes on to 
 catch a new view at every pass and turn ; one must be 
 alarmed at the very tramp of the horses' hoofs rebounding 
 through the caverned rocks, and at the savage shouts of the 
 footmen, scarcely less loud than the echoing thunder pro- 
 duced by the discharge of their pieces in the valleys; — one 
 must witness all this upon the spot, before the full force and 
 Deauty of the admirable story of the good Samaritan can be 
 perceived. Here, pillage, wounds, death, would be accom- 
 panied with double terror, from the frightful aspect of every 
 thing around. Here the unfeeling act of passing by a fel- 
 low-creature in distress, as the priest and Levite are said to 
 have done, strikes one with horror, as an act almost more 
 than inhuman. And here, too, the compassion of the good 
 Samaritan is doubly virtuous, from the purity of the mo- 
 tive which must have led to it, in a spot where no eyes were 
 fixed on him to draw forth the performance of any duty, 
 and from the bravery which were necessary to admit of a 
 man's exposing himself by such delay, to the risk of a simi- 
 lar fate to that from which he was endeavouring to rescue 
 his fellow-creature." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 5. And he said unto them, Which of you 
 shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at 
 midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me 
 three loaves ; 6. For a friend of mine in his 
 journey is come to me, and I have nothing to 
 set before him ? 
 
 The eastern journeys are often performed in the night, 
 on account of the great heat of the day. This is the time 
 in which the caravans chiefly travel: the circumstance 
 therefore of the arrival of a friend at midnight is very prob- 
 able. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 7. And he from within shall answer and say, 
 Trouble me not : the door is now shut, and my 
 children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and 
 give thee. 
 
 See on Eccl. 4. 17. 
 
 Maillet informs us that it is common in Egypt for each 
 person to sleep in a separate bed. Even the husband and 
 the wife lie in two distinct beds in the same apartment. 
 Their female slaves also, though several lodge in the same 
 chamber, yet have each a separate mattress. Sir John 
 Chardin also observes, that it is usual for a whole family 
 to sleep in the same room, especially those in lower life, 
 layingtheirbeds on the ground. From these circumstances 
 we learn the precise meaning of the reply now referred to : 
 " He from within shall answer and say. Trouble me not : the 
 door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed ; I 
 cannot rise and give thee :" it signifies that they were all 
 in bed in the same apartment, not in the same bed. — Bur- 
 
 DER. 
 
 Ver. 47. Wo unto you ! for ye build the sepulchres 
 of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. 
 
 "We visited what are called the sepulchres of the pro- 
 phets, close to the spot where we had halted. "We de- 
 scended through a circular hole into an excavated cavern 
 of some extent, cut with winding passes, and forming a 
 kind of subterraneous labyrinth. The superincumbent 
 mass was supported by portions of the rock, left in the 
 form of Avails and irregular pillars, apparently once stuc- 
 
 coed ; and from the niches still remaining visible in many 
 places, we had no doubt of its having once been appropria- 
 ted to sepulture : but whether any, or which of the prophets 
 were interred here, even tradition does not suggest, beyond 
 the name which it bestows on the place. — Buckingham. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Ver. 35. Let your loins be girded about, and your 
 lights burning. 
 
 They who travel on foot are obliged to fasten their gar- 
 ments at a greater height from their feet than they do at 
 other times. This is what is understood by girding up their 
 loins. Chardin observes, that " all persons who travel on 
 foot always gather up their vest, by which they walk more 
 commodiously, having the leg and knee unburdened and 
 disembarrassed by the vest, which they are not when Chat 
 hangs over them." After this manner he suppases the 
 Israelites were prepared for their going out of Egypt, when 
 they ate the first passover. (Exod. xii. 11.) — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 55. And when ye see the south wind blow, 
 ye say. There will be heat ; and it cometh to 
 pass. 
 
 This circumstance accords perfectly with the relations 
 of travellers into Syria, Egypt, and several parts of the 
 East. When the south wind begins to blow, the sky becomes 
 dark and heavy, the air gray and thick, and the whole at- 
 mosphere assumes a most alarming aspect. The heat pro- 
 duced by these southern winds has been compared to that 
 of a large oven at the moment of drawing out the bread ; 
 and to that of a flame blown upon the face of a person 
 standing near the fire which excites it. (Thevenot.) — 
 Border. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 7. Then said he unto the dresser of his vine- 
 yard, Behold, these three years I come seeking 
 fruit on this fig-tree, and find none : cut it down ; 
 why cumbereth it the ground ? 
 
 This similitude, by which Jesus illustrates the patience 
 and forbearance of God towards sinners, is founded, it is 
 true, in the experience of all countries, and we find in it 
 nothing difficult or unintelligible. But our Saviour prob- 
 ably alluded to a certain custom of eastern gardeners, men- 
 tioned by an Arabian writer, Ibn-al-Uardi, in his work on 
 geography and natural history, called Pearls of "Wonder- 
 ful Things. In the tenth chapter of this work, which 
 treats of some curiosities of the vegetable kingdom, of 
 which the Swedish author, Charles Aurivillius, in a Dis- 
 sertation, published in Upsal, in 1752, has given in Arabic 
 and Latin that part which relates to the cultivation of the 
 palm-tree, we find the following observations. Among the 
 diseases to which the palm-tree is subject, is barrenness. 
 But this maybe removed by the following means: "You 
 take an axe, and go to the tree with a friend, to whom you 
 say, ' I will hew this palm down, because it is unfruitful.' 
 The latter replies, ' Do not do it, it will certainly bear fruit 
 this year.' But the former says, ' It cannot be otherwise,' 
 and strikes the trunk three times with the back of the axe. 
 The other prevents him, and says, ' For God's sake, do 
 not do it; you will certainly have fruit from it this year; 
 have patience with it, and do not be precipitate ; if it bears 
 no fruit, then hew it down.' It will then certainly be fruit- 
 ful this year, and bear fruit in abundance."— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 32. And he said unto them. Go ye, and tell 
 that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do 
 cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day 
 I shall be perfected. 
 
 At Nice, in Asia, at night, " I heard a mighty noise, as 
 if it had been of men, who jeered and mocked us. I asked 
 what was the matter. I was answered, it was only the 
 howling of certain beasts, which the Turks call ciacals, or 
 jackals. They are a sort of wolves, somewhat bigger than 
 foxes, but less than common wolves; yet as greedy and 
 devouring as the most ravenous wolves, or foxes, of all. 
 
606 
 
 LUKE. 
 
 Chap. 14, 15. 
 
 They go in flocks, and seldom hurt man or beast ; but get 
 their food by craft and stealth, more than by open force. 
 Thence it is that the Turks call subtle and crafty persons, 
 especially the Asiatics, by the metaphorical name of ciacals. 
 Their manner is to enter tents, or houses, in the nighttime ; 
 ■what is eatable they eat; gnaw leather, shoes, boots; are 
 as cunning as they are thievish : but in this they are very 
 ridiculous, that they discover themselves by the noise they 
 make ; for while they are busy in the house, devouring 
 their prey, if any one of their herd without doors chance 
 to howl, they all set up a howling likewise." (Busbequius.) 
 — Border. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ver. 8. When thou art bidden of any man to a 
 wedding, sit^not down in the highest room, lest 
 a more honourable man than thou be bidden of 
 him ; 9. And he that bade thee and him come 
 and say to thee, Give this man place : and thou 
 begin with shame to take the lowest room. 
 
 10. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down 
 in the lowest room; that when he that bade 
 thee Cometh, he may say unto thee. Friend, go 
 up higher: then shalt thou have worship in 
 the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. 
 
 11. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be 
 abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall be 
 exalted. 
 
 See on Mark 9. 39. 
 
 When a Persian comes into an assembly, and has salu- 
 ted the house, he then measures with his eye the degree of 
 rank to which he holds himself entitled; he straightway 
 wedges himself into the line of guests, without offering 
 any apology for the general disturbance which he produ- 
 ces. It often happens that persons take a higher seat than 
 that to which they are entitled. The Persian scribes are 
 remarkable for their arrogance in this respect, in which 
 they seem to bear a striking resemblance to the Jews of the 
 same profession in the days of our Lord. The master of 
 the entertainment has, however, the privilege of placing 
 any one as high in the rank of the assembly as he may 
 choose. And Mr. Morier saw an instance of it at a public 
 entertainment to which he was invited. "When the assem- 
 bly was nearly full, the governor of Kashan, a man of 
 humble mien, although of considerable rank, came in and 
 seated himself at the lowest place ; when the master of 
 the house, after numerous expressions of welcome, pointed 
 with his hand to an upper seat in the assembly, to which 
 he desired him to move, and which he accordingly did. 
 These circumstances furnish a beautiful and striking il- 
 lustration of the parable which our Lord uttered when he 
 saw how those that were invited, chose the highest places. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 16. Then said he unto him, A certain man 
 made a great supper, and bade many : 1 7. And 
 sent his servant at supper-time to say to them 
 that were bidden, Come, for all things are now 
 ready. 
 
 See on Matt. 22. 2, 3. 
 
 Ver. 19. And another said, I have bought five 
 yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them : I pray 
 thee have me excused. 
 
 This was not such a trifling affair as some have sup- 
 
 eosed, for it should be remembered it is with oxen only the 
 Orientals perform all their agricultural labours. Such a 
 thing as a horse in a plough or cart, among the natives, I 
 never saw. A bullock unaccustomed to the yoke is of no 
 use ; they therefore take the greatest precaution in making 
 such purchases, and they will never close the bargain till 
 they have proved them in the field. Nor will the good man 
 trust to his own judgment, he will have his neighbours and 
 friends to assist him. The animals will be tried in plough- 
 ing softly, deeply, strongly, and they will be put on all the 
 
 required paces, and then sent home. When he who wishes 
 to purchase is fully satisfied, he will fix a day for settling 
 the amount and for fetching the animals away. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 21. So that servant came, and showed his 
 lord these things. Then the master of the house, 
 being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly 
 into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring 
 in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the 
 halt, and the blind. 
 
 While the higher orders in the East commonly affect 
 so much state, and maintain so great a distance from their 
 inferiors, they sometimes lay aside their solemn and awfui 
 reserve, and stoop to acts of condescension, which are un- 
 known in these parts of the world. It is not an uncommon 
 thing to admit the poor to their tables, when they give a 
 public entertainment. Pococke was present at a great feast 
 in Egypt, where every one, as he had done eating, got up, 
 washed his hands, took a draught of water, and retired to 
 make way for others ; and so on in a continual succession, 
 till the poor came in and ate up all. " For the Arabs," he 
 says, " never set by any thing that is brought to table, so 
 that when they kill a sheep, they dress it all, call in their 
 neighbours and the poor, and finish every thing." The 
 same writer, in another passage, mentions a circumstance 
 which is still more remarkable, that an Arab prince will 
 often dine in the street before his door, and call to all that 
 pass, even to beggars, in the usual expression of Bismilkh, 
 that is, in the name of God, who come and sit down to meat, 
 and when they have done, retire with the usual form of re- 
 turning thanks. Hence, in the parable of the great supper, 
 our Lord describes a scene which corresponded with exist- 
 ing customs. When the guests, whom the master of the 
 house had invited to the entertainment, refused to come, he 
 " said to his servants, go out quickly into the streets and 
 lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor and the maim- 
 ed, and the halt and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, 
 it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. 
 And the lord said unto the servant. Go out into the high- 
 ways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my 
 house may be filled." — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Ver, 16. And he would fain have filled his belly 
 with the husks that the swine did eat : and no 
 man gave unto him. 
 
 That Ktpariov answers to siliqua, and signifies a husk or 
 pod, wherein the seeds of some plants, especially those of 
 the leguminous tribe, are contained, is evident. Both the 
 Greek and Latin terms signify the fruit of the carob-tree, a 
 tree very common in the Levant, and in the southern parts 
 of Europe, as Spain and Italy. This fruit still continues 
 to be used for the same purpose, the feeding of swine. It 
 is also called St. John's bread, from the opinion that the 
 Baptist used it in the wilderness. Miller says it is mealy, 
 and has a sweetish taste, and that it is eaten by the poorer 
 sort, for it grows in the common hedges, and is of little ac- 
 count.— Campbell. 
 
 Ver. 20. And he ar.ose and came to his father. 
 But when he was yet a great way off^ his fa- 
 ther saw him and had compassion, and ran, 
 and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 
 
 The Orientals vary their salutation according to the rank 
 of the persons whom they address. The common method 
 of expressing good-will, is by laying the right hand on the 
 bosom, and inclining their bodies a little ; but when they 
 salute a person of rank, they bow almost to the ground, and 
 kiss the nem of his garment. The two Greek noblemen at 
 Scio, who introduced the travellers Egmont and Heyman 
 to the cham of Tartary, kissed his robe at their entrance, 
 and took leave of him with the same ceremony. Sandys 
 was present when the grand seignior himself paid his people 
 the usual compliment, by riding in great state through the 
 streets of Constantinople. He saluted the multitude as he 
 moved along, having the right hand constantly on his breast, 
 bowing first to the one side, and then to the other, when the 
 
Chap. iB--i7. 
 
 LUKE 
 
 607 
 
 Eeople with a low and respectful voice wished him all 
 appiness and prosperity. Dr. Shaw's account of the 
 Arabian compliment, or common salutation, Peace be unto 
 you, agrees with these statements ; but he observes further, 
 that inferiors, out of deference and respect, kiss the feet, 
 the knees, or the garments of their superiors. They fre- 
 quently kiss the hand also ; but this last seems not to be re- 
 garded as a token of equal submission with the others ; for 
 D'Arvieux observes, that the women who wait on the Ara- 
 bian princesses, kiss their hands when they do them the 
 favour not to suffer them to kiss their feet, or the border of 
 their robe. 
 
 All these forms of salutation appear to hav^ been in 
 general use in the days of our Lord, for he represents a 
 servant as falling down at the feet of his master, when he 
 had a favour to ask ; and an inferior servant, as paying the 
 same compliment to the first, who belonged, it would seem, 
 to a higher class : " The servant, therefore, fell down and 
 worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me and I 
 will pay thee all." " And his fellow-servant fell down at his 
 feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me and 
 I will pay thee all." When Jairus solicited the Saviour to 
 go and heal his daughter, he fell down at his feet : the apos- 
 tle Peter, on another occasion, seems to have fallen down 
 at his knees, in the same manner as the modern Arabs fall 
 down at the knees of a superior. The woman who was 
 afilicted with an issue of blood, touched the hem of his gar- 
 ment; and the Syrophenician woman fell down at his feet. 
 In Persia, the salutation among intimate friends is made by 
 inclining the neck over each other's necks, and "then incli- 
 ning the cheek to cheek ; which Mr. Morier thinks is most 
 likely the falling upon the neck and kissing, so frequently 
 mentioned in scripture. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. Now his elder son was in the field : and 
 as he came and drew nigh to the house, he 
 heard music and dancing. 
 
 To express the joy which the return of the prodigal af- 
 forded his father, music a.nd dancing was provided as a part 
 of the entertainment. This expression does not however 
 denote the dancing of the family and guests, but that of a 
 company of persons hired on this occasion for that very 
 purpose. Such a practice prevailed in some places to ex- 
 press peculiar honour to a friend, or joy upon any special 
 occasion. Major Rooke, in his travels from India through 
 Arabia Felix, relates an occurrence which will illustrate 
 this part of the parable. " Hadje Cassim, who is a Turk, 
 and one of the richest merchants in Cairo, had inter- 
 ceded on my behalf with Ibrahim Bey, at the instance of 
 his son, who had been on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and came 
 from Judda in the same ship with me. The father, in 
 celebration of his son's return, gave a most magnificent fete 
 on the evening of the day of my captivity, and as soon as I 
 was released, sent to invite me to partake of it, and I ac- 
 cordingly went. His company was very numerous, con- 
 sisting of three or four hundred Turks, who were all sitting 
 on sofas and benches, smoking their long pipes. The 
 room in which they were assembled was a spacious and 
 lofty hall, in the centre of which was a band of music, com- 
 poser) of five Turkish instruments, and some vocal per- 
 form<^fs : as there were no ladies in the assembly, you may 
 suppose it was not the most lively party in the world, but 
 bemg new to me, was for that reason entertaining." — Btm- 
 
 DER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Ver. 3. Then the steward said within himself, 
 What shall I do, for my lord taketh away from 
 me the stewardship? I cannot dig; to beg I 
 am ashamed. 
 
 How often are we reminded of this passage by beggars 
 when we t^ll them to work. They can scarcely believe 
 their ears ; and the religious mendicants, who swarm in 
 ever}'- part of the East, look upon you with the most sover- 
 eign contempt when you give them such advice. " I work ! 
 why, I never have done such a thing; I am not able." 
 " Surely, my lord, you are not in earnest ; you are joking 
 with me."— ^Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 19. There was a certain rich man, which 
 
 was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared 
 sumptuously every day. 
 
 This view will enable the reader to form a correct judg- 
 ment of the streets of the city of Jerusalem, which (it will 
 be seen) are partly open and partly covered. The apart- 
 ment, which stands over the archway in the distance, forms 
 part of what is called " the house of the rich man," who is 
 mentioned in the narrative of St. Luke, (xvi. 19—31.} It is 
 one of the best in Jerusalem. The fountain, which is a 
 prominent feature in our engraving, is executed in bold re- 
 lief; although of Saracenic workmanship, it is conjectured 
 by Mr. Catherwood to be derived from the style of archi- 
 tecture introduced by the crusaders. In common with the 
 other fountains in Jerusalem, this fountain is supplied from 
 the pools of Solomon, which lie a few miles to the south- 
 west of Bethlehem. The water is conducted through a 
 small aqueduct, partly under, and partly above ground: it 
 is of excellent quality, but the supply is not sufficiently co- 
 pious for the consumption of the inhabitants, who make up 
 the deficiency from the water supplied by the cisterns which 
 are filled by the periodical rains. — Horne. 
 
 [See engraving, and see also Comprehensive Commentary 
 on Ps. 122. 3, aiid the engraving there.'] 
 
 Ver. 22. And it came to pass, that the beggar 
 died, and was carried by the angels into Abra- 
 ham's bosom : the rich man also died, and was 
 buried. 
 
 How offensive to good taste, and to the figure of the 
 text, is the notion of some painters, who represent Lazarus 
 in heaven as reposing in the bosom of the patriarch. Such 
 attempts have a tendency to lessen that veneration and awe 
 which we owe to subjects of so sacred a nature. This 
 world is the legitimate field for the painter, but let him 
 not presume to desecrate with his pencil the scenes beyond. 
 A beloved son, though at a distance, is still said to be in 
 the BOSOM of his parents. " The king is indeed very fond 
 of that man, he keeps him in his bosom." " Yes, the servant 
 is a great favourite with his master, he has a place in his 
 bosom." " Why, Muttoo, do you never intend to allow 
 your son to go "out of your bosom T' The ideas implied 
 by the term bosom are intense affection, security, and com- 
 fort. But objects of endearment are sometimes spoken of 
 as being in the head. " He not fond of his wife ! he keeps 
 her in his head." " My husband, you are ever in my 
 head." " Yes, beloved, you are in my eye ; my eye is y^^u^ 
 resting-place." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Ver. 6. And the Lord said, If ye had faith as ? 
 grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto thir 
 sycamine-tree, Be thou plucked up by the root 
 and be thou planted in the sea ; and it should 
 obey you. 
 
 The sycamore buds late in the spring, about the latter 
 end of March, and is therefore called by the ancients, 
 arborwm sapientissima, the wisest of trees, because it thus 
 avoids the nipping frosts to whidh many others are exposed. 
 It strikes its large diverging roots deep into the soil; and 
 on this account our Lord alludes to it as the most difficult 
 to be rooted up and transferred to another situation : " If 
 ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto 
 this sycamine-tree, be thou plucked up by the root, and be 
 thou planted in the sea, and it should obey you." The ex- 
 treme difficulty with which this tree is transferred from 
 its native spot to another situation, gives to the words of 
 our Lord a peculiar force and beauty. The stronger and 
 more diverging the root of a tree, the more difficult it must 
 be to pluck it up, and insert it again so as to make it strike 
 root and grow ; but far more difficult still to plant it in the 
 sea, where the soil is so far below the surface, and where 
 the restless billows are continually tossing it from one- side 
 to another ; yet, says our Lord, a task no less difficult than 
 this to be accomplished, can the man of genuine faith per- 
 form with a word ; for with God nothing is impossible, 
 nothing difficult or laborious. — Paxton. 
 
608 
 
 LUKE 
 
 Chap. 18—23. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 5, Yet, because this widow troubleth me, I 
 will aveng-e her, lest by her continual coming 
 she weary me. 
 
 The word vTrama^eiv, to weary, properly signifies to beat on 
 the face, and particularly under the eye, so as to make the 
 parts black and blue. Here it has a metaphorical meaning, 
 and signifies to give great pain, such as arises from severe 
 beating. The meaning therefore is, that the uneasy feel- 
 ings which this widow raised in the judge's breast, by the 
 moving representation which she gave of her distress, af- 
 fected him to such a degree that he could not bear it, but 
 to get rid of them resolved to do her justice. The passage 
 understood in this sense has a peculiar advantage, as it 
 throws a beautiful light on our Lord's argument, and lays 
 a proper foundation for the conclusion which it contains. 
 — Macknight. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 5. And when Jesus came to the place, he 
 looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, 
 Zaccheus, make haste, and come down; for 
 to-day I must abide at thy house. 
 
 Zaccheus did not appear to have seen our Saviour before, 
 but he would not be surprised when it was said, " I must 
 abide at thy house." Hospitality may almost be called a 
 sacred rite in all parts of the East ; and, were it not so, 
 what would become of travellers and pilgrims 1 In gen- 
 eral there are no places for public entertainment, for the 
 rest-houses and choultries are seldom more than open 
 places to shelter passengers from the. sun and rain. View 
 the stranger passing through a village, he sees a respecta- 
 ble house, and having found out the master, he stands 
 before him, and puts out his right hand, and says, para- 
 theasi, i. e. a pilgrim or traveller : he is then requested to 
 be seated, and is asked, whence he came, and whither he is 
 going 1 His temporal wants are supplied, and when in- 
 clined he pursues his journey.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 40. And he answered and said unto them, I 
 tell you, that if these should hold their peace, 
 the stones would immediately cry out. 
 
 Has a man been greatly favoured by another, he says, 
 " Ah ! if I ever forget him the stones will cause me to 
 stumble." " I cease to recollect his goodness ! then will 
 the stones make me to stumble and die.'" The idea appears 
 to be, they will arise up and cause him to fall. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Ver. 18. Whosoever shall fall upon that stone 
 shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall 
 fall, it will grind him to powder. 
 
 Here is an allusion to the two different ways of stoning 
 among the Jews, the former by throwing a person down 
 upon a great stone, and the other by letting a stone fall upon 
 him. — Whitby. 
 
 CHAl>TER XXI. 
 Ver. 18. But there shall not a hair of your head 
 perish. 
 
 « Well, friend, have you heard that Chinnan has gone 
 
 to the judge to complain against you *?" " Let him go, not 
 a hair of this head will be spoiled by that." *' I advise you 
 to take care, for the Vedan has sworn to ruin you." " He ! 
 the jackal cannot pull out a single hair." "What care I 
 for thy anger 1 thou canst not pull out one hair." " He 
 injure my son ! let him touch a single hair." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 Ver. 34. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock 
 
 shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt 
 
 thrice deny that thou knowest mc. 
 See on Mark 14. 30. 
 
 Ver. 48. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest 
 thou the Son of Man with a kiss? 
 
 See on 2 Sam. 20. 9. 
 
 Ver. 64. And when they had blindfolded him, 
 they struck him on the face, and asked him, 
 saying. Prophesy : Who is it that smote thee ? 
 
 This usage of Christ refers to that sport so ordinary 
 among children, called nvivSa, in which it is the manner 
 first to blindfold, then to strike, then to ask who gave the 
 blow, and not to let the person go till he named the right 
 man who had struck him. It was used on this occasion 
 to reproach our blessed Lord, and expose him to ridicule. 
 — Hammond. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 Ver. 31. For if they do these things in a green 
 tree, what shall be done in the dry? 
 
 The venerable Mr. Wesley has caught the idea when 
 he says on this passage, " The Jews compare a good man 
 to a green tree, and a bad man to a dead one." Thus still 
 an abandoned character, a decided profligate, is called a 
 PATTA-MARAM, i. €. & dried or a dead tree. '* Why water 
 that tree T' " Your money, your influence is all wasted 
 there : cease, cease to attend to that dead tree." " The 
 tree is dead, there are no leaves, it will never more give 
 blossoms or fruit, it is only fit for the fire." A spend- 
 thrift or one who has been unfortunate says, " I amapatta- 
 rmram, I have been struck by the lightning." A good 
 man is compared to a talita-maram, i. e. a tree which has 
 " spreading shady branches." People may repose there 
 during the heat of the day: they have defence and com- 
 fort. Jesus was the " green tree" under whom the Jews 
 might have reposed. If, then, they did such things to the 
 " green tree," what would be done to themselves, the dry, 
 the leafless trees of the desert 1 The lightnings of heaven 
 did strike them ; the Roman eagles did pounce on them ; 
 thousands were cut to the ground, and thousands went as 
 slaves to the land of the conquerors. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 48. And all the people that came together 
 to that sight, beholding the things which were 
 done, smote their breasts, and- returned. 
 
 Grief is often far more violent in the East than in Eng- 
 land. The frantic mother, bereaved of her son, or the 
 wife bereft of her husband, beats her breast as if she in- 
 tended to burst a passage to her vitals. I have sometimes 
 been amazed at the blows which in their agony they thus 
 inflict upon themselves. *' Alas ! alas ! that amvia (i. e. 
 lady) will never cease to beat her breasts."— Roberts. 
 
Mnm 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 15. John bare witness of him, and cried, 
 saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that 
 Cometh after me, is preferred before me : for he 
 was before me. 
 
 Before we reached Mayar, we were met by Mirza Abdul 
 Cossim, a confidential officer of the governor of Ispahan, 
 by a hakeem or doctor, one of the learned of the city, and 
 by several other men of respectability. These deputations 
 were called Peeshwaz, openers of the way, and are one of 
 the principal modes among the Persians of doing honour to 
 their guests. The more distinguished the persons sent, and 
 the greater the distance to which they go, so much more 
 considerable is the honour. — Mobier. 
 
 Ver. 32. And John bare record, saying, I saw 
 the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, 
 and it abode upon him. 
 
 See on Matt. 3. 16. 
 
 Ver. 42. And he brought him to Jesus. And 
 when Jesus beheld him, he said. Thou art Si- 
 mon the Son of Jona : thou shalt be called Ce- 
 I phas, which is, by interpretation, A stone. 
 
 Names were frequently given to preserve the remem- 
 brance of particular circumstances. And, as will ap- 
 pear in the following extract, frequently as contrasts to the 
 character and condition of those on whom they were im- 
 posed : " Among the people of the house, who attended us 
 here, was a hhabshi, or Abyssinian slave, an old man, of 
 hideous deformity, entitled Almas, or the diamond. And 
 I observed that at Shiraz, Fassa, and other towns, the Afri- 
 can slaves were distinguished by flowery names or epithets, 
 in proportion to their natural ugliness or offensive smell. 
 Thus, I have known Yasmin, the jessamine; Sumbul, the 
 hyacinth ; Jauher, the jewel ; and Makbul, the pleasing, or 
 agreeable." (Sir W. Ouseley.)— Burder. 
 
 Ver. 48. Nathanael saith unto him, Whence 
 knowest thou me ? Jesus answered and said 
 unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when 
 thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. 
 
 The oriental garden displays little method, beauty, or de- 
 sign ; the whole being commonly no more than a confused 
 medley of fruit-trees, with beds of esculent plants, and even 
 plots of wheat and barley sometimes interspersed. The 
 garden belonging to the governor of Eleus, a Turkish town, 
 on the western border of the Hellespont, which Dr. Chan- 
 dler visited, consisted only of a very small spot of ground, 
 walled in, and containing only tw^o vines, a fig and a pome- 
 granate-tree, and a well of excellent water. And it would 
 seem, the garden of an ancient Israelite could not boast of 
 greater variety ; for the grape, the fig, and the pomegran- 
 ate, are almost the only fruits which it produced. This 
 fact may perhaps give us some insight into the reason of 
 the sudden and irresistible conviction which flashed on the 
 mind of Nathaniel, when the Saviour said to him, " When 
 thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee." The good man 
 seems to have been engaged in devotional exercises, in a 
 small retired garden, walled in, and concealed from the 
 scrutinizing eyes of men. The place was so small, that he 
 was perfectly certain that no man but himself was there; 
 and so completely defended, that none could break through, 
 or look over the fence ; and by consequence, that no eye 
 ▼as upon him, but the all-seeing eye of God ; and, there- 
 t T7 
 
 fore, since Christ saw him there, Nathaniel knew he could 
 be no other than the Son of God, and the promised Messiah. 
 — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 50. Jesus answered and said unto him, Be- 
 cause I said unto thee, I saw thee under the 
 fig-tree, believest thou ? thou shalt see greater 
 things than these. 
 
 On account of the thick-spreading branches and broad 
 leaves of the fig-tree, which, in warm eastern countries, 
 grows much larger and stronger than with us, it was very 
 suitable for the purpose of overshadowing those who sat 
 under it, Hasselquist, in his Journey from Nazareth to 
 Tiberias, says, " We refreshed ourselves in the shade of a 
 fig-tree, under which was a well, where a shepherd and his 
 herd had their rendezvous, but without either tent or hut." 
 — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 6. And there were set there six water-pots 
 of stone, after the manner of the purifying of 
 the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. 
 
 Gana still exists, and was visited a few years ago by Dr. 
 Clarke and his fellow-travellers, who breakfasted there as 
 they passed through it in their way from Nazareth to Ti- 
 berias. He says, " it is worthy of note, that walking among 
 the ruins of a church, we saw large massy stone pots, an- 
 swering the description given of the ancient vessels of the 
 country, not preserved nor exhibited as relics, but \y'mg 
 about, disregarded by the present inhabitants as antiquities 
 with whose original use they were unacquainted. From 
 their appearance, and the number of them, it was quite evi- 
 dent that a practice of keeping water in large stone pots, 
 each holding from eighteen to twenty-seven gallons, was 
 once common in the country." — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 10. And saith unto him, Every man at the 
 beginning doth set forth good wine ; and when 
 men have well drunk, then that which is worse: 
 but thou hast kept the good wine until now. 
 
 The Abbe Mariti, speaking of the age of the wines of 
 Cyprus, says, " the oldest wines used in commerce do not 
 exceed eight or ten years. It is not true, as has been re- 
 ported, that there is some of it a hundred years old ; but it 
 is certain that at the birth of a son or a daughter, the father 
 causes a jar filled with wine to be buried in the earth, hav- 
 ing first taken the precaution to seal it hermetically ; in this 
 manner it may be kept till these children marry. It is then 
 placed on the table before the bride and bridegroom, and is 
 distributed among their relations, and the other guests in- 
 vited to the wedding." If such a custom prevailed former- 
 ly, it throws great significancy into the assertion of good 
 wine being first brought out upon such an occasion ; and if 
 this supposition is admitted, tends to increase the greatness 
 of the miracle, that notwithstanding what had been drank 
 at first was peculiarly excellent, yet that which Christ by 
 his divine power produced as an after supply, was found to 
 be of a superior quality. — Burder, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 8. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 
 thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
 whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is 
 every one that is born of the Spirit. 
 
 When a man is unhappy because he does not understand 
 
610 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Chap. 4. 
 
 his circumstances, when things come upon him which can- 
 not be accounted for by himself or by others, it is asked, 
 " Do you know whence cometh the wind 1" " You say 
 you know not how this matter will end : do you know in 
 what quarter the present wind will blow the next moment V 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 29. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom : 
 but the friend of the bridegroom, which stand- 
 eth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because 
 of the bridegroom's voice. This my joy there- 
 fore is fulfilled. 
 
 Among the Jews, in their rites of espousals, there is fre- 
 quent mention of a place where, under a covering, it was 
 usual for the bridegroom to discourse familiarly but pri- 
 vately with his spouse, whereby their affections might be 
 more knit to one another, in order to marriage, which how- 
 ever were not supposed to be so till the bridegroom came 
 cheerfully out of the chuppah, or covered place. To this 
 David refers, (Psalm xix. 5,) when he speaks of the sun, 
 " which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and 
 rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race." It is affirmed 
 that this custom is still observed among the Jews in Ger- 
 mar^y ; either before the synagogues in a square place cov- 
 ered over, or where there is no synagogue, they throw a 
 garment over the bridegroom and the bride for that pur- 
 pose. While this intercourse is carrying on, the friend of 
 the bridegroom stands at the door to hearken ; and when 
 he hears the bridegroom speak joyfully, (which is an inti- 
 mation that all is well,) he rejoices himself, and communi- 
 cates the intelligence to the people assembled, for their sat- 
 isfaction, — Hammond. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 5. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, 
 which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of 
 ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 
 6. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, there- 
 fore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus 
 on the well : arid it was about the sixth hour. 
 
 " At one third of an hour from Naplosa, we came to 
 Jacob's well, famous not only on account of its author, 
 but much more for that memorable conference which our 
 blessed Saviour here had with the woman of Samaria. If 
 it should be questioned whether this be the very well that 
 it is pretended for or not, seeing it maybe suspected to stand 
 too remote from Sychar for women to come so far to draw 
 water, it is answered, that probably the city extended far- 
 ther this way in former times than it does now, as may be 
 conjectured from some pieces of a very thick wall still to 
 be seen not far from hence. Over the well there stood for- 
 merly a large church, erected by that great and devout 
 patrone3« of the Holy Land, the Emperess Helena ; but of 
 this the voracity of time, assisted by the hands of the Turks, 
 has left nothing but a few foundations remaining : the well 
 is covered at present with an old stone vault, into which 
 you are letdown through a very straight hole ; and then re- 
 moving a broad flat stone, you discover the mouth of the 
 well itself. It is dug in a firm rock, and contains about 
 three yards in diameter, and thirty-five in depth, five of 
 which we found full of water." (Maundrell.) 
 
 " The principal object of veneration is Jacob's well, over 
 which a church was formerly erected. This is situated at 
 a small distance from the town, in the road to Jerusalem, 
 and has been visited by pilgrims of all ages ; but particu- 
 larly since the Christian era, as the place where our Sa- 
 viour revealed himself to the woman of Samaria. This 
 spot is so distinctly marked by the evangelist, and so little 
 liable to uncertainty, from the circumstance of the well it- 
 ^'•If, and the features of the country, that if no tradition 
 existed for its identity, the site of it could hardly be mis- 
 taken. Perhaps no Christian scholar ever attentively read 
 the fourth chapter of St. John without being struck with 
 the numerous internal evidences of truih which crowd upon 
 the mind in its perusal: within so small a compass, it is 
 impossible to find in other writings so many sources of re- 
 flection and of interest. Independcmly of its importance as 
 
 a theological document, it concentrates so much informa* 
 tion, that a volume might be filled with the illustration it 
 reflects on the history of the Jews, and on the geography 
 of their country. All that can be gathered on these subjects 
 from Josephus seems but as a comment to illustrate this 
 chapter. The journey of our Lord from Judea into Gali- 
 lee ; the cause of it ; his passage through the territory of 
 Samaria ; his approach to the metropolis of this country ; 
 its name; his arrival at the Amorite field, which termin- 
 ates the narrow valley of Sichem ; the ancient custom of 
 halting at a well ; the female employment of drawing wa- 
 ter ; the disciples sent into the city for food, by which its 
 situation out of the town is obviously implied ; the question 
 of the woman referring to existing prejudices, which sep- 
 arated ihe Jews from the Samaritans ; the depth of the 
 well; the oriental allusion contained in the expression, 
 living water ; the history of the well, and the customs there- 
 by illustrated; the worship upon Mount Gerizim ; all these 
 occur within the space of twenty verses ; and if to these be 
 added what has already been referred to in the remainder 
 of the same chapter, we shall, perhaps, consider it as a re- 
 cord, which, in the words of him who sent it, we may lift 
 up our eyes, mid look upon, for it is white alread/y to harvest" 
 (Clarke.) 
 
 " In inquiring for the Bir-el-Yakoab, or Jacob's well, we 
 were told by everybody that this was in the town ; which 
 not corresponding with the described place of the well we 
 were desirous of "seeing, led to further explanation; and, 
 at length, by telling the story attached to it, we found it was 
 known here only by the name of Ber Samarea, or the well 
 of Samaria. Procuring a Christian boy to accompany us, 
 we went out by the eastern gate ; and passing through a 
 continuation of the same valley in which Nablous stands, 
 thickly covered with olive-trees, we reached the end of it 
 in about a quarter of an hour on foot, the pass opening into 
 a round and more extensive vale, and the mountains east 
 of the Jordan being in sight. On the right were some 
 Mohammedan buildings ; on the sides, at the foot of Mount 
 Gerizim, either mosques or tombs, now called mahmoodeea, 
 and said to stand over Joseph's sepulchre. On the left, at 
 the foot of Mount Ebal, were several well-hewn grottoes in 
 the rocks ; some with arched, and others with square doors; 
 most probably ancient sepulchres without the old city of 
 Sichem, or Sychar. These grottoes were called here 
 khallat rowgh-ban ; but we had no time to examine them. 
 From hence, in another half of an hour, we reach the well 
 of Samaria ; it stands at the commencement' of the round 
 vale, which is thought to have been the parcel of ground 
 bought by Jacob for a hundred pieces of money, which, like 
 the narrow valley west of Nablous, is rich and fertile. 
 Over this well stood anciently a large building, erected by 
 St. Helena ; of which there are now no other remains than 
 some shafts of granite pillars, all the rest lying in one un- 
 distinguished heap of ruins. The mouth of the well itself 
 had an arched or vaulted building over it ; and the only 
 passage down to it at this moment is by a small hole in the 
 roof, scarcely large enough for a moderate sized person to 
 work himself down through. We lighted a taper here ; 
 and taking off my large Turkish clothes, I did not then get 
 down without bruising myself against the sides ; nor was I 
 at all rewarded for such an inconvenience by the sight be- 
 low. Landing on a heap of dirt and rubbish, we saw a 
 large, flat, oblong stone, which lay almost on its edge, 
 across the mouth of the well, and left barely space enough 
 to see that there was an opening below. We could not as- 
 certain its diameter ; but, by the time of a stone's descent, 
 it was evident that it was of considerable depth, as well 
 as that it was perfectly dry at this season, the fall of the 
 stones giving forth a dead and hard sound. Not far from 
 the well of Samaria is the bir-yusef, over which is a modern 
 building ; and it is said to be,"even at this day, frequented 
 for water from Nablous. The well of Samaria might also 
 have been so, therefore, from Sychar, although that city is 
 said not to have extended further east than the present town ; 
 and, indeed, it is no uncommon thing in Syria, as I myself 
 have often witnessed, for water to be brought from a much 
 greater distance. It is highly probable, therefore, that this 
 is the identical well at which the interesting conference 
 between Jesus trnd the woman of Samaria really happened." 
 (Buckingham, V— Border. 
 
 Ver. 6. Now Jacob's well wa? there. Jesus, there- 
 
Chap. 5. 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 6U 
 
 fore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus 
 on the well : and it was about the sixth hour. 
 
 The learned have been greatly divided in their opinions 
 ::oncerning the true meaning of the particle ovtms in John 
 iv. 6, which is rendered thus, in our version: Jesus, there- 
 fore, being wearied with his journey , sat thus on the well : and 
 it wa; about the sixth hour ; which everybody knows with 
 the Jews meant noon. But an attention to the usages of the 
 East, and of antiquity, might, I think, ascertain its meaning 
 with a. good deal of exactness. Our version of the word 
 thus, gives no determinate idea. We know, on the con- 
 trary, what is meant by the translation of a celebrated 
 writer, who renders the word by the English term immedi- 
 ately, but that translation, I think by no means the happiest 
 he has given us. It conveys the idea of extreme weariness : 
 but nothing in the after part of the narration leads to such 
 an interpretation ; nor can I conceive for what imagin- 
 able purpose the circumstance of his immediately throwing 
 himself down near the well, before the woman came up, 
 and which, consequently, it is to be supposed she knew 
 nothing of, is mentioned by the evangelist. Not to say 
 that the passage cited in proof of this interpretation. Acts 
 XX. 11, which, instead of so he departed, he thought signi- 
 fied the immediateness of his departure, by no means gives 
 satisfaction. It is not so expressed in his own translation 
 of that passage, nor does it appear so to signify. The sim- 
 ple meaning, I apprehend, of the particle is, that Jesus, 
 being wearied with his journey, sat down by the well, like 
 a person so wearied, as to design to lake some repose and 
 refreshment there : to which St. John adds, it was about 
 the sixth hour. If this be just, the translation should have 
 been something like this : " Jesus therefore being wearied 
 with his journey, sat down accordingly, or like such a one, 
 by the well. It was about the sixth hour." 
 
 The panicle certainlv expresses coiiformity to an account 
 to be given after ; so John xxi. 1, Jesus shotccd himself again 
 to his disciples at the sea of Tiberias ; and on this wise he 
 himself, referring to the account about to be given. .And 
 sometimes it signifies conformity to an account that had 
 been before given : so John xi. 47, 48, What do we 7 for 
 this man doth many miracles. If we let him thus aloive, after 
 this manner doing many miracles, all men will believe on 
 him. So ch. viii. 59, Then took they up stones to cast at him: 
 but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going 
 through the midst of them, and so passed by : passed by, by 
 hiding himself after this manner. After this latter manner 
 it is to be understood, I think, here : Jesus being wearied 
 with his journey, sat down like a weary person by the side 
 of the well, and in that attitude the woman found him, pre- 
 paring to take some repose and repast. The disciples, it is 
 said, ver. 8, were gone away into the city to buy meat ; but 
 it does not at all follow froni thence that they all went, nor 
 is it so probable that they did, leaving him alone; but that, 
 on the contrary, some of them stayed with him, making 
 such preparations as indicated a design in them to eat bread 
 there. — Harmkr. 
 
 Ver. 9. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto 
 him, How IS it that thou, being- a Jew, askest 
 drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria ?• 
 (for the Jews have no dealings with the Samar- 
 itans.) 
 
 In Atleet, on the road from Nablous to Jerusalem, pass- 
 ing out of a gateway similar to the other, at the opposite 
 extremity of the wall, w^e crossed a marsh, and remounting, 
 were proceeding on our way, when some women were dis- 
 covered drawing water at a well near the track, and the 
 day being hot, I desired my servant to ask if they would 
 give me some to drink ; but they refused the indulgence, 
 one of them exclaiming, " Shall I give water to a Chris- 
 tian, and make my pitcher filthy, so that I can use it no 
 more for ever 1" This happened within the precincts of 
 Samaria, and was a proof how little change the spirit 
 of the people has undergone within the last eighteen cen- 
 turies. Tnese women were young and handsome, with 
 fu^l, dignified, and stately figures : a dark-coloured fillet 
 bound the head, and passing under the chin, left the face 
 entirely covered. — Munroe's Summer Ramble in Syria. 
 
 Ver. 11. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou 
 hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep : 
 from whence then hast thou that living water ? 
 
 See on Gen. 24. 20. 
 
 In those dry countries they find themselves obliged to 
 carry with them great leathern bottles of water, which they 
 refill from time to time, as they have opportunity ; but what 
 is very extraordinary, in order to be able to do this, they, 
 in marry places, are obliged tb carry lines and buckets with 
 them. So Thevenot, in giving an account of what he 
 provided for his journey from Egypt to Jerusalem, tells us, 
 he did not forget " leathern buckets to draw water with." 
 Rauwolf goes further, for he gives us to understand, that 
 the wells of inhabited countries there, as well as in deserts, 
 have oftentimes no implements for drawing of water, but 
 what those bring with them that come thither : for speak- 
 ing of the well or cistern at Bethlehem, he says, it is a 
 good rich cistern, deep and wide ; for which reason, '• the 
 people that go to dip water are provided with small leathern 
 bucKets and a line, as is usual in these countries ; and so 
 the merchants that go in caravans through great deserts 
 into far countries, provide themselves also with these, be- 
 cause in these countries you find more cisterns or wells 
 than springs that lie high." In how easy a light does this 
 place the Samaritan woman's talking of the depth of Jacob's 
 well, and her remarking that she did not observe that our 
 Lord had any thing to draw with, though he spoke of pre- 
 senting her with water. 
 
 Wells and cisterns differ from each other, in that the 
 first are supplied with water by springs, the other by rain : 
 both are to be found in considerable numbers in Judea, and 
 are, according to Rauwolf, more numerous in these conn- 
 tries than springs that lie high, than fountains and brooks 
 that are of running Water. Some of these have been made 
 for the use of the people that dwell in their neighbourhood, 
 some for travellers, and especially those that travel for 
 devotion. Thevenot found two, made a little before his 
 time for the use of travellers, by Turks of distinciion, in 
 the desert between Cairo and Gaza. And from a history 
 D'Herbelot has given us, it appears that the Mohammedacr^ 
 have dug wells in the deserts, for the accommodation ol 
 those that go in pilgrimage to Mecca, their sacred city, 
 where the distance between such places as Nature had 
 made pleasant for them to stop, and take up water at, were 
 too great : for he tell us, that Gianabi, a famous Moham- 
 medan rebel, filled up with sand all the wells that had been 
 dug in the road to IVlecca for the benefit of the pilgrims. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 2. Now there is at Jerusalem, by the sheep- 
 man rZ;e^, a pool, which is called in the Hebrew 
 tongue, Bethesda, having five porches 
 
 This was the name of a pool, or rather bath of water, 
 having five porticoes : and so called from the miraculous 
 cures performed there. They still show you " the pool oi 
 Bethesda, contiguous on one side to St. Stephen's gate, on 
 the other to the area of the temple." Maundrell says it is 
 a hundred and twenty paces long, forty broad, and at least 
 eight deep : at its west end may be discovered some old 
 arches, which are now dammed up. " A little above, we 
 entered the city at the gate of St. Stephen, where, on each 
 side, a lion retrograde doth stand, called, in time past, 
 the port of the valley and of the flock, for that the cattle 
 came in at this gate, which were to be sacrificed in the 
 temple, and were sold in the market adjoining. On the 
 left hand is a stone bridge, which passeth at the east end of 
 the north wall into the court of the temple of Solomon; 
 the head to the pool of Bethesda, underneath which it (the 
 water) had a conveyance, called also probaticum, for thtat 
 the sacrifices were therein washed ere delivered to the 
 priests. Now it is a great square profundity, green and 
 uneven at the bottom, into which a barren spring doth drill 
 between the stones of the northward wall, and stealeth away 
 almost undiscovered. The place is for a good depth hewn 
 out of the rock; confined above on the north side with a 
 steep wall, on the west with high buildings, perhaps a part 
 of the castle of Antonia, where are two doors to descend 
 by, now all that o-e, half choked with rubbish ; and on iht 
 
612 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Chap. 6. 
 
 south with the wall of the court of the temple." (Sandys.) 
 — Border. 
 
 Ver. 1 3. And he that was healed wist not who it 
 was : for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a 
 multitude being in that place. 
 
 Doddridge translates the word slipped away, and observes 
 from Casaubon, that it is an iglegant metaphor borrowed 
 from swimming; it well expresses the easy unobserved 
 manner in which Jesus as it were glided, through them, 
 while, like a stream of water, they opened before him, and 
 immediately closed again leaving no trace of the way he 
 had taken. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 35. He was a burning and a shining light ; 
 and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in 
 his light. 
 
 This character of John the Baptist is perfectly conform- 
 able to the mode of expression adopted by the Jews. It was 
 usual with them to call any person who was celebrated for 
 knowledge, a candle. Thus they say that Shuah, the father- 
 in-law of Judah, (Gen. xxxviii. 2,) was the candle or light 
 of the place where he lived, because he was one of the mW 
 famous men in the citf , enlightening their eyes ; hence they 
 call a rabbin, the candle of the law, and the lamp of light. 
 
 — LlGHTFOOT. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 1 . After these things Jesus Avent over the sea 
 of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. 
 
 The present town of Tabareeah,as it is now called, is in 
 form of an irregular crescent, and is enclosed towards the 
 land by a M'all flanked with circular towers : it lies nearly 
 north and south along the western edge of the lake, and has 
 its eastern front opposed to the water, on the brink of which 
 it stands, as some of the houses there are almost washed by 
 the sea. The whole does not appear a mile in circuit, and 
 cannot o.^n a".n more than six hundred separate dwellings, 
 from the manner in which they are placed. There are 
 two gates visible from without; one near the southern, and 
 the other in the western wall, the latter of which is in one 
 of the round towers, and is the only one now open. There 
 are appearances also of the tower having been surrounded 
 by a ditch, but this is now filled up by cultivable soil. The 
 interior presents but few objects of interest besides the or- 
 dinary habitations, which are, in general, small and mean. 
 There is a mosque, with a dome and minaret, now fre- 
 quented ; and another with an octangular tower, now in 
 ruins. The former of these is not far from the gate of en- 
 trance; the latter is nearer to the beach. There are also 
 two synagogues of the Jews near the centre of the town, 
 both of them inferior to that of Jerusalem, though similar 
 in design ; and one Christian place of worship, called the 
 house of Peter, near the northern quarter, close to the 
 water's edge. The last, which has been thought by some 
 to be the oldest place of Christian worship now extant in 
 Palestine, is a vaulted room about thirty feet by fifteen, and 
 perhaps fifteen in height; it stands nearly east and west, 
 having its door of entrance at the western front, and its altar 
 immediately opposite in a shallow recess. Over the door 
 is one small window, and on each side four others, all arched 
 and open. The masonry of the edifice is of an ordinary 
 kind ; the pavement within is similar to that used for streets 
 in this country ; and the whole is devoid of sculpture or 
 other ornament, as far as I could perceive. In a court 
 without the house of Peter, I observed, however, a block of 
 stone, on which were the figures of two goats, and two lions 
 or tigers, coarsely executed ; but whether this ever belong- 
 ed to the building itself, no one could inform me. During 
 my visit to this church, morning mass was performed by 
 the abuna, at whose house we had lodged ; the congrega- 
 tion consisted of only eleven persons, young and old ; and 
 the furniture and decorations of the altar and the priest 
 were exceedingly scanty and poor. This edifice is thought 
 by the people here to have been the very house which Peter 
 inhabited at the time of his being called from his boat to 
 follow Christ. It was evidently constructed, however, for 
 a place of worship, and probably at a period much posterior 
 
 to the time of the apostle whose name it bears, though it 
 might have been erected on the spot which tradition has 
 marked as the site of his more humble habitation : from 
 hence, they say, too, it was, that the boat pushed off" into the 
 lake when the miraculous draught of fishes was taken. Be- 
 sides the public buildings already specified are the house of 
 the aga, on the rising ground near the northern quarter of the 
 town ; a small but good bazar, and two or three cotfee sheds. 
 The ordinary dwellings of the inhabitants are such as are 
 commonly seen in eastern villages ; but are marked by a 
 peculiarity, which I witnessed here for the first time. On 
 the terrace of almost every house stands a small square en- 
 closure of reeds, loosely covered with leaves : these I learnt 
 were resorted to by the heads of families to sleep in during 
 the summer months, when the heat of the nights is intoler- 
 able, from the low situation of the town, and the unfre- 
 quency of cooling breezes. The whole population of Ta- 
 bareeah does not exceed two thousand souls, according to 
 the opinion of the best-informed residents. Provisions are 
 not abundant, and therefore generally dear ; and fish, when 
 occasionally taken by a line from the shore, are sold to the 
 aga, or to some of the rich Jews, at an exorbitant price. — 
 Bdckingham. 
 
 Ver. 1. After these things Jesus went over the sea 
 of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. 2. And 
 a great multitude followed him, because they 
 saw his miracles which he did on them that were 
 diseased. 3. And Jesus went up into a mount- 
 ain, and there he sat with his disciples. 
 
 Tiberias, one of the principal cities of Galilee, was 
 erected by the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who gave it this 
 appellation in honour of the Emperor Tiberius. It was this 
 Herod who beheaded John the Baptist, (Matt. xiv. 3 — 11,^ 
 and who sought the life of Christ himself, (Luke xiii. 31.) 
 He probably resided in Tiberias, which may be the reason 
 why the Saviour never visited this place. It was situated 
 near the Sea of Galilee, on a plain of singular fertility, 
 which was greatly increased by assiduous cultivation. Jose- 
 phus describes this region as a perfect paradise, blessed with 
 a delicious temperature, and producing the fruits of every 
 climate under heaven, not at stated periods merely, but in 
 endless succession throughout the year. The neglect of 
 agriculture in modern times has, of course, made it less 
 productive; but the mildness of the climate, and the rich- 
 ness of the soil, are still extolled by travellers. When the 
 Romans made war upon the Jews, Tiberias surrendered 
 without waiting for a siege: on this account the Jews re- 
 mained unmolested ; and after the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 this city became eminent for its academy, over which a suc- 
 cession of Jewish doctors presided until the fourth century. 
 In the early ages of Christianity, Tiberias was an episcopal 
 see; in the seventh century it was taken by the Saracens 
 under the Calif Omar; and though it passed into the 
 hands of the Christians during the crusades, the Moham- 
 medans regained the possession of it towards the close of 
 the fourteenth century. Widely scattered ruins of walls 
 and other buildings, as well as fragments of columns, indi- 
 cate the ancient extent of Tiberias. The stone of these 
 ruins is described by the Rev. William Jowett as being 
 " very black, so that there is nothing about them of the 
 splendour of antiquity, — nothing but an air of mourning 
 and desolation. . In this circumstance they differ so greatly 
 from the magnificent antiquities of Egypt and Greece, as 
 to leave the most sombre impression on the fancy : they are 
 perfectly funereal." 
 
 The modern town of Tiberias, which is delineated in 
 our engraving, is by the natives called Tabaria, or Taba- 
 reeah ; it occupies part of the site of the ancient city, and 
 is situated at a short distance to the east from the Sea of 
 Galilee. It is surrounded with walls and towers, which at 
 first view are very imposing ; on a nearer approach, how- 
 ever, their insignificance is apparent. A few cannon 
 would put them down in an instant, though to an assault 
 from the natives they would present, probably, a very long 
 and effectual resistance. One fourth of the space within 
 the walls is stated by Dr. Richardson to be unoccupied by 
 house or building; and many parts of the town are in a 
 ruined and filthy condition. The population has been com- 
 puted at one thousand five hundred, or two thousand persons j 
 
Chap. 7—10. 
 
 JOHN 
 
 613 
 
 eighty houses are occupied by Chiistians, and one hundred 
 and fifty by Turks, but the largest portion (amounting to 
 two hundred^ is tenanted by Jews of all nations, who come 
 here to spend the rest of their days. On the north side of 
 the town, not far from the lake, there is a Greek church, the 
 architecture of which exhibits much of the character of those 
 sacred edifices which were erected by the Emperess Helena : 
 it is said to occupy the identical spot on which stood the 
 house of the apostle Peter, who, previously to his becoming a 
 disciple of Jesus Christ, had been a fisherman on the|ake. 
 
 To the south of Tiberias lie the celebrated hot baths, the 
 water of which contains a strong solution of muriate of soda, 
 (common salt,) with a considerable intermixture of iron 
 and sulphur ; it emits a powerful sulphureous smell. A 
 thermometer placed in difierent spots where the water 
 gushes out, rose to the various heights of 131, 132, 138, 
 and 139 degrees of Fahrenheit; in the bath, where it cools 
 after standing some time, its temperature was 110. An hum- 
 ble building is erected over the bath, containing mean 
 apartments, on one side for men, on the other for women : 
 it is much frequented as a cure for almost every complaint, 
 particularly by the Jews, who have a great veneration for 
 a Roman sepulchre excavated in a cliff near the spot, which 
 they imagine to be the tomb of Jacob. About a mile from 
 the town, and exactly in front of the lake, is a chain of 
 rocks, in which are distinctly seen cavities or grottoes that 
 have resisted the ravages of time. These are uniformly 
 represented to travellers as the places referred to in the 
 gospel history, which were the resort of miserable and fierce 
 demoniacs, upon one of whom Jesus Christ wrought a 
 miraculous and instantaneous cure : (Matt. viii. 28. Mark 
 V. 2, 3. Luke viii. 37.) 
 
 The Sea of Galilee, which is seen in the background of 
 our engraving, derives its name from its situation on the 
 eastern borders of the province of Galilee ; it was anciently 
 called the Sea of Chinneretla, or Chinneroth, (Numb, xxxiv. 
 11. Josh. xii. 3,) from its vicinity to the town of that name. 
 In 1 Mac. xi. 67, it is called the Water of Gennesar, and 
 in Luke v. 1, the Lake of Gennesaret, from the neighbour- 
 ing land of that name. Its most common appellation is the 
 Sea of Tiberias, from the contiguous town of Tiberias, 
 which has been described in the preceding paragraphs. 
 
 This capacious lake is from twelve to fifteen miles in 
 length, and from six to nine miles in breadth ; along the 
 shore its depth varies, and in some parts it may be sixty 
 feet. The water is perfectly fresh, and it is used hy the in- 
 habitants of Tiberias to drink, and for every culinary pur- 
 pose. The waters of the northern part of this lake abound 
 with delicious fish. It is remarkable that there is not a 
 single boat of any description on the Sea of Tiberias at 
 present, although it is evident from the gospel history that 
 it was much. navigated in the time of Jesus Christ. The 
 fish are caught partly by the fishermen going into the water 
 up to their \ aist, and throwing in a hand-net, and partly 
 with casting-nets from the beach ; the consequence is, that 
 a very small quantity only is taken in comparison of what 
 might be obtained if boats were employed. This accounts 
 for the circumstance of fish being so dear at Tiberias, as to 
 be sold at the same price per pound as meat. Viewed from a 
 height, the water looks, amid the surrounding mountains, 
 like an immense reservoir ; and from the northern part be- 
 ing covered with volcanic remains, it has been conjectured 
 that this lake was at one period the crater of a volcano. It 
 has been compared by travellers to Loch Lomond, in Scot- 
 land ; and, like the Lake of Windermere, in Westmoreland, 
 it is often greatly agitated by winds. A strong current marks 
 the passage of the Jordan through this lake ; and when this 
 is opposed by contrary winds, which blow here with the 
 force of a hurricane from the southeast, sweeping into the 
 lake from the mountains, a boisterous sea is instantly raised, 
 which the small vessels of the country (such as were an- 
 ciently in use) were ill qualified to resist. Such a tempest is 
 described in Matt. viii. 24 — 26, which was miraculously 
 calmed by Jesus Christ with a word. The broad and ex- 
 tended surface of this lake, " covering the bottom of a pro- 
 found valley, surrounded by lofty and precipitous eminences, 
 when added to the impression under which every Christian 
 pilgrim approaches, gives to it a character of uiiparalleled 
 dignity,"— HoRNE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 3. His brethren, therefore, said unto him. 
 
 Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy dis- 
 ciples also may see the works that thou doest. 
 
 In eastern language it is common to apply the word 
 brother or sister to those relations who have no right to it 
 in England. Thus, cousins are called " brothers ;" i. e. the 
 sons of brothers are called brothers ; but a daughter, though 
 she would be called sister by her cousins, yei her children 
 would not be addressed in the same way, but " machdit,'' 
 i. e. cousin, would be their proper title. The name sister, 
 which Abraham gave to his wife, is still given to the same 
 degree of relationship. Gen. xx. 12. " She is the daughter 
 of my father, but not the daughter of my mother."— Rob- 
 erts. 
 
 Ver. 38. He that believeth on me, as the scripture 
 hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of 
 living water. 
 
 It is said of divine sages, of great gooroos, " Ah ! in their 
 heads are kept the rivers of life, or life-giving rivers." The 
 figure in reference to them is, I doubt not, taken from Siva, 
 as the Ganges is said to flow from his head.— Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 2. And his disciples asked him, saying. Mas- 
 ter, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that 
 he was born blind ? 
 
 The Hindoos and Ceylonese very commonly attribute 
 their misfortunes to the transgressions of a former state of 
 existence. I remember being rather struck with the seri- 
 ousness of a cripple, who attributed his condition to the un- 
 known fault of his former life. His conjecture was, that 
 he had broken the leg of a fowl. Offerings are made with 
 a view to an honourable or happy birth at the next trans- 
 migration. — Callaway. 
 
 Ver. 7. And said unto him. Go, wash in the pool 
 of Siloam, (which is, by interpretation, Sent.) 
 He went his way, therefore, and washed, and 
 came seeing. 
 
 The following description of the fountain of Siloam is 
 from the journal of Messrs. Fisk and King, under date of 
 April 28, 1823. (Missionary Herald, 1824, p. 66.) " Near 
 the southeast corner of the city, at the foot of Zion and 
 Moriah, is the pool of Siloah, (Neh. 3. 15,) whose waters 
 flow with a gentle murmur from under the holy mountain of 
 Zion, or rather from under Ophel, having Zion on the 
 west, and Moriah on the north. The very fountain issues 
 from a rock, tAventy or thirty feet below the surface erf the 
 ground, to which we descended by two flights of steps. 
 Here it flows out without a single murmur, and appears 
 clear as crystal. From this place it winds its way several 
 rods under the mountain, then makes its appearance with 
 gentle gurgling, and, forming a beautiful rill, takes its way 
 down into the valley, towards the southeast. We drank of 
 the water both at the fountain and from the stream, and 
 found it soft, of a sweetish taste, and pleasant. The foun- 
 tain is called in scripture the ' pool of Siloam.' It was to 
 this that the blind man went and washed, and came seeing." 
 — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 1. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that en- 
 tereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but 
 clinibeth up some other way, the same is a thief 
 and a robber. 
 
 In summer, the flocks were enclosed in folds, to which 
 allusion is frequently made in the sacred volume. The 
 fold of Polyphemus, the far-famed Sicilian shepherd, was 
 a spacious "cave, where his cattle, his sheep, and goats re- 
 posed. In Persia the shepherds frequently drive their flocks 
 into caverns at night, and enclose them by heaping up walls 
 of loose stones. 'But the more common sheepfold was an 
 enclosure in the manner of a building, and constructed of 
 stone and hurdles, or fenced with reeds. It had a large 
 door, or entrance, for admitting the flock, which was closed 
 
'tH 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Chap. U 
 
 with hurdles ; and to facilitate the tithing, which was done 
 in the fold, they struck out a little door, so small, that two 
 lambs could not escape together. To this entrance, which 
 is still used in the East, our Lord alludes in this declaration : 
 " He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but 
 climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a rob- 
 ber." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 3, To him the porter openeth : and the sheep 
 hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep 
 by name, and leadeth them out. 4. And when 
 lie putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before 
 them, and the sheep follow him : for they know 
 his voice. 5. And a stranger will they not 
 follow, but will flee from him : for they know 
 not the voice of strangers. 
 
 See on Is. 40. 11. ^ 
 
 Having had my atteni, ^p. directed last night to the words, 
 *' The sheep hear his vc;* e, and he calleth his own sheep 
 by name," I asked my i .^ ,a if it was usual in Greece to 
 give names to the sheep. ,.^e informed me that it was, and 
 that the sheep obeyed the snepherd when he called them by 
 their names. This morning I had an opportunity of veri- 
 fying the truth of this remark. Passing by a flock of sheep. 
 Tasked the shepherd the same question which I had put to 
 my servant, and he gave .e the same answer. I then bade 
 him to call one of his sheep. He did so, and it instantly 
 left its pasturage and its companions, and ran up to the 
 hand of the shepherd with signs of pleasure, and with a 
 prompt obedience. It is also true of the sheep in this coun- 
 try, that a stranger they will not follow, hut will flee from 
 hivi, for they know not the voice of strangers. The "shepherd 
 told me that many of his sheep were still wild ; that they 
 had not yet learned their names ; but that by teaching they 
 would all learn them. — Hartley's JotniNAL of a Tour in 
 
 &REECE. 
 
 Ver. 5. And a stranger will they not follow, but 
 will flee from him : for they know not the voice 
 of strangers. 
 
 The oriental shepherd marches before his flock to the 
 field, with his rod in his hand and his dog by his side ; and 
 they are so perfectly disciplined, that they follow him 
 wherever he chooses to lead them. To facilitate the man- 
 agement of his charge, he gives names to his sheep, which 
 answer to them, as dogs and horses answer to theirs in 
 these parts of the world. The shepherds of Egypt select a 
 ram to lead the flock, and suspend a bell from his neck 
 that they may follow him with greater ease and certainty. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 11. I am the good shepherd : the good shep- 
 herd giveth his life for the sheep. 12. But he 
 that is a hireling, and not the shepherd, whose 
 own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, 
 and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the 
 wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. 
 13. The hireling fleeth, because he is a hire- 
 ling, and careth not for the sheep. 
 
 Being wakeful at night, I occasionlly heard noises from 
 the hills, which our attendants said proceeded from loolves. 
 The watchful shepherds shouted, and the sheep probably 
 escaped. 1 was forcibly reminded of the " good shepherd ;" 
 were the flock near our tent to be forsaken by the shepherd 
 for a single night, it would be scattered and devoured.— 
 Rev, R. Anderson's Tour in Greece. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 1, Now a certain man was sick, named 
 Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and 
 her sister Martha. 
 
 Bethany is a miserable village, containing between forty 
 and fifty wretched stone huts, and inhabited solely by 
 Arabs. It stands on a rocky mountain, well cultivated, 
 
 and producing olive and fig-trees, vines, beans, and ccrn, 
 which, over the whole country, are now ready for harvest. 
 The tomb supposed to be that of Lazarus is a cave in the 
 rock, to which we descended by twenty-six rude steps. At 
 the bottom of these, in a small chamber, we saw a small 
 door in the ground ; we descended by two large steps, and 
 stooping through a low passage, about five feet long, enter- 
 ed the tomb, which is not hewed out of the rock, but built 
 withjarge stones, and arched : I found it to be seven feet 
 fourinches, by eight feet two inches and a half, and ten 
 feet high : it is in its original rude state, and belongs to the 
 Catholics, who say mass in it occasionally. In the tomb 
 are two small windows, opening to lioles'in the rock. — 
 Turner. 
 
 Ver. 17, Then when Jesus came, he found that 
 he had laiii in the grave four days already. 
 
 It was customary among the Jews to go to the sepulchres 
 of their deceased friends, and visit them for three days, for 
 so long they supposed that their spirits hovered alDout them; 
 but when once they perceived that their visage began to 
 change, as it would in three days in these countries, all 
 hopes of a return to life were then at an end. After a rev- 
 olution of humours, which in seventy-two hours is com- 
 pkted, the body tends naturally to putrefaction ; and there- 
 fore Martha had reason to say, that her brother's body 
 (which appears by the context to have been laid in the 
 sepulchre the same day that he died) would now on the 
 fourth day become offensive.— Stackhouse. 
 
 Ver. 19. And many of the Jews came to Martha 
 and Mary, to comfort them concerning their 
 brother. 
 
 The general time of mourning for deceased relations, 
 both among Jews and Gentiles, was seven days. During 
 these days of mourning their friends and neighbours visit- 
 ed them, in order that by their presence and conversation 
 they might assist them in bearing their loss. Many there- 
 fore in so populous a part of the country must haye been 
 going to and coming from the sisters, while the days of 
 their mourning for Lazarus lasted. The concourse too 
 would be the greater as it was the time of the passover. 
 Besides, a vast multitude now attended Jesus on his jour- 
 ney. This great miracle therefore must have had many 
 witnesses. — Macknight, 
 
 Ver. 31. The Jews then which were with her in 
 the house, and comforted her, when they saw 
 Mary, that she rose up hastily, and went out, 
 followed her, saying. She goeth unto the grave 
 to weep there. 
 
 Authors that speak of the eastern people's visiting the 
 tombs of their relations, almost always attribute this to the 
 women ; the men, however, sometimes visit them too, 
 though not so frequently as the other sex, who are more 
 susceptible of the tender emotions of grief, and think that 
 propriety requires it of them ; whereas the men commonly 
 think that such strong expressions of sorrow would misbe- 
 come them. We find that some male friends came from 
 Jerusalem to condole with Mary and Martha on account of 
 the death of their brother Lazarus, who, when they suppo- 
 sed that her rising up and going out of the house was with 
 a view to repair to his grave to weep, " followed her, say- 
 ing. She goeth unto the grave to weep there." It is no won- 
 der that they thought her rising up in haste was to go to 
 the grave to weep, forChardin informs us, that the mourn- 
 ing in the East does not consist in wearing black clothes, 
 which they call an infernal dress, but in great outcries, in 
 sitting motionless, in being slightly dressed in a brown or 
 pale habit, in refusing to take any nourishment for eight 
 days running, as if they were determined to live no longer. 
 Her staring up then with a sudden motion, who, it was 
 expected, would have sat still without stirring at all, and 
 her going out of the house, made them conclude that it 
 must be to go to the grave to weep there, though, according 
 to the modern Persian ceremonial, it wanted five or six 
 days of the usual time for going to weep at the grave : but 
 
Chap. 11—19. 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 615 
 
 the Jews possibly might repair thither sooner than the 
 Persians do. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 38. Jesus, therefore, again groaning in him- 
 self, Cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and 
 a stone lay upon it. 39. Jesus said, Take ye 
 away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that 
 was dead, said unto him. Lord, by this time he 
 stinketh ; for he hath been dead four days. 
 
 The Jewish tombs, like those of Macri, have entrances, 
 which were originally closed with a large and broad stone 
 rolled to the door, which it was not lawful, in the opinion 
 of a Jew, to displace. They were adorned with inscrip- 
 tions and emblematical devices, alluding to particular 
 transactions in the lives of the persons that lie there en- 
 tombed. Thus the place where the dust of Joshua reposed, 
 was called Timnath-heres, because the image of the sun 
 was engraved on his sepulchre, in memory of his arresting 
 that luminary in his career, till he had gained a complete 
 victory over the confederate kings. Such significant de- 
 vices were common in the East. Cicero says, the tomb of 
 Archimedes was distinguished by the figure of a sphere 
 and a cylinder. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 44. And he that was dead came forth, bound 
 hand and foot with grave-clothes : and his face 
 was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith 
 unto them, Loose him, and let him go. 
 
 As the Jews did not make use of coffins, they placed their 
 dead separately in niches, or little cells, cut mto the sides 
 of the caves, or rooms, which they had hewed out of the 
 rock. This form of the Jewish sepulchre suggests an easy 
 solution of a difficulty in the resurrection of Lazarus. The 
 sacred historian states, that when our Lord cried with a 
 loud voice, " Lazarus, come forth, he that was dead came 
 forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes." Upon this 
 circumstance, the enemies of revelation seize with avidity, 
 and demand with an air of triumph, How he should come 
 out of a grave, who was bound hand and foot with grave- 
 clothes ? But the answer is easy : the evangelist does not 
 mean that Lazarus walked out' of the sepulchre, but only 
 that he sat up, then putting his legs over the edge of his 
 niche or cell, slid down and stood upright upon the floor ; 
 all which he might easily do, notwithstanding his arms 
 were bound close to his body, and his legs were tied straight 
 together, by means of the shroud and rollers with which he 
 was swathed. Hence, when he was come forth, Jesus 
 ordered his relations to loose him and let him go ; a circum- 
 stance plainly importing the historian's admission that 
 Lazarus could not walk till he was unbound. — Paxton. 
 
 [This interpretation, though plausible and ingenious, 
 does not well accord with the letter of the text. From this 
 it is not easy to avoid the impression, that in some way he 
 came forth from the inner part to the outer opening of the 
 cave, enveloped in his grave-clothes. As to the impossi- 
 bility of his walking when thus impeded, Ave may safely 
 admit, that if his limbs were thus entirely confined, he was 
 conveyed to the door of the cave, by the same Almighty 
 power by which he was raised from the dead. — Bush.] 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Ver. 18. I speak not of you all; I know whom I 
 have chosen ; but, that the scripture may be 
 fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lift 
 up his heel against me. 
 
 See on Ps. 41. 9. 
 
 Ver. 38. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down 
 thy life for my sake 1 Verily, verily, I say 
 unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou 
 hast denied me thrice. 
 
 See on Mark 14. 30. 
 
 It is very common for people to regulate their time in the 
 night by the crowing of the cock : thus, " Idid not leave the 
 temple till the Sdma'-Mi," i, e. midnight cock. " I left my 
 
 home at the Vudeya-Mi," i. e. the morning cock. The 
 people attach a high value to those birds which crow with 
 the greatest regularity; and some of them keep the time 
 with astonishing precision. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Ver. 5. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with 
 thine own self, with the glory which I had 
 with thee before the world was. 
 
 Our Lord is undoubtedly here praying to be glorified 
 with his mediatorial glory. But this was not the glory 
 which he had with the Father before the world was, for 
 TprioY to the creation he did not exist as mediator, and there- 
 fore could not enjoy a mediator's glory. Consequently the 
 phrase, "which I had with thee before the world was," 
 probably means, " which I had in the divine purpose, which 
 thou didst ordain and destine that I should have in the ages 
 to come." Bv a similar diction, Christ is termed "the 
 Lamb slain from the foundat'on of the world." But he 
 was not actually slain from th' .bundation of the world, but 
 only in the divine purpose. o here, Christ prays to be 
 put in possession of that hon^ and glory which the Father 
 from eternity had decreed s".. aid redound to him, in virtue 
 of his assuming the office of Messiah, and being constituted 
 Head and Lord of the New^ Testament dispensation. At 
 this glory he looks, not with a retrospective, but with an 
 anticipative eye, — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Ver. 3. Judas then, having received a band of men 
 and officers from the chief priests and Phari- 
 sees, Cometh thither with lanterns, and torches, 
 and weapons. 
 
 Norden, among other particulars, has given some account 
 of the lamps and lanterns that they make use of commonly 
 at Cairo. " The lamp is of the palm-tree wood, of the 
 height of twenty-three inches, and made in a very gross 
 manner. The glass, that hangs in the middle, is half filled 
 with water and has oil on the top, about three fingers in 
 depth. The wick is preserved dry at the bottom of the 
 glass, where they have contrived a place for it, and ascends 
 through a pipe. These lamps do not give much light, yet 
 they are very commodious, because they are transported 
 easily from one place to another. With regard to the lan- 
 terns, they have pretty nearly the figure of a cage, and are 
 made of reeds. It is a collection of five or six glasses, like 
 to that of the lamp which has been just described. They 
 suspend them by cords in the middle of the streets, when 
 there is any great festival at Cairo, and they put painted 
 paper in the place of the reeds." 
 
 Were these the lanterns that those who came to take 
 Jesus made use of? or were they such lamps as these that 
 Christ referred to in the parable "of the virgins 1 or are we 
 rather to suppose that these lanterns are appropriated to the 
 Egyptian illuminations, and that Pococke's account of the 
 lanterns of this country will give us a better idea of those 
 that were anciently made use of at Jerusalem 1 Speaking 
 of the travelling of the people of Egypt, he says, " by night 
 they rarely make use of tents, but lie in the open air, hav- 
 ing large lanterns made like a pocket paper lantern, the 
 bottom and top being of copper tinned over, and instead ot 
 paper they are made with linen, which is extended by hoops 
 of wire, so that when it is put together it serves as a candle- 
 stick, &c. and they have a contrivance to hang it up abroad 
 by means of three staves." — Harmer, 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 »Ver. 2. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, 
 and put it on his head, and they put on him a 
 purple robe. 
 
 There still .exists a plant in Palestine, known among bot- 
 anists by the name of the " Thorn of Christ," supposed to 
 be the shrub which aflforded the crown worn by the Saviour 
 at his crucifixion. It has many small sharp prickles, well 
 adapted to give pain; and as the leaves greatly resemble 
 those of ivy, it is not improbable that the enemies of Mes- 
 siah chose it, from its similarity to a plant with which em- 
 
616 
 
 JOHN. 
 
 Chap. 21, 
 
 perors and generals were accustomed to be crowned ; and 
 rhence, that there might be calumny, insult, and derision, 
 meditated in the very act of punishment, 
 
 "The mockery of reed and robe, and crown 
 
 Of platted thorns upon his temple pressed." — Russel. 
 
 Ver. 5. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown 
 of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate 
 saith unto them, Behold the man ! 
 
 On quitting the church we proceeded to the Mount of 
 Olives ; our road lay through the Via-dolorosa, so called 
 from its having been the passage by which Christ was 
 conducted from the place of his imprisonment to Mount 
 Calvary. The outer walls of what was once the residence 
 of Pilate, are comprehended in this street. The original 
 entrance to the palace is blocked up, and the present access 
 is at one of the angles of the court. The portal was for- 
 merly in the centre, and approached by a flight of steps, 
 which were removed some centuries ago to Rome, and are 
 now in a small chapel near the church of San Giovanni di 
 Laterano. Very little of this structure is still extant; but 
 the Franciscan monks imagine they have actually traced 
 out the dungeon in which our Saviour was incarcerated, 
 as well as the hall where Cesar's officer proceeded to give 
 judgment. The place where the Messiah was scourged is 
 now a ruined court, on the opposite side of the street ; and 
 not far from thence, but in a direction nearer to Mount 
 Calvary, is the arch which the Latin friars designate " II 
 arco d'ecce homo," from the expression of Pilate, as re- 
 corded by St. John xix. 5 ; upon an eminence between the 
 pillars which support the curvature, the Roman governor 
 exhibited this illustrious victim to his deluded countrymen. 
 Between this place and the scene of his crucifixion, Christ 
 is said to have fainted under the weight of the cross. Tra- 
 dition relates, that he sunk beneath its pressure three times ; 
 and the different stages are supposed to have been actually 
 noted ; they are severally designated by two columns, and 
 an indenture in the wall. — Jolliffe. 
 
 Ver. 23. Then the soldiers, when they had cruci- 
 fied Jesus, took his garments, and made four 
 parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat : 
 now the coat was without seam, woven from 
 the top throughout. 
 
 The dress of the Arabs, in this part of the Holy Land, 
 and indeed throughout all Syria, is simple and uniform ; it 
 consists of a blue shirt, descending below the knees, the legs 
 and feet being exposed, or the latter sometimes covered 
 with the ancient cothurnus, or buskin. A cloak is worn of 
 very coarse and heavy camel's-hair cloth, almost universal- 
 ly decorated with broad black and Avhite stripes, passing 
 vertically down the back ; this is of one square piece, with 
 holes for the arms; it has a seam down the back; made 
 without this seam, it is considered of greater value. Here, 
 then, we perhaps behold the form and materials of our Sa- 
 viour's garment, for which the soldiers cast lots, being 
 " without seam, woven from the top throughout." It was the 
 most ancient dress of the inhabitants of this country. — 
 Clarke. 
 
 Ver. 89. And there came also Nicodemus, (which 
 at the first came to Jesus by night,) and brought 
 a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred 
 pound weight. 
 
 The Old Testament historian entirely justifies the account 
 which the evangelist gives of the quantity of spices with 
 which the sacred body of Christ was swathed. The Jews 
 object to the quantity used on that occasion, as unnecessarily 
 profuse, and even incredible ; but it appears from their own 
 writings, that spices were used at such times in great abun- 
 dance. In the Talmud, it is said, that no less than eighty 
 pounds of spices were consumed at the funeral of Rabbi 
 Gamaliel the elder. And at the funeral of Herod, if we 
 may believe the account of their most celebrated historian, 
 the procession was followed by five hundred of his domestics 
 carrying spices. Why then should it be reckoned incredi- 
 ble that Nicodemus brought of myrrh and aloes about a 
 hundred pounds weight, to embalm the body ol Jesus 1 — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 5. Then Jesus saith unto them. Children, 
 have ye any meat ? They answered him, No. 
 
 Thus did the risen Saviour address himself to his disci- 
 ples. In this way, also, do spiritual guides, and men of 
 learning, and aged men, address their disciples or depend- 
 ants. In the Scanda Purana, it is said, " Sooran asked 
 Kasipan what he should do 1 to which he replied. Children, 
 1 will mention one thing as a security for you, which is, to 
 perform glorious austerity." Again, in the same work, 
 " Thus proceeding, Singu Maggam, who Avas to him as his 
 own life, following Velly, took him into his hall, and seat- 
 ed him, and heartily welcomed him with good words, and 
 asked, Children^ what are you come for 1" — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved, 
 saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now, when 
 Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt 
 his fisher's ' coat unto him, (for he was naked,) 
 and did cast himself into the sea. 
 
 The fishermen in the East, when engaged in their voca- 
 tion, are generally naked, excepting a small strip of cloth 
 round their loins; so that, without any inconvenience, they 
 can cast themselves into the sea.— Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 18. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When 
 thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and 
 walkedst whither thou wouldst: but when thou 
 shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, 
 and another shall gird thee, and carry thee 
 whither thou wouldst not. 
 
 It was customary in the ancient combats for the van- 
 quished person to stretch out his hands to the conqueror, 
 signifying that he declined the battle, yielded the victory, 
 and submitted to the direction of the victor. So, Turnus 
 in Virgil : 
 
 " Viclsti et victiim tendere palmas 
 
 Ausonii videre."— ^n. lib, xii. 1. 936. 
 
 " You have overcome, and the Ausonians have seen thy 
 vanquished foe stretch forth his suppliant hands." To this 
 custom our Lord alludes in his prediction to Peter: 
 " When thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy 
 hands, and another shall gird thee." The aged apostle 
 was to stretch out his hands as a token of submission to 
 that power under which he would fall and perish.— Pax- 
 ton, 
 
rHE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 26. And they gave forth their lots : and the 
 lot fell upon Matthias ; and he was numbered 
 with the eleven apostles. 
 
 The account which Grotius gives of the manner in which 
 lots were cast, seems very probable and satisfactory. He 
 says, they put their lots into two urns, one of which con- 
 tamed the names of Joseph and Matthias, and the other a 
 blank, and the word apostle. In drawing these out of the 
 urns, the blank came up with the name of Joseph, and the 
 lot on which was written the word apostle came up with 
 the name of Matthias. This being in answer to their 
 prayers, they concluded that Matthias was the man whom 
 the Lord had chosen to the apostleship, — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 1. And, as they spake unto the people, the 
 priests, and the captain of the temple, and the 
 Sadducees, came upon them. 
 
 There was a garrison placed in the tower of Anlonia, 
 for the guard of the temple. This tower stood in the 
 northeast corner of the wall, which parted the mountain 
 of the house from the city. It was built by Hyrcanus the 
 Asmonean, the high-priest. There he himself dwelt, and 
 there he laid up the holy garments of the priesthood, when- 
 ever he put them off, having finished the service of the 
 temple. Herod repaired this tower at a great expense, 
 and named it Antonia, in honour of Antony. It was used 
 as the depository of the priest's garments, till the removal 
 of Archelaus from his kingdom, and the confiscation of 
 his estate. The tower then came into the hands of the Ro- 
 mans, and was kept as a garrison by them. The high- 
 priest's garments were then kept there under their power, 
 till Vitellius restored them to the Jews. The captain here 
 spoken olF was the commander of the company who had 
 the keeping of the castle. — Lightpoot. 
 
 Ver. 34. Neither was there any among them that 
 lacked : for as many as were possessors of lands 
 or houses, sold them, and brought the prices of 
 the things that were sold, 35. And laid them 
 down at the apostles' feet : and distribution was 
 made unto every man according as he had need. 
 
 When a person takes a present or an offering to a priest, 
 or a spiritual guide, or to a distinguished scholar, he does 
 not give it into the hands of his superior, but places it at 
 his feet. It is called the pdtka-kdniki, i. e. the feet-offer- 
 ing. Ananias and Sapphira also brought a part of the 
 price of the land, " and laid it at the apostles' feet." — Rob- 
 erts, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 6. And the young men arose, wound him up, 
 and carried him out, and buried him. 
 
 The bier used by the Turks at Aleppo, says Russel, is a 
 kind of coffin, much in the form of ours, only the lid rises 
 with a ledge in the middle. Christians, according to the 
 same author, are carried to the grave in an open bier of 
 the same kind as that used by the people of Nain. But 
 the Jews seem to have conveyed their dead bodies to their 
 funerals without any support, as may be inferred from the 
 history of Ananias and his wife Sapphira : " And the 
 young men arose, wound him iip, and carried him out and 
 buried him." With equal despatch they carried forth Sap- 
 78 
 
 phira, and buried her by her husband. No hint is given 
 of a bier in either case. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Ver. 40. But Philip was found at Azotus; and, 
 passing through, he preached in all the cities, 
 till he came to Cesarea, 
 
 The present state of Azotus is thus described by Dr. 
 Wittman: — "Pursuing our route through a delightful 
 country, we came to Ashdod, called by the Greeks Azotus, 
 and under that name mentioned in the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles, a town of great antiquity, provided with two small 
 entrance gates. In passing through this place we saw 
 several fragments of columns, capitals, cornices, &c., of 
 marble. Towards the centre is a handsome mosque, with 
 a minaret. By the Arab inhabitants Ashdod is called 
 Mezdel. Two miles to the south, on a hill, is a ruin, 
 having in its centre a lofty column still standing entire. 
 The delightful verdure of the surrounding plains, together 
 with a great abundance of fine old olive-trees, rendered 
 the scene charmingly picturesque. In the villages, tobac- 
 co, fruits, and vegetables are cultivated abundantly by the 
 inhabitants ; and the fertile and extensive plains yield an., 
 ample produce of corn. At this time the wheat was just, 
 coming into ear, the harvest taking place so early as towards 
 the latter end of April or Ibeginning of May ."-—Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 5. And he said, Who art thou, Lord ? And 
 the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecu- 
 test: it is hard for thee to kick against the 
 pricks. 
 
 See on Judg. 3, 31. 
 
 Ver. 1 1. And the Lord said unto him. Arise, and 
 go into the street which is called Straight, and 
 inquire in the house of Judas, for one called 
 Saul of Tarsus : for, behold, he prayeth. 
 
 Tarsus, the place of Saul's nativity, was at that time the 
 most celebrated school in the world, and, for polite litera- 
 ture, far surpassed Athens and Alexandria. Strabo, who 
 lived in that age, gives the following account of it: " The 
 inhabitants of this place cherish such a passion for philoso- 
 phy, and all the various branches of polite letters, that they 
 have greatly excelled Athens and Alexandria, and every 
 other place in which there are schools and academies for 
 philosophy and erudition. But Tarsus differs in this, that 
 those who here devote themselves to the study of literature, 
 are all natives of that country : there are not many from for- 
 eign parts who reside here. Nor do the natives of the coun- 
 try continue here for life, but they go abroad to finish their 
 studies, and when they have perfected themselves they 
 choose to live in other places. There are but few who 
 return home." He also says, that " Rome can best witness 
 the great number of learned men, the natives of this city ; 
 for it is full of literati from Tarsus and Alexandria." — 
 Burder. 
 
 Ver. 34. And Peter said unto him, Eneas, Jesus 
 Christ maketh thee whole : arise, and make thy 
 bed. And he arose immediately. 
 
 Mattresses, or something of that kind, were used for 
 sleeping upon. The Israelites formerly lay upon carpets. 
 (Amos ii. 8.) Russel says the " beds consist of a mattress 
 
618 
 
 THE ACTS. 
 
 Chap. 9—12, 
 
 laid on the floor, and over this a sheet, (in winter a carpet, 
 or some such woollen covering,) the other sheet being sewed 
 to the quilt. A divan cushion often serves for a pillow and 
 bolster." They do not now keep their beds made; the 
 mattresses are rolled up, carried away, and placed in cup- 
 boards till they are wanted at night. Hence we learn the 
 propriety of our Lord's address to the paralytic, " Arise, 
 lake up thy bed, and walk."— Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 36. Now there was at Joppa a certain disci- 
 ple named Tabitha, which, by interpretation, is 
 called Dorcas : this woman was full of good 
 works and alms-deeds which she did. 
 
 It was common not only among the Arabs, but also 
 among the Greeks, to give their females the names of agree- 
 able animals. Tabitha appears to have been a word used 
 in the Syriac, which being interpreted is Dorcas ; that is, an 
 antelope, an animal remarkable for beautiful eyes. On 
 this account it might have been given to the person here 
 designated by it. (Parkhurst.) — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 23. Then called he them in, and lodged them. 
 And on the morrow Peter went away with 
 them, and certain brethren from Joppa accom- 
 panied him. 
 
 The people of the East have a general propensity for as- 
 sociates in all their transactions and all their journeys. Has 
 a man from a distant village some business to do with you, 
 he does not, as an Englishman would, come alone ; he brings 
 a large company of his neighbours and friends. Go, ask 
 any of them, why have you come 1 the reply is, (pointing at 
 the same time at the man of business,) " I came because he 
 did." It is often surprising to see people at a great distance 
 from their homes, having no other reason than " we came 
 with him." See the man going to a court of justice, he is 
 accompanied by a large band of his acquaintances, who 
 canvass all the probabilities of the case, and who have a salvo 
 for every exigency. Perhaps a love of show is one motive ; 
 but the d&sire to have witnesses of what has been said or 
 done, and to have help at hand in case of any emergency, 
 are other reasons for their love of company. The Oriental 
 is like the granivorous animals of his native deserts, who 
 are all, more or less, gregarious in their habits ; and, as it 
 is, so it was in the most "remote antiquity. The Psalmist 
 says of those who were travelling to the temple at Jerusa- 
 lem, " they go from strength to strength ;" but the margin 
 has it, " from company to company." Thus did they 
 stretch on, from one party to another, till they each appear- 
 ed before God in his earthly " Zion." In the conduct, there- 
 fore, of Peter and his six companions, in the arrangement 
 of our Divine Master in sending forth his disciples " by two 
 and two," and in very numerous passages of scripture, we 
 see the simplicity, caution, and affection of those concerned. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 25. And, as Peter was coming in, Cornelius 
 met him, and fell down at his feet, and worship- 
 ped him. 26. But Peter took him up, saying. 
 Stand up ; I myself also am a man. 
 
 Mr. Harmer contends, that Cornelius the centurion, when 
 he fell down at the feet of the apostle Peter and worshipped 
 him, did not intend to pay him divine honours, but merely 
 to salute him with a reverence es'teemed the lowest and 
 most submissive in the ceremonious East. He allows there 
 was something extraordinary in the behaviour of Cornelius, 
 but no mixture of idolatry, *But it is to be feared the verdict 
 which this respectable writer pronounces for the excellent 
 Roman, is too favourable. The apostles did not at other 
 times refuse the eommon tokens of respect and civility 
 from those around them ; and if the act of Cornelius meant 
 no more, the refusal cannot be accounted for, upon the com- 
 mon principles of human nature. But the words of the 
 evangelist ought to decide the question ; he says expressly 
 that Cornelius worshipped him ; Tpo(T€Kvvr)(Tcv ^ the term which 
 Luke and other inspired writers commonly use to express 
 the homage which is due only to the Supreme Being. This 
 
 term, it is admitted, is often employed by writers, both sa- 
 cred and profane, to denote merely civil respect ; but it can- 
 not with propriety be so understood here, because the reason 
 which the apostle assigned for his refusal, derives all its 
 propriety and force from religious worship : " Stand up ; I 
 myself also am a man." But surely it is not inconsistent 
 with the character of a man to receive an extraordinary 
 token of respect from another. Mr. Harmer thinks the 
 conduct of the apostle John, in throwing himself at the feet 
 of the angel, is to be viewed m a somewhat different light. 
 " John did nothing at all," says our author, " but what was 
 conformable to the usages of his own country, when the 
 people of it designed innocently to express great reverence 
 and gratitude," But if the apostle meant only to express, 
 by his prostration, the ordinary feelings of civil respect, 
 why did the angel refuse it ; and that because he was one 
 of his fellow-servants 1 That it was actually more than 
 civil respect — that it was really divine honours which John 
 meant in the tumult of his feelings, or from a mistaken 
 view of the angel's character, to pay, is quite evident from 
 the charge which the celestial messenger gave him, to ren- 
 der unto God the homage which he intended at this time 
 for him. But surely God is not the proper object of civil 
 respect, but of religious adoration; and therefore, it must 
 have been the latter which John intended. Though he was 
 a Jew by descent, an enemy to all idolatry, and a zealous 
 preacher against it, still he was but a man of like passions 
 with others ; and although under the supernatural influence 
 of the Divine Spirit as an apostle, he was not infallible as 
 a Christian, and by consequence he was liable, highly fa- 
 voured as he certainly was, to deviate from the path of duty ; 
 and had be not at this time done a very improper thing, the 
 angel had not reproved him, nor used terms so expressive 
 of his abhorrence : " See thou do it not ; for I am thy fellow- 
 servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which 
 keep the sayings of this book ; worship God," That his 
 conduct on this memorable occasion had at least a mixture 
 of idolatry, is evident from the command he receives, to 
 reserve such homage for God al(Mie, to whom it is due. — 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER Xlt. 
 Ver. 10, When they were past the first and the 
 second ward, they came unto the iron gate that 
 leadeth unto the city; which opened to them 
 of his own accord : and they went out, and 
 passed on through one street ; and forthwith the 
 angel departed from him. 
 
 One method of securing the gates of fortified placesi 
 among the ancients, was to cover them with thick plates of 
 iron ; a custom which is still used in the East, and seems to 
 be of great antiquity. We learn from Pitts that Algiers 
 has five gates, and some of these have two, some three 
 other gates within them, and some of them plated all over 
 with thick iron. The place where the apostle M-as impris- 
 oned, seems to have been secured in the same manner; for, 
 says the inspired historian, " When they were past the first 
 arid second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth 
 into the city, which opened to them of its own accord." 
 Pococke, speaking of a bridge not far from Antioch, called 
 the iron bridge, savs, there are two towers belonging to it, 
 the gates of which are covered with iron plates, which he 
 supposes is the reason of the name it bears. Some of their 
 gates are plated over with brass; such are the enormous 
 gates of the principal mosque at Damascus, formerly the 
 church of John the Baptist. To gates like these, the 
 Psalmist probably refers in these words : " He hath broken 
 the gates of brass ;" and the prophet, ih that remarkable 
 passage, where God promises to go before Cyrus his anoint- 
 ed, and "break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sun- 
 der the bars of iron," 
 
 But the locks and keys which secure these iron and bra- 
 zen doors, by a singular- custom, the very reverse of what 
 prevails in the West, are of wood. The bolts of these 
 wooden locks, which are also of wood, are made hollow 
 within, which they unlock with wooden keys, about a span 
 long, and about the thickness of a thumb. Into this key 
 they drive a number of short nails, or strong wires, in such 
 an order and distance, that they exactly fit others within the 
 lock, anJ so turn them as they please. The locks and 
 
Chap. 12—14. 
 
 THE ACTS. 
 
 619 
 
 keys which shut the doors and gates in countries adjacent 
 to Syria, are fabricated of the same materials, and in the 
 same form. But those cities which were fortified with 
 more than ordinary care, had sometimes bars of brass, or 
 ircwi. In describing the superior and almost impregnable 
 strength of Babylon, which Cyrus was chosen by the Al- 
 mighty to subdue, the prophet particularly mentions the 
 gates of brass and bars of iron. According to this view, the 
 emphasis of the following passage is much greater perhaps 
 than is commonly apprehended : " A brother offended is 
 harder to be won than a strong city, and their contentions 
 are like the bars of a castle," that are extremely difficult to 
 be removed, both on account of their size, and of the strong 
 and durable materials of which they are made. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 21. And upon a set da^r, Herod, arrayed in 
 royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made 
 an oration unto them. 
 
 Josephus gives the following account of this matter, but 
 omitting to make any mention of the TyriansandSidonians 
 on the occasion: " In the third year of Herod's being king 
 of all Judea, he exhibited shows to the people in honour of 
 the emperor ; and he appeared in the theatre at Cesarea, 
 dressed in a robe made all of silver tissue, of admirable 
 workmanship. As the sun was then rising, the rays of it 
 coming on his robe, made it shine so bright, that the people 
 cried out. Forgive us, if we have hitherto reverenced you 
 only as a man, bnt from this time we shall acknowledge 
 you to be something superior to what is mortal. The king 
 did not reprove them, nor reject this blasphemous flattery ; 
 and, before he went out of the theatre, he was seized with 
 pains in his bowels, so as to cry out, I, whom you called 
 your god, am now going to die ! From thence he was car- 
 ried to his palace immediately, and in the space of five days 
 he died of those pains which he first felt in the theatre, in 
 the fifty-fourth year of his age, after he had reigned four 
 years over Iturea and Abilene, and three more over all 
 Judea." " The king generally appoints for the reception of 
 ambassadors such an hour as, according to the season, or 
 the intended room of audience, will best enable him to dis- 
 play in full sunshine the brilliancy of his jewels. The title 
 of bright, or resplendent, was added to the name of one 
 sovereign, because his regal ornaments, glittering in the 
 sun's rays on a solemn festival, so dazzled the eyes of all 
 beholders, that they scarcely could bear the effulgence : 
 and some knew not which was the monarch, and which the 
 great luminary of day. Thus Theophylact relates, that the 
 Persian king Hormisdas, sitting on his throne, astonish- 
 ed all spectators by the blazing glories of his jewels. Jem- 
 shid, having triumphed over the blacks, and the dives or 
 demons, caused immense quantities of jewels, obtained as 
 spoils from the enemy, to be piled upon his throve, so that 
 all might behold them ; as the sun shone through the win- 
 dows on those jewels and the gold, his whole palace was il- 
 luminated by their reflected brilliancy. He caused his 
 throne to be placed in such a manner, facing the east, that 
 when the rising sun beamed on his splendid crown, the 
 multitude exclaimed. This is the dawn of a new day." (Sir 
 W. Ouseley.)— BuRDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 14. But, when they departed from Perga, 
 they came to Antioch in Pisidia, and went into 
 the synagogue on the Sabbath-day, and sat down. 
 
 If we had not seen the aqueduct, the quantity of immense 
 squared blocks of stone and sculptured fragments, which 
 we saw all the way to the khan, would have convinced us 
 at once that we were on the site of a great city. We felt 
 convinced that we had attained the great object of our 
 journey, and were really on the spot consecrated by the 
 labours and persecution of the apostles Paul and Barnabas. 
 Leaving the town, and going on the north side of it, in the 
 direction of the aqueduct, we were soon upon an elevated 
 plateau, accurately described by Strabo by the name of 
 'yo(pog. The quantity of ancient pottery, independently of 
 the ruins, told us at once that we were upon the emplace- 
 ment of the city of Antioch. The superb members of a 
 temple, which, from the thijrsus on many of them, evidently 
 belonged to Bacchus, was the first thing we saw. Passing 
 
 on, a long and immense building, constructed with prodi 
 gious stones, and standing easi and west, made me entertain 
 a hope that it might be a church — a church of Antioch 1 
 It was so; the ground-plan, with the circular end for the 
 bema, all remaining! Willingly would I have remained 
 hours in the midst of a temple — ^perhaps one of the very 
 earliest consecrated to the Saviour ; but we were obliged to 
 hasten on. 
 
 The next thing that attracted our notice were two large 
 magnificent arches, a souterrain running far beneath the 
 hill, and supporting the platform of a superb temple. A 
 high wall of immense stones, without cement, next occurred, 
 part probably of the gale of the city, and near it the ground- 
 plan of another building. From hence ran a wall, at least 
 its ruins, along towards the aqueduct, crowning the brow of 
 the hill, and abruptly terminating where the hill became so 
 precipitous as to require no defence. The remains of the 
 aqueduct, of which twenty-one arches are perfect, are the 
 most splendid I ever beheld: the stones, without cement, of 
 the same massy dimensions as in the wall. The view, 
 when near the aqueduct, Avas enchanting, and well entitled 
 Antioch to its rank of capital of the province of Pisidia. 
 Inthe valley on the left, groves of poplars and weeping wil- 
 lows seemed to sing the song of the Psalmist, " We hanged 
 our harps upon the willows," &c. mourning, as at Babylon, 
 for the melancholy fate of this once great Christian city. 
 Not a Christian now resides in it, except a single Greek in 
 the khan. IT'ot a church, nor any priest to officiate, where 
 Paul and Barnabas, and their successprs, converted the 
 thousands of idolaters to the true faith ! 
 
 Behind the valley in the east rises a rugged mountain, 
 part of the Paroreia ; and in front of the place where I sat 
 is the emplacement of the city, where once stood the syna- 
 gogue, and the mansions that hospitably received the apos- 
 tles, and those of their persecutors who drove them frona 
 the city — all now levelled to the ground ! Behind the city, 
 in the "middle distance, is seen the modern city or town oi 
 Yalabatz, the houses intermixed with poplars and other 
 trees, in autumnal colouring, and so numerous as to resem- 
 ble a grove rather than a city. Beyond is a plain, bounded 
 by the heights of Taurus, under which appeared a lake, 
 probably of Eyerdir. On the right, in the middle distance 
 also, the plain bounded by mountains, and these overtopped 
 by the rugged Alpine peaks of Mount Taurus, covered with 
 show. In the foreground, the aqueduct.»with the plains and 
 groves of Yalabatz appearing through its arches. Behind 
 us rose an amphitheatre of round low hills, backed by 
 mountains, naked and lofty. Reserving a fuller examina- 
 tion for the morrow, we returned to our khan, seeing incur 
 way an inscription on a fountain, which with the others we 
 shall notice hereafter. — Arundell. 
 
 Ver. 15. And after the reading of the Jaw and the 
 prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto 
 them, saying. Ye men and brethren, if ye have 
 any word of exhortation for the people, say on. 
 
 The custom of reading the law, the Jcm^s say, existed a 
 hundred and seventy years before the time of Christ. The 
 division of it into sections is ascribed to Ezra. The 
 five books of Moses, here called the law, contained fifty- 
 three sections, so that by reading one on each sabbath, and 
 two in one day, they read through the whole in the course 
 of a year, finishing at the feast of tabernacles, which they 
 called "the rejoicing of the law." When AntiochusEpiph- 
 anes burnt the book of the law, and forbid the reading 
 of it, the Jews in the room of it selected some passages out 
 of the prophets, which they thought came nearest in words 
 and sense to the sections of the law, and read them in their 
 stead ; but when the law was restored again, they still con- 
 tinued the reading of the prophetic sections ; and the section 
 for the day was called the dismission, because usually the 
 people were dismissed upon it, unless any one stood up and 
 expounded the word of God to them. This is the reason of 
 the message sent to the apostles, " Ye men and brethren, if 
 ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on." — 
 Gill. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 13. Then the priest of Jupiter, which was 
 before their city, brought oxen and garlands 
 
THE ACTS. 
 
 Chap. 14—18. 
 
 unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice 
 with the people. 
 
 When the gods are taken out in procession, their necks 
 are adorned with garlands ; the priests also wear them at 
 the same time. On all festive occasions men and women 
 have on their sweet-scented garlands, and the smell of some 
 of them is so strong as to be oiFensive to an Englishman. 
 Does a man of rank offer to adorn you with a garland, it 
 is a sign of his respect, and must not be refused. In the 
 latter part of 1832 I visited the celebrated pagoda of Rami- 
 seram, (the temple of Ramar :) so soon as I arrived within 
 a short distance of the gates, a number of dancing girls, 
 
 griests, and others, came to meet us with garlands s they 
 rst did me the honour of putting one around my neck, 
 and then presented others for Mrs. Roberts and the chil- 
 dren. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 11. Therefore, loosing from Troas, we came 
 with a straight course to Samothracia, and the 
 next day to Neapolis. 
 
 The view of the ancient Sichem, now called Napolose, 
 otherwise -Neapolis, and Napoleos, surprised us, as we had 
 not expected to find a city of such magnitude in the road to 
 Jerusalem. It seems to be the metropolis of a ^ery rich and 
 extensive country, abounding with provisions, and all the 
 necessary articles of life, in much greater profusion than 
 the town of Acre. White bread was exposed for sale in the 
 streets, of a quality superior to any that is to be found else- 
 where throughout the Levant. The governor of Napolose 
 received and regaled us with all the magnificence of an 
 eastern sovereign ; refreshments of every kind known in 
 the country, were set before us : and, when we supposed the 
 list to be exhausted, to our very great astonishment a most 
 sumptuous dinner was brought in. Nothing seemed to gratify 
 our host more, than that any of his guests should eat hearti- 
 ly; and, to do him justice, every individual of the party 
 ought to have possessed the appetite of ten hungry pilgrims, 
 to satisfy his wishes in this respect. 
 
 There is nothing in the Holy Land finer than a view of 
 Napolose, from the heights around it. As the traveller 
 descends towards it from the hills, it appears luxuriantly 
 imbosomed in the most delightful and fragrant bowers; half 
 concealed by rich gardens, and by stately trees collected into 
 groves, all around the bold and beautiful valley in which it 
 stands. Trade seems to flourish among its inhabitants. 
 Their principal employment is in making soap ; but the 
 manufactures of the town supply a very widely extended 
 neighbourhood, and they are exported to a great distance 
 upon camels. In the morning after our arrival, we met 
 caravans coming from Grand Cairo ; and noticed others 
 reposing in the large olive plantations near the gates. — 
 Clarke. 
 
 Ver. 13, And on the Sabbath we went out of the 
 city by a river side, where prayer was wont to 
 be made ; and we sat down, and spake unto the 
 women which resorted thither. 
 
 The Jewish proseuchas were places of prayer, in some 
 circumstances similar to, in others different from, their 
 synagogues ; the latter were generally in cities, and were 
 covered places ; whereas for the most part the proseuchae 
 were out of the cities, on the banks of rivers, having no cov- 
 ering, except, perhaps, the shade of some trees, or covered 
 galleries. Their vicinity to water was for the convenience 
 of those frequent washings and ablutions which were in- 
 troduced among them. — Border, 
 
 Ver. 22. And the multitude rose up together 
 against them ; and the magistrates rent off their 
 clothes, and commanded to beat them. 
 
 It was usual for the Roman magistrates to command the 
 lictors to rend open the clothes of the criminal, that he might 
 the more easily be beaten with rods. No care was taken of 
 the garments on these occasions : but they were suddenly 
 and with violence rent open. Thus were Paul and Silas 
 treated in this instance. — Border. 
 
 Ver. 24. Who, having received such a charge, 
 thrust them into the inner prison, and made 
 their feet fast in the stocks. 
 
 It is generally supposed that these stocks were the cippi, 
 or large pieces of wood used among the Romans, which 
 itot only loaded the legs of prisoners, but sometimes dis- 
 tended them in a very painful manner ; so that it is highly 
 probable the situation of Paul and Silas here might be 
 made more painful than that of an oftender sitting in the 
 stocks, as used among us, especially if (as is very possible) 
 they lay with their bare backs, so lately scourged, on the 
 hard or dirty ground ; which renders their joyful frame, 
 expressed by songs of praise, so much the more remark- 
 able. Beza explains it of the numellae, in which both the 
 feet and the neck were fastened, in the most uneasy posture 
 that can well be imagined. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XVm, 
 Ver. 3. And because he was of the same craft, he 
 abode with them, and wrought : (for by their 
 occupation they were tent-makers.) 
 
 It was a received custom among the Jews for every man, 
 of what rank or quality soever, to learn some trade or han- 
 dicraft ; one of their proverbial expressions is, that who- 
 ever teaches not his son a trade, teaches him to be a thief. 
 In those hot countries, where tents (which were commonly 
 made of skins, or leather sewed together, to keep out the 
 violence of the weather) were used not only by soldiers, 
 but by travellers, and others whose business required them 
 to be abroad, a tent-maker was no mean or unprofitable 
 employment. This custom, so generally practised by the 
 Jews, was adopted also by other nations in the East. Sir 
 Paul Rycaut observes, that the grand seignior, to whom he 
 was ambassador, was taught to make wooden spoons. The 
 intention of this usage was not merely amusement, but to 
 furnish the person so instructed with some method of ob- 
 taining their living, should they ever be reduced to want and 
 poverty. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 6. And when they opposed themselves, and 
 blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said 
 unto them, Your blood he upon your own 
 heads : I am clean : from henceforth I will go 
 unto the Gentiles, 
 
 " The shaking of his coat, a very common act in Tur- 
 key, is, no doubt, an act of the same kind and import as 
 that of St. Paul, who, when the Jews opposed themselves 
 and blasphemed, shook his raiment." (Morier.) " Our 
 Tchochodar Ibrahim, at sight of "this people, immediately 
 grasped his carbine, and shaking the hem of his pelisse, 
 made signs to us to be upon our guard." (Clarke.) This 
 is a sign of caution universal among the Turks. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 19. And he came to Ephesus, and left them 
 there: but he himself entered into the sjma- 
 gogue, and reasoned with the Jews. 
 
 Ephesus was a celebrated city on the western coast of 
 Asia Minor, situated between Smyrna and Miletus, on the 
 sides and at the foot of a range of mountains which over- 
 looked a fine plain, watered and fertilized by the river Cays- 
 ter. Among other splendid edifices which adorned this 
 metropolis of Ionia was the magnificent temple of Diana, 
 which was two hundred and twenty years in building, and 
 was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world. This 
 edifice having been burnt by the incendiary Herostratus, 
 B. C. 356, in the foolish hope of immortalizing his name, it 
 was afterward rebuilt with increased splendour at the com- 
 mon expense of the Grecian states of Asia Minor. The 
 remains of ancient Ephesus have been discovered by learn- 
 ed modern travellers at the Turkish village of Ayasaluk. 
 The ruins delineated in our engraving comprise ail that is 
 supposed now to exist of this far-famed structure, which in 
 the time of St. Paul had lost nothing of its magnificence. 
 Here was preserved a wooden statue of Diana, Avhich the 
 credulous Ephesians were taught to believe had fallen from 
 heaven, (Acts xix. 35,) and of this temple small silver mod- 
 
Chap. 19,20. 
 
 THE ACTS. 
 
 621 
 
 els were made, and sold to devotees. (Acts. xix. 24.) Nero 
 is said to have plundered this temple of many votive images 
 and great sums of gold and silver. This edifice appears 
 to have remained entire in the second century ; though the 
 worship of Diana diminished and sunk into insignificance, 
 in proportion to the extension of Christianity. At a later 
 period " the temple of the great goddess Diana, whom Asia 
 and all the world" worshipped, (Acts xix. 27,) was again 
 destroyed by the Goths and other barbarians ; and time has 
 so completed the havoc made by the hand of man, that this 
 mighty fabric has almost entirely disappeared. 
 
 During three years' residence in this city, (Acts xx. 31,) 
 the great apostle of the Gentiles was enabled, with divine 
 assistance, to establish the faith of Christ, and to found a 
 flourishing Christian church. Of his great care of the 
 Ephesian community strong proof is extant in the aflfect- 
 ing charge which he gave to the elders, whom he had con- 
 vened at Miletus on his return from Macedonia, (Acts xx. 
 16—38;) and still more in the epistle which he addressed to 
 them from Rome. Ecclesiastical history represents Tim- 
 othy to have been the first bishop of Ephesus, but there is 
 greater evidence that the apostle John resided here to- 
 wards the close of his life : here, also, he is supposed to 
 have written his Gospel, and to have finally ended his life. 
 Besides the ruins which are delineated in our engraving, 
 widely scattered and noble remains attest the splendour of 
 the theatre mentioned in Acts xix. 31, the elevated situation 
 of which on Mount Prion accounts for the ease with which 
 an immense multitude was collected, the loud shouts of 
 whose voices, being reverberated from Mount Corrissus, 
 would not a little augment the uproar caused by the popu- 
 lace rushing into the theatre. 
 
 The Ephesian church is the first of the "apocalyptic 
 churches" addressed by the apostle John in the name of Je- 
 sus Christ. " His charge against her is declension in re- 
 ligious fervour, (Rev. ii. 4;) and his threat, in consequence, 
 (ii. 5,) is a total extinction of her ecclesiastical brightness. 
 After a protracted struggle with the sword of Rome and 
 •the sophisms of the Gnostics, Ephesus at last gave way. 
 The incipient indifference, censured by the warning voice 
 of the prophet, increased to a total forgetfulness ; till at 
 length the threatenings of the Apocalypse were fulfilled ; 
 and'Ephesas sunk with the general overthrow of the Greek 
 empire, in the fourteenth century." The plough has pass- 
 ed over this once celebrated city : and in March, 1826, M'hen 
 it was visited by the Rev. Messrs. Arundell and Hartley, 
 green corn was growing in all directions amid the forsaken 
 ruins : and one solitary individual only was found, who 
 bore the name of Christ, instead of its once flourishing 
 church. Where assembled thousands once exclaimed, 
 " Great is Diana of the Ephesians !" the eagle now yells, 
 and the jackal moans. The sea having retired from the 
 scene of desolation, a pestilential morass, covered with mr^id 
 and rushes, has succeeded to the waters, which brought up 
 the ships laden with merchandise from every country. The 
 surrounding country, however, is both fertile and healthy : 
 and the adjacent hills would furnish many delightful situa- 
 tions for villages, if the difficulties were removed which 
 are thrown in the way of the industrious cultivator by a 
 despotic government, oppressive agas, and wandering ban- 
 ditti. — HORNE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Ver. 11. And God wrought special miracles by 
 the hands of Paul : 12. So that from his body- 
 were brouofht unto the sick handkerchiefs or 
 aprons, Ind the diseases departed from them, 
 and the evil spirits went out of them. 
 
 At a short distance, near the road-side, we saw the burial- 
 place of a Persian saint, enclosed by very rude walls. 
 Close to it grew a small bush, upon the branches of which 
 were tied a variety of rags and remnants of garments. The 
 Persians conceive that these rags, from their vicinity to 
 the saint, acquire peculiar preservative virtues against 
 sickness ; and substituting others, they take bits away, and 
 tying them about their persons, use them as talismans. 
 May not this custom have some distant reference to Acts 
 
 xix. 11, 121 — MORIER. 
 
 Ver. 28. And when they heard these sayings, 
 
 they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, 
 Great is Diana of the Ephesians. 
 
 The temple of Diana, at Ephesus, always has been ad- 
 mired as one of the noblest pieces of architecture that the 
 world has ever produced. It was four hundred and twenty- 
 five Roman feet long, two hundred and tAventy broad, and 
 supported by one hundred and twenty-seven columns of 
 marble, sixty, or as some say, seventy feet high, twenty- 
 seven of which were beautifullv carved. This temple, 
 which was at least two hundred years in building, was 
 burnt by one Herostratus, with no other view than to per- 
 petuate his memory : however, it was rebuilt, and the last 
 temple was not inferior, either in riches or beauty, to the 
 former; being adorned by the works of the most famous 
 statuaries of Greece. This latter temple was, according to 
 Trebellius, plundered and burnt by the Scythians, when 
 they broke into Asia Minor, in the reign' of Gallienus, 
 about the middle of the third century. The cry of the 
 Ephesian populace Avas a usual form of praise among the 
 Gentiles, -when they magnified their gods, for their benefi- 
 cent and illustrious deeds. In Arislides, a similar passage 
 occurs : " There was a great cry, both of those who were 
 present, and of those who were coming, shouting in that 
 well-known form of praise, Great is ^sculapius." (Sii 
 R. K. Porter.) — Border. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Ver. 7. And upon the first day of the week, when 
 the disciples came together to break bread, 
 Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on 
 the morrow; and continued his speech until 
 midnight. 
 
 Bishop Pearce, in his note on this passage, says, ^' In the 
 Jewish way of speaking, to break bread is the same as to 
 make a meal : and the meal here meant seems to have been 
 one of those which was called arairai, love-feasts. Such of 
 the heathen as were converted to Christianity were obliged 
 to abstain from meats offered to idols, and these were the 
 main support of the poor in the heathen cities. The Chris- 
 tians therefcrre, who were rich, seem very early to have 
 begun the custom of those arairai, love-feasts, which they 
 made on every first day of the week, chiefly for the benefit 
 of the poorer Christians, who, by being such, had lost the 
 benefit, which they used to have'for their support, of eating 
 part of the heathen sacrifices. It was towards the latter 
 end of these feasts, or immediately after them, that the 
 Christians used to take bread and wine in remembrance of 
 Jesus Christ, which, from what attended it, was called the 
 eucharist, or holy communion. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 9. And there sat in a window a certain 
 young man named Eutychus, being fallen into 
 a deep sleep ; and, as Paul was long preach- 
 ing, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down 
 from the third loft, and was taken up dead. 
 
 Chardin informs us, that the eastern windows are very 
 large, and even with the floor. It is no wonder Eutychus 
 might fall out if the lattice was not well fastened, or if it 
 was decayed, when, sunk into a deep sleep, he leaned with 
 all his weight against it. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 17. And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, 
 and called the elders of the church. 
 
 The present state of this city is thus given by Dr. Chan- 
 dler : " Miletus is a very mean place, but still is called Palat, 
 or Palatia, the palaces! The principal relic of its former 
 magnificence is a ruined theatre, which is visible afar ofl^, 
 and was a most capacious edifice, measuring 457 feet long. 
 The external face of this vast fabric is marble. On the 
 side of the theatre next the river, is an inscription, in mean 
 characters, rudely cut, in which the city Miletus is men- 
 tioned seven times. This is a monument of heretical 
 Christianity. One Basilides, who lived in the second 
 century, was the founder of an absurd sect, called Basili- 
 dians and Gnostics, the original proprietors of the many 
 gems, with strange devices and inscriptions, intended to 
 
622 
 
 THE ACTS. 
 
 Chap. 21, 2^ 
 
 be worn as amulets or charms, with which the cabinet of 
 the curious now abound. One of the idle tenets was, that 
 the appellative Jehovah possessed signal virtue and effica- 
 cy. They expressed it by the seven Greek vowels, which 
 they transposed into a variety of combinations. This sti- 
 
 Serstition appears to have prevailed in no small degree at 
 liletus. In this remain the mysterious name is frequent- 
 ly repeated, and the deity six times invoked : Holy Jeho- 
 vah, preserve the town oi' the Milesians, and all the inhab- 
 itants ! The archangels, also, are summoned to be their 
 guardians, and the whole city is made the author of these 
 supplications; from which, thus engraved, it expected, as 
 may be presumed, to derive lasting prosperity, and a kind 
 of talismanical protection. The whole site of the town, to 
 a great extent, is spread with rubbish, and overrun with 
 thickets. The vestiges of the heathen city are pieces of 
 wall, broken arches, and a few scattered pedestals and in- 
 scriptions, a square marble urn, and many wells. One of 
 the pedestals has belonged to a statue of the Emperor Ha- 
 drian, who was a friend to the Milesians, as appears from 
 the titles of saviour and benefactor given him. Another 
 supported the statute of the Emperor Severus, and has a 
 long inscription, with this curious preamble: ' The senate 
 and people of the city of the Milesians, the first settled in 
 Ionia, and the mother of many and 'great cities, both in 
 Pontus and Egypt, and various other parts of the world.' 
 From the number of forsaken mosques, it is evident that 
 Mohammedanism has flourished in its turn at Miletus. 
 The history of this place, after the declension of the Greek 
 empire, is very imperfect. The whole region has under- 
 gone frequent ravages from the Turks, while possessed of 
 the interior country, and intent on extending their conquests 
 westward to the shore. One sultan, in 1175, sent twenty 
 thousand men, with orders to lay waste the Roman provin- 
 ces, and bring him sea-water, sand, and an oar. All the 
 cities on the Meander, and on the coast, were then ruin- 
 ed ; Miletus was again destroyed towards the end of the 
 ihirtecnth century, by the conquering Othman." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 1 1, And when he was come unto us, he took 
 Paul's girdle, and bound his own hands and 
 feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So 
 shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that 
 owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into 
 the hands of the Gentiles. 
 
 This was significant of what was to occur to the apostle. 
 Does a person wish to dissuade another from some project, 
 he acts in such a way as to show what will be the nature of 
 the difficulties or dangers. Thus, should he doubt his per- 
 sonal safety or fear disgrace, he puts off" his sandals, to inti- 
 mate he will die or be beaten with them. Or he takes oflT 
 his turban, unfolds it, and ties it around his neck, or gropes 
 as if in the dark, to intimate the difficulty. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 2 1 . And they are informed of thee, that thou 
 teachest all the Jews which are among the Gen- 
 tiles to forsake Moses, saying, that they ought 
 not to circumcise ^Aeir children, neither to walk 
 after the customs. 
 
 In every part of the world man is too often the slave of 
 custom ; but in all the old countries of the East, where in- 
 novations have not been made, the people are most tena- 
 ciously wedded to their customs. Ask, Why do y ou act thus 1 
 the reply is, " It is a custom.''^ Their implements of agri- 
 culture, their modes of sowing and reaping, their houses, 
 their furniture, their domestic utensils, their vehicles, their 
 vessels in which they put to sea, their modes of living, and 
 .heir treatment of the various diseases, are all regulated 
 by the customs of their fathers. Offer them better imple- 
 ments, ^nd better plans for their proceedings, they reply, 
 " We cannot leave our customs .- your plans are good for 
 yourselves, ours are good for ourselves : we cannot alter." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 40. And when he had given him license, 
 Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the 
 
 hand unto the people. And when there was 
 made a great silence, he spake unto them inthQ 
 Hebrew tongue. 
 
 The object of Paul in beckoning with his hand was to 
 obtain silence. See that man who has to address a crowd, 
 and who wishes for silence, he does not begin to bawl 
 out. Silence, that would be an affront to them; he lifts up 
 his hand to its extreme height, and begins to beckon with 
 it, i. e. to move it backward and forward; and then the 
 people say to each other, "pasdthe, pasdthe" i. e. be silen^ 
 be silent. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Ver. 3. I am, verily, a man which am a Jew, 
 born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought 
 up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and 
 taught according to the perfect manner of the 
 law of the fathers, and was zealous towards God, 
 as ye aJJ are this day. 
 
 This form of expression is only used in reference to 
 great saints or great teachers. " He had his holiness at 
 the feet of the gooroo, or his learning at the feet of the 
 philosopher." — Roberts. 
 
 With respect to the schools among the Jews it should be 
 observed, that, besides the common schools in which chil- 
 dren were taught to read the law, they had also academies, 
 in which their doctors gave comments on the law, and 
 taught the traditions to their pupils. Of this sort were the 
 two famous schools of Hillel and Sammai, and the school 
 of Gamaliel, who was St. Paul's tutor. In these seminaries 
 the tutor's chair is said to have been so much raised above 
 the level of the floor, on which the pupils sat, that his feet 
 were even with their heads. Hence St. Paul says, that he 
 was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. — Burder. 
 
 Ver, 22. And they gave him audience unto this 
 word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, 
 Away with such a fellow from the earth ; for 
 it is not fit that he should live. 23. And as they 
 cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw 
 dust into the air, 24. The chief captain com- 
 manded him to be brought into the castle, and 
 bade that he should be examined by scourging ; 
 that he might know wherefore they cried so 
 against him. 
 
 A great similarity appears between the conduct of the 
 Jews on this occasion, and the behaviour of the peasants in 
 Persia, when they go to court to complain of the governors, 
 whose oppressions they can no longer endure. " They 
 carry their complaints against their governors by com- 
 panies, consisting of several hundreds, and sometimes of a 
 thousand ; they repair to that gate of the palace nearest to 
 which their prince is most likely to be, where they set 
 themselves to make the most horrid cries, tearing their 
 garments, and throwing dust into the air, at the same time 
 demanding justice. The king, upon hearing these cries, 
 sends to know the occasion of them : the people deliver 
 their complaints in writing, upon which he lets them know 
 that he will commit the cognizance of the affair to such a 
 one as he names ; in consequence of this, iustice is usually 
 obtained." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. And as they bound him with thongs, 
 Paul said imto the centurion that stood by, Is 
 it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a 
 Roman, and uncondemned ? 
 
 Scourging was a very common punishment among the 
 Jews. It was inflicted in two ways ; with thongs or whips 
 made of ropes or straps of leather ; or with rods, twigs, or 
 branches of some tree. The oflTender was stripped from 
 his shoulders to his middle, and tied by his arms to a low 
 pillar, that his back might be more fully exposed to thfc 
 lash of the execulioner, who stood behind him upon a stone, 
 
CiiAP. 23-^28. 
 
 THE ACTS, 
 
 6f23 
 
 to, have more power over him, and scourged him both on 
 the back and breast, in open court, before the face of his 
 judges. Among the Arabians, the prisoner is placed up- 
 right on the ground, with his hands and feet bound to- 
 gether, while the executioner stands before him, and with a 
 short stick strikes him with a smart motion on the outside 
 of his knees. The pain which these strokes produce is 
 exquisitely severe, and which no constitution can support 
 for any length of time. The Romans often inflicted the 
 punishment of the scourge ; the instruments employed were 
 sticks or staves, rods, and whips or lashes. The first were 
 almost peculiar to the camp ; the last were reserved for 
 slaves, while rods were applied to citizens, till they were 
 removed by the Porcian law. — Paxton, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Ver. 2. And the high-priest Ananias commanded 
 them that stood by him, to smite him on the 
 mouth. 
 
 The Persians smote the criminals who attempted to speak 
 in their own defence with a shoe, the heel or which was 
 shod with iron ; which is quite characteristic of the eastern 
 manners, as described in the sacred volume. The shoe was 
 also considered as vile, and never allowed to enter sacred 
 or respected places ; and to be smitten with it is to be sub- 
 jected to the last ignominy. Paul was smitten on the 
 mouth by the orders of Ananias : and the warmth with 
 which the apostle resented the injury, shows his deep sense 
 of the dishonour: " Then said Paul unto him, God shall 
 smite thee, thou whited wall : for sirtest thou to judge me 
 after the law, and coramandest me to be smitten contrary to 
 law V — Paxton. 
 
 " Call the Ferashes," exclaimed the king, " and beat these 
 rogues till they die." The Ferashes came, and beat them 
 violently ; and when they attempted to say any thing in 
 their own defence, they smote tnem on the mouth with a 
 shoe, the heel of which was shod with iron. (Morier.) 
 The shoe was always considered as vile, and never allow- 
 ed to enter sacred or respected places ; and to be smitten 
 with it, is to be subjected to the last ignominy. " As soon 
 as the ambassador came in, he punished the principal of- 
 fenders by causing, them to be beaten before him ; and those 
 who had spoken their minds a little too unreservedly, he 
 smote upon the mouth with a shoe, which in their idiom 
 Uiey call kufsh khorden, eating shoe." " By far the great- 
 est of all indignities, and the most insupportable, is to be 
 hit with a shoe, or one of the pandoufles, which the Hin- 
 doos commonly wear on their feet. To receive a kick 
 from any foot, with a slipper on it, is an injury of so un- 
 pardonable a nature, that a man would suffer exclusion 
 from his caste who could submit to it without receiving 
 some adequate satisfaction. Even to threaten one with the 
 stroke of a slipper is held to be criminal, and to call for 
 animadversion." (Dubois' Description of the People of 
 India.) — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Ver. 40. And when they had taken up the anchors, 
 they committed themselves unto the sea, and 
 loosed the rudder-bands, and hoisted up the 
 mainsail to the wind, and made towards shore. 
 
 Bishop Pococke, in his travels, has explained very partic- 
 ularly the rudder-bands mentioned by St. Luke, Acts xxvii. 
 40, and my plan excludes that accoimt from these papers ; 
 but Sir John Chardin has mentioned some other things re- 
 lating to this ship of St. Paul, which ought not to be omitted. 
 
 First, the eastern people, he tells us, " are wont to leave 
 their skiffs in the sea, fastened to the stern of their vessels." 
 The skiff of this Egyptian ship was towed along, it seems, 
 after the same manner, v. 16, We had much work to come by 
 the boat. 
 
 Secondly, They never, according to him, hoist it into the 
 vessel, it always remains in the water, fastened to the ship. 
 He therefore must suppose the taking it up, vv apavrss, men- 
 tioned ver. 17, does not mean hoisting it up into the vessel, 
 as several interpreters have imagined, but drawing it up 
 i close to the stern of the ship; and the word ■xa'XaaavTMv, 
 which we translate, in the thirteenth verse, letting doysninio 
 
 the sea, must mean letting it go farther from the ship into 
 the sea. 
 
 Thirdly, He supposes this ship was like " a large modern 
 Egyptian saique, of three hundred and twenty tons, and 
 capable of carrying from twenty-four to thirty guns." 
 
 Fourthly, These saiques, he tells us, " always carry their 
 anchors at the stern, and never their prow,"' contrarily to 
 our managements ; the anchors of St. Paul's ship were, in 
 like manner, cast out of the stern, ver. 29. 
 
 Fifthly, They carry their anchors at some distance from 
 the ship, " by means of the skiff, in such a manner as al- 
 ways to have one anchor on one side, and the other on the 
 other side, so that the vessel may be between them, lest the 
 cables should be entangled with each other." To St. Paul's 
 ship there were four anchors, two on each side. 
 
 AH these several particulars are contained, though not 
 distinctly proposed, in his remarks on the vessel in which 
 St. Paul was shipwrecked : the curious will probably con- 
 sider them. If the mode of navigating eastern ships had 
 been attended to, it is possible the jocular and lively re- 
 marks of some indevout sailors, bordering on profaneness, 
 would never have been made upon this part of the narra- 
 tion of St. Luke ; and some clauses would have been differ- 
 ently translated from what we find them in our version. — 
 Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Ver. 3. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of 
 sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a 
 viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. 
 4. And when the barbarians saw the venomous 
 beast hang on his hand, they said among them- 
 selves, No doubt this man is a murderer, 
 whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet 
 vengeance sufFereth not to live. 5. And he 
 shook ofTthe beast into the fire, and felt no harm. 
 6. Howbeit, they looked when he should hav« 
 swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly : but af- 
 ter they had looked a great while, and saw no 
 harm come to him, they changed their minds, 
 and said that he was a god. 
 
 The certain and speedy destruction which follows the 
 bite of this creature, clearly proves the seasonable inter- 
 position of Almighty power for the preservation of the 
 apostle Paul. Exasperated by the heat of the fire, the 
 deadly reptile,<leaping from the bushwood where it had 
 concealed itself, fixed the canine teeth, which convey the 
 poison into the wound which they had made, in his hand. 
 Death must have been the consequence, had not the power 
 of his God, which long before shut the lions' mouths, that 
 they might not hurt the prophet, neutralized the viper's 
 deadly poison, and miraculously preserved the valuable 
 life of his servant. The supernatural agency of God is 
 clearly taught in these words of the historian : " He shook 
 off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm ;" for he who 
 had been wounded by a viper, could not be said to have 
 been exempt from all harm. The disposition of the en- 
 raged reptile to take its full revenge, is intimated by the 
 word KaQanrciv, to fasten and twine itself about the hand of 
 Paul. Some interpreters render the term to seize upon, 
 others to hang from the hand, and others to bite ; but ac- 
 cording to Bochart, it properly signifies to bind or intwine, 
 a sense which seems entitled to the preference ; for, when 
 a serpent fastens on its prey, it endeavours uniformly to 
 strangle the victim by winding round its body. The viper 
 on this memorable occasion exhibited every symptom of 
 rage, and put forth all its powers ; the deliverance of Paul, 
 therefore, was not accidental, nor the effect of his own ex- 
 ertion, but of the mighty power of that Master whom he 
 served, whose voice even the deadly viper is compelled to 
 obey. This conclusion was in effect drawn by the barba^ 
 rians themselves ; for when " they had looked a great 
 while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their 
 minds, and said that he was a god :" they did not hesitate to 
 attribute his preservation to divine power ; they only mis- 
 took his real character, not the true nature of that agency 
 which was able to render the bite of the viper harmless. 
 
 This was to them a singular and most unexpected iccur- 
 
624 
 
 ROMANS. 
 
 Chap. 3— IS 
 
 rence, for they looked when he should have swollen and 
 fallen down dead suddenly. We are informed by natural 
 historians, that under the action of this dreadful poison, the 
 whole body swells to an extraordinary size, and in about 
 seven hours death relieves the hopeless and agonized 
 sufferer from his torments. These barbarians, it would 
 seem, had been taught by their own experience, or the tes- 
 timony of others, that the poison of this creature proves 
 fatal in a much shorter time, for they waited some time in 
 die confident expectation of seeing Paul suddenly expire. 
 
 They knew, perhaps, what has been fully ascertained, that 
 the bite of this animal is more pernicious, according to the 
 place of its abode, the aliment on which it feeds, its age, the 
 heat of the season when the wound is inflicted, and the de- 
 gree of provocation it has received. On this occasion, it 
 must have been exceedingly provoked; and the high state 
 of excitement in which the Melitese saw it fastened upon 
 the hand of the stranger, was, perhaps, the true and the 
 only reason which induced them to believe the poison 
 would produce a sudden effect. — Paxton. 
 
 ROMANS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 13. Their throat wan open sepulchre; with 
 their tongues they have used deceit ; the poison 
 of asps is under their lips. 
 
 Of a deceitful man, of one who speaks in smooth language, 
 it is said, " Ah ! at the tip of his tongue is ambrosia, but 
 under it is poison." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Ver. 24. O wretched man that I am ! who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this death ? 
 
 " Wretched man that I am !" " Do I often cry out, in such 
 a circumstance, with no better supports and incitements 
 than the law can give, * Who shall rescue me, miserable 
 captive as I am, from the body of this •death'?' from this 
 continual burden which I carry about with me ; and which 
 is cumbersome and odious as a dead carcass tied to a living 
 body, to be dragged along with it wherever it goes 1" Thus 
 are the words paraphrased by Dr. Doddrige, to which he 
 subjoins this note : " It is well known that some ancient 
 writers mention this as a cruelty practised by some tyrants 
 on miserable captives who fell into their hands ; and a more 
 forcible and expressive image of the case represented can- 
 not surely enter into the mind of man." That such a cru- 
 elty was once practised is certain from Virgil : 
 
 " Quid memorem infandas csedes 1 quid facta lyranni !" &c. 
 
 " Why should I mention his unutterable barbarities 1 Or, 
 why the tyrant's horrid deeds 1 May the gods recompense 
 them on his own head and on his race. Nay, he even 
 bound to the living the bodies of the dead, joining together 
 hands to hands, and face to face, a horrid kind of torture : 
 and them, pining away with gore and putrefaction in this 
 loathed embrace, he thus destroyed with lingering death." 
 
 — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 24. For if thou wert cut out of the olive- 
 tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted 
 contrary to nature into a good olive-tree ; how 
 much more shall these, which be the natural 
 branches, be grafted into their own olive-tree. 
 
 This practice is so far contrary to nature, that it is not usual 
 for a branch of a wild olive-tree to be grafted in a good olive- 
 tree, though a branch of the good is frequently grafted into 
 the wild. Pliny says this latter was frequently practised in 
 Africa. And Kolben tells us, that " long ago, some garden 
 olive slips were carried to the Cape from Holland, and graft- 
 ed on the stocks of the wild olives at Constantia, a seat so call- 
 ed in the Capian colony." Theophrastus takes notice of both 
 the abovementioned modes of graftiny olives. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 13. Distributing to the necessity of saints; 
 given to hospitality. 
 
 Hospitality has always been highly esteemed by civilized 
 nations. It has been exercised from the earliest ages of the 
 world. The Old Testament affords numerous instances of 
 its being practised in the most free and liberal manner. In 
 the New Testament it is also recommended and enforced. 
 The primitive Christians were so ready in the discharge of 
 this duty, that even the heathens admired them for it. Hos- 
 pitable as they were to all strangers, they were particularly 
 so to those who were of their own faith and communion. 
 In Homer and the ancient Greek writers, we see what 
 respect they had for their guests. From these instances we 
 turn with satisfaction to view the kind and friendly dispo- 
 sition of less polished people. Modern travellers often 
 mention the pleasing reception they met with from those 
 among whom they made a temporary residence. Volney, 
 speaking of the t)ruzes, says, " whoever presents himself 
 at their door in the quality of a suppliant or passenger, is 
 sure of being entertained with lodging and food in the most 
 generous and unaffected manner. I have often seen the 
 lowest peasants give the last morsel of bread they had in 
 their houses to the hungry traveller. When they have 
 once contracted with their guest the sacred engagement of 
 bread and salt, no subsequent event can make them violate 
 it." '* An engagement with a stranger is sometimes accept- 
 ed as an excuse for not obeying the summons of a great 
 man, when no other apology, hardly even that of indisposi- 
 tion, would be admitted." "(Russei) 
 
 The Hindoos extend their hospitality sometimes to ene- 
 mies, saying, " the tree does not withdraw its shade even 
 from the wood-cutter." — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 4. For he is the minister of God to thee for 
 good. But if thou do that which is evil, be 
 afraid ; for he beareth not the sword in vain : 
 for he is the minister of God, a revenger to 
 execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 
 
 This is spoken agreeably to the notions and customs of 
 the Romans at the time when the apostle wrote. Thu8 
 Suetonius says, (in Vitell. cap. 15,) that Vitellius gave up 
 his dagger, which he had taken from his side, to the attend- 
 ing consul, thus surrendering the authority of life and death 
 over the citizens. So the kings of Great Britain are not 
 only at their inauguration solemnly girt with the sword of 
 state, but this is afterward carried before them on public 
 occasions, as a sword is likewise before some inferior ma- 
 gistrates among us. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 14. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 
Chap. 1—9. 
 
 1 CORINTHIANS. 
 
 625 
 
 and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil 
 the lusts thereof. 
 
 " To be clothed with a person" is a Greek phrase, signi- 
 fying to assume the interests of another, to enter into his 
 views, to imitate him, to be wholly on his side. Chrysostom 
 particularly mentions this as a common expression, O Seiva 
 Tov Seiva sveSvcraTo, Such a one hath put on siich a one. So 
 Dionysius Halicarnassus, speaking of Appius and the rest 
 
 of the decemviri, says, ovketi nerpia^ovTes aX\a tov TapKVviov 
 
 cKeivov evSvofjievoi — Theij were no longer the servants of Tar- 
 quin, but they clothed themselves with him. Eusebius, in his 
 Life of Constantine, says of his sons, they put on their 
 father. The mode of speech is taken from stage-players, 
 who assume the name and garments of the person whose 
 character they represent. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Ver. 2. For one believeth that he may eat all 
 things ; another, who is weak, eateth herbs. 
 
 Thousands of Hindoos never (to their knowledge) taste 
 of any thing >yhich has had animal life ; and to eat an egg 
 would be as repugnant to their feelings as to eat flesh, be- 
 cause it contains the germ of life. They live on herbs, 
 
 roots, fruit, grain, milk, butter, and honey. They appear 
 to be as strong and as healthy as those who live on flesh, 
 and they avoid the " sin" of taking life. They believe that 
 all who take life for the purpose of food will assuredly go 
 to one of the seven hells. It has a distressing effect on their 
 minds to show them, through a microscope, the animalcules 
 which exist in the water they drink : for they are convinced 
 by this they must often destroy life. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 16. Salute one another with a holy kiss. 
 The churches of Christ salute you. 
 
 Saluting one another on the face, in token of respect and 
 friendship, was an ancient and common custom among 
 both Jews and Gentiles ; and was continued for some time 
 among the primitive Christians in their religious assemblies, 
 and particularly at the end of their prayers, before the cele- 
 bration of the Lord's Supper, to testify their mutual love. 
 It was therefore called the holy kiss, to distinguish it from 
 that which was merely of the civil kind. By this symbol 
 they showed that Christians, as such, were equal ; because, 
 among the Persians and other eastern nations, equals kiss- 
 ed each other on the cheek, but inferiors kissed only the 
 hand of a superior. — Burder. 
 
 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO 
 
 THE CORINTHIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 28. And base things of the world, and thmgs 
 which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and 
 things which are not, to bring to naught things 
 that are. 
 
 " All things which are not." The venerable Mr. Wes- 
 ley says, " The Jews frequently called the Gentiles * them 
 that are not,' in such supreme contempt did they hold them." 
 When a man of rank among the Hindoos speaks of low- 
 caste persons, of notorious profligates, or of those whom he 
 despises, he calls them alld-tha-varkul, i. e. those who are not. 
 The term does not refer to life or existence, but to a quality 
 or disposition, and is applied to those who are vile and 
 abominable in all things. " My son, my son, go not among 
 them who are not." " Alas ! alas ! those people are all alld- 
 tha-varkul." When wicked men prosper, it is said, " This 
 is the time for those who are not." " Have you heard that 
 those who are not are now acting righteously 1" Vulgar 
 and indecent expressions are also called " words that are 
 not." To address men in the phrase " are not," is provo- 
 king beyond measure ; their eyes will soon brighten, and 
 their tongue and hands begin to move at the individual who 
 thus insults them. The Lord did select the " base things 
 of the world, and things which are despised hath God 
 chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught 
 hings that are." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 9. For I think that God hath set forth us 
 the apostles last, as it were appointed to death : 
 for we are made a spectacle unto the world, 
 and to angels, and to men. 
 
 In t'ae word etrxarovi, last, which the apostle here uses, 
 there is a reference to the Roman custom of bringing forth 
 79 
 
 those persons on the theatre in the after part of the day, to 
 fight either with each other, or with wild beasts, who were 
 appointed to certain death, and had not that poor chance of 
 escaping which those brought forth in the morning had. 
 Such kind of spectacles were so common in all the prov- 
 inces, that it is no wonder we should find such an allusion 
 here. The words antkiiev, exhibited, and Qtarpov, a spectacle 
 on the theatre, have in this connexion a beautiful propriety. 
 The whole passage is indeed full of high eloquence, and 
 finely adapted to move their compassion in favour of those 
 who were so generously expiring, and sacrificing them- 
 selves for the public good. — Doddridge. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 6. Your glorying is not good, 
 not, that a little leaven leaveneth 
 lump? 
 
 Kiiow ye 
 the whole 
 
 This is said of the man who corrupts others ; also of a 
 bad servant; "the more sour the leaven, the better the 
 bread." When a mother has to administer nauseous medi- 
 cine, she says, " My child, take it ; do you not know the 
 more sour the leaven, the better the bread 7" Meaning, 
 because the potion or powder is offensive, it will produce 
 better effects. — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ver. 7. Who goeth a warfare at any time at his 
 own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and 
 eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth 
 a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? 
 
 The wages of the shepherds in the East do not consist of 
 ready money, but in a part of the milk of the flocks which 
 they tend. Thus Spon says of the shepherds in modern 
 Greece, " These shepherds are poor Albanians, who feed 
 
626 
 
 1 CORINTHIANS. 
 
 Chap. 9. 
 
 the cattle, and live in huts built of rushes ; they have a tenth 
 part of the milk, and of the lambs, which is their whole 
 wages : the cattle belong to the Turks." The shepherds 
 in Ethiopia, also, according to Alvares, have no pay except 
 the milk and butter which they obtain from the cows, and 
 on which they and their families subsist. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 24. Know ye not, that they which run in a 
 race, run all, but one receiveth the prize? So 
 • run, that ye may obtain. 
 
 Games and combats were instituted by the ancients in 
 honour of their gods ; and were celebrated with that view 
 by the most polished and enlightened nations of antiquity. 
 The most renowned heroes, legislators, and statesmen, 
 did not think it unbecoming their character and dignity 
 to mingle with the combatants, or contend in the race; 
 they even reckoned it glorious to share in the exercises, 
 and meritorious to carry away the prize. The victors 
 were crowned with a wreath of laurel in presence of their 
 country ; they were celebrated in the rapturous effusions 
 of their poets ; they were admired, and almost adored by 
 the innumerable multitudes which flocked to the games 
 from every part of Greece, and many of the adjacent coun- 
 tries. They returned to their own homes in a triumphal 
 chariot, and made their entrance into their native city, not 
 through the gates which admitted the vulgar throng, but 
 through a breach in the walls, which were broken down 
 to give them admission ; and at the same time to express 
 the persuasion of their fellow-citizens, that walls are of 
 small use to a city defended by men of such tried courage 
 and ability. Hence the surprising ardour which animated 
 all the states of Greece to imitate the ancient heroes, and 
 encircle their brows with wreaths, which rendered them 
 still more the objects of admiration or envy to succeeding 
 times, than the victories they had gained, or the laws they 
 had enacted. But the institutors of those games and com- 
 bats had higher and nobler objects in view than venera- 
 tion for the mighty dead, or the gratification of ambition 
 or vanity; it was their design to prepare the youth for the 
 profession of arms ; to confirm their health ; to improve 
 their strength, their vigour, and activity ; to inure them to 
 fatigue; and to render them intrepid in close fight, where, 
 in the infancy of the art of war, muscular force commonly 
 decided the victory. 
 
 This statement accounts for the striking allusions which 
 the apostle Paul makes in his epistles to these celebrated 
 exercises. Such references were calculated to touch the 
 heart of a Greek, and of every one familiarly acquainted 
 with them, in the liveliest manner, as well as to place 
 before the eye of his mind the most glowing and correct 
 images of spiritual and divine things. No passages in 
 the nervous and eloquent epistles from the pen of Paul, 
 have been more admired by critics and. expositors, even 
 in modern times, than those into which some allusion to 
 ^these agonistic exercises is introduced; and, perhaps, none 
 are calculated to leave a deeper impression on the Chris- 
 tian's mind, or excite a stronger and more salutary influ- 
 ence on his actions,— Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 25. And every man that strivethfor the mas- 
 tery is temperate in all things. Now they do 
 it to obtain a corruptible crown ; but we an in- 
 corruptible. 
 
 The honours and rewards granted to the victors were 
 of several kinds. They were animated in their course by 
 the rapturous applauses of the countless multitudes that 
 lined the stadium, and waited the issue of the contest with 
 eager anxiety ; and their success was instantly followed 
 by reiterated and long-continued plaudits ; but these were 
 only ia prelude to the appointed rewards, which, though of 
 little value in themselves, were accounted the highest hon- 
 our to which a mortal could aspire. These consisted of 
 diflferent wreaths of wild olive, pine, parsley, or laurel, 
 according to the different places where the games were cel- 
 ebrated. After the judges had passed sentence, a public 
 herald proclaimed the name of the victor; one of the 
 judges put the crown upon his head, and a branch of palm 
 into his right hand, which he carried as a token of victo- 
 rious courage and perseverance. As he might be victor 
 
 more than once in the same games, and sometimes on the 
 same day, he might also receive several crowns and palms. 
 When the victor had received his reward, a herald, pre* 
 ceded by a trumpet, conducted him through the stadium, 
 and proclaimed aloud his name and country; while the 
 delighted multitudes, at the sight of him, redoubled their 
 acclamations and applauses. 
 
 The crown, in the Olympic games, was of wild olive ; 
 in the Pythian, of laurel ; in the Isthmian or Corinthian, 
 of pine-tree; and in the Nemsean, of smallage or parsley. 
 Now, most of these were evergreens ; yet they would soon 
 grow dry, and crumble into dust. Elsnor produces many 
 passages, in which the contenders in these exercises are 
 rallied by the Grecian wits, on account of the extraordi- 
 nary pains they took for such trifling rewards; and Plato 
 has a celebrated passage, which greatly resembles that of 
 the apostle, but by no means equals it in force and beauty : 
 " Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an 
 incorruptible." The Christian is called to fight the good 
 fight of faith, and to lay hold of eternal life ; and to this 
 he is more powerfully stimulated by considering that the 
 ancient athletge took all their care and pains only for the 
 sake of obtaining a garland of flowers, or a wreath of 
 laurel, which quickly fades and perishes, possesses little 
 intrinsic value, and only serves to nourish their pride and 
 vanity, without imparting, any solid advantage to them- 
 selves or others ; but that which is placed in the view of 
 the spiritual combatants, to animate their exertions, and 
 reward their labours, is no less than a crown of glory 
 which never decays: " a crown of infinite worth and dura- 
 tion ; an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fa- 
 deth not away, reserved in heaven for them." More than 
 conquerors through him that loved them, and washed from 
 their sins in his own blood ; they, too, carry palms in their 
 right hands, the appropriate emblems of victory, hardly 
 contested, and fairly won. " After this I beheld, and, lo, 
 a great multitude, which no man could number, of all na- 
 tions and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before 
 the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, 
 and palms in their hands." But the victory sometimes re- 
 mained doubtful, in consequence of which a number of 
 competitors appeared before the judges, and claimed the 
 prize ; and sometimes a combatant, by dishonourable man- 
 agement, endeavoured to gain the victory. The candi- 
 dates, who were rejected on such occasions by the judge 
 of the games, as not having fairly merited the prize, were 
 called by the Greeks a^oKijioi, or disapproved, and which 
 we render cast away, in a passage already quoted from 
 Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians : *' But I keep under 
 my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any 
 means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be 
 {a6oKmoi) a cast-away,^' rejected by the Judge of all the earth, 
 and disappointed of my expected crown. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 26. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so 
 fight I, not as one that beateth the air. 
 
 In order to attain the greater agility and dexterity, it 
 was usual for those who intended to box in the games, to 
 exercise their arms with the gauntlet on, when they had no 
 antagonist near them, and this was called aKiofia')(^ia, in 
 which a man v^^ould of course beat the air. In the foot- 
 race, the runners, of whatever number they were, ranged 
 themselves in a line, after having drawn lots for their 
 places. While they waited the signal to start, they prac- 
 tised, by way of prelude, various motions to awaken their 
 activity, and to keep their limbs pliable, and in a right 
 temper. They kept themselves breathing by small leaps, 
 and making little excursions, which were a kind of trial 
 of their speed and agility; in such exercises, they might 
 be said with great propriety to run micertainly, towards 
 no particular point, and with no direct or immediate view 
 to the prize. Both these allusions occur in the declara- 
 tion of the apostle: " I therefore so run, not as uncertain- 
 ly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." He did 
 not engage in his Christian course as one doubtful in him- 
 self whether, in pursuing the path of duty, he should have 
 the honour of being crowned at last or not ; as they are, 
 who know that one only receives the prize; nor did Ke 
 exercise himself unto godliness, like boxers or wrestlers, 
 who sometimes fight in jest, or merely to prepare for th« 
 combat, or to display their strength and agility, while they 
 
Ghap. 9—11. 
 
 1 CORINTHIANS 
 
 627 
 
 had no resistance to enconnter, no enemy to subdue, no 
 reward to merit ; but he pressed on, fully persuaded that, 
 by the grace of God, he should obtain an incorruptible 
 crown from the hands of his Redeemer. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 27. But I keep under my body, and bring it 
 into subjection : lest that by any means, when I 
 have preached to others, I myself should be a 
 cast-away. 
 
 See on ver. 25. 
 
 Like the Grecian combatants, the Christian must be 
 wellborn — born, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorrupt- 
 ible, by the word of the Lord, which liveth and abideth for 
 ever ;" he must be free — " a citizen with the saints, and of 
 the household of faith;" he must "abstain from fleshly 
 lusts," and " walk in all the statutes and commandments of 
 the Lord, blameless." Such was Paul; and in this man- 
 ne/he endeavpured to act: "But I keep under my body, 
 and bring it into subjection : lest that by any means, when 
 I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away." 
 The latter part of this verse Doddridge renders, " Lest after 
 having served as a herald, I should be disapproved ;" and 
 says in a note, " I thought it of importance to retain the 
 primitive sense of these gymnastic expressions." It is well 
 known to those who are at all acquainted with the original, 
 that the word Krip^ag, means to discharge the oflice of a 
 herald, whose business it was to proclaim the conditions of 
 the games, and display the prizes, to awaken the emulation 
 and resolution of tnose who were to contend in them. But 
 the apostle intimates, that there was this peculiar circum- 
 stance attending the Christian contest — that the person who 
 proclaimed its laws and rewards to others, was also to en- 
 gage himself; and that there would be a peculiar infamy 
 and misery in his miscarrying. AJoxi/kos, which we render 
 casl-awaij, ' signiries one who is disapproved by the judge of 
 the games, as not having fairly deserved the prize,— Pax- 
 ton. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 25. Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that 
 eat, asking no questions for conscience' sake : 
 28. But if any man say unto you, This is offer- 
 ed in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake 
 that showed it, and for conscience' sake : for 
 the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof 
 
 These verses refer to articles of food which had been 
 presented to the idols, and were afterward sent to the 
 shambles to be sold. The heathen make large presents to 
 the temples of grain, fruit, milk, and other eatables, and 
 therefore the priests send what they do not require to the 
 market to be sold. The fruit called plantain (banana) 
 may be known as having been offered to idols by having a 
 small piece pinched off one end ; and the other articles have 
 generally some sign by which they may be known. It is 
 however impossible at all times to ascertain the fact, and I 
 doubt not that most Englishmen have at one time or an- 
 other eaten things which have been offered to idols. 
 
 The apostle is very particular in his directions to the 
 Christian converts, (v. 27 :) " If any of them that believe 
 not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go, whatsoever 
 is set before you, eat, asking no questions for conscience' 
 sake." We see the converts were not forbidden to go to a 
 feast, ♦. c. a family, not a religious festival ; but the phrase, 
 " If ye be disposed to go," shows there were doubts and hes- 
 itations as to whether they ought to go. The moment 
 they found the food had been offered to idols they were to 
 •* eat 7iot" — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Ver. 5. But every woman that prayeth or prophe- 
 sieth with her head uncovered, dishonoureth 
 her head : for that is even all one as if she 
 were shaven. 
 
 It is still customary to this day in the East, when you 
 accidentally meet a woman in her house, that she instantly 
 covers herself up, and even runs away, and will not appear 
 before a man ; nay, even if a person lives among them as a 
 
 physician, and eventually has free access to their rooms, 
 he has yet great trouble to get a sight of their feces, unless 
 they have a defect there ; nay, he can scarcely ask it of 
 them, though in diseases much may be perceived and 
 judged of by the countenance. Now, as in these countries 
 modesty requires that women should cover themselves, 
 even when at home, before all men, and particularly be- 
 fore young people, it would have been extremely improper, 
 if, when speaking publicly in the congregation, they had 
 exposed themselves to everybody's view. — Rosenmuller. 
 
 Ver. 10. For this cause ought the woman to have 
 power on her head, because of the angels. 
 
 The head-dress of the women is simple : their hair is 
 drawn behind the head, and divided into several tresses : 
 the beauty of this head-dress consists in the thickness, and 
 in the length of these tresses, which should fall even down 
 to the heels, in default of which they lengthen them with 
 tresses of silk. The ends of these tresses they decorate 
 with pearls, and jewels, or ornaments of gold, or silver. 
 The head is covered under the veil, or kerchief, (couvre chef,) 
 only by the end of a small bandeau, shaped into a triangle . 
 this bandeau, which is of various colours, is thin and light. 
 The bandelette is embroidered by the needle, or covered 
 with jewellery, according to the quality of the wearer. 
 This is, in my opinion, the ancient tiara, or diadem, of the 
 queens of Persia ; only married women wear it ; and it is 
 the mark by which it is known that they are under subjec- 
 tion, {^c^est Id la marque a laquelle on reconnoit qu'elles sont 
 so^is PUISSANCE — fovjer.) The girls have little caps, instead 
 of this kerchief, or tiara ; they wear no veil at home, but 
 let two tresses of their hair fall under their cheeks. The 
 caps of girls of superior rank are tied with a row of pearls. 
 Girls are not shut up in Persia till they attain the age of 
 six or seven years ; before that age they go out of the se- 
 raglio, sometimes with their father, so that they may then 
 be seen. I have seen some wonderfully pretty. They 
 show the neck and bosom ; and more beautiful cannot be 
 seen. — Chardin. 
 
 The wearing of a veil by a married woman was a token 
 of her being under power. The Hebrew name of the veil 
 signifies dependence; great importance was attached to this 
 part of dress in the East. "All the women of Persia are 
 pleasantly apparelled ; when they are abroad in the streets, 
 all, both rich and poor, are covered with a great veil, or 
 sheet of very fine white cloth, of which one half, like a 
 forehead cloth, comes down to the eyes, and, going over 
 the head, reaches down to the heels, and the other half 
 muffles up the face below the eyes, and being fastened with 
 a pin to the left side of the head, falls down to their very 
 shoes, even covering their hands, with which they hold that 
 cloth by the two sides, so that, except the eyes, they are 
 covered all over with it. Within doors they have their 
 faces and breasts uncovered ; but the Armenian women, in 
 their houses, have always one half of their faces covered 
 with a cloth, that goes athwart their noses, and hangs over 
 their chins and breasts, except the maids of that nation, 
 who, within doors, cover only the chin, until they are mar- 
 ried." — Thevenot, 
 
 Ver. 14. Doth not even nature itself teach you, 
 
 that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto 
 
 him? 
 See on 1 Pet. 3. 3, 
 Ver. 15. But if a woman have long hair, it is a 
 
 glory to her : for her hair is given her for a 
 
 covering. 
 
 The eastern ladies are remarkable for the length, and 
 the great number of the tresses of their hair. The men 
 there, on the contrary, wear very little hair on their heads. 
 Lady M. W. Montague thus speaks concerning the hair 
 of the women : " Their hair hangs at full length behind, 
 divided into tresses, braided with pearl or nband, which 
 is always in great quantity. I never saw in my life so 
 many fine heads of hair. In one lady's I have counted one 
 hundred and ten of these tresses, all natural ; but it must be 
 owned that every kind of beauty is more common here 
 than with us." The men there, on the contrary, shave all 
 the hair ofi' their heads, excepting one lock; and those that 
 
628 
 
 I CORINTHIANS. 
 
 Chap. 14, 15. 
 
 wear hair are thought effeminate. Both these particulars are 
 mentioned bjj Chardin, who says, they are agreeable to the 
 custom of the East : the men are shaved, the women nour- 
 ish their hair with great fondness, which they lengthen, 
 by tresses and tufts of silk, down to the heels. The young 
 men who wear their hair in the East, are looked upon as 
 effeminate and infamous. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 ^ Ver. 7. And even things without life giving sound, 
 whether pipe or harp, except they give a dis- 
 tinction in the sounds, how shall it be known 
 what is piped or harped ? 8. For if the trum- 
 pet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare 
 himself to the battle ? 
 
 The words of St. Paul, in 1 Cor. xiv. 7, will appear with 
 the greatest energy, if we consider them as signifying, that 
 for want of a due distinction of sounds, those by whom a 
 procession according to the usages of the East should pass, 
 might be at a loss to know whether they should join them 
 with expressions of gratulation, or in words of lamentation. 
 Irwin has given an instance of such a joining in the latter 
 case, where, speaking of the singing in a funeral procession, 
 that went by his house, he says, " There was an Arabian 
 merchant on a visit to us, when the funeral went by ; and 
 though in company with strangers, he was not ashamed to 
 run to the window, and to join audibly in the devotions of the 
 train." If a pipe was designed to regulate the expressions 
 that were to be made use of, if it gives an uncertain sound, 
 and sometimes seemed to announce a triumph or a wed- 
 ding, and sometimes a procession on account of the dead, 
 how should a bystander know how to behave himself? 
 " Even things without life give sound, whether pipe or 
 harp ; except they give a distinction in the sounds, how 
 shall a man know what is piped or harped 1" How shall a 
 man know what the music is designed to produce, congrat- 
 ulation, or condolence'? This is a much stronger sense 
 than the supposing, if the sounds were irregular, the apostle 
 meant it was impossible to tell what dance was intended. 
 In truth, such an explanation would not well agree with 
 ..le extemporaneousness of eastern dances, for the hearer of 
 the music might in that case know what was to be done, 
 and all that would follow from it would be, that if the music 
 was irregular, so would the dance be. — Harmer. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Ver. 24. Then cometh the end, when he shall 
 have delivered up the kingdom to God, even 
 the Father ; when he shall have put down all 
 rule, and all authority, and power. 
 
 If the opinion of the eminent critic, Storr, may be ad- 
 mitted, that the kingdom here said to be delivered up to 
 the Father is not the kingdom of Christ, but the rule and 
 .dominion of all adverse powers — an opinion rendered very 
 probable by the following words : " when he shall have put 
 dovm (Gr. done away, abolished) all rule and all author- 
 ity and power," and ver. 25, " till he hath put all enemies 
 under his feet" — then is the passage of identical import 
 with Rev. xi. 15, referring to precisely the same period : 
 " And the seventh angel sounded ; and there were great 
 voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of the world are 
 become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ ; and 
 he shall reign for ever and ever." It is, therefore, we con- 
 ceive, but a peculiar mode of denoting the transfer, the 
 tiwMng over of the kingdoms of this world from their for- 
 onoer despotic and antichristian rulers to the sovereignty of 
 Jesus Christ, the appointed heir and head of all things, 
 whose kingdom is to be everlasting. If this interpretation 
 be correct, we are prepared to advance a step farther, and 
 suggest that the phrase, he shall have delivered up, (Greek, 
 parado,) be understood as an instance of the idiom in which 
 the verb is used without any personal nominative, but has 
 reference to the jntrpose of God as expressed in the scrip- 
 tures; so that the passage may be read, " Then cometh the 
 end, (i. e. not the close, the final winding up, but the per- 
 fect development, expansion, completion, consummation 
 of the divine plans, in regard to this world,) when the pro- 
 phetic announcements of the scriptures require the deliv- 
 
 ering up (i. e. the making over) of all adverse dominion 
 into the hands of the Messiah, to whose supremacy we are 
 taught to expect that every thing will finally be made sub- 
 ject." — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 32. If after the manner of men I have fought 
 with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it 
 me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink ; 
 for to-morrow we die. 
 
 The barbarous custom of making men combat with 
 wild beasts has prevailed in the East down to the most 
 modern times. Jurgen Andersen, who visited the stales of 
 the great mogul in 1646, gives an account in his Travels, 
 of such a combat with animals, which he witnessed at Agra, ' 
 the residence of the great mogul. His description affords 
 a lively image of those bloody spectacles in which ancient 
 Rome took so much pleasure, and to which the abave 
 words of the apostle refer. Alamardan-Chan, the gov- 
 ernor of Cashmire, who sat among the chans, stood up, 
 and exclaimed, " It is the will and desire of the great 
 mogul, Schah Choram, that if there are any valiant he- 
 roes who will show their bravery by combating with wild 
 beasts, armed with shield and sword, let them come for- 
 ward : if they conquer, the mogul will load them with 
 great favour, and clothe their countenance with gladness." 
 Upon this three persons advanced, and oftered to under- 
 take the combat. Alamardan-Chan again cried aloud, 
 " None should have any other weapon than a shield and a 
 sword,* and whosoever has a breastplate under his clothes, 
 should lay it aside and fight honourably." Hereupon a 
 powerful lion was let into the garden, and one of the three 
 men abovementioned advanced against him ; the lion, on 
 seeing his enemy, ran violently up to him; the man how- 
 ever defended himself bravely, and kept off the lion for a 
 good while, till his arms grew tired ; the lion then seized 
 the shield with one paw, and with the other his antago- 
 nist's right arm, so that he was not able to use his weapon ; 
 the latter, seeing his life in danger, took with his left hand 
 his Indian dagger, which he had sticking in his girdle, 
 and thrust it as far as possible into the lion's mouth ; the 
 lion then let him go ; the man however was not idle, but 
 cut the lion almost through with one stroke, and after that 
 entirely to pieces. Upon this victory, the common people 
 began to shout, and call out, " Thank God, he has con- 
 quered." But the mogul said, smiling, to this conqueror, 
 " Thou art a brave warrior, and hast fought admirably ! 
 But did I not command to fight honourably only with shield 
 and sword 7 But, like a thief, thou hast stolen the life oi 
 the lion with thy dagger." And immediately he ordered 
 two men to rip up his belly, and to place him upon an ele- 
 phant, and, as an example to others, to lead him about, 
 which was done on the spot. Soon after a tiger was let 
 loose ; against which a tall, powerful man, advanced with 
 an air of defiance, as if he would cut the tiger up. The ^ 
 tiger, however, was far too sagacious and active, for, in 
 the first attack, he seized the combatant by the neck, tore 
 his throat, and then his whole body in pieces. This en- 
 raged another good fellow, but little, ana of mean appear- 
 ance, from whom one would not have expected it: he 
 rushed forward like one mad, and the tiger on his part 
 undauntedly flew at his enemy ; but the man at the first 
 attack cut off his two forepaw^s, so that he fell, and the 
 man cut his body to pieces. Upon this the king cried, 
 " What is your name ?" He answered, " My name is Gey- 
 by." Soon after one of the king's servants came and 
 brought him a piece of gold brocade, and said, " Geyby, 
 receive the robe of honour with which the mogul presents 
 you." He took the garment with great reverence, kissed 
 it three times, pressing it each time to his eyes and breast, 
 then held it up, and in silence put up a prayer for the 
 health of the mogul ; and when he had concluded it, he 
 cried, " May God let him become as great as Tamerlane, 
 from whom he is descended. May he live seven hundred 
 years, and his house continue to eternity !" Upon this ha 
 was summoned by a chamberlain to go from the garden 
 up to the king, and when he came to the entrance, he was 
 received by two chans, who conducted him between them 
 to kiss the mogul's feet. And when he was going to re- 
 tire, the king said to him, " Praised be thou, Geyby-Chan, 
 for thy valiant deeds, and this name shalt thou keep to 
 
Chap. 3—10. 
 
 2 CORINTHIANS. 
 
 629 
 
 eternity. I am your gracious master, and thou art my 
 
 slave." — ROSENMULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ver. 9. For a great door and effectual is opened 
 unto me, and there are many adversaries. 
 
 The chariot races were the most renowned of all the 
 exercises used in the games of the ancients, and those 
 from which the victors derived the greatest honour ; but 
 the writer can find only one or two allusions to them in 
 the sacred volume, and those involved in some uncertainty. 
 One occurs in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, where 
 he informs them of his great success in collecting a church 
 at Ephesus : "But I will tarry at Ephesus until pente- 
 cost; for a great door and effectual is opened unto me, 
 and there are many adversaries." The inspired writer, 
 it is thought, alludes here to the door of the circus, which 
 was opened to let out the chariots when the races were to 
 begin; and by the word avTUKtifitvoi, which is translated ad- 
 versaries, but which Doddridge renders opposers, means 
 the same with antagonists, with whom he was to contend 
 as in a course. This opposition rendered his presence 
 more necessary to preserve those that were already con- 
 verted, and to increase the number, if God should bless 
 his ministry. Accordingly a celebrated church was planted 
 at Ephesus ; and so far as we can learn from the tenor of 
 his epistle, there was less to reprove and correct among 
 them than in most of the other churches to which he 
 wrote. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 22. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 let him be anathema, maran-atha. 
 
 The expression used by the apostle, " Let him be anathema, 
 maran-atha" is so remarkable, that it has attracted general 
 notice. It is usually understood to be a Syriac exclama- 
 tion, signifying, " Let him be accursed, when the Lord 
 comes." It certainly was not now, for the first time, used 
 as a new kind of cursing by the apostle, but was the ap- 
 plication of a current mode of speech, to the purpose he 
 nad in contemplation. Perhaps, therefore, by inspecting^ 
 the manners of the East, we may illustrate the import of 
 this singular passage : the nearest approach to it that I have 
 been able to discover, is in the following extract from Mr. 
 Bruce ; and though, perhaps, this does not come up to the 
 full power of the apostle's meaning, yet, probably, it gives 
 the idea which was commonly attached to the phrase among 
 the public. Mr. Bruce had been forced by a pretended 
 saint, in Egypt, to take him on board his vessel, as if to 
 carry him to a certain place — whereas Mr. B. meant no 
 such thing; but, having set him on shore at some little dis- 
 tance from whence he came, " we slacked our vessel down 
 the stream a few yards, filling our sails and stretching 
 away. On seeing this, our saint fell into a desperate pas- 
 sion, cursing, blaspheming, and stamping with his feet ; at 
 every word crying ' Shar Ullah 1' i. e. ' May God send, 
 AND DO JUSTICE 1' This appears to be the strongest execra- 
 tion this passionate Arab could use, q. d. ' To punish you 
 adequately is out of my power : I remit you to the ven- 
 geance of God.' Is not this the import of anathema, ma- 
 ran-atha ?" — Taylor in Calmet. 
 
 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, 
 TO THE CORINTHIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ' Ver. 11. For if that which is done away was glo- 
 rious, much more that which remaineth is glo- 
 rious. 
 
 This verse, as any who consults the original will see, is 
 undoubtedly susceptible of a much improved rendering. 
 An exact translation would not vary essentially from the 
 following: — " For if that which was done away, (was done 
 away) by glory ; much more that which remaineth, (re- 
 maineth) in glory." That is, since that which was done away, 
 v/as done away by means of a greater glory and splendour, 
 then certainly that which remains must remain glorious. 
 The reasoning of the apostle may be illustrated thus : If the 
 light of the stars, which vanishes at the rising of the sun, 
 was done away by the superior light and brightness of the 
 sun; much more shall the light of the sun, having thus 
 eclipsed that of the stars, remain glorious. So since the 
 glory of the gospel has availed to abolish that of the law, 
 the gospel is hereby evinced to be superlatively great, and 
 /hat of the law will never be able to equal it. — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 7. But we have this treasure in earthen ves- 
 sels, that the excellency of the power may be 
 of God, and not of us. 
 
 Cups of the most beautiful appearance, and ornamented 
 m the most costly manner, are formed out of the nautilus. 
 Such drinking-vessels are frequent in China. Perhaps to 
 such beautiful vessels as these, containing the most costly 
 
 liquor, the apostle alludes when he speaks of earthen ves- 
 sels, literally vessels made of shell. — Burder. 
 
 In a Cingalese pottery, I have seen hundreds of erathen 
 vessels for" hoarding money in. They are nearly round, 
 and in size something less than the twO fists. They have 
 no opening but a small hole, like that in a till to slip in a 
 coin ; and are said to be mostly bought up by children, to 
 hide the profit of their play in, and other such sums. — 
 Callaway. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 1 4. Be ye not unequally yoked together with 
 unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righte- 
 ousness with unrighteousness ? and what com- 
 munion hath light with darkness ? 
 
 See on Deut. 22. 10. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Ver. 14. For we stretch not ourselves beyond cur 
 measure, as though w^e reached not unto you ; 
 for we are come as far as to you also in preach- 
 ing the gospel of Christ. 
 
 Within the measure and determinate limits of the sta- 
 dium, the athletffi were bound to contend for the prize, 
 which they forfeited without hope of recovery, if they de- 
 viated ever so little from the appointed course. In allusion 
 to this inviolable arrangement, the apostle tells the Corin- 
 thians, "We will not boast of things without our measure, 
 but according to the measure of the rule which God haih 
 
630 
 
 2 CORINTHIANS. 
 
 Chap. 11, 12. 
 
 distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto j'-ou. For 
 we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure, as though 
 we reached not unto you ; for we are come as far as unto 
 you also, in preaching the gospel of Christ." It may help 
 very much to understand this and the following verses, if, 
 with Hammond, we consider the terms used in them asago- 
 oiistical. In this view of them, the measure of the rule al- 
 ludes to the path marked out, and bounded by a white line, 
 tor racers in the Isthmian games, celebrated among the 
 Corinthians ; and so the apostle represents his works in 
 ])reaching the gospel as his spiritual race, and the province 
 to which he was appointed as the compass or stage of 
 ground, which God had distributed or measured out for 
 him to run in. Accordingly, " to boast without his meas- 
 ure," and to stretch himself beyond his measure, refer to 
 one that ran beyond or out of his line. " We are come as 
 far as to you," alludes to him that came foremost to the goal ; 
 and " in another man's line," signifies in the province that 
 was marked out for somebody else, in allusion to the line 
 by which the race was bounded, each of the racers having 
 the path which he ought to run chalked out to him, and if 
 one stepped over into the other's path he extended himself 
 over his line. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Ver. 19. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye 
 yourselves are wise. 
 
 The Orientals pay a particular respect to lunatic;?. 
 " The Arabs," says Poiret, " show a kind of reverence to 
 1 unatics according to the principles of their religion. They 
 look upon them as saints, as beings endowed with peculiar 
 privileges, and favoured by Heaven. I met such a man in 
 the duar (villages of the Bedouin Arabs) of Ali Bey. He 
 was quite naked, went into all the tents, and showed himself 
 to the women, without the men being offended at it. It 
 would be considered as a criminal action to send away 
 such a man, or to treat him ill. He could eat where he 
 pleased ; nothing was denied him. Ali Bey himself bore 
 his freedoms and importunities with a degree of indulgence 
 that astonished me." Lempriere says, that in Morocco in- 
 sane persons form a peculiar class of saints. The Moors 
 believe that such men are under the especial protection of 
 God. They consequently find everywhere compassion 
 and support. To treat their excesses with rigour is thought 
 to be as criminal as to lay hands on the person of the em- 
 peror. The consequence of this ill-judged humanity is, 
 that worthless vagabonds feign lunacy, and commit the 
 greatest crimes, no one venturing to hinder them. A 
 lunatic of this description went about without restraint in 
 Morocco, who, under the appearance of being immersed in 
 his devotions, strangled with his rosary several persons 
 who came too near him. Stephen Schultz relates a story 
 of a Franciscan monk, who, being pursued by the populace 
 in the streets of Alexandria, saved himself by feigning 
 madness, dancing and playing strange antics, so that he 
 not only escaped the shower of stones that threatened his 
 life, but was treated with the greatest respect. (Edmann 
 applies these observations to illustrate the words of the 
 apostle in the above passage. Paul's adversaries in Co- 
 rinth, endeavoured to lessen the reputation he enjoyed, by 
 extolling their own merits. He therefore found it neces- 
 sary to compare his merits with those which these people 
 assumed, fcuch self-praise he declares to be folly : but as 
 it was extorted from him, he requests them to judge favour- 
 ably, or at least to grant him the indulgence which they 
 afford to a man whose mental faculties were deranged. 
 " You are accustomed," says he, " to treat mental weakness 
 with indulgence, to give proof of your own understanding. 
 You disregard it, when such an idiot in his madness treats 
 vou as slaves, consumes what is yours, or appropriates to 
 himself what belongs to you ; or is proud and fancies him- 
 self above you; nay, even if he strikes you in the face. 
 This indulgence you will not refuse me, now that I have 
 been compelled to be guilty of the weakness of speaking in 
 mj' own praise." 
 
 The above account of the opinion entertained of lunatics 
 by the Orientals, serves to illustrate what is said of David, 
 1 Sam. xxi. 10, when, to escape the pursuit of Saul, he fled 
 to Achish, king of the Philistines, but was discovered ; then 
 he feigned himself mad, and thus saved his life. — Rosen- 
 
 WULLER. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 2. I knew a man in Christ above fouiteen 
 years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell ; 
 or whether out of the body, I cannot t^ll : God 
 knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third 
 heaven. 
 
 Macknight says, " That the apostle speaks of himself here 
 is evident from verses 6 and 7." This is the eastern way 
 in which a man modestly speaks of himself. Has an indi- 
 vidual performed a great exploit which he does not like to 
 mention in plain terms as having been done by himself, he 
 simply says, in relating the afiiair, " I know the man who 
 did it." NdTi-arevain, i. e. I know. Do people express 
 their pleasure or surprise in the presence of a person at 
 some work which has been accomplished by himself, and 
 should they inquire, " who is the man," he will say, " I 
 know him:" he will not say he is the man, because some 
 would perhaps not be disposed to believe him ; and the 
 slight intimation conveyed in the terms, I know him, is quite 
 sufficient lo convince others he is the fortunate individual. 
 Should a person receive a favour from an unknown hand, 
 he will make many inquiries ; and when he thinks he has 
 found him out, he will go to him and talk on the subject, 
 and then, should he be right, the individual will say, " I 
 know him." But in this way also the people praise them- 
 selves, by saying, " I know a man who performed such a 
 penance: I am acquainted with one who gave such gifts 
 to the temples : I know one who performed an extraor- 
 dinary fast, or went on such a dangerous pilgrimage." — 
 Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 7. And lest I should be exalted above meas- 
 ure through the abundance of the revelations, 
 there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the 
 messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should 
 be exalted above measure. 
 
 The following communication from a Mr. Stephen, in 
 a letter to Mrs. Hannah More, presents an interpretation 
 of this passage, so highly ingenious and plausible, that it is 
 well entitled to a place in the present work : — 
 
 " When are we to have our new or improved views of St. 
 Paul 1 With such a subject, and such an artist, we may 
 reasonably be impatient for the exhibition. Does it fall 
 within the plan or general character of the work to notice 
 the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, and to give 
 any conjecture as to the infirmity alluded to 7 I have an 
 interpretation of this, which, as far as my reading, or that 
 of Wilberforce's and some others, goes, is original, and yet 
 it is admitted by them to be as probable, or more so, than 
 any other of the many conjectures they have seen. For 
 my own part, I hold it almost demonstrably the true soli>- 
 tion. St. Paul's infirmity was one well known in hot 
 climates, a chronical ophthalmia. Hence he was what is 
 called blear-eyed, and was often, perhaps, obliged to wear a 
 shade. It made his personal presence mean, it was a visi- 
 ble infirmity in his flesh, it hindered his usefulness, and 
 therefore he besought the Lord anxiously that it might de- 
 part from him : but was answered, ' My grace is sufficient 
 for thee.' It made it for the most part painful and difficult 
 for him to write. Hence he generally employed an aman- 
 uensis, and regarded it as a great matter when he used his 
 own pen. ' You see how long a letter I have written to 
 you with mine own hand.' — ' The salutation of me, Paul, 
 written with mine own hand.' It is thought that he might 
 abstain from writing to save his strength or time ; why 
 then did he work at tent-making 1 A man who maintained 
 himself by that sedentary labour, might as well have been 
 at his desk, for we cannot suppose that the wages of a jour- 
 neyman tent-maker were greater than those of an aman- 
 uensis. It exposed him to contempt and derision among 
 strangers, and therefore he gives praise to the Galatians, 
 that when he preached the gospel to them at the first through 
 infirmity of the flesh, his temptation, which was in * his 
 flesh, they despised not.' That the infirmity was of a bodi- 
 ly kind seems to me quite indisputable. Doddridge, and a\. 
 the best commentators, take that aside. It is literally so 
 described ; and the calling it a ' messenger of Satan' is 
 perfectly consistent with its being a bodily disease. Satan, 
 
Chap. 12. 
 
 2 CORINTHIANS. 
 
 631 
 
 in fifty places, is represented as the immediate author of 
 corporal defects and maladies. The passages cited show- 
 it was something visible to others. How could a temptation 
 to a particular sin be so unless it was complied with 7 It 
 would be derogatory to the character of the apostle, and 
 even of an Antinomian tendency, to suppose this to have 
 been the case. The Galatians ought to have despised him, 
 if in preaching the gospel he had exhibited before them the 
 strength of a temptation by the commission of open sin. 
 They would have deserved no |)raise for not despising, but 
 the reverse ; — i. e. for not despising the temptation, if but 
 for the visible sin, which was its evidence. In short, I 
 am astonished how many pious and judicious commenta- 
 tors should think this ' thorn in the flesh' a thorn in the 
 conscience. 
 
 " If it was bodily, it was also some bodily infirmity of an 
 unsightly appearance, making his ^ person^ or aspect 
 ^TTiean,' and exposing him to contempt. How shall we 
 find a more probable hypothesis to suit those and the other 
 preconceptions 1 He was not lame — witness his great bodily 
 activity. 
 
 " Doddridge supposes that the view be had of celestial 
 glories might have effected his nervous system, so as to 
 occasion stammering in his speech, and some ridiculous 
 distortion in his countenance. (Exposition, 2 Cor. xii. 7.) 
 But it is at least equally probable that those heavenly vis- 
 ions, or the supernatural light which blinded him at his 
 conversion, might have left a weakness and disease in the 
 organs immediately affected. It is notorious, that after a 
 severe inflammation in the eyes, they are extremely liable 
 for a long time, or through life, to a return of the complaint. 
 It maybe even presumed from analogy, that, unless the 
 miracle which restored Paul to sight removed also a na- 
 tural secondary effect of the temporary injury the organs 
 had received, there must have been a predisposition after- 
 ward to the complaint which I suppose him to have had. 
 Now that frugality in the use of means which has been 
 observed even in' the miraculous works of God, may be 
 supposed to have permitted that predisposition to remain, it 
 being designed that the apostle, for his humiliation and 
 the exercise of his faith and patience, should have a per- 
 manent infirmity of the flesh to struggle with in future 
 life. 
 
 " The choice of the metaphor by which St. Paul describes 
 his infirmity, also weighs much with me ; indeed it first 
 excited my conjecture. The pain of ophthalmia, when 
 severe, exactly resembles the prick of a thorn or pin, I 
 once had it very severely indeed in the West Indies, It 
 made me blind in a manner for about three weeks, and 
 during that time, if a ray of light by any means broke into 
 my darkened chamber, it was like a thorn or pin run into 
 my eye, and so I often described it. I felt also the subse- 
 quent effect for years, which I suppose to have been ex- 
 perienced by St. "Paul, — a predisposition to inflammation in 
 the eyes, which extreme care and timely applications pre- 
 vented from recurring. 
 
 " I see a further possible source of this idea in his mind, in 
 the fact that thorns in the eyes are figuratively used in dif- 
 ferent parts of scripture to signify troubles and temptations, 
 (see Numbers xxxiii. 55, and Joshua xxiii. 13.) Now if 
 this metaphor had an affinity with the actual bodily sensa- 
 tions of the apostle, it was natural he should think of and 
 use it ; but as natural that he should vary it into the more 
 general term /esA, that he might not confound the pro- 
 per with the metaphorical sense, and be understood to 
 mean that a thorn actually thrust into his eye had produced 
 the disease. 
 
 " This maybe thought perhaps too refined. But the strong- 
 est argument of all remains, and appears to me nearly, if not 
 quite, decisive. It rests upon Galatians iv. 15. After prais- 
 ing them in the preceding verse for not despising his flesh- 
 ly infirmity, (whatever that was,) he here subjoins, / bear 
 you record, that if it hud been possible, ye would have plucked 
 out your own eyes, and have given them to me. How natural 
 this context on my hypothesis ! How little so on any 
 other ! Was it a moral infirmity, a temptation shown by 
 its fruits 1 It might then have pardon, it might have char- 
 itable and respectful indulgence, in consideration of the 
 great and good qualities which were seen in the same 
 character ; but it could not give rise to such glowing affec- 
 tion, such ardour of sympathetic kindness, as these words 
 import. Again, was it a bodily infirmity affecting some 
 other member than the eyesl how extremely unnatural 
 this expression of the sympathy which it produced. Let us 
 take, for instance, Doddridge's conjecture, 'You saw my 
 paralytic distortions in my mouth and cheeks, you heard my 
 stammering tongue, when I first preached the gospel to you ; 
 but you despised not those infirmities. On the contrary, 
 you would, if it had been possible, have plucked out your 
 own eyes and given them to me.' Suppose lameness, or 
 some sharp internal disease, (as others have supposed, not- 
 withstanding the visible character of the infirmity,) and the 
 incongruity is not much, if at all, less. But if the apostle 
 was speaking of his diseased eyes, which made his aspect 
 unsigntly, and prevented perhaps much of the natural ef- 
 fect of his preaching, to which they nevertheless respect- 
 fully listened, and with affectionate sympathy did all they 
 could for his comfort and relief, how' natural, how appro- 
 priate this grateful close of the encomium! Such was 
 your generous and tender sympathy, that I verily believe 
 if you could have removed those sufferings of mine, and 
 that obstacle to my more perfect usefulness, by taking the 
 infirmity in my stead, by plucking out your own sound 
 eyes, and transferring them to my use, you would have 
 been willing to do so. 
 
 " If parental fondness for a supposed discovery of my own 
 does not deceive me, these reasons, when taken together, 
 are nearly conclusive. The point to be sure, after all, is 
 of no great importance ; but if Mrs. H. More thinks it worth 
 her while to notice the guesses on this subject at all, here 
 is what I suppose to be a new one, for her considers tion."— 
 (Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, vol. ii. p. 224,)- B. 
 
THE EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO THE 
 
 GALATIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 9. And when James, Cephas, and John, who 
 seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that 
 was given unto me, they gave to me and Bar- 
 nabas the right hands of fellowship ; that we 
 should go unto the heathen, and they unto the 
 circumcision. 
 
 " Pillars," i. e. " the principal supporters and defenders 
 of the gospel." It is said of those who have done much to 
 support a temple, or who are zealous in its religious cere- 
 monies, '• They are the pillars of black stone belonging to 
 *he temple." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 24. Wherefore the law was our schoolmas- 
 ter to bring us unto Christ, that we might be 
 justified by faith. 
 
 The Hindoos have some books which they call school- 
 master, etdsdriyan, or rather schoolmaster-book, raeaningf they 
 will teach science without the help of a master. When a 
 man who was formerly in poverty has learned how to pro- 
 
 cure a comfortable living, he says, " Ah ! my adversity was 
 my teacher ; it has guided me into this." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 15. Where is then the blessedness ye spake 
 of? for I bear you record, that if it had been 
 possible, ye would have plucked out your o\vn 
 eyes, and have given them to me. 
 
 " Ah ! how great was her love for him; had he asked her, 
 she would have given him her own eyes." " Dearer, dearer 
 than my own eyes." — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 7. Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : 
 for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap. 
 
 The Tamul proverb, on this subject is, " virtti-aruppdn" 
 i. e. he reaps what he sowed. " Ah! the wretch, he cast in 
 cruelties, and is now reaping ihem." "Yes, yes, he has a 
 large harvest ; his lies have produced fruit." " Go, go to 
 thy harvest, fiend." — Roberts. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO THE 
 
 EPHESIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Ver. 14. For he is our peace, who hath made 
 both one, and hath broken down the middle 
 wall of partition between us. 
 
 Some think that this refers to the ancient manner of living 
 among the Gentiles, who always endeavoured to reside in 
 some place by themselves, and to have a river or a waJl 
 between them and their heathen neighbours. Some others 
 refer it to that partition- wall in the temple, which separated 
 the court of the Gentiles from that into which the Jews 
 entered, and on which was written, that no alien might 
 go into it, it being, says Josephus, a sanction of Antiochus, 
 that no foreigner should enter within the enclosure of the 
 temple. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 8. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended 
 up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave 
 gifts unto men. 
 
 The highest military honour which could be obtained in 
 the Roman state, was a triumph, or solemn procession, in 
 which a victorious general and his armyadvanced through 
 the city, to the capitol. He set out from the Campus Mar- 
 
 tins, and proceeded along the Via Triumphalis, and from 
 thence through the most public places of the city. The 
 streets were strewed with flowers, and the altars smoked 
 with incense. First went a numerous band of music, sing- 
 ing and playing triumphal songs ; next were led the oxen 
 'to be sacrificed, having their horng'gilt, and their heads 
 adorned with fillets and garlands ; then in carriages were 
 brought the spoils taken from the enemy; also golden 
 crowns sent by the allied and tributary states. The titles 
 of the vanquished nations were inscribed on wooden frames; 
 and images or representations of the conquered countries 
 and cities were exhibited. The captive leaders followed 
 in chains, with their children and attendants ; after the cap- 
 tives came the lictors, having their faces wreathed with 
 laurel, followed by a great company of musicians and dan- 
 cers, dressed like satyrs, and wearing crowns of gold ; in 
 the midst of whom was a pantomime, clothed in a female 
 garb, whose business it was, with his looks and gestures, to 
 insult the vanquished ; a long train of persons followed, 
 carrying perfumes ; after them came the general, dressed in 
 purple, embroidered with gold, with a crown of laurel on 
 his head, a branch of laurel in his right hand, and in his 
 lefl an ivory sceptre, with an eagle on the top, his face 
 painted with vermilion, and a golden ball hanging from his 
 neck on his breast; he stood upright in a gilded chariot, 
 adorned with ivory, and drawn by four white horses, at- 
 
Chap, 6. 
 
 EPHESIANS. 
 
 633 
 
 tended by his relations, and a great crowd of citizens, all 
 in white. His children rode in the chariot along with him, 
 ^is lieutenants and military tribunes commonly by his side. 
 After the general followed the consuls and senators on foot; 
 the whole procession was closed by the victorious army 
 drawn up in order, crowned with laurel, and decoratea 
 with the gifts which they had received for their valour, 
 singing their own and their general's praises. The trium- 
 phal procession was not confined to the Romans ; the Greeks 
 nad a similar custom, for the conquerors used to make a 
 procession through the middle of their city, crowned with 
 garlands, repeating hymns and songs, and brandishing their 
 spears ; the captives "followed in chains, and all their spoils 
 were exposed to public view. 
 
 The great apostle of the Gentiles alludes to these splen- 
 did triumphal scenes, in his epistle to the Ephesians, where 
 he mentions the glorious ascension of his Redeemer into 
 heaven : " When he ascended up on high, he led captivity 
 captive, and gave gifts unto men." These words are a quo- 
 tation from the sixty-eighth Psalm, where David, in Spirit, 
 describes the ascension of Messiah, in very glowing col- 
 ours: " The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even 
 thousands of angels ; the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, 
 in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast 
 led captivity captive," or an immense number of captives ; 
 " thou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious 
 also; that the Lord God might dwell among them. Bless- 
 ed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with his benefits, even 
 the God of our salvation ; Selah." Knowing the deep im- 
 pression which such an allusion is calculated to make on 
 the mind of a people familiarly acquainted with triumphal 
 scenes, the apostle returns to it in his epistle to the Colos- 
 sians, which was written about the same time: "Having 
 spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them 
 openly, triumphing over them in it." After obtaining a 
 complete victory over all his enemies, he ascended in splen- 
 dour and triumph into his Father's presence on the clouds 
 of heaven, the chariots of the Most High, thousands of holy 
 angels attending in his train ; he led the devil and all his 
 angels, together with sin, the world, and death, as his spoils 
 of war, and captives in chains, and exposed them to open 
 contempt and shame, in the view of all his angelic attend- 
 ants, triumphing like a glorious conqueror over them, in 
 virtue of his cross, upon which he made complete satisfac- 
 tion for sin, and by bis own strength, without the assistance 
 of any creature, destroyed him that had the power of death, 
 that is, the devil. And as mighty princes are accustomed 
 to scatter largesses among the people, and reward their 
 companions in arms with a liberal hand, when, laden with 
 the spoils of vanquished nations, they returned in triumph 
 to their capital ; so the Conqueror of death and hell, when 
 he ascended far above all heavens, and sat down in the 
 midst of the throne, shed forth in vast abundance the 
 choicest blessings of the Spirit upon people of every tongue 
 and of every nation. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 26. Be ye angry and sin not ; let not the sun 
 go down upon your wrath. 
 
 One of the apartments in the houses of some rich men is 
 appropriated to a very curious purpose, viz. when any mem- 
 bers of the family are angry, they shut themselves up in 
 , this room, called krodhagaru, the room of anger, or of the 
 angry. When any individual is gone into this room, the 
 master of the family goes and persuades him or her to come 
 out. (Ward's View of the Hindoos.) — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 Ver. 14. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt 
 about with truth, and having on the breast- 
 plate of righteousness. 
 
 The breastplate is frequently mentioned in the sacred 
 volume. It was properly a half corslet, defending the breast, 
 as its name imports, but leaving the back exposed to the 
 enemy. Breastplates were not always formed of the same 
 materials ; some were made of line or hemp twisted into 
 small cords, and close set together ; but these were more 
 frequently u'sed in hunting than in war. The most ap- 
 proved breastplates were made of brass, iron, or other met- 
 als, which were sometimes so admirably hardened as to 
 80 
 
 resist the greatest force. Plutarch reports, that Zoilus, an 
 artificer, having made a present of two iron brigandines to 
 Demetrius Poliorcetes, for an experiment of their hardness, 
 caused an arrow to be shot out of an engine called cata- 
 pulta, placed about twenty-six paces ofi", which was so far 
 from piercing the iron, that it scarcely rased or made the 
 least impression upon it. These facts may serve to display 
 the inestimable value of " the breastplate of righteousness," 
 which the apostle recommends to the hearers of the gospel : 
 a piece of spiritual armour which the fiery darts of the devil 
 cannot pierce. The scales of brass, which composed the 
 breastplate of the ancient warrior, often reflected the light 
 so as to dazzle the eyes of his antagonist, and strike him 
 with terror. 
 
 The military girdle was another piece of defensive ar- 
 mour; it surrounded the other accoutrements; the sword 
 was suspended in it, as in modern times in the soldier's 
 belt ; and it was necessary to gird the clothes and armour 
 of the combatant together. This was so essential to a war- 
 rior, that among the Greeks, ^ovwadai, to jE;ird, came to be a 
 general name for putting on armour. Homer thus intro- 
 duces Agamemnon commanding the Grecians to arm ; 
 
 ArpeiSriS <5£ Porj^ev, i6e ^covvvaOai avoyyEv. — Iliad, lib. ix. 
 
 " Atrides strait commands them all to arm, or gird them- 
 selves." We learn from Plutarch, that the Romans had 
 the same custom ; and it prevailed also among the Persians^ 
 for Herodotus relates, that Xerxes having reached Abdera, 
 when he fled from Athens, and thinking himself out of 
 danger, \veiv rw ^lovriv, loosed his girdle, that is, put off" his 
 armour. The same phrases occur in many parts of the sa- 
 cred volume, the military belt being not less necessary to the 
 Hebrew soldier, on account of his loose and flowing dress. 
 To gird and to arm, are therefore synonymous terras in 
 scripture ; for those who are said to be able to put on ar- 
 mour, are, according to the Hebrew and Septuagint, girt 
 with a girdle; from whence came the expression of girding 
 to the battle. This was the species of girdle which Jona- 
 than bestowed on David, as one of the pledges of his entire 
 love and friendship. He stripped himself, not only of his 
 wearing apparel, but what a warrior valued at a much 
 higher price, his military habiliments also, his sword, his 
 bow, and his girdle, and gave them to David. 
 
 The girdle is mentioned by the apostle, in his particular 
 description of the Christian armour, addressed to the church 
 at Ephesus : " Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about 
 with truth." As warriors are accustomed to gird them- 
 selves with a broad belt to keep up their long garments, to 
 bind them and their armour close together, and to fortify 
 their loins, that they may be stronger, and more fitted for 
 the labours and fatigues of war; so must believers encom- 
 pass themselves with sincerity and uprightness of heart, 
 and with truth and honesty of conversation, that righteous- 
 ness may be the girdle of their loins, and faithfulness the 
 girdle of their reins, that they may be steady, active, and 
 resolute in every spiritual encounter. — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 15. And your feet shod with the preparation 
 of the gospel of peace. 
 
 The legs of the Grecian warrior were defended with 
 greaves of brass, copper, or other metals. Potter thinks it 
 is probable that this piece of armour was at first either pe- 
 culiar to the Grecians, or at least more generally used by 
 them than any other nations; because we find them so per- 
 petually called by the poet {svKvriiiiSei A^atoi) the well-greaved 
 Achaians. But they seem to have been equally common 
 among the warriors of Canaan, and other eastern countries. 
 When Goliath appeared in complete armour, and challen- 
 ged the armies of Israel to furnish a man able to contend 
 with him in single combat, he wore greaves of brass upon 
 his legs. This piece of armour is also recommended by 
 the apostle, in these words : " And your feet shod with the 
 preparation of the gospel of peace." The soldier is wont 
 to wear greaves of brass, or a sort of strong boots, to guard 
 his feet and legs against briers and thorns, the iron spikes 
 which the enemy scatters in his way, and the sharp 
 pointed stones which retard his march ; so must the heart 
 and life of the Christian be disengaged from worldly 
 thoughts, affections, and pursuits, that would hinder him 
 in his heavenly course ; and be filled with holy resolutions, 
 by divine grace, to hold on his way, in spite of every hard' 
 
mi 
 
 PHILIPPIANS. 
 
 Chap. 1, 2. 
 
 ship and danger, fortified against the many snares and 
 temptations that beset him in his progress, and prepared 
 for the assault, from what enemy or quarter soever it may 
 come. 
 
 The feet were protected with shoes of stout, well-prepar- 
 ed leather, plated or spiked on the sole, to prevent the 
 combatant from slipping. Moses seems, at least according 
 to our translation, to have had some allusion to shoes of this 
 kind, in his farewell address to the tribes: " Thy shoes 
 shall be iron and brass, and as thy days, so shall thy strength 
 be." And the apostle Paul, in his description of the spirit- 
 ual armour : " Having the feet shod with the preparation 
 of the gospel of peace." " Not iron," says Calmet, "not 
 steel ; but patient investigation, calm inquiry, assiduous, 
 laborious, lasting; if not rather with firm footing in the 
 gospel of peace."— Paxton. 
 
 • Ver. 16. Above all, taking the shield of faith, 
 wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the 
 fiery darts of" the wicked. 
 
 See on Ps. 57. 4. 
 
 The Hebrew soldiers used two kinds of shields, the (njs) 
 tsinna, and the (po) magen. From the middle of the tsinna 
 rose a large boss, surmounted by a dagger, or sharp pointed 
 protuberance, which was extremely useful in repelling 
 missive weapons, and bearing down their enemy when they 
 came to close fight, A shield of this construction was 
 partly a defensive and partly an offensive weapon. Martial 
 Beems to allude to the tsinna in this line : 
 
 "In turbam incideris, cunctos umbone repellet." 
 
 " Should you get into a crowd, your slave with his boss 
 w^ould repel them all." The ancient bucklers generally 
 covered the whole body ; for Virgil represents the troops 
 as standing close covered under their bucklers : 
 
 — "olypeique sub orbe iegnaiyw.^'—^n. lib. ii. 1. 227. 
 
 And in Tyrtaeus, the mighty buckler covered the thighs, 
 legs, and breast, belly, and shoulders too. The magen was 
 a short buckler intended merely for defence, and of great 
 ser nee in the warfare of those days. To these must be 
 
 added the (x-in"«D) sikara, or round shield ; and these three 
 differed irom one another, nearly as the scutum, clypeus, and 
 parma, among the Romans. The tsinna was double the 
 weight of the magen, and was carried by the infantry ; the 
 others, as being more light and manageable, were reserved 
 for the cavalry. These different shields were also used by 
 the Greeks. The great apostle of the Gentiles earnestly re- 
 commends this weapon, among others, to the use of the 
 churches under the present dispensation : " Above all, taking 
 the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all 
 the fiery darts of the wicked." — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 17. And take the helmet of salvation, and 
 the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of 
 God. 
 
 The first piece of defensive armour entitled to our noticCj 
 is the helmet, which protected the head. This has beea 
 used from the remo\est ages by almost every nation of a 
 martial spirit. The champion of the Philistines had a hel- 
 met of brass upon his head, as had also the king of Israel, 
 who commanded the armies of the living God. This mar- 
 tial cap was also worn by the Persians and Ethiopians in 
 the day of battle. The Grecian helmets were very often 
 made of the skins of beasts ; but the helmet of the Jewish 
 warrior seems to have been uniformly made of brass or iron ; 
 and to this sort of casque only, the sacred writer seems to 
 refer. In allusion to this piece of defensive armour, Paul 
 directs the believer to put on for a helmet the hope of sal- 
 vation, which secures the head in every contest, till, through 
 him that loved him, he gain a complete victory over all his 
 enemies. That well-grounded hope of eternal life which 
 is attended with ineffable satisfaction, and never disappoints 
 the soul, like a helmet of brass, shall guard it against fear 
 and danger, enable it patiently to endure every hardship, 
 and fortify it against the most furious and threatening at- 
 tacks of Satan and all his confederates. Such adversaries, 
 this solid hope is not less calculated to strike with dismay, 
 than was the helmet of an ancient warrior in the day of 
 battle his mortal foes, by its dazzling brightness, its horrifi i 
 devices of gorgons and chimeras, and its nodding plumes 
 which overlooked the dreadful cone. — Paxton. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO THE 
 
 PHILIPPIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver, 7. Even as it is meet for me to think this of 
 you all, because I have you in my heart ; inas- 
 much as both in my bonds, and in the defence 
 and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are parta- 
 kers of my grace. 
 
 This peculiar expression intimates, not only that the 
 apostle cherished for the Philippians the most sincere and 
 ardent affection, but that they were ever in his recollection, 
 and that he was thus animated to promote, in every possible 
 "Way, their spiritual benefit and prosperity. If not strictly 
 similar, the following instance may be considered as nearly 
 approaching to this phraseology : " The old man followed 
 us, with his women, to a distance from the village, and, at 
 parting, recommended me to his relations. ' He is your 
 brother,' he said to his son : * and there,' opening his son's 
 waistcoat, and putting his hand upon his bosom, * There let 
 him be placed.' A way of recommendation much in use 
 in the Arabian desert likewise." (Burckhardt.)— BuanER. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 15. That ye maybe blameless and harmless, 
 the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of 
 a crooked and perverse nation, among whom 
 ye shine as lights in the world. 
 
 This metaphor has an allusion to the buildings which 
 we call light-houses, the most illustrious of which was 
 'raised in the island of Pharos, when Ptolemy Philadelphusj 
 built that celebrated tower, on which a bright flame was al- 
 ways kept burning in the night, that mariners might per- 
 fectly see their way, and be in no danger of suffering ship-l 
 wreck. Some of these light-houses were constructed in thej 
 form of human figures. The colossus at Rhodes held in.| 
 one hapd a flame which enlightened the whole port, Thes 
 lights were also sometimes moveable, and were used to di- 
 rect the marches of the caravans in the night. Pitts thiT*^ 
 describes them: " They are somewhat like iron stoves, int 
 which they put short dry wood, which some of the came^ 
 are loaded with. Every colter hath one of these prlr" 
 
Chap. 2. 
 
 COLOSSIANS. 
 
 885 
 
 belonging to it, some of which have ten, some twelve 
 of these lights on their lops, and they are likewise of differ- 
 ent figures, one perhaps oval, another triangular, or like an 
 N or M, &c. so^hat every one knows by them his respect- 
 ive cotter. They are carried in the front, and set up in 
 the place where the caravan is to pitch, before that comes 
 up, at some distance from one another." The meaning 
 of the passage from these representations is obvious. " Ye 
 shine as elevated lights in the dark world about yon," that 
 ye may direct those that sail on this dangerous sea, and se- 
 cure them from suffering shipwreck, or guide those who 
 travel through this desert in their way to the city of rest. — 
 
 BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 2, Beware of dogs, beware of evil-workers, 
 beware of the concision. 
 
 The champion of Gath inquired of David, "Am I a dog?" 
 And David, when pursued by the infatuated and cruel Saul, 
 asked, " After whom dost thou pursue 1 after a dead dog 1" 
 The term ni, i. e. dog, is an expression of sovereign contempt 
 for the faithless, the ignoble, and the outcasts. "Never 
 more will I go to the house of that dog." " You call me a 
 dog! then (running at him) I will bite thee." " Here, dog, 
 are some bones for thee." "Yes, yes, he will be a dog in 
 the next birth." — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 14. I press towards the mark, for the prize 
 of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 The most remarkable parts of the stadium, were its en- 
 trance, middle, and extremity. The entrance was marked 
 at first only by a line drawn on the sand, from side to side 
 of the stadium. To prevent any unfair advantage being 
 taken by the more vigilant or alert candidates, a cord was 
 at length stretched in front of the horses or men that were 
 to run; and sometimes the space was railed in with wood. 
 The opening of this barrier was the signal for the racers 
 to start. The middle of the stadium was remarkable, only 
 by the circumstance of having the prizes allotted to the vic- 
 tors set up there. From this custom, Chrysostom draws a 
 fine comparison : " As the judges, in the races and other 
 games, expose in the midst of the stadium, to the view of 
 the champions, the crowns which they were to receive ; in 
 hke manner, the Lord, by the mouth of his prophets, has 
 placed the prizes in the midst of the course, which he de- 
 signs for those who have the courage to contend for them." 
 
 At the extremity of the stadium was a goal, where the 
 foot-races ended ; but in those of chariots and horses, they 
 
 were to run several times round it without stopping, and 
 afterward conclude the race, by regaining the other extrem- 
 ity of the lists from whence they started. It is therefore 
 to the foot-race the apostle alludes, when he speaks of the 
 race set before the Christian, which was a straight course, 
 to be run only once, and not, as in the other, several times 
 without stopping. 
 
 According to some writers, it was at the goal, and not in 
 the middle of the course, that the prizes were exhibited ; 
 and they were placed in a very conspicuous situation, that 
 the competitors might be animated by having them always 
 in their sight. This accords with the view which the 
 apostle gives of the Christian life: " Brethren, I count not 
 myself to have apprehended ; but this one thing I do, for- 
 getting those things which are behind, and reaching forth 
 unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark 
 for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
 L'Enfant thinks the apostle here compares our Lord to 
 those who stood at the elevated place at the end of the 
 course, calling the racers by their names, and encouraging 
 them by holdmg out the crown, to exert themselves with 
 vigour. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. Whose end is destruction, whose god is 
 their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, 
 who mind earthly things. 
 
 "When a pandarum is reproved and told to serve the 
 gods, he exclaims, " What ! is not the belly the god 1" " I 
 will tell you all about him, his god is in his belly." " Belly, 
 belly, nothing to the belly," bawls the beggar at your door. 
 — Roberts. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 3. And I entreat thee also, true yeke-fellow, 
 help those women which laboured with me in 
 the gospel, with Clement also, and with other 
 my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the 
 book of life. 
 
 This expression refers to the custom of those cities which 
 had registers containing the names of all the citizens, from 
 which the names of infamous persons were erased. Agree- 
 ably to this we read of names being blotted out of God's book, 
 Rev. iii. 5. Those citizens who were orderly and obedient 
 were continued on the roll, from whence they could easily 
 obtain their title to all the immunities and privileges com- 
 mon to all the members of the city ; and to be excluded from 
 these was both disgraceful and injurious. — Burder. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO THE 
 
 COLOSSIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 14. Blotting out the handwriting of ordi-' 
 nances that Avas against us, which was contra- 
 ry to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to 
 his cross. 
 
 See on Zech. 11. 7. 
 
 The handwriting, ^sipoypa^oi', signifies a bill or bond 
 whereby a person binds himself to some payment or duty, 
 and which stands in force against him till the obligation is 
 discharged. In these words the apostle alludes to the differ- 
 ent methods by which bonds formerly were cancelled; one 
 was by blotting or crossing them out with a pen, and another 
 
 was by striking a nail through them. In either of these 
 cases the bond was rendered useless, and ceased tc be valid. 
 These circumstances the apostle applies to the death of 
 Christ. — Burder. 
 
 Ver. 15. A7id having spoiled principalities and 
 powers, he made a show of them openly, tri- 
 umphing over them in it. 
 
 The most grand and magnificent procession the ancients 
 ever beheld was a Roman triumph. After a decisive bat- 
 tle gained, the most illustrious captives in war, with their 
 wives and children, were led in fetters before the general's 
 chariot, through the public streets of Rome, scaffolds being 
 
636 
 
 1 THESSALONIANS. 
 
 Chap. 4, 5. 
 
 every^vhere erected, and the public places crowded to be- 
 hold the sight. It was also accompanied by vast numbers 
 of wagons, full of rich furniture, statues, pictures, plate, 
 vases, and vests, of which they had stripped houses and 
 palaces; carts loaded with the arms they had taken from 
 the enemy ; the coin of the empires they had conquered 
 and enslaved: these preceded the triumphal car. The 
 
 temples Were all thrown open, and adorned with garlands; 
 they were filled with clouds of incense and perfume. The 
 spectators were clothed in white garments. Whole heca- 
 tombs of victims were slain, and the most sumptuous en- 
 tertainments were given. The captives, after being public- 
 ly exposed, were generally imprisoned and put to death, or 
 sold for slaves. — Burder. 
 
 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE 
 THE THESSALONIANS. 
 
 TO 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 17. Then we, which are alive and remain, 
 shall be caught up together with them in the 
 clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall 
 we ever be with the Lord. 
 
 See on 2 Tim. 4. 7, 8. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Ver. 8. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, 
 putting on the breastplate of faith and love; 
 and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. 
 See on Eph. 6-17. 
 Ver. 17. Pray without ceasing. « 
 
 We learn from church history that an ancient sect, called 
 Euchitae, gathered from this and similar passages, that it 
 was the duty of Christians to pray literally without ceasing, 
 making prayer the whole means of salvation and the whole 
 business of the Christian life. A slight acquaintance with 
 the idiom of the original languages of the scriptures, will 
 enable us to correct this as well as many other errors which 
 have, at different times, crept into both the practical and 
 speculative theology of the church. It may be laid down 
 as a canon of philological interpretation, that adverbs of 
 time expressing perpetuity, sometimes denote only fre- 
 quency or regularity at stated times and seasons. This 
 will abundantly appear from the following examples : Ex. 
 xxvii. 20, " To cause the lamp to burn always." (Hebrew, 
 tamid.) -That this is not to be taken strictly, but merely 
 as equivalent to, " from evening to morning," appears from 
 the ensuing verse : " Aaron and his sons shall order it from 
 evening to morning." That the lamp of the tabernacle did 
 not burn during the day, is evident from 1 Sam, iii. 3 : 
 " Ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord." 
 Again, it is said, Ex. xxviii. 30, " And thou shalt put in 
 the breastplate of judgment, the Urim and the Thummim; 
 and they shall be upon Aaron's heart, when he goeth in 
 before the Lord ; and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the 
 children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continu- 
 ally ;" i, e. whenever he went into the inner place of the 
 sanctuary, as is clear from the preceding clause, by which 
 the word " continually" is to be limited. So 2 Sam. ix. 7, 
 David says to Mephibosheth, " Thou shalt eat bread at my 
 table continually ;" i. e. at the stated hours of meals. In 
 Uke manner, "to pray without ceasing," is, to pray con- 
 otantly, morning and evening, at the stated hours of prayer. 
 In this precept, the apostle seems to have had reference to 
 the injunction of the Mosaic law, Ex. xxix. 38, 42: " Now 
 this is that which you shall offer upon the altar: two lambs 
 
 of the first year, day by day, continually. The one lamb 
 you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you 
 shall offer in the evening. This shall be a continualhuint- 
 offering throughout your generations." At those stated 
 hours of sacrifice, viz. at nine o'clock in the morning, and 
 at three in the afternoon, the devout Jews used either to go 
 up to the temple to pray, or to pray in their own houses. 
 This duty the apostle would haye the Christian disciples 
 still observe; and the word here used, (adialeipioes, with- 
 out ceasing, continually,) is applied to their praying statedly, 
 morning and evening. The same rule of interpretation 
 will throw light upon numerous other passages of scrip- 
 ture, which are frequently misapprehended by the English 
 reader, such as David's saying that he would " dwell in 
 the house of the Lord for ever ;" that he would " bless the 
 Lord at all times ;" that he would " meditate in his law 
 day and night." So Luke ii. 37, it is said of Anna the pro- 
 phetess, that " she departed not from the temple, but served 
 God with fasting and prayers night and day ;" by whicli 
 is implied, not that she took up her permanent abode at the 
 temple, but regularly resorted thither, at stated times, and 
 was uncommonly assiduous in her devotions. Compare 
 with this, Acts xxvi. 7 : " Unto which promise our twelve 
 tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come." 
 This is in accordance with our Saviour's direction, Luke 
 xviii. 1, " That men ought always to pray, and not to faint ;" 
 i. e. that they should continue in the regular discharge of 
 this duty every day at the appointed times ; and that they 
 should not desist, though their prayers should not be im- 
 mediately granted. According to the same usage, from 
 the apostles going up to the temple at the stated hours of 
 prayer, they are said to have been " continually m the tem- 
 ple, blessing and praising God." To this circumstance of 
 the temple-worship there is a beautiful allusion. Rev. iv. 8, 
 where, concerning the four living creatures, it is said, 
 " They rest not day nor night, (or at the morning and even- 
 ing sacrifices,) saying. Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Al- 
 mighty, which was, and is, and is to come." In the same 
 sense, Cornelius is said (Acts x. 2) to have " prayed to 
 Godi always." And through Christ we are said to "offer 
 unto God the sacrifice of praise continually." And, finally, 
 in this sense of the words are we to understand all such 
 passages as the following, in which the apostle speaks of 
 the unremittingness of his prayers and praises to God on 
 the behalf of Christians. Rom. i. 9 : " For God is my wit- 
 ness that, without ceasing, I make mention of you always 
 in my prayers." Col. i. 3 : " Praying always for you." 
 1 Thes. i. 2, 3 : " We give thanks to God always for you all, 
 making mention of you in our pravers ; remembering, 
 without ceasing, your work of faith." 2 Tim. i. 3 : " I 
 thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure 
 conscience, that, without ceasing, I have remembrance of 
 thee in my prayers night and day." — Bush. 
 
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO 
 
 TIMOTHY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 9. In like manner also, that women adorn 
 themselves in modest apparel, with shame-faced- 
 ness and sobriety ; not with broidered hair, or 
 gold, or pearls, or costly array. 
 
 See on 1 Pet. 3. 3. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Ver. 7. For we brought nothing into this wor^d, 
 
 a?id it is (fertain we can carry nothing 
 out. 
 
 " My friend, why are you so anxious after thi^ world 1 
 How much did you bring into it 1 How much will you 
 take out V " Ah ! my son, be charitable to ail ; recollect, 
 you brought nothing into the world, and be assured ydu 
 will take nothing out." " That wretch would like to carry 
 his money and lands into the other world." " Tamby, did 
 you bring these fields into the world with you'? No"; and 
 they will remain when you are gone." — Roberts. 
 
 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, 
 
 TO TIMOTHY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 5. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet 
 is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. 
 
 Those who were designed for the ]3rofession of athletae, 
 or combatants, frequented from their earliest years the 
 academies maintained for that purpose at the public ex- 
 pense. In these places they were exercised under the di- 
 rection of different masters, who employed the most effectu- 
 al methods to inure their bodies for the fatigues of the pub- 
 lic games, and to form them for the combats. The regi- 
 men to which they submitted was very hard and severe. 
 At first they had no other nourishment than dried figs, nuts, 
 soft cheese, and a gross heavy sort of bread called (xa^a ; 
 they were absolutely forbid the use of wine, and enjoined 
 continence. 
 
 "When they proposed to contend in the Olympian games, 
 they were obliged to repair to the public gymnasium at 
 Blis, ten months before the solemnity, where they prepared 
 themselv^es by continual exercises. No man that had omitted 
 to present himself at the appointed time, was allowed to put 
 in for any of the prizes ; nor were the accustomed rewards of 
 victory given to such persons, if by any means they insinu- 
 ated themselves, and overcame their antagonists ; nor would 
 any apology, though seemingly ever so reasonable, serve to 
 excuse their absence. No person that was himself a no- 
 torious criminal, or nearly related to one, was permitted 
 to contend. Further, to prevent underhand dealings, if 
 any person Avas convicted of bribing his adversary, a severe 
 fine was laid upon him ; nor was this alone thought a suf- 
 ficient guard against unfair contracts and unjust practices, 
 but the contenders were obliged to swear they had spent 
 ten whole months in preparatory exercises ; and besides all 
 this, they, their fathers, and their brethren, took a solemn 
 oath, that they would not by any sinister or unlawful 
 means endeavour to stop the fair and just proceedings of 
 the games. The spiritual contest, in which all true Chris- 
 tians aim at obtaining a heavenly crown, has its rules also, 
 devised and enacted by infinite wisdom and goodness, 
 
 which require implicit and exact submission, which neither 
 yield to times nor circumstances, but maintain their su- 
 preme authority, from age to age, uninterrupted and unim- 
 paired. The combatant who violates these rules forfeits 
 the prize, and is driven from the field with indelible dis- 
 grace, and consigned to everlasting wo. Hence the great 
 apostle of the Gentiles exhorts his son Timothy strictly to 
 'oljserve the precepts of the divine law, the rule of his con- 
 duct in the hand of the Mediator, without which he can no 
 more hope to obtain the approbation of God, and the pos- 
 session of the heavenly crown, than a combatant in the pub- 
 lic games of Greece, who disregards the established rules, 
 can hope to receive from the hands of his judge the prom- 
 ised reward : " And if a man also strive for masteries, yet 
 is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully," or according 
 to the established laws of the games, — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 19. Nevertheless, the foundation of God 
 standeth sure, having this seal. The Lord 
 knoweth them that are his. And, Let every 
 one that nameth the name of Christ, depart 
 from iniquity. 
 
 See on Ezek. d. h 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ver. 6 /*or I am now ready to be offered, and 
 the cime of my departure is at hand. 
 
 This is an allusion to that universal custom of the world 
 of pouring wine or oil on the head of the victim imme- 
 diately before it was slain : the apostle's emphatical word 
 signifies, wine is just now pouring on my head, I am just 
 going to be sacrificed to pagan rage and superstition. — 
 Blackwall. 
 
 Ver. 7. I have fought a good fight, I have finish- 
 ed my course, I have kept the faith : 8. Hence- 
 
TITUS, 
 
 Chap. 2, 
 
 forth there is laid up for me a crown of righte- 
 ousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
 shall give me at that day : and not to me only, 
 but unto all them also that love his appearing. 
 
 The officers and soldiers also, were rewarded according 
 to their merit. Among the Romans, the noblest reward 
 wJiich a soldier could receive, was the civic crown, given 
 to him who had saved the life of a citizen, made of oak 
 leaves, and, by order of the general, presented by the per- 
 son who had been saved to his preserver, whom he ever 
 after respected as a parent. Alluding to this high distinc- 
 tion, the apostle says to his son Timc^thy : " I have fought 
 a good fight — henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
 of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall 
 give me at that day ; and not to me only, but imto all them 
 also that love his appearing." And lest any one should 
 imagine that the Christian's crown is perishable in its 
 nature, and soon fades away, like a crown of oak leaves, 
 the apostle Peter assures the faithful soldier of Christ, 
 that his crown is infinitely more valuable and lasting : 
 " Ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." 
 And this account is confirmed by James : " Blessed is the 
 man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried, he shall 
 
 receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to 
 them that fear him." 
 
 The military crowns were conferred by the general in 
 presence of the army ; and such as received them, after 
 a public eulogium on their valour, were placed next his 
 person. The Christian also receives his unmerited reward 
 from the hand of the Captain of his salvation : " Be thou 
 faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." 
 And like the brave veteran of ancient times, he is promo- 
 ted to a place near his Lord : " To him that overcometh, 
 will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also 
 overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne." 
 The saints must all appear before the judgment-seat of 
 Christ, who will produce the proofs of their fidelity beforf 
 assembled worlds, to justify the sentence he is about to pro 
 nounce. Holy angels will applaud the justice of the pro 
 ceeding, and condemned spirits and reprobate men wit 
 have nothing to object; then, while he pronounces a sen 
 tenee which at once eulogizes their conduct, and announ* 
 ces their honourable acquittal, " Well done, good and faith- 
 ful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord ;" he will 
 set upon their heads'a crown of purest gold, put a palm 
 of victory into their right hand, clothe them in robes of 
 celestial brightness, and place them around his throne: 
 " And so shall they be for ever with the Lord." — Paxton. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO TITUS 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 5. To he discreet, chaste, keepers at home, 
 good, obedient to their own husbands, that the 
 word of God be not blasphemed. 
 
 Jealousy is so common and powerful among the people 
 of the East, that their wives are very much confined to 
 their houses. Russel informs us, that " the Turks of" 
 Aleppo being Very jealous, keep their women as much at 
 home as they can, so that it is but seldom that they are al- 
 lowed to visit each other. Necessity, however, obliges the 
 husbands to suffer them to go often to the bagnio, and 
 Mondays and Thursdays are a sort of licensed days for 
 them to visit the tombs of their deceased relations, which 
 furnishes them with an opportunity of walking abroad in 
 the gardens or fields ; they have so contrived that almost 
 every Thursday in the spring bears the name of some par- 
 ticular sheik, (or saint,) whose tomb they must visit on that 
 day. (Their cemeteries and gardens are out of their 
 cities in common.) By this means the greatest part of the 
 Turkish women of the city get abroad to breathe the fresh 
 air at such seasons, unless confined (as is not uncommon) 
 to their houses by order of the bashaw, and so deprived 
 even of that little freedom which custom had procured them 
 from their husbands." The prohibitions of the bashaws 
 are designed, or pretended to be designed at least, to pre- 
 vent the breach of chastity, for which these liberties of 
 
 going abroad might be supposed to aflford an opportunity. 
 For the same reason it may be apprehended that St. Paial 
 joins the being chaste and keepers at home together.— Har- 
 
 MER. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 12. When I shall send Artemas unto thee, 
 or Tychicus, be diligent to come unto me to 
 Nicopolis: for I have determined there to 
 winter. 
 
 Concerning the annals of Nicopolis, only a few trifling 
 memorials are to be gleaned from the works of historians. 
 How soon it enjoyed the light of Christianity is not pre- 
 cisely known, but that it was honoured early with the pres- 
 ence of that great champion of the faith, St. Paul, we may 
 infer from his intention expressed to Titus, of spending 
 the winter there, on his return from Macedonia; from 
 whence it is extremely probable that he had many Nico- 
 politan converts already established. Its reign of splen- 
 dour was but short, for it soon experienced those bitter 
 reverses of fortune, which all the other unhappy provinces 
 endured in the decline of the Roman empire. The city 
 mentioned by St. Paul could not possibly have been (ac- 
 cording to the surmise of some critics) Nicopolis on the 
 Danube, or that of Thrace, for these were both built by 
 Trajan. (Hughes's Travels in Sicily.)— Burder. 
 
THE EPISTLE OF PAUL, THE APOSTLE, TO THE 
 
 HEBREWS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 8. But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, 
 O God, is for ever and ever ; a sceptre of righte- 
 ousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. 
 
 The apostle here cites a passage from the 45th Psalm, 
 in which the Psalmist, and not the Most High, is the speaker. 
 Consequently this is not an address of the Father to the 
 Son, as might be thought from our present translation. 
 "He saith," should properly he rendered, according to a 
 common idiom, " it is said," or, if a nominative be sup- 
 plied, " the scripture saith, thy throne, O God," &c. The 
 same remark is applicable to the same expression, ver. 7 : 
 " And of the angels he saith, (it is said,) Who maketh his 
 angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." A simi- 
 lar phraseology occursf 1 Cor. vii. 16: '•' What, know ye 
 not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body 1 for 
 two, saith he, (i. e. it is said in the scriptures,) shall be one 
 flesh." Rom. xv. 10 : " And again he saith, (again it is 
 said,) Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people." James iv. 6 : 
 " Wherefore he saith, (it is said,) God resisteth the proud, 
 but giveth grace unto the humble." It may also be re- 
 marked, that the true rendering of the preposition (pros) 
 m this passage, and in fact the whole context, is not " to," 
 but " of;" " in respect to," " concerning ;" " of, or as to, the 
 Son, it is said," &c. This import of the original is so 
 common and so obviously pertinent to the text in this con- 
 nexion, that it will be unnecessary to attempt to establish it 
 by an array of parallel passages. — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ver. 8. But that which beareth thorns and briers 
 is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing ; whose 
 end is to be burned. 
 
 The land, which, notwithstanding the most careful cul- 
 tivation, produces nothing but thorns and briers, or noxious 
 weeds of diflTerent kinds, is rejected, or given up as imim- 
 proveable ; its briers, thorns, and brushwood burnt down ; 
 and then left to be pastured on by the beasts of the field. 
 This seems to be the custom in husbandry, to which the 
 apostle alludes. The nature of the case prevents us from 
 supposing that he refers to burning in order to further 
 fertilization. This practice has been common from very 
 early ages, 
 
 S?epe etiam steriles incendere profuit agros, 
 Atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis. 
 
 (Virgil, Geor. i. ver. 84.) 
 
 I/Ong practice has a sure improvement found, 
 With kindled fires to burn the barren ground ; 
 When the light stubble to the flames resigned, 
 Is driven along, and crackles in the wind. 
 
 (Dryden.)— BuRDBR. 
 
 Ver. 20, Whither the forerunner is for us enter- 
 ed, eve?i Jesus, made a high-priest for ever after 
 the order of Melchisedec. 
 
 " The forerunner." The metaphorical allusion here is to 
 the person who carries the anchor in a boat within the pier 
 head, because there is not water sufficient to take the ship 
 
 in. — BURDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Ver. 35. Women received their dead raised to 
 life again: and others were* tortured, not ac- 
 cepting deliverance ; that they might obtain a 
 better r-jsurrection. 
 
 The ancients sometimes exposed criminals to a particu- 
 lar species of torture, by means of a tympanum or drum, 
 on which they were extended in the most violent manner, 
 and then beaten with clubs, which must have been attend- 
 ed with exquisite pain. To this mode of punishment, 
 Doddridge is of opinion the apostle alludes in his epistle to 
 the Hebrews, where he describes the sufferings of ancient 
 believers: " Others were tortured, not accepting deliver- 
 ance ;" because the word ervfjiTraiveffdrjaav, tortured, is not a 
 general term, but one which signifies the specific torture of 
 the tympanum. It is, however, generally understood by 
 interpreters, not as a mode of punishment distinct from 
 others, but as a general term for all kinds of capital pun- 
 ishment and violent death ; but the opinion of Doddridge 
 ought to be preferred, because the original word possesses 
 a specific character ; and the passage viewed in that light 
 is precise and impressive, — Paxton, 
 
 Ver. 37. They were stoned, they were sawn 
 asunder, were tempted, were slain with the 
 sword ; they wandered about in sheep-skins 
 and goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tor- 
 mented. 
 
 The epistle to the Hebrews describes some of the ancient 
 sufl^erers for piety and virtue, as driven out from the socie- 
 ty of their countrymen, and wandering about, like miser- 
 able outcasts, in deserts and mountains, with no better vest- 
 ments than sheep-skins and goat-skins ; referring, probably, 
 to some in the beginning of the opposition made by the 
 Maccabee family, to the attempts of the Syrian princes to 
 force the Jewish people to abandon the religion of their 
 forefathers, and unite with the heathens in their idolatrous 
 customs. It may be acceptable to the reader to learn, that 
 there are numbers of such miserable outcasts from common 
 society, in that very country, to this day : not indeed on a 
 religious account, "for they are all Mohammedans; but 
 from national prejudices, and distinctions arising from that 
 source. 
 
 Doubdan frequently met with such in his peregrinations 
 in that country. He sometimes calls them Moors, by which, 
 I apprehend, is meant the descendants from the old natives 
 of that country, who inhabited it before the Turks, a branch 
 of the Tartars, overran these parts of Asia. Some of the 
 Arabs he met with are not described as in more elegant 
 circumstaBHies: these are, another eastern nation, who are 
 attached to the living in fents, and will by no means be in- 
 duced to dwell in more fixed habitations, and commonly 
 dwell in deserts, and very retired places. 
 
 Upon leaving Jerusalem, in order to embark at Joppa, 
 they halted some little time on a short plain, not far from 
 the Holy City, to give time to the caravan to assemble, 
 with which they were to travel : while waiting there, he 
 says, " We saw six Bedouins pass along ;" he means these 
 wandering Arabs ; *' who had no other clothing than a 
 sheep-skin on their shoulders, and a rag about their loins, 
 emaciated and burnt up with the heat, of a horrible as- 
 pect, their eyes fiery, and each with a great club. These 
 people are Arabs, and the greatest robbers in all the coun- 
 try." » 
 
 He describes some of the Moors in the neighbourhooc' 
 of Bethlehem, who live in the village where the shepherds 
 dwelt to whom the angel of the Lord appeared, according 
 to the tradition of the country, in much the same manner. 
 He says, " it is a poor hamlet, of twenty or twenty-five 
 hovels." That he was informed " its inhatiitants are some 
 of the poorest and most miserable people of the country. 
 That they saw some who looked like true savages, almost 
 
640 
 
 HEBREWS. 
 
 Chap. 12. 
 
 entirely naked, sunburnt, black as a coal, and shining with 
 Ihe grease and oil with which they rub themselves, horrid 
 in their countenances, with a surly voice, with which they 
 keep mumbling, and terrify those that are not accustomed 
 to meet them. More especially when, upon their going to 
 visit a certain place to which their devotion led them, they 
 saw four poor miserable Moors running to them across the 
 $elds, huge, frightful creatures, all of them naked and sun- 
 Durnt, two armed with bows and arrows, the other two with 
 cudgels, threatening to use them with severity, if they did 
 not give them money." 
 
 The same scenery is exhibited in other places, and re- 
 presents, I imagine, excepting the violence, an accurate 
 picture of those poor persecuted Hebrews, who wandered 
 about in sheep-skms and goat-skins, destitute of many of the 
 comforts of life, emaciated, tormented with the burning 
 heat of the sun, and afflicted with many other bitternesses 
 in that wild and rough state. — Harmer. 
 
 Ver. 38. (Of whom the world was not worthy ;) 
 they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, 
 and in dens, and caves of the earth. 39. And 
 these all, having obtained a good report through 
 faith, received not the promise. 
 
 Such places were frequently used as habitations. " In 
 returning to Achmetchet, we stopped to water our horses 
 in the steppes or plains, where the dwellings were entirely 
 subterranean. Not a house was to be seen, but there were 
 some holes as entrances in the ground, through one of 
 which we descended to a cave, rendered almost suffocating 
 by the heat of a stove for dressing the victuals of its poor 
 owners. The wall, floor, and roof, were all of the natural 
 soil," (Clarke.) " At eleven, we arrived on the plain 
 and a better road, but being excessively hot, and seeing a 
 village with many low houses, or rather huts, we struck 
 out of our path, and arrived there about noon, when, in- 
 stead of houses, we found them to be caverns, dug in the 
 earth, and vaulted, with only the upper part appearing above 
 ground. The people received us kindly ; both men and 
 horses descended into one of the caverns, and immediately 
 felt such a comfortable coolness as was extremely delight- 
 ful. The cavern which we were now in was more than one 
 hundred feet in length, and near forty wide, entirely vault- 
 ed the whole wav, and very lofty. It was divided into 
 apartments on each side, in some of which were grain, in 
 others flour, in others oil, all in very large jars, buried 
 half way in the earth : in other divisions were roosts for 
 poultry; in others cows were kept; in some, goats and 
 sheep ; and some served as places to sleep in. The mid- 
 dle part was kept clear as a passage to each room or divis- 
 ion." (Parsons.)— BuRDER. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ver. 1. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed 
 about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us 
 lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth 
 so easily beset us, and let us run with patience 
 the race that is set before us. 
 
 The athletse took care to disencumber their bodies of 
 every article of clothing which could in any manner hin- 
 der or incommode them. The pugilists at first used a belt, 
 with an apron or scarf fastened to it, for their more decent 
 appearance in the combats ; but one of the combatants hap- 
 pening to lose the victory by this covering's falling off, 
 modesty was in future sacrificed to convenience, and 
 the apron was laid aside. In the foot-race they were 
 anxious to carry as little weight as possible, and uni- 
 formly stripped themselves of all such clothes as, by their 
 weight, length, or otherwise, might entangle or retard 
 them in the course. The Christian, also, must " lay aside 
 «very weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset" 
 
 him : in the exercise of faith and self-denial, he must " cast 
 off the works of darkness," lay aside all malice and guile, 
 hypocrisies, and envyings, and evil speakings, inordinate 
 affections, and worldly cares, and whatever else might ob- 
 struct his holy profession, damp his spirits, and hinder his 
 progress in the paths of righteousness. 
 
 The Olympic games generally opened with races, and 
 were celebrated at first with no other exercise. The lists 
 or course where the athletse exercised themselves in run- 
 ning, was at first but one stadium in length, or about six 
 hundred feet ; and from this measure it took its name, 
 and was called the stadium, whatever might be its extent. 
 This, in the language of Paul, speaking of the Christians' 
 course, was " the race which was set before them," deter- 
 mined by public authority and carefully measured. On 
 each side of the stadium and its extremity, ran an ascent or 
 kind of terrace, covered with seats and benches, upon which 
 the spectators were seated, an innumerable multitude col- 
 lected from all parts of Greece, to which the apostle thus 
 alludes in his figurative description of the Christian life : 
 " Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud 
 of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight." — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 4. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, stri- 
 ving against sin. 
 
 The exercise of boxing was sometimes performed by 
 combatants, having in their hands balls of stone or lead. 
 At first their hands and arms were naked and unguarded, 
 but afterward surrounded with thongs of leather, called 
 cestus, which were used both as d^ensive arms, and to an- 
 noy the enemy, being filled with plummets of lead and 
 iron, to add force to the blows. 
 
 This was one of the rudest and most dangerous of the 
 gymnastic combats, because the antagonists ran the hazard 
 either of being disabled, or losing their lives. They some- 
 times fell down dead or dying upon the sand; or they quitted 
 the fight with a countenance so disfigured, that it was not 
 easy to know themselves ; carrying away with them the 
 sad marks of their vigorous resistance, as bruises and con- 
 tusions in the face, the loss of an eye, their teeth knocked 
 out, their jaws broken, or some more considerable fracture. 
 It is to this rude and dangerous exercise the apostle refers 
 in his reasoning with the Hebrew converts : " Ye have not 
 yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." The contest 
 in which they were engaged with their adversaries, had 
 been severe and of long continuance ; they had sustained 
 no small loss of liberty and property, which they cheerfully 
 resigned for the sake of Christ, in hope of a better inherit- 
 ance in heaven ; they were in danger of becoming weary 
 and faint in their minds, from the length of the contest ; but 
 though their antagonists had often tried to defeat and foil 
 them, they had not been permitted to shed their blood, or 
 take away their lives, as they did to many of the saints in 
 preceding ages. The combatant in the public games, who 
 gave up the contest before he had lost a drop of his blood, 
 merely because he had received a few contusions, or been 
 roughly handled by his opponent, would have been infalli- 
 bly branded with infamy. Not less shameful, and infinitely 
 more dangerous, it would have been for any of these He- 
 brews to flinch from their duty, or desist from their Chris- 
 tian course, on account of the slighter difficulties and 
 losses they had met with in striving against sin. — Paxton. 
 
 Ver. 6. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, 
 and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 
 
 It is said, in the East, of a truly good father, when he is 
 obliged to punish his son, — 
 
 " Adikam, oru Id ; 
 Anikam, oru ki." 
 One hand, chastises; 
 One hand, embraces. 
 
 Showing, that though he is obliged to inflict punishment' 
 with one hand, yet in his heart he embraces him with the 
 other.— Roberts. 
 
THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ver. 2. For if there come unto your assembly a 
 man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and 
 there come in also a poor man, in vile raiment. 
 
 By the assembly here mentioned we are not to under- 
 stand a congregation convened for public worship, as is 
 commonly represented, but a court of judicature, in which 
 men are too apt to favour the cause of the rich against the 
 poor. The phrase, sit thou under my footstool, naturally re- 
 fers to courts of justice, where the judge is commonly ex- 
 alted upon a higher seat than the rest of the people. The 
 apostle also says, that such a respect of persons as he here 
 speaks of is contrary to the law, and that those who are 
 guilty of it, are convinced of the law as transgressors. Now 
 there was no divine law against distinction of places in 
 worshipping assemblies, into those which were more or 
 less honourable; this must therefore refer to the law of 
 partiality in juogment. " Ye shall do no unrighteousness 
 m judgment ; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, 
 nor honour the person of the mighty," Levit. xix. 15. 
 The Talmudists say it was a rule, that when a poor man 
 and a rich man pleaded together in judgment, the rich 
 should not be bid to sit down, and the poor to stand; but 
 either both shall sit, or both shall stand. To this rule or 
 custom the apostle seems to refer, when he insinuates a 
 charge against them of saying to the rich man, " Sit thou here 
 in a good place, and to the poor. Stand thou there."— Jennings. 
 
 " A man with a gold ring." By this circumstance the 
 apostle describes a rich man. Among the Romans, those 
 of the senatorial and equestrian orders were distinguished 
 from the common people by wearing a gold ring. In 
 time the use of them became promiscuous. The ancients 
 used to wear but one.— Border. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 6. And the tongue is a fire, a world of in- 
 iquity: so is the tongue among our members, 
 that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire 
 the course of nature ; and it is set on fire of hell. 
 
 The original is very beautiful, and is an allusion to a 
 vrheel catching fire, as not unfrequently happens, by its 
 rapid motion, spreading its flames around, and at last in- 
 volving the whole machine in destruction. The true ver- 
 sion IS, It setteth on fire the wheel of human life, and thus 
 finally destroyeth the whole body. The original word for 
 course, Upo^^oi, signifies a wheel. — Border. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 13. Go to now, ye that ^ay. To-day, or to- 
 morrow, we will go into such a city, and con- 
 tinue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain. 
 
 The merchants of the East have ever been famous for 
 their trading peregrinations; and often are we reminded 
 of the " company of Ishmaelites (who) came from Gilead, 
 with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, 
 going to carry it down to Egypt." See the young adven- 
 turer; he has received a certain sum from his father, and 
 goes to another town, where he has relations or friends, 
 and he c^w^iowsZi/ commences his business; he never loses 
 sight of frugality; and should he, in the course of a few 
 years, have gained a competency, he returns to his native 
 place, there to husband out his davs. But should he not 
 prosper, he goes to another town, for his affairs are so ar- 
 ranged in reference to rents and other matters, he finds no 
 difficulty in removing. But another trader will not thus 
 settle ; he carries in two or three bags various spices, (which 
 are needed by everv family,) and gums, and drugs, or cloth 
 and silk, and muslins, or jewels, or precious stones, and 
 81 
 
 after a year or so he returns with the proceeds of his jour- 
 ney. — Roberts. 
 
 Ver. 15. For that ye ought to say. If the Lord 
 will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 
 
 It was a custom among the Jews to begin all things with 
 God. They undertook nothing without this holy and de- 
 vout parenthesis. If God will. They otherwise expressed 
 it, if the name please ; or, if the name determine so. The 
 phrase was so common that they abbreviated it, using a 
 letter for a word. But this was not peculiar to the Jews ; 
 it was common with all the eastern people. Few books 
 are written in Arabic, but they begin with the word bis- 
 millah — in the name of God. With the Greeks the expres- 
 sion is, <rvv Qcw : with the Latins, Deo volente. — Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Ver. 7. Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the 
 coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandmai* 
 waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and 
 hath long patience for it, until he receive the 
 early and latter rain. 
 In our climate, where it rains at all times of the year, we 
 have no notion of " early and latter rain ;" but nothing is 
 more natural than this division in a climate like that of 
 Palestine, where in the summer months it seldom or never 
 rains. It was not till after the autumnal equinox, about 
 the seed-time, when the Jews began their civil year, that 
 the autumnal or winter rains set in ; and these they called 
 the early rains; the latter rain was that which fell in 
 March and April, towards harvest time. " The rain," 
 says Korte, " which falls in October, November, and De- 
 cember, is called the early rain, and that which comes in 
 March and April, the laitter rain. Respecting this latter 
 rain, it is to be observed, that about the time of the greatest 
 heat, there are many years when it rains only a few hours, 
 or half a day, or at the outside two or three days succes- 
 sively. This rain is extremely propitious to the standing 
 nellu, (rice, resembling our barley,) which is beginning to 
 ripen, and needs nothing more than such a good wetting, 
 to make the grain fuller and more solid, and to mature it. 
 This rain, therefore, which comes in the hot season, is 
 very different from the rain in the rainy season, and is 
 very favourable to the standing corn. In the rainy sea- 
 son, at the end of the year, as soon as it begins to rain copi- 
 ously, and the ground is thereby softened, and rendered fit 
 for the plough, the farmer loses no lime to commence his 
 operations and sow his grain." — Rosenmoller, 
 
 Ver. 14. Is any sick among you? let him call 
 for the elders of the church ; and let them pray 
 over him, anointing him with oil in the name 
 of the Lord. 
 " In Yemen, the anointing of the body is believed to 
 strengthen and protect it fromthe heatof the sun, by which 
 the inhabitants of this province, as they wear so little cloth- 
 ing, are very liable to suffer. Oil, by closing up the pores of 
 the skin, is supposed to prevent that too copious transpira- 
 tion which enfeebles the frame ; perhaps, too, these Arabians 
 think a glistening skin a beauty. When the intense heat 
 comes in, they always anoint their bodies with oiL At Sana, 
 all the .Tews^ and inany of the Mohammedans, have their 
 bodies anointed whenever they find themselves indisposed," 
 (Niebuhr.) That in some degree explains the direction of 
 the apostle James, the meaning of which will be, to do that 
 solemnly for the purpose of healing, which was often done 
 medicinally; and accordingly we find Solomon, in many 
 places of his Proverbs, speaking of administering ointment, 
 which rejoices the heart, which maybe a healing medicine 
 to the navel, &c, — Burder. 
 
THE ^IRST EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ver. 4. To an inheritance incorruptible, and un- 
 defiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in 
 heaven for you. 
 
 See on 1 Cor. 9. 35. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 3. Whose adorning, let it not be that out- 
 ward adorning of platting the hair, and of 
 wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel. 
 
 The eastern females wear their hair, which the prophet 
 emphatically calls the " instrument of their pride," very- 
 long, and divided into a great number of tresses. In Bar- 
 bary, the ladies all affect to have their hair hang down to 
 the ground, which, after they have collected into one lock, 
 they bind and plat with ribands ; a piece of finery which 
 the apostle marks with disapprobation : " Whose adorning, 
 let it not be that outward adorning of platting the hair, and 
 of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel." Not that 
 he condemns in absolute terms all regard to neatness and 
 elegance in dress and appearance, but only an undue atten- 
 tion to these things ; his meaning plainly is : " Whose 
 adorning, let it not chiefly consist in that outward adorning 
 of platting the hair, but rather let it be the hidden man of 
 the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the orna- 
 ment of a meek and quiet spirit, which is, in the sight of 
 »God, of great price." The way in which the apostle uses 
 
 the negative particle in this text, is a decisive proof that 
 this is his true meaning ; it extends to every member of the 
 sentence ; and by consequence, if it prohibit the platting of 
 hair, it equally prohibits the putting on of apparel. But it 
 never could be his design to forbid women to wear clothes, 
 or to be decently and neatly dressed ; therefore, the negative 
 inust have only a comparative sense, instructing us in the 
 propriet3r and necessity of attending more to the dispositions 
 of the mind, than to the adorning of the body. And as one 
 inspired writer cannot, in reality, contradict another, the 
 command of Paul must be explained in the same way, not 
 as an absolute, but comparative prohibition : " In like man- 
 ner, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with 
 shamefacedness and sobriety, not with," or, according to 
 this view, rather than with "broidered hair, or gold, or\ 
 pearls, or costly array." Where nature has been less 
 liberal in its ornaments, the defect is supplied by art, and 
 foreign is procured to be interwoven with the natural hair. 
 The males, on the contrary, shave all the hair of their 
 heads, excepting one lock ; and those who wear their hair 
 are stigmatized as effeminate. The apostle's remark on 
 this subject, corresponds entirely with the custom of the 
 East, as well as with the original design of the Creator : 
 " Does not even nature itself teach you, that if a man have 
 longhair, it is a shame unto him 7 But if a woman have 
 lon^ hair, it is a glory to her ; for her hair is given her for 
 a covering." The men in the East, Chardin observes, are 
 shaved ; the women nourish their hair with great fondness, 
 which they lengthen by tresses, and tufts of silk, down to 
 the heels. — Paxton. 
 
 THE SECOND EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETER. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ver. 12. Looking for and hasting unto the coming 
 of the day of God, wherein the heavens being 
 on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall 
 melt with fervent heat. 
 
 1 he word ** unto" has here been supplied without autho- 
 rity. The original {speudontas teen parousian) exhibits no 
 
 preposition, and properly requires a transitive rendering, 
 viz. accelerating, or hastening on, the coming, &c. Thus un- 
 derstood, the words convey the very interesting, and solemn 
 intimation, that Christians are not only earnestly to cxpea 
 the great day of God, the day of the restitution of all things, 
 but by their devoted lives and a pre-eminent sanctity of 
 spirit, they are to be instrumental in expediting its approach. 
 According to their conduct, as marked by all manner of 
 holy conversation and godliness, or the reverse, will be the 
 speediness or the tardiness of its arrival. — Bush. 
 
THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JUDE. 
 
 Ver. 4. For there are certain men crept in un- 
 awares, who were before of old ordained to this 
 condemnation ; ungodly men, turning the grace 
 of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the 
 only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 » Those who were summoned before the courts of justice 
 were said to be rcpoycypanfiEvoi en Kpiaiv, because they were 
 cited to appear, by posting up their names in some public 
 place ; and the judgment of the court was published or de- 
 clared in writing. Such persons the Romans called pro- 
 scriptos, or proscribed, that is, whose names were posted up 
 in writing, in some public place, as persons doomed to die, 
 with a reward offered to any that should kill them. These 
 
 are the terms which the apostle Jude applies to the ungodly, 
 who had crept unawares into the church : they were before 
 of old, TzpoyeypannEvoi, ordained to this condemnation ; per- 
 sons who must not only give an account of their crimes to 
 Gcd, but are proscribed or destined to the punishment 
 which they deserve. In Persia, malefactors were not al- 
 lowed to look on the king ; this was the reason, that as soon 
 as Haman was considered a criminal they covered his face. 
 From Pococke we find the custom still continues, for speak- 
 ing of the artifice by which an Egyptian bey was taken off, 
 he says, " A man being brought before him like a malefac- 
 tor just taken, with his hands behind him as if tied, and a 
 napkin put over his head, as malefactors commonly have, 
 when he came into his presence, suddenly shot him dead." 
 — Paxton. 
 
 THE REVELATION OF JOHN THE DIVINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Ver. 9. I John, who also am your brother, and 
 companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom 
 and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle 
 that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and 
 for the testimony of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Patmos has an excellent harbour, and the town, being 
 situated on the loftiest part of the island, makes a pretty 
 appearance on entering. The houses, being constructed of 
 a white freestone, have a peculiarly neat aspect. It has 
 been calculated that the town has an elevation of nearly 
 five hundred feet above the level of the sea. In its centre 
 is a large convent dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, who 
 was banished to this island. Here he wrote his Revela- 
 tion. We saw, in walking to the summit of the hill, the 
 grotto in which he is said to have .composed them. The 
 convent has a resident bishop, with a considerable number 
 of monks, and is a college for the education of young men 
 of the Greek persuasion. In those parts of the island which 
 the inhabitants are able to cultivate, we saw several small 
 fieJds, or patches of corn, banked up with stones to prevent 
 the soil from being washed away by the rains. It appeared, 
 however, to be capable of producing but an inconsiderable 
 quantity of grain. The inhabitants procure sheep and cat- 
 tle from the neighbouring islands. The town contains 
 fibout two hundred houses. The women are to the men in 
 proportion of five to one. (Wittman.)— Burder. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 Ver. 1. Unto the angel of the church of Ephe- 
 sus write ; These things saith he that holdeth 
 the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh 
 in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. 
 
 See on Acts 18. 19. 
 
 Ver. 8. And unto the angel of the church in 
 
 Smyrna w^rite ; These things saith the first and 
 the last, which was dead, and is alive. 
 
 Smyrna, situated at the extremity of a beautiful bay on 
 the coast of Asia Minor, was one of the principal cities of 
 the ancient region of Ionia : its early history is involved hi 
 some obscurity. According to the geographer Strabo, it 
 derived its name from an Amazon, so called, who, having 
 conquered Ephesus, had in the first instance transmitted 
 her appellation to that city. The Ephesians afterward 
 founded the town to which it has since been appropriated. 
 Herodotus, however, states that Smyrna originally belonged 
 to the ^olians, who received into the city some Colophonian 
 exiles. These subsequently taking advantage of a festival 
 held without the town, to which festival the Smyrnseans re- 
 sorted in great numbers, shut the gates and became masters 
 of the place. From that time Smyrna ceased to be an 
 ^olian city, but was received into the Ionian confederacy. 
 Of all the different cities which laid claim to the honour of 
 being the birth-place of Homer, Smyrna seems to assert 
 her claim to that distinction with the greatest zeal and 
 plausibility. 
 
 Though the Smymaeans successfully resisted the attacks 
 of Gyges, king of Lydia, they were subjugated by his de- 
 scendant, Alyattes; and in consequence of this event the 
 city sunk into decay, and was deserted for the space of four 
 hundred years. Alexander proposed to rebuild it ; which 
 design was carried into effect by Antigonus and Lysiraachus, 
 the latter of whom completed the new city ; the streets of 
 which are said to have been remarkably handsome, being 
 well paved, and drawn at right angles. Numerous fine 
 porticoes, temples, theatres, and a public library, with the 
 splendid and lofty acropolis, rendered it one of the most 
 beautiful cities of Ionia. Various grants and privileges 
 were conferred upon the Smyrnaeans by the Roman senate, 
 for the part which they hacl taken during the wars with 
 Antiochus and Mithridates* Under the Roman emperors, 
 Smyrna flourished greatly ; and its schools of eloquence and 
 philosophy were held in considerable repute. Under the 
 Greek emperors Smyrna experienced great vicissitudes. 
 Having been taken by Tzachas, a Turkish chief, towards 
 
644 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 Chap. 3. 
 
 the close of the eleventh century, it was nearly destroyed by 
 a Greek fleet under the command of John Ducas : the Em- 
 peror Comne.^.us subsequently restored it, but it again suf- 
 I'ered very severely from a siege which it sustained against 
 the forces of Tamerlane. Not long after this event it fell 
 into the hands of the Turks, in whose possession it has re- 
 mained ever 'since. 
 
 Modern Smyrna, by the Turks called Ismir, is beauti- 
 fully situated at the foot of a lofty mountain, that stretches 
 along the shore to a great extent, and has upon its summit 
 the castellated building seen on the right of our engraving, 
 which looks towards the bav. From this elevation the 
 prospect is truly grand ; ,and this is perhaps the finest port 
 in Asia, as a large fleet might ride in it, and vessels receive 
 and discharge their cargoes close to the shore. Upon this 
 mountain was founded one of those churches which became 
 the peculiar care of the apostle John, who addressed to its 
 angel (presiding minister or bishop) the solemn admonitions 
 in Rev. ii. 8—11. This church isdedicated to Polycarp, the 
 first bishop of Smyrna, who suffered martyrdom here A. D. 
 166, being committed to the flames. The population is 
 commonly estimated at 100,000 or 110,000; but the Rev. 
 John Hartley, who was here in the year 1825, is of opinion 
 that it is greatly overcharged. He thinks that Smyrna does 
 not contain many more than 75,000 inhabitants ; of whom 
 about 45,000 are Turks, 10,000 Greeks, 8000 Armenians, 
 8000 Jews, and less than 1000 Europeans of different na- 
 tions. The English residents may be upwards of one hun- 
 dred: they dwell in the British factory, which is very ex- 
 tensive, and is enclosed with gates. The streets are narrow, 
 and many of the houses, which are built of clay, are low ; 
 most of them have roofs of pantiles, some of which are flat, 
 while others are gaudily painted. There are twenty 
 mosques : the Greeks have three churches ; the Armenians, 
 one ; the Latins, two ; and the Protestants, two : the Jews 
 have eight synagogues. Frank street, where the Euro- 
 peans reside, and in which many sign-boards are exhibited, 
 is by far the best street in Smyrna : by the English it has 
 been named Bond street ; but the Turks call it Ghul Ma- 
 baia, or the Rose Gluarter. 
 
 Smyrna has been subject to several awful visitations. In 
 1743 it was destroyed by fire, and in 1750 by an earthquake ; 
 in 1752, 1758, and 1760, it was depopulated by plague; fire 
 again consumed almost the whole of it in 1763, 1769, and 
 1778 ; and in 1814 there were 40,000 persons cut off" by the 
 plague. Earthquakes and the plague, indeed, are the great 
 calamities of this place: the condition of the Christians re- 
 siding here (which is not the most secure under the Turk- 
 ish government) is said to be better than in that of any other 
 of the sites of the -seven churches mentioned in the Apoc- 
 alypse, as if the promise was still in some measure made 
 good to Smyrna : — " Fear none of those things which thou 
 
 shalt suffer Be thou faithful unto death, an4 I will 
 
 give thee a crown of life." (Rev. ii. 10.)— Horne* 
 
 Ver. 12. And to the angel of the church in Per- 
 gamos write ; These things saith he which 
 hath the sharp sword with two edges. 
 
 Pergamos, or Pergamus, was the ancient metropolis of 
 M3'sia, and the residence of the Attalian kings, who col- 
 lected here a noble library, containing two hundred thou- 
 sand volumes, which was afterward transported to Egypt 
 by Cleopatra, and added to the library at Alexandria. • It 
 IS situated on the right bank of the river Ca'icus, about 
 fnxty miles to the north of Smyrna. 
 
 Against the church at Pergamus was adduced the charge 
 of partial instability; but to its wavering faith was prom- 
 ised the all-powerful protection of God. (Rev. ii. 12—17.) 
 The errors of Balaam and of the Nicolaitans have been 
 purged away ; Pergamus has been preserved from the de- 
 stroyer ; and three thousand Christians, out of a popula- 
 tion of fourteen or fifteen thousand inhabitants, now cherish 
 the rites of their holy religion in the same spot where it 
 v.'as planted by the Apostle Paul ; though the poor Greeks 
 are restricted to one small and mean church, under the 
 Acropolis, or citadel of the ancient city, where the hymn 
 ot praise to their Redeemer is whispered, rather than sung, 
 for fear of oflTending the fanatical Turks. 
 
 Numerous ancient ruins of a fortress, a theatre, and a 
 naumachia, attest the magnificence of this once royal city. 
 The modern town of Bergamo is seen through the mag- 
 
 nificent arch on the right of our engravmg. It . iB» partly 
 on the slope of the hill, and partly in the plain. On the 
 summit of the hill, upon the left, is the Acropolis, on 
 which is a castle nearly covering its whole summit, inclu- 
 ding about eight acres, together with some remains of a 
 heathen temple. A neighbouring cemetery has, for ages, 
 been supplied with marble embellishments from the theatre, 
 which are collected in great profusion to ornament the 
 graves, near to which, if not on that site itself, was once 
 placed the celebrated temple of yEsculapius, which, among 
 other privileges, had that of an asylum. Here also are 
 massive ruins of the church of .Agios Theologos, con- 
 jectured to be one of those which the Emperor Theodosius 
 caused to be erected. There is another ancient church in 
 the town, that of Saint Sophia, which, about thirty years 
 since, was desecrated by being converted into a Turkish 
 mosque. The scenery from the Acropolis is grand, but 
 sad. The fine plain before Pergamus, -which seems ready 
 to start into fertility at a touch, is sparingly cultivated, ex- . 
 cept on the very edges of the town; but that touch is want- 
 ing. The unrestrained flood-courses of the Caicus and its 
 tributary streams have cut the plain into broad sandy veins. 
 In 1828, when this place was visited by Mr. Macfarlane, 
 a collection, in a Greek school, of about fifty volumes, -in 
 Romaic, or modern Greek, was called " the library," and 
 represented the ancient store of two hundred thousand 
 volumes, which had been formed by the munificent mon- 
 archs of Pergamus: and a dirty little Italian quack, igno- 
 rant and insolent, was head practitioner of medicine in 
 the city which gave birth to Galen, and of which iEscu- 
 lapius was the tutelary divinity. The town was as dull as 
 the grave, except during the night, when, as it happened 
 to be the Ramazan of the Turks, there was some stir among 
 the Mohammedan portion of the inhabitants. — Horne. 
 
 Ver. 17. He that hath an ear, let him hear what 
 the Spirit saith unto the churches ; To him that 
 overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden 
 manna, and will give him a white stone, and in 
 the stone a new name written, which no man 
 knoweth, saving he that receiveth it. 
 
 It was a custom among the ancients to give their votes . 
 by white or black stones; with these they condemned the; 
 guilty, with those acquitted the innocent. In allusion tO' 
 this ancient custom, our Lord promises to give the spirit- 
 ual conqueror "a white stone; and in the stone a new 
 name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that re- 
 ceiveth it ;" the white stone of absolution or approbation, 
 and inseparably connected with it, a new name of dignity 
 and honour, even that of a child of God and heir of glory, 
 which is known only to himself, or the inhabitants of that 
 world to which he shall be admitted, and who have already 
 received it. When sentence of condemnation was pro- 
 nounced, if the case was capital, the witnesses put their 
 hands on the head of the criminal, and said, Thy blood be 
 upon thine own head. To this custom the Jews alluded, 
 when they cried out at the trial of Christ, " His blood be on 
 us, and oh our children." Then was the malefactor led to 
 execution, and none were allowed openly to lament his 
 misfortune. His hands were secured with cords, and his 
 feet with fetters ; a custom which furnished David with an 
 affecting allusion, in his lamentation over the dust of Abner : 
 " Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put in fetters."— 
 Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Ver. 1. And unto the angel of the church in Sar- 
 dis write ; These things saith he that hath the 
 seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars : I 
 know thy works, that thou hast a name, that 
 thou livest, and art dead. 
 
 Sardis, or Sardes, the capital of the country of Lydia, in 
 Asia, was a city of great antiquity, the founder of which is 
 not certainly known. It was situated in a fertile plain, at 
 the foot of the northern slope of Mount Tmolus ; which 
 rears its majestic head in the background of our engraving, 
 and commands an extensive view over the circumjacent coun- 
 try. The river Pactolus, (now an insignificant brook,) which 
 
I 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 645 
 
 is also seen in our view, flowed through the forum. To the 
 south of the plain, on which Sardis was erected, stood the 
 temple of Cybele, the fabled mother of the gods, accordmg 
 to pagan mythology: it was a very ancient and magnificent 
 edifice, constructed of white marble. Of this temple the 
 two noble columns which are delineated in the foreground 
 of our engraving, together with a few mutilated fragments 
 of other columns scattered on the sward or sunk in it, are 
 all that now remain : these columns are buried nearly to the 
 half of their height in the soil, which has accumulated in the 
 valley since their erection, most probably by the destruction 
 of the continually crumbling eminence, on which stood 
 the acropolis or citadel. The columns which have been 
 destroyed have been blown up by gunpowder, reduced to 
 blocks, and sold to masons and cuiters of tombstones: and 
 as other materials are wanted, the two columns which are 
 yet standing in all probability will be blasted in the same 
 manner ; and the traveller, who may hereafter visit this spot, 
 will vainly seek for a vestige of the Sardeian temple of 
 Cybele. 
 
 After experiencing various fortunes, Sardis became a 
 great and flourishing city in the reign of CrcEsus, king of 
 Lydia, by the fame of whose riches and hospitality men of 
 talents and learning were attracted thither. On the over- 
 throw of this monarch by Cyrus, B. C. 545, Sardis continued 
 to be the chief town of the Persian dominions in this part 
 of Asia. On the revolt excited by Arisiagoras and His- 
 tiaeus, the lonians, with the aid of an Atheriian force, sur- 
 prised this city, except the citadel, which was defended by 
 a numerous Persian garrison. Though burnt to the ground 
 on this occasion, Sardis was again rebuilt ; and, soon after 
 the defeat of the Persians at the battle of the Granicus, it 
 surrendered to Alexander the Great, who commanded that 
 the Lydians should regain their liberty, and resume their 
 ancient laws and usages. During the reigns of the Greek 
 sovereigns in Asia, this city sustained numerous reverses ; 
 and from Antiochus, the last king of Syria, it passed into 
 the possession of the Romans, having surrendered to the 
 two Scipios, B. C. 187. Sardis was indebted to the Emperor 
 Tiberius for its restoration, after a disastrous earthquake, 
 which had reduced it to a heap of ruins. 
 
 We have no information in the New Testament at what 
 time Christianity was planted at Sardis ; but probably it was 
 not till after Saint Paul had founded the church at Ephe- 
 sus ; and there can be little doubt that the metropolis of 
 Lydia is included in St. Luke's declaration, that " all they 
 which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, 
 both Jews and Greeks," (Acts xix. 10,) and also in the sal- 
 utation of "all the churches of Asia," (1 Cor. xvi. 19.) 
 This is rendered manifest by the book of Revelation, where 
 Sardis is expressly named among the seven churches of 
 that province. When the warning voice was addressed 
 " Unto the angel" or bishop " of the church in Sardis," it 
 was evidently in a declining state. (Rev. iii. 1—5.) Sub- 
 sequeiitly, this city became the seat of a bishoprick; and 
 ecclesiastical history mentions more than one council 
 as having been held here. 
 
 Sardis continued to be a flourishing city, through the 
 Roman emperors, to the close of the Byzantine dynasty. 
 In the eleventh century the Turks took possession of it, and, 
 two centuries later, it was nearly destroyed by Tamerlane. 
 This once-celebrated capital of the Lydian kings is now 
 reduced to a wretched village called Sart, consisting of a 
 few mud huts occupied by Turkish herdsmen, and erected 
 in the midst of extensive ruins ; among which Lieut. Col. 
 Leake observed the remains of a large Christian church. 
 
 " If" (savs the Rev. Mr. Arundell, who visited this 
 place in 1833) " I should be asked what impresses the mind 
 most strongly on beholding Sardis, I should reply, its in- 
 describable solitude, like the darkness in Egypt, — darkness 
 that could be felt. So the deep solitude of the spot, once 
 Ihe ' Lady of kingdoms,' produces a corresponding feeling 
 of desolate abandonment in the mind, which can never be 
 forgotten. Connect this feeling with the message in the 
 Apocalypse to the church of Sardis:-—' Thou hast a name 
 
 that thou livest, and art dead I will come on thee 
 
 as a thief, and thou shalt not know at what hour I will 
 come upon thee.' (Rev. iii. 1, 3.) And then look around 
 and ask, ' Where are the churches, where are the Chris- 
 tians of Sardis V The tumuli beyond the Hermus reply, 
 ' All dead,' suffering the infliction of the threatened judg- 
 ments of God."— HOBNE. 
 
 Ver. 7. And to the angel of the church in Phila- 
 delphia write; These things saith he that is 
 hol3r, he that is true, he that hath the key of 
 David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth ; 
 and shutteth, and no man openeth. 
 
 Philadelphia was a very considerable city of Lydia, in 
 Asia Minor, which derived its name from its founder, At- 
 tains Philadelphus, brother of Eumenes, king of Pergamus. 
 It stands in the plain of the Hermus, about midway between 
 that river and the determination of Mount Tmolus. Be- 
 sides the Hermus, which divides the plain, numerous brooks 
 and rills give beauty, verdure, and fertility, to the neigh- 
 bourhood ; which, however, is but little cultivated. 
 
 This city has, at various times, suffered greatlv from 
 earthquakes. Tacitus mentions it among the towns re- 
 stored by Tiberius after a more than ordinary calamity of 
 this kind. (Annal. lib. ii. c. 47.) Not long before the date 
 of the apocalyptic epistle, (Rev. iii. 7—13,) Philadelphia 
 had suffered so much from earthquakes, that it had been in 
 a great measure deserted by its inhabitants, which may, in 
 some degree, account for the poverty of its church, as de- 
 scribed in that epistle. " Philadelphia appears to have re- 
 sisted the attacks of the Turks, in 1312, with more success 
 than other cities. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by 
 the emperor, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her 
 valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above 
 fourscore years, and at length capitulated with the proudest 
 of the Ottomans, (Bajazet,) in 1390. Among the Greek colo- 
 nies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect— a 
 column in a scene of ruins." Whatever may be lost of the 
 spirit of Christianity, there is still the form of a Christian 
 church in this city, which is now called Allah-Shehr, or 
 the City of God, by the Turks, and which possesses a few 
 remains of heathen antiquity. 
 
 Philadelphia is now a considerable town, spreading over 
 the slopes of three or four hills. Many remains of the 
 .walls, Vv^hich once encompassed it, are now standing, but 
 with large gaps : the materials of its fortifications are small 
 stones with strong cement. The Rev. Mr. Arundell (by 
 whom our view is sketched) is of opinion that these Avails 
 are not much older than the last days of the lower empire, 
 if indeed they are so ancient. He describes the passage 
 through the streets as being filthy in the extreme ; though 
 the view of the place, as the traveller approaches it, is very 
 beautiful. The prospect from the hill is magnificent: high- 
 ly cultivated gardens and vineyards lie on the back sides of 
 the town, and before it is one of the richest and most ex- 
 tensive plains in Asia. 
 
 Philadelphia contains about three hundred houses occu- 
 pied by Greeks, and nearly three thousand which are in- 
 habited by Turks. There are twenty-five churches, in five 
 only of which divine service is performed once every 
 week : in the larger number it is celebrated but once a year. 
 A solitary fragment is shown as the remains of the church 
 of the Apocalypse, dedicated to St. John.— PIohne. 
 
 Ver. 14. And unto the angel of the church of 
 the Laodiceans, write ; These things saith the 
 Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the be- 
 ginning of the creation of God. 
 
 Laodicea was one of the largest cities in the province of 
 Phrygia Magna, at the commencement of the Christian 
 asra ; though, originally, it was an inconsiderable place. 
 This increase was chiefly owing to the fertility of its sur- 
 rounding soil, and to the inimificent bequests and donations 
 of various opulent individuals. Its earlier name was 
 Diospolis ; but after it had been enlarged by Antiochus. II. 
 king of Syria, it was called Laodicea, in honour of his 
 consort Laodice. Situated on a volcanic eminence, this 
 city was frequently exposed to earthquakes, in common with 
 the surrounding towns and villages. Its inhabitants derived 
 great profit from the sale of the fine wools produced by 
 their flocks, which fed in the adjacent plains. 
 
 In the early age of Christianitv, Laodicea possessed a 
 flourishing church, St. Paul's zeal for which is attested bv 
 the mention which he makes of it in his Epistle to the Co- 
 lossians :— " I would that ye knew what great conflict I have 
 for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have 
 not seen my face in the flesh." (ii. 1.) ATid, " when this 
 
646 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 Chap. 4 — ^9. 
 
 epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the 
 church of the Laodiceans ; and that ye likewise read the 
 epistle from Laodicea." (iv. 16.) From the mention here 
 made of the epistle from Laodicea, it has been conjectured 
 that the Apostle had written a special letter to the converts 
 in that city, which is now lost ; buHt is with more proba- 
 bility supposed that he refers to another of his epistles, either 
 that to the Ephesians, or the first Epistle to Timothy. 
 
 The book of the Revelation of St. John contains a severe 
 rebuke of the Laodiceans for their lukewarmness and 
 worldly-mindedness, and threatens them with that ruin 
 which has been so completely accomplished. (Rev. iii. 
 14 — 19.) In our engraving several arches of a once mag- 
 nificent aqueduct are seen ; and the remains of an amphi- 
 theatre and other edifices attest the ancient splendour and 
 extent of Laodicea. Inscribed altars, columns, friezes, and 
 cornices, are dispersed among the houses and burying- 
 grounds. The doom of the church at Laodicea seems to 
 have been more severe and terrible than that of the other 
 apocalyptic churches. Not a single Christian is said to re- 
 side at Laodicea, which is even more solitary than Ephesus. 
 The latter city has a prospect of a rolling sea or a whiten- 
 ing sail to enliven its decay ; the former sits in widowed 
 loneliness. Its temples are desolate, and the stately edifices 
 of ancient Laodicea are now peopled by wolves and jackals. 
 The prayers of the Mohammedan mosque are the only 
 prayers heard near the yet splendid ruins of the city, on 
 which the prophetic denunciation seems to have been fully 
 executed in its utter rejection as a church. — Horne. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ver. 10. The four and twenty elders fall down 
 before him that sat on the throne, and worship 
 him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their 
 crowns before the throne. 
 
 This short expedition was brought to a close by the per- 
 sonal submission of Abool Fyze Khan, who, attended by 
 £ll his court, proceeded to tEe tents of Nadir Shah, and 
 laid his crown, and other ensigns of royalty, at the feet of 
 the conqueror, who assigned him an honourable place in 
 his assembly, and in a few days afterward restored hirn to 
 
 -o throne, — Malcolm's History of Persia. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ver. 2. And I saw another angel ascending- from 
 the east, having the seal of the living God: and 
 he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, 
 to whom it was given to hurt the earth and 
 the sea. 
 
 See on Ezek. 9. 2. 
 
 Ver. 3. Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the 
 sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the ser- 
 vants of our God in their foreheads. 
 
 See on ch. 13. 16. 
 
 Ver. 9. After this, I beheld, and lo, a great mul- 
 titude, which no man could number, of all na- 
 tions, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, 
 stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, 
 clothed with white robes, and palms in their 
 hands. 
 
 Sec on John 12. 13, 14, and 1 Cor. 9. 25. 
 
 Ver. 13. And one of the elders answered, saying 
 unto me, What are these which are arrayed in 
 white robes? and whence came they? 14. And 
 I said unto him. Sir, thou knowest. And he said 
 to me, These are they which came out of great 
 tribulation, and have washed their robes, and 
 m&'V them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
 
 in order to 'ihP'-k with absolute precision the meaning of 
 the original iii i**" latter clause, the preposition " in" should 
 be translated " Uf." It is not the purport of the passage, to 
 
 intimate that the robes of the Martyrs and Confessors here 
 spoken of, were actually died in the blood of the Lamb, as 
 Joseph's coat was in that of the wild beast slain by his 
 brethren for the purpose ; for this would have made them 
 red, not white, at least unless we allow the words to do the 
 greatest violence to metaphorical congruity. But the sacred 
 writers are not apt to outrage propriety and congruity in 
 this manner. In the present case, the idea doubtless is, that 
 it Avas by the blood of Christ, by suffering unto death for 
 his name's sake, by shedding their blood for his cause, 
 which he graciously accounted as the shedding of his own, 
 that they had been enabled to make their raiment Avhite, or, 
 in other words, had become entitled to be arrayed, by way 
 of reward, in the white robes of salvation. Their own suf- 
 ferings, in connexion with the merits of the Saviour's blood, 
 had been the means of conferring this honour upon them. 
 The blood of the Lamb M^as rather the medium by which, 
 than the fountain in which, their garments had been thus 
 blanched into the lustrous and pearly whiteness of the ves- 
 ture of the risen, rewarded, and beatified saints. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 17. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of 
 the throne, shall feed them, and shall lead them 
 unto living fountains of waters, and God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes. 
 
 See on Ps. 23. 1—3. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ver. 4. And the smoke of the incense which came 
 with the prayers of the saints, ascending up be- 
 fore God, out of the angel's hand. 
 
 There is a pagan rite, mentioned by C. Dampier, as prac- 
 tised by the nobility of Touquin, which greatly illustrates 
 this passage. When they pray with their families, the 
 prayer is written upon a paper ; and being recited by a prop- 
 er officer, is thrown into a^re of coals, where, probably, 
 incense or some other perfume is thrown at the same time, 
 so that the prayer ascends up with the smoke. — Daubuz. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Ver. 1. And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a 
 star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to 
 him was given the key of the bottomless pit. 
 2. And he opened the bottomless pit ; and there 
 arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a 
 great furnace ; and the sun and the air were 
 darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 
 
 Commentators at the present day are almost univer- 
 sally agreed in regarding the fifth trumpet as symboli- 
 zing and predicting the appearance of the Arabian im- 
 postor, his spurious religion, and his Saracen followers. 
 But as it is by no means evident how Mohammed himself 
 can properly be represented as " a star falling from heav- 
 en," the usual symbol of an apostate Christian teacher, or 
 of* number of them, we apprehend the design of the Holy 
 Spirit in this imagery to be, to teach us that Mohammedan- 
 ism is to be considered as the fruit or product of a Christian 
 heresy. The star Jiad fallen before the time of the false 
 prophet, in the person of Arius, and other gross heretics; 
 and^ as the consequence of their apostacy from the truth, 
 the providence of God so ordered it, that the desolating 
 delusion of Mohammedanism should arise and overspread 
 some of the fairest portions of the Church. This view of 
 the arch-imposture of Islamism has been taken by some 
 very able writf;rs of modren times, particularly by Mr. 
 Whitaker, in his " Origin of Arianism." The grand here- 
 sies, therefore, of the Christian church, previous to the time 
 of Mohammed, seem to be here personified in the fallen 
 star, and represented as being instrumental in introducing 
 this master-plague of error and superstition into the world. 
 The poetical machinery of the vision is supposed to be 
 taken from the sacred oracular caves of the ancient Pa- 
 gans, which were often thought to communicate with the 
 sea, or the great abyss, and which were specially valued, 
 when (like that at Delphi) they emitted an intoxicating 
 vapour: it is used, therefore, with singular propriety in 
 
^^^:tf>r/i^'^ 
 
 SARD IS. 
 
 Rev. 3:1. Page 645. 
 
Chap. 9. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 647 
 
 foretelling the rise of a religious imposture. There may 
 possibly be an allusion also to the cave of Hera, whither 
 the prophet was wont to retire for the purpose of excogita- 
 ting his system, and from which it really emanated. The 
 opening of the bottomless pit, therefore, and the letting 
 out the vapour and smoke of the infernal regions, aptly 
 represents the wicked and diabolical system of religion, 
 the dense and noxious fumes of the corrupt theology which 
 he broached, and by means of which so large a portion of 
 Christendom was finally obscured and involved in darkness. 
 The preternatural darkening of the sun foreshows the 
 eclipse of the true religion ; and that of the air prefigures 
 the uncontrolled dominion of the powers of darkness. As 
 a striking coincidence with the signs here predicted, it is 
 worthy of note, that a remarkable comet immediately pre- 
 ceded the birth of Mohammed ; and that an eclipse of the 
 sun, of extraordinary degree and duration, attended the 
 first announcement of his pretended mission. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 3. And there came out of the smoke locusts 
 upon the earth; and unto them was given 
 power, as the scorpions of the earth have 
 power. 
 
 Arabia has long been noted for giving birth to prodi- 
 gious swarms of locusts, which often overspread and lay 
 waste the neighbouring countries ; and" it is remarkable, 
 that in a genuine Arabian romance, the locust is intro- 
 duced as the national emblem of the Ishmaelites. The 
 symbol, therefore, of the locusts issuing out of the smoke 
 strikingly represents the armies of the Saracens, the mar- 
 tial followers of the prophet, first engendered, as it were, 
 amid the fumes of his religion, and then marching forth, 
 at his command, to conquer and to proselyte the world. 
 The pages of history must be consulted to learn the devas- 
 tations of those hosts of destructive Saracens, which, under 
 the guidance of Mohammed and his successors, alighted 
 upon and wasted the apocalyptic earth. Yet, notwithstand- 
 ing the phantasms that came forth from the pit of the abyss 
 bore a general resemblance to locusts, they were marked 
 by several peculiarities, by which they were more per- 
 fectly adapted to typify the people designed to be thus 
 shadowed out. These we shall consider as we proceed. — 
 Bush. 
 
 Ver. 4. And it was commanded them that they 
 should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither 
 any green thing, neither any tree; but only 
 those men which have not the seal of God in 
 their foreheads. 
 
 By the command that they should not hurt the grass, nor 
 the trees, but men only, it is evident that these were not 
 natural, but symbolical locusts; and also that Ihey were 
 under providential control. The same thing appears from 
 other attributes assigned them, which plainly belong to 
 the objects signified, and not to the sign; as the human 
 face, the woman's hair, the golden crowns, the iron breast- 
 plates. But it is very common in the symbolic diction of 
 prophecy, to find the literal and the allegorical sense in- 
 termixed, and that even in the same passage. We are 
 thus furnished with a clew to the real meaning of the 
 symbols. By the precept here given, the emblematic lo- 
 custs were required to act in a manner perfectly dissimilar 
 to the ravages of natural locusts : and yet how faithfully 
 the command was obeyed, may be inferred from the fol- 
 lowing very remarkable injunction of the Calif Abube- 
 ker to Yezid, upon setting out on the expedition against 
 Syria, the first undertaking of the Saracens in the way of 
 foreign conquest. It can scarcely be doubted, that these 
 instructions have been preserved, under the providence of 
 God, for the express purpose of furnishing an illustration 
 of this prophetic text. " Remember," said Abubeker, " that 
 you are always in the presence of God, on the verge of 
 death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of par- 
 adise. When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit 
 yourselves like men, without turning your backs ; but let 
 not your victory be stained with the blood of women or 
 children. Destroy/ no palm-trees, norburn any fields of corrS; 
 Cut dovm no fruit-trees ; nor do any mischief to cattle, only 
 such as you kill to eat. When you make" any covenant. 
 
 stand to it, and be as good as your word. As you go on, 
 you will find some religious persons, who live retired in 
 monasteries, and propose to themselves to serve God that 
 way : let them alone, and neither kill them, nor destroy 
 thefr monasteries. And you will find another sort of 
 people, that belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have 
 shaven crowns : be sure you cleave their sculls, and give 
 them no quarter till they either turn Mohammedans, or 
 pay tribute." It has accordingly been noticed, that those 
 parts of the Roman empire which were left untouched by 
 these Saracen hordes, were those in which, as it appears 
 from history, the remnant of the true church of God was 
 still found residing: they were only to hurt the men who 
 had not the mark of God on their foreheads. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 5. And to them it was given that they should 
 not kill them, but that they should be torment- 
 ed five months : and their torment was as the 
 torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. 
 
 Mr. Gibbon's undesigned commentary on these words 
 will show how the commission was fulfilled. " The fair 
 option of friendship or submission, or a battle, was proposed 
 to the enemies of Mohammed. If they professed the creed 
 of Islam, they wer^ admitted to all the temporal and spirit- 
 ual benefits of his primitive disciples, and marched under 
 the same banners, to extend the religion they had embraced. 
 The clemency of the prophet was decided by his interests ; 
 yet he seldom trampled on a prostrate enemy, and he seemed 
 to promise, that on the payment of a tribute, the least guilty 
 of his unbelieving subjects might be indulged in their wor- 
 ship." The period assigned for the power of the locusts, in 
 this prediction, is "five months." Prophecy has its pecu- 
 liar mode of computing time. A day for the most part 
 stands for a year. Five months, therefore, of thirty days 
 each, amount, in the computation of prophecy, to one 
 hundred and fifty years. As five literal months is the 
 utmost term of the duration of the natural plague of the 
 locusts, so the prophetic five months accurately denote the 
 period of the main conquests of the Saracen empire, com- 
 puting from the appearance of Mohammed to the founda- 
 tion of Bagdad. " Read," says Bishop Newton, " the his- 
 tory of the Saracens, and you will find that their greatest 
 exploits were performed, and their greatest conquests made, 
 within the space of five prophetic months, or one hundred 
 and fifty years, — between the year 612, when Mohammed 
 opened the bottomless pit, and began publicly to teach and 
 propagate his imposture ; and the year 762, when Alman- 
 sor built Bagdad, and called it the City of Peace." The 
 comparison of the locusts' torments to that of the scorpion 
 will be considered subsequently. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 6. And in those days shall men seek death, 
 and shall not find it ; and shall desire to die, 
 and death shall flee from them. 
 
 This prediction has usually been considered as awfully 
 expressive of the hopeless sufferings and despair of eastern 
 Christendom, under the lawless insults, violences, and op- 
 pressions, systematically practised by their Saracen mas- 
 ters. We would not deny that this may have been alluded 
 to ; yet, as it would seem that men desirous of escaping 
 suffering by death, might easily, in a thousand ways, have 
 accomplished their object, it may be suggested, whether 
 the Saracens themselves are not the persons here referred 
 to, as coveting death in battle, from a view to the honour 
 and the rewards of such a decease. The following passage 
 from the Koran, is worthy of special note in this connex- 
 ion. " Moreover, ye did sometimes wish for death, before 
 that ye met it." On these words Sale remarks, in a note, 
 "that several of Mohammed's followers, who were not 
 present at Beder, wished for an opportunity of obtaining, 
 in another action, the like honour as those had gained who 
 fell martyrs in that event." The import of the language, 
 therefore, may be, that God should give to the Moslem 
 hosts such an uninterrupted tide of conquests, they should 
 so uniformly come off victorious in their engagements, and 
 that with such inconsiderable losses, that numbers, in the 
 height of their enthusiasm, should pant in vain for the 
 glorious privilege of dying in the field oi battle. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 7, And the shapes of the locusts were like 
 
648 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 Chap. 9. 
 
 unto horses prepared unto battle ; and on their 
 heads were as it were crowns like gold, and 
 their faces were as the faces of men. 
 
 " Arabia," says Gibbon, " is, in the opinion of natural- 
 ists, the native country of the horse." The horsemanship 
 of the Arabs has ever been an object of admiration. " The 
 martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on 
 horseback, and in the field, to practise the exercise of the 
 bow, the javelin, and the cimeter." In correspondence, 
 therefore, with the hieroglyphic of the prophet, the strength 
 of the Saracens consisted very much in their numerous 
 cavalry, and the unrivalled speed of the Arabian coursers 
 forms the most striking possible emblem of the rapid career 
 of the Saracen armies. 
 
 " And on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, 
 and their faces were as the faces of men." — " Make a 
 point," says a precept of Mohammed, " of wearing tur- 
 bans ; because it is the way of angels." The turban, ac- 
 cordingly, has ever been the distinctive head-dress of the 
 Arabs, and their boast has been, that they wore, as their 
 common attire', those ornaments which among other peo- 
 ple are the peculiar badges of royalty. The notice of the 
 " faces of men" seems to be intended jnerely to afford a 
 clew to the meaning of the emblem ; to intimate, that not 
 natural locusts, but human beings, were depicted under 
 this symbol. — Bush. 
 
 The Mamalukes wearing their beards long and rough, 
 with grave and stern countenances, having strong and able 
 bodies, used such cunning in all their fights and battles, 
 that after they had given the first charge with their lances, 
 they would by-and-by, with wonderful activity, use their 
 bows and arrows, casting their tai-gets behind them ; and 
 forthwith the horseman's mace, or crooked cimeter, as the 
 manner of the battle or place required. Their horses were 
 strong and courageous, in make and swiftness much like 
 unto the Spanish jennets : and that which is of many hardly 
 believed, so docile, that at certain signs or speeches of the 
 rider, they would with their teeth reach him up from the 
 ground a lance, an arrow, or such like thing ; and as if 
 they had known the enemy, run upon him with open 
 mouth, and lash at him with their heels, and had by nature 
 and custom learned not to be afraid of any thing. These 
 courageous horses were commonly furnished with silver 
 bridles, gilt trappings, rich saddles, their necks and breast 
 armed with plates of iron : the horseman himself was 
 commonly content with a coat of mail, or a breastplate of 
 iron. The chief and wealthiest of them used head-pieces : 
 the rest a linen covering of the head, curiously folded into 
 many wreaths, wherewith they thought themselves safe 
 enough against any handy strokes ; the common soldiers 
 used thrumbed caps, but so thick that no sword could pierce 
 them. — Knolles. 
 
 Ver. 8. And they had hair as the hair of women, 
 and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. 
 9. And they had breastplates, as it were breast- 
 plates of iron; and the sound of their wings 
 was as the sound of chariots of many horses 
 running to battle. 
 
 The Arabs, as Pliny testifies, wore their beards, or 
 rather mustaches, as men, while their hair, like that of 
 women, was flowing or platted. The "teeth like those of 
 lions," has reference to the weapons and implements of 
 war; and the " breastplates of iron," to the armour made 
 use of by the Saracen troops in their expeditions. The 
 *' sound of their wings as the sound of cnariots of many 
 horses running to battle," is but a part of the same expres- 
 sive imagery denoting warlike scenes and preparations. — 
 Bush. 
 
 Ver. 10. And they had tails like unto scorpions ; 
 and there were stings in their tails : and their 
 power was to hurt men five months. 
 
 The interpretation of the symbols of the Apocalypse 
 must be sought for in the Old Testament. From the fol- 
 lowing words of Isaiah (ch. ix. 14, 15) it appears that the 
 tail of a beast denotes the false doctrines or the supersti- 
 
 tions which he maintains : " Therefore the Lord will cut 
 off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day. 
 The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the 
 prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.^' The emblem, 
 therefore, strikingly represents the infliction of spiritual 
 wounds by the propagation of poisonous and deadly er- 
 rors and heresies. And nothing is more evident from the 
 page of history, than that the Moslem followers of Moham- 
 med have scattered, like scorpions, the venom of their doc- 
 trines behind them ; and whether conquering or conquered, 
 have succeeded in palming a new creed upon those with 
 whom they have had to do. By this symbol, then, we are 
 plainly taught, that the plague of the allegorical locusts 
 consisted not only in the ravages of war, but in the suc- 
 cessful propagation of a false religion, of which the doc- 
 trines should be as deleterious in a spiritual point of view, 
 as the sting of a scorpion in a natural. In like manner, 
 when it is said (ch. xii. 3, 4) of the " great red dragon hav- 
 ing seven heads and ten horns, that his tail drew the third 
 part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth," 
 the explication is, that the antichristian power shadowed 
 out by this formidable monster should be permitted to 
 instil the most pernicious errors into the minds of the pro- 
 fessed ministers of the truth, and thus bring about their 
 entire defection from Christianity. — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 11. And they had a king over them, which 
 is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name 
 in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the 
 Greek tongue, he hath his name Apollyon. 
 
 Both these terms signify destroyer. Since the locusts 
 are at once secular conquerors and the propagators of a 
 false religion, their king must stand to them in the double 
 relation of a temporal and spiritual head. Such accor- 
 dingly were Mohammed and the Califs his successors,, 
 who must be viewed as jointly constituting the locust-king 
 Abaddon ; for in the usual language of prophecy, a king 
 denotes, not any single individual, but a dynasty or king- 
 dom. The chief of the locusts, when they first issued 
 from the pit of the abyss, was Mohammed himself; but 
 during the allotted period of the wo which they occasioned, 
 the reigning destroyer was, of course, the reigning Calif. 
 If, therefore, we were to suppose the genius of Mohamme- 
 danism under the Califs to be personified, and this sym- 
 bolical personage to be designated by the most appropriate 
 title, Abaddon, the destroyer, would be the appellation. 
 As the portion of the prophecy thus far considered, has 
 reference to the origin of Mohammed's imposture, and to 
 the rise, progress, and conquests of the Saracens, its ear- 
 liest abetters and propagators, so the remaining part an- 
 nounces the commencement and career of the Turkish 
 power, the principal of its later supporters.— Bush. 
 
 Ver. 13. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard 
 a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, 
 which is before God. 
 
 It is impossible, from the train of events, and from the 
 quarter of the world in which we are directed to look for 
 the irruption of these prodigious multitudes of horsemen, 
 to mistake to whom the prophecy refers. The four angels 
 who are described as bound in the regions bordering on 
 the river Euphrates, not in the river itself, are the four 
 contemporary sultanies or dynasties, into which the em- 
 pire of the Seljukian Turks was divided towards the closa 
 of the eleventh century: Persia, Kerman, Syria, an:? 
 Rhoum. These sultanies, from different causes, were lonj_ 
 restrained from extending their conquests beyond wha. 
 may be geographically termed the Euphratean regions, but 
 towards the close of the thirteenth century, the four angels 
 on the river Euphrates were loosed in the persons of their 
 existing representatives, the united Ottoman and Seljukian 
 Turks. Gibbon, the historian of the Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire, must of necessity be the guide to any 
 English commentator on this part of the prophetic history. 
 The following is his testimonv as to the immense number 
 of the Turkish cavalry : " As the subject nations marched 
 ^der the standard of the Turks, their cavalry, both men 
 and horses, roere proudly computed by millions. On this 
 occasion, the myriads of the Turkish horse overspread k 
 
Chap. 9. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 649 
 
 frontier of six hundred miles from Taurus to Erzeroum." 
 — Bdsh. 
 
 Ver. 17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, 
 and them that sat on them, having breastplates 
 of fire, and of jacinth and brimstone : and the 
 heads of the horses were as the heads of lions ; 
 and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, 
 and brimstone. 18. By these three was the 
 third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the 
 smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out 
 of their mouths. 
 
 These prophetic characteristics of the Euphratean war- 
 riors accord in the most perfect manner with the descrip- 
 tion which history gives of the Turks. They brought 
 immense armies into the field, chiefly composed of horse, 
 and from their first appearance on the great political stage 
 of nations, their costume has been peculiarly distinguished 
 by the colours of scarlet, blue, and yellow, which are here 
 denoted by the terms "fire," "jacinth," and "brimstone." 
 Rycaut's "Present State of the Ottoman Empire," pub- 
 lished towards the close of the seventeenth century, will 
 satisfy the reader on this point. 
 
 " And the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, 
 and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brim- 
 stone." "We have here a symbol which is not elsewhere 
 to be met with in the scriptures. The prophetic horses 
 are represented as vomiting out of their mouths " fire, and 
 smoke, and brimstone," by which, it is added, " the third 
 part of men was killed." Mede, Newton, Faber, and most 
 other eminent expositors of the Revelation, agree in sup- 
 posing that the flashes of fire attended by smoke and brim- 
 stone, which seemed to proceed from the mouths of the 
 horses, were in reality the flashes of artillery. The Turks 
 were among the first who turned to account the European 
 invention of gunpowder in carrying on their wars. Can- 
 non, the most deadly engine of modern warfare, were 
 employed by Mohammed II. in his wars against the Greek 
 empire ; and it is said that he was indebted to his heavy 
 ordnance for the reduction of Constantinople. The pro- 
 phet, therefore, is to be considered as depicting the vision- 
 ary scene of a field of battle, in which the cavalry and 
 artillery are so mingled together, that while flashes of fire 
 and dense clouds of smoke issued from the cannon, the 
 horses' heads alone would be dimly discerned through the 
 sulphureous mist, and would seem to the eye of the spec- 
 tator to belch forth the smoky flames from their own 
 mouths. As the design of this striking imagery is to 
 describe the appearances rather t'aan the reality of things, 
 the prophet employs an expression, " in the vision," or 
 rather "in vision," i. e. apparently as it seemed, which evi- 
 dently conveys the idea that the phantasm of a battle scene 
 was presented to the imagination. We may now see how 
 far history confirms this interpretation : " Among the im- 
 plements of destruction," says Mr. Gibbon, " he (Moham- 
 med II.) studied with peculiar care the recent and tremen- 
 dous discovery of the Latins ; and his artillery surpassed 
 whatever had yet appeared in the world." " The Ottoman 
 artillery thundered on all sides, and the camp and city, 
 the Greeks and Turks, toere involved in a cloud of smoke, 
 which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or 
 destruction of the Roman empire." " The great cannon 
 of Mohammed has been separately an important and visible 
 object in the history of the times. But that enormous en- 
 gine, which required, it is said, seventy yoke of oxen and 
 two thousand men to draw it, was flanked by two fellows 
 almost of equal magnitude: the long order of Turkish 
 artillery was pointed against the wall ; fourteen batteries 
 thundered at once on the most accessible places ; and of 
 one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was mount- 
 ed with a hundred and thirty guns, or that it discharged a 
 hundred and thirty bullets." — Bush. 
 
 Ver. 19. For their power is in their mouth, and 
 in their tails : for their tails were like unto ser- 
 pents, and had heads, and with them they do 
 hurt. 
 
 The emblematic import of the tail of a beast we have 
 82 
 
 already considered. The imagery in the present symbol, 
 is slightly difierent 'from that of the Saracen locusts, which 
 had the tails of scorpions; but the import is the same. 
 Here the tails of the horses terminated in a serpent's 
 head; and it is not a little remarkable, that the Turks 
 have been in the habit, from the earliest periods of their 
 history, of tying a knot in the extremity of the long flowing 
 tails of their horses, when preparing for war ; so that their 
 resemblance to serpents with swelling heads must have 
 been singularly striking. Striking too is the fact, that so 
 slight a circumstance should have been adverted to by ihe 
 historian so often quoted, who thought as little of being 
 an organ to illustrate the predictions of scripture, as the 
 Turks themselves did of being the agents to fulfil them. 
 Speaking of Alp Arslan, the first Turkish invader of the 
 Roman empire, he says, " With his own hands he tied up 
 his horse's tail, and declared that if he were vanquished, 
 that spot should be the place of his burial." The scope of 
 the hieroglyphic here employed is to predict the propaga- 
 tion of a deadly imposture by the instrumentality of the 
 same warlike power which should achieve such prodi- 
 gious conquests. The event has corresponded with the 
 prophecy. Like the Saracens of the first wo, the Turks 
 were not merely secular conquerors. They were anima- 
 ted with all the wild fanaticism of a false religion ; they 
 professed and propagated the same theological system as 
 their Arabian predecessors ; they injured by their doctrines 
 no less than by their conquests ; and wherever they estab- 
 lished their dominion, the Koran triumphed over the gos- 
 pel. Thus writes Mr. Gibbon : " The whole body of the 
 nation embraced the religion of Mohammed." " Twenty- 
 five years after the death of Basil, his successors were sud- 
 denly assaulted by an unknown race of barbarians, who 
 united ihe Scythian valour with the fanaticism of new con- 
 verts." 
 
 Sufficient proof has now been afforded, if we mistake not, 
 that the appearance of the Arabian prophet in the world, 
 and the rise, progress, and results of his imposture, are 
 clearly foretold in the sacred volume. Indeed, it would 
 not be easy to specify any admitted subject of prophecy, 
 upon which history and Providence have thrown a stronger 
 or clearer light, than that which we have been considering. 
 Interpreters have been justly struck at the surprising exact- 
 ness of the delineations, and their perfect accordance with 
 the details of history. " The prophetic truths," says Dr. 
 Zouch, " comprised in the ninthchapter of the Apocalypse, 
 are, of themselves, sufficient to stamp the mark of divinity 
 upon that book. When I compare them with the page of 
 history, I am filled with amazement. The Saracens, a 
 people which did not exist in the time of John, and the 
 Turks, a nation then utterly unknown, are there described 
 in language the most appropriate and distinct." If, then, 
 the considerations commonly adduced to account for the 
 rise, progress, and reign of Mohammedanism, appear tc be 
 inadequate,— if the human causes usually quoted to expjairi 
 the astonishing success of Mohammedan imposture stiJi 
 seem to us to leave many of the phenomena inexplicable, 
 and the greatest revolution in the world connected with th'j 
 history of the Church, stands forth an unsolved problem,— 
 why should we hesitate to ascribe it directly to the deter- 
 minate will and counsel of the Most High, and thus find a 
 clew to all the mysteries connected with if? Why should 
 we be anxious to escape the recognition of a Divine inter- 
 ference in the rise of this arch-heresy '? If we have been 
 correct in our interpretation of the preceding predictions of 
 Daniel and John, the Mohammedan delusion is as real and 
 as prominent a subject of prophecy, as any in the whole 
 compass of the Bible. Now, to insist upon the operation oif 
 merely human causes in the production of an event which 
 is truly a subject of prophecy, is in fact to take the govern- 
 ment of the world out of the hands of God. And this prin- 
 ciple pushed to the extreme will inevitably lower and im- 
 pugn the sure word of prophecy; for it makes God the 
 predicter of events over" which, at the same time, he has 
 no special superintendence or control. Such a principle 
 cannot stand the least examination. When Daniel foretels 
 the fortunes of the four great empires ; or when Isaiah 
 speaks of Cyrus by name, as one who should accomplish 
 certain great purposes of the Infinite Mind, is it to be sup- 
 posed, that the events predicted were to happen exclusivn 
 of Providential agency '? As easily and as justly then we 
 may acknowledge a special pre-ordainment in the rasr o^ 
 
650 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 Chap. 10—21. 
 
 Mohammed, whose still more formidable dominion and 
 more lasting and more fatal agency in the affairs of men, 
 are equally the theme of unquestionable predictions. No 
 admission of this nature militates with the free agency of 
 man, or at all affects the moral character of his actions. 
 The mere fact that an event is foreknown or foretold by 
 the Deity, neither takes away nor weakens the accounta- 
 bility of the agents concerned. Of this, the whole scrip- 
 ture is full of proofs. But the reflecting reader will de- 
 sire no further confirmation of so plain a position. — Bdsh. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Ver. 5. And the angel, which I saw stand upon 
 the sea, and upon the earth, lifted up his hand 
 to heaven, 6. And sware by him that liveth for 
 ever and ever, who created heaven, and the 
 things that therein are, and the earth, and the 
 things that therein are, and the sea, and the 
 things which are therein, that there should be 
 lime no longer : 7. But in the days of the voice 
 of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to 
 sound, the mystery of God should be finished, 
 as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. 
 
 The solemn asseveration of the angel here cited is very 
 frequently misunderstood. It contains no intimation of the 
 actual and absolute cessation of time, for in the part of the 
 prophecy in which it is introduced, the spirit of inspiration 
 IS not speaking of the end of the world, the winding up of 
 all sublunary concerns, or of any thing pertaining to it, but 
 of the ushering ^?^^!o the world of a state of triumph and 
 glory. The object of the angel is simply to announce be- 
 forehand that this grand event shall take place, without 
 longer delay, under the seventh trumpet. A translation 
 that should give the exact scope of the original, would, dis- 
 regarding the present punctuation, read thus: "that there 
 should be delay no longer, than unto the days of the voice 
 of the seventh angel," &c. The original word for 'time' 
 {chfGiws) is in several instances in the sacred writings used 
 in the sense of delay, as is also the verb chronizo, formed 
 directly from it, as Matt. xxiv. 48, " And if that evil ser- 
 vant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth (chronizei) 
 his coming." That the Greek alio,, but, is used in the 
 sense of except, than, unless, &c. is expressly shown by 
 Schleusner, in his N. T. Lexicon. The conclusion there- 
 fore may be safely rested in, that the burden of the angel's 
 oath in this place is not that time, considered in itself, should 
 then end, but that the consu-mmation of a certain great 
 event, called the "finishing of the mystery of God," should 
 not be deferred any longer than to the period of the seventh 
 trumpet. What ihis event is, is clearly intimated Rev. xi. 
 15, " And the seventh angel sounded ; and there were great 
 voices in heaven, saying. The kingdoms of this world are 
 become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ ; and he 
 shall reign for ever and ever." But this is an event which 
 is certainly to take place during the course of time, and not 
 after its close. — Bush. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Ver. 16. And he causeth all, both small and great, 
 rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark 
 in their right hand, or in their foreheads. 
 
 It was a general custom in the East to brand their slaves 
 in the forehead, as being the most exposed ; sometimes in 
 other parts of the body. The common way of stigmatizing 
 was by burning the member with a red-hot iron, marked 
 with certain letters, till a fair impression was made, and 
 then pouring ink into the furrows, that the inscription 
 might be more conspicuous. Slaves were oflen branded 
 with marks, or letters, as a punishment of their offences ; 
 but the most common design of these marks was to distin- 
 guish them if they should desert their masters. For the 
 same reason, it was common to brand their soldiers, but 
 with this difference, that while slaves were marked in the 
 
 hand, with the name, or some pecuiai character belonging 
 to their masters; soldiers were marked in the hand with 
 the name or character of their general. In the same man- 
 ner, it was the custom to stigmatize the worshippers and 
 votaries of some false gods. Lucian affirms, thai the wor- 
 shippers of the Syrian goddess, were all branded with cer- 
 tain marks, some in the palms of their hands, and others in 
 their necks. To this practice may be traced the custom, 
 which became so prevalent among the Syrians, thus to stig- 
 matize themselves ; and Theodoret is of opinion, that the 
 Jews were forbidden to brand their bodies with stigmata, 
 because the idolaters, by that ceremony, used to consecrate 
 themselves to their false deities. The marks employed on 
 these occasions were various. Sometimes they contained 
 the name of the god ; sometimes his particular ensign, as 
 the thunderbolt of Jupiter, the trident of Neptune; the ivy 
 of Bacchus : or they marked themselves with some mysti- 
 cal number, which described the name of the god. Thus 
 the sun, who was denoted by the number DC VIII, is said 
 to have been represented by the two numeral letters XH. 
 These three ways of stigmatizing, are all expressed by the 
 apostle John in the book of Revelation : " And he causeth 
 all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to 
 receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads ; 
 and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the 
 mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.'' 
 The followers of the beast received a mark in their right 
 hand, because they ranged themselves under his banners, 
 ready to support his interests, and extend his dominions 
 with fire and sword; they bore the name of their general, 
 the bishop of Rome, Larcivoj, and the number of his name, 
 which is (!>(SQ. But they also received the mark of slaves 
 on their foreheads, to denote that they were his absolute 
 property-, whom he arrogated a right to dispose of accord- 
 ing to bis pleasure; who could neither buy nor sell, live 
 with comfort, nor die in peace, without his permission. 
 But they were not only soldiers and slaves ; they were also 
 devotees, that regarded and acknowledged him as a god, 
 and even exalted him above all that is called God and is 
 worshipped ; in token of which they received a mark in 
 the palm of their hands, or in their foreheads. The prac- 
 tice of marking the soldier and the devotee, although of 
 great antiquity, may be traced to one origin, to a custom 
 still more ancient, of marking a slave with some peculiar 
 stigma, to prevent him from deserting his master's service, 
 or rendering his discovery and restoration certain and easy. 
 To this custom the prophet Ezekiel refers : " Go through 
 the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and 
 set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and 
 that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst 
 thereof." Another instance may be mentioned from the 
 Revelation : " Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the 
 trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their 
 foreheads." In both instances, it is the symbol of protec- 
 tion and security both to the persons and privileges of the 
 people of God. — Paxton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Ver. 19. And the foundations of the wall of the 
 city were garnished with all manner of precious 
 stones. The first foundation loas jasper ; the 
 second, sapphire ; the third, a chalcedony ; the 
 fourth, an emerald. 
 
 This is not only a description of what must be exceed- 
 ing beautiful in its appearance, but is moreover manifestly 
 corresponding with the mode of building among the ancient 
 Romans, who, it is well known, constructed their walls 
 from the bottom to the top with alternate layers, or rows of . 
 bricks, and of white stone, and sometimes" of black flints. 
 Each of these layers was alwa)'s of a considerable thick- 
 ness, or breadth ; and while their different colours formed 
 a beautiful appearance to the eye, and were a most elegant 
 kind of ornament, this mode of placing materials of differ- 
 ent dimensions and substance in alternate rows greatly 
 strengthened the work. — King. 
 
 I 
 
INDEX 
 
 (lBEL, asking counsel at, 227, 
 
 ABIATHAR, how far concerned in the plot 
 against Holomon, 249. 
 
 ABIDING under a tree, what, 167. 
 
 ABNER'S mode of promoting the interests of 
 David, 185, 186. 
 
 ABRAHAM and other patriarchs, pastoral life 
 led by, 19 ," his entertainment of the angels, 
 20 ; compared with a modern Arab emir, 23 ; 
 Lazarus' being carried to his bosom, what 
 meant by, 607. 
 
 ABSALOM'S character and conduct, 217 ; pil- 
 lar. 22.3. 
 
 ABSTINENCE from food through vexation, 
 176, 271. 
 
 ADAR, festival of, 323. 
 
 ADDER: description of the, 399. 
 
 ADULATION paid to eastern monarchs, 389. 
 
 AFFECTIONATE mode of address by fa- 
 thers, 156. 
 
 AGE, reverence for in the East, 168, 347'; 
 ages, the four among the Hindoos, 457. 
 
 AHITHOPHEL'S counsel illustrated, 220. 
 
 ALABASTER-BOX, breakin-i of, 598. 
 
 ALIGHTING as a token of respect, 32, 282. 
 
 ALLIANCES formed by Arab families, 33, 
 
 ALMOND-TREE, natural history of, 486. 
 
 ALOE-TREE, described, 98. 
 
 AMALEK,perpetual war threatened against,61. 
 
 AMMONITES, David's treatment of, 214 ; pro- 
 phecies concerning, 531. 
 
 ANGARII, or Persian messengers, 580. 
 
 ANGELS, term how applied in the East, 216. 
 
 ANGER, spoken of as burning, 320. 
 
 ANIMAL FOOD, seldom eaten by the Hindoos, 
 625; animals how designated in the East, 161. 
 
 ANKLETS, eastern described, singular cus- 
 tom in respect to, 451, 633. 
 
 ANOINTING of the body, supposed effects 
 of, 641. 
 
 ANT, natural history of, 420 ; the white spe- 
 cies. 580. 
 
 ANTELOPE, account of the, 184, 251, 443, 444 ; 
 mode of hunting the, 456. 
 
 ANTIOCH in Pisidia, account of, 619. 
 
 ANTONIA, town of, described, 217. 
 
 APOLOGUES, the Orientals much addicted to 
 the use of, 130, 254, 290. 
 
 APPLE-TREE, of little value in the East, 443; 
 apples of gold in pictures of silver, 430. 
 
 ARABS, their mode of life, 19; their mode of 
 warfare, 23 ; addicted to plunder, 326 ; He in 
 wait for caravans, 488; dress of, in the Holy 
 Land, 616. 
 
 ARARAT, mount, description of, 13; ascent 
 of, 14. 
 
 ARBOUR, eastern, account of, 444, 562. 
 
 ARCHIVES, kept of important events, 311 ; 
 sometimes read to princes, 321. 
 
 ARIEL, why Jerusalem so called. 466. 
 
 ARM-HOLES, pillars sewed to, 528. 
 
 ARMOUR, of eastern warriors described, 161. 
 
 ARMY, silent approach of compared to dew, 
 2il ; armies of Israel originally footmen, 
 293 ; num^ousness of ancient, 301. 
 
 ARROWS, poisoned, the practise of using, 331, 
 384 ; shot into an enemy's country, 290 ; 
 used for pestilence, 399 ; term ap'phedto the 
 tongue, 491 ; children sometimes so called, 
 413; burning, what, 367. 
 
 ASCENTS by steps, made in honour of an em- 
 peroi", 255. 
 
 ASHES thrown in the air, 55. 
 
 ASHKELON, prophecies concerning, 504, 566. 
 
 ASS, account of, 304 ; peculiar value of in the 
 East. 341 ; saddle, mode of travelling with, 
 279, 280; female, why more valuable than 
 the male, 324; wild, description of, 353; 
 white, riding upon by persons of distinction, 
 13G. 140, 431. 
 
 ASSEMBLY, poor man coming into, 641. 
 
 ASSOCIATES desired by eastern travellers, 
 618. 
 
 ATHLET.E, or combatants, how trained, 637. 
 
 ATTIRE OF HARLOTS, described, 420. 
 
 AUGURS, covered with a mantle when con- 
 sulted. 176. 
 
 AVENGING the blood of relations, 99, 100. 
 
 AWAKING one from sleep, 443, 
 
 AZOTUS, present state of described, 617. 
 
 BAAL'S PROPHETS, did not ordinarily eat 
 
 at Jezebel's table, 264 ; their conduct illus- 
 trated, 264. 
 BAAL-ZEBUB, god of flies, 274, 583. 
 BABEL, tower of, with what design erected, 18. 
 BABYLON, prophecies concerning, 457, 513— 
 
 519. 
 BACA, valley of, what place meant by, 397. 
 BADGER'S SKINS, wliat meant by, 66. 
 BAGGAGE, how managed in travelling, 527. 
 BAKING, mode of in the East, 26, 214 ; how 
 
 done for families, 501, 528. 
 B.^LBEC, enormous stones among its ruins, 
 
 234. 
 BALDNESS, made for the dead, 109 ; use of 
 
 term explained, 454. 
 BALD-HEAD, phrase how used, 276. 
 BANNERS, carried in processions, 370 ; dis- 
 
 l)laving of, phrase how to be understood, 386. 
 BANQUET, where often spread in the East, 
 
 210, 567. 
 BAREFOOT, when Orientals walk, 218. 
 BARLEY BREAD, a common eastern (lish,139. 
 BASHAN, hill of, what meant by, 388; bulls 
 
 of, expression how used, 371. 
 BATHING, accounted a great luxury in the 
 
 East, 206 ; mode of, 473. 
 BATS AND MOLES, allusion to, 450. 
 BATTERING-RAM, description of, 309. 
 BATTLEMENTS, on the roofs of houses, 117. 
 BAY-TREE, green, allusion to, 375. 
 BEAR, furious passions of the female, 221, 
 
 425 ; makes a loud noise in parturition, 481 ; 
 
 symbol of the empire of the Medes and Per- 
 sians, 545. 
 BEASTS, fallen, kindly cared for in the Mosaic 
 
 law, 116. 
 BEARD, held in great reverence in the East, 
 
 205; shaving the, a mark of subjection, 
 
 206 ; sometimes died black, 225. 
 BEATING the breast through grief, 608. 
 BEAUTY, female, eastern notions of, 447 ; of 
 
 form, highly prized, M2. 
 BEDS, eastern, construction and arrangement 
 
 of, 274, 421. 
 BED-CHAMBER, what meant by in the East, 
 
 289,300. 
 BEDSTEAD of Og, king of Bashan, 103. 
 BEDOUIN ARABS, habits of, 372. 506. 
 BEES, expressions relative to, 103 ; how kept 
 
 in the East, ICO; how their honey deposited, 
 
 125; opinions of the ancients respecting, 142. 
 BEGGARS, very common in the East, 607. 
 BEHEMOTH, what kind of animal, 358-360. 
 BELLS, used upon garments, 68 ; hung on the 
 
 necks of horses, 569. 
 BENJAMIN, compared to a wolf, 52. 
 BESIEGED IN WAR, how used to defend 
 
 themselves, 489. 
 BESOM OF DESTRUCTION, phrase explain- 
 ed, 459. 
 BETHANY, description of its present state, 
 
 614. 
 BETHESDA, pool of, 611. 
 BETHLEHEM, description of, 575. 
 BIER, use of in funerals, 187, 617. 
 BILES, much dreaded in the East, 327. _ 
 BIRDS, employed in ceremonial cleansing, 75 ; 
 
 nifetling near the altar, 396. 
 BIRTH, coming to the, phrase how used, 294 ; 
 
 of a son, season of great festivity, 576. 
 BLACKNESS OF FACE, 521, 572 ; gathering, 
 
 phrase explained, 553. 
 BLANKETS, a single one worn, 599. 
 BLACK AND WHITE GARMENTS, when 
 
 used, 305. 
 BLASPHEMY, deemed as aheinous crime, 81. 
 BLEMISHES, personal, not allowed in priests, 
 
 81. 
 BLESSING, importance attached to, 32. 
 BLOOD, practice of eating in Abyssinia, 17 ; 
 
 forbidden to be eaten by the Israelites, 21 ; 
 
 mixed with idolatrous sacrifices, 369. 
 BLUE, colour of, greatly in esteem among the 
 
 Jews, 531. 
 BODIES of executed criminals exp< sed, 179. 
 BOLSTER, easternj described, 170. 
 
 BONES of men buret upon the altar, 258; 
 scattered at the grave's mouth, 416 ; of the 
 dead burnt, 555, 557. 
 
 BOOK, the writing of by an adversary, 351 ; 
 oriental, account of, 376. 
 
 BOOTY, how divided, 178, 303. 
 
 BOSOM, term how used in the East, 109, 384 j 
 putting fire in the, 420. 
 
 BOTTLES, eastern, described, 129, 411 ; ex- 
 pressions concerning, 411, 582. 
 
 BOW, account of the early use of, 181, 235 ; 
 treading upon, what meant by, 367; ancient- 
 ly used by the Persians, 456'; oriental, how 
 carried. 565. 
 
 BOWSHOT, distance of, 28. 
 
 BOWELS, said to be hot, 250. 
 
 BOWING to the earth as a token of respect, 
 40, 163. 
 
 BOWLS and dishes of the Arabs, 137. 
 
 BOXING, exercise of, 640. 
 
 BRACELETS of eastern ladies described, 451 ; 
 worn by princes, 180. 
 
 BREAD, how eaten in the East, 331 ; eating of 
 the same, a pledge of friendship, 376 ; casting 
 of upon the waters. 440. 
 
 BREAKFASTS of the orientals described, 445. 
 
 BREAKING BREAD, what meant by, 621. 
 
 BRICK, the soil about Babylon peculiarly 
 adapted to making, 18 ; employed for build- 
 ing in Egypt, 455 ; dried, not burnt, 502, 528. 
 
 BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM conducted 
 through the streets, 490. 
 
 BRIERS AND THORNS, tearing with as a 
 punishment, 139. 
 
 BRIGaNDINJE, what kind of #rmour, 503. 
 
 BRIMSTONE, burning of, 336 ; how spoken ot 
 in reference to a country, 123. 
 
 BROTHER, term I'low applied in the East, 613. 
 
 BUILDING, remarks on the state of in the 
 East, 425, 480 ; on the sand, phrase explain- 
 ed, 581. 
 
 BULLOCKS unaccustomed to the yoke, 499. 
 
 BULLS OF BASHAN, expression how used, 
 371. 
 
 BUNDLE, term how used, 169. 
 
 BURDEN, term how used in prophecy, 570. 
 
 BURIAL, desired near the tombs of saints, 
 258; generally without the walls of cities, 
 461 ; sometimes within, 308. 
 
 BURNING TO DEATH, an eastern punish- 
 ment, 543 ; of dead bodies, 181 ; over the 
 dead, 179. 
 
 BUTTER, how made in the East, 135, 316, 434. 
 
 CAIN'S sentence explained, 12. 
 
 CAMEL, much used in travelling in the East, 
 38; remembers an injury long, 138; his 
 habits, 1.39 ; remarks upon the loading of, 
 285; how said to pass thi-ough the eye of a 
 needle, .587 ; Camel's hair, materials of rai- 
 ment, 576; Camel's milk, value of to the 
 Arabs, 39 ; sometimes compared to a ship, 
 333. 
 
 CaMPHIRE, how used in the East, 442. 
 
 CANA OF GALILEE, by what rehcs distin- 
 guished, 609. 
 
 CANAAN, conquest of by the Israelites jus- 
 tified, 136 ; surrounded by drearv deserts, 
 103; original fertility of, 10-3, 106. 131. 
 
 CANCELLING OF HANDWRITING, mode 
 of, 635. 
 
 CANDLES, in night encampments, 346, 
 
 CAPTIVITY, scriptural idea of, 365; captives, 
 how procured in the East, 53^ . 
 
 CARAVAN, description of an eastern, 485; 
 sometimes divided, 39, 
 
 CARAVANSERY OR INN, eastern, 127, 600. 
 
 CARMEL, Mount, description of, 448, 5.58. 
 
 CARPETS, spread in honour of idols, 555. 
 
 CARVED WORK. Orientals verv fond of, 253. 
 
 CASTING DOWN FROM A ROCK, 306. 
 
 CATERPILLARS, rough, remarks upon, 305, 
 
 CATTLE, apt to wander in travelling, 537. 
 CAVALCADE, eastern, description of, 321. 
 CAVES, sometimes residence of eastern shep 
 
 herds, 348 ; places of concealment, 375 ; 
 
 scenes of idolatry, 526 ; and dens places ot 
 
 habitation, 640. 
 
652 
 
 CEDAR-TREE described, 98; of Lebanon, 
 252, 456, 568. 
 
 CHAFF, custom of burning after winnowing, 
 577. 
 
 CHAMBER, prophets', how constructed, 279. 
 
 CHANGES of fortune, how described in the 
 scriptures, 374. 
 
 CHAPPING of the earth in the East, 494. 
 
 CHARIOTS, of iron, anciently used in war, 
 131 ; expressions concerning, 275 ; races of, 
 629. 
 
 CHEEK, smiting the, 335. 
 
 CHEESE, mode of making in the East, 161. 
 
 CHERETHITES AND PELETHITES, what, 
 204. 
 
 CHERUB, term how applied to Tyre, 535. 
 
 CHILD, people compare themselves to, 250. 
 
 CHILDREN, punished for the sins of fathers, 
 63 ; passing through the fire, 108, 290 ; ear- 
 nestly desired in the East, 142; disgraceful 
 not to have, 343 ; destroyed by bears, 276 ; 
 otfered in sacrifice, 278; sold by. their pa- 
 rents, 278; brought up by nurses, 287 ; com- 
 pared to plants, 416 ; how carried in the 
 East, 476 ; piping in the market places, 584 ; 
 term of endearment. 616. 
 
 CHOLERA, its ravages in the East, 394. 
 
 CHURCH of Holy Sepulchre described, 594. 
 
 CISTERNS and water works of Solomon de- 
 scribed, 435. 
 
 CITRON-TREE of the East described, 443. 
 
 CLAY, turned to the seal, phrase explained, 
 352. 
 
 CLEAN and unclean beasts, distinction of, 
 72. 80. 
 
 CLEFT in the rock of Calvary, 594. 
 
 CLIENTSHIP, an ancient custom in Arabia, 
 337. 
 
 CLODS of the valley, allusion to, 341. 
 
 CLOTHES, given in pledge, 64; numerous 
 suits of, 344; clothed with a person, phrase 
 explained, 625. 
 
 CLOUDS, precursorsof rain, 266. 
 
 COACHES filled with female slaves, 320, 
 
 COAL, quenching of one's, 216. 
 
 COCKATRICE, remarks upon the, 481. 
 
 COCK-CROWING, time of, 593. 
 
 COFFIN carried round at feasts, 440 ; not ge- 
 nerally used in the East, 290. 
 
 COINED MONEY, great antiquity of, 40. 
 
 COLDNESS of H^e nights in Palestine, 500. 
 
 COMBAT, single, common in ancient times, 
 163. 
 
 COMFORTERS visit mourn'ers, 328. 
 
 COMPASSING one's steps, 369. 
 
 COMPLAINTS against oppressors, how con- 
 ducted. 022. 
 
 COMPLIMENTARY forms of speech, 216. 
 
 CONCEIVING INIQUITY, phrase how used, 
 367. 
 
 CONCUBINE, the Levite's cut to pieces, 146. 
 
 CONEY, what kind of animal, 409. 
 
 CONGREGATION OF ISRAEL, what meant 
 by the term, 89. 
 
 CONSECRATE, term how used, 68. 
 
 CONSOLATION, THE, a title of the Messiah, 
 601. 
 
 CONSUMING of the life or soul, 215. 
 
 COOKING, performed hastily in the East, 176. 
 
 COOLING, parlours, mode of in the East, 
 133. 
 
 CORN, parched and roasted, 148 ; ground at 
 break of day, 187,441,498; how preserved, 
 263; parched, still used for food, 222; trod- 
 den out by oxen, 289 ; taking off the ears of, 
 343 ; withholding of, in times of scarcity, 423. 
 
 CORNELIUS, whether he intended to pay Pe- 
 ter divine honours, 618. 
 
 CORNERS of a field, left to be gleaned, 81 ; to 
 sit in corner, mark of honour, 556. 
 
 CORN-STACKS, destroyed by fire, 64. 
 
 COTTAGE in a vineyard described, 449. 
 
 COURTESANS, heathen, dedicated to the 
 temple, 561. 
 
 COURTS of eastern houses, 602. 
 
 COVERED, to be, sign of mourning, 462 ; cov- 
 ering the lips, sign of mourning, 531. 
 
 CRACKLING of thorns under a pot, 437. 
 
 CREATION, account of, considered, 10. 
 
 CRIMINALS, where executed, 394 ; cast into 
 the sea, 587. 
 
 CRIMSON or scarlet, the favourite colour of 
 ancient heathen prostitutes, 449. 
 
 CROCODILES, Egyptian princes compared to, 
 536 ; ways of taking, 537 ; object of terror to 
 the Earyptians, 332. 
 
 CROWNS, ancient, remarks upon, 414 ; em- 
 ployed at marriages, 445 ; civic, given as a 
 reward to Roman soldiers, 638 ; of thorns, 
 remarks upon, 593. 
 CRUCIFIXION, remarks upon, 593; created 
 
 dreadful thirst. 593, 599. 
 CRUISE, what kind of vessel, 275. 
 CRYING to ttie gods in trouble, 372. 
 CUP-BEARER, office of, 213. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 CUPS, beautiful, formed of the Nautilus, 629. 
 
 CURES, supposed to be effected by touching 
 the part diseased, 281. 
 
 CURSE God and die, phrase illustrated, 328 ; 
 cursing in war, 98 ; term how to be under- 
 stood, 586. 
 
 CURTAIN, hung before a tent-door, 68. 
 
 CUSTOMS, ancient, held in great reverence 
 in the East, 622. 
 
 CUTTING the flesh of the dead, 79 ; on what 
 other occasions practised, 265, 507. 
 
 CYMBALS, what kind of instruments, 417. 
 
 DAGON, temple of, how built, 145. 
 
 DAN, his blessing explained, 50. 
 
 DANCES, eastern, described, 58, 178, 198 ; and 
 music, when practised, 164; dancing girl, 
 Hindoo, ornaments worn by, 450; dancers, 
 eastern, solicit money from the company, 
 
 .5a5. 
 
 DARKNESS, plague of 56. 
 
 DAUGHTERS, how given in marriage, 35; 
 soiTietimes deceit practised, 36 ; dedicated 
 to prostitution in the East, 79 ; of Israelites 
 allowed to marry out of their tribes, 102. 
 
 DAVID, a man after God's own heart, phrase 
 explained, 188, 189; removes the ark, 193, 
 194, 195 ; kills a Hon and a bear, 162 ; his an- 
 swer to Achish, 171, 172; released from his 
 connexion with Achish, 176; his attack upon 
 the Amalekites, 178; his conduct towards 
 Ishbosheth, 182; his dancing considered, 
 198 ; his treatment of the Moabites, 201 ; his 
 victory in the valley of salt, 203 ; his conduct 
 towards Uriah, 207, 208; his treatment of the 
 inhabitants of Rabbah, 212 ; his alleged in- 
 dulgence to his children, 215; his conduct 
 towards Joab, 224. 227, 241 ; towards Mephib- 
 osheth, 225 ; towards Saul's house at the in- 
 stigation of the Gibeonites, 228; towards 
 Shimei, 224. 
 
 DAYS, time computed by, 17; day, great, com- 
 mon phrase in the East, 35. 
 
 DAY-SPRING, rising of, 600. 
 
 DEAD, how laid out, and mourned in the East, 
 29. 
 
 DEAD DOG, term of contempt, 168, 635. 
 
 DEAD BODIES, how deposited in tombs, 615 ; 
 dead carcass, tied to hving bodies, 624. 
 
 DEAD SEA, account of, 20—22. 
 
 DElATH, personified as having snar*s, 369. 
 
 DECAPITATION, an eastern punishment, 180. 
 
 DECREES, eastern, modes of making, 455. 
 
 DELIVERANCES from danger, how spoken 
 of, 413. 
 
 DEMONIACAL possession believed in in the 
 East. 584. 
 
 DESERTS, African, described, 107; of Meso- 
 potamia, great scarcity of water in, 29. 
 
 DESOLATE PLACES, what meant by, 328 ; 
 desolate houses, commen in the East, 458. 
 
 DEVOTED things not redeemable, 89. 
 
 DEVOTION, apparent, of the Hindoos, 312. 
 
 DEWS, very copious in the East, 181, 548. 
 
 DIAL OF AHAZ, shadow upon. 296. 
 
 DINNER, a Persian described, 589. 
 
 DISMOUNTING, a token of respect, 169, 635. 
 
 DISSOLVER OF DOUBTS, phrase how used, 
 544. 
 
 DIVINATION by arrows, 530 ; other modes 
 of 548. 
 
 DOGS, licking the blood of the slain, 272, 286 ; 
 character of, in Arabia and Africa, 371 ; re- 
 turning to their vomit, phrase explained, 
 431 ; term, used by way of reiiroach, 163. 
 
 DOORS, custom of loose women sitting at, 
 422 ; of the ancients, how constructed, 431 ; 
 door keepers in the East, allusion to, 397. 
 
 DOVE, the, remarks upon the natural his- 
 tory of, 387; conjugal chastity of, 447 ; dove's 
 dung, what rendered it valuable, 283 ; flying 
 to their windows, 482 ; Spirit of God likened 
 to, 577. 
 
 DRAGONS, or large serpents, 350. 
 
 DRAUGHTS, intoxicating, given to malefac- 
 tors, 498. 
 
 DREAMS, much thought of in the East, IW. 
 
 DROMEDARY, remarkable for his swiftness, 
 482. 
 
 DRY TREE, bad man compared to, 608. 
 
 DUNGHILL, to embrace, phrase explained, 
 510. 
 
 DUST, strewed on the head, 180 ; licking the, 
 phrase explained, 389. 
 
 DWELLING DEEP, phrase explained, 510. 
 
 EAGLE, peculiarities of the, 124; the golden, 
 
 529; the bald, 567. 
 EARLY RISING, common in the East, 39. 
 EARS, the digging or opening of, 376 ; of corn, 
 
 plucking of, 119. 
 EATING under the shade of trees, 350; mode 
 
 of in the East, 427 ; early in the morning 
 
 disgraceful, 440 ; eaten up, when one said to 
 
 be. 388. 
 
 EDOM, prophecies concerning, 507, 511, 540. 
 EGYPT, land of compared with Judea, 108 j 
 
 prophecies concerning, 535. 
 ELDERS, or Senators, term explained, 334. 
 ELEPHANTIASIS, perhaps Job's disease, 327. 
 EMERODS, severe disease in the East, 123 ; 
 
 images of, 157. 
 ENCAMPMENTS, eastern, how regulated, 
 
 170, 311. 
 ENGEDI, village of, why so called, 168. 
 ENTRANCE to eastern houses made low, 426. 
 ENTREATING a wife by a husband, 337. 
 EPHAH borne by two women, Zechariah's 
 
 vision of explained, 567. 
 EPHESUS, city of described, 620; temple of 
 
 Diana at, 621. 
 ESHCOL, grapes of, 94. 
 ESPOUSALS, precede marriage by ten or 
 
 twelve months, 142; how performed, 370, 
 
 575, 610. 
 EUNUCHS, black, in the Levant, 502. 
 EUPHRATES, water of muddy, 487. 
 EVIL, in the eyes of, phrase explained, 153 ; 
 
 evil eve, allusions to the, 429. 
 EXECUTIONERS, public, the, 167; execu- 
 tions in the East very prompt, 424. 
 EYES, thrust out as a punishment, 160, 293, 
 
 474, 502; the custom of staining, 287; the 
 
 seven of the Lord, phrase explained, 567; 
 
 of carcasses picked out by ravens, 434 ; of 
 
 the dove, remarks upon, 447. 
 
 FACE, to see one's, phrase how itsed, 169, 
 216 ; to put away one's, iil8, 334 ; to entreat 
 one's, 2o8 ; to turn to a holy place in prayer, 
 2.S4. 367 ; to put between the knees, 265. 
 
 FAIRNESS of complexion, how esteemed in 
 the East. 365. 
 
 FALSE' BALANCES, punishment for employ- 
 ing, 422. 
 
 FAN, eastern, form of, 467. 
 
 FARE, scanty, of the Arabs, 423. 
 
 FATHER, term how used in the East, 455. 
 
 FEAR, a prominent effect of heathenism, 291 ; 
 of wild beasts, its effects, 428. 
 
 FEASTING, from house to house, in turn, 
 324 ; eastern, how conducted, 429. 
 
 FEASTS, given in the East to the poor as well 
 as the rich, 589, 606 ; how tables arranged at, 
 589, 603. 
 
 FEET, to be at one's, phrase e.xplained, 135; 
 of travellers, washed in the Ease, 26 ; of 
 criminals secured, 187 ; and fingers, speak- 
 ing with, 420 ; placed upon the neck of a 
 conquered enemy, 49, 131. 
 
 FEMALES in the East not generally able tD 
 write, 271. 
 
 FESTIVALS, religious, expediency of, 110. 
 
 FIELDS said to complam of their owners, 351 
 
 FIG-TREE, particularly valuable in Canaan- 
 .551 ; grow in oriental gardens, 609. 
 
 FIGURES, representing captivity of Israel, 292 
 
 FINGERS, dipping in a dish, 592. 
 
 FIR-TREE, felling of with an axe, 458. 
 
 FIRE, treading or walking on, 291. 
 
 FIREBRAND, term how applied in the East, 
 567. 
 
 FIRST-BORN, privileges of, 116. 
 
 FISH, in the Red Sea, 92. 
 
 FISHERMEN prefer the night for fishing, 602 
 
 FLAGONS, supporting one with, 443. 
 
 FLESIIMEAT little eaten in the East, 63, 429. 
 
 FLEA, David's comparison of himself to, 172. 
 
 FLOATS, eastern manner of construction, 
 252. 460. 
 
 FLOCKS in the East kept by women, 129 ; ol 
 goats, 269 ; driven to the shade at noon^ 
 443 ; numbered daily, 500. 
 
 FLOORS and ceilings in the East, 253. 
 
 FLY OF EGYPT, remarks on the, 454. 
 
 FOOD presented to idols, 627. . 
 
 FOOLISH WOMEN, alluded to By Job, who 
 meant by them, 328. 
 
 FOOT set in a wide place, phrase explained, 
 374. 
 
 FOREHEADS marked by idolaters. 527. 
 
 FORERUNNER, term how used, 639. 
 
 FOUNTAINS of water, frequently places of 
 danger, 136 ; armies assembled at, 176 ; .stop- 
 ped in time of war, 310; sealed, phrase ex- 
 plained, 445. 
 
 FOWLING, mode of in the East, 373. 
 
 FOXES, particularly fond of grapes, 445, 518 ; 
 Samson's catching, 143. 
 
 FRECKLED spots in leprosy, 74. 
 
 FROGS, plaffue of .'"4, 410. 
 
 FRONTLETS, Moses' words concerning ex- 
 plained, 105. 
 
 FRUIT-TREES, not willingly cut down in the 
 East, 115. 
 
 FUF.L, what kind of used in the East, 156 ; 
 scarcity of how compensated, 486. .'v^I. 
 
 FUNERAL, attending upon made one unclean, 
 89; chariots, described, 286; feasts, in hon- 
 our of the dead 496. 
 
INDEX 
 
 653 
 
 FURNACE, fiery, mentioned by Daniel, 543. 
 FCRNITIJRE of eastern houses, 462. 
 
 GAME, how taken in hunting, 420. 
 
 GAMES and cooibats among the Greeks, 626. 
 
 GARDENS, how watered in the East, 107, 366, 
 4-50, 481 ; oriental, described, 423. 
 
 GARDENERS, eastern, custom of alluded to, 
 606. 
 
 GARLANDS employed on festive occasions, 
 620. 
 
 GARMENTS taken in pledge, 120 ; laid down 
 as carpets, 286; frequently changed in the 
 East, 407 ; the keeping of white, 438. 
 
 GATES of cities, common places of judica- 
 tion, 116, 149 : of the daughter of Zion, what 
 meant by phrase, 868; of fortified places, 
 how secured, 618. 
 
 GIBEON, Solomon's sacrifices at considered, 
 249. 
 
 GIBEONITES, sentence pronounced against 
 them considered, 129. 
 
 GIDEON'S hastily prepared meal, 137. 
 
 GIFTS, often pompously presented in the 
 East, 133. 
 
 GILEAD, mountains of described, 125. 
 ;1RDLES, how used in travelling. 57 ; bestow- 
 ed as a mark of esteem, 222 ; use of in east- 
 ern dress, 494, 583, 605. 
 
 GIVING a cup of cold water, 584. 
 
 GLEANING after reapers, 79, 147. 
 
 GLORYING over one, phrase explained, 55. 
 
 GNASHING of teeth in rage, 411. 
 
 GOAT, wild, described, 408; symbol of Mace- 
 don, 546. 
 
 GOEL. or avenger of blood, 99. 
 
 GOING out to meet a person, 178. 
 
 GOLD, qualify of how tried, 569. 
 
 GOURD, wild, what, 281 ; mentioned by Jonah, 
 what, 560. 
 
 GRAIN, product of Syria, 395; where lodged 
 after winnowing, 551, 577 ; various kinds of 
 sowa in Palestine, 468. 
 
 GRANARIES, made under ground, 303. 
 
 GRAPES, large and abundant in Holy Land, 
 94; juice of trodden out, 125, 140. 
 
 GRASS, generally found in the vicinity of wa- 
 ter, 263; grows with great rapidity in the 
 East, 337. 
 
 GRAV^E. spoken of as ahabitsttion, 349. 
 
 GRAVING on the palms of tlie hands, 475. 
 
 GRAY H.^IRS, objects of special reverence 
 in the East, 427. 
 
 GREAVES, military, described, 161, 633. 
 
 GREECE and Pei'sia, prophecies concerning, 
 546. 
 
 GRET^DY of gain, piiiHse explaineu, 418. 
 
 GREEN, liow term applied to persons, 405. 
 
 GRIEF, eastern mode of expressing, 156. 
 
 GRINDING the face, phi'ase explained, 450. 
 
 GROVES anciently made use of for temples, 
 485. 
 
 GUESTS, dismissed from feasts with presents, 
 200: liowlionoured at entertainments, 244. 
 
 GUIDES in tiie wildernesses of the East, 90. 
 
 GUITAR, people of the East very fond of, 350. 
 
 HAGAR, circumstances of her sending away 
 considered, 28 
 
 HAIL, plague of, 55; hailstones of enormous 
 size, 1.30. 
 
 HAIR, liow worn by eastern women, 216, 642; 
 (if evil-(]oers cut off as a punishment, 317; 
 standing up tltrough terror, 329; how dress- 
 ed by eastern ladies, 451; cutting off in 
 mourning, 406 ; worn by females very long, 
 627. 
 
 HAKIMS or doctors, much in esteem in the 
 East, 578. 
 
 HAND, whon said to be sealed, 352 ; hands 
 st_^retching out towards an object of devotion, 
 377, 391 ; Yiuht, accounted more honourable 
 tiian tiie left. 391, 410; use of as a signal to 
 servants, 412: hand joined in hand, plirase 
 e.xplaineii. 407; hand's on the head, what in- 
 dicated flierebv. 488. 
 
 HAND'S-BRGADTH, life compared to, 376. 
 
 HANGING upon a pillar, 311 ; by the hands, 
 522. 
 
 HANGINGS, used in temples, 297; in courts 
 and gardens, 318. 
 
 H.\NUN'S treatment of David's servants, 204. 
 
 H.VREMS of the East, considered as sanctu- 
 aries, 273. 
 
 H ARES, eastern modes of cooking, 423. 
 
 HARNESSED, term explained, 58. 
 
 HART and fallow-deer, what kind of animal, 
 250 ; pantins for water brooks. 376. 
 
 HAWKS, how distinguished, 357. 
 
 HAZAEL'S murder of Benhadad considered, 
 28."). 
 
 HEAD of a conquered enemy, how disposed 
 of 164: taking away from, phrase explained, 
 275 ; decapitated, how disposed of, 283 ; of 
 tlie way, plirase explained, 53U. 
 
 HE-GOATS travel before the flock, 513. 
 
 HEALING in his wings, phrase explained, 572. 
 
 HEAT of the day, Orientals repose during, 
 284 ; in eastern countries often fatal, 279. 
 
 HEAP of stones, as sepulchral monuments, 
 223. 
 
 HEART, to be placed in one's, 634. 
 
 HEATHEN, term how applied in the Scrip- 
 tures, 366. 
 
 HEAVENS spread out as a curtain, phrase 
 explained, 407. 
 
 HEBREW, the original language, 11 ; Hebrews 
 not a warlike people, 162. 
 
 HEDGE placed around one, 324 ; of thorns, 
 breaking through, 424. 
 
 HELMET, piece of ancient armour, 162; and 
 shield, account of, 624. 
 
 HELP-MEET, a wife so termed in the East, 11. 
 
 HERBS and flowers planted upon graves, 464. 
 
 HEROD, Josephus' account of his exhibition 
 of himself, 619. 
 
 HERMON, mount, the dew upon, 415. 
 
 HEZEKIAH'S display of his treasures, 297. 
 
 HIDDEN treasures, discovery of, 329. 
 
 HIGHEST seat at entertainments, G06. 
 
 HIGH-WAYS, frequently deserted by travel- 
 lers, 136. 
 
 HILLS and high places, anciently the seat of 
 worship, 273, 291. 
 
 HIND, bringing forth her fawn, 353. 373, 495 ; 
 allusion to feet of, 370 ; celebrated for affec- 
 tion to its mate, 419. 
 
 HINDOOS beheve in numerous gods and de- 
 mons, 585. 
 
 HIRING out for bread, 156. 
 
 HOGS, wild, numerous and destructive in the 
 East, 394. 
 
 HONEY, found in the rocks in Palestine, 396 ; 
 not always wholesome, 430 ; comb, delicious- 
 ness of, 370. 
 
 HOOK in the nose, phrase explained, 469 ; 
 hooks and fish-hooks, 557. 
 
 HORN, worn by females in the East, 155, 369 ; 
 also by soldiers, 272, 390. 
 
 HORNETS, sent as a iudgment, 66 ; very an- 
 noying in the East, 101. 
 
 HORSES, not allowed to the kings of Israel to 
 multiply, 112, 307; of conquered enemies, 
 how dealt with, 130; brought by Solomon 
 from Egypt, 257 ; the bride in Soiomon's 
 Song compared to, 442; of the sun, 279 ; an- 
 cient mode of shoeing, 453; sometimes 
 Eainted red, 567 ; led in the wilderness, 484 ; 
 ells hune upon their necks, 569. 
 
 HORSE-LEECH, remarks upon the, 433. 
 
 HORSEMEN spreading themselves, 564. ' 
 
 HOSPITALITY, distinguishing trait of the 
 Orientals, 351, 588, 603. 
 
 HOUSE of burial described, 168 ; of sheep- 
 shearing, what, 288 ; dedication of, 374. 
 
 HOUSE-TOPS, how constructed, 159,414,461; 
 dwelling upon, 427; walking upon, 691. 
 
 HUNTING, mode of, practised in the East 235 
 
 HUSBANDMEN, in the East, labour almost 
 naked. .591. 
 
 HUSHAI'S treachery considered, 218. 
 
 HUSKS, import of original term for, 606. 
 
 HUTS or booths for oriental shepherds, 538. 
 
 HYMN, sung on the night of the Passover, 592. 
 
 HYSSOP, what kind of plant, 383. 
 
 IBEX, or wild goat, described, 408. 
 
 IBIS, the, particularly venerated in Egypt, 396. 
 
 IDOLS, great number of in India, 450. 
 
 IDUMEA, vide Edom. 
 
 IMAGES, graven and molten, what, 122, 549. 
 
 IMAGERY, oriental, remarks upon, 416. 
 
 IMPRECATION, form of, 268. 
 
 INHERITANCE might be exchanged in Israel, 
 271 ; inheriting the wind, phrase explained, 
 423. 
 
 INSOLENCE of Rabshakeh's speech, 293. 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL music, employed in reli- 
 gious services, 417. 
 
 INTERMENTS of the dead, frequently hurri- 
 ed in the East, 116. 
 
 INQUIRY, oriental modes of making, 603. 
 
 IRON, found in Mount Lebanon, 106 ; and 
 clay, mixture of in Nebuchadnezzar's vis- 
 ionary image, 543. 
 
 IRONY and satire, common in the East, 353. 
 
 ISHMAEL, the prophecies concerning him 
 considered, 24. 
 
 ISRAELITES, their land protected while ab- 
 sent at Jerusalem, 69. 
 
 ISSACHAR, his blessing explained, 50. 
 
 IVORY, e-mployed as a material for beds in 
 the East, 557. 
 
 JACKALS, devouring human bodies, 387; 
 further account of, 60-5, 
 
 JACOB'S wages changed by Laban. 37. 
 
 JAEL, her conduct towards Sisera considerpd, 
 135 ; her offering him milk and butter ex- 
 plained, 135. 
 
 JAW-BONE, from which Samson drank, con- 
 sidered, l44. 
 
 JEALOUSY, very common in the East, 420 ; 
 effects of, 638. 
 
 JEBUS, speech of the inhabitants of, to David, 
 explained, 189. 
 
 JEPHTHAH'S vow considered, 140. 
 
 JERICHO, the curse denounced upon him who 
 should rebuild it, 129; state of the country 
 around, 604. 
 
 JERUSALEM, vast numbers gathered thereat 
 the festivals, 65; enthusiasm of pilgrims 
 upon coming in sight of, 390 ; how it could 
 contain so great multitudes, 298; Volney's 
 account of approach to, 413. 
 
 JEWELS, the Hebrews' borrowing of the 
 Egyptians considered, 50; worn in the nos- 
 trils, 422; on the cheeks, 423; worn profuse- 
 ly by Jewish brides, 482.' 
 
 JEWS, forbidden by Adrian to enter Jerusa- 
 lem, 453. 
 
 JOAB slain by Bcnaiah, 249. 
 
 .TOB, structure and scope of the book of, .3215. 
 
 JONATHAN'S mecliug David in the wood il- 
 lustrated, 107. 
 
 JORDAN, the river, described, 20, 127. 
 
 JOSEPH compared to a fruitful vine, 51 ; 
 where interred and why, 132. 
 
 JOT or tittle, term explained, 579. 
 
 JOURNEY, when the Arabs begin, 280 ; those 
 of princes, how distinguished, 470. 
 
 JOY, how expressed by femaies in the East, 
 289. 
 
 JUDAH, why compared to a lion, 49 ; cover- 
 ins of, phrase explained, 461. 
 
 JUDEA, remarks on the soil of, 453, 473 ; land 
 of desolated according to prophecy, 88, 463, 
 461, 525. 
 
 JUNIPER-TREE, account of, 266; coals of, 
 phrase explained, 411. 
 
 KEEPER of the head, phrase how used. 171. 
 KEY, sometimes worn ''upon the shoulder 
 
 462 ; given in token of conferring authority 
 
 536. 
 KID, seething in its mother's milk, 65. 
 KINDRED, laws respecting marriage be 
 
 tween, 78. 
 KINGDOM, delivering up the, to the Father 
 
 638. 
 KINGS and princes dishonouted after death, 
 
 309 ; memory of the good honoureil, 309 ; 
 
 how nursing fathers to the church, 476. 
 KISIION, the river, described, 136. 
 KISSING the beard, 184, 227; the feet, 604; 
 
 sacred oblations, 267 ; the hand a token of 
 
 respect, 350 ; the wiitten decrees of prince.s, 
 
 429 
 KNEAD' NG-TROUGHS, eastern, described 
 
 57, r23. 
 KNOWING a person, phrase how used, 3:^2 
 . one afar off, 4 15. 
 
 LABOURERS collected for employment, 589. 
 
 LACHRYMATORIES, used by the ancients, 
 534. 
 
 LADIES, eastern, veiled when they appear in 
 public, 350. 
 
 LAMB, emblem of meekness. 480. 
 
 LAMENESS and dumbness, effect of walking 
 in deserts, 469. 
 
 LAMPS, much used in the East, 257; lamp 
 despised, phrase explained, 333; of Cairo 
 described, 615. 
 
 LAND of Israelites, not to be permanently 
 sold, 87 ; division of among heirs, 303 ; bear- 
 ing thorns and briers, 639. 
 
 LAND.MARKS, not to be removed, 115, 122. 
 
 LANGUAGE, the original, what, 11. 
 
 LAODICEA, account of, 645. 
 
 LAP, shaking the, 313. 
 
 LAPPING water Mke a dog, 13S. 
 
 LATTICE through which Ahaziah fell, 274. 
 
 LAUGHING, expression when used by Orien- 
 tals, 27. 
 
 LAYING aside every weight, 640. 
 
 LEANING upon one's words, 310; upon the 
 bosom at meals, 395. 
 
 LEAVEN, corrupting influence of, 62.5. 
 
 LEBANON, mount, description of, 103; how 
 an object of comparison, 447; fragrant 
 odour " of its wines, 448, 550 ; storms and 
 tempests upon very severe, 466; violence of, 
 565 ; glory of, 471 ; cedars of, 550. 
 
 LENDING upon usury, 109 ; upon pledge, 119, 
 
 LEPERS obliged to cover their lips, 74 ; expel- 
 led from camps and cities. 281. 
 
 LEPROSY described, 73, 74 ; leprosy in gar 
 ments, 74 ; in houses, 75. 
 
 LETTERS, eastern, form of, 315; usually 
 
 taken by travellers, 313. 
 LEVIATHAN, Job's account of considered, 
 
 3(10-,365. 
 LEVIRATE lawe.xplaincd, 150. 
 LICE, plague of 55. 
 
854 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 LTFE compared to a story or dream, 398. 
 
 LIFTING up the feet, 34 ; the countenance, 89. 
 
 LIGHTS always burning in Egyptian houses, 
 498. 
 
 LIGHT-HOUSES, alhision to, 634. 
 
 LIGHTNINGS, Jrequent in Syria, 415. 
 
 LILY, eastern, often very magnificent, 581. 
 
 LIP, protrusion of, a mark of contempt, 371. 
 
 LIVING WATER, wliat meant by, 487. 
 
 LOCKS, eastern, described, 133, 446. 
 
 LOCUSTS, account of, 305 ; operation in lay- 
 hig their eggs, 504 ; their destructive ravages, 
 551 ; syujbol of the Saracens, 649. 
 
 LOINS, custom of girding up, 266, 352. 
 
 LONG LIFE, especially desired by the Orien- 
 tals 484. 
 
 LOOKING BACK, how understood in the 
 East, 27. 
 
 LOTS, casting of among the Orientals, .320, 617 ; 
 employed to settle contentions, 426. 
 
 LUNATICS, highly reverenced in the East. 630. 
 
 LYING upon the left or right side, 525. 
 
 MACHINE, for throwrlng stones, 524. 
 MAJESTY, how reverenced in the East, 542. 
 MAKING bare the arm, phrase explained, 
 
 478, 479. 
 MAI.E CHILD, birth of, 328; male children 
 
 principally desired in the East, 497. 
 MALEFACTORS, not allowed to look at kings, 
 
 322. 
 MANDRAKES, what they were, 36. 
 MANNA described, 60. 
 MANOAH, his history illustrated, 142. 
 MANTLE, the transfer of, ^68; Jewish, an 
 
 upper garment, 582. 
 MANY DAYS, phrase how used, 249. 
 MARINERS, eastern, their conduct in a storm, 
 
 559. 
 Marks imprinted on the person in honour 
 
 of idols, 124 ; for other purposes on the 
 
 hands and arms, 474. 
 MARRIAGE FEASTS^ sometimes continued 
 
 for seven days, 143; marriage ceremony 
 
 performed in the open air, 151 ; delay of, con- 
 sidered by the Hindoos as a disgrace and 
 
 calamity, 394; processions, customs con- 
 nected with, 592. 
 MARRING aland with stones, 27a 
 >f ASTER anischolar, phrase explained, 571. 
 Mats or cai^ts employed by the Orientals 
 
 in praver, 480. 
 MATTRESSES used for sleeping, 617. 
 MEAT-OFFERING, what, 70. 
 MEDICINES, externally applied, 596. 
 MEETING friends or guests, the custom of, 
 
 178. 
 MELONS, and other fruits of Egypt, 91. 
 MEN at one's feet, phrase explained, 135. 
 MERCHANTS of the East, for what famous, 
 
 641. 
 MESHA, his tribute of lambs, 279. 
 MESSENGERS in the East travel rapidly, 332. 
 MICE, the Philistines scourged by, 157. 
 MIDDLE wall of partition, 632. 
 MILCH camels, very valuable in the East, 39. 
 MILETUS, present state of, 621. 
 MILITARY operations commenced in the 
 
 spring, 206. 
 MILK, how kept by the Arabs, 129 ; poured 
 
 out at funeral ceremonies, 33i3; sometimes 
 
 afforded by fathers to their offspring, 341 ; 
 
 great part of the diet of the Orientals, 432. 
 MILLET, account of the plant so called, 525. 
 MILLO, a place in Jerusalem, 191. 
 MILLS, eastern, described, 91. 
 MIRAGE of the desert, allusions to, 469, 495. 
 MIRRORS, what kind in use in the East, 69, 
 
 432. 
 MOAB, prophecies concerning, 505, 507. 
 MODEST way of speaking of one's self, 630. 
 MOHAMMEDANISM announced by fifth trum- 
 
 petr646 ; votaries sKict in their religion, 562. 
 MOLOCH, children sacrificed to by passing 
 
 through the fire, 113. 
 MOMENT, a, Tamul mode of expressing, 374. 
 MONEY put up in bags, 289, 334 ; changers 
 
 among the Jews, 588. 
 MONSOONS, severe in the East, 352. 
 MORDECAI'S demeanour towards Haman 
 
 illustrated, 321, 323. 
 MORTARS, how made in the East, 56, 572 ; 
 
 pounrling in as a punishment, 432. 
 MOTIIWORM, description of, 329, 344. 
 MOUNT HOR described, %. 
 MOURNING, eastern, described, 211, 583 ; ex- 
 pressions usual in, 492; mourners, female, 
 hired in the East, 491. 
 MOUTH, opening the, wide, 395 ; of a strange 
 
 woman, phrase explained, 425. 
 MOWINGS, the king's, phrase explained. 5.57. 
 MUD walkni buildinsrs, short duration of, 342. 
 MUJELII'.E among the ruins 6f Babylon, 458. 
 Ml I-HF.IIRY, the, whether mentioned in 
 •cripture, 240. 
 
 MURDERER, no satisfaction to be taken for 
 
 the lite of, 192. 
 MUSIC and dancing, usual at entertainments, 
 
 607;, in the night, 467; as an expression of 
 
 respect, 279. 
 MUSTARD-TREE, natural history of, 585. 
 MUZZLING of oxen, 120. 
 MY I,ORD, phrase how used, 30. 
 MYRRH, allusion to explained, 446. 
 
 NAILS of female captives to be pared, 115 ; 
 
 nails fastened by masters of assemblies, 
 
 441 ; fixed in a sure place, 463. 
 NAMES given to women and slaves, 155 ; how 
 
 varied in the East, 315 ; sometimes bestowed 
 
 from occupation, 596 ; other grounds of be- 
 
 stowment, 609, 618. 
 NAMING of the living creatures by Adam, 11. 
 NAVEL of infants, allusions to explained, 
 
 419. 
 NAZARETH, description of, 576. 
 NAZARITISiVI, vow of, 155. 
 NEAPOLIS, present state of, 620. 
 NECK, wlien one said to have hold of, 236. 
 NEHEMIAH, expenses of his table, 315. 
 NEIGHING, term how used in the East, 489. 
 NET, being compassed in, explained, 337. 
 NICOPOLIS, present state of, 638. 
 NIGHT, often time for travelling in the East, 
 
 316, 605; principal time for heathen rites, 
 
 369 ; for the roaming forth of wild beasts, 
 
 409 ; night dew very heavy in the East, 138 ; 
 
 sometimes the season for agricultural labour, 
 
 149; often severely cold in the East, 38. 
 NILE, waters of pleasant to the taste, 53; 
 
 changed into blood, 54. 
 NINEVEH, description of, 559; prophecies 
 
 concerning, 563. 
 NO-AMMON in Egypt described, 503. 
 NORTH WIND, Solomon's allusion to, 430. 
 NOSTRILS distended in anger, 329. 
 NUMBERING the people, David's sin in, 236. 
 NURSES in the East, 31. 
 
 OATH, ceremonies in taking, 254, 288; very 
 common among the heathen, 264 ; doctrines 
 of the Jews concerning, 590. 
 
 OBEISANCE made by women to men, Oil. 
 
 OBLIGATIONS, written, how cancelled, 569. 
 
 OIL, treasures of, how kept, 303 ; burnt in 
 honour of the dead, 549 ; how used in sacri- 
 fices, 70; poured upon the head, 415; oil- 
 olive, what. 68. 
 
 OINTMENTS in great esteem in the East, 215. 
 
 OLD AGE. the winter of life. 330. 
 
 OLIVE-TREE, utility of, 16; how injured, 
 335 ; grafting of, 624 ; olives and grapes, how 
 gathered and gleaned, 459. 
 
 OPENING the mouth in speaking, 579,328; 
 open hands, 109. 
 
 ORACLE.Hebrew,compared with heathen,192. 
 
 ORDAINED to condemnation, phrase ex- 
 plained, 643. 
 
 ORNAMENTS, Rebecca's considered, 31 ; 
 worn by females in the nose, 31 ; laid off in 
 time of mourning, 312. 
 
 OSTRICH, natural history of the, 355 ; dole- 
 ful noise of, 561. 
 
 OVENS, eastern described, 70. 
 
 OWL, a bird of evil omen in the East, 457 ; 
 emblem of desolation, 457. 
 
 OXEN, view of their services, 300 ; custom 
 of trying or proving, 600, 606. 
 
 PAINTING the eyes and face, 287. 
 
 PALANQUIN, effects of bearing, 535. 
 
 PALM-TREE, account of the, 404, 493. 
 
 PANTING for the dust, phrase explained, 555. 
 
 PARENTS, one's, reproached by enemies as 
 an expression of anger, 166. 
 
 PARTING, ceremony used at, 580. 
 
 PARTRIDGE, account of the, 171. 
 
 PARTURITION of eastern women easy, 53. 
 
 PASSOVER, circimastances of eating the first, 
 57. 
 
 PASTORAL or wandering tribes in Syriai, 494. 
 
 PASTURES carefully guarded, 399. 
 
 PATMOS, present state of, 643. 
 
 PAVILION, eastern, description of, 268. 
 
 PEACOCK, account of the, 256 ; exceedingly 
 numerous in the East, 355. 
 
 PEARLS, casting before swine, 581. 
 
 PELICAN, account of the, 405. 
 
 PERFUMES poured upon the heads of guests, 
 372, 431, 479 ; boxes of suspended from the 
 neck, 442 ; burning of at feasts, 529 ; per- 
 fumed garments, common in the East, 34. 
 
 PERGAMOS, account of, 644. 
 
 PETRA, ancient city of, described, 554. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA described, 645, 
 
 PIGEONS, building nests in rocks and hollow 
 places, 507 ; carrier, still employed in the 
 East. 3&1, 440. 
 
 PILLAR, or column, a seat by, 289; pillars, 
 term how applied, 632. 
 
 PILLOW of goats' hair, phrase how to be un- 
 derstood, 166. 
 
 FIT, criminals cast into, 352; used for catch- 
 ing wild beasts, 368, 529. 
 
 PITCHERS or jars, used for carrying water 
 instead of leathern bottles, 139. 
 
 PLOUGH, the Syrian, described, 554. 604. 
 
 PLOUGHING, how managed in the East, 117, 
 118 ; upon the back, 414 ; often done in win- 
 ter, 427. 
 
 PLUCKING out the right eye, 579. 
 
 POINTS of the compass, how expressed, 108. 
 
 POLITENESS of the Orientals, how evinced, 
 30. 
 
 POLYGAMY piodtictive of many evils, 36; 
 among the Jews considered, 152. 
 
 POMEGRANATE JUICE, employed as a 
 drink, 95. 
 
 PORTIONS, custom of sending to friends and 
 to the poor, 316, 322. 
 
 POTTAGE, people of the East very fond of, 
 32 ; how made, 281. 
 
 POTSHERD. Avhat meant by the term, 327. 
 
 POTTED flesh in use in the East, 222. 
 
 POTTER'S wheel, what, 497; potter's-field, 
 a burial place for strangers, 592. 
 
 POURING water on one's hands, 277. 
 
 PRAY without ceasing, phrase explained, 63G. 
 
 PRAYERS, frequency of among the Brahmins, 
 384 ; ascending up before God, 640. 
 
 PRECIOUS stones, forming foundation of 
 New Jerusalem, 650. 
 
 PRECIPITATION, mount of at Nazareth de- 
 scribed, 602. 
 
 PRESENTS given in the East at the close of 
 a meal, 40; sent to procure help, 260; of 
 garments, 306 ; valuable made to governors, 
 571. 
 
 PRISONERS, oriental, miserable condition 
 of, 394 ; how treated, 501 ; generally easy to 
 be visited, 592. 
 
 PRISONS, eastern, described, 502. 
 
 PROPERTY of executed criminals confisca- 
 ted, 271. 
 
 PROPHETS, performed on musical instru- 
 ments, 160; mode of consulting, 259; se- 
 pulchres of, 605. 
 
 PROSEUCH.^, or Jewish places of pi lyer, 
 620. 
 
 PROSTRATION practised in prayer, 590. 
 
 PROVENDER, carried for beasts of burden 
 on a journey, 251. 
 
 PROVERBS, or aphorisms, ancient mode of 
 conveying instruction, 418. 
 
 PROVISIONS, how demanded by public of- 
 ficers, 314. 
 
 PSALM 149th, on what occasion composed, 
 417. 
 
 PUBLICANS, where their houses built, 582 ; 
 office of described, 596. 
 
 PUFFING at one's enemies, 368. 
 
 PURCHASES, how made in the East, 499. 
 
 PUTTING the hfe in the hand, 141 ; putting 
 on Egypt as a garment, phrase explained, 503. 
 
 QUAILS miraculously brought, 92; Moses' 
 accoimt of considered, 58, 93, 391; abound 
 in Asia, 93. 
 
 RABBI, when title began to be used, 589. 
 
 RAINS in Judea described, 123 ; when fall in 
 the East, 261, 374 ; the sound of, 265 ; some- 
 times falls- in neighbourhood of Red Sea, 
 387; former and latter, 4S4, 641; very vio 
 lent in the East, 433, 603 ; makers of pre- 
 tended, 495. 
 
 RAISING up evil, phrase how to be under 
 stood, 211. 
 
 RAMAH, city of described, 132. 
 
 RANK and opulence, how distinguished, 438. 
 
 RAVENS, made to provide food for Elijah, 2G1. 
 
 REACHING beyond one's measure, 629. 
 
 REAPING, customs connected with in the 
 East, 147. 
 
 RECORDER, what kind of office, 204. 
 
 RECORDS, how preserved in the East, 499. 
 
 REDEMPTION of land, 87; of the first-bom, 
 95. 
 
 REED grows abundantly in Egypt, 332 ; lurk- 
 ing places in for wild beasts, 388 ; sweet 
 smelling, 489. 
 
 REGISTERING the names of citizens, 635. 
 
 RENDING of garments, phrase explained, 436. 
 
 REPHAIM, term for deceased giants, 343. 
 
 REPIIIDIM, rock of, described, 61. 
 
 REPUBLIC, Hebrew, form of, 89. 
 
 RESPECT, attitudes and expressions of, 16a 
 
 RESURRECTION, Job's anticipation of, 338 ; 
 curious notion of the Jews concerning, 376, 
 563. 
 
 RETALIATION, Mosaic law of considered, 83. 
 
 RICE, eating one's, how considered, 314. 
 
 RIDING into houses, 505. 
 
 RINGS, usually worn in the East, 99; given 
 as a token of atfection, 320. 
 
INDEX 
 
 655 
 
 RIPPING up women with child, 285, 555. 
 
 RIVERS in Arabia, often dry up, 331 : cut 
 among the rocks, 345 ; fertihzing etfects of, 
 468 ; drying up of, 477. 
 
 RIZPAH, her conduct illustrated, 234. 
 
 ROAD in a wilderness, 473. 
 
 ROBBERS, cunning of eastern, 438. 
 
 ROBES stripped off to confirm engagements, 
 164 ; washed in the blood of the Lamb, 646. 
 
 ROCK, the shadow of a, 467. 
 
 RODS of the Egyptian magicians, 53 ; or staff, 
 how mentioned in the scriptures, 280, 366. 
 
 ROOF, breaking up the, account of consider- 
 ed, 595. 
 
 ROSE, very fragrant in the East, 442. 
 
 RUDDER-BANDS, term explained, 623. 
 
 RUNNING FAST, sign of news, 2^. 
 
 SABBATICAL YEAR, law of considered, 88. 
 
 SABEANS, who they were, 324. 
 
 SA doles, eastern, described, 29. 
 
 SALAAM, or salutation of peace, 311. 
 
 SALT, covenant of, 95; the effect of on vege- 
 tation, 124 ; salting, term used for mainte- 
 nance, 310; salt plains of the East dreary 
 and desolate, 497 ; salting the bodies of new- 
 born infants, 529. 
 
 SALUTATIONS in travelling, 280; of guests 
 at entertainments, 604 ; our Lord's direction 
 in regard to, 604 ; mode of, 606. 
 
 SALUTING or blessing a house, 583; on the 
 face, 625. 
 
 SAMARIA, description of, 253. 
 
 ^AMIEL, tlie destructive wind so called, 268. 
 
 SANDALS, disgraceful to be beaten with, 
 555 ; custom of loosing from the feet, 577. 
 
 SANHEDRIM, Jewish, 91. 
 
 SARDIS, account of, 644. 
 
 SAVOURY meats described, a3. 
 
 SCAPE-GOAT, eastern custom respecting, 77. 
 
 SCEPTRE and staff; terms how used, 372, 520- 
 
 SCORPION, effects of its sting, 257, 524. 
 
 SCOURGE of the tongue, 330. 
 
 SCOURGING, a common punishment in the 
 East, 622. 
 
 SCRIBES, thenature of their office, 110; mode 
 of teaching, 578. 
 
 SCRIP, a garment used for carrying money, 
 281. 
 
 SCRIPTURES, custom of reading in public, 
 601, 609. 
 
 iSEAL sot upon the heart, 448. 
 
 SEATS in the streets, 347. 
 
 SEBASTE, the ancient Samaria, described, 465. 
 
 SECRETS not usually confided to women in 
 the East, 143. 
 
 SEE eye to eye, phrase explained. 479. 
 
 SEED-TIME, attended with danger to eastern 
 Imsbandmen, 413, 532. 
 
 SENNACHERIB, his vam boastings, 456,- de- 
 struction of his army considered, 295. 
 
 6EIR, mount, prophecies concerning, 538. 
 
 SEPULCHRES, liow constructed, .30, 458. 
 
 SERPENTS, fiery, or seraphs, described, 97; 
 their bite alluded to, 340; some supposed to 
 he deaf, 385 ; serpent charmers, 335, 438, 490. 
 
 SERVANTS, in what manner orders given to, 
 40 ; Jewish, regained their freedom on the 
 seventh year, 110 ; how treated in the East, 
 215 ; scriptural use of the term, 410. 
 
 SETTING the eyes upon one, 405. 
 
 SEVEN, the number, used for many, 431 ; 
 frecjuent use of that number, 587. 
 
 SHADE, essential to oriental luxury, 443. 
 
 SHADOW, emblem of protection, 95, 399. 
 
 SHAKING out the lap, 603. 
 
 SHAVING, and rending the mantle, 326. 
 
 SHEATH, term how apphed to the body, 545. 
 
 SHEBA'S rebellion, 226. 
 
 SHEEP, employed in making a covenant, 29 ; 
 large tails of, 68; shearing of, 169; great fe- 
 cundity of, 4ie ; hearing the voice of the 
 shepherd, 614; folds of, how constructed, 
 613 ; skins of and of goats, made into cloth- 
 ing. 639. 
 
 SHEMINITH, title of some of the Psalms, 
 367. 
 
 SHEPHERDS in tiie East accountable for the 
 flocks under their charge, 38 ; why the oc- 
 cupation of offensive to the Egyptians, 4^; 
 allusions to, 470 ; duty of to provide water, 
 472; figures drawn from the occupation of, 
 372 ; Syrian exposed to the seasons, 533. 
 
 SHIELD, highly valued by the ancients, 181 ; 
 uses of, 367 ; furbishing and anointing, 460. 
 
 SHILOAH, gentle waters of, 454. 
 
 SHIMEPS conduct illustrated. 220. 
 
 SHIRTS worn by the Arabs, 143. 
 
 SHITTIM-WOOD, what, 67. 
 
 SHOES, origin of the use of, 23 ; taken oflT in 
 temples, 53 ; in the presence of kings, 129 ; 
 also in confirming a bargain, 150. 
 
 SHOULDER of a lamb, a luxury, 159. 
 
 SiHOW, c-.haracteristic of false religions, 580. 
 SICKNESS often feigned by Asiatics, 214. 
 
 SIGNET worn on the little finger, 478, 
 
 SILENT praise practised by the Hindoos, 387. 
 
 SILOAM, fountain of, 241, 613. 
 
 SIMOOM, account of, 294. 
 
 SINAI, wilderness and mount of described, 
 
 62 ; flaming of trees upon, 63. 
 SINGING on a journey, 477. 
 SINS, the supposed source of all losses and 
 
 afflictions, 316; term how apphed by the 
 
 Hindoos, ^38. 
 SITTING at meals, 33 ; in prayer, 201 ; on a 
 
 cushion, 157 ; at the feet of a teacher, 622. 
 SKIN for skin, phrase explained, 326; of one's 
 
 teeth, phrase explained, 337. 
 SKIRT, spread over as a sign of protection, 
 
 149. 
 SLAVES, how used in the East, 64, 104, 399 ; 
 
 branded in the forehead, 650 ; female, gen- 
 erally given to a daughter upon her marriage, 
 
 560. 
 SLEEPING, arrangements in the East, 437, 
 
 605. 
 SLIME-PITS near Sodom, account of, 22. 
 SMELL of valuable gifts, 171. 
 SMITING with a shoe on the mouth, 623: the 
 
 hands together, 530. 
 SMOKE, term how applied to an angry man, 
 
 SMYRNA, account of, 643. 
 
 SNAIL, remarks upoji the, 385. 
 
 SNOW ]fi Salmon, phrase explained, 388. 
 
 SODOM AND GOMORRAH, destruction of 
 
 considered, 27. 
 SOLDIERS, their valour how excited, 313. 
 SOLOMON'S treatment of Adonijah, 249 ; his 
 
 decision in regard to the two children, 255 ; 
 
 splendour of his drinking vessels, 256. 
 SON, term how used, 164, 169; numerous in 
 
 families where polygamy is practised, 287. 
 SORCERY, common in the East, 114. 
 SOULS, superstition concerning, 344. 
 SOUNDS, distinction of in a procession, 628; 
 
 .sound of one's feet at the door, Wi. 
 SOUTH WIND, effects of in Egypt, 418; else- 
 where, 605. 
 SP.\RROW, habits of the, 407. 
 SPICES, large quantities of employed in 
 
 swathing dead bodies, 616 ; burnt in honour 
 
 of the dead, 307. 
 SPITTING in the face, 94, 121. 
 SPOILS of a conquered enemy dedicated to 
 
 the gods, 166. 
 SPORT made by prisoners, 145. 
 SPRING discovered in the wilderness, 98. 
 STADIUM, description of the ancient, 635. 
 STAIRS, secret places of, phrase explained, 
 
 444 ; staircases, how arranged, 598. 
 STAFF, shepherd's, allusion to, 372. 
 STANDARDS of the tribes described, 89; 
 
 standard-bearer, allusion to, 446. 
 STEPS, taking hold of, 341. 
 STICKS provi'led for fuel, 263 ; ancient mode 
 
 of writing upon, 541. 
 STOCKS, punishment of described, 334, 620. 
 STONES, anointed by the ancients, 84; of 
 
 great size in building, 300; stone pitchers 
 
 made use of for baking, 386 ; white, custom 
 
 of giving. 614. 
 STONING to death, 63, 80. 
 STORK, account of the, 408, 490. 
 STREETS, making in Damascus, phrase ex- 
 plained, 270 ; having a name in the, 337 ; one 
 
 m Jerusalem, 592. 
 STRIPPING the dead bodies of enemies, 179. 
 STREWING flowers and branches of trees 
 
 before great men, 588. 
 STRIKING HANDS, what meant by phrase, 
 
 STRETCHING forth the hands, 616. 
 
 STRIFE between herdsmen, common in the 
 East, 20. 
 
 STRINGS of African bows, of what made, 548. 
 
 STUBBLE and grass, burning of, 475. 
 
 STUMBLING-BLOCK, on wliat allusion found- 
 ed, 455. 
 
 SUBJECTS seldom admitted to the tables of 
 princes, 321. 
 
 SUBMISSION, outward tokens of, 269 ; by 
 what phrase expressed, 304. 
 
 SUBORNED swearing in the East, 271. 
 
 SUMMER parlour described, 133; summer 
 fruits. Orientals fond of, 562. 
 
 SUEZ, present state of, 273. 
 
 SUN, intense heat of in the East, 412. 
 
 SURETISHIP, ceremonies relating to, 419; 
 very often hazardous, 425. 
 
 SWALLOW, remarks on the habits of, 470 ; 
 swallow up, phrase how used, 473 ; swallow- 
 ing one's spittle, 332. 
 
 SWARTHINESS of eastern women, 489. 
 
 SWEARING by the head or life of a king, 
 579. 
 
 SWORD, bearing the, 624. 
 
 SYCAMORE-TREE, account of the, 304, 558, 
 607. 
 
 SYMPATHY of the Orientals with the afBicttti 
 
 365. 
 SYRIANS, precipitate flight of illustrated bfy 
 parallel case, 284, 285. 
 
 TABERNACLE, the, resembled an eastern 
 tent, 67. 
 
 TABLES, for writing, of great antiquity. 564. 
 
 TABOR, mount, described, 134, 398, 578,' 586. 
 
 TAIL, how used figuratively, 123. 
 
 TAKING hold of instruction, phrase explain- 
 ed, 419. 
 
 TANNOOR, or oven, eastern, described, 70. 
 
 TARES, still sown by enemies in the East, 584. 
 
 TARGETS and shields, how to be understood. 
 2i55. 
 
 TARSUS, Paul's birthplace, account of, 617. 
 
 TASTING of a person, phrase how employed, 
 375. 
 
 TAXES, how levied in Persia, and elsewhere 
 in the East, 2-50, 391. 
 
 TEARS, drinking of, expression common itt 
 the East, 394. 
 
 TEMPLE, Solomon's, mode of building illus- 
 trated, 253. 
 
 TEMPTATION of Christ, place of, described, 
 577, 601. 
 
 TENTS, Turcomans sit at the door of, 25; 
 custom of living in part of the year, 37, 299 ; 
 of the Arabs covered with black, 441. 
 
 TENT-PINS, how used in the East, 136. 
 
 THIGH, putting the hand under in swearing, 
 36. 
 
 THINGS which are not, phrase explained, 625. 
 
 THIRST terrible in eastern deserts, 410. 
 
 THORNS in the sides, phrase explained, 99 ; 
 and thistles, enemies compared to, 535 ; of 
 Christ, name of a plant, 615; in the flesh, 
 Paul's, what, 630. 
 
 THRASHING-FLOORS, how constructed in 
 the East, 138, 239, 366 ; thrashing out grain, 
 mode of, 465, 472. 
 
 THRONE of Solomon, its magnificence, 255 ; 
 similar ones in Persia, 255. 
 
 THUMBS and toes cut off; 133. 
 
 THUNDER-STORMS and showers in Syria, 
 160. 
 
 TIBERIAS, its present state, 612. 
 
 TIDINGS of victory announced to idols, 300. 
 
 TIMBRELS described, 395. 
 
 TIMBER, different modes of felling, 531. 
 
 TIME measured by the length of the shadow, 
 332 ; shall be no longer, phrase explained,650. 
 
 TIN mixed with silver, 449. 
 
 TITLES, flattering, to give to one, 351. 
 
 TOMBS, of lower orders, how constructed, 
 590 ; visited by eastern women, 499, 614 ; an- 
 ciently inhabited, 582; how closed, 615. 
 
 TONGUE, the, compared to fire, 641, 
 
 TOOTH, temple of, 235. 
 
 TORCHES and flambeaux, when used ia the 
 East, .591. 
 
 TORRENTS, figures taken from, 413. 
 
 TOWERS of protection for animals, 303 ; fig- 
 urative use of the term, 426 ; in gardens and 
 vineyards, 453,488,597. 
 
 TRADE, every Jew expected to follow one, 
 620. 
 
 TREASURES, how disposed of in the East, 
 437. 474 ; practice of hiding in the earth, 585. 
 
 TREES, often planted about houses, 254; te- 
 nacious of life in the East, 334; planted in 
 courtyards, 405; cut down by enemies, 495. 
 
 TREADING of grapes and oUves, 483. 
 
 TRIUMPH, military, described, 632, 635. 
 
 TROOPS said to be chosen, not levied, 58i5. 
 
 TROUGHS, stone, used in childbirth, 53. 
 
 TRUMPETS employed in war, 162. 
 
 TURBAN, eastern, described, 347. 
 
 TURTLE-DOVE, account of, 390; plaintive 
 note of, 526. 
 
 TUTELARY deities presiding over places, 
 
 TYMPANUM or drum, mode of punishment, 
 
 639. 
 TYRE, prophecies concerning, 533. 
 
 UMBRELLA, its use very ancient, 412. 
 UNCLEANNESS, contracted by attending a 
 
 funeral, 89, 
 UNICORN, what kind of animal intended by 
 
 the term, 399—404. 
 UPPER CHAMBERS, eastern, described, 498. 
 UPPER GARMENTS taken in pledge, 579. 
 USURY and extortion common in the Eaat, 
 
 5.30. 
 UZZAH, the fate of considered, 198. 
 
 VALI,EYS filled up to prepare a highway. 483. 
 VEGETATION short-lived in the East, 398. 
 VEHICLES, eastern, of conveyance, 197. 
 VEILS worn by brides in the East, 32 ; a tbken 
 
 of subjection, 629. 
 VESSELS, earthen, how made unclean. 73. 
 VILLAS in eastern gardens, 443. 
 
656 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 VINE, luxuriance of in Canaan, 49 ; running 
 over "walls, 51 ; why Joseph compared to, 51 ; 
 how injured by insects, 123 ; of Egypt, de- 
 struction of, 393 ; made to grow about houses, 
 414 ; how fenced in the East, 429, 438. 
 
 VINEGAR, refreshing quality of, 388. 
 
 VINEYARDS injured by cattle in the East, 
 64 ; highly valued in Asiatic countries, 270. 
 
 VIPER, remarks upon the, 623. 
 
 VIRGINS sleeping with the aged, 240; be- 
 trothed, how considered, 600. 
 
 VISITS of the Orientals very ceremonious,301. 
 
 VOWS to be sacredly performed, 437 ; of the 
 eastern women, 155. 
 
 WADY GHARENDEL described, 59. 
 
 WAGES of shepherds, 625. 
 
 Walking upon the roof of a house, 544; 
 softly, phrase how used, 272. 
 
 Wall, term how applied, 169 ; of Aphek, its 
 fall explained, 269 ; a bowing or tottering, al- 
 lusions to, 387 ; erected around eastern 
 dwellings, 541 ; of fire, phrase explained, 567. 
 
 WAR. religious rites preparatory to, 157. 
 
 Warriors interred in complete armour, 537. 
 
 Washing the hands of or from any thin^, 
 115 ; the feet, an eastern custom, 170 ; clothes 
 by the side of streams, 221. 
 
 WATCHES in the East, how announced, 483 ; 
 watchmen in the East, 398, 460 ; stationed in 
 a tower, 223. 
 
 WATER carried by women in the East^ 30, 31 ; 
 bitter made sweet, 58 ; scarce and valuable 
 in the East, 96, 466 ; poured upon the ground, 
 158; from the well of Bethlehem, 236 ; pro- 
 vided by the humane for birds, 423; for the 
 refreshment of travellers, 597 ; drawn from 
 wells bv women, 611. 
 
 WATERING a garden, mode of, 294. 
 
 WATER-SPOUT, allusions to, 376. 
 
 WEANING children, 27. 
 
 WEARYING one by continual coming, 41, 608. 
 
 WEAVER, allusion to in Isaiah's prayer, 469. 
 
 WEEPING over the dead, 181. 
 
 WEDDING, mystical, of Christ with his 
 church, 377—383 ; eastern, when celebrated, 
 591 ; use of lamps at, 591. 
 
 WEIGHING griefs and sorrows, 330 ; a king 
 in a balance, 544. 
 
 WEIGHTS, divers, forbidden, 121 ; exactness 
 in required, 424. 
 
 WELLS, stopping of, how considered in the 
 East, 32 ; furnished with means of watering 
 cattle, 25; closed to keep out sand, 34; a 
 place of concealment, 221 ; figurative allu- 
 sions to, 422; .lacob's visit to, 610, Gil. 
 
 WHEELS and living creatures in Ezekiel's 
 vision explained, 5^, 523. 
 
 WHIP for a horse, allusion to, 430. 
 
 WHISPERING in the ear, 159. 
 
 WIFE, addressed by that title, 259 ; contentions 
 of how represented, 426 ; wives, many not 
 allowed to the kings of Israel, 113; pur- 
 chased by dowry, 165 ; taken with ease in 
 the East, 207 ; of deceased emperors how 
 disposed of, 227 ; temporary, common in the 
 East, 548. 
 
 WHIRLWIND precursor of rain, 27S ; com- 
 ing from the north, 545. 
 
 WILD BEASTS, combats with, 628. 
 
 WILDERNESS of the Red Sea, account of, 
 486. 
 
 WIND, violent eastern described, 348. 
 
 WINDOW from which persons thiown. 287. 
 
 WINE, time of drinking in the East, 320 ; red 
 particularly esteemed in the East, 391, 429 ; 
 tarrying long over, 429; custom of cooling, 
 430 ; mixed with water, 449, 478 ; kept upon 
 
 the lees, 464 ; poured from vessel to vessel, 
 5Cp6 ; r oil, poured on the head of a vie;; 
 637. 
 
 WINE-PRESS, the treading of, 317; re ii 
 on the, 453. 
 
 WINGS, figurative application of term, 4:; 
 symbol of protection, 591. 
 
 WINTER in the East, how divided, 444; how 
 the inhabitants spend their time durinu 144 ; 
 winter and summer houses, distinction be- 
 tween, .''56 ; severity of how relieved, .0'J7. 
 
 WIPING Jerusalem as a dish, phrase explain- 
 ed, 271. 
 
 WISDOM'S house with seven pillars, 421. 
 
 WITCH OF ENDOR, Saul's consulting, 173. 
 
 WOLF, habits of the, 489. 
 
 WOMEN, love of, phrase how used, 182 ; not 
 admitted to eastern banquets, 318 ; custom 
 of the Persians, exception, 320; womens' 
 apartments inviolable, 320 ; a king going iiUo, 
 sign of execution to criminals, 321 ; vvomaui, a 
 beautiful, compared to a roe, 419; wom;n 
 confined in eastern countries, 421 ; Egyptian, 
 carried on commerce, 435; of Samaria rj. 
 fusing in modern times to give water to 
 travellers, 611; seek concealment, 627 1 
 head-dress of, 627. 
 
 WOODY tracts in the Holv Land, 222, 521. 
 
 WORDS of the law, how to be revealed, 122. 
 
 WORMS in the human body, 340. 
 
 WRESTLERS, probable allusion to tke cus- 
 toms of, 335. 
 
 WRITING, the most ancient way of, 333 ; on 
 stone alluded to, 339 ; on fine sand, 497 ; wr» 
 tings how sealed in the East, 526. 
 
 ZIBA'S present of summer fruits, what, 219 
 
 David's conduct towards, 219. 
 ZION, mount, present state oi; 561. 
 
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